Recently, I ran into this article by Douglas Rushkoff, asking, “Are Jobs Obsolete?” I highly recommend reading the piece in its entirety.

Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff — it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

…we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

This line of questioning our current employment crisis intrigues me. For ten years now, I have been self-employed. Every day that I wake up, I need to justify to clients that my services are worth something. Every day, I show my work value to potential clients and they agree or they disagree with the value I bring to their real estate needs.

As Rushkoff points out, it used to be that folks would do what they did best and trade for what they needed or wanted:

They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. By the late Middle Ages, most of Europe was thriving under this arrangement.

It was not until theRenaissancethat folk began to work for organizations or corporations. Since, workers and employers have consistently been searching for ways to make our work lives easier. Be it the assembly line or desktop computer, we have yearned for an easier way to work or have work done for us by automation.

‘Easier’ Work is Luxury, Right?

Could it be that our high unemployment rate is a victim of our drive towards efficiency? We have more than we actually need to live, we have some of the world’s richest poor folksand yet we are spinning our wheels as a country trying to “solve” this employment problem.

I know that in my own work, I look for tools and systems that allow me to be more efficient and effective with the resources and time I have at my disposal. A recent acquisition is enabling me to spend less time printing documents for signatures and more time focusing on the needs of my clients. If I had not been looking towards making the administrative side of my business more efficient for myself, I might have found myself, more rapidly, in a position to hire someone to do those admin tasks.

Forever Recession?

And then Seth Godin drops this tidbit:

There’s a race to the bottom, one where communities fight to suspend labor and environmental rules in order to become the world’s cheapest supplier. The problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win…

You see, Seth posits that work that is repetitious and can be systemized, will be. As civilization battles with this shift, efficiencies increase. It was in the inefficiencies, in communication, in geographic location that companies were able to charge more and employees could expect a stable, secure job.

When everyone has a laptop and connection to the world, then everyone owns a factory.

Rethink: Employment

Let’s face it: most folks reading this post live in North America. We do not want for much in our countries. Scarcity is word and concept that is not oft used to describe much of our lives. Unless, of course, we are talking about our attention span…

I recently attended the TEDxDetroit 2011 conference and was blown away by a young, happenstance, entrepreneur. While attending classes in the winter and completing a project for one professor, Veronika Scott, a design student, sees a homeless person living in a makeshift tent literal steps from a homeless shelter. She pokes her head into the shelter, and begins to design a coat/sleep bag with folks in the homeless shelter.

Not only did she create a coat that allows the homeless to stay warm, she has begun to employ some of the very homeless that she originally worked with to design the coat. One of her employees, a seamstress, has now moved into an apartment with her three children and is now actively looking to get more into industrial textile manufacturing.

…

One college student. One happenstance walk down a sidewalk. Some guts.

What “job” actively makes things like this happen? Is this a repeatable, systemize-able workflow? And yet, I am beginning to believe, this is a glimpse of what the new definition of employment is becoming. It is not easy to compartmentalize, label, and analyze.

Employment could very easily be redefined as re-assembling thoughts, ideas, services and products in more efficient manner.

Have idea and laptop, will produce.

This is my buddy Thom’s bid for one year, rent-free living at Garden Court Condos in Detroit, Michigan.

While his bid was unsuccessful (Garden Court has NO idea what they’re missing out on), his video was too awesome to not highlight!

From the talk that James Geary did for TED.

And how cool is Prezi for a new kind of presentation? Hmmm…

The Power of Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing from Eric Bryn on Vimeo.

For more information, check out http://plymouth-real-estate.us/2010/03/sector-7-technologies/
Brian Hernandez of Sector 7 Technologies talks about their business and introduces us to their giant fish, Bubba.

Make sure to watch the whole video…

Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation

My mind read that but saw, “Rise of SocNets, Demise of Google.”

Huh?

While Sean’s CV is truly impressive, I’m having trouble swallowing this premise that the rise of SocNets will somehow diminish the relevancy of Google.  Again, given his background, I would have to agree with the one of the commenters that the talk probably had more to it than simply the presentation slides embedded on TechCrunch.

Knowledge Based Economy

In my opinion, our economy is rapidly shifting to a knowledge economy (thank you Pete Drucker).  As such, BOTH SocNets and data collectors (ie. Google) are necessary.  Without common, readily accessible data that all folks in your SocNet can access, a social network becomes little more than a glorified coffee clatch. Being able to point your peeps to the relevant information and resources online (wonderfully indexed by Google) has already allowed much to be accomplished across the digital landscape.

Think about your own use of Twitter, for example.  It is great to be able to share conversations and ideas with folks across the ‘net.  The ability for you to share and discuss is inextricably tied to your ability to communicate, effectively, your ideas.  That’s where ‘the Google’ and other search engines come riding in.  They have made it their mission to catalog the world’s data.  And that data is darn near useless if no one can find it or access it.

Earlier this year, I mentioned a trailer for a movie coming out that looks intriguing.  While highlighting the film itself, I explained part of my fascination with science fiction in general:

One of the draws to scifi, for me, has been the “what if” of the stories presented.  Vernor Vinge wrote a book called “Rainbows End” that I recently picked up again.  The premise is a near future story, 2025, and the prevalence of access to the net, data and therefore analysis of said data plays heavily into the storyline.

Vernor Vinge’s, “Rainbows End,” is a story that truly does not seem too far fetched, or removed from our current technological progress.  His premise of ease of ‘access to the net, data and therefore analysis of said data’ is the direction I can see our economy heading.  Mentioned in the periphery of this story are the collaborators; those with giant SocNets that can analyze data/trends and delegate quickly through their SocNet.

The Rumblings of a Beginning

The recent news of Twitter “pipelining” its feed to search engines is the beginning of a new collaborative age.  SocNets ability to transmit information quickly is renowned.  The “balloon  boy” hoax earlier this year is a great example of how quickly a hoax can travel around the globe… and nearly as quickly get ridiculed for the attention attracting hoax it was.

Being able to sift and sort real time “conversations” will make crowd sourcing near instantaneous.  Furthermore, the ability to determine patterns of marketing affects, disease, weather anomalies and emergency conditions will allow the appropriate institutions to respond accordingly…and a LOT faster than we are currently used to.

Is the rise of the SocNet going to bring Google to its knees?  Nope.  In this particular instance, I firmly believe the sum of the whole is vastly greater than its parts.

A LOT of stuff has been written about Wave and how it will revolutionize communication.  While I don’t have much more to add to that discussion, I would like to offer my review of using it for about two weeks.

First Few Days: Barren as the Antarctic

Yeah, so it was ‘cool’ to be in the first wave of nominations that went out (thanks Dan!), but man, there simply weren’t a bunch of my paesans there to try out this new medium.  Thankfully, Dan and I tinkered, crashed a wave or two and generally kicked the tires while we waited for more folks to join in the fun.  The good news was that this ‘forced’ me to do some research and see what was already out there in the form of bots, extensions and how to search public waves.

Since then…

Many of my SocNet friends have gained their nominations and joined in the Wave.  Kinda fun breathing deep that “shiny new object” smell.  You know, kinda like that new car smell? Except not so automotive…

For sure, Wave is still experiencing growing pains.  For example, one feature that was present from the beginning was the “green dot of here-ness.”  This dot simply showed whether someone was online or not.  It disappeared and has recently made a reappearance, though it only shows the current user as online and nobody else, regardless of their status.

A few more features that need to be implemented:

• better contact management –> too easy to add someone you didn’t mean to a particular wave
• better wave management –> currently can’t remove someone from a wave unless you are that person
• GUI needs to be tweaked for better contact and wave management –> kinda clunky and too easy for confusion

Sounds Kinda Rough.  Is It Ready for Prime Time?

While Wave is a bit on the rough side right now, the potential is staggering.  Currently, with patience, a little spit and polish, it has been pretty easy to collaborate with a few folks on some upcoming projects.  Agendas have been proposed, revised, edited and finalized all while being able to track who made what changes…in real time!  And if we’ve needed to go face to face or ear to ear, there’s a plugin for that!

Wave is not ready for prime time just yet.  However, if you and your associates are willing to be patient and want to explore the edges of modern communication, this medium is a riot!  It is too simple to drop YouTube videos, pictures and other resources right in the middle of the conversation…and not just out of sheer goofiness!  Wave makes getting your point across a lot more fully fleshed out than a word document or email.

Collaboration is Key

So, uses that I can see for Wave immediately.  Yeah, so I’m a real estate guy, right?  I can see where Wave can be used to collaborate between agent and buyer, the homes that are being considered.  At the buyer’s discretion, I can see a lender being added to the wave to discuss financing, with auto-updating rate sheets.  Or even allowing access to folks whose opinion the buyers value.

I can also see a setup where emails are delivered right into a wave and addressed by the wave collective.  Kind of a customer support on crack.  If you have a distributed team, your CS could potentially be 24/7 worldwide and every CS member would see what had been asked and what had been documented via Wave.

Once screen sharing makes an appearance in Wave and it becomes more stable, presentations will change forever.

Honestly, the possibilities only accelerate from there …

Some Initial Wave Tips to Share:

• First tip : to search for other, open, public waves, type- with:public
• This will return a list of ALL public waves. Want to search for other waves? Modify the search string. To search for real estate type – with:real estate
• In order to add yourself to a public wave, be sure that your own googlewave contact is in your own contact list. Therefore, when you want to participate in a public wave, you simply hit the + button and add your contact to that wave…
• To “embed” a video, simply grab the URL of the video, paste in your new reply, and a little light bulb pops up at the end of the URL asking if you would like to embed the video…
• To create a public wave: Add public@a.gwave.com to your contacts and add the bot to any wave you’ve created that you would like to be public. To date, you will need to add this bot EVERYTIME you log back into wave if you want to add it to a wave.

Brian Boero of 1000WattConusulting has an “off the beaten path” post on the bizarro world that is social media.

The money quote, for me:

This social media thing was made for real estate.

But does it feel to you like real estate has really nailed it?  It doesn’t to me…

There are lots of reasons why. The details are less important than some of the faulty assumptions driving them:

• That hundreds of thousands of under-experienced practitioners could play effectively on a platform that rewards substance

• That the social media opportunity would get bigger the easier it got to participate

• That social media marketing could be sensibly peddled to agents by many of the same folks who convinced them that haranguing their friends and neighbors with scripts was a good idea

Right there is the rub…Are you in real estate to earn a living, change lives or be friends?  And this doesn’t apply merely to real estate!  If you are in any kind of business for yourself, and you are utilizing social media, you need to be asking yourself, “Why, how, & how much?”

Why, How & How Much?

Ok, so this is pretty much like touching the third rail of politics, Social Security.  Once the folks in the swamp even breathe that they are going to ‘reform’ social security, the rails come off their individual races for re-election…In other words, folks get all hyperventilated when someone begins taking on their beloved program.

Why are you using social media for your business?  Is the aim to get more business?  Presuming the answer is yes, what is your strategy?  Do you even have a strategy?

I stand by my analogy of social media as a giant Chamber of Commerce networking event.  To make good use of your time at the networking event, you arrive with one of two objectives: meet 3 folks that you need to “round out” your business network, or give away X number of business cards while having meaningful conversations.

If you are going to engage the SocNets for your business, you better have a strategy, or at least a well-thought out plan of utilizing the services provided.  Otherwise, you run the risk of wasting a lot of time and money or entirely trashing your business’ reputation online… and Google’s memory is greater than an elephant’s!

How are you using social media? See where that strategy thing might come in handy?  Are you simply spewing links about your business and incessantly talking about your business?  Do YOU like ‘talking’ with people like this in meat space?

When you throw a party, you really shouldn’t, as the great host you are, usher people into your dining room, whip out the white board and hard sell your product to your guests.  They are all there for a party.  And a party is about getting to know each other and enjoying each others company.  The same holds true on the SocNets.  It is about creating meaningful connections, relationships.

How much time and/or money are you spending on the social media side of your business?

• Social media marketing costs just as much or more than “traditional” marketing. You’re going to need to spend a lot more in time and spend your money in different places. On a marketing director with great writing skills, for example. Or a video producer who can do right by you. Social media needs to be treated with the same care that big newspaper ad contract received back in the day if you want results.

Brian hits it out of the park with this point ALONE!  Real estate agents have positively flocked to social media as a panacea to their lack of a marketing strategy (dang! There’s that word again…).  They’ve heard or been sold a bill of goods that says, “Get online and all your problems are solved.”  Truth is, getting online will only magnify the positives, or negatives, that your business currently has.  Seeing as many agents don’t operate with a business plan, this social media “strategy” has the double-plus, ungood effect of showing their marketplace they have no business plan, marketing plan or strategy.

Harsh Words…

Yep.  Reality can be that way.  This is not to suggest that folks practicing real estate or social media “the unapproved” way can’t be successful.  Far from it.  I simply posit that the majority of real estate agents, and folks using social media for their businesses, have no idea the damage they can do by “playing around” on the SocNets without a clear strategy.

Information/data is the new economy.  How are you using your information/data?

One thing that I remember, constantly, as I interact online is: “My grandkids will be able to see what gramps was like in the early aughts.”  Can you see how this thought can apply to your business too?