God help me, I don’t like to blindly follow, but there is just something about the Vaynerchuk enthusiasm that’s hard to deny. Anyway, from the mind and heart of @garyvee comes Good People Day… a day to think about and celebrate good people. The idea is to bring those people out into the light of the internet, to blog on them, to tweet on them, to celebrate the good.

As I sat thinking about how I might acknowledge Good People Day I saw this tweet from Andy Kaufman pop up in my twitter stream: “PSA: 4/3/08 is GOOD PEOPLE DAY (& the 10th Anniversary of the legendary 4/3/98 Phish show) http://tinyurl.com/2vq85n Double freakin whammy! “ And then I found the above video – from that show.

Perfect. What better way to celebrate Good People Day than to pay tribute to all the good people I have met in the parking lot shakedown madness of the Phish universe. The artists and craftspeople… the dream dealers and dope smokers… the one for three two for five beer vendors… the grilled cheese gourmets… the dogs, the kids, the family… the books, the ideas, the posters, patchwork and patchouli… the stickers, the t-shirts, the jokes, the laughs, the long and setting sun… the six-up, the paramedics, the bearded wisdom… the vans, the riders, the tweakers, the spun, the undone, the shaken and the far from home.

These are the good people of the road. These are the good people of the rainbow. These are the good people of the wild. These are the good people of the wandering mind… and today is their day.

Ryan Adams is prolific. Usually that means he’ll release a few albums in the space of a few months, but now – in the age of personal expression – it means that he can produce any manner of artistic communication he and his psychosis can dream up. For Ryan Adams fans (like myself) that is most definitely a good thing.

It is rare to be so close to pure, uncut, undiluted, unfiltered, uninterpreted, art. Most artists of his stature are too afraid to be so open… afraid they’ll hurt album sales… afraid they’ll damage their reputation. They labor over every note, every photo, every piece of video with their name on it. They polish it, shine it, sequence and master and mix the life out of it.

After getting it approved by A&R they release a trickle of this labored material through verified channels. The end result is so remote, so impersonal, so unfeeling, so apart from the world in which the original seed of art was planted that any traces of genius and creativity that might have survived are barely visible under thick layers of product.

Yes, it is a decidedly good thing that Adams is, at least for the time being, keeping a tumblr blog at dradamsfilms.com. It is inspiring that he has broken free of the traditional creative process and has embraced a transparent and open one. It is inspiring to see how creativity lives… to see it strolling the same city streets I walk every day. It is inspiring to see a man, an artist, confront things about himself and his world in real time.

Given that head start… given the accumulation all that knowledge regarding the building and nurturing of niche communities… one might think that magazines are in a perfect position to transition to the web and dominate the new social media landscape. Well…

I don’t even have to finish that thought. One look around the social communities that are now thriving across the web and any blind man could easily see that traditional magazine titles are horribly, inexcusably absent. To blame that absence on technology is wrongheaded. Technology can be kept up with and publishers have done as much in the past (CTP the most recent example).

No, the shift we are now going through is as much social as it is technological, perhaps more so.

The real tragedy here is the way in which the magazine sector has so far totally misread, underestimated, and ignored the changes that are flowing through their readership, their communities. Their readers are out in the wilderness of the web, exploring, talking, and finding smart folks who are willing to talk back to them. They don’t have to wait for editorial proclamations to come in the mail anymore… in fact that they ever did that seems more and more absurd with each passing day. Information, conversation, knowledge is everywhere. They are out there experiencing, learning, enjoying whatever it was that brought them to the magazine in the first place… and they are doing it with newfound zeal. The web has got them charged.

So where and why exactly did the magazine start to loose the community? Why are the former experts slowly loosing their status as the go to source for information?

In a word: arrogance.

There, I said it. The problem that magazines have on the web is not the fast paced change in technology, but the sedentary arrogance that is epidemic among magazine editors. Editors and publishers who feel (usually at a subconscious level – these are good people by and large) that they occupy a place of privilege within their communities are killing off readership with each issue… a problem that most magazines still blindly wrestle with as I write this.

All is not lost, though. There is still time for magazines to make a play, a serious play, in the social space. Certainly old attitudes and egos will need to be checked end the editorial stance has to move away from proclamation and toward conversation, but that can happen. By and large editors are smart, sensible people… they can change if the change is important enough.

I am convinced that if magazines can break away from the linear, pipeline mentality, and embrace a transparent, networked way of working they can regain their status as the leaders in the social space. If editors can learn to listen to their communities and provide intellectual space for them to express themselves then old titles will find new relevance.

So, if you are an editor, or a publisher, stop obsessing over the tech… that will iron itself out. You have to get back to basics… You have to re-learn your community… You have to get your hands dirty and participate in the conversation – especially when it’s NOT taking place on your property… You have to mix it up… You want to be the leader of the charge– not the headless king.

I have been on the Gary Vaynerchuk bandwagon for a while now, and until recently I was just following his lead on wine. Lately though, @garyvee is really hitting a nerve in terms of plain old life. His perspective has always been true… always been honest… always been about the things that matter. No bullshit, just good vibes and an unrepentant love of life and living.

In the video above he baselines the profound social and technological change we are living through and explains that the only sane way forward for business is transparency. That same sentiment is also the essence of what I’m trying to do on this blog… just be who I am, get everything out there, in plain sight.

Realated Links:

GaryVaynerchuk.com

tv.winelibrary.com

Chris Brogan on Gary

Winecast on the cult of Gary

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So what exactly is it about NewBay’s approach that could be seen as being even remotely “Web 2.0″? Seems to me like everything they’re doing is straight out of a playbook written in 1998. In reading this article it would seem to me that PubExec has no clue as to what “web 2.0″ even is. Granted it is a rather cloudy concept to begin with, but that does not excuse you from having to be somewhere in the ballpark… especially if you’re going to run it on your cover.

What would be a story worthy of your headline (and cover) would be if NewBay was opening up their data via some kind of API, giving some control over how it gets shaped to users, letting their readers mash it with other services to create something entirely new. THAT would be closer to the “web 2.0″ ethos. Or if they DID utilize the existing social frameworks to complement their own offerings (hello YouTube API) rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. THAT would be closer to the “web 2.0″ ethos. Or if they used that information about their readers to introduce them to each other, to start conversations. THAT would be closer to the “web 2.0″ ethos.

At the end of the day those of us that love magazines, that want to see them thrive on the web beyond v.2.0 need to start thinking about this stuff a bit more critically. Publishers need more from you guys than regurgitated buzwords… they need inspiration and ideas.

It scares me sometimes… the degree to which McLuhan nailed it. His take on how media and the electronic age were/are re-shaping the human experience was so profoundly accurate at such an early point in time one has to wonder whether or not he fell from the future.

For more interesting video you must go here: http://analogue.ca/blog/

If you follow politics at all you have no doubt heard by now that Barack Obama delivered a speech today… actually he delivered a groundbreaking, paradigm shifting address on matters concerning race, family, friendship, and the great American discourse. Yes friends, today Barack Obama showed us just what politics in this country could be like… what politicians could sound like… what elected officials could do to inspire us.

Obama took a stand today. He didn’t run from controversy… he didn’t sell a friend for political capital.. he didn’t listen to empty talking heads. He stood in front of the nation and talked to us in a human voice… he invited discourse… he welcomed conversation.

This video is posted here and at many other sites across the web because it is special. It is posted here because it resonates deeply and in a way that is just plain foreign in the realm of American politics. And it is posted here because everyone needs to see it.

Some related links:

Jay Rosen’s take at PressThink

Jeff Jarvis’ Clintonian take (and the commenters who set him straight)

Douglas Rushkoff on Reverend Wright’s accuracy

Without a doubt printing is a filthy, dirty, sky-staining, carbon-spewing, environmental nightmare. So is the rest of the economy. That’s not what’s endangering traditional models. The problems that print media face are much more complex, much more layered and have much more to do with the way the human brain processes information.

Ahhh… but that’s a story for another day. Today I just wanted to take a quick look at… to point you toward… to pass along, this little tidbit as found in FOLIO: Backpacker Unveils Carbon-Neutral Project.

On the whole this is a good… no a great idea. It is something that every print producer should be doing… hell it’s something that every person should be doing. Not only does it help the magazine get out in front of the environmental claims that ink on paper is bad for the environment, it goes along way with readers that like living in a clean world and the advertisers who want to be part of the green scene.

It’s also a financial commitment… not a greenwashing campaign. There is real money behind this, real data and real process that can ripple out into the industry and be used and improved by other titles. That beats a special Earth Day issue about organic farming or solar powered neckties.

As I said above, there are bigger problems facing print media than just the environmental ones. Still, this is a start… a way of imagining a future world with magazines still in it.

This guy has been nothing but fun to watch and intelligent since his days on SportsCenter. Over the past few years he has become the country’s best voice of sanity. Here he delivers some sense on the Clinton campaign’s handling of the Ferraro fiasco.

Above: A nice, crisp, ten minute video of author Jeff Gordinier discussing the main themes of his new book on Generation X – X Saves The World – due out on March 31.

I have to admit I haven’t thought much about the social implications and context of my generation, Gen X, in quite a while. Don’t get me wrong… in the 90′s I lived that shit hard. I delivered pizza, had principles, studied and wrote poetry, retreated into education, and wondered if there ever could be anywhere in this world that I might actually make a life. Douglas Coupland was my role model.

While I may not be the artist I wanted so badly to be then, I do think that I have lived true the principles that those times instilled in me. I make money now, have a family, kids, mortgage payments… but I am also happy… very happy. I do work I love… work that makes me think. I challenge bullshit when I see it… and (apparently) I have been hard at work doing my little part to help save the world.

So who needs those ego-laden boomers? X is here and X is working.