Touch Millions With Mediocrity or A Few With…
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Ignore Seth Godin’s Title…Halloween has little to do with the nugget of truth he reveals at the end.
Seth’s Blog: Why celebrate Halloween?
Why celebrate Halloween?
Because everyone else does.
Why believe that people once put razor blades into apples and you should only eat wrapped candies? Because everyone else believes it (it’s an urban legend).
Most of what we believe is not a result of direct experience (ever seen an electron?) but is rather part of our collection of truth because everyone (or at least the people we respect) around us seems to believe it as well.
We not only believe that some brands are better than others, we believe in social constructs, no shirt, no shoes, no service. We believe things about changing our names when we get married or what’s an appropriate gift for a baby shower.
This groupthink is the soil that marketing grows in. It’s frustrating for someone who is hyper-fact-based or launching a new brand to come to the conclusion that people believe what they believe, not that people are fact-centered data processing organisms.
Sure, it would be great to have an organization that enjoys the advantage of everyone believing. Getting from here, to there, though, requires stories, emotion and ideas that spread. Organizations grow when they persuade a tiny cadre to be passionate, not when they touch millions with a mediocre message.
The Gospel and Playground Economics
I just read a blog post that Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama, is typically the first one picked when making kickball teams at recess even though she has suspect fielding skills. Funny stuff. I also just read where they cast lots to choose teams in 1 Chronicles 25. They weren’t really choosing teams, but they were choosing the order of the terms of service for the musicians in David’s royal court. The passage notes that the lots fell and no bias was made according to age or experience. It hit me at the end of the chapter that Romamtiezer and his family were the last ones picked. It could have been really disappointing.
It brought back memories of times when I wasn’t picked. I wasn’t picked to be in the gifted class. I wasn’t picked to be on the “A” All-Star basketball teams. I can remember fighting over unfair teams on the playground. There were a lot of tears shed, a lot of angry words said, and a lot of self-victimization. The enemy had a field day.
After Jesus comes on the scene and pronounces the arrival of a new Kingdom, a new economy, he describes that it works like this, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
When you really think about it there are tremendous advantages to being the last one picked. Expectations are low. Little successes are celebrated as milestones. Mistakes are expected. It doesn’t mean we lower our expectations or strive for mediocrity. Instead we have the opportunity to learn from those picked before us. It just means that the yoke is easy, and when the yoke is easy, then work is fun, and when work is fun I believe we are our most productive. I wonder if Romamtiezer and the boys enjoyed their work more than the others?
What about you? Recall any “last one picked” stories? How might Jesus redeem them?
Kindle for PC Ships
Kindle for PC Ships, Hints At Future Color Kindle | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Gadget Lab Hardware News and Reviews
Kindle for PC Ships, Hints At Future Color Kindle* By Charlie Sorrel Email Author
* November 10, 2009 |
* 7:05 am |
* Categories: Desktops
*Kindle fans now have one more place they can read their e-books: A PC. Kindle for PC joins the equally well-named Kindle for iPhone and, er, Kindle for Kindle in the list of ways to read Amazon’s DRM’ed content. A Mac version is “coming soon”.
The application does pretty much what the iPhone version does: your place is synced with other devices by Whispersync, and there is support for your bookmarks and annotations. You can browse and buy from the Kindle Store, but you can’t access blogs, newspapers or magazines. This isn’t a problem, we guess, as you’re sat at a computer with a web browser anyway.
But the thing that intrigues us is the screenshot above (along with more on the Amazon site) which shows a book with color illustrations. This may mean a color Kindle is on its way, or that Amazon is simply future-proofing its Kindle books. Either way, since when did Kindle books start to get color pictures? It would seem rather bandwidth-unfriendly to a company that restricts international downloads to save on the wireless bills.
On the other hand, you can now buy and read Kindle books without buying a Kindle. Amazon must be expecting its brand-name to shift a lot of e-books direct to computers. Imagine, then, how it would answer the question “Why are the pictures on my $1000 computer in black and white?”
Product page [Amazon]
Kindle for PC Ships, Hints At Future Color Kindle | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
