January 1, 2008

TZ Radio Podcast: Welcome to Theme Zoom 2008

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Hi folks,

There are only a few hours left in 2007 and I must get this note to you before we kick off the New Year!

I want to thank everyone for a fantastic 2007!

But as we move into 2008, I would make one suggestion:

Don’t’ look back.

Download this Essay as a PDF

Below is my years-end essay in preparation for The Gateway to Multi-Channel Marketing Course to be released shortly.

The below rant is a final reminder, during the last hours of 2007, why Art Crowley and I have brought the Gateway to Multi-Channel Marketing course to TZ members. (You should receive your username and password to log into the GMCM system no later than January 10.)

Goodbye 2007, The Future is Better Than it Used to Be!

This year is going to be the strangest and . . . perhaps the most exciting year in history.

Somehow everyone seems to sense that “change is in the wind”. Nobody seems to want to put their finger on exactly what this change is.

Everyone was murmuring quietly about “change” in the halls at the PubCon, in Las Vegas.

My fellow web entrepreneurs are watching the skies for incoming storms and letting go of old and outdated online behaviors that are no longer profitable.

Even the teachers at my children’s elementary school speak uneasily about the winds of change, as if there were some sort of masked man about to ride into town.

Who is this masked man? Man of mystery?

I am not exactly a prophet.

But if I were to wear the hat of a “futurist” I would simply announce what is already here to the people who are still living in the past. I would probably use one word to describe the “masked man”.

I would call him:

“Mr. Transparency”. (Not as good as “the invisible man” I suppose.)

I know it may be hard to imagine, but the present internet that you have come to know and love . . . is merely a fleeting glimpse of what is to be.

The novelty of Web 2.0 will wear thin by mid 2008 and people will start sharing files and information at an inconceivable pace.

Social networking will also turn into “social research networks” where people have far more free AND useful web applications and services at their disposal than ever before in history. Even worse, people will share buzz, and find it easy to digitally triangulate facts that were previously impossible using new web services and API keys.

These services will be used to share information and gather actionable data at a mind-numbing pace. This data will be cheap too.

Only market intelligence and market research data that cannot already be easily obtained for FREE will be of value.

Reputation Transparency:

It will be almost impossible to hide your own personal and business reputation (for better or for worse) as the collective vote casts a “digital ballot” on your character and distributes this Facebook-style data-feed in real-time via the massive cluster of multi-channel social information and media networks.

Think I am kidding?

I have friends-of-friends-of-friends on Facebook who seem to know more about me than I know about myself. Sherman Hu and I do not have the same movie tastes. (Did I REALLY need to know that?) ; - )

Anyway, resistance is futile. You can’t stop the tide. Hopefully Jaron Lanier, the father of “Virtual Reality” is wrong about Digital Maoism and the neglectful online “wisdom of crowds”.

Do you think Google knows too much?

We are undergoing both a personal as well as a business intelligence revolution.

And it is time.

And we are ready. (Or we better be.)

2008-2010- Google takes over the world:

By developing an almost alarming amount of incredibly cool web-based applications, Google is taking the lead with a connect-the-dots web service attitude.

When taken as a whole, these new web-based convenience-apps, can literally change the way that EVERYONE does business on a global scale.

Google’s Grand Central organizes all of your incoming communications via a single telephone number.

Google 3-D Sketchup allows any idiot to create holographic maps and blueprints.

Google Page Creator allows people to publish actual web pages (yes WEB pages) and websites. (Gasp).

Google Analytics allows you to track and manage conversions. (Although Brett Crosby , senior manager at Google analytics promised me in person at Pub Con that they have NO intention of harvesting peoples individual website statistics data and sharing that with the rest of the world . . . at least not at the moment . . . but perhaps (and I quote), “This may be something that could help our customers and be an offering in the future”. . . ahem). ß My “ahem” not Brett’s.

Godaddy is working with Google directly on the domaining side of things (Although Dana from Google promised me that, quote, “they have no intention of buying Godaddy”, unquote.)

Google also purchased Feedburner, so now you can run all of your feed content through a variety of feed-based networks. Old news to you I am sure- I mean, I hope. I can’t fail to mention the MASSIVE infusion of market-intelligence data the Feedburner purchase gives Google.

Oh, and if you get tired of figuring out how many applications Google is offering to make your life easier, you can just download the whole darn Google package.

Dang! Who is that masked man?

Google’s strategy for global domination is to offer free ultra-cool web service apps that connect-the dots in the average consumers fight against information overload and too many risky choices.

The Google “Global-Invasion” list will continue to grow at a break-neck pace in 2008.

And this list will grow until one day we wake up and find ourselves living on Planet Google.

A side note:

I will be uploading all of my PubCon contacts and verified resources at http://www.themezoomapproved.com Many of the Google goods and services will be clustered there, and I will link to reviews and information about the latest Google plans.

Although I have not had a chance to add a commentary and personal contacts for all of the services located on the TZ Resources Brain, items are being added on a daily basis.

Beyond Google:

The connect-the-dot instant personal and business intelligence revolution is not limited to Google this year!

Everything about Theme Zoom will be at least ten times more powerful than it already is.

We have been making real progress on the application. Alright, alright, I mean Kelley and Sue have made killer progress on TZX. They even released a sneak peek. I have no idea how Sue found the time, but she wrote a blog post for you with a sneak peek at the Google Trends module that will be a component of the TZX application.

Every sneak peek at the new TZX program will be placed on the following section of our blog:

http://www.themezoomspy.com

Announcements:

There is a new podcast I made to kick off 2008 located at the new Theme Zoom podcast radio station:

http://www.themezoomradio.com

As I said before I will update any of the approved contacts and Pub Con and other resources throughout the year at the following URL.

http://www.themezoomapproved.com

Next topic: Stuff Russell Really Diggs in 2008.

The Real Search Engine is your BRAIN:

As the personal and business intelligence revolution becomes more transparent, you will need to start using more of your brain.

I have had the opportunity to work with some extraordinary mentors over the last fifteen years.

Two of these people in particular were decades ahead of their time.

One of these mentors was a direct protégé of Buckminister Fuller. This person taught me more than anyone about an area of study that I have come to call Neurogeometry™. His name will need to be kept under wraps for the moment.

The second mentor that contributed the most to my system was Jirka Rysavy.

Jirka created several companies from scratch worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the Neurogeometry™ principles taught to me personally by Jirka are simplified in a system that I am now calling “5-N” or The Five-Neuro Success System™. Although 5-N is a hybridization of many neuroscientific fields, it is unlikely that you have seen all of this information in one place before.

In a personal and business intelligence revolution, it has become easier for generation “Y” (that would be me) to connect-the-research-dots more comprehensively than ever before.

An old friend reminded me recently that Bucky Fuller said “a culture that specializes will not thrive.” A true renaissance man, Buckminister Fuller was fond of encouraging his students to become generalists and life artists. I would say this was the approach that I have taken to both business and life.

The future successful person will have to be “a synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist." - Buckminister Fuller

In 2008 it is exceedingly easy to become wealthy as a “life artist” within your market or niche. However, in order to make this happen, you must bring intrinsic added value to your industry. Bucky Fuller is also known to have said “In the end, only integrity is going to count.”

Web 2.0 and 3.0: A Multi-Disciplined Approach for Knowledge Workers:

The emergence of Web 2.0 has made it easier for a professor or a scientist to connect-the-dots across multiple disciplines without being ridiculed and viewed as a dilettante.

Previously this has been impossible.

But with the rise of the knowledge worker, there are more and more generalists being born every day. Bucky Fuller would have been delighted (and perhaps dismayed) by what is happening right now.

The beginnings of the evolving 5-N System™ can be found here. Take what you are interested in, and leave the rest. It is really a process, not a product.

http://www.russellsbrain.com

The 5-Neuro System ™ has been in development for over ten years. And there are several reasons why I never fully developed it. The market had to begin asking the right questions.

I was recently reminded, again by an old friend, that Bucky Fuller also said, “You should never answer a question that a market (or culture) is not yet asking.” This is the innovators dilemma.

When I was pursuing Fuller’s work, I felt this “Gene Roddenberry” was a cop-out, and I didn’t have the patience for it. The prime directive always rubbed me the wrong way. ; - )

Yet as a marketer, I came to see this was indeed a useful principle- and the pre-emptive knowledge given to me by innovative geniuses and mentors ended up taking me years to process. Both Jirka and Buckminister Fuller were already asking Big Questions. At that time (1995), the world was not really interested in these questions as a mainstream inquiry. Therefore the amazing and innovative solutions they attempted to bring to market could not hit the mainstream. The market was simply not capable of demanding these products.

However.

Many of us Long Tailers have ALWAYS been asking questions that the market is not yet asking. We are the next generation of what Chris Anderson calls Long Tailers. But our questions get lost in a sea of data and Blockbuster distractions.

But in 2008-2010, the market is about to ask some REALLY BIG QUESTIONS . . . and over the next few years you will see these questions go mainstream.

Half of the reason for this influx of New Questions is the technological transparency of the online Long Tail social revolution. The other half is because people are getting bored of the same old “Blockbuster” ideas and predictable Hollywood scripts.

The study of a field called neuroeconomics is probably going to lead the way to the information and financial revolution. This financial revolution is something that my friend Art Crowley calls “The Guilded Age” of Billionaires.

When you understand the principles of neuroeconomics, one of the cornerstones to the 5-N System, it doesn’t really matter how many zeros you wish to add to your bottom line- the breakthrough is always scalable to your value system.

This is not dissimilar to Bucky Fuller’s “size is profane but ratio is profound” concept. Scalability is essential when considering profitable and sustainable models, both in business and in urban design.

All of this is covered in the ever evolving 5-N System ™.

If you wish to look at my recommended reading list throughout 2008, I will add books used to develop the 5-N system from time to time. Learning is a constant process. Even as we move forward building a better and better Theme Zoom application, my education continues offline:

http://www.themezoombookstore.com

We will also be updating and editing the Theme Zoom Glossary on a regular basis:

http://www.themezoomglossary.com

Again, I wish to thank you all for a fantastic 2007.

This year will very likely be the most profitable and FUN year you have ever had.

I will do everything in my power to provide you with tools and ideas that can assist you in making that happen.

I hope you are getting as excited as I am!

Here is a summary of the new “open source” links and tools that maybe useful to both members and non-members:

(Theme Zoom Blog)

http://www.themezoomradio.com (TZ Weekly Radio Program)

http://www.themezoomspy.com (Updates and sneak peek on software updates)

http://www.themezoomglossary.com (The Theme Zoom Glossary)