Author Archives: ghotchkiss

The Psychology of Summer and Fall

I’m always amazed how the turn of the seasons also seems to flip our frame of mind. As summer turns to fall, we shift mental gears. It’s a time for hunkering down, organizing our to do lists and picking up tasks set aside sometime back in April or May. I know that’s certainly true for me.

This summer was a great summer. I did a ton of biking (which seems to be the new mid-life pursuit in the online ad biz – everyone I talk to now is a road biker) including a memorable trip down the Oregon Coast and 2 Metric Century Rides. I also discovered, much to my shock, that I actually love landscaping. That has to be some manifestation of a mid life crisis, because I sure the hell didn’t feel that way in my 20’s.

This summer also saw me working on my first book – The BuyerSphere Project, which is due out on Amazon in a few weeks. I’ve been threatening to write a book now for a few years and now, I’ll actually have something in the book shelf to point to, proving it just wasn’t an idle boast. The book that came out isn’t the one that I set out to write, but I discovered that the author has remarkably little control over what comes out on paper. We go in with the best of intentions, but somewhere in the process, the book seems to take on a mind of it’s own. In this case, I started planning for a book about the psychology of consumerism and ended up writing a book on organizational buying behaviors. Related, yes. But it’s not the book I anticipated. However, I must say, I enjoyed almost all of the process. I’m also taking a crack at self publishing. I’ll let you know how that goes.

So the summer was productive, but it almost seemed that all the things I did belong in a special “summer” category. They seem separate from the day-to-day detail of my life. And now, as the weather cools, I’m settling back into the regular groove. I do so reluctantly, because everything seems more alive somehow in the summer. It’s like the transition from black and white to color in the Wizard of Oz. For those 5 glorious months from May to the end of September, I visit the technicolor of Oz, but now, I’m back in the black and white of Kansas.

So, on this gloomy Monday in rainy BC, Canada, I’ll trudge my way through my list of tasks, more productive perhaps, but secretly dreaming of next year, when I can build another retaining wall!

The Meeting of the Mind and Marketing: 11 Books to Read

First published October 15, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s official! With this column, I break David Berkowitz’s Search Insider column count record, with 225 of my own. And to commemorate the occasion, I wanted to follow up on a request that came in response to my column two weeks ago. I had warned any would-be students of human nature that this wasn’t a quest to be taken lightly. A few readers responded by asking for a recommended reading list.

So this week, I went through my bookshelf at home and jotted down a list of titles that I found particularly insightful or interesting in understanding the human condition. Today, I offer them as suggestions for some fall or winter reading. I came up with 22 titles, so I’ve broken them into two groups. This week, all the titles are specifically for those who want to explore the intersection between marketing and the way our minds work.“How Customers Think” — Gerald Zaltman. Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman has carved out a nice little career by exploring the psychology of consumerism. The foundation of Zaltman’s approach is his metaphor elicitation technique. Metaphors are linguistic keys to some of the darker workings of our mind, and Zaltman shows how these can be used as a Rosetta stone to unlock consumers’ true feelings towards brands and products. A fascinating approach suffers a little from Zaltman’s dry and overly academic writing style, but it’s a very worthy candidate for the list.

“The Culture Code” — Clotaire Rapaille. If Zaltman is a little stodgy and academic, Rapaille is an unabashed French nouveau-riche pop psychologist who has used his decidedly qualitative approach to dig down to the cultural common denominators behind our brand relationships. This book looks for those labels cultures apply to some of the best-known brands in the world. Being French, Rapaille brings an occasionally charming European cultural arrogance to his subject (i.e. in France, the culture code for cheese is “alive”, but in the U.S. it’s “dead”). This is  an easy and interesting read; while you might have some quibbles with Rapaille’s findings, he has plenty of willing customers among the Fortune 500.

“Buy-ology” — Martin Lindstrom. Lindstrom’s ego is almost matched by the insight he brings in his latest book. Lindstrom is the self-styled guru of brand perception and has written before on how our senses interpret brands. In “Buy-ology,” he goes one step further and launches an extensive brain scanning research project to see exactly what happens in our brains when we think about brands. For example, do the warning labels on a pack of cigarettes have any impact on our desire for a smoke? Does product placement really work? (The answer, in both cases, is no, according to Lindstrom) Don’t worry about getting caught in academic jargon here. Lindstrom keeps it light and readable.

“Why Choose This Book?” — Read Montague. Baylor University neurologist Montague was behind the original Pepsi Challenge fMRI test — and in this book, he takes on no less a challenge than explaining how we make decisions. The writing style’s a little uneven, as Montague tries to balance his academic background with a style overly determined to appeal to a wider audience. That said, Montague knows his stuff and the insights here are solid, supported by both his own and others’ research.

“Predictably Irrational” — Dan Ariely.  Ariely follows in the footsteps of behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky by looking at some of the common irrational biases of humans. For example, why does a 50-cent aspirin eliminate a headache better than a 5-cent generic brand, even though the pills are identical? And why would offering your mother-in-law $300 for a fabulous meal be an unforgivable social transgression, yet be expected in a restaurant? The territory has been covered before, but Ariely deals with a highly interesting topic with a nice, light touch.

“The Mind of the Market” — Michael Shermer. Last but not least, Michael Shermer delivers what I consider to be a tour-de-force on this topic. Shermer’s approach is well-grounded in evolutionary psychology (he labels it evolutionary economics), so he and I share a common approach to understanding consumer behavior. He strikes the right balance in his writing, delivering solid information without worrying too much about how it might play for a wider audience. This is probably my favorite on this list.

If these six titles whet your appetite, here are some other titles you might consider:

“Driven” by Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria

“Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill

“The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz

“The Advertised Mind” by Erik Du Plessis

“Brain Rules’ by John Medina

Next week I’ll share another 11 books, as well as some reader suggestions. Feel free to keep the suggestions coming!

And Now: The New News Regime

First published October 8, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This week, I moderated a session at SMX about real-time search. Personally, I find the convergence of social and search to be perhaps the most significant trend of 2009. Social adds an entirely new dimension to search. Traditionally search has been used to find “what” you wanted to know more about. Social adds the dimension of time. Suddenly, relevance isn’t the only measure. Search now needs a “stale date,” a measure of the freshness of the results.

Flying Rumors

There were a number of interesting things that came up in the panel. Presenters used a few recent examples to show how stories broke online: the death of Michael Jackson, the elections in Iran and the emergency landing of a United flight in Iceland.  It was fascinating to see where people turned as news broke. Not surprisingly, behaviors followed age-old grooves, but now those behaviors played out over a brand new landscape, the digital one.

For example, Jeremy Crane from Compete showed how, as we learned the news of MJ’s death, we first turned to Google and news sources for confirmation. But as time went on, we took new online paths. We turned to Twitter, to real-time search engines, to YouTube and other richer media sources as we worked our way through the process. If you were to look at how humans deal with loss, these paths really aren’t surprising. First we want confirmation from an authoritative source, and then we have to participate in our own ways. We need to talk about it (Twitter) and we need to reminisce (watching old videos on YouTube). We need to participate in some way in the experience to reach our own measure of closure. Funerals are never really for the departed; they’re for the ones left behind.

If It’s Not New, Is It News?

But the most interesting question came from out of the audience, right at the end of the session. The internal SEO manager for ABC asked a huge question: As news increasingly breaks online, how do traditional news publishers stay nimble and relevant? How do the New York Times and ABC News keep up in a world that includes Twitter and TMZ? That, indeed, is the question.

A few columns back, I gave my own example of real-time search, as forest fires encroached on my home town of Kelowna, BC. There I touched on the new speed of news. But the ABC’s staffer’s question brings up some added dimensions to that. The answer is not as cut-and-dried as it used to be.

Traditional news channels, with their journalistic checks and balances, can never be as nimble as rumor. It’s a game they can’t play; yet they feel they must. They have a decades-old tradition of being not only the official and credible source of the news, but also the first place most people hear news as it breaks. Now, however, we often hear about the news while it’s still a rumor, perhaps several rumors, as they bounce around the Internet.

The New Regime?

What we have here is a discontinuous shift in the industry. As one of the presenters quipped, public relations is now really about the public. News spreads through millions of instaneous connections, rather than tightly controlled and edited channels. Often, the traditional news publishers are relegated to a role of listening to and verifying online buzz, trying to sort what is true from what is social gossip. It’s a middle ground they’re having a difficult time adjusting to.

The news industry is in the middle of what Christopher Freeman and Carlota Perez  called a Regime Transition. When technology shakes the very foundations of society and its supporting institutions, there is usually a resulting passing of the torch from what was to what will be. My suspicion is that what we were talking about in that session is pointing to a regime transition of epic proportions. We are defining the new reality of news by where we turn to be informed. The traditional players have no choice but to see if there will be a place for them here — when the dust settles.

The Prerequisites for Being a Student of Human Nature

First published October 1, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week I asked for input on the upcoming Search Insider Summit. Of the seven possible topic areas I presented, the highest level of interest was in the role of human behavior in digital marketing. You, the Search Insider faithful, have made me very happy. But being an avid student of human nature, I feel it’s only fair to warn you what to expect as you continue down this path.  Some years ago, I too was intrigued by human behavior and thought it would be interesting to “learn a little bit more.” But learning about human nature is pretty much an all-or-nothing proposition. Think of it as having a baby. The first few minutes of the process might be fun, but soon you learn you’ve just signed on for a lifetime commitment. You’d better make sure you’re ready.

The True Meaning of Customer-Centricity

I’ve been criticized in the past for using the term “customer-centric” (the practical application of studying human nature), but I suspect it’s because the term has lost its original meaning as it’s been adopted into the lexicon of “Dilbert-speak.” Customer-centric is one of those terms bandied about in board meetings and corporate retreats, along with “synergistic” and “holistic.”

But customer-centricity represents much more than a quick paragraph in the annual report. It’s the core you build a company around. It’s a commitment that lays the foundation for everything an organization does: the people it hires, the way it develops products, the way it formulates business processes, the way it markets and even the way who sits beside whom in the office gets decided. Customer-centricity is a religion, not a corporate fad.

There Aren’t Any Shortcuts

As I found out, if you are going to commit to learning more about human behavior in the goal of becoming a better marketer, don’t be surprised when you discover that this commitment can’t be met in a one-hour session or by reading a book. Humans are a lot more complex than that. There’s a lot of weird and wonderfully quirky machinery jammed in our skulls.

I was humbled to learn that people devote their entire lives to exploring just one tiny part of why we humans do what we do. Joseph LeDoux, one of the world’s foremost neuroscientists, has spent years exploring how fear is triggered in rats. Ann Graybiel  at MIT has made a similar commitment to exploring the role of the basal ganglia in how habits form and play out.  Antonio Damasio’s  extensive work with patients with pre-frontal cortical lesions led to his somatic marker theory, foundational insight into the area of human behavior Malcolm Gladwell explored and popularized in his book “Blink.” These are all tiny little pieces in the overall puzzle that is human behavior, yet each of these is integral in understanding how we respond to marketing messages.

Beyond the Cocktail Party Quip

Today, several years after I started down this road, I hope people find my insights on human behavior interesting. There’s that brief light bulb moment that happens when “what” is matched with a plausible “why” — when a psychological or neurological trigger for a puzzling human trait is identified.  “Hmm – that’s really interesting,” is the common response, and then it’s on to the next thing (possibly mumbling something about me being a “pedantic bore”). Yes, it is really interesting, but it wasn’t a quick or easy path to get here.

Sometime ago I decided a quick primer in human behavior would be interesting. I started with the more accessible books (such as Gladwell’s) and was instantly hooked. I next moved to books by academics doing the actual research that provided the fodder for Gladwell and other’s popularizations: LeDoux, Damasio, Edelman, Rose, Pinker, Chomsky and others.  Before I knew it, I was wading through academic papers. Today, the bookshelf in my home office is packed with fairly hefty tomes on everything from evolutionary psychology to the social patterns of the 20th Century. My wife and kids can’t remember the last time I read a book that didn’t have a brain on the cover.

I share this as a warning. I discovered developing even a basic understanding of human behavior is at least a multiyear commitment. I’ve never regretted it, but I also know that this is not everyone’s cup of tea. But here’s what I also discovered along the way. Even a basic understanding will give you a whole new perspective on pretty much everything, including marketing. The one common denominator in all marketing is that it’s aimed at people. If you’re ready to start the journey, I’m sure you won’t regret it.

Give Us Something to Talk About in Park City

First published September 24, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

From Dec. 2-5, in the ski hills of Park City, Utah, a bunch of really smart search marketers will get together to share what’s on our minds at the Search Insider Summit. The almost seven months that have passed since the spring show in Florida have been interesting ones. I’ve taken a quick look back at the Search Insider columns in that time to see what things we were writing about:

Real Time Search

Twitter? Facebook? The Nexus between Social and Search? This was probably the most consistent topic for Search Insiders over the past few months. I think we all know something important is happening right under our noses. We’re just not sure what.

What Would Google Do?

Everyone in this industry is endlessly fascinated with the Big G. What can we learn from them? How will they reshape the marketplace? How has the culture changed through the recession?

The Interplay of Search and Everything

The Search Insiders have long known that search lies at the center of everything, but there’s little hard data out there about how search interacts with other online (and offline) ad channels. What is the lift from search and display? How about search and video? We know that prospects bounce back and forth across the Web through search, but we’re still figuring out how to use that to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time.

Fundamental Shifts in the World of Search

A number of us have written about the shifting sands of our industry, feeling that something big is happening. Is search as the industry we know dying? Are SEMs changing with the times and providing value? What has the impact of the recession been, good and bad?

Bing, Yahoo and Google

In terms of sheer volume, this was the hands-down winner as the most popular topic for we Insiders. Can Bing break the Google Habit? What is Yahoo’s role? And who are the dark horses who might break the whole race wide open?

Search and Human Behavior

Of course this is one of my favorite topics, but lately Insider Kaila Colbin has actually been beating me at my own game. How and why do we use search? What are the pros and cons of targeting? What is the role of habits in search. And why don’t we spend more time trying to understand why our customers do what they do?

The Future of the SEO Business

SEO still seems to be alive and well — or is it? A few columns have looked not only at the long-term sustainability of SEO, but also the fundamental nature of companies that tend to do SEO well. Is SEO success something you have to earn?

Personalization and Privacy

Personalization is one of the hot topics that seemed to go under the covers for a while, but I suspect it’s due to raise its head, along with a lot of questions about privacy. The big one is: How much are we prepared to trade for a better experience?

How Does This Industry Make the Leap from the Front Line to the C Suite?

 Search has always lived on the tactical side of the corporate org chart, but there are signs that this might be changing. We’re getting more attention from the C-level folks, but often at the expense of understanding what this is all about. How can we help companies “get it” before the coming wave of change wipes them out?

Mobile

Finally… maybe? It’s almost to the point that we’re afraid to talk about mobile for fear of being branded as a false prophet. But with the explosion of functionality, surely we must be getting closer to the tipping point.

What Do We Talk About?

So, that’s a quick summary of what’s been on the collective minds of the Search Insider over the past seven months. How about you? What would you like to see covered in Park City? We want to make sure this is as relevant and timely as possible. Please post your comments, or, better yet, visit MediaPost’s quick survey (all we ask is five minutes of your time) and indicate which of the above topics are most interesting — or add the ones I’ve totally missed.

Do We Need a Different Kind of Search Conference?

First published September 17, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Something’s been bothering me for the last few years. In that time, I’ve probably spoken at two to three dozen industry events: trade shows, summits, conferences and workshops. In fact, this week, I’m at one such event – a user summit. Throughout that entire time, I’ve felt that there’s a fundamental disconnect at these events. And this week, I think I’ve finally put my finger on it: the wrong people are attending.

Let me give you one example. Earlier this year, I was at a client’s internal summit, talking about the importance of “Getting It.” I looked at the 100-some assembled people, responsible for driving forward the digital strategy of this company, and asked the fateful question, “How many people here are senior C-level executives in the company?” Not one hand went up. Oops! Houston, we have a problem.

Where are the Actionable Takeaways?

Most of the events I speak at focus on giving attendees actionable “to-dos” to take home. In fact, I’ve been told time and again: give people a list of things they can do Monday when they get back in the office. That makes sense. Conference organizers have learned that attendees find the most value in these things. Yet I tend to ignore the advice of these conference organizers and talk about things like research, understanding buyer behavior and how this integrates into marketing strategy.

Increasingly, I’m seeing more confused looks in the audience:
“Where is my top ten things-to-do checklist? This guy is just giving me more questions, not answers.” This disappointment bothers me, because at my heart, I desperately seek approval.

But, in those sessions, after the rest of the crowd has dispersed to look for a speaker with a list of things they can do Monday, there are also a handful of people that come up to me and thank me profusely.  They seem to operate at a different level: a strategic level. I’ve seen this pattern over and over again, and as I said, it’s been bothering me.

Are the Takeaways Really Actionable?

Here’s the biggest thing that bothers me. My suspicion, borne out by several conversations with people that attend these shows, is that very few of these “to-do” tips that make the list ever get implemented. Months later, they still sit somewhere in a conference handbook, quickly jotted in a margin. Stuff just doesn’t get done. Why?

The people that attend these conferences don’t control their to-do lists. On Monday, their list gets put aside to respond to the all the other things they have to do — because they’re not calling the shots. The to-do list is being determined by priorities that have been put in place somewhere else by someone else. People come back from conferences with a list of “what” to do, but unfortunately no one told their bosses “why” they should do it. The bosses don’t often go to search conferences.

Less “What” and More “Why”

“Why” doesn’t come from to-do lists. “Why” comes from seeing things in the big picture. “Why” comes from “getting it.” The people who go to search shows already get it. That’s why they have the job they do.  You don’t have to explain to them why this “what” stuff is important. They understand at a fundamental level. But eventually they leave the conference hall, full of other people who get it and with whom you’ve swapped stories about how your boss desperately doesn’t “get it.” Monday, you’re plunged back into a culture where “what” is not aligned with “why.”

There are no easy answers here. Even if you have that rare CEO or boss who gets it, you need a fully integrated culture that is committed to executing at the highest level of “getting It” from top to bottom. Everyone in the company has to agree on the “why” and the “what.” And I’ve yet to see a conference or summit that manages to pull that trick off.

The Pressure’s On and the Cracks are Beginning to Show

First published September 10, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Some time ago, I wrote a column saying the fallout of the economic crisis would be a rapid evolution in marketing practices, speeding the transition from the old way of doing things to a much more dominant role for digital. In that transition, search would play a bigger role than ever. In the past few months, I’m seeing exactly that come to pass. People are serious about search, from the bottom right up to the top corner office. This isn’t playtime in the sandbox anymore; we’re suddenly moving front and center.

“I’m Ready for My Close Up, Mr. CMO”

The reason people are so interested in search is that it comes with the reputation of being highly measurable and accountable. This isn’t anything new, but lately, it’s coming with some additional baggage. Now that the C-Level is involved, performance isn’t being judged simply on a trial campaign with a limited budget. Suddenly, search is being tested to see if it’s worthy of taking a starring role in the marketing mix. And that is adding a lot of pressure to those of us toiling down here in the search trenches.

Search, by its nature, isn’t all that scalable. It comes with a built-in inventory limitation. You can only reach people who have raised their hand, indicating interest in something. Once you tap out that inventory, search loses its bright shiny luster. Search is effective because it’s a signal for consumer intent. You can’t use search to create intent where none exists.

“You Bid on What?”

Management of search isn’t very scalable, either. It’s a lot of heavy lifting and obsessing over thousands of tiny little nitty-gritty details, which, if you overlook them, can suddenly blow your ROI right out of the water. Just ask the PPC manager who forgot to set the appropriate budget cap and comes in on a Monday morning to find they’ve just spent several thousand dollars of a client’s money on a broad match for the word “lube.”

Also, the new breed of client is expecting more than just a limited tactical approach to search. Suddenly they’re using words like “integrate” and “holistic” because, well, because those are just the kind of words you use when you get to the top of the corporate food chain. You get paid the big bucks because you can toss “synergistic” around in a board meeting and actually be serious at the time.

Back to the Drawing Board

Right now, people across this great land are pulling out their white boards and sketching out the rudiments of “Marketing Plan 2.0.” They know something important has shifted in the marketing landscape; the economic belly flop has made it all too apparent that there must be a better way of doing things.  I haven’t seen any huge waves of budget pouring into search yet, but I know there’s a lot of talk out there, and much of it is about search.

Generally, I think this is great news. I’m the first to complain about the tactical bias of search marketing.  I think search has a much greater role to play — but I feel it’s only fair to warn search marketers that this isn’t going to be a painless skip down the path to a lucrative retirement. Anytime there’s a big shift, it comes with an accompanying pendulum effect. After being restrained too far on one side of equilibrium, the pendulum has to correct by swinging too far in the other direction. As budgets start to come into digital channels, including search, we’ll learn that, in many cases, it comes with a set of expectations that are seriously out of whack.

Survival of the Fittest

There are some search marketers that are ready, willing and able to take search to the next level, the one it rightly deserves. There are many others who will use impressive words in the sales pitch (words like holistic, integrated and synergistic) but fall seriously short on delivery. The path ahead is going to have a lot of casualties, both on the vendor and client side. But then, evolution has never been a particularly gentle process.

Just ask any ichthyosaurus.

Search: The Verb

First published September 3, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

“And now the times are changin’Look at everything that’s come and gone”

Rob Griffin’s thought-provoking column on “The Death of Search”  started by poking fun at my summertime nostalgia, likening it to Bryan Adam’s lyrics. Well, Rob, two can play that game.

Search: More Than an Industry

Here’s the thing. In the column, and the resulting feedback, Rob and others talk about search as an industry,  a channel,  a technology. All these things are way too limiting: search is a verb. Search is something we do. And, as such, it reaches past technology and channels and even Google. The only reason search became such a strong channel is because it’s so well aligned with our intent. We want to find something, and search is the way to do it. Trying to pigeonhole search into a “snapshot in time” definition that relies on technology is pointless and a little silly. It’s like trying to explain communication by the definition of Twitter.

What Rob does put his finger on is the speed of shift that technology is enabling, and if we use the definition of our industry as supposedly stable ground, we’re fooling ourselves. It’s the wrong reference to set your bearings to. What you have to do is look for the common denominator, and as I, Kaila Colbin, and others have always said, there’s only one: people.

Balancing Asymmetry

The reason that search is so powerful in consumer interactions goes back to a paper written by economist George Akerlof in 1970 called ” The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism.” Akerlof introduced us to the idea of information asymmetry, the problem that arises when the seller has more information than the buyer. That dynamic has been in place for the entire history of marketing. It’s the foundation that advertising was built on. But the Web is changing things  by providing an explosion of information — and search is the means by which we can reach out to connect all this info. That’s why search is so powerful.

If we’re being asked to part with money in return for something, human nature will dictate that we try to balance out information asymmetry. Our acceptance of a reasonable balance depends on how much risk is in the purchase. The more risk, the more information we’ll need. To seek that information, we’ll take the path that has proven to be the most reliably informative in the past. Right now, for most of us, that’s Google.

There are two solutions for information asymmetry: signaling and screening. Signaling is when we accept signals in lieu of personal knowledge about a purchase. For example, if we’re buying a used Toyota, we don’t know the mechanical reliability of the car in question, but we do know (through our research) that Toyotas are generally reliable and have a high resale value. That’s a signal. Screening is the process we go through to learn enough information (whether or not the other party is willing to share it) to balance out the information asymmetry. Again, in the case of the used Toyota, taking it for a mechanical inspection would be an example of screening.

If All Else Fails, Look At People

Forget about search as a technology, or a channel, or an industry. For a moment, think about search as a verb, namely, “searching” for information to help me make the right purchase decision. That human objective isn’t going anywhere. You can count on it. Now, all you have to do is look at the new ways we can do that.

I suspect Rob is right. Search as the industry we know has days that are numbered. That’s why it’s important to keep looking at people, not technology. Technology has already changed in the time it took to read this column. But people’s basic and inherent drives are remarkably consistent.

The New Speed of Information

First published August 27, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

This summer, we had fires in the town I live in. From the back deck of my house, I could see the smoke and, as darkness descended, the flames that were threatening the homes in the hills above Kelowna. I had friends and co-workers that lived in the neighborhoods that were being evacuated, so I wanted to know what was happening as soon as possible.

I was sitting on the back deck, watching the progress of the fire through binoculars and monitoring Twitter on my laptop. My wife was inside the house, listening on the radio and watching on TV. Because I had an eyewitness perspective, I was able to judge the timeliness of our news channels and gained a new appreciation for the speed of social networks.

News That’s Not So New

If you had tuned in to our local TV station even hours after the fires began, you wouldn’t have known that anything out of the ordinary was happening. There was no mention of the fire for hours after it started. The TV station in Vancouver was better, with real-time coverage a few hours after the fire first started. But their “coverage” consisted of newscasters repeating the same limited information, which was at least 2 hours out of date, and playing the same 30-second video loop over and over. If you needed information, you would not have found it there.

The local news radio station fared a little better, reporting new evacuation areas as soon as they came through the official communication channels. But the real test came at about 8:45 p.m. that night. The original fire started near a sawmill on the west side of Okanagan Lake. Around the aforementioned time, I noticed a wisp of smoke far removed from the main fire. It seemed to me that a new fire had started, and this one was in the hills directly above the subdivision that my business partner lived in. Was this a new fire? Were the homes threatened? I ran in and asked my wife if she had heard anything about a second fire. Nothing was being reported on TV or radio. I checked the local news Web sites. Again, no report.

Turning to Twitter

So I tweeted about it. Within 15 minutes, someone replied that there did seem to be a second fire and fire crews had just gone by their house, on the way up to the location. Soon, there were more tweets with eyewitness accounts and reports of more fire crews. In 30 minutes, the Kelowna Twitter community had communicated the approximate location of the new fire, the official response, potential neighborhoods that might be evacuated and even the possible cause of the fire.

Yes, it was all unvetted and unauthorized, but it was in time to make a difference. It would take TV two more hours to report a possible new fire, and even then, they got most of the details wrong. The local radio station again beat TV to the punch, but (as I found out afterwards) only because a reporter was also monitoring Twitter.

We’ve all heard about the new power of social media, whether it be breaking the news of Michael Jackson’s death or the elections in Iran, but for me, it took an event a little closer to home to help me realize the magnitude of this communication shift. Official channels are being hopelessly outstripped by the efficiency of technology-enabled communications. Communication flows freely, unrestricted by bottlenecks. One might argue that with the freedom in restrictions, one sacrifices veracity. There is no editor to double-check facts. But in the case of the Kelowna fires of 2009, at least, official channels proved to be even more inaccurate. Not everything I read on Twitter was true, but the corrections happened much faster than they did through the supposed “authorized” channels. Twitter had broken the news of Jackson’s death while the official news sources still had him in the hospital with an undisclosed condition. When it came to timely, accurate information, social media beat the massive news machine hands down.

Do we need a two-hour jump on the news we hear? Is it really that important that we know about events as soon as they happen? When a fire is bearing down on your home and every minute gained means you might lose one less precious keepsake or treasured photo, you bet it’s important.

Summer Stories: How I’ve Spent My Summer Vacations

First published August 20, 2009 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Robin Williams’ movie “RV” may not have gathered much critical acclaim, but one scene at least hit a comedic home run with me. Williams has to get a presentation back to the home office during a camping trip with his family. After his laptop goes AWOL, he uses his BlackBerry to retype the presentation and then tries to get a signal strong enough to let him email the presentation to his boss. He scales the top of his rented motor home, holding his BlackBerry heavenward trying to get a signal. This is an episode directly out of my life. I did exactly the same thing in a state park in California one summer, trying to get some file (it might have even been a Search Insider column) to someone who was expecting it. Running a business means splitting your time between family vacation activities and keeping the bare essentials going back at the office.Have Column, Will Travel

In the five years I’ve been writing for Search Insider, I’ve usually continued to contribute throughout my vacations. This has meant filing columns from campgrounds up and down the West Coast, from Hawaiian beaches, from London hotel rooms, from a chalet in the French Alps and from a charming little hotel  in Florence, Italy. Each has presented their challenges in finding a connection but it’s always been interesting weaving my experiences into the story line.

A few years ago, we were taking the family through Europe and spending a lot of time on trains. We were on the high-speed train from Lyon to Paris and I had to get a column filed. I had just received my first mobile Internet device and thought this would be just the ticket for a little “wired” jet setting. It took me the better part of the trip to key the column in with the tiny little keyboard, but finally the column was done and ready to be filed. I hit the send button and marveled at how technology allowed me to stay connected, even on a train whizzing through the French countryside at 200 kilometers an hour. Unfortunately, no one had explained data roaming charges to me. My little flirtation with international mobile computing came with a nasty little $800 surprise when I got back to the office. The technology is amazing, but the ethics of mobile carriers are noticeably less so.

My Wife Said I Could, So There!

Every time I write something while on vacation (by the way, we call it holidays here in Canada, but you’ll notice I’m carefully keeping my column Americanized) I usually get emails or comments saying I should leave the laptop and PDA at home. My wife and I have talked about this and we agreed that the ability to stay connected not only to work but also to family is worth the odd hour or two checking emails. I am much more at ease when I can check in and make sure everything is fine back home. We have amazing support systems, supplied by both family and my co-workers, so a periodic check-in is usually relatively stress-free. Besides, the Internet is a tremendous resource for a little ad-hoc planning while on the road. Last year, when plans suddenly fell through in France for three days of our trip, I was able to book alternate plans at the last minute.

In continuation of the Hotchkiss summer tradition, this column, too, is being penned on vacation. Right now I’m in a hotel room in Florence, but this Florence is in Oregon, not Italy. A friend and I are biking down the Oregon coast (three days and 192 miles behind us, so we’re a little past half way). Our wives and children are following us with a van full of anti-chafing cream and cold beer. It’s been an amazing experience, but I swear I’m going to hunt down every jerk driving a motor home down Highway 101 who doesn’t give cyclists a little extra room when whizzing by at 70 miles per hour and teach them how to dump their holding tanks, Robin Williams-style. That was the other scene in the movie that had me rolling on the floor.

Over and out from the Oregon coast!