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Boston in the Summertime!

More and more with clients and internally, participation is a focal point of conversation, as it should be.  How do we engage clients, consumers, and ourselves in the campaigns and concepts we create?  Without a more serious examination of participation on the Internet, we may see clients burnt by neglect (low participation) or, worse yet, by inappropriate actions that may cause embarrassment or negative impact.

The Internet is nothing without participation. It is just cold, inanimate, cobbled-together hardware and utilities that provide an infrastructure. So how can we inspire appropriate participation?

First, we should recognize that restrictions and labor intensity are not always a bad thing. For example, I have a DJ friend who makes music mixes available only if you send him a self-addressed, stamped envelope, which he uses to send you a CD. He does this not because he is old school or a luddite, but because he believes that music is so available now that for many people, collecting is more important than the content. He feels that if you have the patience to send him an envelope, and wait for your return CD, you may really desire to listen with a different kind of intent to the mix when it arrives.  This is a very interesting play on information exchange and participation along social networks.

In many projects lately, I have been stressing that we need to think hard about how we seek participation from potential users. For some projects, simply clicking on a “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” rating system can be very successful. (Consider the Digg social news service and how effectively news is shared with this simple gesture.) Other projects can escalate this ask with requests to #tag information (tweets), post photographs and videos, or even have the user generate original content.

We, as askers, makers, and marketers, need to take the extra time to create systems appropriate to project budgets and desired outcomes. Setting the bar too high and not getting enough return is a Fail, as far as I’m concerned. Many of our clients are still learning about social media and how they can interact with it, so we need to create feedback loops that create a desire for further exploration and success.

Simply put, we must practice, practice, practice. We must engage social systems, embrace as many opportunities as we can, and see what user experiences are like. We have to play with the network. At work, we should encourage this activity by as many of our colleagues/employees as possible, not just by a couple of creatives or planners. (You could use collaborative new-media tools to do this, like something from http://37signals.com or http://www.twiddla.com.) This internal experience must then be reflected back to the groups responsible for new-media output for clients.

In the end, I recommend having as much fun as possible. Playing games, interacting with forums and user groups, commenting on blogs, and investigating shopping reviews, recommendation sites, aggregators, contests, social networks, etc. Participate.

Google Labs has a pretty solid history of putting out one amazing innovation after another (like Sets, Trends, and News Timeline, just to name a few). Latest that I’ve been messing around with is Fast Flip, which basically brings the experience of browsing headlines at a newsstand to your online news experience.

Such a simple idea, and a brilliant one. The functionality is pretty flawless in my experience so far. Don’t think this will end up replacing Google Reader just yet (at least not for me), but I have to say it’s a far more enjoyable and richer experience. Also like that it changes and adapts the stories you see based on those you click on in order to give you the most relevant experience.

The mobile experience may be even better, which is not something you get to say often.

Perfect way to get a feel for what’s going on from multiple sources while walking to the train in the morning for example (though the drivers who honk at me as I absent mindedly walk into the road while reading clearly feel otherwise).

Google Labs never ceases to impress. And I’m always even more interested to see what they do next. Their philosophy of embracing life in beta is something I wish more companies saw the value in.