Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky face off.

I want to talk about passion and more specifically passion as an increasingly essential currency of business success.

Wayne Gretzky, one of the best professional hockey players of all time, would at the age of two cry after watching the weekly Hockey Night in Canada game. It was a prelude of what was to come.

In my mind, and also as Malcolm Gladwell writes, what made Gretzky great were not only his tremendous skills but his knowledge and passion for the game of hockey. The passion is what led Gretzky to stay longer at practice and to try things that no one had ever tried before. He saw things others couldn’t even though it was right in front of them.

Wayne Gretzky watched hockey games on television, enraptured, and slid his stockinged feet on the linoleum in imitation of the players, then cried when the game was over, because he could not understand how something so sublime should have to come to an end. This was long before Gretzky was any good at the game itself, or was skilled in any of its aspects, or could create even the smallest of chunks. But what he had was what the physical genius must have before any of the other layers of expertise fall into place: he had stumbled onto the one thing that, on some profound aesthetic level, made him happy.

Passion is often misdiagnosed. It gets confused with negativity and objections to change. When in actuality, passion is what drives some of us. And, whether you’re ready to admit it or not, you want and need people like that.

A friend who works for a fairly big media company in a fairly big city sent me the following about a week ago. It’s an excerpt from the book “How” by Dov Seidman. It’s being shared throughout the news organization there and thought of as a tool to use during the transitions that all media companies are making. Here’s the gist:

“Success no longer lies in what we do; how we do what we do now matters most. In a world where information flows and technology connects us instantly around the globe, the rules of the game for business today have changed dramatically.

“In a connected world, individuals and organizations that make the strongest connections win. In the past, our products and services — our whats — were our keys to success. Today, whats have become commodities, easily duplicated or reverse engineered. Sustainable advantage and enduring success — for both companies and the people who work for them — now lie in the realm of how.

“Qualities that most once thought of as “soft” — integrity, passion, humility, and truth — have become the hard currency of business success and the most powerful drivers of reputation and profitability.”

I am a passionate person. I care how we do things. I often tell people I wear my heart on my sleeve and I get a weird look. I need to show passion because I live and breathe this stuff, and love it. There also comes a responsibility with that, and I get that. The knowledge I’ve gained, the projects and strategies I put forth go into adding credibility to that passion.

But I’m not going to feel bad about it anymore or let people automatically discount passion. Its value in successful business is becoming more evident by the day.

Some things I considered while I wrote this:

• Run your own race by Amber Naslund
• 24 traits of a game-changer by Sarah Robinson

I have to credit Kristina Halvorson and Mellisa Rach via Twitter for helping me find it.

Intro from Mickey McManus

“Information is a slippery idea, all too often we confuse information with the form that it takes. We confuse the medium for the message. To help explain what information really is, we’ve created a short film, take a look.”

There is a lot of talk, actions and decisions being made at the media company I work at in Iowa because of the tactical and organizational approach of separating content from product.

The vision that spurs the strategy of the company is clear. Organize and act for speed and flexibility. We want to reach people where they want, how they want and when they want. We want to enable users to tune a device of their choosing to find information and engage with communities. We must play a focal point in the local information ecosystem, and a key part of that is creating and participating in many nodes within it.

The network is not one of stages but of tribes, and this is a better metaphor for new media. Tribes have leaders (or many leaders), and it is the leaders themselves, not their stages that give them authority. – Terry Heaton, March 2009

I am in no way implying that separating content creation from product development is a faulty approach. Quite the opposite. Collecting content in the first instance with key elements tagged to easily find relationships that can contribute to the nodes is one tremendous step in the right direction.

Information architecture for news by Stijn Debrouwere

But I want to nudge the conversation toward  a newer focus: collecting content for audiences. For example, media company A wants to participate and engage with audience and community B. How can the entire organization take a high level solution view to use our resources, skill, technology and the known and unknown platforms, products and devices to accomplish that goal? (Read a few lessons learned from an audience-first approach.)

But that’s only one piece, I admit. We ultimately want to have fun and make money, right? So we must look from the enterprise level at content as a way of doing business.

What would happen if a content strategist, content collector or information designer, user experience guru, influence marketer and product manager all got in the same room to tackle the example above? Five skilled people spending five minutes and are empowered to make decisions who then deploy, listen, adapt, deploy, listen, adapt, and so on.

Now that would be fun.

What do you think?

That’s where I’m at right now and two separate avenues helped feed that lesson.

The first comes from Dan Millman’s book Way of the Peaceful Warrior which I finished on a plane from Cedar Rapids to Philadelphia. Millman’s quasi-fictional character is taught many things by a man he meets at a gas station. One that stood out to me is referenced in this question and answer exchange that the gas station attendant, named Socrates, eventually teaches Millman. The lesson: There are no ordinary moments.

• Where are you? …. Here.
• What time is it? … Now.
• What are you? … This moment.

One of the first times I was able to able this new realization was during Richard Goode’s piano recital in the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center shortly after I arrived in Philadelphia.

Leonard Bogart of the Philadelphia Examiner described Goode’s proposed playlist leading up to the recital like this: “The program is inspired.  Bach represents the summation of all that had come before, Haydn the path toward what was to come next, and Schumann all that had yet to be imagined.”

As you can see from the photo on the right, I witnessed the recital from a very different perspective than most – behind and above the stage. I was so close I could hear Goode, who is described eloquently by Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times as the singing pianist, hum as he played. I could feel what he was experiencing while playing because I was often able to watch his eyes. A fantastic performance. A fantastic moment, for sure.

Taking Bogart’s description and applying the location of my seat in the theatre, I also had the fortune to live in my moment as Goode played and also add to that the experiences of others for a greater appreciation of what was my ‘here and now’ for two hours.

There was the woman in the front row who was constantly sketching during the performance. An elderly couple who would hold hands during key moments of Bach pieces where you could feel they’ve had a rich life together. There was the professional pianist who sat next to me whose body movements mirrored the emotion of the piano. And there was the 20-something granddaughter who brought her grandfather and the smile on her face that erupted after they saw Goode’s hands play for the first time.

A year ago, I would have watched and listened as Goode played but I likely wouldn’t have heard what he was saying and for a whole host of reasons. Instead, with my new found self-knowledge, it was indeed no ordinary moment.

More than 200 people from different media organizations, schools technology companies and bloggers have registered to attend the free event. (Christopher Wink- who was excellent last year in the post-barcamp beer selection – highlights some of the people he’d like to meet.)

This barcamp is a bit different than last as those who registered were encouraged to use a panel picker to vote on session ideas. See them all and read the descriptions here.

Among the top vote getters: Social media as a reporting tool, the modern journalist, the state of knowledge management systems, ethics in a modern world, simplifying the news view and quantifying the atomic unit of journalism.

It should be an interesting day in Philadelphia. Here is a recap of my top takeaways from last year.

#BCNI Philly

BarCamp NewsInnovation Philadelphia is the national conference in a country-wide effort to reinvent the news industry.

Using the BarCamp open grid format, some of the greatest minds around will discuss new ideas on how to re-energize and innovate the news industry. This is NOT a journalists-only event! Invite any friends from various industries who are concerned about the future of news. Even your friend that complains about the biased media. Especially that guy. There will be representatives from news organizations all over the country.

The event is FREE and will be hosted at Annenberg Hall on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. Doors will open at 9 a.m. and the presentations will start at 10 a.m. After an hour break for lunch at 1 p.m., the last presentations will start at 4 p.m.

Read more

Two conversations that are ongoing right now which get me excited and appear as essential elements to successful business objectives and profitable products are the ones taking place on content strategy and context.

Both philosophies are quickly gaining momentum with smart and passionate people behind them who are engaged in meaningful conversations.

Context is information that informs your understanding of the world, literally allowing you to derive more meaning from an experience. Context is primary. You actually need context before you can make much sense of what’s in front of you. – Tristan Harris

Content strategy isn’t a bunch of tactics. It’s a plan. It’s a well-founded plan, fueled by your business objectives and user goals. An achievable plan, created with your current business reality, content assets, and limited resources in mind. A future plan, for what’s going to happen to your content once you send it off into the world. And, most importantly, a profitable plan, where your measures of success ultimately have impact on your organization’s bottom line. – Kristina Halvorson

What’s proving to be equaling as exciting is seeking the intersection of both those disciplines and applying them in smart ways. I actually believe that neither context nor content is king. I have to believe it’s somewhere in the middle combined the values that users bring to the table that are recognized by brands and publishers.

I wrote about 10 months ago that it was time for the full-court press. I reread that post recently and realize I haven’t done enough to push the envelope or challenge norms to reach the intersection I describe above. I keep worrying about the rules instead of redefining them. I wasn’t part of the Cult of Done.

I wrote then about how relentless effort and the fearlessness to work in unconventional ways leads to a better chance for success. Along the way, I image, some of the rules are rewritten as some risks reap rewards and lessons are learned from failures. That’s the avenue I now see clearer.

I recently had a conversation with online content team members I work with that focused on moving forward. The talk was all about ability, urgency, content development and having fun. The talk was really about new rules.

Here are some of those new rules. I hope you comment and add your own.

The article page is dead: The old building block of journalism — the article — is proving to be inadequate in the current onslaught of news. I’ll argue here that the new building block is the topic. – Jeff Jarvis

Brands are still alive: Consumers are actually more receptive and actively engaged with brands than ever before. According to our study, nearly 40% of consumers report having “friended” a brand on Facebook and/or MySpace and 26% have followed a brand on Twitter. – Garrick Schmitt

Packaging without an engagement strategy won’t work: Indeed, we are programming the social web around our brand hub, which requires a consistent flow of engaging and relevant social objects. Social objects are the catalysts for conversations — online and in real life — and they affect behavior within their respective societies. – Brian Solis

Content strategy is the next big thing: It’s a way of thinking that has direct impact on the way we do business. And the way we do business must include a clear focus on how we create, deliver, and govern our content. Because more than ever before in the history of commerce, content has become one of our most valuable business assets. – Kristina Halvorson

Have you ever mapped a content strategy for your tweets as an organization? After thinking about it more I, embarrassingly, have to say no, and I should have.

Whether real or perceived, I’m been labeled as a web content guy and more often than not I’ve taken that as a quazi insult. It seemed too limiting. I’ve sold web advertising. I’ve been a newspaper reporter. I study digital audience trends and pursue tactics to reach and engage more. I’ve helped run two news websites. I’ve introduced new tools. I embrace technology, incomplete ideas and take risks.

But the more I get into it, the more I’m convinced that, yes, I’m a web content guy and damn proud to be one. I also have a lot to learn.

Kristina Halvorson, who leads the conversation on content strategy for the web, keeps saying – and I’m buying it – that content strategy is the next big thing.

It’s a way of thinking that has direct impact on the way we do business. And the way we do business must include a clear focus on how we create, deliver, and govern our content.

My role is content planning for digital products at a media company in Iowa – the delivery part mentioned above. I have a basic philosophy and implemented tactics that have lead to developing content plans for products such as a parenting niche and a news site.

Six pages into Halvorson’s book and it’s clear I’ve missed two important factors in content planning: identifying the key business objective and user goal for each piece of content.

Let’s not gloss over content strategy by focusing solely on what we should be doing; let’s also focus on the why and how. – Halvorson

I’m not through with my research to form more conclusions yet. But I’m now taking part in the conversation. It’s already opened me to a new way of thinking which will mean new tasks for me to perform on the next content plan I build, which will lead to a better content strategy.

What’s clear is that media companies can be better overall, especially given societies trends in consumption and attention, not to mention the new business opportunities that arise via smarter choices in content streams and resource allocation.

Content strategy demands that you stop considering content as a product you can create, launch, and forget about. Content isn’t something you can just ‘go get.’ It forces us to consider content a business asset, not a commodity. It also means changing who/what typically drives the bus on our web projects: today, it’s UX and/or design. A great web project team includes a content strategist from day one. Everyone knows where the “content buck” stops! – Halvorson

As a content guy I’ve likely taken a too narrow approach to decisions. Tactics weren’t really strategies but rather short-term solutions with no real communication as to the how and why. That too changes right now.

What’s the intersection between your expertise (as it relates to your products) and the informational/entertainment needs of your customers? – Joe Pulizzi

Worth reading

Lords of strategy – Sarah Cliffe

Building The Ultimate Website Content Map Pt.1 – Scott Ellis

Brands as Publishers – Where’s Your Content Strategy? – Joe Pulizzi

I’ve learned much in the past three days. Self-examination and realization tends to do that.

I found my inspiration the other night from an unlikely source: Season 4 of the West Wing in an episode titled 20 Hours in America. Despite your probable laughter, it worked for me.

I haven’t been at my best, but I will be better. No words are going to show that. So I’m ready to run into the fire and keep moving forward.

And although my personal and professional challenges don’t rise to those portrayed via fiction in a television show, there is an underlining theme I needed to hear.

Long version (3:41)

We did not seek nor did we provoke an assault on our freedom and our way of life. We did not expect nor did we invite a confrontation with evil. Yet the true measure of a people’s strength is how they rise to master that moment when it does arrive. Forty-four people were killed a couple of hours ago at Kennison State University. Three swimmers from the men’s team were killed and two others are in critical condition, when, after having heard the explosion from their practice facility, they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the fire. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They’re our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we’re reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars. God bless their memory, God bless you and God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

Shorter version

As sometimes happens, I was focusing on the wrong problem given the situation and worrying about what I can’t control. Don’t misunderstand there is still a tremendous need for quality, relevant and engaging content. But creating content is not the role of the team I am associated with. Our role is to seek out quality content from multiple sources to package it in smart and enticing ways and use smart tools to feed the engagement process.

As Judy Sims points out convincingly in comparing AOL’s new strategy against media company strategy, some potential ways to do that better are found in these areas:

• Media companies need a culture of smart online product development
• Embrace that fragmentation is a good thing
• Create a wide range of content verticals targeting multiple niche audiences

Sims notes an important point Clay Shirky made in his talk on internet issues at newspapers:  “one of the 3 non-economically based reasons that most newspapers will eventually fail is that the bundle of information they present online is “incoherent”.

The New York Times is being torn apart right now by its own readers. The number of people who go to the Times’ homepage as a percentage of total readership falls every year — because you don’t go to the Times, you go to the story, because someone Twittered it or put it on Facebook or sent it to you in email. So the audience is now being assembled not by the paper, but by other members of the audience.

Brad Garlinghouse, the president of internet and mobile communications for AOL says it best: ‘how do we take messaging to the next level?’

The importance of moving the culture and the essential task list in the online product development realm is demonstrated by this exchange. (Find the entire Q & A here)

Q: Can content-bases strategies scale? Content businesses don’t seem to get all the love that tech companies do.

A: I don’t know what our valuation will be but people in the media business look at Silicon Valley companies with envy. We have the opposite view. Let’s take some tech and be serious about it, around our content.

What makes tackling this issue interesting and fun is how we choose to scale the possible solutions. Our future relies on the things we try and the environment in which we do it.

Newspapers produced the mix of content that would appeal to the broadest audience possible. As the web allows for narrower and narrower niches of content, maintaining the old bundle cannot work.

So here are four simple tasks I can up with that can help shift the culture and move momentum in the areas where I have some influence. What do you think? Is this a good path?

• Seek out numerous community contributors across a wide range of spectrums, engage them and use and promote their content. Professional journalists are just one source of content. (A message to journalists: “For journalism, you’re not just hiring the person, you’re hiring their community too.” – AOL chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.) If you’re a journalists, you better have a community.
• Develop a model similar to what’s going on at The Daily Blank. Check it out. It’s worth it.
• Create a kick-ass user experiences around multiple topics, whether automated or manual
• Follow the product develop discipline
• Divide and conquer

His passion for classical music is astonishing, and he doesn’t get deterred by the negativity surrounding the closing of  orchestras or survey results showing that only 3 percent of the population likes classical music.

“There are some people who think that classical music is dying. And there are some of us who think you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he says.

His talk is funny, inspiring, motivating, eye-opening and likely the best 20 minutes, 46 seconds you could spend today.

I mentioned each time I watch it I pick up something new. Here is what I heard today:

“The conductor of the orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me. It was totally live-changing.  .  .  I realized my job was to awaken possibility in other people.” – Benjamin Zander

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