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Dave Winer on the Viacom vs Google business: “It’s a negotiation with users, not a war with Google. Forget Google. The users want something you aren’t providing. So provide it and stop arguing so much.”

That’s pretty much the bottom line.

The uglybooth

Today’s daily self portrait is another photobooth experiment, this time it’s the ugly booth. I did it using the Sony K810i phone, it has some pretty interesting warping features built in to the camera which lead to very amusing photos indeed. There’s something very amusing yet very wrong about seeing your face all distorted.

Ze Frank speaks out on ugly.

By the way if you haven’t been watching Ze Frank this past year, it’s not too late [this is the last week of the show]. Go ahead and watch from the beginning. What he has done this past year is truly remarkable. Not only are his shows great, what’s really outstanding is how he’s manage to engage his audience.

People send in all sorts of bits that he uses in the show, he runs bizarre competitions like dress up your vacuum cleaner or who can create the most ugly MySpace page. There is a massively active forum where members interact and collaborate on projects and there is even an apprenticeship.

The “Messages from the Sportsracers” episode a couple of days ago was extremely long and consisted entirely of clips sent in from people all around the world thanking him for the past year. I watched the whole thing and was really quite touched by it. Ze doesn’t care who you are or what you look like, he’s inspired people from all walks of life and from countries all over the globe to do really important things.

Ze Frank is a real life Ferris Beuler or Van Wilder: the people’s hero.

Remember it’s not about being cool, it’s about being more awesome.

Mark Cuban: “If Viacom wants to put up snippets, scenes, mashups, mockups, quarter, half or full episodes of anything they own, there is nothing to stop them […] Google may not know it, but they have already lost.”

BBC News: “Entertainment giant Viacom Media says it will sue web search engine Google and its video-sharing website YouTube for $1bn”. Hmm, betting against Google is kind of like betting against the Internet: in the end they always win, even if at first it might seem like you did.

What do evangelists do?

At the last London MiniBar event I met quite a diverse group of people, saw some interesting presentations and had a beer or two. One of the people I met was Roo Reynolds who is a Metaverse Evangelist for IBM. It turns out that IBM have a pretty large portfolio with Linden Labs, owning something like 12 Islands in the online virtual world of Second Life. Roo explained that they have started to use Second Life to host meetings where real life IBM employees are geographically spread out worldwide. The dress code is strictly “no jeans, no wings”.

As well as wondering what work would be like if it were more like a video game, I’ve also been wondering what it is that this new breed of evangelists, you know the ones that work for companies, actually do. Whatever it is, with companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM all boasting many evangelists on their books, you can bet they are doing something useful. Somehow the term has migrated into everyday business speak, it’s just I must have missed it happen.

One of the definitions of an ‘evangelist’ at dictionary.com is “A missionary preacher sent forth to prepare the way for a resident pastor; an itinerant missionary preacher”. Putting the religious bit to one side, I quite like the ‘preparing the way’ part, kind of like you’d be out there in unchartered territory, meeting new people with new ideas and viewpoints, figuring out how you could help them.

What do you think modern evangelists do? Let me know in the comments.

Technology Evangelist: “People who have one simple goal: Better Living Through Technology”.

Robert Scobble on evangelists: “Another reason for an evangelist never to tell a lie. Credibility. Who will listen to an evangelist who tells you something that you already know isn’t true.”

Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Evangelism.

The art of telling stories

More and more I’m realising how important it is to be able to tell stories. There’s something very fundamental about storytelling, it’s the tool us humans use both to learn and understand new concepts. Interestingly in the real world, in everyday life, storytelling is not one directional. A good storyteller is very aware of the audience, how they are reacting, constantly looking for new ways to engage them, to guide their thoughts.

Much like a stand up comedian, a storyteller must be able to ad-lib, to create things of the cuff, to see new parallels and to pluck relevant things from their story archive. A bad storyteller has it all planned out in advance. The problem is that it’s impossible to see in advance how to engage the audience, how they will react. If there is one skill you should practice it is the art of storytelling, it is a sign of experience.

Incidentally, I imagine that good evangelists are good storytellers.

1 year ago today: “The default title-then-post format of the Wordpress blog is starting to get me down. It just doesn’t fit in right to life when you’re busy with other stuff all the time.”

How funny it can be to look back at what you were doing and how you were feeling exactly one year ago.

Enough of the silence, from tomorrow I’ll be publishing words again.