RIEP10: Social Butterfly Effect (SBE)

3 Responses to RIEP10: Social Butterfly Effect (SBE)

1. Stowe Boyd says:

   December 7, 2010 at 3:14 am

   Listen to your recording. Its takes minutes for you to get past saying ‘I had this idea’ ‘five years ago’. Shut the hell up and tell us the idea.

   Reply
   • alex says:

     December 7, 2010 at 3:22 am

     Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
     The Social Butterfly Effect is the effect, on innovation, from people moving seamlessly from one social context to another.
     As a French-speaking anthropologist, I do tend to be longwinded. Especially by myself.
     I need interaction.
     I actually stopped podcasting not too long after this. It might have worked if I had been with co-hosts or guests.
     The idea itself was in that original blogpost.

     Thanks again for dropping by.
     And, more importantly, for some choice tidbits during the latest TummelVision episode. Much of it is precisely the type of thing I try to tell people. Works really well when there’s some fertile ground, but it’s still useful to get the soundbites.

     Reply
   • alex says:

     December 7, 2010 at 4:54 am

     Ok..
     Took your kind advice and started listening back to that recording of my “ramblings on a rather simple concept.”

     It did take me about a minute and forty seconds to get past this point about the context for this SBE idea. Which, you might argue, is indeed more than a minute (hence the “its takes minutes for you to get past..” in your comment). So, you’re probably right. I should have “shut up and told the idea” (what a neat concept for those interested in Cage’s 4’33”!).

     Still, though, by the standards of longwindedness to which I’m accustomed, the early part of this podcast episode is relatively close to “getting to the point.”
     In fact, by the five minute mark (“a few minutes in,” one might say), I was already talking about specific applications of this simple concept. Two minutes later, I was talking about Granovetter and Gladwell’s awkward conception of it. For an academic, that’s speeding things up and it’s not that dissimilar to some of the things which happen on TummelVision, not to mention Place de la toile.

     Of course, I could also give someone the “elevator pitch” version. In fact, I’ve done so in some contexts. But the context here is pretty specific. I was trying out different formulas for this podcast, none of which really gave me what I wanted. Yes, I know what didn’t work and I eventually decided to abandon this podcast and reinvested this small amount of energy elsewhere.

     Still, the point about my convoluted ways to get things across is well-taken. If I were to pitch an idea to someone, I should send the short version, not the long one, including some of my interrogations.
     One of my mistakes, here, was that I assumed you might click on one of the links instead of on the MP3. Silly me. Live and learn.

     Reminds me of things discussed on TummelVision, actually. Some people with whom we interact may indeed hear about diverse ideas, but they probably don’t have time to think about their implications. So they go about their business until they’re told in exactly the right way by exactly the right person (hopefully with some prestige attached to her or him).
     Really fascinating, come to think of it.

     Again, thanks for the feedback. I often get thoughtful feedback in other contexts. However, this podcast is one in which I wasn’t getting much interaction. So your comment was useful in reassuring me that I made the right decision in podfading.

     Cheers!

     Reply