I’ve published a bit of work on reputation economics and I’ve recently started to say more about attention conservation.
Extending the metaphor of economics in the realm of reputation, I’ve got some thoughts on portfolio diversity, and how attention conservation matters.
What is DailyKos to you? I think it’s unique for each individual, but I’ll share my personal perspective.
When I first arrived this place was a training ground where I sharpened my writing skills and applied my already sharp systems thinker skills to new problems. I met people, both online and in real life, and I credit the community spirit here with keeping me in one piece during a life threatening illness.
Once I returned to work and shifted my attention to social media the dynamic changed. I was organizing people for various efforts, doing what has turned out to be some pretty innovative work, and learning that beneath the radical egalitarian surface of the Progressive blogosphere there is a murky, unaccountable hierarchy.
As a mildly autistic adult I have the usual clutch of benefits and deficits. I develop circumscribed interests; mathematics, software development, and voice/data/video network engineering that are uniquely applicable to the problems of social media. I'm faceblind – largely unable to interpret how others feel based on their expression, I miss social cues, and I don't have a lot of patience for things that are not deterministic. Humans, for example …
So after becoming aware that going off on my own and doing something innovative was a problem within the orange padded walls of DailyKos, I set out to both conserve my attention and diversify my online portfolio.
Autistic adults are a bit funny; fire alarm sounding? OK, but I have two pages left in this chapter and I will finish reading them before I get up, even if I smell smoke. If something captures my attention, it really captures my attention. I used to spend time on DailyKos like this, I have in the past played online simulation games with that sort of intensity, and I now catch myself in the same mode in Twitter.
Some of this might look like information addiction, a real and true issue for our society, but it's more subtle for those on the autism spectrum. As a rule we lack some of the filtering stuff that neurotypical humans just do. Sights, sounds, and smells that would be beneath your attention threshold can drive me absoutely crazy. The autistic understand the need for attention conservation in a way no NT ever could; the world's amplifier is always set to eleven for us.
So I turned away from DailyKos and sought to spread my attention across multiple venues, enhancing my activist's reach as I went.
I evaluated a variety of Progressive blogs before settling on a mix of OpenLeft and my own personal blogspots for publishing my more analytical work. This writing is not something I might not bother posting on DailyKos any more, except that this piece focuses on this site in particular.
I expanded my influence on Twitter. My 1,700 followers don't look so impressive, but I've banned 3,200+ sales bots and right wing kooks. Had I let the normal flow of followers proceed I'd be around 5,000 now, as near as I can tell. Quantity doesn't matter, quality does. And I'm willing to bet that among the Twitter Progressives no one has a better rolodex than mine. I can call about half of the total leadership and among them I have various back channel discussions and projects going with perhaps half of that group with whom I have direct contact.
I am less orderly in my Facebook efforts, but the 2,700+ friends I have there represent the business end of the Progressive battering ram in that space. I've started the tool creation process there, just as I did for Progressive PST in the twitterverse.
Having successfully diversified, I sought to consolidate and reinforce my position.
The news service I've been building for the last four months, inspired by portions of a strategic vision from Progressive Congress, and fleshed out by contributions from some of the top thinkers among the twitterati, has left us in a unique position.
Note the pronoun change. US. Here is where we depart dramatically from what the rest of the world sees as netroots values.
If I had to write a one paragraph indictment of the Progressive blogosphere, which I happen to need at this moment, it would go something like this …
The radically egalitarian blogosphere places a premium on equality that greatly hinders its utility to the Progressive movement. There is a one dimensional focus on the ability to write, which excludes many other sorts of contributors. While not extreme like the far right, the far left provides broad lattitude for views that are far outside the mainstream. The accepting nature leads to a place for everyone … including far too many charming, talented personality disorder victims. Sociopaths able to string sentences into paragraphs find willing audiences. Those with borderline personality disorder satisfy their craving for dramatics. Insulated from the consequences such problems bring in real life, they drag the collective view this way and that, focused on scratching whatever itch they might have rather than advancing the Progressive cause.
I sensed something was wrong before I started working for political campaigns. I used to puzzle over why Congressional staff didn't pay closer attention to this site. Six months of contact with the real world has me averting my eyes from the wreck list, too. The front page articles are nicely done, but within the community the parallels to such shining endeavors as Free Republic or World Net Daily become painfully apparent.
As a simple example, when I published The Wh0r3 Next Door it made the rec list, scored 88 comments, and spawned a couple of offspring that also made the rec list. I came back two days later, published the very same information with the non-inflammatory title Policy Oriented Service Work and it received 9 comments, 6 of which came from people already involved. So a chance to participate in something that's shaping up to be a pretty big deal is of no interest, while an inflammatory title draws a flood of responses tied not to the substance of the article, but to its provocative lede.
Do I need to reiterate my indictment of the blogosphere, or is it fresh enough? Want me to perform another experiment verifying the conclusion? I'd warrant you can do that yourself by simply comparing what makes the rec list to what's scrolling down the page with just a handful of comments.
So, I did some software evaluation, I wrote a little code, I designed and built my very own front page, and I'm pushing it into the blogosphere, the twitterverse, the kingdom of Facebook, and into the halls of Congress, too. And that's a place the blogosphere simply can't go, for reasons we've just covered.
Back to that US and the key differences that allowed this effort to gain such traction so quickly.
We didn't build a system for me, we built one based on Progressive Congress's vision, which has hierarchy and is lead by strategists, rather than having the flat, radically egalitarian, reactive layout of the blogosphere.
We didn't build a system just for me, We applied the structures one would see in a compartmentalized intelligence operation. This partitioning and otherwise disciplined approach is inviting to the project managers who have little tolerance for the reactive blogosphere and it simultaneously thwarts the attention seeking conduct disorder crowd.
We built a system that is smooth enough to permit work to flow, but open enough to permit a shifting group of players to trade duties. We made it difficult for one person to get overloaded and easy to delegate portions of work. We cross trained where ever possible.
We sought feedback as to the needs of Congressional staff. We sought feedback as to the needs of political campaigns. We sought feedback as to the needs of think tanks and other content producers we might wish to integrate. We sought feedback from a variety of organized labor figures. We solicited input, credited above, from the sharpest minds of the twitterverse. And we did the same within Facebook, too. We face out, not in, and we pay attention.
We insisted on establishing metrics where ever possible. We keep context of interactions in a top quality customer relations management system. We don't charge for it, but we run it like a professional services operation.
We built not only a system but an organizational culture along with it, one that values team work over individual aggrandizement, service to others over self seeking, diligence and forethought over reactivity, and measured results over feelings.
I could delve into how such a system facilitates attention conservation in a purposefully overloaded world. I could go on about systems architecture, and recruiting, and organizational development, and startup management. But we've crossed that magic 1,500 word line, where even the people who really like my writing start looking for the end.
More will be revealed in due time ...