Massive Caveat - This is a purely personal take on work. I speak on behalf of myself & my home’s legion of unkillable moths. Shout me a holler directly at my personal email (meghan.warby*at*gmail.com) if you want to discuss or feel free to post - I’ll try to stay on top any feedback within a reasonable timeframe.
Hokay. I don’t think that I could’ve read this book at a better time in my life/career. Ever.
Two weeks after working on an event aimed to spread some blogger/social media luff there’s some widely divergent chatter going oan about the night, the approach, the invitees, etc. All generalizations are false, including this one…but from my purview, the peeps attending had a brilliant time. (I had such a good time that I couldn’t polish off the entire Black Angels show…but I digress…)
So yeah. When is a pitch too much of a pitch? Or not a pitch? Or exploiting friendships & relationships? Or not inviting the ‘right’ people? Do the rules change with journos & PR work vs. bloggers & digi-work? I really enjoyed participating in Rohit’s session at SXSW08 schooling/venting over the ‘don’t’s in blogger relations.‘ & loads of the take-away-ables are common sense stuff - right? In this case, the client & their digital council crew (incl. yours truly) liked & admired the quality of work put out by the invitees. For reals. There’s a reason I sign the emails with ‘your fan.’ I mean it.
I’ve never done a PR course, don’t really know rules of conduct, outside of not being lame or schmaltzy or fake. In politics, you hear about the ‘Toronto Star rule’ - if what you’re doing at work ended up on the front page of the dailies tomorrow morning - would you be ashamed (questionable too-casual-even-for-Friday outfit choices aside…)? I’ve never been in a situation where this dilemma was even on the periphery.
We had a cool client that gets social media, they wanted to meet a mix of Toronto-based writers, photogs, foodies & geeks in the same mindspace - they ran with it and put out a nice spread. Why the drama? Was mulling over the flurry of posts & comments when I saw Mike’s post on his Fifth Column blog today, about BoingBoing readers getting all in a huff over deletions. I agree with his take. Bloggers make their content, own their content & have every right to change their content. Then checked out Seth’s evaluation of the bizarro rules & values governing Wikipedia. I agree with him, too. Why do some valid (?) entries get deleted? Why are some absolutely, unnecessarily (?) massive? Notice a theme? Who’s setting the rules? Why are content creators vilified for not placating the peanut gallery?
For me, it’s so weird running into these types of conversations at work (again). It reminds me of the ’sellout’ jeers lobbed at musicians all the time & at many of the artists referenced in this pretty solid book worth checking out - Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity by Anne Elizabeth Moore. Reading the book, written by a Chicago-based zinester & PunkPlanet vet who had her own corporate encounter, took me back to the days working at AMF - watching our Incubator Artists struggle with recording fees, stolen gear, travel/gas, holding down day jobs and then suffering people’s self-righteous b.s. for licensing a song, doing a corporate/private show, or ‘compromising’ some abstract idea of integrity in any other form. I know I’ve linked to these before - but damn, there’s no finer examples - that bloggers can learn from, I think - than these two artists I admire equally: the melodically-gifted-and-literary-reference-dropping-Of-Montreal-frontman Kevin Barnes & comedic-genius-gut-busting-b.s.-free actor David Cross.
*exasperated sigh* I apologize for the rant-eriffic format of the post & in hindsight see that I’m (as usual) all over the map in terms of my argument, so maybe this is best left to die a slow & painful death on the other critical blogs…until BoxStoreX gets outed faking a travel blog or someone YouTube’s repairman dozing off…I’ll go back to boosting music tomorrow. I promise.
g’night
meegs
