Social media rock star! New media rock star! Marketing rock star!

Really? Let’s take a quick look at some of the qualities that define the average rock star:

• Detached from reality; live in their own world of limos and riders
• Massive egos that are inevitable when stadiums full of people hang on your every word and gesture
• Often forced to stay in a rut for fear of alienating fans with a “new sound”

Meet the session musician

Now I’d like to introduce you to a lesser-known player in the commercial music world. The session musician.

Session players are the guys and gals that get the call to help out in the studio when an artist or producer wants to find that certain sound. If they’re lucky they’ll appear in the liner notes but they’re not usually mentioned in the Rolling Stone articles. They’re heard but not seen.

So what are the qualities of a good session musician?

• They listen to what’s already there and fill in the gaps as needed
• They are versatile enough to play different styles as the situation warrants
• They aren’t in it for their own glory, they’re there to help the rock stars find theirs

I don’t know about you but, as a consultant and strategist, I’d rather be described that way. I’d rather my clients get the glory. We should get hired because of what we’ve done for others, not for what we do for ourselves.

How about you? Would you rather be a rock star or a session musician? Or if you’re on the other side, which would you rather hire?

photo credit: The Real Darren Stone

Either way, I’ve turned to passive aggressive image creation as my outlet. First, in the wake of the Twifficiency madness, here’s the design comp for my new Twitter rating system:

The next version will ask for a nude picture too

Then came Twitter Follower Freakout 2010. OH NOES, they cried, MY FOLLOWER NUMBERS ARE ZERO!

But how can I be sure Justin Bieber is reading this?!

Healthy, no?

Just stop it, will you?

This weekend, the who’s who of the social and interactive media world are descending on Austin for SXSW. It’s the place to be so, of course, I won’t be there.

As I’ve never been to SXSW I can only speculate on this sort of thing but, since it’s my name in the address bar up there, speculate I will. At some point, someone (probably many someones) will spend a lot of time (probably an arseload of time) debating the ‘next big thing‘ in social media.

FYI, I think the next big thing will be the proverbial bait-and-switch, which is why the link above goes to a brilliant Ed Lee blog post which helped inspire me to finally get around to writing this post. Not to some secret lab that identifies the next big thing.

We are not bridging the digital divide, we are widening it

Many of the people I share this big circle with heralded the arrival of social media as the great flattener of communications hierarchies. By democratizing the tools of content creation and publishing, we’re ridding ourselves of the filters of the past and connecting people directly. Ideas flow. Knowledge is shared. Puppies are rescued from burning buildings.

It’s majesty, I tells ya.

The thing is, it’s also bullshit.

We’re not flattening or democratizing anything. We’re simply shifting the balance of power from one set of elites to another. Sure, we’ve killed the press barons. But we’ve replaced them with the cutting-edgers. The people who (seemingly) have nothing better to do than test drive every new tool and dismiss as obsolete anything that doesn’t fit their narrow view of what matters.

People can not keep up

Hell, I get paid to know about what’s coming up in social media and I can’t keep up. Why? Because I’m too busy trying to close the gap we’ve already created between the early adopting crowd and the rest of the world. I’m trying to explain to clients that social media are a bunch of tools and services that offer different ways to communicate. I’m trying to bust myths and reign in expectations.

I’m meeting with professionals. People who have careers. People who are, generally speaking, intelligent and passionate about their work.

And we make them feel dumb.

They feel dumb because we call them dumb. We heap praise upon organizations that “get it” and ridicule those that don’t. We’re like this pack of jackals, ready to start some social media shitstorm of #FAIL tags anytime someone dares to make the very same mistakes we’re so eagerly encouraging them to make.

And the divide grows.

Innovation is important. But where is the balance?

I get that people want to innovate. You’d be stupid to call innovation a bad thing. But shouldn’t innovation be based on … I don’t know … something? How on earth do we have time to properly evaluate one tool before it’s already been innovated into obsolescence?

At this point, it seems like a small group of people with too much time on their hands is picking winners and heaping scorn on anyone who picked different. Call it an echo chamber, call it a clique, call it whatever you want.

It’s making people feel dumb. And that’s not going to make widespread adoption of the tools we all love any easier.

photo credit: jiva

A few quiet curses so as not to wake anyone and I’m out the door to wait for the next bus. Trying desperately to untangle my earbuds so I can listen to some suitably angry music, my seething anger is interrupted by a friendly hello.

It’s one my neighbours. One of the ones I see on a semi-regular basis while I’m out walking the dog, exchange a wave or a friendly hello with, but not one of the ones I’ve ever really had a conversation with. A soldier, judging by the fatiques he wears, though this morning, speaking to him up close, I learn that he’s a military surgeon.

I’d like to pretend that I warmly welcomed this unexpected reprieve from my shitty morning but, in reality, my decision to engage in deeper conversation was based more on the severely tangled earbuds in my hand and my desire not to be a total prick to a man in uniform.

Still, engage in conversation we did. It started with fairly standard fare: how long we’d been in the neighbourhood, what his kids are doing these days, how great it is for me to have a new baby. As we boarded the bus our conversation moved along to places we’ve lived and the transient life of most servicemen and women. Mostly wondering if he’d been stuck in some remote corner of the country (Hey Sue! What’s up, Dan?), I asked if he’d been in any far-flung locales as part of his service.

“Well, I’m just back from my second tour in Afghanistan.”

At this point, I should say that, generally speaking, I’m a broad-strokes pacifist. I’d really rather not live in a world in which armies and soldiers and people shooting at each other were a necessary fact of life. That being said, though, I’m generally of the opinion that – if armies and soldiers and people shooting at each other ARE a necessary fact of life – I’m pretty glad that the Canadian Forces are out there doing it. Call it blissful ignorance, call it patriotic naivete, but I tend to think that Canadian servicemen and women do the job well, with an underlying sense of respect for human life and human rights.

So when my neighbour casually mentioned that he’d been in the single deadliest war zone for Canadians since the Korean War, I thought it only fair to mention the deep respect and gratitude I felt to the likes of him. He seemed almost embarrassed, graciously thanked me, then proceeded to speak at length about how lucky he felt to be Canadian and how much pride he had in our country.

Later, when discussing the life of a field surgeon (again, in the single deadliest war zone for Canadians in more than 50 years), he largely downplayed his role, saying the real praise goes to the guys outside the wire who do the first aid and careful extraction needed to get the wounded back to base in the first place.

I know I tend to be verbose so I’m going to ahead and recap that quickly, in case you’re skimming:

A man who has saved lives in a war zone deflected all praise and gratitude, choosing instead to praise his country and the people he serves with.

I work largely in social media. The people I share an industry with go by ego-massaging titles like “rock star,” “guru,” and “expert.” My compatriots speak at length about personal brand. They think so highly of their work and their thousands of followers that they seek every opportunity to broadcast in any new medium that comes up. People in my field have iPhone apps built for the sole purpose of distributing their work. They speak at $2,000 per head conferences. They write books.

All my neighbour does is stitch up wounded soldiers while suicide bombs explode outside the gates of the base.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the leading minds in the social media sphere. A man’s gotta eat. They’re using the skills they have to earn a living and isn’t that really what we’re all trying to do?

But my god, if my neighbour – a genuine fucking hero in my eyes – can deflect the praise that’s sprinkled on him by a surly, coffee-deprived white collar consultant during a dreary morning commute, I think we can all try to find just a little more time for humility in our day.

Don’t you?

photo credit: slimmer_jimmer