Today I feel like taking a match to everything. I'm pissed off, tired and really over my own ability to see shit coming long before it hits. I'm over having this ability because no fucker ever listens.
I'm not psychic (much) it's more just an ability to see threads between things that others think are unrelated. To understand and know when they are going to converge and create demand, issue, opportunity.
There are numerous examples, big and small. Some of the standouts include:
I was working for The Australian some 15 years ago (or more). When the first internet job boards landed (anyone remember Monster Board) the powers that be had conniptions because it threatened their cash cow of IT recruitment advertising on a Tuesday. They decided to lock Monster Board out and would not accept their advertising. I argued my ass off (no right to do so, I was a kid) but said to anyone that would listen "don't shut them out, lock them in. Get them on exclusives, the internet is the way everything is going to go, so let's work with them and be the first to do this." I knew nothing about the internet. Did not own a computer. Had rarely even used one. But I knew it made no sense to shut out innovation instead of partnering with it. Remarkably, this argument is still being had with print publishers that continue to fail to get it, as their print publications continue to fail.
Not long after I left the Oz, I started doing a bit of PR and marketing for an outfit called Quantel. They make high end editing gear for broadcast. I remember saying to the Australian MD, who was questioning my media strategy "you guys need to be talking to this market because in five years time you'll have opened your platform to 3rd party developers, be competing with consumer brands on editing capabilities and applications and have to know how to talk to telecommunications companies, because they will be broadcasters So you should be talking to them now and leading their thinking about how your technology will apply." He told me I was an idiot.
Once upon a time, I walked into the office of a guy who was also flogging broadcast equipment and had briefed my flatmates agency on a catalogue he wanted to create. My flatmate didn't understand the brief. I didn't know the first thing about this guys business, or his brand (Sony) but I marched into his office, told him I believed he was setting up a new division, outlined the business case for doing so and how he would then take his channel business into branded stores with his leading partners to open up a new category. He asked my flatmate if he had bugged the office and demanded to know how I knew all this when he hadn't even told his own wife what he was planning. He hired my flatmates agency to launch the division. He ended up running Sony AV/IT marketing. When he left the pro division and went to consumer, he dumped the agency and didn't take me with him. I still give him shit about that on a regular basis. I married him last year. He sometimes listens to me now :)
I flew to Columbus, Ohio with a client to pitch on the launch of a new product into SEAsia. It was not long after the Sydney Olympics and during the whole Bush/Gore election fiasco. Smack bang in the bible belt I was, in my 20's and still clueless. Got asked what I thought of the election and what would happen. Being Australian, I told them. Said history would show Gore won the popular vote, but Bush would take it on a point of law. Said in his first 100 days he'd be rattling his sabre at China and the Middle East and if they were not already scenario planning for war, they'd better. My Australian client went green and kicked me repeatedly under the table. I came home with the business. In April of that year, I had a weird breakdown and cried my heart out to my agency boss, told him something terrible was coming, something bad was going to happen and so many people were going to die. Started warning my clients to look at their exposure in the US. Very few of them listened. When Sept 11 hit, I was numb. I'd already grieved.
Recently I said to a CTO I greatly admire and respect two things "soon, everyone is going to choose which application they want to use to do their jobs, even if they are all doing the same job. They'll do to their app cloud bank and choose the application that best suits their purpose, download and use it and the enterprise will let them." He said "It will never happen." I also said to him after a round table "the thing your brand needs to focus on talking about at this level is not technology, it's people, because that is what is fucking your clients up." He said "our technology can't help them with that " #facepalm
He recently tweeted from Gartner that BYO Application is the next thing...duh, really. Oh, and the marketing gurus at corporate in the USA have come up with new positioning that includes having to change the human element of thinking. They even have a nifty slogan for it and one of their blogging gurus has started referencing how many conversations with clients are not about tech, but about solving the human issues. Double Duh.
I mean, none of this matters. I'm not saving lives. Watching an interview with a young unknown actress starring in an indie film called Mystic Pizza and saying "She is going to be huge" when I was 15 didn't change the world. It's all swirling around up there but I'm not a millionaire because of it.
Right now I'm tired and pissed off because I have been seeing shit coming down the line for my own family. And today it hit. And it's a storm of crapola. I could not have stopped it. Talking about it would not have prevented it. But every now and then, it would be really good if someone stopped and took the time to consider "what if she is right."
