More on this video over on Health Is Social.

@PhilBaumann

Healthcare adoption of emerging technologies (not just new media) needs to be done with a robust understanding of them in accordance with strategic visions. Privacy isn’t the only consideration in healthcare: dignity, content, information and excellence in communication and community-building are just a few of the others.

I wanted to go beyond that typical social media hype and give a deep view of what’s needed in healthcare communications. Included are some slides on how Information and Content related with each other in order to provide true empowerment for patients.

You can view my presentation below or over here (there’s also another copy here).

Too often, organizations and industries attempt to integrate new technologies without delving deeper into their ramifications, possibilities and limits. As a result, they often run into trouble and then back away, leaving internal champions frustrated. Understanding is the first step toward doing. Paradoxically, though, with emerging technologies you need to do a bit of both at the same time.

If you would like to see me speak to your organization or help conduct personalized workshops and bring some perspective and orientation on process design, email or call me: info@CareVocate.com – 484-372-0451.

For those of us who’ve been at this for a long time (my experience with social networking goes back to 1978 – that’s a whole other story), it’s startling to witness the level of web literacy in many imprtant, well-financed organizations.

So, unfortunately, due to this web illiteracy I’m sad to say that the talk will go on for some time.

That’s dismaying because there so much more that we can talk about.

Remarkable as they are, the discussions are endless and most loop back into themselves without generating sufficient voltage to power an army of macrophages. Additionally, Pharmaceutical companies – beset by a myriad of constraints – are anxious about flipping on social connection switches which the Web furiously creates every day.

We could say that Pharma has a sort of Social Media Anxiety Disorder. What to do?

The answer isn’t in social media. It’s not in what the FDA decides to do. It’s not in echo chambers found within Twitter or blogs or conferences.

It lies in simple, basic economic truths. It lies in radical acceptance and in brave recreation. It lies beneath the proverbial nose of obviousness. It lies far beyond any discussion about the meanings and promises and purposes of new media on the Web.

Pharma’s Social Media Anxiety Disorder is merely a peripheral symptom of deeper pathologies. Let’s assess the patient.

NOTE: If you believe social media is the cure of business ills, this post may not be appropriate for you. See your doctor if you’re addicted to social media before acting on the information contained herein.

DEEP CONCERNS AND PERIPHERAL RISKS

Social media is nothing – an oxymoron at best: media are simply media, incapable of being at all social. People are social. Information isn’t social either – but it is everything. So let’s talk about information and why it matters in every nook and cranny of Life Sciences’ media challenges and wider business fundamentals.

Nobody doubts that the ultimate concern surrounding the the development, production and marketing of molecules and medical devices is their safety, efficacy and effectiveness. From production to marketing to administration/application, every step of the way involves risks: tiny flaws in R&D methodologies; overlooked nuances of human physiological processes, genetic mechanisms and anatomical structures; manufacturing and engineering oversights; misinforming marketing messages (unintended or otherwise); and administration error (provider or patient related).

At the core of all these risks lies information, which is the coherence of relevant data that helps to make decisions in light of risks. Any information indicating danger during any point of the entire pipeline can retard or terminate production or marketing or dispensation of a product.

Furthermore, the media through which information conveys its meaning determines its interpretation. Therefore, any discussion concerning the proper delivery of product information must base itself upon the most complete understanding of media possible. Few media are alike in properties, possibilities, limits and pliancy of re-purposing. Not all media can be used for the same purposes as other media. Twitter may help Dunkin Donuts move sales, but that doesn’t mean it would for Pharma.

And it’s this understanding of media which is at the heart of the circulatory system of discussions and decisions with respect to the Web’s place in Life Sciences. It’s one thing to say Let’s start a blog, tweet like sparrows, set up Facebook Pages and create forums. It’s quite another to do so remarkably without addressing both the deeper nuances of human communication, social interaction and individual psychological responses and their peripheral risks.

The order of complexity that arises out of the tasks involved in creating and cultivating safe and engaging environments for patients, doctors, pharmacists, employees and all other publics grows with every added layer of interaction.

It sounds hopeless – in fact it is anxiety-provoking. But it isn’t hopeless and it doesn’t need to be an unstoppable source of anxiety. But the reality is this: Life Sciences has far too many variables and concerns to tie together to ever completely satisfy everyone and everything when it comes to social media – certainly not right out of the gate. The Enterprise considerations alone are almost impossibly daunting.

It’s easy to see how most Pharmaceutical companies suffer from a sort of Social Media Anxiety Disorder. What will the FDA do? What about Adverse Events? What about them lawyers trawling for our mistakes? What about abusive flash mobs? What happens if 4chan decides to play pranks on us on Twitter or Facebook?

What’s the anxiolytic here? Simplicity: do what’s simple and simply do it.

More on that in a moment, but first a necessary but pertinent side trip off the path of new media onto the economic principles upon which any exploration of the uses of social media in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

NATURAL VERSUS UNHEALTHY RATES OF RETURNS

Let’s take a quick pan-back for a moment from social media to mention something about Capitalism and economic fundamentals because it’s the central economic context in which modern pharmaceutical marketing arose. An inquiry into the economic ramifications of a fast-changing world must the the foundation for any exploration into the role of media. And this will lead us to why simplicity is Pharma’s best prospect for long-term viability. Bear with me on this excursion. Why? Because if there’s no industry, who cares about social media?

The rates of return for the pharmaceutical industry over the last twenty years have been quite remarkable. After the industry radically transformed itself decades ago from a primarily scientific endeavor into a marketing Juggernaut, the stock prices of publicly traded life sciences companies soared. Blockbusters made careers. Fortunes bloomed. Investors beamed.

We could say that co-morbid with Pharma’s Social Media Anxiety Disorder is an addiction to quick hits of Blockbusters and above-average rates of return. As we know, co-morbid conditions are often the hardest to treat.

But the fact is, these rates of return were not natural rates of return. Sustainable long-term rates of return for industries in their natural states is on the order of a paltry two to three percent. Why? Because the resource-inflationary pressure of high returns inevitably leads to downward pressures on sustainability. When rates of return exceed rates of regeneration, eventually capital systems collapse in on themselves. Sooner or later, pendulums swing back – the higher the summit, the more momentous the tumult.

To most pharmaceutical executives, the very thought of rates of return that low could cause chuckles or perhaps induce suicidal ideation. But eventually Pharma will face major reversals of fortune in the coming years. Here’s why:

• The disruption of traditional marketing coupled with the infiltration of the Web into consumers’ lives will dilute their effectiveness;
• The mis-coordination among the various international regulatory agencies and the industry will hamper innovation in customer outreach;
• The internal weaknesses, complexes, inefficiencies of out-dated infrastructures will continue their pressure to reduce costs at the expense of development, resulting in positive feedback on tightening concentric loops of cost-reduction and market contraction;
• The pool of bright young talent will flow to tech and other sectors while flowing away from an industry who’s public reputation has suffered years of traumatic wounds (many self-inflicted).

Furthermore, the revealing essence of media technologies will continue to illuminate fundamental truths about the industry and bear novel stresses on it:

• The proliferation of social media will continue to shed light on weaknesses inherent within organizations: information about organizations will increasingly leach into the public sphere.
• The raw scapegoating potential of new media will fuel public relations fires like never before seen and their financial impacts may be enormous, and their recovery will be slow and painful. Perhaps not in the immediate future (contrary to some of the hypers of the “power” of social media) – but as new media proliferate, the peripheral costs and risks associated with maintaining communities will rise considerably. (See Dennis Howlett’s excellent piece on how Nestle’s Facebook problem had no significant impact on its share prices.)
• Worsening depressive global economic conditions will likely usher forth political demands for tighter regulatory controls. When people are hungry, they cry for blood.

Therefore, the industry must undergo a radical realization and acceptance that their fundamentals need serious attention. A critical dissection of assumptions and traditional business thinking will need to take place. The harsh realities of the 21st Century’s upending nature must be faced without fear. The marketing models which were co-opted from the Cereal and Automobile industries will be tough to break down and replaced with fresh perspectives on the ever-shifting ways in which people consume their information.

Meanwhile, the social engineering foundation of modern marketing ushered forth by Edward Bernay’s will continue to falter. Unless, of course, a few geniuses emerge who will discover some magical formula to mechanize social media into standard operating algorithms – as was done with traditional media. Not impossible, but it was much easier to do with unilateral oligopolies of mass communication.

There are times in our lives when incredibly hard and frightening decisions must be made. The same applies to companies and industries – entire countries in fact. And it’s always those simple decisions that must be made and are most often the most difficult to execute.

Pharma’s simple way out of its coming dark ages is nothing less than the task of utterly re-vamping itself into an entirely new industry – one which will be supple and cleaver and ethical enough to win the attention and social capital so critically necessary to hold sway in the coming world. It’s not social media, stupid: it’s The Capital.

Here are a few simple things Pharma can right now to inject true hope into its future:

• Invest in education. Where will the next generation of molecular biologists and geneticists and engineers come from? Set up a consortium of education which extensively funds captivating educational programs which spark the attention of a youth easily distracted by the temptations of the Web. The Web is a perfect medium to extent in-real-life educational experiences, even while it opens up new temptations for distraction. The Web’s disruption of education means we must dovetail new media technologies with the traditional disciplines and rigors of learning about what matters. The public and private systems are becoming increasingly vulnerable in this regard, which implies opportunities for industrial talent to avail itself of its knowledge and expertise.
• Shift capital-flows from over-marketing back to R&D. Wait? What? If we don’t invest in marketing we won’t have sales, which means we can’t develop products. The retort: the future of traditional marketing is bleak. Accept the losses now. A robust portfolio of novel pipelines for products – in conjunction with re-designing public relations with valuable social propositions – will lead to healthier long-term prospects for capital accumulation.
• Begin the process of re-designing infrastructure and process from an assembly-line basis into info-social ecosystems. Capitalism is in the process of transitioning from deriving value through mechanized re-allocation and transformation of resources towards creating value out of the informational synergies of social connections. As the cost of technologies shrink while their powers expand, the opportunities to more fully realize the power of ideas and experiences expand. How many more discoveries and advances in molecular genetics be made if businesses were based upon social designs instead of mechanical rigors?
• Extract value from the innate experiences of human capital within the enterprise. Building on the previous investment strategy, there is an entire sub-industry within the Pharmaceutical industry which has never been tapped. The collective wisdom-power of doctors, nurses, engineers, geneticists and other key players is an enormous source of business value. Entrenched stiff organizational structures have buried the collective values that can be derived from the vast array of product and service ideas inherent in these collective talents. Investing in re-designing business towards info-social ecosystems will develop the platforms necessary to yield the potency of human creativity and innovation.

Of course, maybe it’s already too late for the large pharmaceutical companies. If that’s the case, then the smaller enterprises have an open opportunity to gun for the future – especially if they refuse to be subsumed into the Juggernauts, which anymore are more like Holding Companies than actual creators and producers.

If 20th Century Capitalism taught us anything, it’s this: Juggernauts often jeapordize their long-term sustainability by assuming their ways of doing business are eternally solvent. They aren’t: Technology brings forth into world both opportunity and obsolescence. It reveals the status quo even while it destroys it.

THE SIMPLE TRUTH

If the industry is to be what it aught to be – a leading creator of technological solutions to biological problems – then it will have to abandon the now false hope of generating unnatural rates of return via outmoded mechanisms, processes, strategies, tactics. Because if it continues to believe its industry is an exemption from the eternal laws of supply and demand, of resource and allocation, and of creativity and innovation, then it will perpetuate a belief system that will continue to funnel its efforts into practices which forgo richer long-term prospects.

This is not only a matter of industrial health: it’s a public health urgency. A bankruptcy of novel bio-molecular advancement would be catastrophic for health care.

Connecting points of suffering with points of care. That’s the simple going concern of the Life Sciences industry.

This connecting is what marketing is all about. All efforts from idea to development to production to consumption create the ribbon of presence which is marketing.

BACK TO THE WEB OF CONNECTIONS

It’s not that the Web doesn’t matter – far from it. But the basic economic principles outlined above are the priority for all companies curious about how to integrate Web media into their enteprises.

There are places for new media within Life Sciences but the industry needs to be very basic in its approach.

For one, companies won’t get very far with “social marketing” efforts until executive leadership actually has hands-on experience with new media and a working comprehension of their properties.

No, the only way things will move is when middle and executive managers start using these media personally (none of it is hard). They need to go through this process before clear-headed strategies can be well formulated. Here’s how, in order:

1. Executives must gain Web Literacy (this is a limiting agent).
2. Then they must step back and re-frame everything they think they understand about media.
3. After that, they need to imagine the re-purposing possibilities of the various media.
4. They need to put together small packs of champions who – with permission – can go forth and lead the way with small steps.
5. They will have to initiate the system-deep integration of social design into their companies (and Enterprise versions of Facebook ain’t it).

Once they understand how to use these media themselves, only then will they see the potential and pitfalls. They will realize the importance of accumulating Social Capital. They will see more clearly what it takes to create content and communities and the safe connections which engender markets where information can be safe and effective.

The economics of life science products and the realities of emerging shifts in the properties of adopted media dovetail each other over time. Perhaps not immediately, but it won’t be too long before the industry sees the need to change. That’s why the previous discussion about Capitalism is so important and relevant to any discussion on social technologies. Social media are merely revealing the deeper needs to re-vamp the industry’s microecnomic and enterprise schema.

ASK YOUR DOCTOR INSTEAD OF A DOG

The Web decentralizes centers of information. It rewards erratic volume at the expense of disciplined silence. It atomizes the world’s data while it connects disparate sources of information.

The Web is seductive. It promises Democratization. Unfortunately, seductive promises usually break.

And so it is with Pharma’s relationship to social and other media. In lust for easy returns by the promise of cheap media, fundamentals are easily forgotten. Longevity of industrial health is put at risk. The savviest get-rich schemes don’t sound like get-rich schemes. And yet, most of the talk about “social marketing” does in fact possess within it the underlying pitches of get-rich schemes.

Pharma will have to get back to fundamentals in economic design and collaborative networks. It needs to bring the life scientists back to front-and-center as pioneers of not only innovation but also creativity (and not in the way David Ogilvy abhorred the word). It will have to develop new ways to work with doctors and nurses, patients and the public.

It will have to answer, continually, questions such as these:

• What is the effect of the Web on the health of human beings, from birth to death?
• How does the Web affect collaboration? What about culture in general?
• How can those with expertise create music that shunts the attention and interest of consumers away from the cacophony of charletons or from well-intended but misguided people? After all, a little knowledge can be more dangerous than complete ignorance – life science and health care aren’t always intuitive.

It will need to propound into the FDA’s collective head the one eternal truth of the web: On the Internet, nobody knows your’re a dog – but they may think you’re a doctor.

The imperative for leaders in life sciences businesses to understand the emerging roles of emerging media has never been more important. Moreover, the enframing of these media must line up with a fresh perspective on the nature of Capitalism in an age where social currencies emerge as substantive elements in the Capital System at large.

Pharma: Give up false hope in a Social Media Utopia. Overfed Utopian desires always end up backsliding into disasters. Get back to the science of life and the art of being a hero. Re-examine the fundamental meaning of marketing. Remember that marketing is about Presence. Realize the costly long-term error in mistaking Messaging for Marketing. History will hate you if you abandon your duty to be spotlessly heroic.

If you’re going to integrate rapidly shifting new media into your efforts, keep things simple. Don’t aim for marketing gold – you’ll not only miss the pot, you’ll ruin your reputation forever because the Web is your last hope, even if it’s your biggest fear.

Find what’s simple and simply do it.

It’s that simple. But like life itself, simple is rarely easy.

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Of course the flip side of instant connection include numerous dangers: security breeches, privacy violations, spam, flawed information, process hurdles, cultural clashes, etc.

PHARMA’S ENTERPRISE ONION

In order for an industry like Pharmaceuticals to be successful in online community engagement, it has to be able to peel away – like a giant onion – many many layers:

1. Cultural sludge
2. Resistant political domains
3. Organizational fears
4. Local and federal regulations (including interpretational ambiguity)
5. Resource allocation
6. Talent acquisition and training
7. Process planning, design, implementation and evaluation
8. Ethical awareness and discipline
9. Content creation abilities
10. Conversational skills – including a profound understanding of diverse cultures
11. Documentation management (e.g. Adverse Events require consistent documentation procedures)
12. Establishing a consistent and unifying online “voice”
13. Cross-departmental and talent osmosis (e.g. Communications staff need to understand clinical processes, while clinical staff need to understand communications)
14. Competing philosophies and ideologies and departmental directives
15. Actual and public perception of engagement independence.
16. A clear understanding of the difference between instant and real-time communications.
17. Investor obligations (e.g. Investors demand rates of return in accordance with risk preferences – any process which adds another layer of risk with little perceived return is harder to advance)

Pretty daunting, yes? And this is the abridged list. Here’s what’s more: each layer that has to be examined and peeled away adds an additional order of complexity. The mathematics of this is not linear – that is, the aggregate order of complexity is not the simple sum of all the layers. I don’t know if it’s geometric or exponential, but it’s daunting.

BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS

It’s easy for advocates of social media and engaging with customers (be they consumers or doctors or the public at large). The reality, however, is that the order of complexity for Pharma to be safe and effective (so-to-speak) is high. That doesn’t mean at all that Pharma should sit in the sidelines.

But it does mean that Pharma will have to devote extensive care, attention, labor time, hard work, courage, creativity and supple musculature in order to be remarkable. Online, if you’re not remarkable, you’re nothing. There’s no return on mediocrity.

Anyone who has had to peel away an onion (either a real one, or a psychological one) knows the tears that can flow. It’s not as easy as it looks.

And yet…we all need to break-through difficult times. We all need to peel away layers of the onion.

The Web is making clear that organizations simply won’t be successful in community management and leadership unless they do the hard work of re-thinking and re-envisioning a simpler way of doing business.

What I’m saying is this: the “social media” challenge for Life Sciences isn’t social media. It’s all those layers of the onion.

Of course, once you’ve peeled away those layers, you find yourself confronted with a fresh view of the world. One you get through those layers, the world doesn’t seem so complicated. In fact, you start to see opportunities where you once saw danger.

I need to make my point in the flesh. So here I am, presenting an elucidation of my thesis: Audiences are strategic imperatives [link to video if you can't see the embed is here]:

Investing your talents into inspiring and conversing and leading your audience is one of the most challenging but important things you can do with the Web. If you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a business.

If you spend yourself being everywhere, you’ll end up nowhere.

Know where audience needs to be – and that isn’t on dozens of un-monetizable social networks.

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Should Enterprise software be like Facebook? That’s a question Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff recently raised. While reading Dennis Howlett’s analysis, Dennis makes a very simple but easy-to-overlook point about the difference between instant media and real-time media. It’s an important point, one I believe gets lost in the noise and hype about social media.

INSTANT CONFUSION

One of my main focuses is health care adoption and employment of software for improving collaboration and communication among patients and doctors and nurses. It’s important, therefore, to understand the property differences between media and the different contexts, conditions and processes needed for successful deployment. What works for consumers (Facebook) doesn’t necessarily work for business.

One of the properties of media like Twitter and Facebook has to do with time. Twitter and Facebook statuses are instant (at least when there are not server errors). Instant is exactly that: immediate, without regard to relevance. Real-time, however, has to do with relevance. In an enterprise, what matters are information flows – and without context and relevance, information is just data.

Real-time is more than just anytime (which is what instant is) – I need the right information delivered at the right time within the right context throughout the right process.

This distinction between instant and real-time is critical because any software developed must take into account the purposes and needs and contexts in order to ensure proper user experience and appropriate results.

So no: I don’t believe Enterprise software should be designed like Facebook. It follows then, that any software designed for patients and hospitals and doctors and nurses must not confuse themselves with consumer applications.

BUILD IT RIGHT AND SPEAK CLEARLY

Therefore, any healthcare enterprise analogues of media like Twitter, must take into account the difference between instant and real-time. The applications must take into account the sociological and informational needs of clinical processes. Otherwise, disaster is certainly built-in.

Software lock-in is a huge problem in technology. I fear that philosophical lock-in of social media philosophy may be one our time’s greatest threats. (As an illustration of what I mean, the Privacy Is Dead mantra is, I fear, just one self-fulfilling instance of social media fallacy – it’s one of the most dangerous myths propounded and accepted by superficial thinking these days – it’s a dangerous mind-virus.)

We need a clear language when discussing technology – especially media technologies. Confusing instant with real-time is sloppy thinking. In a health care context, it’s downright dangerous.

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Was your company blogging ten years ago? If not then why? Google made it easy for you and now you’ve lost ten years of priceless link juice. Given the fragmentation of media in the last ten years, it’s clear now just how relatively little work you actually had to do back then. But that’s in the past. Still, I have bad news for you: what you have to do now is far harder than it was ten years ago. Let me explain.

CONTENT FRAGMENTATION AND SOCIAL DISTORTION

As the Web expands and proliferates novel media, messaging becomes increasingly diffuse and fragmented. The Web creates new opportunities and destroys old standards. It disrupts communication patterns, rattles social structures and ruptures attention spans. Ten years ago, you could leverage your audience-building skills for acquiring and retaining customers. You could even have learned and mastered a skill which traditional marketing didn’t really demand: conversational aptitude.

But now the honor of your presence demands you to be at many different places at once. You not only need to know how to create captivating content but you also need to know how to converse and lead with such conviction and remarkability that it could almost require you to be loved.

The choices open to you grow. Where to begin? Where to be? Twitter? Facebook? Blogs? Youtube? Foursquare? Gowalla? Flickr? The dozens of other places yet to come along? And if you show up and listen and play, will you be good at it? If you’re not good at it, you’re not going to achieve anything.

Here’s the biggest challenge for companies struggling to “figure out” social media: the convergence of Strategy and Practice becomes increasingly elusive as the Web mercilessly evolves.

What do I mean? Strategy and vision are essential parts of ultimately getting business done. But strategy without planning and mechanics and process worked out, nothing gets done: the going concern becomes aimless and bankrupt. Much of the daily work that has to be accomplished online has to be done manually and personally. Furthermore, the work has to stand out so it can be kindly remarked from one person to another.

Much of this work may not fit into any strategic category; as a consequence, the strategic directives can easily diffuse and lose their trajectories. Once that happens, it’s easy to lose balance and focus and clarity.

THE VANISHING POINT. BTW, JUST WHAT IS THE POINT?

The one question every executive asks every time a marketing or PR agency or internal manager tries to push social media is this: What on earth is the point?

Many of us who live in the echo chamber have answers. Or statements we think are answers. The truth is, however, that this is a vital question. The whole enterprise depends on it.

There’s no doubt: the Web is the place to be; and companies need the skills and confidence to incorporate all media into their day-to-day routine. But the vaporization of the Web creates a situation where:

• so many choices have to be made;
• conversations need to be quality and sincere;
• attention spans are short;
• messages are now real-time;
• traditional Search is being disrupted;
• new technologies are emerging which don’t necessarily communicate well with other
• the prospect of walled gardens is rearing its head

Contrary to Social Media evangelist claims, the Web is becoming a mess. Messaging is being liquified, subject to evaporation – and worse: your message can be easily replaced with someone else’s within seconds.

Marketers used to have a landscape they could map out. They could harvest farms of attention. They could plant their feet on the ground and develop real estate which they could mostly control.

But the new landscape isn’t on land. It’s vaporizing. The vaporization of marketing will get worse. Not every business will figure out the point of being online, let alone be able to cultivate a captivated audience and converse real-time. Most will just be talking to themselves and an imaginary audience.

That’s what happened to Pharma giant GSK because they had too many meetings and consults and fears on how to do something as simple as running a blog. Mind you: this is a company with over $40 Billion in assets and which employs some of the smartest people in the world. From an investor’s perspective that’s managerial irresponsibility, indicative of severe creative anemia.

What’s the point? isn’t something you ask and answer once and then move on. No: it’s a daily question. It’s no different than asking What’s the point of our business?

The problem is this: there isn’t a point. Or one single point I should say. There are many points. All kinds of purposes and opportunities and needs. A thousand points of light flashing and fading and distracting.

This is only good news for marketers who have creativity, muscle, chutzpah, intelligence, pliancy and permission. For the rest, it’s a disaster waiting to happen – no matter if you play or not. The Vaporizing Web is Scylla and Charybdis for businesses.

HOW TO HANDLE THE VAPORIZATION OF MARKETING

What to do? You can read a million how-to posts, hire big agencies who know how to price and bill, attend overpriced conferences or have tons of meetings littered with streams of buzzword-stuffed PowerPoint presentations. But I’ll give you one simple answer:

Don’t take it so seriously! If you do, you’ll vanish into a mushroom cloud.

A sense of humor and a style of lightness are enduring qualities of successful long-run presence, especially online. Once operations become chores and jobs they cease to be useful. The Web is the end of the assembly-line.

If your business doesn’t know how to have fun and to be spontaneous and swift, it probably won’t survive this century. Capitalism is destructively creative. It’s also creatively destructive. The Age of the Farmer is coming to its close. It’s Hunting time now. Prepare yourself for war.

You’ve been warned and advised. Questions? Call me: 484-372-0451 or Skype: Phil.J.Baumann or Twitter: @PhilBaumann.

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Anyhoo, I haven’t seriously used Foursquare but have been intruiged by its usage – it seems a lof of people on Twitter love to use the service and tell everybody that they became Mayor of Casterbridge or some such place. Harmless fun I suppose.

So I decided to see how useful this service could be. Does it have a place in health care? How can Foursquare be re-purposed for more utilitarian goals beyond telling friends what watering hole you’re Mayor of? (See note below this post.)

What if you could “check into” emotional places or disease states? (Yes, I like taking it to the absurd.) Foursquare doesn’t let you do that – not for very long at least. I can see how spam could become an issue for Foursquare (I’m probably not the only joker doing these sort of things). So here’s what I did: I added the items Insomnia and Clinical Depression and linked to them on Twitter. A few hours later, Foursquare removed (or “closed”) these places. Here are screenshots:

So wow! Foursquare could end Insomnia and Clinical Depression! Score one for Social Media!!!

I’m all for using social media for all sorts of things. And I’m sure Foursquare has its uses. But I also sense that social media mania may be getting out of hand. I wonder if the majority of the adopters of these servcies have a clear purpose in mind before they adopt them. Or are they just adopting them because they exist, with some getting lucky in finding purpose after?

What do you think? Do you use Foursquare? How do you use it?

Foursquare is based on one simple piece of meta-data – geolocation. It’s the primary social object around which all other social objects and behaviors and meta-data orbit.

But there are all kinds of meta-data. Think about that, developers.

Not everybody is paying attention to the Web. Many businesses still struggle with the staples of today’s daily communications media: blogs, Twitter, FaceBook and custom social network solutions. And they are staples: Twitter and blogging are now nothing new or shiny. They’re old news. Some of us still talk about these things in order to help the late comers. But there’s nothing original to say about them.

We live in a digital age: which is to say, many things are all or nothing. Some companies will thrive in their business fundamentals and on the Web. Others: they just won’t get through the next few years. The fact is there are many organizations that simply are too dysfunctional in their cultures; short-sighted in their visions; fear-laden in their uncertainties; or too busy to notice the lights have changed.

This doesn’t just go for businesses. It applies to me. To you. To your children. The world always changes. But sometimes, once-in-a-lifetime changes happen right during your lifetime. If you knew ten years ago how the world was going to be today, what difference would that knowledge have made for you?

You don’t know how 2020 will look like. But it won’t look like today.  What are you doing right now to clear your vision? What skills are you learning? What do you think you should unlearn?

Will you be putting the pieces together? What will you say when chaos and change come thrashing through your door? Sorry, we won’t be putting pieces together this year – come back later?

When it’s clear that the world you know so well is breaking apart, it’s time to re-frame your view of that world and start putting pieces together which you never before ever connected. A picture is worth a world. Sometimes it can even save a life. Hope is the picture you must have in mind when putting pieces together in the dark.

Happy New Year my friends.