I'm not contrary, I'm just thinking

I’ve been traveling like crazy the past few weeks.

Detached from home, from family and from my Tempur-Pedic mattress, I had lots of sleepless nights. At the end of my trip I spent a few long days hunkered down in the French Quarter.

In the evening, after the parties, I’d sit on my balcony eating and listening to the music that carried over from Bourbon Street just a couple blocks away. It was a welcome departure from the prim and proper California town I now call home.

With my computer and cell back inside the room, ideas, thoughts and questions with no answers that had been marinating in the the back of my mind came forward, ready to be grilled.

I thought I’d turn each into a blog post, but decided I wasn’t up to the task. So I jotted them all down on my plane ride home.

Jots of consciousness I’m not comfortable inside the status quo.

I don’t break rules. I just interpret them liberally.

Brands that do this tend to amass a seriously loyal following.

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I disagree with James Surowiecki and believe that the crowd isn’t always right.

Especially when the component parts of the crowd no longer think independently.

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I’ve been conflicted lately about the Web. Call it a love/hate thing.

As great as the Web is, it has also eliminated many things that have not been replaced with equal value.

I miss real rock stars. I miss skilled travel agents. I will miss real journalism.

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I have a growing distrust of the kids currently engineering our social experiences.

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74% of people today no longer believe in advertising yet rely on the opinions of social media “friends.”

But the safeguards that protect us from irresponsible big brand advertising do not apply to our no-name brand “friends.”

Will it matter?

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I recently watched a smug Zuckerberg proclaim this as the “new age of conversation” for Facebook.

Valaria asked a good question: “since when is a proclamation a conversation?”

In exchange for our addiction to Facebook, Zuckerberg will earn billions. I’m no longer finding this relationship equitable.

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The growth of social media is driven by psychic rewards we receive for how much we say. Not what we say.

As a result, the social Web has become the Gulf of Mexico. Soiled by verbal spillage.

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Over the past two weeks I’ve been all over America and didn’t share my location or my experiences with the rest of world.

But you can be assured that I was at baggage claim, rode in a cab, ate at restaurants and crossed some streets.

Some might say that by not documenting my every move I robbed my “friends” of the opportunity to share in those experiences.

Forgive me.

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The $10,000 A-List speaker has been replaced by the $5,000 B-List speaker who sort of presents the same thing. She’s just cheaper.

The B-List speaker is replaced by the free C-List speaker. He plagiarizes slides, copies ideas but sort of says the same things.

Now, the C-List speaker is being replaced by the D-List speaker: the vendor rep. They say nothing.

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It’s worrisome to me that likes, comments and user sessions are accumulated and offered back to us as intelligence when most of this information is generated without thought in the first place.

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Last week I ran into a slew of top producing agents.

One of them closed 26 deals last month and will close 200 before the year is out.

These agents have no Web strategy.

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Two weeks ago in Dallas, I heard a broker on a panel argue against the RPR.

Her reasoning was that a new agent should not have access to the same data as a veteran agent.

What can you say about an industry that loves to recruit new agents and then send them out into the world with so little?

Imagine if the medical profession thought this way.

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I took one morning off, picked up some breakfast and went to visit my friend Darren.

I spent three hours in his garden watching his 1 year-old son test his walking feet.

I didn’t Tweet it. Foursquare it. Or post pics of it on Facebook.

Does that make me the Mayor of Nowhere?

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If a picture speaks a thousand words, how many words would a two minute video about your community speak?