Great post about Twitter yesterday by Dave Kellogg, CEO of Eastwick client Mark Logic. I completely agree with Dave that most of what appears on Twitter is drivel. One of my favorite songwriters, Tom Lehrer, once said, “Life is a like a sewer. What you get out of it depends upon what you put into it.” I would say the same holds true for social media tools like Twitter.

Which brings me to my second point. As we develop and make widely available technologies for the recording and dissemination of the written word, there is an associated degradation in the quality of the words that are written. In the Middle Ages, illuminated religious manuscripts were created by trained professionals, who carefully copied the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc. from approved sources. Later, the Chinese and then Guttenberg, invented movable type, and cheaper papers replaced vellum, making books easier and less expensive to produce and therefore available to a wider audience. I won’t outline the entire continuum, but suffice it to say it includes the introduction and popularization of things like books, newspapers and dime novels, the telegraph, radio, television, the Telex, the Internet, bulletin boards, chat, instant messaging, the Web, blogging, wikis and now, Twitter.

With the introduction of each of these developments came reduced barriers to participation. Costs became lower, and with lower costs came less (or no) oversight, because the usual motivation for controlling “content,” except perhaps in the political sphere and arguably there as well, is financial risk. Online communications tools, once the domain of the geek and the technical elite, became more highly integrated with popular operating systems and browsers, and became less complicated to learn and use. So give people easy-to-use communications tools with no one holding a financial interest in the quality and nature of the content, and you get what we have today: a web of millions of web sites and millions of blogs with trillions of words, most of which are, statistically at least, of no use or relevance to anyone.

If you walk through the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, you will frequently pass people talking out loud to no one in particular muttering things like, “that’s a shiny red car,” and “I just ate an apple.” Many of us cross to the other side of the street when we encounter these people. With Twitter, what would be disturbing to us in “real life,” has somehow taken on the aura of “spontaneous, transparent content” online. Back in the day, we used to call this TMI, Too Much Info. Twitter is, then, a little too transparent for my tastes.

Dave Kellogg, drivel, Elitism, Mark Logic, Social Media, Tom Lehrer, Twitter

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I’ve counseled our Eastwick bloggers to stay on topic, and I’m trying to do the same, but I had such a wonderful meal a few days ago that I had to share. I was in San Francisco checking out the insanely great show Picasso and American Art at SFMoma. The theme of the show is Picasso’s influence on American artists. To prove it, the museum is showing an extensive collection of Picasso’s works alongside works by American artists that can be said to have been inspired by, influenced by or simply ripped off from Picasso. I had no idea how much Jackson Pollock, de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein and others had been inspired by Picasso. Did you know, for example that Picasso’s Guernica, which Pollock saw in an exhibition in New York, actually exhibits, if only slightly, paint splattering of a style similar to that which would become Pollock’s trademark?

I was stunned by this exhibition, and I urge anyone who can to go see it. (Runs through May 28. Thursdays are half-price night and the museum is open late.) But back to my restaurant review.

After the museum, I wanted to grab a bite, but the cafe at the W, usually a favorite, looked a bit bleak, so I walked down Third Street toward the wharf. I came upon Pazzia, a restaurant with perhaps 16 tables in a singularly uninspiring cement and steel building. The venue, however, was the only thing uninspiring about this amazing trattoria. When I arrived, I asked for a table for one. (See Steve Martin in The Lonely Guy for my idea of what it feels like to eat alone in a restaurant.)

A man I took to be the manager (but who later turned out to be the owner) told me the wait would be about 10 minutes. No sooner did I check in, when at least 25 people, also without reservations, showed up looking for tables. That’s when I had the experience that set the tone for the rest of the night. While I was deciding whether to simply go somewhere else, expecting to be ignored or forgotten as larger, more lucrative parties were seated, the owner spotted me in this crowd, and seated me first.

I didn’t see quite the dish I wanted on the menu and asked the server if I could get a simpler pasta dish. She suggested fettuccini carbonara, a dish I usually like after I pick the peas out of it. But Pazzia doesn’t put peas in their carbonara. (Score Pazzia, 2, other restaurants 0. I hate peas.) I also ordered the carpaccio, which was perfect, with capers and big thin shavings of parmesan, but devoid of the mustard typically found on carpaccio, which I also despise. Pazzia scores again.

Throughout my time at the restaurant, the service and the food were extraordinary. And while I enjoyed the incredible fettuccini carbonara, which had about a half-pound of prosciutto in it, the owner stopped my table to see if I was enjoying my dinner. He told me the carbonara was his favorite, that it was a secret dish, not on the menu, and you had to know to ask for it. I told him how grateful I was that he did not forget me in the crowd, and he said, “of course –welcome to my crazy little place!” I’ve lived in the Bay Area for almost 50 years, and have dined at hundreds of Italian restaurants (which I’ve also done in Boston’s famous North End and in Venice, Italy, among other places), and Pazzia is one of the best, or the best, I have ever experienced.

Pazzia is at 337 Third Street. Their number is 415-512-1693. Massimo Ballerini, the owner, will make you feel like an honored guest in his home. The food was perfect. Massimo and his staff were gracious and kind. I felt important and cared for. I will go back. 

Bay Area Restaurants, italian, Massimo Ballerini, Pazzia, Picasso and American Art, san francisco, SFMoma, The W

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I’m working in our San Francisco office today. The Anchor Steam Brewing Company is just across the street from us and I was a little surprised to see this morning a school field trip group, apparently waiting outside the brewery for a tour.

I’m all for teaching our young people [full disclosure: this is a tongue-in-cheek reference; I don’t actually refer to kids as “young people”] about American industry and ingenuity, but doesn’t a tour of a beer factory send the wrong message?

Anchor Steam, beer, brewery, school field trip, Social Responsiblity

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This is so cool. We’re building a new Eastwick agency blog on WordPress MU (more on that in a moment) and to get our current bloggers converted from TypePad to WordPress, and to train our new bloggers (and we have plenty of ‘em), we’re holding blogathons at our offices in Redwood City and San Francisco.

Today’s RWC blogathon is winding down. Tomorow I head up to SF to work with our folks there. The goal is to emerge from two days of training and discussion with new posts from every agency blogger. And to make things interesting we’re offering a couple of $50 gift cards for the best blog post and best blog post by a new blogger. (I said interesting, not lucrative.)

I’ve been managing this project and have encountered a number of “challenges” along the way. The biggest of these was finding a platform. I chose WordPress MU (Multi User), since both of my previous blogs have been on WordPress and I love the interface and all the cool plug-ins available. What I didn’t know is that MU is not as mature as standard WordPress. It’s great for creating and managing mutliple users and multiple blogs. We wanted the Eastwick agency blogs to have a family look and feel, so that each blogger can have his or her own identity but that it is clear that we are a team, and that we represent the agency and its clients.

MU has been a blessing and a curse. It’s super powerful. Managing plug-ins is a breeze. Creating new blogs is a pain. Preview isn’t working with our theme. Some headers aren’t showing up on some browsers. Some blog posts are not showing up. I still haven’t figured out how to include multiple ping sites. (And I still love WordPress. Sad.)

I always tell people social media, and blogging, are not about the tools and that they should not spend too much time on the arcana of their content management system or their tagging plug-in. Having spent 100 hours in the past two weeks locking horns with WordPress MU, I had to share my experience, if only for therapeutic purposes.

When I first started blogging, I was a speechwriter for a Fortune 200 company. I spent my days (and quite a few nights and weekends) writing for and on behalf of other people. Blogging has been liberating. For a communications professional, there is nothing quite like being able to write about what matters to you, in your own voice, with your own opinion and sensibilities.

Blogging is not passe. It’s not silly, but it does have a silly name which has probably reduced the amount of respect it gets. But I think blogging (apologies to everyone who thinks it’s cool) is the next must-have business skill, like PowerPoint, Excel and public speaking.

We have some damn smart people here with an incredible range of experience and interests. I love that we have close to half of our agency blogging.  [Disclosure: I am paid by Eastwick and I have often said nice things about the agency. See our Code of Ethics, “We represent the interests of our clients and the agency. This should not surprise anyone.”] By blogging on a regular basis, Our people will become social media-aware, and will become better writers, and that benefits clients. Hopefully, we will also engage our PR industry colleagues in relevant, spirited discussions.

Let’s see how it goes in San Francisco tomorrow. Who knows who will end up with the $50. That after all, is the most important question.

Agency Social Media, Blogathon, Training, TypePad, WordPress MU

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I was intrigued by an item titled Police unveil new podcasts until I discovered it was not an intimate series of interviews with Sting and whatever those other guys are called out on the road with the reunion tour, but rather, a program of the Wichita Falls Police Department:

“The Wichita Falls Police Department’s Community Services Section has unveiled a new way to get information into people’s hands with something more and more people are using - podcasting.

The first podcast is online already - at www.wfpd.net/podcast - and the downloadable clips include a three-part series on home inspections, hosted by Officer Jeff Hughes.”

Podcasting

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