Gurus - Get My Goat.

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Despite my natural lust for knowledge I'm deeply suspicious of terms like "web-guru" and "internet-visionary." Knowledge is too precious to generalise but I'm fed up with gurus.

Digital media has thrown up an exilitrating set of ideas which challenge conventional forms of mass media, but web 2.0 has also commodofied knowledge, by peddling the very conventional thought that a small group of self-elected male thinkers, many of them on the US convention circuit, hold some spiritual' access to wisdom. They are the antithesis of wiki-knowledge or participative meaning.

Web gurus run the risk of corroding knowledge by turning it into a show-business. I recently saw Doug Richards on his brief visit to Scotland and was seriously under-whelmed. It so tempting to have a go at his shallow brand of Chino-Jeans entreprenuerialsim, but he lacked any substance, and peddled so many mixed messages that it was hard to work out what he really values. The biting irony was that Richards conversed with a 3-D version of himself which exaggerated his self-love whilst making him seem even more superficial. The Scottish Economic Minister John Swinney blew him off stage - smarter, more engaging and unemcumbered by third-rate schtick.

I guess, my grouse is not with people Clay Shirky, Richard Florida or Mike Wesch, who I have promoted on 38minutes and who have spread outwards from academia. They have clearly wrestled with ideas over many years and stretch you to think. My bug is with the 'visonary' entreprenuers and VCs who confuse their prewsonal journey with intelligent thought .

We are living in an era where wealth creation is in crisis and I freqeuntly feel let down by the shallowness of the message that so-called serial entrpreneurs and web business gurus peddle?

Am I alone?

[Michael Coulter]

2 or 3 years ago, I was driving back from a presentation to a client.

I was feeling quite pleased with myself, after giving what I felt had been a brilliant irrefutable argument about why they and most brands should whole-heartedly embrace the tools and opportunities of web 2.0.

I'd been in full on evangelical, guru-like, passionate believer mode, banging on about the power of blogs, delicious, rss, flickr sets, youtube etc. (Stuart, you'll be pleased to note, Twitter didn't exist in those days. However, I'm glad to see that twitter.com/stuartcosgrove has been snapped up by someone. That's twitter.com/stuartcosgrove ;-)

But I digress.

So I'm driving back with lots of self-love and switched-on-smugness swirling around my head, until the truth hit me:

I was an (unintentional) fraud and a fibber.

And thank gawd I hadn't been asked THE question in the presentation.

The question would have been: "Sounds great Mike. We'd love to see how you use Social Media yourself. Can you let us have the url's of your: blog, delicious, flickr sets, youtube etc.?

Problem was I didn't actually have a blog, or was using any of the stuff I'd been saying was essential to modern day marketers. (And of course the people I'd presented too didn't think to ask for some actual evidence that I actually drank the kool-aid myself.)

I wasn't actually engaging and immersing myself in the tools I was telling everyone were such a big deal.

I was in short, all talk. (which ironically enough you can't be in the age of conversation.)

Ewan describes suchness as; "those who say, but do not do."

I'd go one step further and offer the absolute requirement is : "Don't tell me, show me."


The moment I realised I'd better actually use the stuff I was propounding, I immersed myself in building an online digital/social footprint.

Web 2.0 and Social Media bullshit is everywhere.

Most ad agencies, PR companies and digital agencies would tell a client they are really into social media and can give them a top-notch strategy advice about how to use the tools of Web 2.0.

However a facebook account does not a social media guru make.

Almost everyone involved in marketing nowadays talks a good social media game. (They have to, they need the money at a time when traditional media and consequently their revenues and income are taking a right old battering.)

But most are no different from IFA's mis-selling pensions.

Out to make a quick buck in a in a highly competitive, but mis-information awash market.

So what's a bewildered Marketing Director/brand to do, when trying to get the best advice?

We'll my advice for what it's worth, is type the person/vendor/ad agency/pr company/'guru's name into Google along with "Social Media" blogs, "online marketing" or whatever "expertise" they are pitching.

Then you'll know if they 'get it'.

Google.

Finest 'outing-machine' known to man.

[Ewan McIntosh]

I feel the same way about the confusion created by those who say, but do not do. Mark Prensky is, for me, prime suspect in spreading the 'digital native, immigrant' thesis which has become as much an excuse for people not to innovate on the web and mobile and gaming, as a reason to make sensible projects and products that appeal to many people without dumbing down the goal in mind.