Brian Alkerton Wanted To Document This

A lot of people are flipping out over the “Ground Zero Mosque”, that’s neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero nor even VISIBLE from Ground Zero, but that’s not stopping anybody from letting their emotions get the best of them. If you happen to be opposed to its construction, I’d take a look at this article, which I think makes a pretty strong case for re-aligning your priorities. This one might help too.

This post isn’t really about the arguments for or against the center, though. I happened to be following the Park 51 Twitter account (it’s being managed by a friend), which was getting pretty snarky in its replies to those who were making over the top and unfounded attacks. Which I think is great.

This post is about how unscrupulous people, knowingly or not, manipulate the public discourse to a point where it ceases to have factual basis and gets out of control.

It starts innocuously enough. Fox News host Greg Gutfeld starts the following back and forth:

Gutfeld: You rejected Paterson’s offer for a new state-owned location for the mosque, without asking where. Why?

Park51: No we’re going to meet with Patterson to see what exactly he’s offering. We’re open to conversing and learning more.

Gutfeld: Acc to Paterson’s office, developers have no interest in moving. (link)

There’s only one problem with that link – it goes to a story that doesn’t verify Gutfeld’s assertion. The article, written by Fox News, takes the following quote from New York’s Governor and turns it into a refusal to move.

But Paterson said Wednesday that the developers told his office they weren’t interested in moving. ”I think they would like to stay where they are, and I certainly respect that and I certainly respect them,” Paterson said. “Having said that, how much more foresighted would it have been if the imam who is the developer of the project had been willing to hear what we are actually talking about?”

The distortion here is that the Governor’s disappointment at Park51′s organizers not having contacted him is interpreted as not only the organizers contacting him, but also as the organizers refusing to budge. This isn’t a screwup on the part of the Governor, who’s effectively saying “They picked that spot for a reason (it’s in Lower Manhattan where they were mandated by the local community board to build), and I wish they had run it past me first.” All in all, that’s a pretty reasonable statement from someone handling that kind of political hot potato.

It’s a screwup on the part of the reporter by taking one thing to mean something completely different. Park51 refuted it, pointing to a story where they had said on the record that they were open to meeting with the Governor. This led to a bunch of back and forth suggestions of locations that were nowhere near Lower Manhattan, and rejections of those locations on the basis that their mandate was to build in Lower Manhattan, culminating in:

Gutfeld: So the AP report was right: You did reject offer to move. why did you lie all this time? You wont move from that locale. now, why? // Don’t run from question. I’m not swapping – only asking you why you lied about article, and why you refuse to say why u wont move // Why not come on #redeye and tell us why you won’t move? and, why the lies? Enough dodging the question. boring. i got work to do. // you lied about article. you evade simple questions. you attack me instead of employing “tolerance.”

And so on. And this poses a problem because Gutfeld has a platform with his TV show, 10,000+ followers (at least most of which aren’t naked-lady spambots), many of whom will retweet the stuff he says, poisoning the well further. If someone misunderstands you in a conversation, you don’t lash out with “are you calling me a liar?” – it’s poor form.

So, to sum up:

• Distort the facts
• Make accusations/claims based on the distortion
• Let your followers/listeners/viewers spread/repeat those accusations and distortions

Eventually things get repeated so many times to so many people that the distortions and accusations become common knowledge. I don’t think this is any revolutionary discovery – it’s the same progression that turned a few dozen students at uOttawa protesting Ann Coulter into a couple hundred on newspaper sites into thousands armed with rocks and sticks on Drudge into uOttawa having to defend itself against accusations and criticisms for things that simply didn’t take place.

This isn’t news. But it is a problem – and one that owes as much to our own human nature as to anything else. Conflict gets ratings. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. And it does mean that we have a responsibility to point it out and try to minimize its impact on the public discourse when it happens.

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One of the great things about social media is that when companies screw up, people can very quickly spread word of their misdeeds. Few things pressure a company to fix things like the threat of public humiliation. This is something social media does far better than traditional media. “If you don’t give me what I want, I’m going to the media” is a threat I heard more than a few times over the years I worked in customer service, but despite that, I never once saw a news story on the allegedly horrible things my companies were doing. This is partly because the news can only show so many jilted consumer stories, and partly because there’s a difference between a company screwing up (lost/destroyed baggage) and you not being happy with the terms of sale (if you ask for a quote you based on having 3 friends travel with you, but you have no friends, you have to pay more for the room or not go. I’m sympathetic, but it’s not my fault that your friends are either poor or imaginary.)

Here’s the thing: in either case, good companies will do everything they can to make the customer happy, within the constraints of their budgets and obligations. I can’t waive a price increase due to occupancy, but I can keep your name on file and put you in touch with similarly screwed passengers in the hope of you working something out. And when I legitimately screw something up? When it’s my bad? I make it right, whatever that entails. Sometimes that’s a matter of making one phone call, sometimes it’s something that takes a little more time.

So I’ll confess to being a little pissed off when I saw the internet collectively shitting all over Air Canada when I woke up Thursday morning. The background, in case you’re not aware, is this. Tanner has a debilitating illness that requires a custom wheelchair. He’s in a pretty rough spot but thanks to the generosity and kindness of others, a lot of money has been raised to make the time he’s got left as comfortable as possible in the company of his family. You can, and should, read more and/or donate here. Tanner flew into NYC on Wednesday. His wheelchair made it, but on arrival it was discovered that the wheelchair had been damaged enroute. Tanner can’t get around without his wheelchair. This is not good.

And so, Air Canada set out to right their mistake, and they had a replacement wheelchair to Tanner within 24 hours. Bear in mind that this is a custom chair that costs in the ballpark of $15,000 dollars – it’s not just a matter of giving Tanner one of the chairs they have around to assist the elderly and disabled. And what do they get for their trouble?

There’s a few reasons things went the way they did, and beyond the initial damaging of the chair, none of them are really Air Canada’s fault – they’re just human nature.

• Traveling turns minor customer service issues into horrifying nightmares. I’m not saying this to downplay what happened. I’ve had customers call me in tears, threaten legal action, or (worse if you’re in senior year of university) had your parents call for you in tears and threatening legal action, for minor concerns that were resolved within seconds. My point is this: whether it’s the unfamiliarity of being in a different place, the fear of having only a limited time in said place, or something else entirely, concerns, problems, and setbacks that wouldn’t faze anyone at home have a tendency to take on mythic proportions as the imagination runs wild with doomsday scenarios when you’re on the road.
• Everybody loves a bloody takedown. If a company’s wronged you (whether real or perceived) in the past, it’s incredibly cathartic to lash out at them with all the vitriol and anger you can muster when you see them wrong someone else. The distance of the internet makes that easier. But it’s irresponsible to do so when the company in question is still in the process of making things right. Unlike the United Breaks Guitars fiasco, Air Canada didn’t tell Tanner and his aunt that AC wasn’t responsible for damage, they told them they were going to make things right. Acquiring a custom wheelchair, sadly, is not an instantaneous process.
• People hate uncertainty. This ties back into point one a little bit, but while I didn’t bear witness to the conversation at the airport when the aunt was first told that it would take a few days to get Tanner’s wheelchair fixed/replaced, I can almost guarantee it started with AC’s customer service agent saying they were going to make it right as soon as possible. “As soon as possible” terrifies people who are only in a place for a limited time, and if my experience is any indicator, that conversation wouldn’t have ended without a guaranteed timetable. If I’m dealing with someone in distress, the worst thing I can do for them is make a promise that I’m unable to keep. Therefore, it’s imperative to only promise what I’m absolutely certain I can deliver. Custom wheelchairs take time, and while throwing enough money at any problem can solve it, there’s still the fundamental logistics of acquisition and shipping. 3 business days doesn’t seem like an unreasonable estimate. You have to make the safest prediction you can in a case like this because it’s cruel to let someone down multiple times, but once word got out the shitstorm kicked into high gear. “We’ll work as fast as we can to make this right, but given the situation it may take 3 business days.” may have too much nuance to be adequately communicated on Twitter.

There’s an old adage that a well-treated customer might tell one person, and a poorly-treated customer will tell ten. If your horror story has a happy ending, you simply can’t count on people to relay that message.

So please, if a company screws up and won’t make things right, say so, as loudly as you can. But hold off on the napalm until they’ve made it clear that they won’t fix it.

And while you’re at it, next time you have a great service experience somewhere? Write about it!

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I paid 5 dollars to watch Dinner For Schmucks last night. I advise that you do not do the same. The comedy is really really broad and while you can tell everyone involved is doing their best with the material, the script needed a few more revisions. It’s precisely the kind of people you hear people using as a reason for piracy: “That movie, along with half the crap Hollywood pumps out, isn’t worth what they charge. That’s why I stream my movies online!”

Well, hold on a second. I happen to agree that most of the movies released in any given year are shit, and not worth paying full price, or even half price, to see. But you know what I do with those movies? I don’t watch them.

The idea that the widespread availability of pirated content means we suddenly have the right to try before we buy is an unethical one. That people are making full movies available doesn’t mean we have any right to watch them in full before deciding if we pay a cent for them or not.

This isn’t quite the same as music or TV shows, which are easily broken down into tracks or episodes and where it’s conceivable that based on one or two pieces, you might decide to buy the whole thing. A movie, with rare exception, is a singular experience of two hours. There’s not many movies I’ll throw on the DVD player just to watch a particular sequence because the context of everything that surrounds it is so critical. Albums and TV shows are made in a different way, one better suited to sampling.

Also, we don’t get to dictate the terms of sale, the artist does, with the caveat that if they’re overly draconian no one will buy their stuff keeping them in check. Right now, the more or less agreed-upon terms are $10 on first release, $15-20 if you want to buy the DVD a few months later, a few bucks less to buy digitally on iTunes, and a few more bucks less to rent at Blockbuster. If you want to consume the content, you do it on those terms. If you don’t want to consume the content on those terms, don’t. Despite the internet making it possible, there is no option 3 where you can consume the content someone else is producing and provide them nothing in return, or only provide them with something if you like it, or so on. That’s not to say that these options can’t exist. Many artists choose to explore innovative compensation structures for their content and more power to them for that, but the creator retains, if not control, then at least the right to be compensated when someone experiences their work. The terms are sometimes negotiable
and sometimes they’re not, but it’s simply not fair for the consumer to decline the artist’s terms but still have access to the product of their labour.

And I don’t claim to be an angel in this – I, like just about everyone else reading this, have downloaded content on occasion. But I do it now far less than I used to, because above all else, it just strikes me as cowardly. It would not end my world to spend $10 on a movie only to find out it’s crap. How lame would I be if I couldn’t even be bothered to spend a few bucks on a movie rental, so terrified was I that I might get anything less than my absolute money’s worth? I’ve seen tons of shitty bands, shitty theatre, and shitty stand-up comedy. But I consumed what they provided and, for better or worse, lived up to my end of the terms they had offered it on. I realize that the distance between ourselves and filmmakers is greater than it is in any of those examples, and that makes it emotionally easier to dick them over, but that doesn’t change the fundamental basis of the situation: If you watch a movie online without paying for it, and the creator of said movie intended to be paid for it, you’re screwing them over. And that’s not cool.

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Alas, for a lot of people, it is. Since I know a lot of people who do struggle with sticking to a budget I thought I’d dedicate a post to the tricks I’ve employed to stay (relatively) balanced over the past few years. I’ve used this method to pay for a month in Europe and 2 trips to Seattle without going a penny into debt.

What You’ll Need:

• Steady employment with a stable rate of pay. If you’re relying on freelance work or commission cheques to make ends meet, this probably isn’t the best plan for you. However, if you have both steady work and the occasional freelance gig, this method works pretty amazing.
• Excel, Google Docs, or OpenOffice;
• Your phone
• A little bit of will power (less than you think!)

Step 1: Define your weekly income. Take a look at your most recent pay stub, and the amount that was deposited in your bank account (you don’t need to worry about CPP, EI, or taxes, as they’re pre-deducted). If you’re paid every two weeks, divide your pay by 2. If you get paid on the 1st and 15th of every month, divide your pay by 2 and then multiply by 0.923. This adjusts for having 52 weeks but only 24 pay periods. If your paycheque is typically $1200, the calculations will look like this:

• Every two weeks: 1200 / 2 = $600
• Twice a month: 1200 / 2 = 600 * .923 = $553.80

Step 2: Define your weekly expenses. Take any monthly bills you have (cell phone, rent, student loan payments, insurance, car payment, etc.,) and divide them by 4. If your cell phone bill varies wildly from month to month due to personal usage, contact your provider and negotiate a new plan that adequately covers your usage. If it’s due to work usage, talk to your employer about expensing it. Assign yourself a budget for groceries, even if you eat out often. I found having $40 a week dedicated to buying food motivated me to buy groceries, and having food in the fridge motivated me to stay in and cook for myself rather than go out. Figure out how much you need to spend on clothes and shoes a month, and add that in too (for me it’s about $20/week)

Step 3: Set savings goals. This could be a trip to Europe, a weekend in Vegas, your RRSP, a big screen TV, whatever. Determine how much money you’ll need, the date you’ll need it, and divide the money by the weeks remaining minus 2 (to adjust for any lapses in willpower, unexpected expenses, amazing sales, etc). For example, I knew I’d be going to Europe 8 months before I left, and budgeted the trip like so:

$5000 / (32 weeks – 2 weeks) = ~$170/week

Step 4: Build a spreadsheet to pull it all together. Create a list with your total from Step 1 at the top and each of your deductions below, and be sure to set it up so the math functions are based on cells, not hard numbers – that way you’ll be able to tweak your values to find a good medium. Whatever you’ve got left after subtracting all your expenses from your income is your weekly fun money – cash you can spend on booze, movies, eating out, video games… whatever you like.

Step 5: Oh my God I need way more money. Not necessarily. Once you have the basic framework, you can start playing around with things. Here’s a few general tips I used.

• If you’re paying more than the minimum on your student loans, you can reduce that. Don’t do this on your credit cards though… the interest is way higher.
• Don’t get the most home you can afford, but rather the least home you can tolerate.
• Renegotiate your cell phone contract. Threatening to switch carriers almost always pays dividends.
• Ditch the gym membership and take up running, at least during the summer.
• Plan out menus/recipes that prepare 2 meals worth of food, and always take leftovers for lunch. This also serves as a great incentive to learn how to cook.
• If you can’t afford the big thing you’re saving towards on the timeline you want, push it back until you can.
• Treat credit as an investment – don’t use it to buy stuff NOW unless the return on having it now will be greater than the interest you’ll pay on it. A pair of awesome shoes will last a year from the date of purchase, whether you buy them now or in a month when you have the cash in hand.
• That’s not to disparage credit cards – use them instead of debit or cash for just about everything to rack up benefits – just make sure to pay it off every month. If you’re sticking to these guidelines, you’ll be able to do just that with no problems.

Step 6: Stick to your limits. Now you effectively have one number you need to worry about each week instead of dozens of others – your fun money budget. There’s a number of great iPhone apps that’ll track your expenses and keep you honest (I use this one, but there’s tons to choose from). I’m sure there’s BB apps that’ll do the same thing. But even on the simplest dumbphones, you can start each Sunday with 150 and subtract the money every time you buy something (I know, because I did just that for a number of months.) Because all your numbers are based on your bare minimum income, any freelance or one-time inflows of cash can be treated as 100% disposable income – you can spend them on whatever you like without worrying if you’re over-spending. Alternatively, you can put them towards your bigger items and increase your fun money for weeks to come.

Step 7: Save money, do awesome stuff, don’t go into debt. Simple!

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments. I’d be happy to share my experience further, as well as give you some tips and pointers to get back on track.

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I’m not always right. When I write here and elsewhere I take a look at the facts of a situation, make the best judgment I can with that information, and act accordingly. Sometimes my interpretations of those facts are wrong, that is to say, plugging X facts into my rational faculties generates an outcome Y that doesn’t jibe with what other people expect to happen, much less the actual outcome of an event. I’m not perfect, no one is, but if everyone’s starting from the same point, usually some kind of consensus can be achieved. The key, in any case, is to make sure that whatever our interpretations may end up being, we all start from the same understood and agreed-upon facts.

The decision by one side of the debate to simply toss facts out the window, as if they didn’t exist, is part of what’s getting people all riled up in the debate over the long-form census. While there’s room for debate on what should be on the long-form, when people attack the methodology of its application, my commitment to the betterment of public understanding compels me to state the following:

MAKING THE LONG-FORM QUESTIONS VOLUNTARY INTRODUCES SELF-SELECTION BIAS TO THE RESULTS, SIGNIFICANTLY UNDERMINING THEIR ACCURACY. THIS IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE. IT HAS BEEN PROVEN ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS. VOLUNTARY SURVEYS OVER-REPRESENT THE MIDDLE CLASS, WHILE UNDER-REPRESENTING MINORITIES, THE POOR, AND THE WEALTHY.

Now, if you think it’s inappropriate for StatsCan to be asking certain things, by all means we can have the discussion on what should and shouldn’t be asked. That being said, if you think it’s inappropriate for questions of religion, the time you leave for work, and the number of bathrooms in your home to be on the census, I’d ask you to take 5 minutes and flip through the long-form first, because not one of those questions is there. Independent of content, the methodology is damn near bulletproof. All personally identifying information is stripped from the results before they reach human eyes, and that protection stays in place for 92 years. And after 92 year, it’s only made public if you explicitly authorize StatsCan to do so. That data’s never been leaked from StatsCan.

Should not completing the census be punishable by jail time? Probably not. I think a modest fine would be more than enough to compel people to take the 45 minutes to complete the long form. After all, the jail threat is a hollow one – it’s never been applied to anyone. As such, it probably should be nixed.

How we compel holdouts to complete the census is an important question. What we ask on the census is equally important, and both questions should be brought up for debate. But let’s be clear: the methodology of a voluntary census has been proven to be lacking. And I don’t think it’s unfair to assume that the mental faculties of those who think a voluntary census is the way to go are similarly lacking.

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I performed stand-up comedy last week for the first time in about a year.

It was my first time performing in Ottawa, and only my third time performing ever. And truthfully… I’m really happy with how it went. I felt comfortable on stage for the first time, and I got a bunch of laughs. The first two times I went up I felt pretty kinda awful as I walked off stage – I had frozen up or completely botched the delivery on some of my jokes despite pulling off a few of them with moderate success – but my biggest self-criticisms were that I didn’t speak clearly enough into the mic at a couple points and wound up skipping over a couple of my bits because I was terrified of going over my time. But even that was an improvement. Every time I’m on-stage I find myself tweaking and editing my prepared stuff in my head as I go based on the time I have left, what the audience seems to be reacting to, all in real-time.

It’s thrilling mental exercise, and you get better at it as you go. My first performance I froze up completely for about 30 seconds when the “you’ve got one minute left” light came on. Last week it was a quick calculation to drop a couple lines and I was able to do it more or less without missing a beat.

Since then I’ve had people who haven’t done stand-up before praise my courage and comedy chops. People who have done it before have been moderately supportive, which I think is about the best you can hope for. If you think it’s something you’d like to do, just start writing jokes and sign up for an open mic. You may bomb, but, if you’re anything like me, you’ll feel a lot of pressure to kick ass, and what that pressure does in the days leading up to your gig is it motivates you to really work on your public speaking skills, really try your best to come up with funny material, because when you walk up on stage… it’s just you. You’re the writer, director, and star. There is no bassist to blame if you screw up.

But no matter how bad your first time is, if you analyze your faults and strengths and keep at it, you can improve pretty quickly. I’m nowhere near the level of talent and polish of a professional comedian, but you don’t need that to have the confidence that someone can stick a mic in your hand and you can make a crowd laugh. It’s an incredibly valuable skill and one worth cultivating.

In the meantime, check out my latest set!

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First, the spoiler-free version: It’s a fantastic movie. Thrilling, funny, and emotional, with great cinematography and brilliantly creative setpieces. I think the visuals and concepts often overwhelm the plot and characters, but that isn’t an indictment of the work that anyone did on the film, just a matter of balance that Christopher Nolan didn’t quite get right. The basic plotline isn’t too difficult to understand thanks to plenty of expositionary dialogue throughout, and Nolan’s constantly dropping hints about what the bigger picture might be until he wraps it up with a wonderfully ambiguous ending that invites speculation and discussion.

Now then, regarding that ending, and what it all means… if you haven’t seen the film, stop reading now.

No, seriously, stop.

Okay, so: the ending. Is Cobb dreaming? Does the top keep spinning forever? No and no… at least based on the information we get in the movie. If you bring in outside ideas and assumptions, you can use the stuff in the movie to make a ton of arguments, but by looking at the characters and their motivations, there just isn’t a sound argument that Dom stays in Limbo forever with the memories of his kids and father-in-law.

But the kids are wearing the same clothes! Yes, they are, but Dom sees their faces. While he was unable to keep projections of his kids out of the various dreamworlds, he never let himself see their faces because he knew that if he rebuilt them from memory, he’d lose sight of the fact that he was in a dream and never come out of it. He wouldn’t want to do that since his entire motivation for the entire movie is to get back to his kids.

But he had Mal’s totem! She could be playing a trick on him! A trick in which he gets over the guilt of her death and never sees her again? She wouldn’t want to do that since her entire motivation for the entire movie is to spend eternity with Dom. I think it’s far more likely that Dom tricked Mal since he admitted that he did as much using the totem she had forgotten the use of.

But Saito would’ve wanted revenge! The top never falls after Dom goes to sleep in Mombasa! True, but how would Saito benefit from permanently neutralizing the one guy who can neutralize Fischer? He wouldn’t, and to do so would run counter to his entire motivation for the entire film.

But Joseph Gordon-Levitt looked absurdly handsome! You should kidnap the costume designer and have him redo your wardrobe! Yes. He was and I should.

The Cobol goons are projections of Cobb’s subconscious trying to stop him from completing his mission! The narrow alleyway replicates a common dream scenario! If they are, why are they preventing him from carrying out the mission that will reunite him with his kids?

Michael Caine told him to wake up! It’s all a scheme by him to get revenge for Mal’s death! And spite his grandchildren by depriving them of their father when they’ve already lost their mother? Caine’s motives are the same as Cobb’s – even if Caine disapproves of Cobb’s methods.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that all the characters in the film have motivations and objectives that sync up with Cobb completing his quest and getting back to his kids, and if they don’t directly, then they certainly don’t benefit from him ending up a vegetable in Limbo. The only exceptions are Mal and the Cobol goons, but the former is insane and defeated while there simply isn’t evidence in the film that the latter has any role in the proceedings. The speculation and what-ifs around this movie are a ton of fun, and Nolan’s encouraged them with the ending. At the same time, I think any argument that the whole movie is itself a dream depends on dream logic to make its case, and therefore is kinda self-defeating.

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But since I’m contractually obligated as a blogger to mention it in any post that goes up today, I must begin saying that Old Spice’s marketing department are geniuses. The cost of a few writers and a day of Isaiah Mustafa’s time for making the entire internet flip their lid is a great deal.

So, in the wake of their much ballyhooed Toronto launch, Virgin decided to throw a contest to find someone to be the public face of the Virgin brand in Toronto. It’s a pretty cool gig – they’ll trot you out at events and on social media, you’ll have the opportunity to develop marketing ideas and content for their in-flight entertainment, you get a bunch of free flights – but I’m wondering if it’s really the right plan to have someone doing stuff for you in the public eye who’s not an employee.

I’m currently managing social media for a company in the health sciences sector, and I really enjoy it. It’s an interesting job. But whenever a client approaches me online with a question I can’t answer, a complaint, or a customer service issue, I have to 1) tell the customer I’m working on it, 2) reach out to the client to figure out what’s going on and what the solution is, and 3) go back to the customer and resolve the issue. Done right, it looks seamless and makes the customer think the client is staffed by a bunch of rockstars. But it’s not an instantaneous thing. It takes time and effort, for which I’m compensated.

Is it reasonable to expect the same out of a contest winner who isn’t getting paid? Whether it is or isn’t, Virgin has to take into account that people will see whoever wins this contest as a representative of the airline, and act accordingly.

The challenge for any service company, no matter the industry, is to give every customer a moment that exceeds their wildest expectations, that hooks them for life and gets them talking to their friends, and to do so as early as possible once someone decides to go with you. At the same time, you’ve gotta avoid the moments that are so bad they have people talking trash about you forever. Especially if that customer’s got a Klout score like woah. Having worked in the travel industry for a number of years, I can tell you with confidence that people always overreact to problems. Any minor delay or quibble becomes cause for complete vacation ruination in their eyes. It almost never actually is, so the trick to awesome travel industry service is to have someone proactively reaching out to inform, advise, and help. It suggests that you know what you’re doing. I’ve had furious phone calls from people with delayed flights, and I’ve had to reassure them that we were aware and making adjustments accordingly. Half the time they wouldn’t believe me. But when I call them first? To say yes, we know, and don’t worry, we’re going to make things right? People get amazed and send complimentary letters to my boss.

This isn’t especially difficult to do. But it does require constant attention being paid. Virgin America talks about being based in Silicon Valley and embracing a startup culture. Find me a startup that thinks it’s wise to have the public face of the company anything less than 110% invested in the success of the firm. What happens if I think something’s going catastrophically wrong with my red-eye back to Toronto? Who’s going to reassure me? If I message whoever ends up winning this contest, are they just going to say “I don’t handle customer service issues – try @VirginAmerica”? Which subsequently says, “For guest issues, call our offices”? It’s just not going to have someone in a good mood by the time they reach an agent, and that’s going to skew their opinion of the experience from the get-go. Is the contest winner even going to respond if it’s 11pm on a Friday night? Is that a fair expectation to put on a contest winner?

I don’t think it is. So, by all means, run a contest to find someone who’ll talk you up to anyone and everyone. Marketing is important. But social media blurs the lines between service, product, and marketing like nothing before, and based on that I can’t help but think it’d be worth investing in a destination concierge. Someone who’ll proactively handle customer service nightmares, offer fantastic recommendations for restaurants, hotels, entertainment, and nightlife, be available 24 hours a day to assist Virgin customers (as any startup player should be), and on top of that, be seen out and about in the community as the face of Virgin America. Someone who, if he sees a Virgin passenger asking what to do on a given night, invites him out to the city’s hottest event that night, offering to buy the first round and to introduce him to Toronto’s most creative and happening people.

Isn’t that something that’d provide a wow moment? Isn’t that something that, with only a couple planes a day arriving/departing Toronto, is completely scalable and achievable without needing more than one person dedicated to it? Aren’t I, with extensive customer service experience in the travel industry, a thorough knowledge of and love for Toronto, and an interest in finding work that’ll empower me to do cool stuff with social media, an ideal candidate for such a role?

If you think the answer to these questions is yes, then by all means, don’t email Richard Branson. Despite the public appearances, he doesn’t have a huge stake in the airline. But the executives of Virgin America do – and given that at least one of them’s on Twitter – it couldn’t hurt to retweet this post to their attention?

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There are many guys in this world with more game than me, but I do know a few basics about attracting the fairer sex. For example, when a pretty girl decides that she’s going to walk across the bar and talk to me, while I may not know what to say, I do know that saying “if you’re not interested in a long-term relationship, get out of my face.” would fall under the category of what NOT to say. Similarly, if the first words from the mouth of a girl I start talking to are about how if I like it then I need to put a ring on it, and she’s not singing along with Beyonce, I’m going to lose interest.

That kinda describes how I feel about  the many many companies that offer deals to their Foursquare mayors. If you’re not going to extend me a single benefit until I’m your most frequent customer, and only for exactly as long as I remain your most frequent customer… that requires a pretty big commitment, and unless the reward is suitably big… I’m not keen to bite. That’s without getting into how easily it can be gamed.

And this isn’t even anything new. Loyalty programs have existed for YEARS in every industry there is. The idea that foursquare is doing some brilliant thing working with Starbucks by giving $1-off frappucinos is nuts. Every time you swipe a Starbucks card, they can and should be tracking your usage pattern, and using that info to better target promotions. Always buying hot beverages? Cheaper frappucinos will mean nothing to you, but you might be convinced to upgrade your Americano to a Mocha, and over time that’s something that can turn into real bottom line increases. The mechanisms to collect that data are already there. Aggressively push to get people on Starbucks cards – offer an incentive that 50 cents from every $10 top up goes to benefit the rainforest, or half-price companion coffees, or whatever. Publicize that cardholders get perks. Offer short AND long-term value.

It’s true – and unfortunate – that the most common business case for Foursquare is just a rehash of loyalty programs that have existed for years, but with distinct disadvantage of limiting their application to only one customer at a time. It might be cheaper to run, and the competitive element can be fun (or frustrating if employees game the system), but that doesn’t necessarily improve loyal customers’ experience (because let’s face it, a company with only one loyal patron isn’t long for this world). I don’t even know if “improvement” is enough. People don’t talk about good experiences. They talk about fantastic ones.

So, if I ran a store or restaurant, and I was trying to do the social media thing, here’s what I’d do: I wouldn’t monitor my own check-ins… I can look around and see if I have a customer or not. No, I’d monitor my neighbours. More specifically, my neighbourhood. If I’m browsing at Gap, and the manager of the Chili’s fires off a quick message saying that I might be better off hitting up Mexx because they’ve got a big sale on… that gives me value in a way I’d never have expected, and who am I going to be grateful to? Chili’s. If I run the Hard Rock and I see 5 people checked in at stores within the Market, if I can shoot a message to all 5 of them calling an impromptu meetup. First one there gets a beer on the house and everyone gets some free apps. Once they show up, have the manager sit down and chat for a while. If it’s slow enough that you can spare the time and effort to give that kind of targeted personal service, you’re going to blow some minds. You’re going to get people talking. And that’s a valuable thing.

One of the biggest challenges in starting a business is getting people to come through your door, and Foursquare offers the possibility of making that process much, much easier. Meanwhile, most businesses only use it to deal with people who have already come in. Am I the only one who thinks that’s nuts?

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I’m not a huge fan of the fail meme where, rather than offering constructive feedback on something that needs to be fixed, people just pile on to disparage whoever screwed up. It’s easier than addressing how things could be better handled, and it can be more fun, but that doesn’t make it good.

So when I say that last week’s Ottawa celebration of Social Media Day was less than stellar, don’t dismiss it as someone dumping on people for the sake of doing it… I want there to be more successful events in this city on a weekly, monthly, even daily basis. I like having more opportunities to meet cool new people and I’m just too lazy to make it happen for myself on most occasions.

But the odds of that happening if we shy away from criticism, and assume that nothing needs improving when things do need improving… are a lot lower than if we do.

So here’s three things that the event organizers can (and should) improve on going forward:

1. Promotion. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I’m fairly in-tune with most of what’s going on in Ottawa on any given night. I travel in a lot of circles, have a pretty diverse network of contacts, and while I don’t go to everything, I probably know one or two people at any given event. Aside from catching one single tweet from an attendee, I didn’t hear a thing about it until the day of the event – nor did more than a few people I know who would’ve made plans to attend had they known about it. You absolutely can’t be timid with things like this – a few tweets every day for a couple weeks leading up to your event can make a world of difference. I’m glad they were able to fill the small space with about 40 people, but with subject matter as broad as “social media” and a city this size with so many people doing cool things… there’s no reason that the attendance couldn’t have been 5 times as large. We are forgetful creatures… and making sure your event is on the forefront of everyone’s minds is key to having a great turnout. That means driving discussions around your hashtag, tweeting about it frequently, and taking advantage of Eventbrite’s features to email attendees before the event.
2. Location. I love The Foolish Chicken. Their food is sublime. But the space was a little cramped and just not well-suited to networking. A good mix of seating and standing space is a great way to keep people moving and mingling, and the restaurant was too skewed toward the former.
3. Subject Matter. The event was pitched as an opportunity to meet with other enthusiasts, but the speakers, while they had a lot smart things to say, seemed to be presenting as if the audience wasn’t already on-board and aware of what social media was capable of. Maybe I misread the audience and there were more newbies than I realized, in which case I think the content would’ve been bang-on, but it seemed there was a bit of disconnect there.  Better communication of what the target audience was and the objectives of the event would have set the right expectations and energized people to share it with their friends. Social Media as a topic is really broad, which is good because it means you can draw on a lot of different things, but events like this work best when people can figure out quickly and accurately exactly what’s in it for them, and I think that’s something that can be better conveyed in the future.

I definitely want to see the folks at Six Degrees continue to throw events, and I’m looking forward to what they put together in the future… but based on the event they threw last week, they’re not quite there yet. I can’t wait until they are.

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