Rushkoff is in

I'm pleased that Doug Rushkoff will be working with my new startup company, that helps enterprises with social technology strategy and implementation.  Doug has been talking for years about why companies need to change.

From a description of Rushkoff's last (12th?) book, Get Back In The Box:

"The age of mass production, mass media, and mass marketing may be over, but so, too, is the alienation it engendered between producers and consumers, managers and employees, executives and shareholders and, worst of all, businesses and their own core values and competencies.

American enterprise, in particular, is at a crossroads. Having for too long replaced innovation with acquisitions, tactics, efficiencies, and ad campaigns, many businesses have dangerously lost touch with the process – and fun - of discovery."

The challenge for organizations and technology today, in Doug's words:

"Going 'social' online means more than hiring a company to create a ‘white label’ version of Facebook for your organization to chat with customers, employees, shareholders, and others. It means understanding the real value of creating a 'transparent' company; it means understanding why sharing and collaborating beat hiding and competing; it means learning to work with unfamiliar measures of success - like how many new unsolicited resumes from people looking to join you come over the transom, instead of just how many 'unnecessary' jobs could be cut."

I'm looking forward to working with Doug and helping companies change the world of work.  If you are interested in learning more about hiring us, or being hired, let me know or drop Jeff Dachis a line.

Comments

[Justin Hunt]

I used to write for Guardian Online and remember Doug Rushkoff's work well. I agree with Doug that mass media is dead. The audience on the internet is now taking charge and we are seeing the emergence of the people's media. No longer needing to be a wealthy press baron to get your views heard, you can blog and talk among your friends on Twitter, and social networks etc.
The key challenge I see for companies is that they need to first see what social media activities their customers and stakeholders are involved with and then decide how they want to respond. Ultimately all organisations and brands are going to have to become open to social media, they are going to have to immerse themselves in social media and it is going to go way beyond media relations people. It will encompass HR and customer relations. The farce at the moment is that so many organisations cannot even see into the world of social media. Firewalls prevent a lot of good communications people even looking and reading a blog. This is because some senior management just don't understand what is going on. Having said that, there are plenty of highly intelligent people in large organisations who are picking up on the potential of social media as they want to secure influence and get their messages across to social networks who cannot be reached through traditional media. The more organisations see themselves being discussed and commented upon, photographed and videoed, the more they will realise they cannot turn a blind eye. It is going to take a huge cultural shift and will create flatter and more transparent organisations who should be able to respond much faster to customer concerns and trends in the market.

[Branislav Peric]

Congratulations.
Rushkoff's "get back in the box" was a key initiatic step in my social media understanding.
This book is a must-read.

Lucky you!

[Adam Daniel Mezei]

Hi Peter -- choice quotes from the Rushkoff title, nice going.

You wrote:

"If you are interested in learning more about hiring us, or being hired, let me know or drop Jeff Dachis a line at jdachis at austinventures dot com."

I'd be seriously interested in working with you in terms of providing a Central European (egs. Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland) "on-the-ground" perspective as concerns the unfolding of Web2.0 across the region (CEE = Central and Eastern Europe).

The advantage of working with so-called "developing" -- or transitional -- economies is that you get plenty of quasi-"early adopter" behaviour that's near non-existent Stateside, for example, since many social networking sites are being experienced for the first time by Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, etc. We can "re-live" the experience of what it was like to be an early adopter in the States -- only difference being is that the technology has since radically been improved from when it first made its debut.

It might be nice to chronicle the "second wave" of social networking rolling out across the former Communist bloc, and to monitor how interactions with things like twitter, plurk, utterz, etc. are being interacted with by former citizens of the post-Communist world.

Thank you again for your post.

--ADM

[Pete]

Hi Justin, Branislav - thanks for starting the conversation here. It's great that you all are familiar with Doug's work; I'm hoping to learn a lot from working with him.

ADM - great perspective, as usual. Let's take the "working together" part of the conversation offline...

[Angela Connor]

I see why you're pleased to have Doug on board. That second paragraph is pretty profound. I will copy it momentarily and send it to a few folks who could benefit from reading it, but not before reading the full post. Keep us posted on your progress. Tell Doug he's found a new RSS subscriber here.

[Pete]

Wow Angela - will do. And thanks for being a reader and participating here, too!

[Greg Verdino]

Fantastic addition to the team! Rock on, Pete. G

[Ross Popoff-Walker]

Congrads Pete, that's awesome news. Rushkoff's PBS documentary opened my eyes when I saw it first:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/