Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

My wife and I were able to catch Wilco at Hill Auditorium on Friday, October 19. Before the headliner came out, we were treated to an outstanding opening act, Liam Finn. What a unique style. A one-man band, Liam plays a riff on guitar, loops it and then jumps on his drums, loops that and picks up the next instrument. The sound is very industrial with a DIY aesthetic. Check it out for yourself and you'll see his looping effect beginning around 3:30 in this video.

So it got me thinking. Liam took a piece of technology designed for perfecting music in a studio and turned it into tool for high-energy live performance. Just like any live show, it wasn't perfect, but the audience wasn't disappointed in the least. There were technical glitches, missed notes, but it didn't take away from the brilliance of the moment.

Of course, the equipment, guitars, technology would all be worthless if Liam didn't have the chops to make them work for him.  I could walk up to that same setup and drive a crowd away -- in other words, be ignored.

Could that be applied to anything we do on the Internet? Sure. We go live everyday with thoughts in our tweets, blog postings, comments, forum topics, photos, videos and so on. In the olden days (10 years ago), we read, proofread, edited articles in newspapers. Highly educated experts wrote our encyclopedia articles and music critics helped guide our next big find. In today's world, anyone breaks news, entertains and educates.

The cream, however, will rise to the top.

I recently took up photography as a hobby, but was reluctant to share anything on flickr. Finally, I figured, what's the worst that could happen? At worst, my pics will be ignored, unless they're really bad and become a viral joke. But what's the best that could happen? Well that remains to be seen. For me, I hope to connect with people in the community and improve on my hobby. Some (a.k.a. "the cream") rise to the top and their lives change.

So, if you have something to share, don't be afraid to step on the stage and go live.

Anthony Viviano