Granted that some of my friends call me ‘Schedule,’ it should be plain that I live and die by my planner.  While at NME, my days were simply too packed with meetings and deadlines for me to ever have a chance of remembering everything.  Getting me from meeting to meeting, office to office, somehow became non-mission critical.  My phone, Outlook calendar and Google worked together to ensure that I got from meeting to meeting.

And yesterday morning, that system failed me.  I woke up at a good hour, went to the bank, and returned only to find that I had missed a call with someone I really admire.  I think we all have someone like that in our lives.  A man or woman that is larger than life, that you always point to and say “If I was in his situation, I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”  Or rather, “Some day, I hope to grow up to be her.”

You know those sorts of people.  The giants that surround us, that are only apparent when you get to know them.

And it was with my giant that I had missed a call.  He lives in California now, and he had to stay late at his office to take the call.  And I made him sit around for an hour or more, waiting for a call that never came.  Wasting valuable time that he could have spent with his family on a Sunday evening, and instead had lost to my irresponsible ass.

I had made some configuration changes on my phone lately, and it did not alert me to the call.  This is not an excuse, nor an attempt at shirking responsibility.  I am declaring that I should have tested the system after the reconfiguration, and I am totally at fault.

And truth be told, having missed the call put a major damper on my morning.  I tried to track him down, and sent him an email.  He didn’t respond yesterday, but thankfully he responded today.  A succinct, “That’s ok.  We’ll talk again sometime,” made me a little bit less miserable, and made me glad that this person I respect understands that things happen.  And certain things do not happen on purpose.

Also yesterday morning, I discovered that a domain I had registered for a friend had expired without me noticing it.  She hadn’t noticed it either, but some of her clients had noticed it, which could have put a massive crimp in her plans.  She called me yesterday morning, and luckily I was able to re-register it without anyone stealing the domain.  A minor professional catastrophe was averted for her.  I had inadvertently wounded myself again, but luckily, was just a flesh wound.  She’s easy going, and we are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

So, this morning, this post which I meant to write yesterday, I am struck by an unattributed quote that I heard yesterday.

No matter what your past is, your future is a clean slate.

I am a big fan of redemption.  My own personal redemption.  I believe that I am always trying harder.  That I am imperfect and that most times, my heart is in the right place.  We all hit those moments of desperation and compromise.  Things go poorly.  We make mistakes.  We are human and get lost in the weeds.

We get knocked down.  We get pummeled.  Not by the world, but rather ourselves.  Man has a savage capacity for self-mutilation.

And then we pick ourselves up.

Those who do not acknowledge the past are doomed to repeat it.  Our ability to grow as individuals is very much predicated on our ability to self-assess and take concrete actions to modify behavior.

For instance.  This morning, I uninstalled League of Legends from my machine.  LOL is some sort of bastard child of Real Time Strategy Games (RTS) and Third person adventure games.  I discovered it through my old college friends, and my curiosity was reinforced as it was mentioned by a nephew and a online comic I regularly read.  And I have been hooked on it for the past two months.

I have lost roughly 20 hours a week to League of Legends.  And this morning, I have stopped that temporal hemorrhaging.

At first, I thought, “I’ll just try and see what it is like.  It is free, after all.”  And then, it became, “I’m terrible at this game. I should continue to play to get good enough to evaluate what it is like.”  Which later became, “I’m pretty good at this game, run from me you fuckers.”

Which goes to show that I spent roughly three hours a day, to achieve flow in a game that in the long run, doesn’t benefit me at all.  In the short run, I could argue that it relaxed me.  Though unemployment is plenty relaxing as it is.

So, I hope to have kicked this bad habit.  And that this will allow me to put in three hours of something a bit more productive in its place.

And for my missed connection, and my expired domain.  I have corrected the causes of those problems.  Taken the blame and apologized, and hope that those specific problems won’t happen again.

But I know that I will make problems again.  Just not those problems, and not on purpose.  And I am lucky that the people around me are generous, kind, and are human.

And hoping to see me improve for a better tomorrow.

Today, I am having trouble finding something to write about.

Hindsight is twenty/twenty, and looking back ten years ago, I realize that I had started thinking about doing platform-based community websites since 2001.  Honestly, it wasn’t my idea though.  I had somehow stumbled upon Phillip Greenspun’s excellent (though a bit old fashioned now) Photo.net, one of the first community websites for photographers out there.

At the time, Phillip was in charge of MIT’s Media Lab, and had come up with a revolutionary system for dynamically generating web pages from database content – essentially one of the first CMS systems.  Ars Digita was a platform built in the mid 1990s to quickly generate websites based upon the input of users (aka user generated content).

The company itself did well until the dotcom boom.  And then, it no longer did well.

I had rediscovered Phillip a couple months ago at Harvard University in some capacity.  (I love Google).  On his personal blog there, his caption is:

A posting every day.  An interesting idea every three months.

A simple statement, which sets the bar for his own personal KPI.  He is aiming for a signal to noise ratio of roughly 1%, and he is way smarter than me.  Most of his stuff will be crap, but he hopes that you will find something interesting every so often.

An honest and clear statement.  Essentially, “You probably won’t find what I write interesting, but sometimes we might agree”

This afternoon I did some readings at a recording studio on behalf of my brother.  I guess a girl named Le Thanh Thuy passed away several years ago from cancer, and before she died, she had written a book about the experience, as well as founding a charity organization.

Or so, that was what I was able to piece together.  My brother had called me up the other day and told me that “a friend of a co-worker of his passed away and left some poetry.  Can you read some of it at a recording studio?  We are doing a recording for posterity.”  Normally, I jump at the chance to do stuff for this, or as Matt says, “I live for this sort of media attention.”

But on the flip side, reading poetry publicly isn’t really my thing.  From time to time, I may read a poem aloud at home, alone, and maybe in the bathroom, but it is rare that I ever read poetry in public.  Let alone the poetry of a stranger.

Yet it was my brother, and I agreed to go.  Upon arrival there, a Tuoi Tre reporter asked me how I came to know about this project, and why I had volunteered my time.  She didn’t seem happy that I had come because my brother had asked, and that I didn’t know anything about this specific project.

Some energetic people seem to believe that their energy should be infectious, and I wonder if I fall in that category.  This reporter certainly did, and tried to explain to me the context of the project, but I just could not find the energy to care.  This afternoon was one of those experiences where no one could understand that I was just doing my brother a favor, and that I was not especially moved by the project itself.

Now, does this mean I am jaded?

The story of a cancer patient heroically founding her own charity organization, writing a book while losing her fight with cancer should move me.  Has my heart truly become a shriveled up walnut?  I honestly don’t know.  Maybe it is that cancer has taken a couple people from my life, and I see it as a rite of passage that everyone has to go through.

It is a dick thing to say, but everyone has loss in their life.  And it is good that this girl helped people and had meaning to her life before the end.  She certainly was a better person than me.

I honestly don’t know why I am not moved by her story.  Or is it the project that sets me off?

For what purpose are they lionizing someone that is no longer with us?  Is it that I am looking for a hidden motive behind this activity, and that is why I can’t bring myself to care?

When I first came to Vietnam, I supported an orphanage by buying rice for it each month.  When you look at what an orphanage needs to survive, they need a steady stream of income each month to buy food and pay for rice each month.  Perishable food stuffs like vegetables are donated by local shop owners.  Food unsold at the end of the day is sometimes donated to the orphanage.  However, rice keeps well.  So there is no pressure for merchants to donate rice, and I felt it the easiest way for me to help orphans without having to commit too much time.

For orphans need a consistent commitment and  time, and I am never able to offer much of either.

I had lost contact with this orphanage for some time, and a couple months ago, I returned to reconnect with them, and see if they needed anything.  Much to my chagrin, I learned that the orphanage had moved.  The woman that ran the orphanage had been using it as the front of a con game.  She used the orphans to get donations from abroad and gullible guys like me, and then funneled the money into real estate.  Her family members were on the deeds of property bought with the donations.

I heard that the older orphans were kicked out of the orphanage, as they had figured out what was going on, and that they were not receiving their fair share.

For those first years in Vietnam, donating and working with that orphanage was the only outlet I had to helping the community.  I was an English teacher/Tourism marketing exec back then; cash was not plentiful, but I tried hard to make a difference.  To find that my work and sacrifice had just made someone richer, and that I did not help the children, it frankly left me disheartened about philanthropy here in general.

Maybe that’s it.  I have a lot of friends here who work with charities and NGOs, and it is a subject that I will explore further.  I may develop a platform to help the unfortunate, via chattel donations or in microfinance.  It is still very early stages.

And I need to find the commitment, and the time.

The most common questions that I have fielded since leaving Edge are:

• Why are you leaving?
• Where are you going?
• Are you starting an agency?

The first question, I will answer in public to whomever wants to know.

The second question, I don’t even know the answer.

The third, is super easy for me to answer.

And it is a “No.”

No. No. No. No. No.

Yes.  You in the middle row.  You may have a follow up question.

Why?

Before delving into the “why not,” I guess it is best to explore the reasons why I should start an agency

Digital is still beginning in Vietnam

We are at the dawn of the digital age, and I remember presenting a couple weeks ago a concept that I had stolen called Digital Manifest Destiny.   Fundamentally, it states that all content that we currently consume will eventually be digital.  We are already there with music.  We are close to consuming all  TV digitally, and print media is soon to follow.  Cinemas are still a challenge, but I imagine we will get there eventually.

Don’t get me started about video games.

And when all content becomes digital, all advertising becomes digital.  Which means, every creative agency out there will have to create digital ideas and have a creative technologist on-board.  Likewise, every media agency will have to book media and track it via ad serving platforms, and research companies will use online panels to generate brand health statistics.

Because the big networks understand this, they have all invested in digital agencies in response to this trend.  And luckily in Vietnam, we are a bit slow, so the acquisitions are just beginning here.  Large networks are moving to purchase small digital agencies to ensure they lock in the talent and the capability to compete in a digital world.

And these digital agencies are still small.  Almost too small to be swallowed.

In Vietnam, we are still early days and online ad expenditures here are somewhere between 35-45m (RCT Statistics).  Roughly 3% of the advertising industry, when it should eventually grow to 20-25% to catch up to the USA.  And when manifest destiny is fulfilled, that percentage should rocket up to the 80-90s.

No Talent in Vietnam

There simply is not enough digital talent in Vietnam.  Of the men and women that understand digital at my level either already have their own agency (good for you!), or are heading up digital agencies for the large networks (congrats!).

With my departure from Edge, I think I am the only free agent out there.

Free as a bird and quite happily unemployed.

Fundamentally, there are two very good reasons two start a digital agency.  There could be a lot of money in doing so, and there are not enough people who can run an agency.

So Why Not?

There are simply too few barriers to entry.  A wise man named Ken once told me that in business,

You want it hard, excruciatingly hard.  You want it to be just difficult enough so that you almost fail, but somehow succeed.  You need to surmount impossible odds, and in doing so, you make it very difficult to follow you.  Find a niche that you are the only possible one who can succeed.

And in digital advertising, there are simply too many digital agencies.  New digital agencies sprout up and die almost every month.  Just about any team of college graduates who have read a Seth Godin book and watched an episode of Mad Men thinks they can start an agency.

Shit.  That was a terrible sentence.  Rewind and edit.

Nowadays, all you need to start a digital agency is a Seth Godin book, an episode of Mad Men and a Adobe Flash.

Better.  Almost reasonable.

The existence of so many incompetent agencies creates a ridiculous price pressure on the market.  These smaller agencies are willing to work for very little, sometimes 30% of standard billing rates to get the work.  And when questioned about their quality, they spill out these exorbitant KPIs, numbers that are unattainable.

An illustrative example might describe what happens.

We come in and pitch for a campaign with a client.  After a multiple round process, at the final meeting, the client tells us they like our concept and our idea, but they our prices is too high and our KPIs are too low.  Instead of, say 30k, they ask us to go for 12k, as our competition has quoted 7k.  12k seems very reasonable to them, and us as the agent should be happy they are not giving the business to someone else.  Also, we need to ignore our own carefully calculated KPIs, and commit to a number plucked from the air by our inexperienced, dare I say (I DARE!) incompetent, competition.

What they have just said is “We like you, Mercedes.  You are fantastic.  However, we know that we can get a Honda for a lot less than you, and it gets better fuel mileage.  So, can you give us a fantastic deal and defy the laws of physics, because we like you better than Honda?”

This is how the digital world operates, and I cannot fathom how this will improve in the future.

A myriad of low price entrants will continue to stream into a market.  And another issue here is that marketers do not truly understand digital advertising.  They do understand KPIs, and know which numbers should be high and which numbers but low.

They use KPIs as a shield to hide their ignorance.  And those that give high KPIs without justifying them are criminally incompetent.  Those that hit them are just criminals.  There are tons of ways to fake KPIs, and I am proud that we have never used them.

Nor have we ever partnered with anyone who did.

I told someone the other day that a lot of the agencies just don’t feel clean.  The larger ones are reputable.  I know them and I know them well.  And for the most part, they do reasonably good work.  However, most of the smaller ones streaming into the market deceive their prospective clients – either purposefully or well, by being idiots.

And if I were to start an agency, I would feel like one of the lone honest voices in a sea of liars.  I think I am better than that, and I think the industry deserves that.

So, if you see me start an agency, rest assured that I will have some sort of trade secret, some sort of clear positioning that will make it fucking hard to follow me.  Right now, it is all about finding that special niche where I am the only one who can succeed.

I swear, I am going to start these posts someday with “Dear Diary”.  Of course, only three of you reading this are named ‘Diary,’ so that would be a stretch.

Those of you might have been keeping track, may have noticed that there are two missing days of my promised 1,000 words per day promise/challenge to myself.  Rest assured that I have not broken my promise.  The two posts were written on the duly appointed days, and are sitting in my draft folder here at RCT Central.

The first one was put on hiatus simply because I was too open about my love and social life of late.  I realize that as cathartic and healthy it is to think and write about such things, making such things public can hurt people who are reading it.  I am not saying that most of you care about my love life, but certainly some people reading this blog are referenced in it.

I have tried to scrub the serial numbers off of  failed romances so people would not take things personally.  The more I scrubbed, the more broad the stories became.  I realized that with such vague stories, the people who I did not want to hurt would be hurt, and those I wanted to reach would be stricken with a case of “he’s not writing about me.”

The other talked a bit about the job opportunities surrounding me, and what I may or may not take.  Looking back (on tomorrow!), I realize that it is some time sensitive stuff, and may affect current negotiations and meetings that I am taking.

All in all, I am still writing, and I am still keeping this particular commitment.  Though I am not posting 1,000 words a day, I hope that I am improving.  I especially pray that I will look back on October 4, 2011 and realize how trite a writer I was.

But steadily, through practice and commitment, I became much better.  Someday, I aspire to even be good.

I sit here in front of my computer whilst committing a faux pas.  I am drinking boxed white wine, by myself, with a gigantic cube of ice in it.  Of course, the faux pas’s are that someone like me should never drink wine from a box (apparently, it is more akin to grape juice with attitude) and one should never throw ice into it.

Part of me is tempted to throw soda into it.

Another part of me is tickled to use ‘whilst’ and ‘faux pas’ in the same sentence.

My toes are still confused as to what the plural form of faux pas is.

Luckily, I am at home and if I hadn’t told you what I was drinking, most would guess I was drinking whiskey with soda.  Or if there was wine, there would also be cheese and some Nina Simone or Ella songs to provide ambiance.  And of the two personas, they are both me.  It’s just, drinking whiskey all the time is boring.  I have to be moody to enjoy my jazz alone, and my diet precludes me from too much dairy.

Luckily, boxed is low on the list of social no-nos, so I am safe.  Or I would hope that your good impression of me remains unharmed by my foray into economy-sized premium goods.

It is very human to subconsciously rank and judge people by whatever data available.  First impressions are literally the tip of the iceberg, as first contact fades away into small talk, which may lead into actual conversation.  And every step of the way, when you meet stranger becomes an acquaintance turning into a friend, colleague or intimate, there is judgement, and a ranking system.

When I first arrived at university, I used the same repertoire as every other college student used to introduce themselves:

• Where are you from?
• What are you studying?
• What dorm are you in?

And on the basis of these three questions, we would pretty much decide if we should try and hang out. Of course, there was also one other factor that remained unsaid.

How lonely am I, and how open are you to hanging out with me?  I am a young college student, and don’t think you could be as insecure as me.  Please be my friend.

I look back and wonder about those people I had met during my freshman year at university, and wonder how we could have been friends?  Was it some sort of mutual pity?  Was it true friendship and I have somehow changed into something vastly different from the me at 17 years of age?

Oh right, there was another key factor to my first year of university.  I was in a scholarship program, introduced to other recipients and I wrapped that scholarship around myself as if it was the only thing that defined me.  So much so that I had two other questions in my repertoire:

• How big was your scholarship?
• What were your SAT scores?

And with those two questions, I mentally created a hierarchy for myself to judge the people around me.  ’I’ had a full ride, and destroyed me on the SATs, therefore he was someone to look up to.  ’L’ also received a larger scholarship than me, but had lower SAT scores, therefore she had received her scholarship from affirmative action.  ’M’ received less money than me, and had lower SATs, and ‘E’ was happy to be in the same classes as the rest of us bright kids.

Have I mentioned that I was an insecure dick while growing up?

This achievement-based people valuation methodology of mine got me into trouble fairly regularly.  I would always belittle the accomplishments of those I had ranked below me, and always extolled the works of those above. I remember once when ‘E’ aced a Statistics exam that I had done poorly on.  Some outrageous claims were made that the test results were skewed (by me).  She was righteously angry, and a friendship was ruined.

Another time, I was visiting my girlfriend at an Ivy league university — a university that I had failed to get into, not once, but twice.  She had a roommate that had received poorer scores than me and in the eyes of my 17-year old self, was clearly my intellectual inferior.  She was however black, and a she.  And so, I went on and on about how it was unfair that my slot had been stolen by someone like her.

Mind you, despite knowing about social inequality and the historic injustices perpetrated on both blacks and women in America, I felt totally justified in making a scene, insulting my gfs friend, and honestly, just hurting people for no good reason except for my own insecurity.

Years later in meeting my friend Gavin, I had asked him for his SAT scores.  Incidentally, he attended another Ivy league university.  Truth be told, I don’t know if I asked because I was genuinely curious or still insecure.  His refused, citing quite clearly, “You are either going to think you are smarter than me, or dumber than me.  You’re just going to use this to rank us, aren’t you?”

Caught in the act, I confessed to my guilt.

“Asshole.”

And we have been good friends ever since.  It has been over 10 years since that day.

—–

So what am I getting at here?

Those that I judged in the most superficial way, when I was young, are no longer my friends.  My real university friends came along during my Sophomore year, when I moved to a smarter university, or that where there was no honors program.

And as I grew up, when I did not have such simple ways of establishing a hierarchy, somehow I have been able to establish lifelong friendships.

Maybe being open to more people would make my life better.  That I should stop judging a book by its cover.

This isn’t to say that I have stopped judging people.

I am very much a bookcover guy.

Which means I look for every shortcut I can when I meet someone to determine whether or not I will like them.

Fundamentally:

• Do they listen more than they talk?
• Are they here in the present, thinking of the future, or lost in the past?
• Are they a dumbass?
• Where do they fit on the style vs. substance axis?

Stuff like that.

Life’s too short to meet six billion people.  We judge, sort and prioritize everyone we meet.  Day in, Day out.  We make conscious decisions on who matters to us and who doesn’t.  There is a class of people whose personal emergencies are our emergencies.  But for the vast majority of humanity, their problems can be summarized with a shrug of the shoulders.

Or to paraphrase “The Incredibles:”

If everyone is your friend, then no one is.