Who cares what I have to say

Last time I talked to my dad, I was recapping the last round of interviews I've had. I told him about the one company, looking to me to run an established film festival, that asked me to make a presentation of ideas. I spent three days on it, and it was twice as long as they'd asked for but I had done an incredible amount of research and thinking about this brand. I had something to say and I was really excited about it. My presentation was totally positive, enthusiastic and I spoke as a representative of the brand. I stated my excitement for the festival and the brand throughout.

This was the second meeting but the first was a phone interview, with the woman who would be my boss. She was there with an HR gal and a "half person" that supports the role. I got the feeling throughout the presentation that they weren't impressed, or more that they just weren't responding at all, like maybe they didn't get it. It was a pretty big idea. Basically I said that they had enough reach, they'd already done a lot of the things I thought of. Their problem isn’t exposure; it's their message. The tagline is limiting and uninspired, their pitch doesn't do the festival justice and the website was not a destination that communicated the uniqueness of this event. I presented a number of solutions and that would take their brand (and festival) to the next level.

This is a presentation I could have charged a lot of money for if I was a strategic consultant. Yet at the end, I got blank faces and dumb questions that had already been asked or just seemed irrelevant after showing them how uniquely interested and qualified I was for this job. "Why do you want to work here?" "Why do you think you're a good fit for this job?" "How would you expand the festival?" I had already said expansion is not the problem; that they aren't expanding because their story is too hard to tell. I said, make it a fun and easy story and people will tell it for you. Bloggers will write about it, people will tell their friends.

That's when the HR lady asked me how, when there were SO many blogs, could I possibly choose which ones to target? I don't know why that struck me as a particularly stupid question. Maybe because it was coming from the HR gal who later told me she used to teach classes at the company gym before getting into human resources. Or maybe because it epitomized the point that they were missing. I was talking big picture and a holistic approach where you change something that will affect everything. What they wanted was logistics. Some magical formula for selling tickets. Like buying a third-party email list, printing posters to put in coffee shops, handing out postcards at Whole Foods, or buying those flags that hang from the lampposts on major streets. Is that what they wanted from me? I think it is.

Anyway, while telling my dad this story, he suddenly says "I don't even know what a blog is. It's just someone's opinion right?" Before I can even answer he continues on this opinionated rant. He says there's a guy on the finance channel that's always talking about his blog, someone he obviously doesn't like. "What makes a person so egotistical that they think their opinion is so important? Do they really think people want to read what they have to say?" Then, even more disturbing, he said something about how if it was really important, it would be on the TV. He completely misses the point that the Internet is by the people, for the people and the TV is run by the corporations for the people who are too dumb to know otherwise.

It was so shocking. I mean, he was so upset about something he doesn't even understand. Which is probably the point. He's looking for a job right now too. He's been independent for ten years but with the economy slowing down thought he'd be better off with a job. It's not going well for him either. Hearing his daughter talk about things he doesn't know about probably makes him insecure about his age and looking for a job after being out of the loop. Knowing that the whole world is blogging is probably upsetting. It made me grateful that I never told him about this one. I never wanted to argue about post he read, some topic I wouldn't choose to talk with him about. He also comes from a generation of people that don't talk about themselves.

Calmly, I explained that a blog was like a diary, or could be more like a book or a column in a magazine. I gave him examples: a mother wanting to share the details of bringing up her children for other mothers, or for family and friends to follow along; a lady who grows a garden in the Bay Area and records her trials and tribulations, photos of what she's growing and maybe even what she's cooking with her harvest. I couldn't tell him that people harass me if I don't keep up the blog regularly and that people really do want to hear what I have to say.

Then I told him that he could keep a blog. A diary of his progress in building houses. He could share things that he's learned only after building his third house, tricks of the trade, and establish himself as an expert. I said that people are very interested in getting information from someone they can identify with, not just some guy on the TV. He was very quiet and shook his head a little. He might even have been thinking that I had a good point about starting a blog. I'm going to send him a few examples and the Blogger link to get started. I really think he'd take to it like a duck to water.