Tag: Gifted Amateurs

A Call for all "Digital Coaches"…

85220007_1648c84f7c
Hat Tip to Jan Wilkening!

 

Seth Godin, hammers the nail firmly on the head with his post on digital coaches.  Seth notes the following:

1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity.
2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals.
3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money.

Typical responses…..

“Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.”

“You mean I don’t have to manually type my address book in by hand?”

“There are graphs in Excel?”

“Gmail is free?”

Seth makes the point that we need need more “digital coaches”. Not techies but driven, motivated and switched on enthusiasts. These people are are “Gifted Amateurs”

Gifted amateurs use technologies such as blogs to easily communicate with loyal customers. They also use sites such as Technorati to actively “listen” to conversations surrounding their own businesses on the web.

Are you a gifted amateur or digital coach?. Show yourself on Seth showcase for digital coaches…

Are today’s "gifted amateurs" on the Internet killing popular media?

Andrew Keen’s new book, “The Cult of the Amateur – how today’s Internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”, examines this very issue.

I’m not entirely convinced that Keen is convinced by his own argument. However, The book is designed to be “biased” and finally sparks a debate about the case against amateur content and its proliferation  through Web 2.0 technologies.

I do agree with Keen in some respects, in that it is becoming too easy to manipulate Google’s search engine’s results with Google Adwords and then using the results of popular searched words, as keywords on your site. The polite term for this is “Search Engine Optimisation”. I see it more as Search Engine Hacking. Search engines, such as Google are increasing their own usage with tactics such as Google Adwords.

However to the original point, are amateurs really killing the Internet and popular media?

Have a look at the video below, where Keen discusses his book at part of the Authors@Google series. I’m off into the  garden to the read the book!

Andrew Keen’s blog