Let’s face it: none of us can predict the future. We can speculate, call on past experiences or histories, cite business cycles or run algorithms or confer with experts…or just trust our guts. But at the end of the day, nobody knows. A researched thesis or a Magic 8 Ball? Who’s to say which is better at validating an outlook?

So take these thoughts for what it’s worth, and consult your own 8-ball. But I’m writing about why I’m bullish on cleantech, and most specifically, solar.

Lucky me. I arrived on the personal technology scene early, in 1981, not early enough to watch the Steves debut the Apple II at the Homebrew show (reenacted here), but not far after.  So I remember the days of skepticism and doubt, of fringe crowds gathering at ragtag shows and meetups, of financial wariness and audience resistance. Owning a computer then meant risk, not to mention financial outlay. It also meant uncertainty about the future: early Apple buyers couldn’t know if the geeky little boxes on their desktops would become agents of the future or relics of a would-be past.

Certainly Commodore, Franklin, and Apricot caused buyers to believe in the demise more than the potential of a sea change – or a market opportunity. But their failures didn’t signal the end of an industry.

Back in the day, when Apple would invest in showing up at a trade show or similar event, I’d often be there in the booth, watching people’s eyes widen at their first view of Visicalc or AppleWriter. Hah! How I laugh now. Most people today can’t imagine the sound of a world cracking open at the first sight of these early apps, carefully inserted into a “floppy disk” slot on the face of a textured beige wonder-machine any more than they can imagine lugging a two-pound, $4,000 cell phone into their DeLorean.

Looking back, it’s easy to see many expressions of a vision – bringing personal technologies to the masses – appearing on the scene, most of them destined to glimmer for but a moment in time. But look across the “portfolio” of expressions – start-up companies clamoring to gain traction, and big companies moving in to throw their weight at the opportunity – and even then we knew: something big was going to happen.

In solar today I hear an echo. Not just the crowded showroom floors, cluttered with me-toos and false starts, dotted by a few bright points of innovation and vision, together in the risk-mix. Looking at most of the booths, I think “no.” Most of them won’t make it, will confirm the belief that solar is a bad investment, too big a risk.

But looking at the industry, at the momentum of the total portfolio, sparks a different thought: that this industry is here to stay, or at least to shape something that will stay, in a way that causes a few future shapers to win big.

If that’s true, and my 8-Ball tells me it is, then the question becomes: what will it take for those few to win big, and for those of us who are betting on solar to identify them early?

For that, back to the ‘80s. The companies that will win are those driven to lead and to reshape, to blow through assumptions and to think different. Companies that aren’t bridled by the limitations of solar today – solar that I believe will one day be seen as “legacy solar” – but who innovate as they look to ways to harness the power of the sun.

Our good friends at Enphase – “the Apple of solar energy,” as Xconomy dubbed it – and other microinverter suppliers? They’re looking for new ways of making energy capture and management more efficient, safe, and intelligent.  Companies that streamline installation or integrate solar into non-traditional settings? They’re directly confronting the cost and practicality obstacles to choosing solar. Big thinkers attacking conventional assumptions about solar production? They’re taking on the production cost and material consumption parts of this equation and (as our client Twin Creeks is proving) catching their breath as they witness the results.

As I look to the future of solar, experts and 8-Balls probably agree: a point will come where the value exchange clicks into place, and some group of companies is going to win big. When? Don’t know. How? Judgment reserved. But here’s what I believe: the breakthrough will be driven by engineering, design, and innovation, and will emerge from companies committed to thinking differently about the way they use technology to solve problems and improve lives.

That’s a pattern we at Eastwick know well, and that’s why we’re committed to building our solar, and overall cleantech, practice today. The entrepreneurs who are pushing the edges of today’s solar are likely to be the ones who also redefine its financial outlook, too. We’re believers, and we know how to help. It’s our mission to help tomorrow’s most future-shaping companies connect with the audiences who matter most. Today’s cleantech visionaries deserve this, and – much as we helped some of IT’s leading companies find their way through uncertainty and doubt, we’re committed to contributing to their impact and success.

Ooyala Airstream

It’s a generally understood fact that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. So my two dinner buddies, who shall remain nameless, need not worry – the bacon story is in the vault.

Every spring, approximately 80,000 people from the world of broadcast technology converge in Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters Tradeshow. This was my debut on the tradeshow circuit and lucky for me, I was invited to attend with Eastwick client Ooyala.  (As background, Ooyala provides technology for online video management, publishing, analytics and monetization. Its integrated suite of technologies and services give content owners the power to expand audiences through deep insights that drive increased viewer engagement and revenue from video.)

The Show Floor:  Focusing on the Future

After speaking with “show veterans,” some who had been attending for upwards of 20 years, it became clear that NAB 2012 represented an undeniable shift in traditional broadcast models and overall thinking about the future of the industry. One message I heard loud and clear is that online video is no longer a theoretical business opportunity sitting in the distant future waiting to take center stage, but rather: it is here now.

The tech and media folks shaping the discussion generally acknowledged this shift in video consumption, but what I found most the interesting were the varying predictions on how to best approach this rapidly changing industry.  Forecasts about how much television consumption will be taking place online in the years to come (and subsequently how advertisers and cable operators will have to evolve to fit that model to stay relevant) were debated. Dialogues about the explosion of mobile devices and how to reach that rapidly evolving customer highlighted a need for content personalization.

Ooyala predicts a substantial increase in television consumption over IP by 2015 and with good reason. The company has been gathering and analyzing millions of unique user analytics (on a global scale), and gleaning rich insights into viewership trends across devices. Ooyala envisions a world of “every screen personalized,”  meaning to create a unique content viewing experience for each user  which not only allows people to engage with the content they find most relevant, but also to allow advertisers to optimize efforts and bring home the bacon. (Last bacon joke– maybe it’s “what happens in Vegas ends up on the Internet?”)

Through the whirlwind of activity, I did manage to chat with Ryan Lawler from GigaOm at one of our tailgates and while we discussed the show in general – he said in a recent NAB show article:

“I’ve always attended NAB with a view toward the digital future — and over the years, I’ve been frequently frustrated by how the industry doesn’t seem to “get it.” This is the first year where I’ve felt that the show and attendees were having real discussions about the future, the first time someone acknowledged that the big broadcast and cable networks weren’t the only ones who held the keys to the future of video.”

Ooyala on the Scene

Ooyala exhibited at “The Airstream” – their custom booth uniquely outfitted as a tailgate party, complete with a vintage, branded trailer (fondly dubbed the “silver bullet”), picnic tables, umbrellas, and a white picket fence.

Sean Knapp (Center), Panel Appearance

Sean Knapp, Ooyala Co-Founder and CTO participated in a panel, “Monetizing Viewership in a Multiplatform Environment,” along with Joe Alicata, Senior Director Product Development for ESPN, Steve Raymond, CEO of Big Frame YouTube’s Premium Funded Channel Initiative, Jeremy Helfand, Vice President of Monetization Adobe Systems, and moderated by CNBC Media and Entertainment Reporter Julia Boorstin. 

Sean shared his vision for the online video industry and the importance of personalizing content to optimize engagement. He said “it’s not about 100 channels. It’s about a billion channels: 1 for each viewer.”

All in all, NAB was a great experience. I had the opportunity to immerse myself even further into the trends and happenings of the digital media industry alongside a talented group of people. Vegas trip = slam dunk.

Lastly, a quick (and well deserved) plug for my buddies at VideoMind. VideoMind is Ooyala’s thought leadership blog dedicated to industry news and views. Check it out for coverage from the show floor (and foolish road trip shenanigans.) Be cautioned, side effects may include laughter and jealousy – you’ll pretty much wish you had been at NAB.

Her latest post for Fast Company – “Why Agencies are Going the Way of the Dodo” – shares her signature tough love. In essence, Francine calls out agencies for ruining (my word, not hers) social media by replacing branding and conversation with performance-based social strategies. (To translate: many agencies are shilling “pay for results” social strategies, meaning they only get paid for their work when a brand’s friend, fan, or follower jumps through some brand-ordained hoop. A “Goal!” bell rings and the agency gets a coin. Essentially a CPM approach to social media.)

For anyone considering this approach, I offer a short word: DON’T. I agree with Francine that this model is inherently flawed and will go the way of traditional online ad models (and other dodos). What to do? Allow me to offer some perspectives.

1. Learn from experience.

Observe the evolution of online advertising and read the writing on the wall. The category is growing but engagement is waning. As Francine says, nobody pays attention. I see dozens of thoughtful articles each day on how online ad models are failing and how companies are scrambling for the next thing that replaces them. We talk to countless companies looking to ship the next “aha!” that will save the model: incent response, increase efficiency, generate broader terms, etc. For a while, maybe. But most won’t sustain; on that I agree with Francine.

Looking for “solutions” to the waning ad model “problem” suggests that the goal really to help the digital (or social) marketer to rush breathless into their CMOs office proving that they’ve scored the numbers that signal “success”? Maybe they can’t get that 0.0X clickthrough rate on banners anymore, but dang it, they’re going to get in on social, and, good news: they only have to pay their agency if they get that result.

Beware, marketers, the danger of this thinking. As the saying goes, each time I hear about it, a kitten dies. To think of relegating social media, an unparalleled platform for true conversation, interactivity, and trust-building – all of which build momentum and action – into…what?  Compare your favorite farmers’ market to QVC and I think you’ll see what I mean.

Eastwick doesn’t do that, and we won’t. We believe that social platforms give brands an unparalleled way to communicate openly and honestly, to ask for input, and to track the way conversations evolve over time.

Based on these conversations, we learn about sentiment (how people feel about our clients or their products). We learn about concerns. Competitive issues. Opportunities – heads’ ups on things they should know about or even places they should go. We track how this shapes things like Share of Voice, topicality, and preference over time (that’s the NEXT thing I’m going to write: my manifesto on measuring success), and we watch, sometimes literally smiling, as these conversations get generous. People openly sharing with each other. Responding and helping. Providing information that otherwise would be hard to find or expensive to source.

And we track how this leads to actual engagement and conversion: to filling sales pipelines, driving online sales, and otherwise building business results. Sustainably.

Think flock, not dodo.

I’m not saying it happens overnight, but with vision and commitment: it happens. Our clients see it and acknowledge the momentum, the results. And I’m ready to assert that – unlike the waning efficacy that Francine forewarns in her post – this type of social interaction will grow in value and impact over time.

2. Share the LOVE.

Francine calls agencies to help their client/partners “design love into the product or service.” Thank you again, Francine. At Eastwick, we use the word “generosity,” but heck: “love” works too. Differentiate with openness and proactivity. Invite. Collaborate. Encourage.

Don’t those words hit you differently than things like Drive, Incent, and Close? I’m not saying that we don’t use those words: we do. But we put them into context of a generous, proactive strategy that begins with serving an audience’s best interests (AKA “Love”) and not simply seeing them as “consumers” of what we want to push or serve.

How does this work? By understanding the people who are part of the audiences our clients serve: what interests them, what matters to them, what’s essential to their satisfaction or success. Then: story development – how we talk about this in terms that reflect our grok of and respect for these audiences. Sure, Francine: journalists CAN go straight to the source…but if the source hasn’t evolved the story to the point where it connects with the audiences, that access doesn’t matter.

This, by the way, is very different for a communications agency than it is for an advertising or even digital firm…but that sounds to me like another future blog post….

3. What killed the Dodo?

I’ve waited a long time for this. Now I get to share some tough love right back at Francine.

Francine, it’s easy to blame agencies for what you describe in your post, but we all know better. Agencies are like any other business: they need to be a business. That means selling something (typically services, aka “people’s time”) at a price that the market will bear.

For most agencies, that means pushing work down to the junior ranks, minimizing strategy, and willingly saying “Yes!” to business relationships that don’t position them as intellectual and implementation partners to their clients.

We all know what I’m talking about. Eastwick team members have written about the phenomenon in recent posts asking if “tech PR is broken” and challenging marketers to demand more out of social (and themselves). It’s also why I declared my independence as one of the few hold-out agencies in Silicon Valley who continues to do things a different way (I loved the positive feedback on this, by the way).

If agencies are going the way of the dodo, Francine, then we need to remember what caused their demise. Dodos didn’t stand up for themselves. They stood there looking dodo-like as they were hunted to extinction.

In a way, what Francine describes in her post reveals a much larger problem in business today. The online world’s inherent connection to data, and the ease with which we can access, analyze, and understand it, has created a “hyper-quantitative” approach to marketing that I believe undervalues qualitative insights in determining success. As a good friend says, “Analytics are the pepperoni slices on the pizza of business results.” I’m no vegetarian, but I wouldn’t want an only-pepperoni diet, or even an only-pepperoni pizza. It’s the balance of the ingredients (quantitative meets qualitative, if you will) that makes the pizza taste great and worth ordering again.

As you read about the Dodo, think about the big picture that’s causing agencies to choose a role that they probably know is a fail-in-the-making. They’re scared as they watch their traditional models being disrupted and by direct connections between businesses and the audiences they serve. They’ve lost sight of their true value as data and analytics (awesome as they are) have shifted the shape of their craft. And they’ve let that happen by reacting to demands rather than committing to the value of their work and upping their game to make it even better.

So they’ve let themselves get cornered into accepting roles that ultimately shrivel up and die, like that dodo, almost like some twisted self-fulfilling prophecy proving that their models don’t work.

Here, Francine and I agree. THAT, actually, is the brokenness of most agency models: the “servitude” that prevents them from being of true service. How did that happen, and why did some of us allow it? When agencies can sit across the table from clients and share perspectives like I’ve shared above that say, “Actually, I don’t recommend that. And here’s why,” in a way that helps these clients make better decisions?

That’s when the model will get unbroken. That’s when it works.

Thanks to Francine for a thought-provoking post, and for helping me articulate another reason that I’m committed to sustaining the way we do things at Eastwick.

Namely, public relations.

Public relations? Surely, you must have misunderstood him, you’re thinking. Green, like virtually all other technology industries, requires titanic, world-class scientific breakthroughs and interesting business models. If you don’t have a good idea, public enthusiasm follows.

But take a look at his seven-point plan for clean energy, as reported by GigaOm. It was the centerpiece of his keynote speech at Bloomberg’s annual green conference. The seven recommendations were:

• Messaging about clean energy should be about affordability not subsidies.
• Messaging about clean energy should be focused on the greater economy, productivity, security and health. Not “green jobs.”
• Messaging on clean energy policy should be about deregulation of all energy, not regulation of clean energy.
• Clean energy needs alliances with other sectors, like auto, telecom, retail and real estate. Systemic change can’t happen without the change happening in other sectors.
• The audience for clean energy messaging needs to change. We need to stop preaching to the converted. Fifteen percent of people will make more energy efficient and sustainable choices because it interests them, while 85 percent will not make a new energy efficient choice if it costs more money. It won’t help to scare people into changing their life. We need to focus on the mainstream.
• Embrace media. We need to own the airwaves and the politicians. “You can’t soar like an eagle and poop like a canary” (not exactly sure what that means but like the quote).
• And, finally, support sustainable energy for all, not just a niche sector or demographic.

Five out of seven of his recommendations directly call for better messaging and communication and another (number 4) revolves around reaching out to other sectors, a job which invariably starts with a communication efforts. Put another way, 85 percent of Liebreich’s advice revolves around framing discussions.

I had a similar experience at the conference sponsored by the Carbon War Room, the nonprofit think tank created by Jigar Shah and Sir Richard Branson, in 2010. The conference broke attendees—mostly investors, engineers and execs–into six groups. Each group was charged with coming up with a three- to five-point plan for tackling a major problem like energy waste in building or the inordinate amount of diesel consumed in shipping.

At the end of two days, each group shared its to-do list. “Better communications” was on every single list.

This failure to communicate has already begun to take a silent toll on many sectors of cleantech. Look at the energy efficiency industry. Numerous studies show that homes and commercial buildings consume approximately 39 percent of all of the energy in the U.S. and that 30 percent of the energy consumed gets wasted. Tools exist to solve the problem and consumers and businesses in many instances will see a payoff in a few months. Yet it remains far easier to get someone to upgrade a year-old cell phone than install weather stripping or change a light bulb.

Green startups are discovering you can die of indifference just as easily as you can from a flawed strategy.

Why is communications such an Achilles’ heel? Partly, it derives from the replacement nature of the many green products. Consumers already own cars. If they buy a hybrid, their lives won’t be appreciably different. An energy efficient air conditioner works just like a water-chilled clunker. The IT world has it much easier. Word processing and email marked huge advances over typing and mail. Word-of-mouth and true-life experience sold those products.

Consumers and businesses, also, sadly, get distracted easily. When gas approaches $4 a gallon, national debates about efficiency and national security get ignited. And then the debate ends when the price drops to $3.25. Food riots or climbing bread prices spark debates about water scarcity, food stockpiles and potential refugee movements. Two weeks later, it’s a forgotten topic.

But it also comes down to a failure of imagination. There is a way to engage consumers and business buyers without boring them with product specs or risk hectoring them about the danger of climate change. And it’s the reason I became a reporter and have now moved into corporate communications.

And I will share that it my next post.

I’m going to take a risk. It’s not the first time. I took a big one 20 years ago, when I started Eastwick, knowing that big-name PR firms held a stronghold in the Valley and that going up against them would be tough. A small team of upstarts who believed tech communications should be different than “PR as usual?” Trust me, plenty of people told me we were going out on a limb: that we wouldn’t make it, or couldn’t make it last.

But I guess the vision of disrupting the status quo was enough to make me step out onto that limb. After all, isn’t that how good things in this place almost always get started?

But back to that risk. I’m confessing that I recently turned down an acquisition offer. In other words, I said no – again – to a firm who approached me with an offer to acquire Eastwick.

It’s risky for a communications pro and CEO to share a story like this. Maybe some of you will question my business sense. Maybe you’ll think I should play it safe and accept the tradeoffs that come with increased security. But read on and you’ll see why I said no and why I believe staying independent is of value to my company, our clients, and even the Valley.

An “exit” is the named goal of many companies in Silicon Valley (and beyond). Rewarding an entrepreneur or a founding team for vision, effort, risk, and hard work, a successful exit puts money into wallets and security into futures.

I get that, and over the years I’ve sometimes been tempted by the chance to say “yes” to acquisition. Especially during lean times – when the bubble popped, or as the social-mobile-app revolution redefined the ways many of our legacy clients did business – I’ve thought about myself, my family, and above all my team and wondered if I was doing the right thing to keep Eastwick independent

I asked myself again as I pondered that recent offer. It was from an attractive big-name partner – one I’ve spoken with before – and in our conversations they emphasized how Eastwick was one of the last holdouts, a midsize, independent firm. It’s harder to go up against larger firms, they said. Most clients want the security of a known name, they asserted.

I bit my tongue (rare for me). Everything they said was true – but I didn’t bring up why more and more clients these days see our independence as an advantage.

This post is about that independence and the reasons I’ve stayed this way. I’m not naïve about the benefits of joining a larger entity, but I’m not going to do it. Following please find my reasons why.

• I don’t want tech PR to be homogenous or undifferentiated from other PR. Tech is a unique business, faster-changing and more complex than, say, packaged goods or financial services. It can be a “star” business where proven players, big-name investors, or late-breaking visionaries shape the story alongside the innovators. I want to be close enough to this market to know who these people – and their products – are.
• I don’t want our clients to be part of a portfolio spanning diverse industries. I want the synergies and “pattern recognition” that happens when you’re deeply woven into an ecosystem rather than more thinly spread across the surface.
• I don’t want to follow the guidelines of a conglomerate that isn’t immersed in the culture and pulse of this valley. I want to be able to choose the companies I think will rise to the top, even if they’re not the biggest names out there. And I want to be able to work with the big names so that they move like nimble startups when they need to, especially if that means challenging “PR as usual.”
• I want to be able to check in with trusted friends here, get the inside scoop, and know what’s around the corner when I meet with our clients. And I want this to shape my business decision more than someone else’s business plan.
• I want to preserve our culture. I like how collaborative we are, and I like that we set our guidelines to allow time for learning, cross-training, and “free thinking” time. I’m committed to the Eastwick quality of life and I know my team values it.
• I want to be able to challenge assumptions rather than just say “yes.” I want my place at the table as a trusted advisor, if and when my clients need it, rather than just the “PR arm.”
• I want to hire geeks and journalists and people from non-PR backgrounds if I think they have something unique to bring to our clients. Some of the people at Eastwick wouldn’t fit the mold at traditional PR firms. Yet I see what they do to our impact and I’m proud that we’re able to bring them in.
• I realize I’m being stubborn about this, but I want to do tech PR a different way.

Don’t get me wrong: I often see great work coming out of tech PR firms that have been acquired, and even from some of the area’s big-name agencies. And there are times when we recommend that prospective clients work with the conglomerate firms. I’m not saying that the Eastwick way is right for every business. I’m just saying that I want to offer a different path for tech companies who do want to do things a different way. Over the years I’ve seen clear value in that path – in the way we work, in the teams we hire, and even in the results we get – and the good news is some darn good businesses have seen the value, too.

But that’s why I decided, once again, to stay independent, and why I’m taking the risk to talk about it here.

What do you think? Does thinking this way change the way you think about Eastwick in any way? I’d love your thoughts and comments.

Ellen, a respected authority on social media and user experience, has championed the importance of audience engagement throughout her work at Eastwick, and at her prior experiences at Google and Apple, and in strategic consulting. She and her four illustrious Pandolist colleagues were saluted for their innovation, insights, and vision for technology.

Ellen recalls her experiences as an Apple evangelist with PandoDaily reporter Amanda Schwab. You can read more and watch the video here, or roll the show:

Congrats to Ellen and all who made this impressive list.

Follow Ellen on Twitter or subscribe to her posts on the Eastwick blog.

The Evolution of the CIO? (click to view larger)

Ramón Baez stood in the spotlight near the main stage, his face shining from massive hanging screens, amplified words resonating through the packed auditorium. The audience leaned in, tweeting, taking notes; untold others followed via simultaneous webcast.

Baez echoed the still-warm words of Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, who spoke via video to the 10,000+ attendees at Salesforce’s recent Cloudforce gathering in San Francisco. Discussing the critical role of IT in accelerating the collaboration between companies and customers, Ahrendts – who has nearly quadrupled Burberry’s share price since her arrival in 2006 – said, “You have to be totally connected with anyone who touches your brand. If you don’t, I don’t know what your business model is in five years.

Watch for yourself (1:51 viewing time).

In his Cloudforce demo, Baez, CIO of Kimberly Clark, showcased his company’s take on the critical nature of the customer-enterprise connection. Scrolling through screens of tweets, texts, and comments, he pointed to the various touchpoints where customers can get “in” and information can get “out” of his organization.

A winner of the CIO Executive Council’s Leadership Award (roughly the equivalent of the CIO Oscar), Baez wasn’t the only IT lead to stake this claim. CIOs from a variety of companies also took to the stage, showcasing the ways they connected with customers: reading and responding to social posts, geolocating callers as Customer Support conversations began, talking face-to-face – even looking at the problem – over ChatTime.

The message? That companies that will thrive tomorrow need to connect directly with customers today. And IT is leading the movement to that connectivity.

This isn’t just about consumer brands. Companies that sell to enterprises – where, of course, decisions are actually made by people (increasingly young/tech savvy people at that) – are also proving that point-to-point conversations streamline sales and attract valuable input on deployment and development. Not to mention the impact on loyalty.

In past years, we’ve all heard IT professionals bemoan the challenges of enforcing controls and keeping social conversations out. Often, resistance was driven from the top, with IT being asked to maintain the moat, so to speak, that forced customers to know, and stay in, “their place.”

That “us vs. them” mentality is reflected in the web blockers, last-gen firewalls, and enforcement policies we all dealt with a few years back. But the irresistible forces of social platforms, mobile proliferation, and BYOD have moved these immovable objects. Today’s leading enterprises defined more by their willingness to open up and collaborate than by their ability to keep things safe and closed in.

Is that, as Ahrendts asserts, a key to future sustainability?

If so, can we make a connection between the companies that are increasing their openness – via active two-way communities, enterprise social networks, and collaborative business ecosystems – and these companies’ future relevance and success?

If we can, does that suggest that IT innovation might be an indicator of future value?

And if so, is the IT lead a “litmus test” of sorts that we should look to as we test what companies will succeed best over time?

I don’t have answers but I’ll tell you right now: the companies I’m banking on over time are future-proofing themselves by increasing the way they interact with – and converse with – customers. They’re equipping themselves to learn faster, communicate more openly, and shape decisions based on the wisdom of the people who matter most: the ones who buy their products.

And at the helm of all that? The CIO.

Makes me wonder. What can we learn from a CIO and his or her power to shape a company about the way that company will perform in the future?

Check out Kanellos offering further insights on the subject here on CNBC.

The umbrella theme of SOCAP Soul was connecting your job,  finances, and community with what you value. I know – it’s crazy.

I was actually at the event tabling for a social enterprise called FeelGood. You may have heard me mention them before. I have interned with them in the past, and now head the newly invigorated alumni association, FeelGood4Life.

Eastwick’s Christina Farr popped in as well; she’s a contributor for VentureBeat. Christina was checking out the conference, doing on-the-ground reporting to add to her existing social entrepreneurship coverage.

Among educating others on FeelGood’s mission and success thus far, I met an interesting array of characters from all over the country. I met co-founders, innovators, and entrepreneurs seeking to actually do something with the resources they had, and didn’t have, to create a better, more sustainable world for everyone. I didn’t even get to pop into any of the sessions, but the passion and energy during breaks and the after-party was palpable. There is often a stigma that when the word “business” is thrown in the mix, truly impactful social change is not the end goal.  If you’re nodding your head right now, attendees at SOCAP Soul would have made you stick your foot in your mouth. There is no better avenue than business to get resources moving, people connecting, and perspectives shifting.

Working in the technology industry in Silicon Valley has certainly offered me a different perspective on social entrepreneurship. Being surrounded by the companies, technologies, and innovators that have changed how our world works forever is inspiring and a little intimidating at the same time. But looking past the big names and household brands that were built in the Valley, the common thread was the ability of a people-driven business to change how the world thinks, works, and behaves. A method with amazing history and amazing potential.

Creative Commons image

We always value the insights in our friend Francine Hardaway’s thought-provoking blog, and an entry last week, exploring the long-term impact of an “always on,” always connected life on teens and young adults, inspired a response. Her insights rang especially true since I’m engrossed in David Rock’s outstanding Your Brain at Work, which reveals the way the brain – and specific parts of it – activate and interoperate during different types of tasks. I’ll never look at multitasking the same way again.

Although there’s probably no way to decide if “hyperconnected lives” are good or bad (and even if we did, what difference would it make?) the important takeaway is that people today are increasingly shifting between modes, managing parallel tracks of complex information, and engaging their prefrontal cortex (the late-to-evolve “thinking and reflecting” part of the brain) and the basal ganglia (the habit, repetition, and sometimes even veg out part of the brain) in a complex on again, off again dance that’s probably never been precedented (except for short bursts) in human history.

Plastic/elastic wonder that the brain is, it adapts accordingly, actually altering functions to optimize for this new way of interacting with information.

Back to that takeaway. To reach audiences and communicate effectively, we need to be aware not only of hyperconnectedness, but of the need for that brain to take a little break from deep thinking and processing and refresh itself with a bit of low-stress engagement.

That’s important for every business to understand, even enterprise: witness the rise in humorous or playful content from nearly every leading B2B brand.

This isn’t a cop out or a sell out, it’s smart science. You will strengthen your engagement by aligning your modes of communication to address the multiple parts of the brain that today’s decision-maker is optimized to use, adapting your content and placement to connect to their new way of thinking.

Imagine your way back to an earlier time: an executive in a quiet office, a stack of papers before him (yes, him), photographs and diagrams and detailed information waiting to be read, understood, and processed as he moves along a linear gameboard to a purchase decision. His secretary takes his calls: wouldn’t want to be interrupted! His back is to the window: wouldn’t want to be distracted! He takes notes or underlines as he moves through the pages.

Fast forward to today. I’m commuting on SF MUNI now, focusing (thank you, prefrontal cortex) on writing this post, but glancing up occasionally (hello, basal ganglia) to notice the many young professionals standing in aisles or sitting in close-quartered seats, fingers sweeping across iPhones or tapping on keyboards.

Most wear earphones; some nod subtly to the beat. We’re underground, offline ‘til Powell Street, so no one is texting (contrast to the stop where I boarded) but people are tapping in notes, scanning downloaded content, or flipping through pages of printouts, sometimes folding corners or scribbling in margins. They move aside uninterrupted as people come and go at stops. And every now and then one of them will fold their notes into a Timbuktu bag or backpack, slip the phone into a pocket (or not), and step out of  an exit doors just as the train stops. Without missing a beat.

Better or worse? Who am I to say? My own stop is coming so I feel an urge to wrap up, probably triggered by a jolt of adrenaline fired by some unconscious awareness in my basal ganglia that the words “Van Ness Station” means three minutes to my exit. I didn’t really even hear the words, yet here I am preparing for my stop.

As I prepare to close my laptop, a list of the morning’s priorities stages itself in my prefrontal cortex, a process I prepared for when writing down tomorrow’s to-dos on my schedule last night. I glance out the window as my train slows, Banana Republic and City Car Share ads blurring by, not read or really seen but certainly recognized. Registered. As I save this file a text pops up on my phone (we’ve passed Powell Street) and I plan my response even as I prepare to shut my computer.

There, in three minutes: everything a communicator needs to know about breaking through the noise.  Engage with multiple modalities, optimize content for focus and space out, and remember that learning is cumulative and sometimes unconscious.

And realize that today’s hyperconnecteds are simply doing what people have done since the beginning of time – trying to make the most out of the complex stream of information constantly barraging our brains, and relying on those brains to help decipher this information and find a way to thrive…or at least exit the MUNI at just the right stop.

Francine’s post appears below. And thanks to David Rock for the neuroscience; hope I’ve understood enough not to botch it.

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Hyperconnected Lives: Are They Good or Bad?

I was invited to participate in the Pew Center on the Internet and American Life’s survey on the Future of the Internet, and they gave us a link to the online results this morning.

Net-net: it’s almost a 50-50 split on whether young people will be positively or negatively affected by their always-on environments.

Half the respondents think that by 2020 the brains of young people will be wired differently, making them short term thinkers, multi-taskers, and instant gratification junkies who can’t retain information and lack face-to-face personal skills.

The other half think that although the brains of young adults will  be wired differently, “they do not suffer notable cognitive shortcomings as they multitask and cycle quickly through personal- and work-related tasks. Rather, they are learning more and they are more adept at finding answers to deep questions, in part because they can search effectively and access collective intelligence via the internet. In sum, the changes in learning behavior and cognition among the young generally produce positive outcomes.”

So we did a big study of “experts,” — meaning invited participants, not random participants — and the outcomes is “nobody knows.”

There was consistency on one thing: the brains of millennials are adapting to their environment. You would hope so. Otherwise,we’d be discrediting Darwin.

Also, the most desirable life skills in the future will be “public problem-solving through cooperative work (sometimes referred to as crowd-sourcing solutions); the ability to search effectively for information online and to be able to discern the quality and veracity of the information one finds and then communicate these findings well (referred to as digital literacy); synthesizing (being able to bring together details from many sources); being strategically future-minded; the ability to concentrate; and the ability to distinguish between the “noise” and the message in the ever-growing sea of information.”

Oh, and lest we forget: education has to change.