Zoom, Canaries, and the Virtual Village
I rarely respond to requests from student journalists. See, the thing is, Journalism is hard in the best and most supportive of times. Journalism is frightening to engage in a state-controlled environment. (What is school journalism but journalism a state-controlled environment? Disagree? The Supreme Court says you are wrong.) And when the student is trying to write about a complicated and politically charged topic-- well, calling the situation frightening is probably not strong enough. It's dangerous.
In this case, I decided it was better to participate because I don't know. I guess I like to live dangerously.
That being said, here's my canary in the coalmine. These are the responses I sent to the student journalist verbatim. I thought you all would enjoy reading them. Of course, if you come back later and these words have been replaced with reference to a dead canary, you can decide for yourself what's happened... I won't be able to tell you about it.
How do you feel about virtual learning?'
I love all learning. Virtual learning is still learning. Virtual learning is, in many ways, a better environment for learning for some people than in-class learning. So let's get that out of the way right out. Virtual learning is not a lesser or worse educational model; it's just different. Whether or not it's suitable for specific individuals is a different conversation, but on the whole, virtual learning is just another way of learning.
The virtual learning environment is very similar to the creative professional environment I lived in before becoming a teacher. Co-operating with reluctant colleagues online was a huge part of my day-to-day work, and while that lifestyle isn't for everyone, it's very "real world."
Dirty, Dirty, Canary.
The fact that the entire world was able to spin up a flavor of virtual learning in the face of a pandemic is a testament to its power. Even 15 years ago, such a thing would not have been possible. Let's revel in the success of our virtual experiment, if only for the fact that it happened at all.
Do you think that students have been using the resources provided to reach their greatest potential?
That's a question for the students. I mean, if you're rolling out of bed and smashing the zoom button on your phone while you sleep, you're not doing virtual school. As an at-home worker for a big part of my career, the mindset of "working" from home was something I had to cultivate. You can't just treat every day like a weekend when you work from home-- get up, take a shower, put on some clothes, have breakfast, and then sign in a few minutes before your shift starts to make sure you're ready to go when the meeting begins. That's a skill you can learn during virtual attendance, and I promise you, the mindset will change your game.
I think, however, that this question hints at a larger conversation that would be more fruitful for the students: are you ok? Like, seriously. Are you ok? Because it's ok if you're not. Many of us aren't.
See, the thing is, the whole thing was pretty traumatizing. For many of us, there was a genuine sense that the world was ending. In one way or another, many of us believed that this was the beginning of the end. Many of us thought that maybe, from now on, life was going to be little more than being trapped in my house (with my family!) and forever staring into my laptop screen, wishing for human contact. People lost loved ones, planned activities, rights of passage, freedom, and comfort. The pandemic came and took away celebrations and events, like senior sports seasons, the prom, and graduation. Or worse, it made celebrating those things feel "wrong' or "dirty." Those things were hard-fought and well earned, and they just went away. Every one of those losses is legitimate and real and creates a sense of vulnerability, whether you acknowledge it or not. See, the problem is, feelings are real-- even when they're based on falsehoods.
I feel like the best way to move past those feelings is to acknowledge and name them and then move forward. If we pretend that this wasn't weird, scary, sad, upsetting, challenging, and bizarre, we're acting, not living authentically.
What are your biggest challenges with doing everything over Zoom?
Technically, I’m a finch.
Zoom has its advantages over other virtual education systems. But any system is only as good as the effort teachers and students are willing to make at using it. I try to be conscious of the quality of my audio and video, I try to make sure I'm talking to the virtual students and the students in the room, but I understand that it's not an area of expertise everybody has.
Virtual education isn't about "doing everything over Zoom," and I regret that you feel that way. Virtual education uses Zoom as a centralized way of teacher-to-student contact. Still, education, as I'm sure has been your experience outside of the virtual setting, is about more than just teacher-to-student contact. Zoom isn't an optimum platform for virtual education, but neither is any other single-source solution. Virtual education takes a virtual village.
See also my previous comments about celebrating that such an endeavor was possible at all, let alone thriving.
Have you at any point thought, "If this is the future of learning and we won't go back to normal, will I continue to teach?" Why or why not?
Just a canary. Just hanging out . No big deal.
I would be remiss as a former journalist and news editor if I didn't chastise you a bit about the leading nature of this question. If you are asking the question: Do you think blended learning environments are the way of the future?" I would say yes. I think blended learning environments are the way of the future. And why not? Staying connected to a classroom learning community through illness, relocation, and time away from school is advantageous to all students. Why would we stop making those services available to those who identify them as a way they prefer to learn?
Governance: the real problem with voting in the United States
It doesn’t matter how many of us vote or how much we talk about the power of a single ballot until we make sure that every single person has the ability to freely access and cast their ballot for a government that represents them.
Voter suppression (and the ugly, racist, and classist motivations at its core) is a conversation we have to have before we change anything in America. You can’t have equality without equal access. And my state is currently so gerrymandered that I have a hard time believing that it can be fixed. It’s easy to see why voters get disenfranchised.
But it must be fixed. It must.
We simply cannot sit back and let our elected officials pretend that they are not pursuing racist policy, espousing racist ideas, and pantomime that they’ve been wronged.
Listen: Voting should be easy, convenient, and secure.
In the computing world, we’ve solved this problem. America’s economy is little more than a series of electronic bits and bytes that are (occasionally) secured by math and distributed by electrons. America’s voting system is a physical piece of cardstock that, when scribbled on by the right kind of pencil, is converted into bits and bytes and secured by an octogenarian volunteer at a folding card table in the basement of the police station. Secure voting from a computer or phone or through the mail is a solved problem -- it’s the governance of the voting that is the issue. It doesn’t matter how the votes are cast when the governance of the voting is insecure and done in secret. And we can’t fix that until we fix the racist policies that drive that governance.
We must fix this problem. But we can’t fix it by refusing to play. We must be involved.
Stand tall against racist policies and ideas. Play the game. Vote against racist policies and the politicians who support them -- take small steps and vote against the incumbency and for change. It is the only way.
I used to think that it would take the end of the world to fix our broken republic. But that happened in March and April of this year; and, look at us, we’re still stuck. We’re stuck until voting is no longer a game and Scott Fitzgerald falls in a hole.
Chickens are good people #ChickenDad
This is a triumph. From their birthday on May 4 to June 6, these nearly 4-week old birds are my favorite effect of quarantine. There is always a silver lining, they say, and for me, the adventure of “enriching” the lives of these chickens has been a joy.
Here’s a collection of screenshots from the short video I took while taking them out of the outdoor coop and putting them back in their brooder for the night.
I am not keeping track of individual weights anymore (because it’s hard to tell them apart) but here’s a growth chart for the first four weeks of their growth.
My respirator hides my tears.
I have a strong memory of a film we watched in third grade about the end of the world. In this film, either air pollution or acid rain-- or maybe the loss of the ozone layer-- had caused drastic changes for life on planet Earth.
Needless to say, I don’t really remember the details well. I spent a lot of time in third grade in the principal’s office. Or standing on the teacher’s desk when she wasn’t in the room. Or, one notable time, running out one door and in another one during recess repeatedly until I was sent to the office and made to write a letter home to my parents that informed them what kind of horrible child I was-- as if they were unaware. The fact is, I wasn’t actually that bad of a third-grader. I mean, I was probably only the third-worst bully on the playground-- and that’s only because I was bad at sports. But I digress.
The point is, I remember this video from third grade about the end of the world. And it’s coming up in my mind these days for the obvious reasons.
The narrative device was this: You are watching a surviving human walking through a natural history museum. A voice-over narrator explained what was wrong with pollution, or acid rain, or whatever it was we were supposed to be scared of. The surviving human was walking through a series of displays.. You couldn’t see what he was looking at because his head was covered by this **Space Helmet** that we were told he had to wear to be safe because of the air pollution or the acid rain or whatever. And he was wearing some kind of crazy tin-foil jumpsuit, too. And had tubes plugged into his suit and helmet and stuff. I don’t know. Even excepting for the low budget nature of educational filmmaking in the 1980’s, it seemed pretty cheap. I had seen Close Encounters by that point, so I was kind of a film snob. My family had a VCR. We’d seen several films by that point. Maybe.
I remember watching it and thinking that it was kind of stupid; a space helmet wasn’t really the optimum design for every-day life in a hostile environment, you know? It would be like a knight walking around in a full-plate mask to keep the mosquitos off him.
But that wasn’t the part of the video that really made me mad. Here’s the part that made me mad: The man, as he walks through the museum, he comes across a diorama of a mule deer standing in a prairie. The man staggers when he sees the deer, and then the film cuts to a close up of the deer’s poorly taxidermied face. And then the film cuts back to the man, and he has his hands on his helmet as if he’s sobbing.
At this point, I was livid.
No human being who has successfully acclimated to living on a hostile Earth that requires the continued use of a fully-enclosed respiratory helmet would put his hands on his face when he was sad.
This man was not a survivor. He was an idiot. An idiot who cried at a deer. And I have hated him for thirty years.
But now, today, in the Spring of 2020, I find myself about to rub my eyes or chin every thirty seconds. And I think of that. And I am angry at third grade all over again.
I am angry, you guys. And I’m sorry, I know we’re supposed to be standing together united and feeling like we can get through this together, and I don’t disagree with that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not angry. Every effing time I hear some idiot spreading bad information, or talking brave and bold in the empty toilet paper aisle, I get so mad.
But what stops me is this: People have always been idiots. People are not survivors. They are idiots who cry at deer. Walt Disney scientifically proved this. The case study was titled “Bambi.” And the dear, for what it’s worth, fine. Well, the ones that didn’t die of chronic wasting disease in the early 2000’s.
At the end of the day, you can’t reason with someone who is insistent that they are right and you are wrong. And it doesn’t do any good to try to educate them out of crying at deer. All you can do is love them for it. All you can do is hope that they take that sadness and transform it into something more useful.
Alchemy, amirite?
So… long story short-- too late-- I hope you find the wisdom you can learn from the things you experience in the past and coming months. Take the present moments of uncertainty and confusion and fear and anger and remember that you are in control of your experience. You choose whether the deer makes you cry. And whatever you choose, that’s ok. Just learn from the experience. Be better.
Keep Going
I have loved this piece since I first discovered it on a compilation CD called “Tribal Legends” that I checked out from the Wauwatosa Public Library. The first time I heard it the hair on my arms stood up. It was written by a man named Joseph M. Marshall III. And recorded by Joseph Fire Crow. And a copy of it is surprisingly hard to find. Youtube’s got your back, tho.
Marshal eventually turned the poem into a whole book that I rather liked. I’ve shared it before. I’m sharing it again today. May it bring you a small comfort.
I’m rooting for you.
Keep going.
I'm here. Keeping Office Hours.
Gabe feels the need to tell you you’re ok.
Read More
Don’t get too attached to the Pony.
The Red Pony is a horrible book.
Sometimes I read things. I recently read John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony." It's a terrible collection of episodic content that feels like a Disney Princess sequel cobbled together out the better episodes of an unaired animated series.
Here are five alternative titles for John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony."
- Jody's dad is a Big, Big Asshole.
- The Terrible Veterinarian Lives at my House.
- The old guy, The hired man, Someone's grandpa, Anyone But Dad.
- Leave it to Beaver, but all rustic and shit.
- John Steinbeck's All out of Mountains.
Listen, I get it. I like my pony stories set on Chincoteague island. But this isn't a story about a pony. This is a story about a shitty dad.
Still alive, doing stuff.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated.
A few years ago, I lost my job for the first time. I got another one. Then I quit that one because it was terrible. Then I got another one, and I liked that one a lot, but it didn’t pay much, and it got in the way of my recreation and family time, (especially when iOS7 launched), so I quit. Then I got another job, and that one was good, and I met a lot of really great people, and then that job went bonkers, and I lost that job too. So, in about seven years, I had a lot of jobs. Some I liked, some I didn’t. I was good at all of them. Anyone of those jobs could have been a career, except for the fact that they didn’t end up being one.
After all that happened, I decided I didn’t love marketing. If you roll backward in time down this here blog, you’ll see some of the things I was doing as far as trying to make myself fall in love with marketing again. It didn’t work.
I think it’s possible to do marketing and be a good person. I know a lot of people who are good marketers and who are good people. And It’s a struggle for them every single day. They fight for excellence, authenticity, and compassion, and they face an impossible crashing wave of spreadsheet-driven mediocrity.
That’s not for me, though. I honor those sword-wielding paladins, but that’s not for me. The truth is, those people survive on their discretion; knowing when to pick their battles, advancing strategically when it matters and retreating when necessary. I tend to meet force with force and eventually get downsized out of a job by a coward who pays a hired goon to escort me from the building. There is honor in losing that way, I guess. But it’s not a satisfying resolution for anyone. It’s still losing; I hate losing.
So I’m not in marketing anymore. That’s the facts.
Someone I care deeply for once told me I was the best writer she’d ever worked with. That kept coming up as I was searching for my next big thing. Nobody I wanted to work for cared that I am a great writer. Nobody who wanted me to work for them had any work for someone who excels at getting all excited and doing stuff.
I went to see my college writing partner a few days ago. I was telling him about “getting all excited and doing stuff,” and I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t need to explain that to him. “Yeah,” he said. “Isn’t doing stuff great?”
So, yeah. I’ve been doing stuff.
Still alive. Hope things are well with you.
The long way around
in personal
At approximately 11 a.m. on August 16, I became (officially) a 1.0 FTE Cross Categorial Teacher for the School District of Fort Atkinson. It's been in the works for a while, but I wanted to wait until I signed a contract to make it public.
Today I signed the contract.
It's a quicker-than-expected step on my road to full licensure; I'm still enroled in WiscEDU's fabulous 10SPED program, which is part of a Master's Degree I'm working toward at St. Mary's University in Minnesota.
I wanted to share my "Personal Statement" with you guys. I wrote this as part of my application to St. Mary's Master's program and submitted it to several local school districts as part of my ongoing job hunt.
I came to teaching the long way around.
In 1992, I enrolled at The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater with the intention of majoring in special education. I started reading the news on the college radio station, and I became enamored with the journalism school. I graduated, became a newspaper reporter, editor; I won some journalism awards. I left journalism for marketing; I became a PR spokesperson, and eventually the director of a marketing department with a $2 million annual budget. After 26 of years of success as a storyteller, both in journalism and business, I ended up back in special education-- working as a substitute teacher in my hometown.
It’s something of a calling. I’ve worked hard and gathered enough wisdom that I’m ready for it now. I used to tell myself that if I can help one marginalized kid find success at school, it will have all been worth it. I’ve helped more than one marginalized kid. I help marginalized kids all the time. My current students are better readers and better people than they were six months ago. This is important work.
It is, hands down, the most important work I have ever done.
I covered a small town’s reaction to the Sept. 11th attacks in 2001. I won awards for helping a community of seniors secure funding for their bus trips. I advocated and helped tell the stories of people with eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and developmental and intellectual disabilities.
But when one of my students smiles because he got his first passing grade in science, that is a magic moment. Not for me, but for him. He knows the taste of success, and the warm feeling of pride for a job well done. Sometimes, for the first time.
I am humbled and proud to have been a part of that student’s journey. Admission to your program would help me to continue to help students make more of these magic moments for themselves.
With the appropriate training and licensure, there is no limit to the way I can help students help themselves.
This school year, I'll be teaching at Fort Atkinson High School, where I'll be a team teacher with 10th - 11th graders and managing a caseload of kids. I can't wait to get started.
Remembering Shadow
in personal
My ferret, ShadowAnne, died today. I found her body in her snuggle sack. It was not surprising. We knew she was not long for the world. She was almost 11 and was in declining heath.
We burried her with her business mates, a couple of white ferrets who passed within the last few years, Unagi and Snow Princess. They are together now. Under the evergreen.
I made this recording off the cuff, kind of thinking about her.
She was a great friend, and a wonderful pet. I will miss her.
"Monster Girl" still scares me. Still. Today.
When I was little, two movies genuinely scared and upset me. The first was Poltergeist). In particular, the scene where the tree) runs amok in the unfinished swimming pool. Also the clown doll.
However, Poltergeist doesn't hold up well. First of all, TV doesn't go off the air anymore, and second, I'm no longer afraid of claymation. Third: Coach.
The second film was one I, until recently, did not remember the name. I called it, at the time, "Monster Girl." I had reoccurring nightmares about Monster Girl for years. Monster Girl was scary. She had a messed up face and voice; she was very strong. She tried to kill her mom with a bureau. She could move things with her mind. And she swore. A lot.
Turns out, this film was "The Exorcist." And it holds up very well, in spite of it being released in 1973. It's got all the trappings of a typical 70's film, it's grainy, under-lit, and plods through the plot, but overall, it's well written, acted, and creates a genuinely terrifying picture that explores the boundaries of motherly love, faith, and medical bureaucracy .
Of all those things, the third frightens me the most. Medical Bureaucracy is terrifying, but that's a conversation for another time. Also, if you can enjoy some A+ quality profanity, it's well worth watching. Overall, it's Hollywood silliness and doesn't make a lot of demonological sense, but it's well worth watching again, especially if you can turn the sound way, way up.
Both the Exorcist and Poltergeist have had a strong influence on the American zeitgeist, both contributing iconic imagery that has been parodied many, many times. Both films are allegedly cursed. But only the Exorcist holds up as genuinely terrifying.
Duralog: Tonight's the night!
Fade into a meeting at Duralog industries.
CEO: I like this package design for our flagship Duralog product, but can you make it sexier?
DESIGNER: Like a different font or more seductive colors or something? I don't really --
CEO: Put an older/middle aged couple on it.
DESIGNER: Ok...
CEO: And make it say "Tonight's the night!"
A piano falls out of the sky and crushes the designer. After the smoke clears, CEO reaches over and pushes the intercom button on his phone.
CEO: Take another designer out of the vat. It happened again.
Be the protagonist of the story
There was a guy, driving a beat up mid-sized sedan, who, racing down Western Avenue at dusk, sped up when he saw my wife and child crossing the street ahead of me. It was clear that he was speeding up. It was so clear.
The mama bear in me roared, and the tiger snarled, and the leopard got ready to pounce. THe man stopped his vehicle a few feet away and my girls scooted across the crosswalk to safety.
But I did not.
I held my ground.
I stood in the crosswalk and glared at the little man. I narrowed my eyes and lowered my center of gravity as the man rolled his car up to me and then stopped less than a foot from my shins. I stared at him through the windshield. I hefted the plastic bag of dog shit in my hand.
“Do you really want to do this?” he asks me.
“Do you?” I ask him.
The bag of dog shit is begging to be thrown. It’s begging. It is saying, have your revenge, thrown me at this guy, smash it all over his window, goad him into running you down. And then retire on the lawsuit.
It’s a good, baseball sized loaf of shit. I could easily wing it, side-armed, into the car. I’m thinking about it. I could hit this guy right in the face with a bag of shit. And then he would not be able to say “nobody has ever thrown a bag of shit at me” ever again in his life. He would always remember the day he got hit in the face by a bag of shit.
It would be an epic story.
"So, what’s it going to be?" asks the bag of shit. "Fight or flight?"
I’m pretty sure both of those end up with the bag of shit thrown at the car. I’m on to you bag of shit. You can’t trick me.
In order to make up my mind, I used the whiteboard in my head and drew up a quick a list of pros and cons for throwing the shit.
- Pro: I don’t have to carry this bag of shit anymore.
- Con: I don’t like to litter.
- Pro: But I could throw a bag of shit at a guy and be totally justified. (*Bucket list!*)
- Con: Possible jail time
- Pro: When the driver tells the story about the time he got hit in the face by a bag of shit, he would make himself the hero of the story. He would tell the tale of an insane fat man who lept of the bushes and assaulted him with a 12-inch knife and two attack dogs. He’d talk about how he’d probably be dead if he hadn’t been able to escape thanks to his amazing driving skills.
- Con: That sleaze doesn’t deserve a story that good.
So it's decided. I know that I cannot throw this bag of shit. I can only stand my ground. Legally in the crosswalk; mere feet away from being run down.
But I want you to know this: I didn't throw the bag of shit, not because it’s morally reprehensible, not because it’s unclean, and not because I don’t want to be the kind of person who throws a bag a shit at a guy. I don’t throw that bag of shit at that guy because I don’t want to give this guy a cool story. I don’t want to make this guy the hero of his dumb existence. I don’t want him, ever, under any circumstances, to feel like somehow he was the bigger or better person. I want him to be the kind of a guy who speeds up when he sees a child and a stroller cross the street in front of him because that’s who he is. He’s not a victim of a morning-zoo style crime blotter story. He’s a slime of a human who had an impulse to kill a child and her little dog and acted on it. Because he was in a hurry.
I take a step forward. I can feel the heat coming off his car now. I issue a demand. “Slow down,” I say.
“We can’t see you!” his wife, or girlfriend, or ugly mistress or whatever, shouts from the passenger seat. “You’re wearing black, and have a black stroller, and are walking in the street.” Because somehow, it’s always the victim’s fault. Because somehow, darkness justifies running a child down.
I step out of the way. The man pulls forward. I am now face-to-face with the woman and her open window.
"This is it!" shouts the bag of shit. "This is your last chance. You could hit that woman right in the face with a spicy bag of dog shit, and it would be so good." It would be so good. And I would probably get on the tonight show. The bag of shit is so right.
But I am not the antagonist of this story. I am not the dangerous lunatic on the street. I am not the kind of person who throws dog shit on people. I used to be. I might still be. Sometimes I probably am. But that night, I was not.
I take a step back toward the car, and I reissue my demand: “Slow down.”
The man steps on his accelerator. His engine sputters and moans and propels him and the woman away. I am left standing in the street, adrenaline pumping and surging. And there is nothing that I can do.
Nothing.
I will have to become ok with that I did not get to punish or change those horrible people. I will have to become ok with the fact that somehow, they are going to go on with their life, and probably never give this incident another thought, and if they do at all it will be as a justification for why people shouldn’t wear black at night.
I will have to hope that they're better than that.
I hope that, maybe, just maybe, the next time they’re driving too fast on a dark street, they will slow down. I really, truly, genuinely believe that they might. And that is the gift I have given them. I have made a way for them to become better people. All they have to do is act on it.
I am the protagonist of this story.
The Suck of the Vacuum
So many good musics.
Heres a thing for when I'm writing a lot, which is a thing that is happening right now.
I've got myself a membership at VideoHelper.com and it's amazing. So here's why you care:
- It's an incredible collection of really good video production music.
- You set a mood, and click play, and you're suddenly listening to 30-and 120-second scores built around that mood.
- Also, mostly no dialogue-- so you don't end up including lyrics in your prose. I'm looking at you, The Hold Steady.
- There is no Number 4. But this is a pretty good example of what's so great about this site. Amazing music with a goofy description that nails the tone of each piece.
- The clips are pricey. But that's because they're good. But you can just stream them. You don't have to buy them. Unless you use them. Which you can totally do, if you have $500 sitting around for 15 seconds of unbranded internet content you want to score.
But if you're stuck and looking for inspiration, or just want to change the musical mood you're currently stewing in, VideoHelper is pretty great.
OUT OF OFFICE.
I haven't been too busy to blog; I've been out of the office.
This is a very small a sample of the 3000 or so photos from this trip.
Truth is, after I got done with my work at the orgnaization that I shall not discuss publically (hereafter refered to as the OTISHDP), I took a vacation with my family.
We did that thing. You did it with your familiy. I did it with mine when I was little. Now Gaia's done it with hers. We drove to Devil's Tower and back.
It was a crazy trip. And I'm busy writing about it. I love traveling with my family. I have stories and pictures and drawings. But in the itnerim, here's some great videos that Google Photos made automatically.
Becuase, as much as I rage against robots, sometimes they do cool things for you.
I'll post a few more to hold you over while I write my travelogue.
Our last day in the madhouse
I made this little video at work yesterday to celebrate my final day there.
Please enjoy it.
This. Forever yes.
Conversations with Phil.
in Fun
Hey, everybody. Gabe here. I just wanted to start this piece off with an important note. This post has nothing to do with "Conversations with Phil," the incredible podcast made by my old buddy Phil Gerbyshak.
Phil Gerbyshak is a human being that I know, and he is entertaining and thoughtful. This post is about my ongoing passive-aggressive battle with robots.
I am currently "on the market" for jobs, so to speak. And as a result, I get a lot of email from recruiters. But one particular recruiter is very special to me. And I want to tell you more about him.
Meet Phil.
On Feb. 24, Phil, who is a recruiter with a primary placement agency sent me a job so new that not many people had applied for it yet. I dutifully clicked on the link, and sadly, the job was so new that there was no job there at all, just an ugly 404 Page Not Found error.
So I shot Phil back a message. "Hey Phil, your Robot sent me a garbage link."
Phil replied almost immediately. "Thanks so much for reaching out. Here are a billion links, none of which respond to your message. But feel free to call or write support."
"Talk Soon!" Phil wrote. Seriously. The email message says "Talk Soon!" Phil, whose email signature implies he's located in Santa Monica, Californa, thinks that he and I are going to "talk." And "soon."
"Phil, your robot wasn't super helpful," I said.
Phill did not reply. It would not be the first time I would be disappointed in my conversations with Phil.
Feb. 27th.
Phil writes to let me know that "he wanted to reach out" and let me know that he's aware of a job I applied for and that there are other jobs that are kind-of vaguely like that one, and if I click the 1-click apply button he'll go ahead and submit my application. That's super thoughtful Phil. Thanks, buddy.
And the tone of this email is so different than his previous emails. He might actually be a person.
Phil does not respond.
March 11th.
Phill writes again. I get a lot of email from Phil. I've received 27 emails from Phil in the past 25 days. This email, though, This email is different. This email is to an obviously scammy multi-level marketing company that has little to nothing to do with the kind of jobs I would consider.
I've had it. I'm sorry, Phil. But I have to say something. "Stop sending me multi-level marketing jobs. We both know you're a better recruiter than that, Phil."
Now I feel bad; I don't mean to chastise Phil. He's probably a real person; he's got a quota to meet. "Send me your picture,"]I add. See! I'm not a jerk. I should add more. "Are you human? Let's be friends."
Phil responds almost immediately. I've seen it all before. Blah blah blah, "Talk Soon."
Yeah.
Talk soon, buddy.
Sure.
March 14
Phill found a job that he thinks lines up with my resume. "It's new, so they don't have many candidates yet..." I can't take it anymore. I know Phil is a human being, in my heart, I know this. But as I man of science, I must know for sure. I MUST DETERMINE FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL! ARE YOU A MAN OR A MACHINE, PHIL? WHICH IS IT?
That message was sent 38 minutes ago. And Phil has not yet responded.
Have I gone too far? Did my casual application of the Liars Paradox break the Phil robot? Have I killed him? Phil? Are you still out there buddy?
Oh god.
What have I done?
You need a Voice and Tone Guide. Trust me you do.
Your firm needs a voice and tone guide, a collection of technique, positioning, and words and phrases that anyone in your company can use to create work that is on-brand.
This is you: > Voice and Tone Guide!!? I’m not going to sing anything!
This is me: > Not with that attitude you're not.
But the fact is, your company's brand is stronger when everyone has agreement on how they speak and react to the outside world, and to each other. That's what the voice and tone guide is for. Trust me. This isn’t one of those wonky “marketing is everyone’s responsibility” tools. This is ground zero of controlling your brand and ensuring that your staff knows how to represent your company's brand.
This is you: > No. You should just write my letters for me.
This is me: > I can’t. I’m too drunk.
Why am I so drunk? Because I read your letter to the pheasant hunters who want to use your company’s property on the weekends. It drove me to drink. You can’t call people with guns names like that. And as a rule, you should avoid describing the company’s property as a “valued real estate asset” to anyone.
“Pheasant in the grass” by Alistair Young
is licensed under CC BY 2.0
See, if you’d had a Voice and Tone Guide, you would have known what words, phrasings, and positioning to use when you wrote your letter. You would have known to position the response to the hunters around the safety and support of our clients. You would have known to offer the hunters alternative solutions because we’re well known as collaborators and supporters of the hunting arts. You could have used one or two of our stock letter templates to get you started, and most of the work would have been done for you. You would have known to use “hunter-first” language.
You would have known. You could have known. But you didn’t. And now there is a group of angry pheasant hunters running around town telling people that your company “kicked them off the land” because you told them “they are not safe people” and that they would damage the "real estate."
I’m not the only one who thinks you should have a voice and tone guide. Here is a list of five links that are almost literally the first five links that Google give you:
- Mailchimp’s vaunted Voice and Tone Guide
- Buffer pays homage to Mailchimp’s Voice and Tone Guide
- A simple tool to guide tone of voice
- Rocket Media complains about the popularity of Mailchimp’s guide, kind of.
- Harriet Cummings ‘Finding Your Brand’s Voice’ is the best of these articles.
Enjoy those links. I’m going to make some coffee and try to sober up. I have a make-good letter to the local Pheasant Hunters Society that I have to come up with now.
Hey: Just so you guys know, I'm not really drunk-- but I do really write voice and tone guides for companies. Hit up PrettyGoodContent.com for details.