I found myself pondering a 1500 person Newsletter recipient list the other day. What struck me funny was the idea that I was sending: ideas, information, concepts etc. but had no control over initiating one of the most important stages of communicating the idea, which would be the continued conversation about the idea after the initial ingestion.
When we send out ideas through a digital medium we are obviously setting up a situation where the initial ingestion of the idea takes place through digital means. This concept brings into light a fundamental problem with online communication models.
With simple reporting tools it is possible to track whether someone clicks on a link in an email or forwards the email to someone else and with Social Media we can see how an idea can take shape and spread through contacts within the social medium, but it’s simply not possible to track the conversation outside the digital realm.
People are not plugged into their computers 24 hours a day, the Time in which people are at their computers and ingesting topics or ideas is relative to each person.
Which makes it very difficult to Quantify data based on active conversations outside the digital spectrum.
So If we were trying to some how quantify the data outside the digital spectrum a typical solution would be to rely on grass roots tactics of mobilizing lots of people to make phone calls or ask person to person, which essentially is a high volume “bean counting” approach.
What if instead of trying to quantify the individual instances the environment was targeted for having the conditions to support a higher probability of active conversation about an idea or topic?
SIMPLIFIED ANALOGY – SMOKEY THE BEARS NIGHTMARE…:
If we have a bucket, filled with a magnifying glass, matches and lighter fluid and it is placed in the hot hot sun the probability that a fire will happen is almost so high, that I could count it as a fire.
COMPLEX EXPERIMENT:
Let’s say you have a list of 20 people and of the 20 people you knew that 3 of them liked the band Radio Head. Our desired outcome is to build conversation or debate about an idea. If we send the 3 people on the list Tickets to Radio Head and your idea, this would raise the probability the three people talked about your idea, but it wouldn’t raise the chances high enough to support border line fact like the fire analogy above. The people would need to be geographically located close enough to each other and given enough time for the idea to come up in conversation.
The more conditions we gain control of, even by a fractional amount the higher probability of us being able to create a desired outcome.
THE CONDITIONS:
- The Idea, Topic. ( i )
- The Conversation. ( c )
- User or person. ( u[x] )
- Passions, Interests, Likes or Dislikes. ( p[x] ) sets up a relative environment.
- Geographical Location. ( g ) = x,y,z coordinate of ( u[1] ) inside their relative environment ( p[1])
- Proximity ( prox ) = how close the geographical locations ( g ) is of ( u[1] ) within their environment ( p[1] ) that overlaps other ( p[2] ) of ( u[2] ).
- Time ( t ) = the length time during which (prox) is occurring.
- Probability ( ℙ )
ROUGH FORMULA:
( ( u[1] + p[1] + i ) = g[x,y,z] ) + ( u[2] + p[2] + i ) = g[x,y,z] ) ) * ( t ) = ℙ(x)
IF (ℙ) > 50 ( c ) = 1
In this drawing the 3 people based on their Passion ( p ) are geographically located near enough to meet the condition of proximity( prox ). Given the degree of Passion ( p ) it will increase length of stay or time ( t ), now that conditions have been fulfilled there is a high probability that the idea originally sent in our email will come up in conversation.
Damon Sanchez - Darkriderdesign - Blog 