I’ve spent the first two entries in this post series (Part One, Part Two) talking about my compulsion to share identity information to Slack or LinkedIn or other places.
And you’re probably asking a very important question.
So what?
Talking about my compulsion isn’t really a good customer-focused thing to do.
Unless my compulsion benefits you in some say.
And for some of you, it does.
If you are a professional in the identity industry, you want to remain up-to-date on all the goings-on. And there are a number of sources that provide that information. But in many cases, you have to read the entire article.
That’s where my long-established practice of quoting excerpts can help.
Through force of habit, most of my shares to the Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page begin with a relevant excerpt, and sometimes I include an editorial comment based on my 25-plus years in the identity industry. If the excerpt (and/or editorial) interests you, you can click on the link and read the article. If the excerpt/editorial doesn’t interest you, you can skip the article entirely.
And it also touched upon my compulsion to share stuff. Specifically, articles about identity.
I’ve already told how I’ve created or managed five services over the years to share identity industry information, but I’ve never told any of the behind the scenes story regaridng the creation of the fifth identity information service. This one was created for Incode Technologies, which was (and is) very different from Bredemarket, and very different from IDEMIA, Safran, and Motorola.
Behind the scenes on the fifth identity information service
By the time I joined Incode, I had spent much of my life as an employee working for large bureaucratic multinational companies.
I worked for Motorola when there was only one Motorola.
MorphoTrak was part of the huge Safran Group (until it wasn’t).
IDEMIA was, and is, a combination of dozens of previously independent companies that eventually merged into one big firm.
I was used to process. Motorola WAS process, and Safran and IDEMIA weren’t slouches at process either. You can’t build aircraft parts just by, um, winging it.
But now I found myself at Incode, a rapidly growing startup. It used (and uses) newer tools that didn’t even exist when I worked for Motorola. For example, it used Slack as one of its primary methods to communicate with employees.
As I perused the Slack channels offered at my new employer, a new idea popped into my mind. OK, it was actually a pretty old idea from my perspective, but it would be new to my coworkers.
“Why don’t I create a Slack channel devoted to identity industry information?”
But of course one does not simply create a corporate Slack channel.
Before establishing a Slack channel on a corporate platform, I knew (with the same certainty professed by certain generative AI services) that you obviously need to go through a lengthy approval process. You probably have to get signatures from the corporate headquarters, IT, and probably a few other organizations besides. I mean, I knew this, based upon extensive data that I had acquired up to 2021. (Actually mid-2022, but some of you get the reference.)
So I went to my boss Kevin, told him I wanted to create a Slack channel for identity industry information, and asked him what the official Incode approval process was to create the channel.
(And you wonder why my younger marketing coworkers said “OK Boomer” to me at times.)
Kevin was a patient boss. I don’t know what was going through his mind when I asked the question, but he simply smiled and said, “Just create it. And if no one uses it in a couple of weeks, just delete it.”
(They didn’t do that in La Défense or Issy-les-Moulineaux or Schaumburg, or even in Reston or Billerica or Alexandria or Tacoma or Anaheim or Irvine.)
So I did simply create the new corporate Slack channel, posting articles of interest to it, and letting my coworkers know about the channel’s existence.
And soon other people started posting to the channel.
And soon people other than myself were inviting other people to the channel.
I didn’t delete it.
So the fifth identity information service took off, and I settled into a routine. On many mornings, I did the one thing that experts say you shouldn’t do. I started my morning by reading my corporate email.
And as I read my various alerts and emails I’d find articles of interest, identify a brief excerpt that encapsulated the main point of the article, and share the excerpt (occasionally with an editorial comment) and article to the Slack channel.
Compulsively.
Of course, because I was devoting time to the company-only fifth identity information service, the Bredemarket LinkedIn showcase page (the fourth identity information service) wasn’t receiving that much attention. Bredemarket wasn’t doing any identity consulting anyway, so I was spending my limited Bredemarket time pursuing other markets. And pouring my identity compulsion into Incode’s Slack channel.
Then on Tuesday my routine was shattered. For purposes of this post, I’ll simply say that I no longer had access to that fifth identity information service, or to any of Incode’s Slack channels.
But I still had my identity information sharing compulsion.
I was still reading articles (albeit from other sources), and I still had the urge to share them on the Slack channel, but then I remembered that I couldn’t.
That’s when I started hearing the plaintive call of the wildebeest.
My old forgotten friend the wildebeest was soothingly telling me that I could go back to the fourth identity information service and share identity stuff there again.
I hadn’t shared anything to that Bredemarket LinkedIn showcase page in over two weeks. But starting that Tuesday, I started sharing several items a day, successfully redirecting my compulsion and sharing to a new target.
So what? I’ll explain why this whole story is important to YOU in Part Three.
Often I write my Bredemarket posts to target a specific audience. Technologists. Leaders of businesses in California’s Inland Empire. People who like wildebeests.
Well, this post series is specifically targeted to people who follow the LinkedIn showcase page Bredemarket Identity Firm Services. By the time you finish reading this post series, you may choose to follow the page also.
When people scan the posts on that LinkedIn showcase page, they’ll see that earlier in the year, I was posting infrequently, and then a few days ago I started posting all sorts of stuff on the page.
In this case Heston was talking about guns; he was giving a speech to the National Rifle Association.
But that “cold, dead hands” line can be applied to other things, as I did when I created the Bredemarket website about three years ago and created the “Writing, writing, writing” section of the “Who I Am” page.
I am John E. Bredehoft, and I have enjoyed writing for a while now.
And for a while I’ve been able to make a living at it. With the exception of my first jobs as a paperboy and a library assistant, every one of my positions has required some level of writing. Articles for my college newspaper. User manuals. Zines (in my previous brief foray into business, Gresham Press.) Requests for proposals. Responses to requests for proposal. Marketing requirements documents. And other documents that I’ll address a little bit later.
And when I wasn’t getting paid to write, I was writing for free. A college dorm newspaper, the Eastport Enquirer. Nearly a dozen personal blogs since 2003, a few of which are still running. Two professional blogs.
I guess I’m a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” type.
When keeping your websites updated, I advise you to do as I say, not as I do. Two of my websites were significantly out of date and needed hurried corrections.
I realized this morning that the “My Experience” page on my jebredcal website was roughly a year out of date, so I hurriedly added content to it. Now the page will turn up in searches for the acronym “ABM” (OK, maybe not on the first page of the search results).
I’ve been using AI image generators (most frequently Craiyon) to illustrate my Bredemarket blog posts, and I recently heard about the Freepik AI image generator and thought I’d try it out.
I provided Freepik with the prompt about a man with a laptop in a park that I used in my last post.
A little over a year ago, Bredemarket announced two changes in my business scope and business hours. I stopped accepting work from clients who marketed systems to identify individuals, and I reduced my business hours to Saturday mornings only.
Generated at craiyon.com.
I had to change my business scope and business hours. On May 9, 2022, I started a full-time position with a company in the identity industry, which meant that I couldn’t consult on weekdays and couldn’t consult on identity projects.
But things change.
As of May 31, 2023, I will no longer be employed at my day job.
Which is my misfortune…um…opportunity.
Generated at craiyon.com.
Has Bredemarket changed its business scope and business hours a second time?
Yes.
As of June 1, 2023:
If you need a consultant for marketing or proposal work, and your company is involved in the identification of individuals, Bredemarket can accept the work.
If you need a consultant who can meet with you during normal business hours, Bredemarket can accept the work.
So what?
My…um…opportunity is your opportunity.
Now that I can expand my business scope and business hours again, you can take advantage of my extensive marketing expertise, including deep experience in the identity industry.
This means you can obtain quickly-generated and expert content with an agreed-upon focus.
This means you can get content that increases your revenue.
These two e-books explain (a) how Bredemarket starts a project with you, and (b) how Bredemarket has helped other businesses over the years.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Because I choose to follow conventional wisdom (for once), just about every Bredemarket blog post is adorned with an image. (I should be adorning each post with a video, but that’s another story.)
Most of my blog post illustrations come from Wikipedia because of the ease in legally using most Wikipedia images.
But what if I want an image that I can’t find on Wikipedia?
DIY
Yes, it’s an acronym. For Do It Yourself. (I’ll explain my fascination with acronyms in a minute.)
Mitch Wagner does it himself. His latest post for Silverlinings is accompanied by generative AI artwork, created by Midjourney. The image conveys the exact message that Mitch wanted to convey. To see the artwork, read Mitch’s post.
But I’m not using Midjourney; I’m using something else
I haven’t jumped on the Midjourney bandwagon yet. So far the only generative AI art application I’ve used is Craiyon. It’s extremely easy to use, doesn’t require you to set up and account, and has some nice options including the generation of nine images at a time so you can pick and choose the one you want.
But so far I haven’t generated a Craiyon image that is as impressive as the one that Mitch generated on Midjourney.
More recently, for one of my other blogs (jebredcal) I wrote a post entitled “AAC (acronyms are confusing)” in which this image was the featured image.
Generated at craiyon.com.
Not as detailed as what Midjourney produced. And frankly, I had to type in the KYS myself, even though I specified in my Craiyon prompt that the sign had to say “KYS.” I got a blank sign instead. Maybe Craiyon can’t read or write.
While I agree with the second part of Bain’s assessment where he won’t enter into a contract that works for him, remember that the other party won’t want to enter into a contract in which Bain gets all the winnings. Or if they do, they’ll mutter about Bain under his breath and find a new contractual partner when the opportunity presents itself.
Hard sell (win-lose) is of limited value. Win-win is better. If you can establish it.
Why should I listen to your pitch? (Or why should you listen to mine?)
A business relationship starts with one party approaching the other. Perhaps it may be a question, or perhaps it may be a pitch. We all get pitches. Some of us (including Bredemarket) give pitches.
What determines whether you respond to a Bredemarket pitch?
If you know that you don’t need marketing content at all, you won’t need Bredemarket. (I can perhaps dispute your assessment, but if you’re not ready to create targeted marketing content, you’re not ready.)
If you already have access to great content creators, you won’t need Bredemarket. Just treat your content creators well so they continue to advance your business.
If your company is outside the United States, you can’t use Bredemarket. My company isn’t mature enough to handle the complexities of international business.
If your company offers finger/face identification services, you can’t use Bredemarket because of that pesky day job.
If you need me to be available Monday-Friday 8-5 Pacific time, you can’t use Bredemarket, again because of that pesky day job.
What determines whether Bredemarket responds to a company’s pitch?
Again, your product or service has to benefit me, Bredemarket, and my current status as a small part-time business.
I don’t need payroll software. I’m a sole proprietor.
I don’t need your phone answering service. I already have a free one, and most of the voicemails I get are spam. I’m not going to pay to get spam.
I’m not interested in your list of leads. The fact that you have me on your own list of leads shows how poor your lists are.
And no, I don’t need your (INSERT SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT SERVICE HERE) offering. If your (INSERT SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT SERVICE HERE) is going to take off like gangbusters in the next 6 months, why are you so stupid as to sell it to me, rather than keeping it for yourself?
Beyond the pitch
So we don’t respond to pitches if they don’t benefit us.
In the same way, we don’t sign contracts if they don’t benefit us. And we certainly don’t remain in long-term business relationships if they don’t benefit us.
Yet people still pursue the win-lose model. If you want to score a single sale and move on from a disappointed customer and find your next target, win-win isn’t for you.
I don’t work that way, in Bredemarket or anywhere else.
Three benefits of win-win relationships
Since I’m writing this to potential Bredemarket clients, let me share three benefits of our working together in a win-win model.
Improved collaboration
From the first six questions onward, you and I will collaborate on the deliverable Bredemarket prepares for you, ensuring that you get precisely what you need.
As we continue to work with each other, I will have an understanding of what you need, and you will have an understanding of what I can deliver. This speeds up the deliverables, an added bonus.
Mutual growth
My hope is that my Bredemarket work will benefit your business.
One of my six questions involves the goal that my deliverable is supposed to satisfy, and after the content is available we can see if the goal was met.
While we both need to realize that inbound marketing is a long-term approach, hopefully the content will start to move the needle forward.
Example: I’m writing this post in April 2023. Will it work as a “secret salesperson” to attract someone to Bredemarket in April 2024?
At the same time, what I learn about your business will benefit me.
For example, I’ve already described (on page 6 of the e-book I talked about here) how the practices of one of my customers influenced Bredemarket’s own practices.
After all, incoming money is a necessary component of business. I get paid for my Bredemarket work, and my work helps you increase your revenue and profit, based on what we decided during our collaboration.
Of course, this assumes that you want to make money. If your goal is to bankrupt your business, Bredemarket could theoretically help you with that also. But I won’t, because that increases the chances that you won’t pay me.
Go out and win-win
So whether you select Bredemarket for your writing needs or not, take care to pursue win-win relationships with your partners. You’ll establish long-term relationships, and (in most cases) you’ll feel better about yourself.
As we know, generative AI sources its training data from a diverse array of sources, often without the knowledge of the sources themselves. But where do humans source their data? Sometimes from intentional sources, and sometimes from unintentional sources.
I was in Mexico City all week for a marketing sprint. Definitely a tech company sprint, with t-shirts and everything.
In Mexico City’s Polanco district, Wednesday, April 19, 2023.
But what generative process selected the word “bleary” to use in that post?
I’m not sure about the specifics about why (geddit?) I chose that word, because I hadn’t heard the word “bleary” during the sprint. I was listening to a lot of music this past week, but none of the songs included the word “bleary.”
Many of the lyrics I heard were in Spanish.
One lyric repeated the phrase “take me to church”; it was not a religious song.
Another had some lyrics I choose not a print in this blog or anything else I write. (The song had an aquatic theme.)
I had an arrangement to meet a girl, and I was kind of late And I thought by the time I got there she’d be be off She’d be off with the nearest truck driver she could find Much to my surprise, there she was sitting in the corner A little bleary, worse for wear and tear Was a girl with far away eyes
The takeaway from this post: how can we ask generative AI tools the specifics of their content generation techniques if we don’t even know how humans generate content?
It’s Saturday morning in California, and I’m a little bleary-eyed after a trip to Mexico City in connection with my day job. I was going to sleep in this morning, but I ended up reading a Forbes article that Mitch Wagner shared. Then I thought about it. Now I’m thinking about it some more.
Generated by Craiyon from the prompt “A powerful robot standing next to a weak robot, in which the two robots represent high quality generative AI vs. low quality generative AI”
Shrivastava obtained the quote in the article’s title from Melissa Shea of Fashion Mingle, who has used (and still uses) freelancers to write marketing copy and perform other tasks.
Why did Shea say what she said?
At $0 an hour, the chatbot can crank out more content much faster than freelancers and has replaced three content writers (Shea) would have otherwise hired through freelancing platform Upwork.
Shrivastava then goes on to say that this affects the Upwork, Fiverr, and related platforms in two significant ways:
People like Shea are less likely to go to Upwork and Fiverr to seek people for non-specialized tasks. After all, even the cheapest content creators from the most impoverished developing nations cost more than today’s free generative AI tools.
People seeking jobs on the platforms are trying to get an edge by using…you guessed it, AI.
In early April, business consultant Sean O’Dowd uploaded two job postings on Upwork and within 24 hours he received close to 300 applications from freelancers explaining why they should be hired. Of the 300 proposals, he suspects more than 200 were done by ChatGPT, he says.
Obviously O’Dowd isn’t going to pay for something he can get for free, and others who hire freelancers caution in advance that they won’t pay for work in which the freelancer uses AI.
(I assume in this instance “use” means “generate the majority of the content automatically.” Shrivastava mentions a graphic designer from Nigeria “who uses ChatGPT to help him ideate,” and I’ve used the same technique myself. For this post, I asked a generative AI tool to describe the benefits of case studies for Inland Empire businesses. I threw out everything that the tool wrote except for five short bullets. Which I then changed to six short bullets.)
What the Forbes article didn’t say
Rashi Shrivastava was examining the relationship between generative AI and freelancing TODAY. That in itself is a handful to analyze, but there’s an entirely different question to address.
I addressed this other question in a Bredemarket LinkedIn post earlier this morning providing my thoughts on Wagner’s share of Shrivastava’s article. Now I’m going to be lazy: not by using generative AI to write the following paragraphs, but to simply reprint what I already said on LinkedIn. (I guess I could use generative AI to rewrite the post using different words, but…well, we’ll get to that.)
There are so many things to unpack here, but I will confine myself to one (for now):
What happens when (not if) the better generative AI tools are no longer free? What happens if the better tools cost MORE than a beginning writer in a developing country? Or the worst (best?) case scenario: what happens if the highest quality tools cost more than an experienced writer in a developed country?
As time passes, we will see significant differences in these tools.
Some will crank out basic work with outdated data; these will be “good enough” and will be cheap and may even continue to be free.
Other tools will be constantly be retrained and provide proper attribution of training data. Because of significant investments in R&D, the better tools will provide higher quality work – maybe even better than Mitch Wagner’s work (or my own). Perhaps you may even need to “program” them – an order of magnitude more complex than proper prompt phrasing.
At that point, someone requiring high quality content may decide that it’s cheaper to let a human do it.
What generative AI says
So that was what I’ve written about a future in which the quality and cost of generative AI tools will vary dramatically. But what would generative AI write about its own future? Since the service is still free, I thought I should ask.
In the past I posed a question to generative AI asking if it was after my job. If I recall correctly, I posed the question to Google Bard, and it diplomatically answered that humans can never be replaced. (But what was the source of its information? Google executives who want to minimize the chances that Congress will clamp down on generative AI use?)
In this case, I’m turning to ChatGPT. My prompt was “What happens to the economics and usage of generative AI when the higher quality services are no longer free?” The remainder of this section is ChatGPT’s response.
If higher quality generative AI services are no longer free, it is likely that the economics and usage of such services will be affected in several ways:
Reduced usage: Some users may be deterred from using the service if it is no longer free. They may look for alternative solutions or reduce their usage of generative AI altogether.
Increased cost: Users who continue to use the service may have to pay for it. This could increase the cost of using generative AI, which may limit its adoption.
Competition: If one provider starts charging for generative AI services, it may create opportunities for other providers to offer similar services at a lower cost or with better features. This could increase competition in the market and ultimately benefit consumers.
Quality: If providers start charging for their services, they may have more resources to invest in improving the quality of their generative AI. This could lead to better results and more satisfied users.
In summary, the economics and usage of generative AI may be affected if higher quality services are no longer free. However, the impact will depend on the pricing strategies of providers and the behavior of users in response to the change.
Postscript: a little more about Mitch Wagner
Why did Mitch Wagner share the Forbes article in the first place?
Because generative AI affects him. Or maybe it doesn’t.
Read his LinkedIn biography (as of today; writers sometimes like to edit themselves) and judge for yourself if generative AI threatens someone with his broad experience.
I’m a marketing writer and tech journalist, with more than 25 years of experience telling stories about companies using technology to deliver business value.
I’m expert at interviewing, researching, writing and editing articles and newsletters for audiences at all levels of technology understanding on daily, weekly, and monthly deadlines. I’ve worked solo, led a small full-time team, and large teams of freelance contributors. I’m skilled in hosting podcasts, webinars, and video.
Previously, I worked at Oracle, part of a team of writers, editors, and designers telling stories about how the company and its customers are innovating and inspiring.
Prior to Oracle, I was an executive editor and writer at top tech journalism publications, covering the early days of the Internet, social media, and wireless communications.
I went through several titles, settling on “Tomorrow’s Generative AI Landscape Will Differ From Today’s.”
I then fed the following prompt to ChatGPT: “Rewrite the title “Tomorrow’s Generative AI Landscape Will Differ From Today’s” to optimize clicks”
ChatGPT returned this: “Revolutionary Changes in the Generative AI Landscape Coming Tomorrow – Don’t Miss Out!”
Unfortunately, ChatGPT had no way of knowing that BuzzFeed shut down this week. I was busy in Mexico City and missed the news, but luckily for me Mitch Wagner shared that news item also.
Bredemarket 