The comment on my "Baby steps" post got me thinking about why people blog or Facebook, Twitter etc. Much has been written about these new, so-called social media. Clearly, for many people this is a key part of how they earn their living, but it is also blurring, inevitably, into who they are. I began writing this blog for commercial reasons but soon changed tack. Now I see it more as a personal journal of a particular place and period - in my life and in Brazil's history. It also serves as a pressure valve - self-administered therapy. Which of course might give a distorted picture to others, prompting comments such as the one referred to above.
Whether we can talk to ourselves while being watched, in the same way as when we are in private is another matter. Perhaps I am guilty of "branding" this blog as a sort of "everything you ever wanted to hate about Brazil but were too afraid to vent" ? It would arguably be good "positioning" since the market for "wonderful, exotic, booming" Brazil is already overcrowded.
Everyone's into "personal branding" these days, aren't they ? Just look at all the one-man and one-woman mini-conglomerates out there, all singing their own multi-media, multi-career praises on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs, etc. The size of your ego is dangerously dependent on the number of your "business contacts", "friends", "followers", "unique users". Lead us, oh Great One.
God forbid you should only be good at one thing, or that you might actually be unemployed ! Your neurotic, 24-7 personal branding demands the constant thrusting of your dazzling CV / resume under every and any unsuspecting nose. In this evermore raucous world**, you must constantly go for broke. It's either a multi-tasking, multi-award-winning, government and UN-advising Einstein or nothing. Your background may be in some fairly mundane business "process" but your online identity is much more concerned with your heroic powers, as a guru / visionary / pioneer, as an "author", an "expert", a "visiting professor", a "lecturer", a "broadcaster", a "senior advisor", "consultant", "serial entrepreneur", "top one-hundred most important", humanitarian, would-be politician and, of course, as an adored and adoring family man / woman.
I recall my first paid work after graduating from university. In my home town of Oxford I had to pretend to interview for a job with BT. I say pretend because it was actually the interviewers - BT middle managers - who were being assessed. Remuneration for my labour was the tasty sum of £5 an hour. Nice work if you can get it. At the end of numerous fake interviews we were thanked and released from the make-believe bubble. Everyone, that is, except me. I was asked to stay behind and vainly imagined greater glories heading my way, perhaps the offer of a career in this esoteric field ?
In fact I was singled out for the dubious pleasure of being critised quite harshly for my lack of ability to promote myself during the fake job interview. I had a prestigious university on my CV so why didnt I emphasise the positives instead of mumbling and grumbling my way through the conversation?
It left it's mark on me but, sadly, I don't think I ever significantly changed my style. Rather ironic since I ended up writing about marketing. The same low-key approach and, as I see it, honest criticism is currently being directed at Brazil. Which doesn't mean to say I'm a pathological party-pooper; in fact, I think I have more of a lust for life, in my own bitter-sweet way, than most of the online Renaissance Persons twittering about their "passion" for this and their positive thinking about that. I suppose it's just a different form of branding (damn that word!).
But if anyone in Sao Paulo needs a not so recent graduate to apply for a fictional position, I'm sure I can fake a good dose of enthusiasm for you. Did I mention how much I've wanted to live in this city and how carefully I plotted my career, over many years, in order to end up here ?
** It's particularly weird right now that there is a sort of "Dot-Com Bubble" Mark II, a decade after the first one, which I covered as a journalist. Its obviously not as much of a bubble this time since there isn't so much funny-money around, but still it's strange to see the turbo-charged atmosphere all over again: the jargon, the obsession with start-ups and buy-outs, the frenzied rush to be first, arguing over who broke a news story, Twitter or the "MSM". All the insecurity and the neophilia; all the back-scratching, logrolling and self-proclaimed geniuses. Perhaps another difference this time around is that Joe and Jo Public are more involved in the hoopla. Last time it was less tangible because most businesses were still just scribbled ideas and a makeshift website, supposedly worth millions of pounds.
Whether we can talk to ourselves while being watched, in the same way as when we are in private is another matter. Perhaps I am guilty of "branding" this blog as a sort of "everything you ever wanted to hate about Brazil but were too afraid to vent" ? It would arguably be good "positioning" since the market for "wonderful, exotic, booming" Brazil is already overcrowded.
Everyone's into "personal branding" these days, aren't they ? Just look at all the one-man and one-woman mini-conglomerates out there, all singing their own multi-media, multi-career praises on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, blogs, etc. The size of your ego is dangerously dependent on the number of your "business contacts", "friends", "followers", "unique users". Lead us, oh Great One.
God forbid you should only be good at one thing, or that you might actually be unemployed ! Your neurotic, 24-7 personal branding demands the constant thrusting of your dazzling CV / resume under every and any unsuspecting nose. In this evermore raucous world**, you must constantly go for broke. It's either a multi-tasking, multi-award-winning, government and UN-advising Einstein or nothing. Your background may be in some fairly mundane business "process" but your online identity is much more concerned with your heroic powers, as a guru / visionary / pioneer, as an "author", an "expert", a "visiting professor", a "lecturer", a "broadcaster", a "senior advisor", "consultant", "serial entrepreneur", "top one-hundred most important", humanitarian, would-be politician and, of course, as an adored and adoring family man / woman.
I recall my first paid work after graduating from university. In my home town of Oxford I had to pretend to interview for a job with BT. I say pretend because it was actually the interviewers - BT middle managers - who were being assessed. Remuneration for my labour was the tasty sum of £5 an hour. Nice work if you can get it. At the end of numerous fake interviews we were thanked and released from the make-believe bubble. Everyone, that is, except me. I was asked to stay behind and vainly imagined greater glories heading my way, perhaps the offer of a career in this esoteric field ?
In fact I was singled out for the dubious pleasure of being critised quite harshly for my lack of ability to promote myself during the fake job interview. I had a prestigious university on my CV so why didnt I emphasise the positives instead of mumbling and grumbling my way through the conversation?
It left it's mark on me but, sadly, I don't think I ever significantly changed my style. Rather ironic since I ended up writing about marketing. The same low-key approach and, as I see it, honest criticism is currently being directed at Brazil. Which doesn't mean to say I'm a pathological party-pooper; in fact, I think I have more of a lust for life, in my own bitter-sweet way, than most of the online Renaissance Persons twittering about their "passion" for this and their positive thinking about that. I suppose it's just a different form of branding (damn that word!).
But if anyone in Sao Paulo needs a not so recent graduate to apply for a fictional position, I'm sure I can fake a good dose of enthusiasm for you. Did I mention how much I've wanted to live in this city and how carefully I plotted my career, over many years, in order to end up here ?
** It's particularly weird right now that there is a sort of "Dot-Com Bubble" Mark II, a decade after the first one, which I covered as a journalist. Its obviously not as much of a bubble this time since there isn't so much funny-money around, but still it's strange to see the turbo-charged atmosphere all over again: the jargon, the obsession with start-ups and buy-outs, the frenzied rush to be first, arguing over who broke a news story, Twitter or the "MSM". All the insecurity and the neophilia; all the back-scratching, logrolling and self-proclaimed geniuses. Perhaps another difference this time around is that Joe and Jo Public are more involved in the hoopla. Last time it was less tangible because most businesses were still just scribbled ideas and a makeshift website, supposedly worth millions of pounds.
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