Too much choice?
Published: Fri, 05/15/15
I was reflecting today on the opportunities that have arisen in the past 22 or so years. The early 1990s were not that long ago but computers were relatively rare, the machines that were around could do basic word processing and play some games but not a whole lot else. The internet did not exist a we know it now and very few people had access to mobile phones and email. Cameras needed expensive film that was also expensive to develop and then all you could do was show people the prints or put them in an album. Video cameras did exist but they were cumbersome, expensive and the footage was very difficult to edit. If you did record something there wasn’t much you could do with it apart from play it back on your TV.
Publishing to a wide audience meant writing for specialised magazines and hoping they would accept your copy. This would usually mean a time lag of months between sending off a manuscript and actually seeing it in print. The upsides were that if you got published in the right publication you probably got paid something by the publisher and you could reach a very focused audience.
I remember thinking when I got involved in Stav that it would be great to be able to make videos without having to pay a specialist a lot of money, publish material directly, reach as many people as possible without having to get past a fussy magazine or newspaper editor. Those dreams have come true as far as the technological opportunities are concerned. However the energy and enthusiasm to make the most of the opportunity seems to have dissipated to some extent.
It may partly be age on my part and sometimes it seems that I simply don’t have the energy and enthusiasm I had 20 years ago. But there are other factors. The limited range of options for getting a message out meant more care and focus in getting that message over. A good article in a respected specialist magazine could and did make quite an impact on readers. If a martial arts magazine had a readership of say ten thousand people and you did get an article published in that magazine then you could be pretty sure that most of that readership would at least look at your article and a large proportion would read it thoroughly. That may seem very limited compared to the millions of people who could potentially see a Facebook post. But how many people will actually see that your post is there at all and how many of them actually read it? Yes you can pay for advertising to increase the reach of the advert but even that can make a
limited difference. Also, I remember when I got paid for material which contributed to a publication, now I am expected to pay to have people read what I write!
Now it seems like there is a huge overload of content of all kinds and I wonder if any of it makes much impact at all? I wasn’t encouraged by my foray into Facebook advertising. I had 70 odd hits on the website but nothing came of any of them. It was suggested to me that there were too many words and not enough pictures and graphics. But the words were there to tell people why they should try a Stav class, which was the whole point of the exercise. There was a time when people actually paid for magazines with lots of words in them and then actually read those words. Once someone had made that much commitment there was even a chance that they might do something meaningful as a response.
So are these the ramblings of an old man nostalgic for a golden age? I know that you can’t turn back the clock but there is something to be learned from the past. I am wondering how to find the few people who could respond meaningfully to the opportunity to learn Stav. It needs focus and that seems to be very hard to achieve in these days of mass digital communication.
I am going to be teaching in Sweden next week and that will be a real, face to face experience where I can share what I have learned in the past 22 years. I also expect to learn a lot myself. Then, on the 30th of May in Salisbury and on the 6th of June in Crewkerne I will be teaching seminars which will explore using an understanding of the web in a practical martial arts context.
Oh, and if you have just read this far I do appreciate it.
regards
Graham