• You’re required to show an ID and your boarding pass in order to make sure the names match. What does this really do? And now that I can print out a boarding pass at home, or even use the digital image of one on my iPhone, how much security does that provide? Especially since the form of ID is regularly faked by high school students?
• How many times have you gotten through security, taken your flight, and unpacked at the hotel only to discover some contraband you forgot to take out or throw away?
• Shoes are, apparently, really important to put on the belt rather than in a bin, yet I rarely see that happen in regular practice.
• Flight crews often just have to flash a badge rather than scan it. A uniform and an ID badge (both real or both fake) can breeze you not only through security without scrutiny, but getting to go straight to the front of the line.

There’s an assumption in the TSA guidelines that flight crews are unflinching, background checked protectors of our nation’s air security. Just look at the recent letter from the head of American Airlines’ Pilot’s Union to the TSA:

“Our pilots are highly motivated partners in the effort to protect our nation’s security, with many of us serving as Federal Flight Deck Officers. We are all keenly aware that we may serve as the last line of defense against another terrorist attack on commercial aviation. Rather than being viewed as potential threats, we should be treated commensurate with the authority and responsibility that we are vested with as professional pilots.”

On one hand, I understand this thinking. Many (all?) pilots have been background checked, and many have security clearances. But considering how easy it would be to pass as a pilot, and considering that flight crews and pilots alike have no liquid restrictions going through security, isn’t it foolish to believe that changing the standards without changing the methods of verification is ridiculous?

And yes, I recently watched a flight attendent walk through the metal detector at AUS with a large cup of coffee. When I asked about it with the TSA supervisor, I was told that since they had had a background check, they were able to do things normal passengers weren’t. And besides, he asked, why would I distrust my flight crew? Yeah, I was scared out of my mind for the next few flights. A few years ago, I sat across a table from the TSA Administrator who told me very, very clearly that 3 ounces of liquid is safe when it comes to explosives, and 4 ounces+ is very, very dangerous. And flight attendants or pilots, with barely a glance at their ID can walk through security with unlimited liquids.

I truly understand the pilot’s concerns for significant radiation doses, intrusive pat-down methods, and other problems with the current process, I don’t believe that they should be entitled to alternative screening methods until several things happen:

1. Actual identification verification methods are used consistently across all of our nation’s airports.
2. Crew only lines are moved out of sight of the passenger lines, or clarity and openness about what crew member background check processes are used is shared with the world. If TSA is asking passengers to be vigilant, nothing kills that desire quicker than seeing near unfettered access by flight crews without an understanding of what protections they have that I don’t. After all, Air Marshals don’t take their ankle holsters and pistols off and put them in a bin, right?
3. Non-flight crew citizens have the ability to apply for similar background check methods. After all, there are plenty of military personnel who have security clearance. There are plenty of frequent fliers (myself included) who would happily pay a fee to undergo a background check yearly that grants them privileges like avoiding taking out liquids (or being able to carry on more), skipping the removal of their laptops, or even being able to avoid the scanning metal detectors that broadcast an image under your clothes to some random person doing lord knows what in a room somewhere in the airport or D.C. Certainly if this is the kind of thing that pilots are wanting, expecting to be able to opt out of because of their backgrounds, we can and should be able to apply that to other citizens too, right?

I understand the irritation and concern pilots  are feeling. I’ve probably flown as many flight this year as some pilots have. I get it. But before we go removing restrictions, I’d sure as hell like to feel good about the poor implementation of the ones we already have.

This year’s SXSW Interactive had 12,000 people attend. It was bigger than SXSW Music for the first time. It had 4,000 people more than the year before. Largely I heard two things from people:

• “This is a great event, I’m getting a lot out of it!”
• “Man oh man, I can’t seem to throw an iPhone without hitting a douchebag!”

Personally, SXSWi for me just isn’t compelling anymore, at least not as a conference. While the content may be perfectly suited for some, I found the sessions weak and beginner level. But that might be OK, since there was clearly an audience for that content. And yes, there were an insane amount of douchebaggery going on. This came in two forms:

• Social Media Expert Douchebaggery – There’s only one thing worst than a room full of “social media experts”… a room full of social media experts who’ve been making a living off that “expert” status for a couple of years. They’ve fashioned a career out of telling clients what to do and now they seem to think that they’ve been knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
• Starf**king Douchebaggery – I’m amazed at the sheer number of Foursquare shouts and twitter messages I saw from talented, experienced, mature social media people that sounded something like “OMG! I might get to meet Pete Cashmore at the Mashable party!”

Maybe my disillusionment comes from the fact that my SXSWi experience this year started off with one of the most insulting conversational exchanges I’ve had in my entire life, with a “social media expert”, who later (and totally separately) blogged on the topic of the problems with interpersonal exchanges at the conference. (No I’m not going to say who or what, other than to say that year ago we drank together as friends. Apparently I’m no longer worthy of respectful conversation…)

But that was my experience. I’ve been going to SXSWi since 1997, taking a few years off around the dot com bust. I remember when the conference was less than a thousand people. We were learning and struggling together through the Web 1.0 days. Then we were learning and struggling together through the Web 2.0 days. But as Gina Vakili said: “Aging Techies are the new Aging Hippies.”

As one of those aging techies, I remember a time when SXSWi was better than it was this year, and it wasn’t a smaller amount of douchebaggery. Here are the main three reasons I think SXSWi has gone off the rails:

Size
The organizers of the event have largely kept the formula of the event the same as it was 13 years ago when I attended my first event. Directly scaling a 500 person event to 12,000 simply doesn’t work. To put the 12k number in context, CES this year had 6,000 attendees, while GDC had 18,000. This is the big leagues as far as industry events go. At this point, SXSWi will never again be a 500 person event, and that’s OK. But it’s time to rethink what SXSWi is and what people are hoping to get out of it. The SXSWi team has to decide what they want the event to be and then redesign it according to those desires. If it’s going to be a size restricted event, so be it. If it’s going to be as large as they can sell tickets to event, that’s fine too. But those are both very different events, and that decision needs to be made.

Mass Audience Crowdsourced Panel Picker
The first year the Panel Picker was out, I thought it was a great idea. The content that came out of it was pretty solid. But as awareness of the tool grew, people figured out that the best way to get a panel selected was to come up with a sexy and often pointless session title. It’s time for the organizers to enlist a group of people to help find genius speakers we don’t know, to find topics we don’t know we need to know. The best session I’ve seen in years at any conference was Henry Jenkins at last year’s SXSWi. Henry is an absolute genius and an amazing speaker. I’ll bet you’ve never heard of him, and if you have, you probably haven’t read his blog or his books. Which is exactly why he was so much fun to hear from. Just because a metric ton of potential conference attendees vote up all the panels with “sex” in the titles, doesn’t mean you’re going to have a compelling content experience.

Do you know why TED has absolutely astounding content? Because they make it the very core of the program and they find people you’ve never heard of. Then they work with them to ensure insanely good presentation.

Grand Expectations
Good things do, in fact, come to an end. SXSWi isn’t the same because the world isn’t the same. For every SXSWi vet that I talked to who said the event sucked, I talked to two first timers who loved the event. Yes, SXSWi is “just another event”, but that’s actually a good sign. It means we’re onto the second (third? fourth?) generation of Web geeks. Those of us who were doing this stuff 10+ years ago dreamed of the day when the Web would be given the serious attention and credibility it deserves. We’re there. And that’s a great, great thing.

Despite the problems, I have to call out some awesomeness.

• Foursquare (the app): A truly useful service for the event. While I used Foursquare before SXSWi, I was never really that excited about it. Having a purpose and a network for people using it for the same purpose helped me get quickly excited. Now I want all my friends and local businesses on it. I’ve already talked to two neighborhood small businesses about how they should get on it. (Oh, and the updated app was a great improvement just in time for the conference)
• Foursquare (the company): From the fact that the service was rock solid stable, to the custom SXSWi content, these guys did great in running a Web app business.
• Chevy: The power bricks the Chevy team put out for people to plug their laptops into was an insanely good promotion for their Volt electric vehicle. I literally thanked the Volt girl standing next to the car for those power bricks. They could have just printed a bunch of pointless paper collateral to shove in the registration bag. Instead they solved a real need.
• AT&T (the network): It worked. Well. As TechCrunch asked, why can’t they do that every day?
• AT&T (the lockers): Like Chevy, AT&T solved an honest to god need with an unique and talkable solution. They created lockers where you could plug in your phone to get a recharge, then lock it up so you could hit a session while you rejuice. Genius.
• Inspiration: I didn’t realize quite how inspired I was from all the great work my incredible friends are doing until the first day back in the office. I literally filed a 4′x8′ whiteboard with ideas, tasks, and sketches.

So what did you think about the SXSWi 2010?

UPDATE: Here’s a few additional bits of content from around the Web re: SXSWi 2010

• Swag Bag Assessment (with lessons for marketers)
• Check-in & Location Apps
• How AT&T dealt with the insanely high network traffic
• SXSWi 2010 recap on Baazarvoice blog
• David Armano’s recap

I have.

I was literally cheering on the Verizon workers laying the fiber optic cable outside my house that would allow the FiOS service to be activated, giving me wonderful HD television, phone, and smokin’ fast, insanely reliable internet access. I convinced neighbors that they too should sign up. When I moved to Seattle, I chose a house to move to in some part based on the availability of FiOS. I check the Verizon site weekly to see if my place in Austin stands any chance of getting it any time soon. I’ve blogged, commented, and tweeted about how amazing the service is. I’ve literally convinced at least 10 people, probably more to sign up.

I’m what we in the business call a “Customer Evangelist”. I’ve been working my tail off for years to help Verizon expand their FiOS customer base because it’s an incredible product.

Despite my unwavering love for the product, I’m done.

You see, twice I’ve had to cancel their service as I moved cross-country. The first time I had to cancel my Verizon Texas account and open a Verizon Washington account. The second, I was moving to an area without Verizon FiOS service.

Twice, Verizon’s third party equipment return house lost my equipment. Twice they received the cable boxes fine, but not the modems. Twice I used the prescribed return method of self-addressed envelopes dropped off at the UPS store.

This time around, I continued to get healthy sized bills, despite having been told by Verizon agents that we wrapped up. I called in and was transferred seven times to four different departments (yes, some of them more than once) simply trying to figure out what the number was I actually owed. After two hours on the phone, they gave me a number, I paid it, then got another bill. During this time, I also received two call from the third-party return house asking if I’d sent my equipment back. Twice I gave them UPS tracking numbers. Twice they said they would clear it from their records and that I’d be done getting calls.

So you can imagine my surprise when I received another bill for $134.86 rather than the $0.00 I’d been promised by the last Verizon employee I’d talked to. After another hour phone call, it was discovered that only two of the three returned pieces of equipment had been logged into by the third party house. Which means Verizon thinks I need to buy my missing equipment.

Here’s the thing – I finally threw out my UPS tracking numbers, so I literally have no recourse here. Verizon is literally demanding I pay for equipment that I’ve returned, but was lost in a system that clearly sucks or I’ll end up in collections.

When I explained the situation to the agent who saw notes on my account that things had been insane after 3+ hours of phone calls, he had sympathy but told me my only option was to provide tracking numbers or pay my bill. He all but said that we were in a game of “he said, she said”, and they’d never believe me.

The lesson in this is really quite simple: If your service sucks, it doesn’t really matter how great your product is. In my case, there’s no chance I’ll continue to be a FiOS customer evangelist. I don’t want my friends to curse me for getting them into a situation like I’m caught in, no matter how cool the product is.

And the inverse is true as well: If your product sucks, it doesn’t matter how great your service is. This isn’t a new observation; it’s been made time and again. Marketing includes service. Your customer service is a marketing function, not a separate department. Marketers all too often steer clear of the call centers, and that’s unfortunate. Imagine if the FiOS brand manager had been on the phone with the agent and me throughout these 3 hours of madness. Do you think they’d be focused only on launching new features as a way to acquire and retain new customers?

So you can imagine my reaction when I saw the photo below last week while standing inline at the American Airlines check-in desk.

I asked the woman who owned this bag if the “I <3 baggage handlers” tag was about the United Breaks Guitars story, and she said that it was and that she is really scared now about traveling with United because of that video.

Like I said last week: literally everything helps and everything hurts a business. If this isn’t proof, I don’t know what is.

Social media marketers (all 100 million of them, if my Twitter count is correct) are bending over backward to congratulate themselves on the effect the 4M YouTube views of a song about a broken guitar had on United Airlines.   Some social media PR types are touting the enormous brand damage done by the incident, and a journalist at the UK Times Online has even connected a 10% drop in United’s stock price with the spread of the YouTube video.

In the last few weeks, this question about the impact of this video on the United stock price has been quite a fun debate. Here’s how Vanno continues on the topic:

So let’s put the United 10% stock price claim to bed first. If you look at other airline stocks on July 10 (the low point immediately after the YouTube guitar video release) you’ll see price drops for Delta, American, Continental and even Southwest. All the drops occurred on small trading volumes, and were followed by a quick recovery. Moreover, United’s stock (UAUA) had fallen by over 100% in the previous month, and day-to-day variations of 25% or more were common. It is, after all, a very low-priced stock in a brutal industry during volatile financial times. In fact, the average day-to-day variance in UAUA price is more than 10% in the period shown in the graph above!

Let me first say that I’m not convinced that “social media” can take credit for anything in particular. But we know for a fact that any number of things can affect stock pricing. We’ve seen it happen numerous times and long before social media is a thing.

Having received phone calls from CEOs who have read a random blog post and been motivated to react or respond, you’d be surprised what makes it to the board room. Which is why I flat out disagree with this point from the Vanno blog:

United may have made a belated attempt to assuage the offended customer/musician, but I seriously doubt very many executive cycles or board moments were dedicated to the incident – despite all the social media navel-gazing.

Sorry, but wrong. When news cycles start picking up stories, execs spend cycles on them. Period. And with 4+ million views of this video, tell me how this issue didn’t come up in the United offices?

That said, I would have to wonder about this same point:

It’s not like the guitar story somehow broke a pattern of behavior on the part of United, or the 4M YouTube views changed the direction of customer perceptions.

Would this cause United to change the way they do business? Probably a yes and a no answer. Yes, everything adds up over time. Even companies like United have to reach the bottom at some point. These types of stories add up, although impact may not be seen or felt instantly.

And when sites like Orbitz and Travelocity make it just as fast to select American or Delta rather than United when booking your trips, 4 million people have another reason to skip United. In a business with tight margins and spiraling revenue, literally everything helps and everything hurts.

It’s not as simple as saying “social media dropped United’s stock price 10%”, but to blow off the impact of 4 million people seeing negative brand impressions is to blow of the overall concept of marketing generally. Any time you discount something as big as the concept of marketing, you’re probably not paying enough attention to the issue at hand.

But I’ve been waiting for this particular shoe to drop:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

It was bound to happen, and how appropriate that it was this particular author.

This is where you really see the value in the open source mindset, and privacy geeks who’ve been screaming about placing too much power in Amazon’s hands by not demanding their content be handled in a more buyer-centric way.

Personally, this really bothers me. When I purchase content legally through a valid channel, I find it inexcusable for a vendor to remotely pull that purchase out of my device. Restricting further purchases? Fine. No problem. But to take back the goods of a sale simply because a publisher changed their minds is flat out unacceptable. Imagine Nike sneaking in your closet at night and swiping those $150 shoes you bought because they decided the design wasn’t worthy the Nike brand name?

How is this any different?

UPDATE: In the comments, Patrick wants to clarify that this isn’t theft because Amazon grabbed their content back without permission, but also issued a refund. I suppose he’s right in a broad sense. After all, the terms we agree in purchasing both the Kindle and the Kindle books grants Amazon permission to conduct such Orwellian (ha ha ha) activities. But I would also say that just because a refund is given, doesn’t get Amazon off the hook from inappropriate action. If I broke into someone’s house and swiped some of their property but left enough money for them to replace it on the counter, it doesn’t mean that the theft is acceptable.

Perhaps the core issue here is the exception we have in this new digitally based world of what is “our property” and what usage of “our property” the providers grant us. In the long term, I can’t see consumers (or consumer protection mechanisms and groups) allowing this behavior to continue. So the real issue, perhaps, is how long we, as consumers, are willing to accept this type of ridiculous relationship between the content providers who sell us goods.

UPDATE 2: Patrick points out that Amazon is trying to recover from this story.

Amazon on Thursday began e-mailing a few hundred owners of its Kindle reading device to explain that it had deleted electronic copies of the George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ and had refunded the $0.99 purchase price.

[...]

The incident, he said, highlighted the gap in understanding about rights in the digital world and the real world. “There’s an enormous difference between buying a book and buying a tethered media device. And this incident really underscores that fact. Consumers carry with them analog expectations.”

Bingo.

UPDATE 3: Amazon issue a statement about this:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books…When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers….We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

UPDATE 4: The Wall Street Journal has written an article on this too.

But one part had me thinking all weekend:

“We promote the right of free expression,” the chief US diplomat added.

“And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know a twitter from a tweeter, but apparently it is very important,” she said, sparking laughter.

Will there be a time when older people don’t think it’s cool to joke about their tech cluelessness? I know it’s a brave new world and all, but seriously, when you’re the Secretary of State and Twitter is a major part of the revolution in Iran, joking that you don’t know anything about it is just stupid.

UPDATE: Des follows up on this topic. Good stuff, Des.

On Friday the FriendFeed founders Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit debuted a radical redesign of the product for about 15 journalists, technologists, and Robert Scoble.

Whether you love him or hate him, you can’t argue that people want him to talk about their stuff.

There are a few questions I can always count on getting during or after the session:

“But what if nobody in the organization is empowered to make the changes you mention? Who’s job is this change you refer to?”

Out of all the frequently asked questions in my sessions, this is that one that gets me the most amped up, ready to pounce. My reaction is normally summed up by a quote overheard in the hallways of SXSW 2009 a few weeks ago:

“If you know something’s wrong…fucking fix it!”

We’ve come to see that fear dictates many of our external facing business decisions, giving rise to massive Terms of Service agreements, NDAs, massive Legal team power, and other protectionist tactics. But it continues to surprise me how afraid we are of our bosses, colleagues, and management teams.

Whose job is it to fix things we recognize as problematic? Ours! It is every employee’s obligation to stand up for their customers, to be on the look out for ways to improve the company.

When I started at LEGO, I was a Senior Web Producer who saw instantly that the Adult Enthusiast community was being completely overlooked. I took on a few extra hours a week to help them. Those few hours turn into an official part of my job, and then my entire job. I didn’t ask for permission, I just started fixing it.

Surprisingly, especially for me, nobody told me to mind my own business or focus on my “real job”. They started seeing results I was producing and asked me to take on more and more and more of those duties.

The trick to making this process work is to use a tactic I call Success by 1000 Paper Cuts. The idea is simple: start with the biggest element of activity that you can do without having to get full blown approvals, budget sign offs, or legal approvals. A single paper cut barely gets notice, but enough of them and you can cut off a limb.

Start small, create success, share results.

The repeat over and over again until you have a collection of successes that represent a landmark. Bundle that landmark up and show it off. Use the landmark to get permission to bigger and radical and perhaps more expensive projects, but only by the new increment.

Start just a bit bigger, create success, share results.

So what are the small things you’re going to do today to impact change and improve your customer experience?

I asked Kelly—on this, the third major user uproar the company has faced on privacy that caught it completely by surprise—if the issue was a blind spot for the company or if Facebook was doing something so new in organizing the data of human relationships that it was bound to take all the arrows as these issues of privacy continually emerge. Kelly essentially said its the latter; I think it’s a mixture of both, although Facebook’s privacy sensitivities have clearly come a long way since the News Feed and Beacon debacle days. Give them credit: Each time they learn how to handle the crisis better, and this time they sprung into action quickly and decisively.

Setting aside the extreme slack that Lacy seems to give Facebook at every turn, my response is simple: no, I’m not going to “give them credit”. This is the third major breach. They’re clearly not maturing as an organization and they’ve not found a way to effectively communicate, or hell understand the sore spots their users have.

For an organization steeped in the Social Web, they apparently have very little understanding of it’s members.