Dear Devastator

Hey guys- I won't be around for the webinar, as I'll be flying to Florida tomorrow night. It's an unexpected inconvenience that nobody is happy about. I don't envy you who are going to be making the call, however, because it looks likely to turn into an unproductive hour of audience research babble. I should have said this sooner, but this blog is a mess.
We've made pages and pages in a week, and no post seems to get more than one comment. Those that do get one usually aren't about audience research at all. I kind of just feel that audience research was a wrong first step. Not a step backwards, but maybe an awkward sideways step. Starting with audience statistics seems so business-driven to me; I think of advertisers who want to market cars to women and desperate radio stations that want kids to listen again. Artists don't start don't start creating with audience research and journalists don't start a story with audience research. Maybe those "don'ts" should be "shouldn'ts."
A charge was made that we're supposed to produce "the iPod of Journalism." I wasn't so bothered by the analogy because the iPod was conceived through a creation net strategy like ours, but I can think of a couple key differences right now. For one, I'm pretty sure they didn't start with audience research. "Let's just make an MP3 player that isn't completely terrible," they probably said. They had a problem to address right there. Then they probably started scribbling some ideas down, hardcore brainstorming, researching current technologies, that sort of stuff. When the iPod was presented to Steve Jobs, I'm sure he didn't say, "This is great, but who do I sell this to? Where's the audience research?". It was just awesome, you know? Our idea does need an audience, or a community at least, but I think it might be more natural to start with awesome idea and then figure out who to sell it to, if it isn't already apparent.
Also, I'm pretty sure those in the iPod creation net were not required to do five posts a week on some sort of bottomless blog. If I'm wrong here please disregard everything I've said, but this blog homework has only seemed to muddle our goal. Are we seriously going to acknowledge each post tomorrow night? What are we going to resolve? Did you all really want to know about the internet habits of yuppies before we revolutionize journalism? If the answer to that last one is yes, I guess it's not too late for me to go find a couple pages of unsurprising statistics if you promise that it will lead to an iPod-caliber idea.
And yes, I know this whole post wasn't cool, and unnecessarily grumpy, and douchey. I think it's less dead grandpa and more "I'm never getting paid, am I?". I realize that audience research could have been a good way to spark ideas, to get people thinking about problems and to weed out the slacker kids who hate this kind of stuff, but it all seems like a wasted week for me.
The collective innovation incubators' number one principle is Fun. I'm pretty sure half of us picked it as a joke, but I think that only strengthens the notion. I double-checked the thesaurus and this blog is actually the complete opposite of Fun. It's an antonym. My suggestion for next week is that we blog about journalism problems that matter to us, in fewer than five posts if one chooses. I'm just saying- it might spark more of a dialogue than audience research has.

Forever with love,
Kyle
"Thinking and winning do not mix."