Monday, June 02, 2008

Seth Gaffney: Secrets

I fully expect most of my readers to have made the Conan O'Brien Celebrity Secrets connection when reading this post's title. If not, NBD (No Big Deal, for those same peeps who didn't make the Conan connection) but just remember that the best thing about being seen as the nicest guy in Hollywood is that nobody searches your backyard for bodies. (That's according to Tom Hanks, of course.)

Anyway, for those hoping I'd reveal some deep, dark, light, juicy, and/or funny secrets now, I'm sorry to disappoint you. (Though I have shared my real given name with the few who have emailed me "Hello El...") I have been remiss in updating about my participation in the Age of Conversation since here in March. Once again, it's a collaborative book—mostly bloggers participating as you'll see below—with proceeds going to Variety, the Children's Charity. And it's due to be released at the end of August.

I've linked to the entire 270 co-authors in my first post, so I thought here I'd show some love to the 20 contributors to my chapter, which is all about keeping secrets and, I'd imagine given my submission, privacy and sharing. I've never met any of this crew IRL (In Real Life) and I've only exchanged online words with one (Scott Monty about Sherlock Holmes), but I'm sure they wrote up some enlightening—dare I say, revealing—pages. So without further ado, I wanna give a shout-out to:

Bob Carlton , Colin McKay, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darryl Patterson, George Jenkins, G.L. Hoffman, Gianandrea Facchini, Jeroen Verkroost, Joanna Young, Julie Fleischer, Matt Moore, Phil Soden, Rob Mortimer, Ron Shevlin, Scott Monty, Scott Townsend, Steve Portigal, Tim Mannveille, Troy Worman, and last but not least Veronique Rabuteau

I'm really interested in what compelled each member of this smaller group to choose this topic from a list that included marketing manifestos, moving conversation to action, accidental marketers, and marketing failures, amongst others. I, for one, wrestle with how much of my personal life I share online. I wouldn't call it a struggle, but I definitely realize my lack of complete openness when failing to fill out my interests in my Facebook profile or post video from my best friend's wedding, for example. I've seen a decrease in how many services or communities I'll register for. I've seen an increase in my use of things like Twitter and Tumblr.

These (surface) inconsistencies made me interested enough to write on this topic. Who knows maybe some of my "Keeping Secrets" colleagues will drop by (after seeing the link) and let us in on their quick story.

In closing, I Believe It's Butter. Thanks Fabio.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Seth,
Actually, not completely sure what compelled me to write about secrecy, other than noticing how completely isolated one CAN be if you are tied to the screen all day. Isolated=alone=wants to be alone=no governor on behavior, etc? Since I generally try to be non-reflective on these sorts of things, maybe it was first on the list?
like your blog, btw, nice to meet you.
best, GL HOFFMAN, Minneapolis
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