Review of New Media for Designers + Builders-author Steve Mouzon By Buddy Milliken I volunteered to review Steve Mouzon’s new book New Media for Designers + Builders available at nm4db. Steve offered to provide the book free in exchange for a review. He did not ask that it be a good one or bad one, only that it be reviewed. I met Steve in person once at a Congress for New Urbanism meeting, have corresponded a few times by email and bought several copies of his Traditional Construction Patterns book, but that is the extent of our relationship. I agreed to review the book because the articles and observations I read by Steve are usually provocative, but rooted in common sense. As a real estate developer his insights have been instructive for my work. New Media for Designers + Builders is less a book about marketing techniques than it is a post-advertising guide to choosing good work and developing and tending to the communication channels needed to pursue that work. Steve’s discussion of Old Economy force- fed product promotion and the New Economy approach of building business relationships from a base of shared virtues and common cause is refreshing. The idea and ideal of engaging colleagues and consumers in an authentic cause is desired universally, particularly when it sustains both the individual and the community. I particularly like Steve’s distinction between Branding vs. Causes. I have for some time been repelled by the typical use of Branding where it is used for drenching something in imagery without the foundation or durable value that derives from underlying substance. Causes that generate work and the resulting physical and cultural patterns that seep into society and evolve as “living traditions” are at the heart of Steve’s insights in New Media for Designers + Builders. I can also see where the book could be viewed by cynics as a sophistic attempt to employ the emotional appeal associated with donating to causes while still including an invoice at the end of the transaction. For less arduous and meticulous authors who “skip steps” as to how the cause gets genuinely translated into work and how that work gets promoted, that might be the case. However, New Media for Designers + Builders articulates very well the fundamental change in work from the focus on the company to the focus on the cause and practical advice on how to navigate the new media ecosystem. Each ecosystem node and its relationship to the other nodes and the whole are extremely rich, detailed and nuanced. Ecosystem images in the book show the dense, redundant webs between the nodes which is the bedrock of resilience. Steve’s exhaustive descriptions of how to implement the New Media nodes is impressive as is his command of the underlying conceptual reasons why it’s important in the first place. A novice or an expert can find a place to enter the New Media stream and advance as desired. The recommendations for learning from others and the copious glossary are outstanding. Steve Mouzon has responded to the difficult challenge of helping us find good work to do and a sincere, effective way to engage with others who can support and be supported by our work. I am from North Carolina, the Tar Heel state. Our state motto is "Esse Quam Videri" which means to be rather than to seem. Although Steve is from Alabama, I think he is a Tar Heel at heart. New Media for Designers + Builders is a good book and I’m glad I have the opportunity to be influenced by it.
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 17:24:37 +0000
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