Honestly, I’m wondering if John Mayer isn’t relying on his scotch-addled media antics to save him from what would otherwise be an inevitable fate of evaporating into the easy listening airwaves – to be filed somewhere next to Kenny Loggins and Richard Marx. I’m just saying. If it weren’t for his “bad boy” image, I would expect to forget about him until he reappears someday on a soft rock music compilation.

Younger types and techies tend to be more comfortable with the amorphous nature of social media and digital communication. They don’t need as much linearity or control over every aspect of content creation.

Unlike print, you can’t edit a social media-based web site until it is perfect. Since much of it’s evolution depends on how users behave and what types of content they share, you have to accept more of a role of jazz composer than orchestra conductor.

I have been looking for creative analogies to explain the differences to clients and colleagues.

Here’s what I have come up with so far (thoughts and suggestions are welcome):

• think of web as organic, as opposed to genetically modified: unpredictable and raw instead of manipulated for uniformity
• improv comedy versus sitcom comedy
• raising a child versus raising a houseplant (in terms of flexibility and hopefully not necessarily maintenance)

Ray Liotta was on television last night. I thought to myself, dang, I would love to see him cast as Rod Blagojevich (a man, who along with John Edwards, proves that maintaining the hairstyle of an 80s teen movie heartthrob can only bring a lifetime of scandal and disappointment). Apparently, I am not alone in secretly wishing for such a made-for-tv masterpiece.

I haven’t yet decided who I would love to see cast as John Edwards.

As a product of a liberal arts education, I have a healthy dose of critical thought coursing through my veins at all times. I can deconstruct and paradigm out with the best of them.

There have been times when I wondered if these skills might just be intellectual… er… self-gratification. But I have come to appreciate the doctrine of thinking broad and asking questions. Not only is it part of my nature (or nurture), but I’m fairly confident that appreciating fact-finding while not taking everything only at face value makes a person more balanced.

Going to business school flew in the face of this part of my world view. Many MBA curricula reinforce the notion that there are always right answers and that smart means you persevere to construct the right model to find them. That’s what makes management more science-y.

Are there right answers and straight lines in life? Yes. But more often than not, there aren’t.

I’ve expressed before on this blog my concern that such an approach produces manufactured and unimaginative thought. Tooliness, if you will. And have been studying a book by a Harvard Business School professor that reveals that people like me, now the outliers in business school, were once embraced by the MBA… er… paradigm (wow, this is the first time I wrote “paradigm” twice in one composition since undergrad).

Recently, the NY Times suggested that liberal arts staples like “multicultural critical theory” may once again become all the rage at post-financial-crisis-thanks-for-effing-up-the-economy-smarty-pants MBA programs. Everything old is new again.

The devastation in Haiti has many of us feeling that we must do something, be useful, however we can. People from the Haitian diaspora have been profoundly moved to action because their own families are in crisis. The rest of us are shaken by empathy and an inherent concern for human rights.

The question is what to do? Donate to relief, of course. But some of us would love to give so much more than our financial constraints allow. We know that we have skills and we would love if they could be put to use in a crisis. Perhaps we hope that doing so would give our professions and experience greater purpose.

Good intentions, good people… sign them up. What’s the problem?

Understandably, relief agencies are overwhelmed and not in any position to train hoards of disaster “newbies.” I’ve worked at enough resource-strapped non-profits myself to know that sometimes well-intentioned volunteers can make your busy day even harder, if they need lots of hand-holding.

I helped start a website for people like myself itching to be put to use, in the hopes that this could help streamline the process of matching people with appropriate skills to the organizations that can make the most constructive use of their time. Perhaps this could mitigate the flow of requests and organize them into something more structured when the time is right for the organizations.

I thought most people who joined this community might be like me, not at all contemplating an actual trip to Haiti but comfortable with the virtual world and willing to “get in where we fit in” from wherever we are. What we got was some of these types but also many, many people who were hoping to sign up for the next available flight.

Understandably, many relief experts caution against this. An under-prepared “vigilante” volunteer might do more harm than good and end up needing to be rescued themselves. However, a number of these potential volunteers are highly skilled and are realistic about the appropriate timeline for volunteering on the ground (i.e. longer term stints in the months/years following the immediate rescue crisis).

I am concerned about the commentary dismissing volunteers or characterizing them all as naive, misguided, humanitarian Rambos out to assuage their 1st world guilt. These are not fair generalizations and what is the constructive purpose of judging people who are inspired to lend themselves however they can without expecting financial gain? It also ignores the fact that a portion of these people are from the Haitian diaspora.

It would be far more useful for those who know the reality of development and disaster recovery to use their time, wisdom and experience to figure out ways to channel these would-be volunteers into something helpful (based on what they have to offer), rather than poo-pooing them from a pedestal.