I think you’re making great sense. Thanks for taking the time to put your thoughts together here. I’m very drawn to your idea of “impact engineering” which I think definitely captures the result of what is happening. And the imagery of the bridge over the river that creates opportunities resonates very deeply with me. There are such interesting psychological and sociological effects from creating all of these bridges, too.

It’s funny – when I wrote the original post, I was thinking much more about “presence” in a passive Zen kind of way. Your comments now having me thinking about active and passive presence. Now the question I’m asking myself is “should anyone ever stop with passive presence online”? Seems obvious, huh?

Thanks again for jumping in,
Laurie

I want to pick up on something you said here in your post, though: the idea of presence in this context meaning “to be present”. I interpret presence engineering differently than that. I think what we’re talking about when we say “presence engineering” is “impact engineering”. As Michael said, there are pieces of us everywhere; each piece individually has an impact on those who encounter it, all the pieces in the aggregate have an impact. Our challenge as engineers of our own online presence is to make sure the impact delivered is the impact desired.

In other exchanges with Michael about this topic I’ve used the analogy of a bridge to make sense of the idea of “engineering” in this context. A structural engineer wanting to build a bridge across a river has to decide which materials to use and in what combination to complete a structure that functions as desired. The finished bridge may appear to simply stretch passively across the river — may appear to be merely “present”. But when you compare that place as it functions with the bridge to how it functioned before the bridge you see that the bridge is anything but passive — in fact it’s delivered a profound impact. First, it has rerouted the patterns of human behavior: people can now get across the river where before they could not. And now that they can cross, they do and that reveals new possibilities and opportunities: now that there’s traffic, maybe there’s an opportunity for stores, restaurants, parks, to serve that traffic whereas before the bridge those opportunities didn’t exist.

I think of online presence in those terms: like the bridge in the physical world, once we enter the online environment and shape our multi-faceted presence there, we have an impact. You and I would probably never have had the opportunity to communicate if you hadn’t used the tool of blog commenting to build a bridge from your blog to Michael’s — your side of the river to his. Your act was an act of presence engineering and it was active, not passive, it was much more than simply “being present”. Even online, the world that was changes with the addition of our presence into the world that is and the world that will be.

I’ve gone on too long now and am not sure I’m making as much sense as I hoped I would. Thank you, though, for writing this blog post. I appreciate the opportunity to engage your ideas.

(First I want to clarify that by presence I mean the totality of the stuff we as individuals and companies put out on the web.)

The fact is you already get it. Most of us essentially get it — the thing is that right now, involvement is less conscious than it should be. Right now, a lot of businesses are jumping into the social media waters without checking the temperature, analyzing the potential for shark infestation, and other hazards. Granted, there are opportunities there for everyone as well. Successful involvement, however, requires thought and strategy, and the term “presence engineering” attempts to focus our attention to the time prior to involvement, where the reasons why must be explored.

Also, I don’t think it’s about mastering new tools, but rather about really thinking and strategizing (the engineering part) about the messages we’re putting out there (the presence part).

There are pieces of us everywhere on the web — in avatar form, in text form, in image form, in user profile form(s), etc. And that goes for companies too. If we could locate and piece all those bits together, how would we look? How would a company look? And how does the reality of what you’ve put out there compare to who you really are?

The term, “presence engineering” merely attempts to focus our attention to the deliberateness of the presence we create — in whatever form that presence may appear.

Feel free to contact me regarding presence engineering any time. Thanks for thinking. And asking.