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Jeremiah and Shirley Owyang are about to celebrate their first anniversary at Lake Tahoe and I wasn't even invited to join them. The nerve. Congrats guys. It's been a pleasure getting to know you this year. You have both always felt like you have been married forever.
This photo from Techcrunch 7 was taken by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid.
Speaking ofTechcrunch, Jeremiah has posted a great sample Scrapblog page of the Techcrunch Party.
I was over at Sun Microsystems today to talk with a small group about blogging and social media. I'm always pleased when I walk into a room such as this one was and see our book on the table. In this case there was but a single copy--being used to prop up the projector. I guess we can argue that we support Sun's projections.
For you old timers who have followed this blog when Robert and I just started writing Naked Conversations, you may recall how we struggled over our Table of Contents (TOC). The TOC is a key component of what you send to the publisher in the hopes of getting an advance payment for writing a book.
For writers, the TOC is the road map to the book and determines what and who you will cover as well as what questions you will ask. For Naked, we wrote about 10 versions, before striking our deal with Wiley. Then we discovered the one they had approved didn’t work when we tried writing it and so we did another one that came out okay in the end.
I’m nowhere near ready to write a final TOC for Global Neighborhoods. That ma not happen until next year after Rick Segal and I complete the series of travel chunks we have now decided to make, rather than do the formerly touted World Tour. The new way is less dramatic, but it allows us to spend more time meeting people and less time in airline security queues.
In any case, here is my first stab at a TOC. Call it v.01. Picture a big marble slab, to which I am hammering out my first chisel marks. Last time reader input made Naked a much better book than it would have been if we had written in private. I ask again for help from you members of our studio audience.
Please tell me what me all your thoughts. Give me some of that tough love for which the blogosphere has become so famous.
This is how the book looks with those first chisel marks taken. Please note that nearly every bullet point will have cases studies to be added later. Also, please note, this is just the first of at least three parts. The outline, with the case studies is about 100-120 pages of the book. It’s as far as I’ve gotten.
Part One: What’s happening
1 The irrelevance of geography.
• Charlene Li says that the internet is making geography irrelevant
• Global Communities are forming around shared interests in everything from politics to technology to hummingbirds.
• Global Neighborhoods refer to the communities where we feel safe to hang out.
• Power is shifting from large central organizations to small, decentralized organizations.
• Users generating and sharing everything: digital media; open source code, etc.
• Most influential have become people most generous to communities rather than those with largest media budgets.
2. The business handicaps of “Big.”
• Big traditionally an asset in business and government. Power of incumbency.
• During times of rapid change such as these, large organizations simply cannot move with sufficient agility.
• Disintermediators--media, government, borders, regulatory laws, etc. becoming impotent —cannot command, control or worse, monetize
• People during deaf/blind to traditional communications efforts.
• Big companies accustomed to competing with big companies using big company tactics.
• Less adept at stopping “armies of ants,” loosely joined in connected world.
3. The exploding universe
• In tech sector, Silicon Valley has been center of the universe, but that universe is expanding at incredible rate.
• Tech startups in Ireland, Estonia, Italy, Ho Chi Minh City, Phuket, etc.
• Use internet to accelerate development, market, distribute, sell, cut deals, recruit people. Do work where its cheapest, etc.
• Barriers to starting borderless, social media company extremely low.
4. The lobster trap
• Barriers to entry are low but the barriers to exit are extremely high. It may be like Hotel California or a lobster trap. Once you get in, you cannot get out.
• 1600 social media companies. 85% expect revenue from contextual advertising.
• Traditional media business model. Free to use, ad or sponsorship supported
• 1600 companies, 85% hoping to be acquired by Google, Microsoft & Yahoo
• If this is the outcome as many people think it will be, has anything changed at all? Are we headed from decentralization back to recentralization? If all the little companies either become big companies or get acquired by them what ultimately changes.
Please let me know your thoughts on any and every aspect of this. What is too obvious? What am I missing? Can you give me some examples for each of these sections? I am also likely to insert a chapter on government and blogging, but need to do a little more research on the subject before I jump in.
Joseph Thornley, CEO of Thornley-Fallis PR is bringing me up to Ottawa and Toronto in the last week of September for no less than six talks in three days. Yes, he gets a volume discount. I know he'd like me to list each one, but I have a hunch most of my readers would prefer I didn't.
But I need some help in what I say in a couple of areas:
1. Public Relations--In Naked Conversations, we said this was a "change or die area" and I think the 18 months since we wrote those words have strengthened the argument, which at the time was called overstated.
I'd like two things: (1) Case studies of PR practitioners who have gained by incorporating social media for themselves or their clients, and (2) horror stories of bad practice caused by PR people who did not understand the power and opportunity of blogging and social media.
I will of course give full credit to any of you who give me cases I can use and your additional thoughts on this subject are welcome.
2. Government and blogging--thanks to Joseph, I am addressing a group of Ontario government communications officers. These are professionals in government who are weighing the pro and cons of blogs. There are two parts to this:
(1) People influencing government through blogging and social media and (2) government people who are getting interactive with constituencies by blogging.
I am looking for case studies on this one as well. I am particularly interested in these cases, because this is an area that I plan to cover in Global Neighborhoods as well. If you know of any cases in this area, please post them here.
If you wish, you can email me your thoughts or cases as well.
No, not me.
But I did a lot of media training before I stepped into a restroom in 2001 and wrote, "Stop me before I pitch again." To help clients wishing to reach business technology editors, I used Richard Brandt for a segment called, "A journey inside an editor's mind."
Richard did astounding work. He would explain to someone who was going out to pitch editors, what was on that editor's mind, what he or she was looking for, the politics, competition and frustration of the newsroom. He'd also listen to your pitch, then write a news article based on it.
The results were that clients walked into the city room with the target birthmark removed from their chests. They understood the mystifying, but powerful person on the other side of the table.
The issue was on my mind today, because I'm working with several companies that are DEMO bound, where they will be meeting some of the traditional media's most influential players--usually for the first time.
A lesson from Richard could be very valuable. Email him here.
Keith Newsome down in Texas as 9 thoughts on my random thoughts. I really like the piece and wanted to leave a comment, but that function seems to have a problem at the moment. I could click on the word, but it did not jump to a comment input section.
Keith, you said you'll be in the Bay Area and would like to meet some of us bloggers. I think that as good reason as any for us to have a blogger dinner with you as the guest of honor. Give us the dates and we'll see if we can assemble a blogger or two in a tavern where the beer is cheap and the food hardly edible.
Our publisher, John Wiley & Sons, sent me four copies of the Japanese version of Naked Conversations which is apparently just out. This version, published by Nikkei Business Publications, Inc., Japan is interesting, to me, in that it is in paperback with cover around it reads from right to left and from top to bottom on each page.
The only words I can understand are the title and our names.
This is our first translation book. There will be at least two more and seeing it is yet another thrill in what has been a very thrilling path.
[NOTE--Photo added in response to Gabe's comment below. I'll post a professional shot when the publisher sends it.]
These are just a few random thoughts that popped into my mond on a flight home tonight. Each has something to do with posts I've read recently from people who apparently see the blogosphere differently than I do:
1. Law of Diminishing Share.
No blogger can grow at the speed that the blogosphere is expanding. The world’s most popular blogger reaches a smaller percentage of the total blogosphere every day.
2. The buck’s not there.
There are few bloggers making a living, or even rent money, by blogging. Many more improve their livings because of blogging. The same, of course, can be said of people using telephones.
3. Size isn’t relevance. A blog may give you a huge audience but a smaller audience may be more relevant to you and your business. For example,you could have a political blog with only three readers. If they happen to be the heads of the US, China and Russia, you could have great influence on the world. Yet Technorati would rate you as chopped liver.
4. Give to Get.
Blogging is very much like a savings account. The more you contribute, the more you get in return. Like a savings account, it takes a while before you can see measurable returns.
5. It’s the conversation.
The blog is just the latest tool. You can have more conversations with more people in more places with blogs. None of them beat a face to face encounter.
6. Blogging is multi-sensory.
Touch and voice are useful, but eyes and ears are equally valuable.
7. Blogging is like an elephant.
Depending on how and where you touch it you get a different impression of what it's like.
8. ROI is priceless.
Few blogs can be measured by financial returns. The ROI can be measured the same way that you measure the ROI if a press release or the value of earning a reputation for great customer support.
9. Any blogger can be heard.
It happens all the time. Some unknown blogger posts about a spouse being abused in the workplace, or a hole popping out of a plane or a bomb in a London tube and the voice is heard worldwide very quickly. This does not mean every blogger who posts a picture about their cat will be heard. Nor does it mean they should be.
I have not always had the kindest words for Dell and Apple Computer companies, but in the case of the serious issue of laptop batteries bursting into flames, the two companies have behaved in first-rate fashion. They responded to customer complaints. They listened and responded. They explained the source of the problem--Sony in both cases. They warned customers. They are exchanging potentially dangerous batteries for safer ones.
Sony, however has me feeling a bit dubiously. As far as I can tell, they have not issues a press release on the subject. Their is an inconsistency to the state,ments they have issued through Dell and Apple. As CNET reports, Rick Clancy, 'an official company spokesperson' stated in Dell's press releases that Dell had the highest incidents that Sony knew about and that Sony anticipated no more problems. There were six incidents and the first time the two companies discussed the issue was way back in October 2005.
A week later, Apple reported nine incidents had occurred. This time Clancy did not talk about the issue, but once again stated that Sony anticipated no other computer maker anticipates a recall.
We shall see. For me, I cannot help suspect that Sony knew there was a problem and that more incidents had occurred over at Apple when it made its comments. Therefore, i wonder what surprises will come out next week.
I also wonder just what we will learn about how Sony's quality control system went so amiss for a specific period, we are told, to ship 15 exploding batteries and the potential for others among about six million laptop owners. They also have not made clear what they have done to ensure this will not happen again.
In fact, what little I know comes from an apparently candid interview by the US Computer Product Safety Commission, which made the determination of the danger, its source and the recommendation of the two recalls. Two days after Clancy was saying there were no additional recalls anticipated, a commission spokesperson was on NPR hinting strongly that more could be expected.
Even if Clancy was intentionally lying then, I do hope he was telling the truth the second time with Apple. Laptop batteries that go boom on the lap--or on an airplane are anything but funny, and the world is scary enough without further incidents such as these.
I haven't blogged for the past few days, mostly because I've been in the affluent Miami suburb of Coral Gables, a tropical-smelling, Caribbean-influenced place. I was there to work with a company and team I really enjoyed at Scrapblog, who is preparing to launch at DEMO about a month from now.
If you don't know the rules of Chris Shipley's DEMO, where 60-70 companies launch new products and technology twice annually, then you may not realize that the nondisclosure rules are tight prior to the event. Each company get precisely six minutes to present in front of 500-700 product enthusiasts. So I can't tell you much about the new version, but the name "Scrapblog" kind of gives it away. You can see a more primitive version of it here.
The new version is going to be a lot better.
But more than that I like the team and the feel. Carlos Garcia, CEO and founder, is co-founder of Nobox, a successful Puerto Rican interactive advertising agency. At a time when ad dollars are moving to insertion in dead trees to placements on sites, he's in fat city economically, or at least I surmise from our dinner conversations.
At precisely the moment in life when most people are settling in, Carlos is getting out. He's dipped into his own pockets, as well as those of his partners and is starting a Web 2.0 social media company. He is not doing this because he sees a market opportunity, so much as he just feels this is something he has to do.
Well, for the same reason, I've been hearing since Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolscheim told me they had developed workstations, when Sun Microsystems was my first startup--because they couldn't find the tools they wanted to work with so they developed their own and now they want to share them with friends.
In all my years of working with startups, this has been the best reason I've heard and nearly all the success stories I've touched upon over the years have had that component.
In this case, Carlos and his wife Margarita wanted to make scrapbooks of their first-born Lorenzo, now 2, and they wanted to share them online with friends and family. So did the friends and family.
I can't tell you exactly what happened there, without stepping on the NDA, but what I love is the way, Omar Ramos, his soft-spoken lead developer told me they had improved the photo framing feature. "My wife (Lydia) was in the other room shouting because it didn't work right. So I had to fix it to make her happy." It seems the caption balloons got improved in the same way after Margarita expressed the same frustrations with resizing them.
It was just a small project, but this company is playing in so many of the yards where I feel passion: photo-sharing, blogging, social media and startups. Geography prevents that I work with them day-to-day as I like to work with DEMO companies I coach, but I am certainly hoping these guys to well at the conference.
[Note--Photo added after I found it in the wrong folder.]
