--3 Points in a Revolutionary Bitstream
[Charlene Li (l) with Shirley Owyang at Silicon Valley Party. Photo by Shel]
David Weinberger, Charlene LI and I were keynoters at Community 2.0 . It's a bit daunting to follow those two but I think I was pretty well-received anyway. At the break, we were asked to sign books and we were pretty much surprised by a long line that waited patiently to have us sign our works. For any author I've talked with it is always a kick to sign a book, but to do it with David and Charlene made me feel pretty proud.
Someone in the line said, "Wow, the authors of the three seminal social media books in one place at one time." It was a comment that resonated with me. At first I wanted to discount it as overly flattering, But after a few days, I've come to think:
- Cluetrain ignited the fire that caused the revolution. People did not just want to be message targets. They wanted to talk back. We who followed Cluetrain were the insurectionaries generally ignored by the keepers of corporate power.
- Naked Conversations, written in 2005, gave a compelling case for why businesses should use social media. It's followers took the revolution inside the enterprise walls, where small bands of zealots have been spreading the word often with mixed results and great frustration.
- Groundswell presents an understanding of the processes that will normalize social media, taking it to the point beyond conflict and controversy. It is the least revolutionary in tone, but just might be the book that finished the coup the Cluetrain started and Naked spread.
I never quite saw this so clearly until someone made that comment and I feel good about it. I hope sometime the three of us get to speak again, perhaps on the dais at the same time.
