Global Neighbourhoods

Hanging Up on Dell

BusinessWeek adds some depth, texture and insight into why customers increasingly want Dell to go to Hell.  I'm beginning to form a theory.  Dell fought for low price leadership.  Attained it, and are now skating on margins that would submerge them into the Red Sea, if it weren't for shoddy components backed by a shoddier service operation.  It will soon be too late for them to erase the blemishes from their tainted brand.  I write this without glee. Dell is one of technology's greatest stories. Every time I read a new and ugly increment to this story, I want to write Mr. Dell and have him say it isn't so.

Another Controversy over a Dooced Blogger

Form our friend BL Ochman comes the tale of Kelly Kreth, Corporate PR person for Dwelling Quest. She gets fired by starting an anonymous blog trashing the company she is paid to represent. She gets righteously dooced. Kelly feels she was treated unfairly.  I think she should be nominated for a Darwin Award. Yeah, I know, to win you gotta be dead.  In her case maybe they can make an exception.

Why Retail Lags

I've been having a back-channel talk with Dennis Howlett at Bazaarz, a blog focused on European IT. The gist of the matter is around the paucity of large retail blogs.  He wonders why that is and so do I.  Ironically, Dennis is based in France, where we had several good retail stories including Vichy, a L'Oreal division who started a character blog, then made it better and La Fraise, a blog that sells more t-shirts than you can imagine. Over in Japan, you have Nissan selling city cars and P&G enticing housewives to try a new detergent.

But overall, retailers are lagging in blog adoption, particularly in the US where blogging has taken off at the world's most rapid rate. When Robert and I researched Naked Conversations, we only heard "not now, not ever" from two Major entities, both of them among the most prominent retailers in America.  We didn't even bother approaching Wal-Mart because we could not picture them blogging.

Why is that, we wonder.  And we have no definitive answer. Big retail has always lagged in technology or so it seems. It took a very long time before retail chains had PCs on most desktops, and then not until they were tied together with inventory control and purchase data systems. When the Internet came along, Bank of America beat Macy's to having a website by nearly four years.

Part of it is cultural. Macy's really does hate to tell Gimbell's anything.  The fear is that competitors will steal ideas,employees, promotions all sorts of information.  But then, so to large enterprises like Boeing, General Motors, EDS, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, the Dallas Mavericks  and a rising number of other non-retail corporations.

In the end, it is probably a cultural thing. Retailers like to keep card so close to their vests that they become tattoos. Mid-level managers are pressured to keep their eye on the bottom line.  They are not encouraged to take the time to get into blogging as other sectors might.  There's also the question of how interesting the content would be. There is a huge difference between a product manager writing about the struggle to bring something new to market and a shoe department manager explaining why the white shoes are displayed prominently at Easter.

I don't think the top retailers will e the first of sector to blog.  I think it will become the act of a desperate, failing entity such as K-Mart, Sears or another tailspinner.  The blog will be started after all else seems to have failed to bring customers back in.  Upper management, will say, aw screw it, and give some kid a chance to try.  If the blog gets traction, and the blogosphere amplifies it, then the press will notice it. Next, mainstream media will report on this odd but interesting blog.

The one day, someone at WalMart, Target or Costco will notice that the blogging companies just gained back a quarter point in a certain category, and they determine they had better start to blog as well.

Perhaps this will all happen.  Perhaps not. We shall see.

What can a PR Pro Do?

In Chapter 7, "Survival of the Publicists," we stated that PR practitioners, who adhere to  may find themselves in a new career in the restaurant service industry. As a recovering publicist, I wrote those words without joy.  We advocated that communications practitioners need to now listen and respond rather than command and control.

We interviewed a bunch of top-notch PR pros like Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson and Richard Edelman, who talked about how they had adapted their professions because of blogging.  Some disagreed with us on just how disruptive blogging is, but not as strongly as we had thought they would.

Since completing Naked Conversations, we've talked to other top level PR agency folk and they quietly acknowledge that they are in what is gently called a transformative stage.

In retrospect, Chapter 7 would have been a stronger if we had ended it with a list of specific ways that agencies and corporate communications departments can change. We should have tried addressing:

• What does the PR agency of the future look like?
• How does PR improve its tainted image?
• What specific tactics should be abandoned.
• What new tactics should be installed?
• If the press release is dead, what replaces it?
• If PR operatives need to transition from gate-keepers to facilitators, how is this implemented?

Please give me your thoughts.

Felicity: Character Blog or Cool History Teacher?

In Naked Conversations Chapter 10, "Doing it Wrong," we took a dim view of character blogs, where fictional characters are created to either to deceive or entertain readers. We argued that it was impossible to be either transparent or authentic when being asked to reply to a cartoon moose as you are over at Moosetopia. But we also fell short of saying, "not now, not ever" for character blogs, instead we wrote:

"New people are bringing new ideas that extend blogging. Some changes are spawned by technology innovation; others by new participants addressing new or old topics with fresh voices. The rules are changing because no one, thankfully, has the power to enforce them."

Shortly after the chapter was locked up, a fan of the newest Star Wars movies, started the Darthside, a character blog that we had to admit was kind of cool. We started thinking that there may be a place for character blogs, even as marketing tools.  It was just that none that existed was either to our liking or to the liking of the people we most listen to.

Yesterday Business Blog Consulting drew my attention to the new Felicity Blog in which an American girl doll blogs historic characters on her blog character blog. The target audience is young girls.  The purpose is to sell dolls to them.  The effect is that the blog series gives a compelling series of lessons in American history.

This hit a second nerve in me.  All my life I've wondered why our teaching makes most learning boring.  History is our story.  It is filled with excitement, conflict and lessons for today.  In school kids learn the mundanities of dates and titles. The Felicity Blog seems to me to be a better way to teach history.

And if along the way, the company sells a few dolls to children, it is a fair price to pay or so it seems to me. 

More Business Cases Wanted

Okay, business cases for our book are locked up and nothing more can be added. But every day something new is happening and this site wants to keep reporting on the subject of what businesses are doing alive.  I'm interested in hearing about more business cases.  My hope is to interview people, then publish the results of the interview on this site.

Please let me know any cases you think are either interesting or useful. Feel free to nominate your own companies. 

BMW is Podcasting

Neville Hobson reports that BMW is podcasting about a new model from an auto show.  This is very interesting to me, because BMW, at one time, considered interviewing uis about their blogging plans for Naked Conversations, then withdrew with the statement, "We assure you, we are watching very,very closely."  I'm glad to see them moving from the voteur phase to the particpation phase.

Galley Proofs Status

Lance at Maine Coast Design is one of a few Naked Conversations galley reviewers who's asking what the process is, and the answer is we aren't precisely sure.  Someone from Wiley is supposed to contact you about an address for mailing and then ship it two you in about two weeks time.  We do not have a precise date.

If you have not heard from them by Oct 7 or so, please email me and I will check into it.

Salute to Scoble

Robert Scoble has been my partner on Naked Conversations since December 2004, and it has been one of my most fulfilling business partnerships.  Close up, Robert is very much as you probably perceive him to be through his blogs.  He is passionate and knowledgeable. He is sometimes off the wall and has no problem admitting it.  He knows more about the experience of blogging for a business than anyone else I know.  He has a vision of how blogging stitches together with traditional business practices.  He has more goodwill toward people than I could ever muster. He is insufferably geeky. He’s funny and devoid of self-importance.

He is one of a kind, and maybe that’s why so many people appreciate him so much.

I keep hearing that Robert is telling people that I deserve more credit than him on this book, because I did most of the writing, which is true.  But the book is what it is, because of what Robert knew already.  The great interviews we landed, were because people knew Robert—not me—and trusted him.  The tips and guidelines are Robert’s thinking. It was Robert’s idea to start this blog and he actually did it without my knowledge, consent—orat the time—appreciation.  But he was right.  This blog gave us great stories, corrected our facts, told me when my writing went over the top, helped us find our 14th and final title.

Robert, I could never, NEVER have done this book without you.  You are a blogosphere knowledge center, and I began this project merely as a reporter.

Thanks so much for taking the risk of working with me.

Katrina & Rita Stalking Ernie?

Ernie, the Attorney, who Naked Conversations covered in our Chapter on "Consultants Who Get it," had to evacuate New Orleans, a harrowing experience that he blogged by relaying SMS messaging to a friend in Florida. It took two tries, but he got out of harm's way. That was the good news.  The bad news is that he relocated to Houston.

The next good news is his law form a few days ago, assigned him to a case in Baton Rouge. The bad news is that the people who put him up in Houston are having trouble getting out as Ernie relates in this blog. They are having the same ordeal Ernie had in New Orleans.  They tried to get out of harm's way, but the highways are jammed and they turned back to home.

Ernie recently got divorced.  It must be nice to have Katrina and Rita apparently following him around wherever he goes.

Talk of Ojos in Demo Hallways

I had been contracted by Ojos to help them get ready to present at DemoFall, which ended yesterday. While they may have been ready, there product was not and they elected to skip the prestigious conference and use a blog-based word of mouth strategy to start raising awareness of their auto-tagging technology. Briefly, a computer cannot tell that this is a photo of your Aunt Bertha until you tell it to do so. With Ojos, when it's ready, you'll be able to tell the service this is your Aunt, and Ojos will be able to find all other publicly available pictures of her.

Digital photography was among the subjects often discussed at all the social gatherings at Demo.  There were a few very promising technologies including FilmLoop launched  at the conference that were well received.

But, I was pleased to notice, I heard more word-of-mouth talk of Ojos, than about the companies who actually were there, usually from people who did not know I connected with them.

Why is this relevant to Naked Conversations? Because the only thing that Ojos has going right now is word-of-mouth generated by Munjal Shah's surprisingly candid blog and by Tara Hunt's roguish blog. They don't yet have a product and have not yet released to beta.  They have spent no money on marketing programs. Their website is not ready for prime time yet nor is it even close. The team members are being tight-lipped about  the technology and patents filed.

But just because of a couple of blogs they seem to have already captured the awareness and enthusiasm of people who care about digital photography. That is a real testimony to the power of blogging for startups who cannot afford the vast fortunes required by traditional consumer marketing campaigns.

Conversational Presentations

I’m just back from the DemoFall Conference and am just starting to process the experience of watching 63 hopeful early stage companies strut their stuff in six minute launch presentations on a dias in front of 500 people including most of the world's most influential press.  I’ve watched hundreds of companies present over the years.  In those years, Ive seen many of the same mistakes made year-after-year in company after company.

I'm not sure what it is about getting up on stage, but some people, perfectly intelligent and authentic professionals for one reason or another assume the position of a stuffed suit whenever they take a stage.  Maybe it's the way they get media-trained by people who advise them to tell the audience what they are going to do, then do it the review what they have done. They must think this audience of professionals, assembled because of shared knowledge of and passion for technology is going forget these points in a six-minute span. These speakers also like to to string three adjectives in front of every technology-related noun.  You can’t just have "security software," for example, it has to be safe, secure and customer-tested. The same speakers seem to also be overly fond of the word "imagine," before telling us that their new product is what we've been dreaming of which, thank the DemoGods, has never been the case.

Presentations are about conversations, and as in blogging people should get as naked as possible.  By that I mean that they should stop covering their demonstrations in contrivances and just talk to the audience as they would a trusted collegue. 

Just show us your new baby and let us decide for ourselves if we think it is a beautiful child. Chances are it will put the audience on your side.  And being approachable means that you can learn a great deal by listening to what your audience thinks, rather than telling them what they should think.

Robert & Shel at Les Blogs II

Loic Le Meur's 2nd Les Blogs is scheduled in Paris for Dec. 5 & 6.  Loic who heads Six Apart in Europe has asked Robert and I to speak.  It is the first time we've been asked to be on the dais together and we are both honored because Loic is assembling such an awesome group of speakers, including:

• Mark Rogers, CEO, Market Sentinel
• Fegus Burns, CEO, Nooked
• Scott Rafer, CEO, Feedster
• Jan Ni, Nokia Lifeblog
• Steve Olechowsky, CTO & co-founder, Feedburner
• Philipe Borremans, External Communications, IBM Belgium & Luxembourg
• Roy Lindeman, Country manager, Readspeaker
• Bob Wyman, CTO & co-founder, PubSub
• Jeff Clavier, Soft Tech VC
• Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void
• David Sifry, Technorati
• Rebecca MacKinnon, GlobalVoices

Hope to see you there.

EnglishCut in New York Times

EnglishCut and Thomas Mahon and   are covered nicely today in the Sunday New York Times.  GapingVoid's Hugh MacLeod is a partner in EnglishCut and he had told me about this hit when we covered EnglishCut for the book, but we were under NDA.  Hugh also told me this morning that he was speaking at LesBlogs in Paris this December and so am I.  It will be nice meeting him face to face and tearing the town apart. By then, the business cards I ordered from him should have finally arrived.

Personal v. Private

The last few weeks, I've been talking to a good number of people who are contemplating blogging, either for business or on a personal level.  I've heard a great deal of discomfort about "telling all my personal stuff," or, "essentially, I'm a very private person."

First off, by blogging, I can assure you, you do not lose the right to remain silent. I knowof no blogger who reveals everything about themselves, their family and their work. Some matters are best left private, and when people start blogging, they should not get swept away in all the talk about transparency and authenticity.

Some things should remain private, but that does not prevent you from getting closer and more personal with your readers than the marketing and legal departments traditionally have.  The idea is to show the world that you are a real person, with real fallibilities and passion about the topics you cover. You need to show us enough flesh and blood, so that we know you are trusted as a human, rather than a borg-like unit of a robotic global enterprise.

You need to use language that sounds like you, when you are talking with a professional friend. And you need to reveal about yourself only to the level of your personal comfort.  For example, Scoble reveals a lot more personal stuff than I choose to reveal about myself. We both reveal enough to readers that they know we sometimes disagree as partners, occassional to a very high degree.  But we also reveal our respect for each other's judgement.

When you are trying to decide what's personal and publishable, and what's private and not, keep in mind that blogging exploded because of a general discontent with and disbelief in CorpSpeak, language inflated by marketed and obfuscated by the legal department.

Corrante President Stowe Boyd has named his blog "Get Real" and we think itis good advice to any blogger.

 

Story Telling v. Product Selling

My intuitive friend Dave Taylor had an interesting recent post post called "Don't sell me a product. Tell me a story. Of course this also plays into Seth Godin's excellent, "All Marketers are Liars." I violently agree with the concept that the best way to market is to tell a story, rather than sell, sell, sell.

But as I commented over at Dave's blog, I don't think the concept goes far enough in expressing the essential impact of story-telling.  As Yossi Vardi told Robert and me back in Naked Conversations Chapter 3 (Word of Mouth on Steroids), our culture is conversational.  We have been telling each other stories ever since we were huddle together in caves, using berries and blood to paint pictures before we had languages to tell stories. Religion, history--nearly every aspect of every human culture is built on story-telling. 

Story-telling is very powerful stuff.  We retain the essence of simple stories, well-told much longer than we recall the three key point in a PowerPoint stack.  When I cover conferences for Conferenza, the most popular speakers were not the pontificators, but the story narrators.  Malcolm Gladwell was our favorite last year.  He was selling his book, but he didn't talk much about his book.  Instead he told audiences the story of designing the Aeron Chair and zesty Prego Spaghetti.  I loved the stories so much, I just couldn't wait to read the book.

When I look back at the making of Naked Conversations, I still wonder how people will receive the list, tips and guidelines crammed into its pages.  But I have very high confidence that The stories we tell, of over 100 business bloggers are powerful stuff.  And the stories we tell is what will convince new people to start blogging.

Galley Reviewers AtLarge selected

Thanks to all of you who offered to review the Naked Conversations galley proofs.  Below are 21 people we have selected to review.  Sis of were on a previous list that Robert and I had compiled and sent to John Wiley & Sons, our publisher.  We have left them on this list, because by stepping up as volunteers, the least we can do is give them a link.  Our thanks to you all who offered to help.

• Ken Yarmosh
• Richard Dudley
• BL Ochman 
• Michael McLaughlin
• Jill Fallon
• Andrew Watson
• Chris Shipley
• Blaine Moore
• Alun John
• Jack Nork
• Paul Morriss
• Toby Getsch
• Adrian W. Kinglsey-Hughes
• Tom Raftery
• Bud Bilanich
• Angela Booth
• Jozef Imrich
• Tris Hussey
• Lance Dutson
• Randy Holloway
• Buzz Bruggeman

Thanks to you all and please be kind.

I'm speaking at The Blogging Enterprise

The Blogging Enterprise is a day-long conference in Austin Nov. 2 that will explore blogging, podcasting and video podcasting and their potential benefits and value in building brands, educating prospects, making sales and cultivating customer loyalty. Attendees will depart with new ideas and a better sense for how to implement this new technology successfully.

It's produced by Zone Read Ventures' Paul Walker who also produces South by Southwest (SXSW), which was one of this year's most talked about interactive multimedia conferences.  I'm honored that Paul has asked me to speak. I chatted with him for nearly an hour last week and he impressed me in a great number of ways. 

Galley Reviewers Wanted

In a few weeks Naked Conversations will be in "galley form." I love this old-fashioned term that goes back to cold print newspaper days.  In fact, the book galleys are completely computerized and have been for a few decades.  They produce a paper version of the book, that Robert and I get to prooofread, delete or add a paragraph here or there.

The publisher sends it to book reviewers who will have a great deal of impact over the future of our book. So will some of you. Robert and I have created a list of influential bloggers we will ask to read the galley version and if they choose--post a review of it. We have held back 15 Galleys for volunteers who would like an early look at the book and who will then tell others what they think of it.

If you'd like to be among the 15 Galley reviewers "at large," please leave a comment here, or just email me.

The Next Step in the Book Story

We have complete the Fact Checking portion of the book.  The next step is for Paula and me to hop on a jet tomorrow morning and go to Puerto Vallarta for five days of battery recharging in sun and sea and sailing.

That funny sound you here in the background is me gloating.  I may bloig while I'm down there.  Then again, maybe I won't.

The Long Trail

That is not a typo in the headline.  I am a believer in the LongTail concept of Wired magazine's Chris Andersen and I find his blog often brilliant. But I'm talking about something that I perceive of as the a long trail, and it is rel event to any emerging market.

First the metaphor part.  Picture, if you will, a comet.  The front of it is brilliant and solid and stunning.  It's brightness makes it perceived ac cross many light years. Behind it there is a very long trail. It doesn't shine so brightly.  It doesn't get the oohs and ahs of the front end of the comet, but it is vastly larger.  It contains more particle matter and is in a great many ways more enduring that the front of the comet which is destined inevitable to burn itself out.

Blogging is right now exists exclusively in the glorious front end.  The trail is just forming. It is filled with businesses and people in all sorts of places and of a great many ilks.  They are the future of blogging.  They may not burn as brightly, but they will endure for a very long time.

Things that are exciting eventually become expected.  Things that are new and worthwhile eventually become systems in place.  The most exciting results of experimentation and creativity eventually become the tried and proven "best practices" of large incumbent companies.

This must happen if a phenomenon is to endure. The good news is at about that time something new and glorious comes along.

All these thoughts have been gushing through me today because I got asked to speak about best practices in blogging.  There aren't any.  There won't be any until blogging moves into the long trail, and by then, many of us will have moved along into the next wave of innovation.

Nipper Says Thanks the Old-Fashioned Way

http://nip.blogs.com/patent

Steve Nipper is a Boise-based attorney who helped us with IP issues when this project got started.  We then covered him in our Chapter on consultants who get it.  A couple of weeks ago I sent some business his way. From my perspective it was the other party, not Nipper who was getting the favor.

What blew me away was when I received a hand-written Thank You note from Steve in the good old-fashioned snail-mail. I don't see many of those any more. In this age of instant, global, scalable communications, an old fashioned note is most gracious indeed.

Return to the Red Couch

Tomorrow Scoble will be dropping by to discuss a few upcoming Naked Conversation issues.  But the main event is that he and I will be posing for the book jacket photo on my red couch. Mine is actually the stand-in red couch. When I flew to Seattle last year to pitch Robert on this project, I sat on his brand new red couch, which has since starred at Gnomedex, and was a runner up for the title of this book. When it looked like Red Couch would be the title, my wife Paula ran out to buy us a red slipcover which will now be the backdrop for the two fully clothed authors.

The photographer is my good friend Jeff Spirer, who I met when he was VP marketing at Virtual Vineyards, my forst Internet startup client. Jeff has an eye for the bizarre, which make Robert and me ideal subjects for him.

Publisher's Fact Checker

The writing part of the Naked Conversations is completed, but the work continues on a daily basis.  I love just about every aspect of this book-writing business, except the current one.  We are in the fact checking phase. In this phase a John Wiley & Son employee, whom I will probably never meet or talk with goes through every word and phrase, checks every link and views what I've written with the suspicion of a class action lawyer and the diction of my old City Room editor in the days when I was a star obit and weather reporter for the old Boston Herald Traveler.

There's this tendency to want to strangle these challenges and cross checks.  I have the authority to ignore each one of them, but just before I get too dismissive.  I discover that a link that I had submitted is indeed broken or I had actually spelled the last name of Intel's CEO wrong. In short, this guy may be annoying me, and he would probably dislike some of the epitaphs I've muttered about him under my breath in the past few days.  But in the end he's like you blogosphere denizens. He's making the book more accurate and that is what really matters.

I don't know this guys name.  But thanks.  And thanks to Wiley for giving me a hard-nosed, suspicious and slightly cantankerous guy, to make Naked Conversations a better book