Global Neighbourhoods

2 New Blogs Credit NC. One Makes Us Proud

Something very gratifying has started to happen.  Several times in the past few weeks people have emailed me to say that they read Naked Conversations, then started a blog. I've received two in the past 24 hours and one of them makes me proud to have played a role in getting it going.

The Liverpool National Museums blog is a wonderful, friendly thing that shows you the breadth and humanity that blogging can communicate.  A most recent post shows a musical instrument that merges a wind instrument with a prettily enameled toilet--not something you see everywhere.  One down shows kids marching in a band and so on. You read a few of them and you get the idea that the Liverpool museum folk have a lot of things going that are interesting. My thanks to Billy Fallows, the museum editorial director who gave me the heads up and said our book helped him to get started.

I wish I could say the same about the new Yahoo Corporate Blog, which author Nicki Dugan wrote me about yesterday.  She too, said NC played a role in shaping the blog.  But I think, it must have played a very small role because the blog ignores much of the advice we give. 

It is called Yodel, which seems appropriate. Yodelers play with echos, and this blog links only to other Yahoo blogs, at least so far.  I went to the About page to see who Nicki was and found myself on the static website About page that told me all about Yahoo's founders. Nicki, writes in the voice of a corporate "we," rather than in the first person voice we so strongly advocate. Another site blogger has written that she is a senior corporate communications person and I have no trouble believing it. I don't have a problem with that, so long as she makes it transparent who she is and where she's coming from. There is also a video clip on the site, which didn't work for me--but i seem to be having trouble with tech ever where these days, so someone else needs to verify whether it works or not.

What Yodel needs to do is to join other people's conversations if it wants other people to join theirs. This blog is about corporate blogging as much as any blog site is.  It also is about communities, a subject that should be very dear to Yahoo. So it surprised me that, in my dialog with Nicki, it became obvious that she does not read it.  She explained she has been too busy starting Yodel.

Perhaps she'll catch this one. She should also check out the Liverpool Museum blog to see how it's done properly.

I've said this before. Large organizations will mostly start blogs in a lame and cautious fashion.  People like me should not be overly harsh because some of these blogs will get better over time. Its just that Yahoo should know better and be better, if their desire to be the center of Internet communities is to use the miracle of conversations in a bidirectional sort of way that benefits the community.

Your Visa is Approved. Here's your Spam

I never needed a travel visa until this microworld tour. Now I need them to get into China, India and Vietnam. I learned that instead of having to go each country's consulate there are service companies that take you passport then walk through the process for you. At a few hundred dollars for the expedited service I need, it's not cheap; but it is worth it.

Still the sidebars are interesting.

China and Vietnam take only a day here in the US. But India requires six days.  The other two countries have one-page forms. India has two and needs to know my father's name and birthplace.

Up in Toronto, Rick only needs one day to clear India as well as the others.  What gives? My friend Gibu Thomas, who has been helping me better understand India for this trip may have the answer. He is an Indian citizen, holding a US green card who has been here for years. Whenever he tries to travel, the US government makes the process impossible. When he graduated Stanford several years ago, he could not go to Europe with his American friends because our immigration folk made it impossible.

So, Gibu speculates, "maybe it's comeuppance."

But the India anomaly is really small potatoes compared with the odd coincidence I've had with China. My visa service let's me track progress via their website, sort of like FedEx.  My visa was approved for China last Thursday.

On Friday, I started getting all sorts of spam email from inside China.  It was very targeted, offering me deals on hotels, tours and a pass into a couple of tech conferences going on while I was in the country.

I can think of no explanation other than someone in the consulate is selling or sharing names and data. Of course, it's probably entirely legal and my data has probably done nothing more than move from one Chinese government office to the next.

I'm glad the US IRS doesn't work that way, but on the other hand, I'm not certain that it doesn't.

Maybe we'll call it the Microworld Tour

Rick Segal and I met for seven hours yesterday to finalize plans for our world tour. In the end, we have decided to go to fewer countries and to spend longer time in the ones we visit.  This of course means a lot fewer flights and more time on the ground meeting people, getting sense of cultures by walking through neighborhoods and seeing sites that we may never get the chance to see again.

When you think of connected technology, the world is indeed a faster, smaller place.  But when you drill into a map and you think of the people you meet and the places you go, the trip we had originally envisioned would require a year or more.

We always knew it would be a survey tour, that both Rick and I saw it as a way to start conversations, that some of those conversations may last for many years. But if we try to cover too much ground, then even out "Blink" visits, would not give us enough insight and understanding into what's happening in the neighborhoods where we do not hang out.

With that being said, it remains an awesome trip and an imminent one. In 9 days we will wheels up from Toronto and San Francisco to meet at an airport gate in Japan.  From there we fly to Beijing. Here's the final schedule, complete with some adjustments still to come:

• 8.13-20 China.  Trip includes visits to several cities. These include Hong Kong, Shanghai and at least one other.
• 8.20-23. Thailand.  Visit Bangkok and Phuket. Visit a tech farm. Also swim.
• 8.24-27.  Vietnam.  Visit Ho Chi Minh City, a place I went to great lengths to avoid in my youth. We're meeting with Internet entrepreneurs.
• 8.28-9.2 India. Visit Bombay, Bangalore & other cities to be determined.
• 9.3 Helsinki.  We hear the food and view are great.
• 9.4,5 Estonia.  Meet with VCs, Skype executives, entrepreneurs and investors--all thanks to Ross Mayfield. Visit 12th century Medieval City.
• 9.6.  Shel to Stockholm for business meeting.  Rick to Amsterdam to wander aimlessly in Wondelpark.
• 9.7-8 Regroup with Rick in Dublin. Survey Trinity College and historic pubs. Meet series of entrepreneurs as guests of Enterprise Ireland.
• 9.7-8 People's Republic of Cork. Blogger Party at Taste of Thailand. 9.8 Meet individual entrepreneurs.
• 9.10-12 Rome.  Check out connectivity in Colosseum. Speak to Italian entrepreneurs in America Embassy. Meet with entrepreneurs.

To those of you we had hoped to see like Dennis Howlett in the UK and Nicole Simon in Germany, I express my regrets and can only say, "See you next time." The world is a bigger place than I had thought.

Plumber Blogger Has Strong Flow

When we wrote Naked Conversations, we searched the blogosphere for a blogging plumber. It didn't actually have to be a plumber.  We wanted to find a local merchant, craftsman or contractor who had the smarts to blog, to show their knowledge and passion for what it is they did for a living.

Since the book a few examples have emerged, such as Tinbasher sheet metal worker's blog or even the Envirolet Compost Toilet folk, but we never did find our plumber until after the book was completed.  That was until about two days before I went to Boise for a speaking engagement.  That's when Retired Geezer, a cantankerous but charming character proclaimed he had started a blogging plumber blog.  By coincidence, he was in Boise, and planning to be at what turned out to be a great blogging dinner.  The Geezer was a lot of fun and he told me how he was really a sprinkler installer but that was pretty close, I thought when I wrote about it here.

But I had the feeling that the Geezer had too much twinkle in his eye and too many of his friends were listening to our chat too closely. I felt that he was putting me on.

And he was.  While there's a sprinkling of sprinkler work going on, it has emerged into a fun-loving and popular group blog.  The counter says that it has had 41,000 visitors in just four months, and now there's lamentation that they are too busy working to do much blogging.

Well, I'm glad my faith in this nice retired guy helped get the blog kick-started. I'm even glad the guys in Boise had a nice chuckle at the expense of this Californian.

But if you happen to live in Boise and you have an emergency plumbing problem, I suggest you use Google Local or Yellow Pages online.