Biggest (Smallest?) Prick Award...

In the conversation about the 53 guys and 1 woman (climbing now to 3 I hear tell) presenting at Office 2.0, I would like to present the winners of my Biggest Smallest Prick Award. Let's name names so that they may bask in the glow of their own lameness:

+++++++++++++++++++

THIRD PLACE--BRONZE

When my five-year-old daughter grows up and becomes an Oracle sysadmin (fingers crossed!), it’ll be because I started teaching her how to write stored procedures in the womb, not because some conference organizer was pressured into using his conference to “promote diversity”. Jeez. -- Comment by Jeffrey — September 1, 2006 @ 6:02 pm

SECOND PLACE

… gee .. .how do I invite you now, Robert? Will you dress up as woman for us? Joke apart, sending email in a minute… and hope to see you there. -- Comment by Zoli Erdos — September 1, 2006 @ 8:51 pm

AND THE WINNER!!!!!

Sadly to say Robert, when you engage the castration crowd, you ain’t never gonna win an argument. Not even come close. -- Comment by Dennis Howlett — September 2, 2006 @ 2:17 pm

++++++++++++++++

WOW those are really dumb things to say!

And yet, I find myself inspired. If I were the least bit gifted in graphics, which I am not, the women speaking at O2.0 would be wearing a cafe press shirt, featuring two...err...nuggets with a C in each one, and the slogan: Brought to you by... and it DOESN'T stand for Creative Commons.

But this will have to suffice.

Tags: Castration Crowd, Tech, Business, PR, Marketing, Web2.0, Conferences, Office 2.0, Castration Crowd = Powered by Qumana

Got VoIP?

On the topic of conferences, Ken Camp's looking for The Women of VoIP to step forward for an upcoming conference.

Ken check out the speaker's wiki on Social Text. I've bee looking it over today. A lot of good people in there, though it's more cumbersome to use than a good database would be.

Tags: women, VoIP, Internet, Technology, Business, Blogging, Conference, Ken Camp = Powered by Qumana

Unfuck to Stowe Boyd

A lot is passing between and among bloggers on blog and through email and telephone regarding the Office 2.0 Conference, which, until today had only one woman represented among the 53 "visionaries" scheduled to speak.

You can follow the other blogs and comments to get up to speed on developments re: the conference leaders. Good news--earnest outreach to highly qualified women speakers has begun, and I believe the speakers list is beginning to show that speaking up made a difference this time.

It wouldn't have without Stowe Boyd, though. What a class act. Guys and women, you could do a lot worse than to watch how Stowe comports himself around the tech space and its most complex issues, NOT just around women, but around his clients, his thinking, his reviews of new technology, his dealings with colleagues and competitors, his humanness. He is transparent and open, not afraid to call bullshit when he sees it, and he has both shown and earned respect from the folks who know him well.

Without Stowe in this discussion, it would have gone nowhere, because Ismael, the conference organizer, could not get past his own condescending 'but but but's and focused initially on feeling put-upon and wronged, and also upset that I "attacked" Stowe. With Stowe's counsel, I think Ismael's getting there.

AND ON THAT ISSUE, Stowe wasn't attacked. Stowe was confronted online by a friend over a public issue that matters to her. My fuck-off to Stowe was not a reflection of his character, for crying out loud, but a HELLO to his supporting and brandishing that Office 2.0 graphic on his sidebar knowing that it was linking to an all-male (sorry, one woman), 53-person "sausage party" somehow put together without due diligence on making the conference even a TEEEENY bit inclusive.

This attack bullshit has GOT to stop.

Piling on to PROTECT people when arguments arise on important topics may seem "civil" and "polite," but it's really quite slimy. I don't bother stating my opinion unless I'm ready to discuss it. When I wrote what I wrote, I knew exactly what I meant and why. I was relatively sure Stowe would too. I'm pretty sure Ross and Paul did too.

I have even more respect for Stowe today than I did a couple of weeks ago, not because he decided that YES they could do better, but because he took my Fuck You, he took it like a friend, he wasn't afraid of it because it came from a female, and he responded NOT with blogdom's new favorite "hey, that was an ad hominem" or "are you playing the gender card?" cop-outs. Instead he responded with one simple phrase that made real discussion possible:

                              "Fuck me."

You see, Stowe met me there. Fuckin'-a, THAT is special. THAT's how real conversation between men and women and women and women and me and men and grown-ups in general drills down into meaningful stuff.

We meet each other there. I put my foot on a stair, you put yours there too, we walk down together.

Forget the pomp. Blow the circumstance. Meet me and help me meet you.

Thank you, Stowe Boyd.

Tags: Stowe Boyd, Office 2.0, Diversity, Gender, Blogging, Web2.0, Tech, Marketing, Conferences = Powered by Qumana

Your Balls Are in Your Court

When so many male colleagues line up together against you, by the very assemblage of their smiling faces, and after so long online, it dismisses your work, makes you feel like the net is a joke. And if not the entire net, then what we as women have accomplished professionally online -- or think we have accomplished.

Shelley pretty much nails what's wrong with this picture.

The only thing I have to add is a shout out to the men who have been promoting this conference -- those who full well know the speaker page is littered with 53 men and no (Shelley says one--I don't see her) woman.

Fuck You.

Especially to those on the list I consider friends, I say, Fuck You.

Yes, you Stowe, and you Ross, and you Jeff, and you Paul and the rest of you.

If we were standing in a bar and you pulled out this Office 2.0 hard-copy pamphlet and said to me, "Hey, I'm supporting this Office 2.0 thing by speaking there--have a look," I would have opened it, read it, and looked you in the eye and asked, "You're kidding, right?" Then you'd say, "No, my picture and name are right there--my brand. It's co-branded."

And I would say: FUCK YOU.

After Tara's more gentle attempt failed to elicit anything but the ever-famous lamest excuse on the net -- "Well, what should we do? Where are the women speakers?" I turned away in disgust. But I had to turn back for a minute just to say, Fuck you.

Then I saw Shelley ask the men of Office 2.0 what needs to be done, and I had to add my advice:

They need to NOT GO and say why.

Reschedule the motherfucker. Meet some women. Learn something. Tell the advertisers, "Our bad. We thought it was 1906, not 2006. Ooops!" The donate the money they paid you to the breast cancer society in the sponsoring company's name and start over.

Give them free ads on the new Office 2.0.2 conference site. Show that you give a damn.

But if you stand up at this conference with its current lineup and take the economic advantages that come along there, then Fuck you guys. And I'm not giving you the "Unfuck" sign until you say or do something meaningful.

Already book your travel? Tough titties--meet your friends there and play golf. Go drop off a $50 check at a battered women's shelter. Go take some books or videos to The Children's Hospital. But for crying out loud, don't touch that stage.

Think my approach is too unilateral, then do what Shelley suggests. Ask the big boys what can be done in their estimation:

Ask them directly, these men who go to this conference: what should we do?

Ross Mayfield (speaker profile), you’re hosting the list of potential women speakers from the last set of discussions on this..what should we do?

Stowe Boyd (speaker profile), you’ve been vocal in your condemnation of other conferences that have so few women…what should we do?

Michael Arrington (speaker profile), you profess to want to bring back ‘core values’ into weblogging. Aren’t fairness and equality and diversity core values? Aren’t they, perhaps, the most important core values? If so, what should we women do?

Marc Orchant (speaker profile), you wrote about this for ZD Net, and mentioned about C/Net being a sponsor. I have to wonder how C/Net feels about being associated with a conference that has such an obvious bias against women. Do you know the answer? Can you tell us what women need to do differently?

David Young, your conference photo shows you with your daughter, and your profile says you have two daughters. Do you want them to have an equal opportunity to participate in the web of the future? Rather than increasing in numbers and visibility, we’re actually losing ground in this brave new world. By the time your daughters are in college, at the rate we’re going now, women will make up less than 10% in the fields related to the web and the internet. As a father of daughters, how do you feel about this? What do you think we need to do differently?

Yah, huh?

Tags: Office 2.0, Stowe Boyd, Ross Mayfield, Paul Kedrosky, Women 2.0, BlogHer, Blog Sisters, Shelley Powers, Tara Hunt = Powered by Qumana

dual diagnosis

kind of is insane this thing we do here, especially if you have clients both in web 2.0 and NOT in Web 2.0 (yes, virginia, there still are tech clients that don't give a flip about Web 2.0 and some are called enterprises). I have been walking that surly fence of on and offline clients with amazing ease and results, but it's getting harder because the same personal work systems that let me live online beside my web 2.0 clients are the very systems i have to avoid in order to get work done for my offline clients.

it would be easier to say i'm only going to take web 2.0 clients. it would also be stupider.

i have my risk and opportunities, as you might say, well balanced; i am diversified, and may God keep me thusly. because at the end of the day, i never want my bubble here to burst, to resent this place -- my home, my friends, my colleagues who i have lived with online for years and years here if it all doesn't last forever. I want to love being, just being here, without an agenda or a single opportunity, without noise and hubub and proclamations of great features and big things. first and always i come to the net for you. 

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Meta Meta Splog Hell

A screen grab from the site of the splogger who is using the site feed + header from this blog to make ad $ off me (here's the meta part) which features my post about the splogger who is using the site feed + header from this blog to make ad $ off me.

Therein proving once again that the Web 2.0 shark has not yet BEGUN to be jumped.

And a question: how long til RSS can carry -- say a return loop of -- currency? Micropayments or something. Because if RSS could deliver currency, Mr. Thief and I could be talkin. Is paypal experimenting with RSS and currency? Anyone?

Tags: splogs, advertising, google adsense, RSS, marketing, web2.0, tech, blogging, ethics, content, thuggery = Powered by Qumana

Does anyone else have the bird flu?

I mean, it's been like 12 days, and we've been on everything from (combined list of meds across family partipants): albuterol+pulmacort treatments, levaquin, clindimycin, omnicef, methylprednisone, prednisone, saline squirts, tylenol chest, and i think i threw in a percocet at one point.

percentage better? 17%.

progress not perfection?

expectorate not congestion?

fuggit.

Tags: august, back to school, sick and tired = Powered by Qumana

Creditizing Advertising

i just had this quick brain freeze where i was thinking why not have an advertising model where we put ads on our blogs with some trusted provider (hey qumana!), and THEY hook up with an amazon thing or a i dunno some cool ecommerce names or online shopping sites, and then let me DIRECT my ad revenue where I can use it like paypal $. BUT give me a little more if i do it that way.

so what am i trying to say.

i am SO coming down off steroids.

OK I AM AWAKE now, later: So I'm saying why not have an ad engines give us a BIGGER percentage of the ad revenue back if we re-spend the money we've earned with one of their partners -- i dunno have some cool niche partners, or have the big boys like amazon.

So like, let's say you might get $20 for a run of google ad sense ads, but google takes a big piece--do we know how much? i don't use them here, but let's keep going with that thought--and anyway way, google says, okay if you RESPEND your ad revenue before we ever have to bother sending it to you, and if you RESPEND it with our premier partners amazon, or basillovers or toysrforshit or whoever, then you don't have $20 to spend, but you have $25!

And suddenly we're shopping FROM the ad engine and bringing money in TO the ad engine, right from our blogs, and the ads on our blogs become little mini transaction centers and shopping hubs.

i'm rambling. i am SO coming off steroids.

i feel nauseated.

Tags: advertising, google ad sense, blogging, tech, web2.0, business model, advertising, marketing = Powered by Qumana

You don't have to be a list to be splogged.

The Head Lemur called last night while Jenna and I asthmad our way through Target. When the Lemur calls, it's never boring. THL (like KFC, now ubercrunchy) never says, Hey what's up? What's new? No. He rips open the receiver as soon as you say Hello.

"TWO THINGS!" he says, and then he proceeds to leap and thrash through the day's Very Important Issues like a feral cat trapped in a dumpster.

SO last night he tells me about this Splog Guy who is scraping our content (his, mine, Doc's, and a few gazillion other people) into these city-based splogs, and collecting the Google ad sense money from them.

I've said about other sites that incorporate my RSS feed, as long as they aren't making money off my content or reframing it within a context I don't like I'm okay with it. What you can't do is aggregate it onto a site AND SELL ADS or in any other way profit from it if you're not giving me a piece. If you wish to make ad revenue off my content, then I am game. We become business partners and agree to how much of the ad revenue each of us gets. We agree in writing. It's a business. And I'm choosey.

Thanks to THL for going after this ASSHAT who is stealing $ from us. Go Lemur, and Go Daddy. If you need help figuring out if this loser is scraping your content, I bet the Lemur can tell you how to find out.

Doc's thoughts: Sploggers Beware.

Tags: splogs, web2.0, tech, marketing, RSS, aggregation, google ad sense = Powered by Qumana

who's this jerry

Thank you to Tris Hussey who is going to help my old friend Jerry re: the process of hooking his Honors class up with what they need to blog. Tris wants me to donate the $10 to my library instead of giving him the amazon gift certificate. He's a gooood egg.

I have also forwarded on all the links you left in comments for the class's learning pleasure. PLEASE feel free to leave more links, wit, and wisdom on edublogging and the like. Lemur, your call was essentially essential as well. And. You. Know. What. I. Mean.

I thought I should toss a word in about who Jerry is, especially since some, okay quite a few, of you have inquired in the past where how i got that poetress thing down so good. The wounds were there for the opening, let's say. Mr. McCarthy was my modern poetry teacher while I was a college junior and senior at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, 1982-84. I would like to tell you that he made loss less scary for me, but I think the opposite is true. In the end, the mashup of voice+terror was a good thing for me, because there was no way out but through.

Most of Jerry's poetry and fiction lives in Real. Paper. Books. But I did hunt around for some stuff onlilne:

SPRING EQUINOX 2005 (or The New War Dead)
The End of the World, Etc.
On a Line by Li Po
essay: The Caged Bird

And, more:

Gerald McCarthy as born in Endicott, New York of an Italian mother and Irish father. When he was seventeen, he enlisted in the Marines and was sent to Vietnam. He unloaded cargo from ships for two months at FLSG-Bravo with the 1st Marines and then was transferred to the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion in Chu Lai and then Danang. After his return from Vietnam, he deserted and spent time in military prison. Upon his discharge he worked as a stonecutter, concrete finisher and shoe factory worker before attending The Writers Workshop at The University of Iowa. He is the author of War Story (The Crossing Press) and Shoetown (Cloverdale Library). A recipient of awards from the National Writers Union and The New York State Council on the Arts; his poetry, fiction and criticism have appeared in New Letters, TriQuarterly, America, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ohio Review, Rattle, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Nimrod, Carrying the Darkness, From Both Sides Now, A New Geography of Poets, Unaccustomed Mercy: Soldier Poets of The Vietnam War, Asheville Poetry Review and other magazines & anthologies. Active in Vets for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he has twice been a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome and has taught workshops in schools, colleges, migrant labor camps, and Attica Prison. Currently Professor of English at St. Thomas Aquinas College, he lives with his wife Michele and their three sons in Nyack, New York.

Tags: Gerald McCarthy, Shoetown, War Story, Poetry, Blogging, Edublogging, Friend = Powered by Qumana

Global Blogger's Link Out Day

FIVE STEPS TO FIGHT HOMOGENY!

1. Go to one of the blogs you read often.

2. Find a link to someone on that blog you do not know.

3. Click to visit their site and read one or two of their entries. Do you like?

4. a. if yes, then add it to your blogroll and/or aggregator.

    b. if no, do not add it to your blogroll and/or aggregator and go back to step 2. Do this until you find one you like enough to add..

5. After you complete step 4, remain on the last blog you visited, go back to step 2, and and start process again.

Repeat steps 3 more times.

You just grew.

we need a funky decision tree for flickr bec/ that's what people do.

Update: Chris Pirillo gets specific.

Tags: diversity, blogging, tech, web2.0, marketing, pr, aggregators, blogrolls = Powered by Qumana

edublogging counsel

Keep the good ideas coming in for professor Jerry... THANK YOU.

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Scoping out sites for TCPNW07 BAR CAMP

Brandon's working hard to find the right site for collaborative knowledge sharing and spit swapping at TequilaConPacNW07 Bar Camp.

*********­
XV also has yam fries.

Totally random scoring chart for XV: 15

Ease of finding bathroom: IV
Bathroom lighting level for self portrait: III
Nvmber of people who walked into bathroom whilst preening: 0 (What the hell is the Roman Nvmeral for zero? Oh, wait, yov have to pvt a I in front of the nvmber to decrease that nvmber by one. So the Roman Nvmeral for zero is II. Dvh.)
Quality of teqvila: It was fine (III). Bvt they didn't have Cvervo (II).
Dark corners for groping: V

Svmmary: XV ain't gonna work. It's too small.

***********

What a facilitator--keep up the good work, B.

Tags: Brandon, One Child Left Behind, BAR Camp, FOO Camp = Powered by Qumana

Flowerade

Oh dear, Sheila. RICE is nice, that's what they say, but I wish that turn of events, and upturning of your body, hadn't happened. :-(

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Something else too then...hyperthought from reading Doc...

I don't think "ownership" should be the default here. It's not the right word, this owning, or maybe it's the right word plopped into the wrong context. Owning what's mine too quickly segues to owning what's yours, or at least coveting, and in the disagreement over such things, borders and Great Walls emerge to separate this from that.

Tags: ADE, Attention Deficit Economy, Doc Searls, Intention Economy = Powered by Qumana

Doc Does Due Dilligence on the ADE Thing

This from Doc, who runs down my Attention Deficit Economy post, giving us more to chew on.

I get the IDEA behind the Attention Trust and "attention owning." But man, a complicated logo and a site with rounded corners don't shave my suspicions, not in the least. Even with the right "trustees" behind the trust -- and I'm not convinced of that -- the speed of co-optation today is surpassed only by the speed of money flying at every "latest new thing" under the sun.

And while all of this speedy, jiggly titillation may make it a great time to be in business, ATTENTION and what happens with the associated "breadcrumbs" have little to do with fertilizing organic, REAL trust among individuals. In fact the opposite is more likely true. The trust linkage among us in the middle, the accidental or assisted discovery, the purging of attention, the occasional etch-a-sketch erasure--these are the best modes of control and accountability I can think of. Put a dot-org on it, whatever.

Of it all, Doc is right on with this:

I can't help thinking that there's something premature about the Attention Thing. It looks to me like one wrench in a future user-in-charge tool box. We don't even have the box yet, much less the rest of the tools we'll need.

Tags: ADE, Attention Deficit Economy, Doc Searls. Steve Gilmore, Attention Trust, Blogging, Tech, Data, Marketing = Powered by Qumana

Allied Advisory Board

Anticipated Time Commitment - Five minutes, right now.

Your Area of Counsel: College English professor starting blog with his honors class, small college, first blog, no pre-existing conditions. ;-)

Blogging Platform: Free Blogs(??) - recommending Qumana for cross platform posting ease. If students have or start their own blogs, Q will make it easy to blog to the class blog and their blogs from one spot. Other benefits--offline blogging, easy ad integration if desired, easy tagging.

Class Currently Engaged In? Reading The Godfather, Jews Without Money, The Joyluck Club (immigrant novel) So the blog will be about the books and how to write about them.

Compensation: A link, a smile, lots of love, and a $10 amazon gift certificate to the 25th caller OR the best idea OR the person who works the hardest to get my friend the best of what he needs. Leave in comments and email me any extras to jeneane DOT sessum AT gmail DOT com.

Questions to You:

What recommendations, advice, pointers, and links do you think would serve Jerry well in getting his class blog off the ground? E.G., What to expect? What to do/not do? Who to read? Good models for this? What to expect? What great links to you know that would help college students WRITE, and who should they be READING? How to accomplish the art and science of blogging/writing in faster, cheaper, easier, hipper ways?

Where's the go-to stuff for blogging from academia? (Nancy White, thoughts?) BlogHer CEs, any pointers in addition to our education/academia blogrolled blogs?

What are some great college-student bloggers for Jerry to point his students to? Where are the masters?

What about the REST of the college -- since this is the first blog, there's nothing to align with. Is that good, bad, or neither?

What Essential Tools and Fun Stuff - Web 2.0 goodies that will make for a richer experience?

What About Social Networks: Embrace or steer clear? How to incorporate them or not?

What are the necessary things for Jerry to know about blogs about books and writing? (Craig, thoughts?) Goodness yummy, as in: wood s lot.

How about off the wall ideas to consider. EXAMPLE: What about students writing their own books online (Dr. Weinberger, any advice?), what about pulling them into something like Lulu and creating a bottom up bookstore where students are selling (and buying) student and teacher-written books, rather than the traditional college bookstore model where students can only buy hard cover texts written by the experts? What if a college blog could become a profit center for a university? Is it worth doing? Is it worth caring? I'm sure someone is doing it. Someone's doing everything.

Other things?

Tags: college, english, professor, blogging, tech, web2.0, education, advisory board = Powered by Qumana

Got a call from the man

I got an email this morning that made me smile. Big smile. Little steroids. It's all related. You know?

Ok, so who sent the email.

My all-time favorite college professor, the guy who taught me how to make poetry out of poetry, fuckit, he taught me how to get inside words and stencil the edges back to you, right, that's who, and he asked if I could help with some advice for his first in-class blog.

My answer, in short, Hell, yeah!

I reconnected with Jerry a couple months back via email. Last time we jammed about life and loss and words, it was 22 years ago, when I was his student. Now, personally, I don't think that's possible. The 22 years part. I'm blaming the drugs. And yet, right, the 80s. Remember?

Transported.

October winds toss my hair with smoke from the pack's last cigarette, late morning bile still bitter on my tongue, feet up on the back of a chair, its sprawled aluminum legs like a steel whore turning tricks. Crusted blood from freshly chewed cuticles adorn fingers that clench a medium-tip Bic, extra thick ink gives texture to my grief, coal black tears trace memory across the stark white skin and razor blue veins of my composition book.

That was the act of writing before pixels. For me, something sacred.

Jerry, I can't wait to help.

Tags: poetry, gerald mccarthy, writing, tech, blogging, PR, web2.0, blogging, education = Powered by Qumana

Back from Nebulizer Camp

I just got back from NEBCamp and I am exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.

I met so many great people, late night television characters mostly but so what--video casting is really just TV++--and learned so many new things.. At NEBCamp because the action goes on late into the evening, no one can keep an eye open. Who could sleep with so much thinking and conversation and innovation, all taking place in one location with the best and the brightest in attendance? The inhaling and the exhaling and the input from from the tubing to the receptacle to the mask was one (won) word wide, as in WWW. That word? INCREDIBLE. 

The best part of NEB is the feeling of peace. You're among family there. It is safe to be who you are. For example, At NEBCamp I roomed with Jenna and couldn't believe I was actually. sleeping. through. that. coughing. It wasn't a problem that she couldn't get out of bed--At NEB you get your tentside meals and take them where you want.

What was great was when the developers actually showed off the CRUMBY, which sucks the crumbs from Lunchables off the $90 Linens-n-Things comforter while simultaneously searching Google for Bird Flu updates--and I got to use it. Totally. Geeked.

At NEB camp I also got a chance to sing the mucus from my lungs during jam sessions, suck the aluminum off methylprednisolone pills, and explore my Burningbird tote bag to see if maybe there was one valium left in the bottom.

The people at NEB are folks, good folks. I know you may envy my time off-blog these last few days while at NEB. But you also should understand that just because NEB is RX only, it's NOT exclusive. O.Really folks should have the right to to hand out prescriptions to those of their choosing without having to face the wrath of the mob for exercising that right.

And if you want an alternative that isn't RX-only, you can go to ROOTCANALCamp. At ROOTCANAL, things move faster, and deeper. If you want Drill Down and Open Sores, go to ROOTCamp. No prescription is needed. Just a referral from your HMO.

In the mean time, if you want to be a team player and maybe get invited to NEB next year, check out my pix on Flickr to see what's in store for you--and I mean it's. one. big. good. time.

Tags: BarCamp, FOOCamp, Om Malik, Nebulizer, Asthma, Chris Mesina, Tim O'Reilly, web2.0, tech, give me the Ritz = Powered by Qumana

My She

She had just turned 5 when we blogged this:

Thursday, November 21, 2002

conversations in jenna's twin bed before drifting off to sleep

Jenna: Mama?

Mom: Hush Jenna--go to sleep.

Jenna: Can I tell you something?

Mom: Okay, go ahead but then close your eyes.

Jenna: When you drink water, it goes in your mouth, down your throat, past your potatoes, into your stomach, into your bladder, then it mixes with yellow ivy and comes out in the potty--right?

Mom: Pretty close, yes.

Jenna: Is that it--is it the yellow ivy that makes it yellow?

Mom: No I think it's vitamins and minerals and stuff.

Jenna: Are you sure there's no yellow ivy in there?

Mom: I don't think so, but that's a good idea, now go to sleep.

Jenna: Mama?

Mom: Sleep Jenna.

Jenna: When I was one year old, where did I sleep?

Mom: You slept in your crib, in here, in your room.

Jenna: But how did you fit in there to lay with me?

Mom: I didn't, honey. I sat on the rocking chair that used to be in the corner.

Jenna: Oh, I wondered how you fit in my crib with me.

Mom: I love you Jenna, now hush.

Jenna: Okay. I love you too.

posted by BabyBlogger @ 3:46 PM

----------------------

In a month, she turns nine years old. She has grown up bloggy. She asked me this week if she could start a new blog. She didn't want to be the same old 'baby blogger' because she is "older now." George spoke to her of Brand Equity, I mean, BabyBlogger has been in the NY Times and more! Meanwhile, I got her all set up on this one. 

My little girl's been blogging since 2001, which is more than half her life. Tonight she's downstairs typing I don't know what--something about taking Bando to Petsmart for a bath.

Web 2.0, I guess so.

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The Odd Couple?

It would not be unlike me to fight the Lemur for Christine's hand. She indeed is some kinda woman. Will the Lemur's love stand the test of time? Discuss.

-------
p.s.
-------

Several alternate headlines for this post that didn't make the cut:

Herron Lemur's Heroine?

Lemur Loves the Lady

Herron's Syphilis Reference Lands the Lemur

Lemur Drinks to Bottletop Porn



And some other ones that weren't so clean.

Tags: christine.net, christine herron, the raving lunatic, the head lemur = Powered by Qumana

The Attention Deficit Economy

{Note: CROSS POSTED TO BLOGHER.}

The most annoying marketing buzzword of the week is “Attention.” Not a new theory, the Attention mantra has been regaining traction among blogworld marketers who propose control of Attention as the Brand New Promise for Internet citizens and the New Brand Promise for the businesses that serve them.

The payoff for paying attention to what Internet travelers pay attention to is apparently twofold: 1) paying attention to what consumers are paying attention to and why makes businesses smarter (i.e., more money now), and 2) holding customers’ attention long enough to fully engage them stitches a hyperlink directly from the business’s URL to the knotty little skull of the consumer, making him a Customer For Life (i.e. more money in the future).

God truly is good, is he not?

My stepfather once worked as a Managing Director at the same firm where I was Director of Corporate Communications. The CEO ran a brainstorming session (corporate dysfunction signal number one) one morning on rejiggering our mission statement. My stepfather came up with: “To make more money now and in the future.”

The management team rejected that one, but I rather liked it.

Although this attention thing sounds a little good and a little creepy at the same time, it is essentially as it always has always been: anyone concerned with what you’re paying attention to is out to make money off of you. Trying to paint attention monitoring or tracking or trust or what have you as anything other than that is dishonest. You and I are not that important. No one, I mean no one, besides a suspicious mate cares what you pay attention to online unless they’re looking to divorce some bread from your wallet.

And what’s wrong with that is not admitting it is the truth, but rather, painting it as new movement, an alternative, a new way.

If I appear skeptical it’s because I’m on steroids and I’m over 40. These things happen.

Attention and Gestures, which are now inextricably linked, got a dose of Heroin recently when AOL did the dastardly deed of releasing guzumpteenthousand individuals’ search records in such a way that it wasn’t hard to tell that Granny has a penchant for strap-ons.

Mary Hoder explains it this way: “The AOL data which lumped each user's searches together with a user ID over three months, making profiling and finding them easy, meant that AOL provided enough data in some cases to indicate a lot about who the data related to very specifically. Leading to judgments by the rest of us. About the people who do or think things on the edges of society.”

I’m with Mary up to the very end, where she says: “About the people who do or think things on the edges of society.” Because I don’t think that we can tell where the edges are from search results. My data does not define me. My search is not my gesturing 60 percent of the time--maybe more. I don’t think that search = attention. Sometimes search = anti-attention more often than not. Especially as Internet users become more at home online and start to rearrange the furniture.

Lots of times, what we seek is not what we are looking for, and where we end up is really not where we cared to go. Hyperlink does not always equal intention. Again, the accidental, the speed and simplicity of discovery, is what makes the Internet NOT like real life.

But more on “attention” and “gestures” and “search," "intention," and “data” and why I think so much of this stuff is New Age Internetism designed to make giving away your money feel better. As I said, attention is not intention. I can assume that the person who paid attention to my blog for the fleeting seconds it took to get here today by searching Google for “Great Dane Doberman Mix" was looking for something. I can't tell whether that something was to find a home for one or to fuck one.

Two very different customers. Two very different attention fulfillment requirements. And many, many, many opportunities for savvy marketers to sell you consulting services around the variations therein.

Queue Seinfeld: Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Unless your expectations are around context and intention, around making meaning, not making purchases.

Methylprednisolone tablets USP 4mg, Day 2, 20mg.

Glorious ADD.

The Internet is where we are free to dissociate. You cannot put a value on my lack of attention.

I will say here, in closing, that what I think I am getting at is that the Internet most important distinction is its exquisite function to enable distraction, not to track attention. That the accidental come-upon-ness of the obscure and viscerally meaningful can evoke mere milliseconds of joy or horror individually which has relevant commercial value to precisely nothing.

THAT is what’s important. And that your Snakes on a Plane is my e.’s ghosts.

No formula for the value of obscurity and accidents, rather increasing disproportionately in fits and starts.

It takes getting to know me. ME. YOU.

The most meaningful online relationship with one sometimes come from the unknowing of someone else, and in the unknowing of one, discovering the other.

What matters is often not the gesturing, but in the de-gesturing; it is not attention then, but repulsion. It becomes too convoluted to calculate, which way my attention flows, because it is neither linear nor accountable, except for total on the invoices of some mighty consultants.

More and more, my gestures reflect not what I am paying attention to, but instead are sideways related to what I’ve dropped my illusions about. In surrender of control, then, not in clinging to it, we wander here. We value most those instances of delight so fleeting that they are the opposite of thought and reason; they are out of time; they scatter us to the wind rather than draw us in.

They repel us outward, until we are untraceable, exiled, free, and only in knowing me severed will I tell you how you can find me whole.


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And upon announcing the end of his reign as the King of Blogdom....

In the days of graying beard and weakened knuckles, King David the Winer, ruler of all Blogdom, bequeathed his rights and privileges and power to the Princes of the Palace, Sir Michael and Sir Robert. In secret conversation, the two Princes were schooled in the methods and means of maintaining the gentle balance that yielded plenty for the rulers of the land.

The mission of the Princes, from that day onward, was to emulate the great King in his absence, both in word and in deed, and to practice the artful dodgery which had made the King legend among his people. "As I have made you, make me proud," the bearded one decreed to the Princes in Waiting as he counted down his final days of rule over the land of Blogdom.

"Yes, Your Highnass," Sirs Michael and Robert said, heads bowed, each kissing the King's knotted fingers. And they promised to tell all who protected the kingdom the powerful tactics of war, both in speech and in conduct, passed down from the great King David the Winer.

They attended great gatherings where princes and knights and leaders from other kingdoms came together to confer on urgent matters. There, they signed treaties to preserve the order of things. And, when these great gatherings dispersed, word spread from one kingdom to the next on strategies of protection in the manner of King David the Winer.

"Attack lest ye be attacked," was the lesson of the King, "And use whatever weapons you have."

With the Good News in hand and in heart, Knights from many lands rode home to lay with their maidens and sip wine straight from the pap. The ladies licked secrets from the lips of their lovers of the great gatherings in the land of plenty, in the Kingdom of Blogdom, under the rule of King David and the Princes of the Palace, Sirs Robert and Michael.

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A new career path!

I took the test. I'm taking the oath. I'm going to be an attention spammer!

On a semi-related, what-a-logo!

P.S., "trust" is a big word. And "u"re in the middle.

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I think Robert just called me arrogant.

Does this mean that I get to play the "ad hominem card?" And if so, can I have a whole deck?

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retooning

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Blaugh--Bout Time

I'm an id--i haven't seen blaugh bfore.

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Clues on a Plane

I, Vomit. or, key take aways from the Seth Godin Intervhugh:

Books are like witchcraft.

His latest book is a headline taken from the Boston Globe and a stroke of synchronicity, plus previous blog post$ and article$.

People should treat people like people.

Artists are rarely the first to embrace a new medium (editor: my head exploded just then. splat.)

Blogs aren't just a way to waste time at work. It's a big shift.

Millionaires are too smart to sit on a beach.

Drug dealers on the street corners of Topeka are only in it for the money.

Most people in regular industry jobs aren't in it for the money. They love doing what they do.

He reads lots of blogs by men every day, and by kathy sierra.

Bloggers should resist input from other bloggers.

He once stood in a nice store in a nice suburb and heard one 25 year old explain to a 30 year old what gmail was. (editor: Obviously, in modest suburbs and in the cit-ay, no one is expected to understand the internets.)

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