Mind Out

You know. Because. Well. Just Mind Out.

Mind Out Originally uploaded by bartmaguire.

BlogHer!

BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer, BlogHer.

I'll be thinking about EVERYONE at BlogHer while I'm shuffling off to Buffalo for the family reunion on the 30th. I'll have email. And cell phone. But laptop's staying home.

Actually, plan to leave this coming Tuesday and be back the following Tuesday. Don't think I'll get much time to blog. Whoopie!

But you still have a couple more days of My Big Mouth.

Not Just Any Corporate Blogging White Paper

Who better to tell the corporate blogging story than us? By us, I mean we bloggers who have been working in large, multi-national corporations, middle market companies, small firms, two-person startups, or out on our own, while nudging the blogworld into form over the last several years.

I've said before, when it comes to the intersection of business and blogging, one thing that makes this intersection point important for business is that we are typically people who work, have worked, and/or will work somewhere--some business, some place, whether it's IBM or the Harley Davidson shop on North Oak in Kansas City.

We are people first. We connect as people, but also delight in discovering those things we are passionate about, including what it is that we "do." I'm not saying that this is blogging's value. But it's part of how blogging can help businesses better understand and move closer to their markets.

And these relationships continue to grow. It has been one of the most rewarding parts of blogging for me during the last 5 years, both personally and professionally, to have met and learned from some mighty minds.

Those learnings are reflected, at least a little bit, here.

The bottom line is, blogging gives business an opportunity to shrink the distance between its front doors and ours.

Why go on and on. It looks a lot prettier here:

To Blog or Not to Blog: Blogs Help Corporations Answer the Call to Conversation

from The Content Factor.

Note of thanks to Michael O'Connor Clarke, whose keen eye and, shall we say "zesty?" understating of this space were WAY valuable in getting this paper done.

A couple additional notes:

Not sure if the links inside the PDF are working--will be interested to know from you all.

The resource section at the end is something I want to put back into HTML and expand.

There are a lot of compendium of "must read" blogs, but when I started putting this paper together, I realized I needed a different kind of "blogroll" for it--and that is still emerging.

Because, as we know, everything is changing so friggin' fast. ;-)

Lemme know.

Thanks.

Industrious Pippa

When I wake up, God willing, and I get back here to this very spot, I wanted to have something to start off my day--something to change my steroid-induced funk into a creative nirvana, or at least a productive morning.

Found one, thanks to Margaret & AKMA's creative daughter, Pippa. See Pippa's other artwork on Flickr.

Blows my mind.

I love these folks.

My better half is blogging again

Isn't that a kick in the head.

Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick.

Guess Jack doesn't work at Ketchum.

I am not sure how to help, but maybe someone will be

See Constantin's blog for information on a woman who needs immediate medical help in the way of a liver transplant. I called the number Constantin provided to get information on exactly--really--what Shari needs.

She doesn't need a transfusion, or blood, or that kind of thing. The deal is this: She needs a cadaver liver, and she needs it right away. It doesn't have to come from NY, but I would think a good way to start would be putting the word out in the NY Hospitals, or NY Doctors, and doctors around the country--world even?--regarding Shari's current condition.

I don't know, personally, how designating an organ takes place. For instance, if today, you were to know of a loss in your family or another family's--an aunt, uncle, cousin, sister, brother, friend--is it possible to say, get this liver to Shari? Does there have to be a matching process, or is any liver better than no liver? I'm not sure we can get these answers in time, but stranger and more miraculous things have happened.

If you know of anyone who can help, this is the number to start off with, and they can refer you onward: 877/223-3386.

Good Journalists Gone Wild!

Sheila Lennon's new blogspace is more bloggish than ever, with RSS, Comments and the ability, finally, for Sheila to post from home. WOHOO! That means she'll be posting more often I bet. She's still adding code, so, you know, lookout.

And we won't lose the stuff she's already written in the rehab, thank goodness:

The previous three+ years of blogs will still be available, linked somewhere on the right. For now, they're all at the bottom of today's page -- the one many of you started at before clicking to come here.

Welcome to the after hours club Sheila!

{shhhh. cut a check to chris locke quick}

Though they may not be earth-shaking, business-shaking, or the panacea of a lifetime of sinusitus and phleghm, the truth is that real-life best/worst practices are unfolding, here and now.

This isn't a hypothetical Harvard Review Business Case Study that poses the 'Blogger in Your Midst' question to businesses.

This is realtime.

Another way for PR practitioners to look at the ongoing Ketchum Conversation: How would you advise Ketchum if you were the PR Agency's PR Agency?

Note: The first two comments are from ex-Ketchum employees who have been actively blogging since 2001, and have been working to advance the space as it applies to marketing and PR and the real people that intersect those disciplines since 2001, including while with the company.

This I can predict with the utmost certainty: Folks are sitting down in a conference room or sitting on a conference call right now at Omnicom Group's Ketchum deciding the hows, ifs, whens, whys, and whos of their next communication with what they call the PR Blogosphere. If you were in the room, what would you advise?

Batters Up!

You Can't BS a BSer

I really like the title and substance of this post at Advancing Insights that references yours truly and David and Constantin on the Ketchum Thang. "The Pathology of Business Bullshit" is a right on way to look at it. An example now being played out real-time via the traditional BigPR 'control the message' mantra. This is just the malady that blogging sprouted up to remedy--it grows from the ground like echinacea for business.

It's not much like Western medicine practices that are predictable and 'managed-care' manageable; it's more like Traditional Chinese Medicine and accupuncture, twisting in the needles to unblock and re-direct the flow of energy.

Or maybe I've had too many steroids today.

{Full transparency disclaimer: I am sick and on antibiotics and steroids. Don't mess w/ me.}

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends...

The latest interview with Ketchum's Blog Representative, Adam Brown, is up at Jeremy's place. I added a few follow-on questions that came to mind after a first read. I also helped out last night when I first scanned the piece and noticed it said Adam joined Ketchum in 1988. Whoops. Typos can really make one stop and think. It was actually 1998, in April, same week as I signed on. Jeremy said that's how it was in the bio he received, but he changed it after he did the ciphering. Not always, but sometimes I have a pretty good eye for proofing.

Pod Doc

Pappa Doc and The Kid do their first podcast, and its just great. I love the light and excited voice of The Kid layed just beneath Docs staccato expressions, until The Kid gets way excited and lights up the melody of voice over doc's in the pocket groove.

I've talked to Chris, I've talked to David, and now I know what Doc sounds like (Plus The Kid). That means I'm 3/4 clued. We ever find Levine, I got first dibs on his voice.

Love Notes to my Google Referrers...

How badly is your tooth chipped? You can probably get it fixed for about $150. Don't freak out.

I don't know when school starts, but I wish I did!

You know what? I'm not sure that anyone won the showdown between Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, and Dave Weckl -- except for us fans who get to watch it forever because it was digitized. We won.

I can't believe you didn't know YAHOO stood for You Always Have Other Options! I'm glad I could help, but I can't believe I'm number 1 result on Google over such a funny little thing. But you know something--I really don't believe we really do always have other options. I hate to be a pessimist, but I think I might believe these are the only options I have. But you? YOU HAVE OPTIONS Girlfriend/Boyfriend. The sky is wide open to your potential.

As far as the Arkansas Bees go, I would just get a good can of Wasp spray at the dollar store, maybe Big Lots. Look, you can go to Lowes and get the expensive kind, but then you won't have the money to pay the Lowes card, and they start calling all the way from India to tell you that your attidude isn't helping. TRUST ME. Stick with the Dollar Store. Arkansas Bees aren't any worse than any other bees. (Oh Geez, Myrtle, did you mean Africanized Bees? You searched on Arkansas Bees--their is a difference. Never trust a dark bee. They'll mug you in the elevator.)

The DiGiorno Pizza cooking directions are on the back of the box. You use my post, you're gonna do it RageBoy's way and cook the cardboard. You do NOT want to go there. Just do what the box says.

Don't get me started about Earthlink Live Chat support. The first two times I tried it honey, It was m-e-s-s-e-d u-p. Okay? But now, I think they've worked the kinks out. I really would give it another chance. I think there's a new rule that they can't get offline with you until you answer with just the right string of characters. Don't try fuck you--they don't respond to it. It's like yelling into a black hole.

Whoever is making Halushki, you better invite me over. And I mean it. I don't care where you're cooking it, you either freeze some and send it to me or you invite my ass over with the most greatful set of molars and tastebuds you've ever seen. Now make sure you get the fried cabbage just a little bit brown--cook it long enough--because when some of those slivery pieces of cabbage get brown, the sugar in the cabbage carmelizes. HELLO! Czech Heaven.

When it comes to bronchitis pleghm, you are looking at the woman who can tell you more than you wanted to know: Taste, Color, Texture--you name it. Now, you probably didn't want these details when you first came here, but if it's green or brown tinged (maybe blood) get some antibiotics, a steroid shot in you ass, a take home Medrol Dose Pack and call in sick tomorrow. (Give me a shout on my cell when you go through the steroid shakes. I'll talk you down: 678-294-0900)

Ketchum? Just don't go there.

And last of all, stop worrying about getting a bigger one and start loving the one God gave you.

From CBO to EXBO, he's the Internet's Chief MoFo

David reports that Chris' tenure as Highbeam's Chief Blogging Officer has ended. Perhaps the big man's work there is done. You know, this blogging thing: once you get the rapid implementation done, the rest is pretty much value, value, value. (cough.)

There were many entertaining ideas in a recent email exchange on what Mr. Locke should "be" next. Michael O'Connor Clarke suggested this:

Maybe you’ll still re-emerge as a Highbeam Blogging Officer. Pity you weren’t doing this back when you did that gig in Japan - you could have been an Artificial Intelligence Blogging Officer, and then sued those Sony chaps for copyright infringement. Personally, I’ve always fancied playing the Official Blogging Officer – but six years of French horn messed up my embouchure. With my background in knowledge management, I guess I could try for Knowledge Intranet Blogging Officer, but I don’t think the world really needs another one of those.

Me, I was thinking TAE Blogging Officer has a nice ring. Which brings me back to my post the other day -- except it's not just for BigPR anymore. Smart companies won't let their bloggers get away just yet. Now isn't the time to do something "leading edge" and then take your jellybeans and go home.

What if MS decided having Scobel's mouth open all the time was more pain than pleasure. What if Scobel decided to retire to Jamaica and chase hurricanes? There isn't a thicket thick enough to hide him from the companies that would want their very own Scobelizer. You and I both know, it would be really stupid for MS to cut bait on its technical evangelist any time soon. Short of any hard jail time, Scobel's there for a while.

And that's the thing corpo-newbies need to understand: blogging isn't a project or a program; blogging's for life. It's not an engagement, it's a process by which your organization becomes ever increasingly closer to your markets. It's not linear. It's an inward churning circle, spinning like a hurricane, bringing your markets closer to your eye, where what you see happening will blow your hair back.

At the same time, it's an outward churning circle, like a reverse hurricane, and I don't even know what a weather bug would call that.

The point is, now that CBO has re-emerged as the Internet's Chief MoFo, you would be wise to follow David's links to what RB's up to. Or try some of these.

• Was Highbeam's Chief Blogging Officer
• Now Ex-Blogging Officer
• Continuing to write the most entertaining, Enlightening and frightening book of the 21st century. (Oh wait, he started it last century, so I guess that would be "of the last two centuries combined.")

Isn't it neat that after all of these years, he's still throwing down words blogspot? The Blogger/Google/Blogspot folks should feel honored. Here's why.

Named in a 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the "top 50 business thinkers in the world," Christopher Locke (aka RageBoy, aka Chief Blogging Officer) is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business As Usual, and author of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy®. He has worked at the Japanese government's Fifth Generation Project, at Ricoh, at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, at MCI, at IBM, as a consultant/blogger for HighBeam Research, and as a short-order cook at Nick Tahoe's Texas Hots. Locke has written for Wired, Release 1.0, The Industry Standard, Harvard Business Review and many other publications. His work has been covered by Fast Company, Advertising Age, Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, The Economist, The Financial Times, and like that. He has never recanted anything. Before now. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Peace, Out.

100,000 mile club

When I started blogging in 2001, a search on my name, in quotes, brought up two search results: one, a comment on an online discussion group about women's health, and the other, I don't even remember.

Today, I did a quick check for something I'm working on and saw that Google's kicking out more than 100,000 hits on my unique name, in quotes.

I think that means I get a new car.

To dispel any conjecture, no one else has my full name, with this spelling. Color me lucky.

Note to risk-averse corporations on the reverberating effect of the Internet--participating doesn't always mean "having a blog." It does mean participating in the conversation. Comments, forums, Wikis, IRC, conferences all of these places are hang out spots for bloggers in our "off" time (i.e., non-posting time). Wouldn't it be cool to be able to talk to us on the things we're talking about? You may even find, after a while, that you, too, want to blog!

We like to talk to people. Why the heck else would we be out here doing this year after year. You think we're after the free car?

OMG, The World Is Round?

Spurred by this NY Times article, Scoble is surprised that Dave Winer is considering treating his PC as a consumable, like an ink jet printer which now cost less than the cartridges, because Microsoft's OEMs don't provide Windows install disks when you purchase a PC, and it's nearly the same costwise--even less sometimes--to buy a new computer instead of purchasing a full-fledged copy of Windows.

Let the dumpster diving begin!

My guess would be that Scoble gets his Windows CDs free, or that perhaps they have WindowsXPPro CDs sitting around in candy dishes at Microsoft for all who wish to partake, but newsflash to Scoble: Most of us regular folks have to RE-BUY the software if we want to be able to pave our machines (to get rid of offending agents, because we deleted an important operating system component and screwed it up bad, or just because we feel like it).

I spent $2,000 on computers last year--my Acer laptop from buy.com (do NOT buy.com) and an HP PC from Microcenter here in Atlanta. The year before we bought a PC from a different store (or OEM as Scoble refers to them). In fact, I've been buying PCs for years, and it's been a long, long time since I got the actual software that would let me re-install, from scratch, the Microsoft OS. Maybe never.

Yes, Robert, the world is round and every day all around this round world, people pay for Microsoft's OS twice. Once on the computer and once in the box.

I hate that too. Grrr.

Oh and by the way...

Thank goodness all the men are doing the heavy lifting around this issue. We from Girls Gone Wild: PR Spring Break just wouldn't know how to hold all of those deep thoughts in our pee-sized heads, would we? Nooo. We haven't been writing on these topics for years, have we? Nooo. We're busy making our hair fluffy and color coding our Organizers with our earrings. Spending all that time in Media Map can make a girl perspire!

Make sure you keep it in the family, boys.

A good un

Tom Murphy has a sizzling rant on the silliness of the predictions regarding the demise of PR-Proper. Some are now prophesizing that your average PR flacks will morph into event planners, thanks to blogging. Follow the bouncing predictions. I think they all end up with telemarketing. So quit now and get yourself an extra phone line or a ticket to India.

I do agree with the folks who use the word "folks" a lot, whom Tom quotes, that command and control doesn't work, and that public relations is a dish best served as private relations, thank you Chris Locke for writing all of that many years ago.

However, I see the division coming along the lines of flexibility and speed. In other words, practitioners who stay small and nimble and on the outside of BigAgencies will make headway into all but the Very Large accounts of BigPR. But in BigPR, there will always be room for a good crisis guy. So don't write your telemarketing script just yet.

Things are changing. Tom is right that the hyperbole among the 'because I said so' blog bunch is getting annoying.

But then, I have been in that 'because I said so' bunch for years, so I guess I'll shut up now.

I think I have an event to plan anyway.

Jesse knows...

...what a sinus infection feels like. This pretty picture is me! It neglects the painful teeth though. And the cough I'm now sprouting thanks to the post nasal runoff.

It's wet enough around Georgia now to grow sinus infections from the earth, on little vines, waiting for noses to happen by and inhale them like jasmine.

Everything changes even while we're sick. The net stands still less and less often these days. I think that when we die we'll be summed up and remembered and forgotten before our bodies touch the earth. We will be vintage in 5 years or less. The age of an online antique reduced from 100 years to ten.

All the while, infectious agents will hold fast to the insides of sinuses everywhere.

Mama PR, Don't Let Your Good Bloggers Get Away.

Especially right now.

It's an odd thing. Besides my finger injury, which is now better thanks to all the funnies and encouragement you left me in comments, I'm sick. I know the routine by now, after all of these years. I get worked up over something incredibly important that's being discussed online, I try to make a difference, I realize I can't, and then I get a sinus infection.

Works like clockwork.

Does this mean that blogging makes me sick? Well, not blogging per se, but the twisting of blogspace by powerful non-participators who have not a clue what it means to be here--that makes me sick. The command-and-control oriented who don't know what it means to talk as people who happen to work in companies large and small, or for themselves, in the U.S., and globally, but as people first. Blog posers who use out terms like 'dialogue' and 'conversation' but don't understand what having one feels like. These folks make me spend my co-pay, and that gets me cranky.

The first step for the blogging clueless: Admit your are powerless.

Would it be so difficult, for example, for a company like Ketchum to admit that they've missed the blog boat but are correcting that by, say, encouraging their employees to blog, listening to what bloggers within the organization already know--striking up conversations (not defense arguments) with people outside the organization? To understand that the "PR Blogosphere" is not the some place out in the ether separate from the rest of the blogworld? To cop to the fact that it isn't just PR bloggers who think they've behaved stupidly?

To admit they have a lot to learn from others with commitment and caring and years of living in the blogosphere? And that they're ready to engage that expertise?

That some of these experts are the very ones they have systematically ignored within their own organization for years on this very topic?

To understand that blogging is about lowering yourself to the level of your market--to take off your PR Holy See robes and listen up? Not by "putting a blog up," necessarily, but by at least being interested?

And to help their clients understand this?

I could go on and on and cover old ground, talk about the conversations I had with my colleagues on blogging at a time when eKetchum barely had its "e". Back when I had Chris Locke, Gonzo-Marketing fresh, ready to talk with them about how they could leap forward in a largely undefined space by participating.

That's when Anthony Parcero and I were blogging from the inside, and even after I left, and blogging became "bigger," Anthony remained a participating-if-semi-secret-ketchum voice encouraging Ketchum, and PR as a whole, into the blogosphere--for the most part, without any sign that Ketchum was listening to its own clued employee.

Compare Ketchum's recent defense messaging with what Anthony has written in the past--someone who, as a technologist, is not at the top of the hierarchical PR food chain. From what I can tell as an outside observer over the last few years, Anthony kept his ketchum connection mostly behind the scenes. The reasons for that are his to write about or not. But his voice did not go unnoticed. Maybe even now noticed by Ketchum, as they scramble to catch up.

Compare and see if any of Ketchum's recent press sounds vaguely familiar to what one of its past blogging employees has been saying for a long time:

• Anthony on What is a Weblog
• Anthony on Interactive PR Strategies
• Anthony's Q&A

Kind of similar to the blogsong Ketchum is singing now. Except, Anthony's not there singing it anymore. It'll be interesting to see if Ketchum can learn to carry a tune. Won't it?

The fact is this: Ketchum needs to catch up quick and stop using the positioning that "blogging isn't always the right strategy" to explain its lack of presence in this space over the last five years.

Ketchum may need to take a page from the Edelman playbook and engage the services of a real live blogger (like David is for Edelman), to play devil's advocate and put a hand up when it's time to call bullshit bullshit.

It's a lot less messy than letting the blogosphere play that role for you.

Now excuse me while I go expel the toxins from my system.

typing without pointer...

With all the football i played as a kid, with all the horses I fell off of, with all the times my brother stuffed my clothes full of pillows and beat me to a pulp, with all the stairs I fell down, I must have never sprained anything. I know this because no appendage has caused me such discomfort in all of my God-given injuries.

This pointer finger thing (see below; linking is too much work) is not so good and it's swelling and I can't move it so good. It's not broken I'm pretty sure because I can bend it and the pain is down low, near the part where the knuckle bends, but I don't WANT to bend it because it hurts. Four Advil Bad. Jeremy told me to take six. He just wants me off Global PR Week because I jabber during conference calls. I wish I could link--i'll come back in tomorrow and link. Right now my injured finger wants to stay stiff and sort of curled, like a claw finger, and george said no no make sure you keep moving it but put ice on it, don't let it stiffen up, but now it's 1:24 and i would kind of like to sleep.

I am learning how to send my middle finger in to do my pointer finger's job on the keyboard. He can reach all the way to "t" and "b" now, but it slows me down.

This means my fuck-you finger has to work harder and reach farther, but hey, he's never been shy before.

Traffic Jam

Damn, that traffic jam...how I hate to be late...hurts my motor to go so slow...time i get home my supper be cold...i say damn, that traffffiiiic jam. (name that artist).

So, I'm driving through more cobb county and north fulton FLOOD WATERS today, doing I don't know what with my steering wheel, maybe it was when I called Tom, maybe not, and then BAM somehow I had jammed my left hand pointer finger into the steering wheel in a way that made no sense, and the bottom line is, I've never had a finger issue like this.

Luckily, I can curl it into a typing position. However, DAMN it hurts and I can't move it side to side, as in wagging, as in baaaaad Ketchum, and I'd link over to Constantin but really this finger dilemma is making things quite difficult and i feel like halley suitt with her cocksyx or whatever it's called bruised from falling down, except i wasn't skating or anything, i was simply steering a car.

what on earth is up with that.

When We Are Hypocrites

I've been writing a lot about Technorati and its recent identity crisis ("I'm a portal! No, I'm a search engine! No, I'm a portal! No, a search engine! No, I'm a mess!") lately. I just don't understand how an essential tool in a specific space -- i.e., blogging -- can become virtually unusable after a round of publicized enhancements, supposedly tested out on beta users like me. I don't understand how Technorati's full-scale search failure over the last several weeks can go unexplained.

And don't get me wrong. I love(d) Technorati. I use(d) it for clients and for my own blog travels. I paid the money. I joined the party. I expect more.

And I'm getting a little miffed.

Because when it's someone like Dell that fails to deliver, more brick than click, the bloggerati jump up and down and demand satisfaction. They call in the legit media and launch a feeding frenzy.

But when it's me and the folks who comment here about Technorati's weeks of non-usability, you hear a lot of wind. Is that because we're supposed to all be friends? Not bite the hand that ranks us? Because Dave Sifry's busier launching Live 8 sites and sending bloggers backstage, and announcing top 100s, than he is making sure that we can search beyond the new Technorati wasted-space homepage?

Is it okay to take Dell to the matt while making sure one of our own is immune?

No it's not.

So what is it? Why no word from on high? Is it the price point difference between a Dell Notebook and a Technorati Watchlist? Is it a loyalty on the part of the Top 100 that Technorati has appointed that buys silence?

I have tried to search more than a dozen times in the past month. I have gotten an error message every time I've tried to go beyond first-page results. I've blogged about it. I've included screen clips. When I'm lucky enough to arrive at an actual page without an error message, it is taking upwards of a minute or more. Today, I didn't even make it to the first page results. Instead I got the old error message again.

You see, I don't like the big colorful icons and links to things I don't care about taking up space and costing extended loading time. I'm not a teen, I'm not a tween, and I'm not a twenty-something, so get over all the FUN you're trying to make me have, Technorati. Just cut it out and fix your product.

I don't know about you folks, but I'd like a few answers. I'm not sure who Technorati's PR folks are. Maybe I should snoop around.

And maybe Dell should stop making computers and start making blog search engines. No portals. No search engines. No portals.... They'd have it a whole lot easier when they screw up.

Priestcasting

AKMA's On! He posted the mp3 of his sermon and a comprehensive 'sermon report' from St. Lukes. I've been waiting for four years to go to AKMA's church. Amazing. Stunning. I have met the man as a friend and a blogger, and now I've heard him at work, executing that about which he is most passionate.

Now, if we can get some video behind it, and bring other denominations on board -- to podcasting, to videocasting, to places like Odeo and Kaneva -- if we can bring Baptists and Born Agains, Friends and Lutherans, Unity and Unversalists, then virtual congregations can do a kind of inter-denominational shape shifting, breaking down church walls and exclusive doctrines to attend services without the barriers of geography and ritual.

In secret or in the open we can commune.

God willing, a new "flatter religion" is waiting for us there.

quotes of the day

Shelley: I'm not writing news; I'm telling a story.

Dave Winer: Now when they fuck us, we have a way of giving them a black mark. A little more metadata, and it'll start showing up on their bottom line.

Denise Howell: It's only taken me 40 years to stumble upon my epitaph, but this morning one spoke to me with perfect clarity: "She never took enough pictures."

Ray Sweatman: ...to where the morning doesn’t break but unfolds softly in a bloom

Broken Fema

Well sweet Mary, I want to get the good federal benefits and paid-for-PPO insurance that come with the tough job of wrting FEMA's communications. I could bring much clarity ot the process. I am even proficient in translating FEMA's instructions into Internetese: U R SOL, LOL!

Be well, Tom, and all-a you Floridians and neighboring southeasters.

SOLD to the highest bidder

Just really not keeping up. There are things I am doing that are taking way too much time, and things that I should be doing that aren't getting done. And it's time to clean out the garage and put every little not old thing (and every old vintage thing) on ebay, because it's time.

You know, when I think about ebay, I think back to when I first started selling--how long ago that was. The brink of dot-comunism. Back when life was good and no one was paying over-the-limit fees.

So today I signed in for the first time since I don't know when. I found that I owed $1.83 for some long forgotten transaction, and paypaled myself into good guy status forthwith.

Then I looked up how long I've been a member of that most wonderful "we can always get grocery money by selling the [fill-in-the-blank] on ebay, honey" community.

I could hardly believe it when I read: February 20, 1999.

That's 42 years in Internet time.

And of course, that got me reminiscing... about the good old days... about some of my finest ebay moments:

1) Shopping the dollar stores in 2000 and re-selling $1 items at a profit -- especially that particular little bear figurine for $15.75 -- and did you know that people with zebra collections are willing to pay nearly $8.00 for a $1 zebra pin?

2) A particular financially bad winter in 2002 when George and I found an interesting piece of photographic equipment in -- well near -- a dumpster, took it home and sold it on ebay for $150. We then spent the next Saturday afternoon doing dumpster drive-bys up and down highway 41. [Hint--plazas with new construction...]

3) The $75 I got for one of my old Barbies, which I managed to scrub off the ink I used to trace her body parts with a mixture of Melaleuca Oil and Irish Spring.

4) Selling the little pocket books I found in my friend's attic when we were 9 -- that her dad let me keep -- for $150.

5) Bringing in $400/month back in 2001 selling anything of value in our house until there was nothing of value left.

Then rebuying all that stuff.

The early ebay was very different from the ebay today. The entire 'automation' thing hit after I had been selling for a while, and power sellers really took over the marketplace. Buyers became discerning. Sellers became aggressive. Paypal became my bank. Everything changed at once. By the end of 2002, every original dollar store item had been sold four times over, and ebay buyers just plain stopped bidding for the thrill of it.

But I'm here hoping. Hoping that when I dig out our new good stuff from the garage, that ebay will come through. Hoping that supply chain and inventory efficiencies have not been completely achieved at ebay, leaving me room for my average six-day lag getting to the post office with my shipments.

Ebay 2.0

We'll see what it's got to offer.

Not fishing for compliments...

...because you guys have been supportive enough.

Today I start my second year of not smoking. The fourth of July was the one-year anniversary of my quit date. On the third of July, I grabbed an American Spirit and was going to have a puff until it was effectively lurched away from me.

Soon the feeling was as gone as it ever gets.

As any seasoned wanabee-smoker/ex-smoker knows, you never fail to justify the potential benefits of a future puff: "Well, it's an anniversary--of COURSE I can have a puff to celebrate the fact that I don't do it anymore!"

There are some readers to whom that statement makes perfect sense. God bless us.

So, you're wondering still, and I can tell you that naw. I didn't do it.

I still think about it almost every day.

Part of what has kept me quit is blogging. It's not accountability, per se, but something like that. Accountability by default. Or by laziness. In those moments where addiction comes knocking and I have every good reason in the world to have a smoke, I also think about this blogplace. The mind game goes something like this:

Man, I'll have to post about it, and Frank will tell me it's okay--one slip up does not a failure make; and Shelley will tell me to keep up the good fight, and RB will say RAH! You didn't drop Acid! Plus, I just told Don Park to keep at it and now I'm going to have one. McD will offer me condolences and encouragement, and Dean might stop by comments to say 'don't stop stopping'. Plus, if Winer did it, I should be able to do it. How lame am I that a year has passed and I would even think about writing an "I smoked" post. Sure, I'll call it: "So sue me, I puffed one." I can see the post now, talking all about how good it felt going down, blah blah, the same as it ever was.... Oh the hell with it. It isn't worth the effort it takes to post about it.

...and by then, the craving has dulled. I shake my head and move on with my day.

So thanks ya'll. You did it.

Tsk Tsk Tsk

I've gotten into that very bad habit again, that cheating on my blog habit: reading books.

You know, those sqare things with pages that you turn? No typing required?

Freaky, I know.

Recent Reads: My sister's keeper; Ruby Fruit Jungle; Not Tonight Honey, Wait Until I'm a Size 6; and just beginning: Broken for You.

A million good reasons...

there are a million good reasons for me not to be out in the sun all day, from practical reasons to health reasons, but when night time falls and I'm home with jenna tucked in and the ceiling fan is blowing just so, and I'm cool from the pool and baked hot from the sun, I am so relaxed, just smoked and toasted relaxed, just warmed and smoothed with lotion relaxed. No drug in the world, no drink in the world, makes me feel as warm, as free, as bone hot tired.

My favorite thing is my little floatable raft, and lying face up as it carries me across the water, with my extra good sunglasses that let me watch the clouds paint the sky, overlap and touch, brush by, and swirl brighter white.

Information at the Speed of Syndication

I can't keep up.

Even with bloglines I can't keep up. Reading blogs is now like whiplash for me: gnomedex over here--no! look over here, Yahoo's got some social network beta, NO! look over here, technorati's got new features but they don't work, no! look over here, Yahoo's mindset is in beta! NO! Look over here, Weinberger's in Amsterdam with Edleman! NO! Look over here, gmail! HEY look here--Ketchum's still not blogging! NO! Wait! Over here! Scoble says a whole new way to comment is coming! NO! Look over here, blogads wants you, HEY, over here lady, what about grokster?

If you're like me, you're tired of trying to shove as many blog sandwiches down your cake hole as possible at any given sitting.

That's why I'd like to introduce the NEWEST beta--designed to change the way you consume blogs!

It's called Blog(between-the)Lines(SM), a new aggregator/reader that serves up the three most important words from across all of the blogs you subscribe to each day! You can get your Blog(between-the)Lines WordPack 2005 delivered to you via email, via text message, or stamped on your head with a branding iron underneath the Free Download Code Number, 666.

That's EVERY day. And TWICE on Tuesday!

We make you more efficient--so you can subscribe to tens of thousands of blogs and read the naughty bits in no time flat. YOU'RE on the golf course before 10 because we've done the heavy lifting for you, aggregating the most important text nuggets from the blogosphere and tossing them back at you the way you want them.

Here's a sample of a Blog(between-the)Lines Email Message summarizing Wednesday's Activity:

Weinberger Amsterdam Halley Tailbone Doc Google Scoble Scoble Scoble Web 2.0 Technorati Yahoo Google Technorati beta beta beta Winer thanks RSS gnomedex canter beta beta beta.

SEE! You're up to date in 10 seconds flat.

Why waste time with all of those useless articles of speech and prepositions. MEANINGLESS! And flowery adjectives, or hyperactive adverbs? FORGET THEM.

With the new Blog(between-the)Lines reader, Bloggers CAN be Choosers(TM).

You get the choicest morsels in the blogworld: NOUNS NOUNS NOUNS. Direct Objects. Subjects. That's it.

(Disclaimer: An occasional gerund or two may slip in--we're working on that.)

And all of this is yours for only $29.95. (per minute)

Paypal me today and I'll get started on it.

Technorotty

Susan Kitchens has a new term to describe the new Technorati feature that keeps you from looking yourself up: Bruised Ego Surfing.

It has a certain ring to it, non?

HELLO TECHNORATI--Is anyone home?
I NEED YOU TODAY!!!
REAL ENTERPRISES ARE INTERESTED.

T-shirts:

"I beta tested technorati and all I got was this damn squid."

Give Me My Name Back.

Halley's got an interesting post at misbehaving on maiden names and who gets what name in a divorce, and who can call herself what, and what an ex-husband should and shouldn't be able to ask his ex-wife to do in terms of his last name.

As evidence of the complicated times in which we live, check out the comments, and see if you can follow the bouncing ball on marriages, remarriages, taking names, not taking names, and oh yes, kids.

I added my two cents in comments about being both a wife with her husband's domain name, and a kid growing up with a mom whose last name was different from mine.

But the issue Halley presented was really about a guy friend who had gotten divorced and was thinking about asking his ex to take her maiden name back rather than keeping his.

I actually know a couple where the husband asked for this in the divorce decree. Guys, it's something to think about. If you don't have kids, and you want your name back, put it in writing because some folks will tell you it's a control issue for you to want your divorce to be complete, in name and all.

I don't think so. I think you're right to want your name back. I think most women who take their husband's names, who have no children with the man and end up in divorce court, ought to not fight the guy if he asks for his name back. It's like a family hierloom from his side of the family. If it was his when he entered into the marriage, and there are no children who could beneft from his great-great grandpa's pocket watch, YOU GIVE THE THING BACK.

I think if you have kids, you do your children a disservice by asking their mom to become the person in name she was before she had them. No no don't do that. It fucks with kids' minds.

But if you don't have kids, tell her you want your name back. Or better yet, put it in the divorce agreement because her girlfriends are going to tell her to hang on to it, along with that pocket watch from your great-great-grandfather.

;-)

Dear Technorati

When I sent my beta review mail to you, Technorati, I asked for a way to have the main screen just a tiny bit customizable so that I can at least CLOSE the boxes (and keep it that way if I'm signed in) that I dont give a flying crap about. In other words, if you're going to now clutter the homepage with things that most of us don't care about, the least you can do is give us a way to get rid of that crap.

HERE are just some of the things I don't care about that you are sticking in my face when all I'm trying to do is a vanity search:

Top Searches This Hour
1. Itunes
2. Google Earth
3. Itunes 4.9
4. Tom Cruise
5. Google
6. Grokster
7. Bush
8. Iraq
9. Podcast
10. Necc

Special Event
There are 9,303 posts from 2,525 people about Live 8 right now.

Join the conversation

I just wanted to tell you, I don't want to join the conversation, not about Live 8, Tom Cruise, or Iraq. I want to use your tool to do what it used to do best: SEARCH BLOGS.

Why, oh why, when I search on my blog's URL do you keep giving me error message after error message. I just got it again.

Technorati, my most valued tool, has been useless to me for searching on information for my clients and myself for two days.


ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrieved

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

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://technorati.com/search/allied.blogspot.com

The following error was encountered:

Zero Sized Reply
Squid did not receive any data for this request.

Your cache administrator is noc@technorati.com.

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

Generated Wed, 29 Jun 2005 03:46:41 GMT by www.technorati.com (squid/2.5.STABLE7)


Noc, my cache administrator, consider this your notification.

I would appreciate it if you would turn your tool back into a search tool first, and give me some options on HOW I WANT to experience the world live web--which is really cute by the way. I do like that.

However, my idea of fun and work might be different from yours.

For example, you might enjoy the nice layout and images on the first page of search results you return for me.

I, on the other hand, WANT TO SEE MORE THAN FOUR SEARCH RESULTS WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK AND WAIT MINUTES ONLY TO GET ANOTHER ERROR MESSAGE.

You say you will show all of my most recent posts if I click: Show all 437 links from 333 sources » but you lie.

You just throw another error message in my face when I click it.

Technorati, I have always loved you. I know I have used you in the past, but I'm trying to tell you something here that will make both of our lives better...

...Don't forget what you are, Technorati. Lesser companies have failed to survive that single mistake.

-------------------
BONUS FEATURE

THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT ON MY TECHNORATI RESULTS PAGE NUMBER 1:

Most Popular
News: New Ideas in Global Health Get a $437 Million Assist - New York Times »
Movies: Batman Begins (2005) »
Books: The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection »
More in Popular »

MORE THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT:

Sponsored Link Matches
Google Ads

And EVEN MORE THINGS I DON'T CARE ABOUT:

There are9,303blog posts about Live 8 right now.

So, in case I haven't made myself clear.....

THE THING I CARE MOST ABOUT ON YOUR SITE:

Love,
jeneane

Still looking for that hybrid acronym...

That explains what I do working full time from home, business owner from home, and mom from home, by myself when george is on the road mom. The SAHM (stay at home moms) and the WM (working moms) have endless debates on forums and in chats on who's making the tougher sacrifice. Well I do what both sets do, and not only do I want the world to know that the kid part is hardest, but I also want my own stinking acronym.

SAHWAHM - stay at home, work at home mom.
SAHWFHM - stay at home, work from home mom.

The above two choices suck because you can't make words out of them.

WMSAM - (william sam?) working mom stay at home mom.
VCKTWM - vomit cleaning keyboard typing working mom. [Yidish I think]

PBJLHOCCM - peanut butter jelly lunchtime home mom on conference call. [Also resembles the sound made when a child vomits.]

NSWOSAHM - never stop working or staying at home mom

TWS - trick work sally

c'mon bunky--give me an acronym!

You Go, Guy.

I'm always up for a good rant--and Tom Murphy delivers on PR Opinions.

Blogs will not perform a slash-and-burn on the PR toolkit. Instead blogs are an important additional element. Do we think that blogs will turn an unnewsworthy press release into something that's newsworthy? No. Will blogs turn badly written content into well written content? No

.
Forget press releases; I'm just waiting for blogs to replace the throw-up can we've been using the last few days.

Meta Meta Redundancy and SAHWMs

I haven't been blogging because I've been writing about blogging offline, which leaves me more than a little spent and feeling as though I've already blogged, forgetting of course that a post is not a post unless it lands in a blog.

Mr. O'Connor Clarke, I hope, will not mind me singing his praises as THE GUY you want to pay to put on his strategy thinking cap and edit your most important 20 pages or so. What a pleasure having his expertise and assistance on this recent white paper, coming soon to a blog near you. Michael's got one of those brains that can shoehorn just the right concept in between two strings of thought to pull together a completely new (and oh-so-much-more meaningful) idea.

Yowsa!

In other news, I have decided that I am of the new breed. I am a Stay At Home Mom (SAHM) and a Working Mom (WM) which makes me a Stay At Home Working Mom: SAHWM.

Let's hear it for the SAHWMs! (pronounced saw-ems, which is what we fantisize doing to both clients and children on our worst days).

We aren't large in numbers, but we have the distinction of being the worst dressed women at the grocery store, at odd hours, if we leave the house at all.

I haven't left the house since Saturday--I mean not even out to the mailbox, because jenna started throwing up in the middle of the night Saturday and got blindsided by strep over the weekend. She appears to be on the mend on the meds.

While I was working on a TON of work this weekend, I had to write about 13 pages cold out of my brain, and I did this lying flat on my bed with Jenna off to the right, the small garbage can in between for me to heft under her chin while I patted her head and said nice things as she hurled and gagged and puked. Rinse out can. Time for suppository. Yes I'm sorry too. Has to be. Insert. Wash hands. Tuck in kid. Turn to Disney. Sound down. Back to the keyboard. Time for meds. Bribe and coax. Yell and threaten. Give meds. Tuck kid in. Grab can. Pat and coo. Wipe vomit. Rinse can. Wash hands. Back to keyboard.

I did this for 12 hours straight, though the throwing up subsided after the second suppository. Thank heaven for little girls and small favors.

This is what I do for a living. This is what I live doing.

I only wish I could double bill for nursing.

I love my kid so much.

Dear Feature Creepers

Two of my favorite blogging tools, Technorati and Blogger, have done me some favors I didn't ask for this week. Again. Blogger is infamous for this. It's like this: You don't like donuts but that's really neither here nor there because you usually don't run across donuts in your morning travels. Then one day you wake up to find that someone's put a donut on your face while you were asleep.

That's what using Blogger is like when they decide to improve things.

I don't like the "I'm to lame to live" new image upload feature. Yes, it allows even the most helpless blogger upload an image, as long as they pay for blogger pro, and at the same time, forces the bloggers who had been happy uploading them into their long-standing subdirectory and layng them out as they wish, into yet another pat process.

On to Technorati. I was part of the beta review bunch and sent a rather thoughtful email on my various likes and dislikes. I never got a response, so I don't know if anyone read it. But it was nice to be invited to participate and I love checking out betas.

I thought I made the point in my feedback that the most important thing technorati does--it's a search engine after all--is to provide search results, not all these fluffy 'current books' and 'what watchlists do I have today' everywhere I look.

So, when I do a search on my own URL as a blogger, you know, it would seem logical to give me those results -- not JUST FOUR of them, but maybe 10-20 at a time (or however many at a time we want to see on a page--let me decide) WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK A LINK TO GET ALL FOUR MILLION LINKS -- A LINK THAT TIMES OUT BEFORE IT EVER GIVES ME THE REST OF THE RESULTS I'M LOOKING FOR.



By the way, who's Squid?

In Praise of BlogHer and Why I Can't Be There

I let Lisa know a few days ago that I can't make it to California on the 30th for BlogHer. Time to let you all know too. I'm sorry sorry sorry because not only did I Really Want to Go to this one (as opposed to the many I have NOT wanted to attend), and I Really Want to be on the Naked identity panel, and I Really Want to meet everyone of these women I've never gotten a chance to meet, and I Really Want to try my hand at being on a panel. I think I'd do good. I think I'd learn so much.

But then real life comes in to intercept this other life I live. And the fact is that our once-a-year family reunion, we learned a couple of weeks ago, will take place in Buffalo the day after the conference. And the fact is that George is performing in Ain't Misbehavin'? in NY (think Long Island, not Broadway) and hopefully coming home before then, but that is never for sure in his business. And that I'd have to take Jenna with me, in a 48 hour span from Atlanta to California to Buffalo, then back to Atlanta two days after that. And that I don't want to tell you how many client deadlines I have between now and then. And that I'd have to be clear headed and keeping tabs on my seven-year-old every minute while trying to contribute and enjoy myself and all of you. And that it costs money. And also the fact that I have a trip up north scheduled mid July as it is.

I didn't make a pros and cons list. It wasn't that easy of a decision, and it wasn't that hard either. I just thought a lot about it over a week's time. And I thought about how tenuous my remaining family relationships are. (There aren't many left.) How important it is for Jenna and who she is to understand and know the Sessum part of her family in Buffalo that she has met precisely one time (last year at the reunion), and that it meant a lot to George to begin only now to know that side of his family, and what a toll that has taken on so many of us, and all of the other "thats" I've babbled about above.

The decision kind of made itself.

Lisa and the BlogHer gang were gracious in accepting my apology, my withdrawal, and my request to use my registration so someone else doesn't have to pay. I also pledged to sponsor another participant between now and the conference. It's the least I can do. They're not even kicking me off the Board. Least I don't think so. ;-)

Why do I believe that you should go to BlogHer even if I can't? For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the conference was a bottom-up response to a situation that many in blogland -- many women especially -- have been bitching about for years now. It was a brave response to the undeniable fact that mainstream Technology, Internet, Blogging, Podding, RSSing, and PISSing conferences look past women. They look past women when they pick speakers and panelists. They look past women when they schedule the events. They look past women when they decide what to talk about. They look past women when they begin talking and linking to other non-women. They look past people of color. They look past ideas that challenge their own. They look past out-of-the-circle-jerk conversations. They look past anyone who doesn't look like them.

Rather than continue to solely write about that fact, the BlogHer founders came up with another layer to their response. In additon to writing and talking, they got their plans together, their funds together, their team together, and their shit together in record fast time to hold a conference that doesn't look past women. And they went zero to 60 with the top down, baby. Got the venue; got the people; got the sponsors (keep em coming); got scholarships and assitance for attendees.

And the women who will be there are smart and strong and willing to listen and willing to talk and willing to shut up and learn as much as they are to slap you silly. That's the difference. I guarantee that unlike conference-as-usual events, this one will engage folks in a real exchange. Not just an exchange that claims to be an exchange because the bloggers having it are Technorati Top 100 list makers.

So go if you can. All of you. Men and women. Together. Engage. Talk if you can. Write if you can. Listen if you can. Clap if you can. Laugh if you can. Cry if you can. Say AMEN if you can. Blog if you can. Lunch and Dinner and Drink if you can. Shero Chalk on a brick wall for me if you can.

I will be watching.

Love you guys,
Jeneane

Ketchum meets Ex-Ketchum in Constantin's Comments

If you would have told me I'd be commenting on a Ketchum-related comment by Adam Brown on blogging one day, I would have told you you're crazy. (Adam and I started the same week at Ketchum. He's still there. I'm not). I wouldn't have believed, first, that Ketchum would make it to the blogosphere. And that if they did, I would have expected that they wouldn't get it right. Nothing against Ketchum. It's just hard for BigPR to play with the little guy and maintain the BigPR mindset and model.

Maybe there's hope. Adam (for Ketchum) has responded to the recent flack (hee) toward Ketchum for their sloppy, bouncy entry into the blogworld with the Ketchum Personalized Media service.

I have a lot more to say but not much time. I added some quick comments on Adam's response. We'll see where it goes.

Pool time.

Networking Is Something I Suck At

...which is why I found this post on the Cheater's Guide to Linked In fascinating. It's not really cheating--it's best practices for networking in a social network. It's almost like search engine optimization for social software participants. It strikes me that folks who are good at networking in the real world are the ones who are good at networking online. The practices aren't so different, but the techniques and the technology are. Thing is, I've also identified that I do approximately 0 of the recommended practices. Which proves my theory that I suck at networking.

Ah well, we all have our gifts and talents.

PETA unfriendly*

Two years I've been going to the same pool. You know me--I like to get brown in the summer, chasing my daughter's beautiful tone, her always one step ahead of me. Last year one of the moms and I used to chuckle because every day we ended our pool fest, we looked whiter than when we came.

"What is up with the flakes and sloughing?" She asked. Yes, she talks like that. Isn't she cool?

"I can't handle it," I say. "Hour after Hour I spend here trying to get the least bit non-anemic looking, and I'm actually going backwards! I'll be a frgging Sweede by the time the summer's over."

"What do you suppose it is--I mean, we shouldn't be getting whiter. I don't think chemically it's possible."

"I think it's the pool. I think they keep the water pH on whitey."

"I think so too; it's like a sloughing thing."

SO this year, we decided to experiment. And we found the key. Oil. The thicker the better. It doesn't matter if it has 299 sunscreen or 0 sunscreen, as long as it's oil, it manages to create a barrier against the sloughing detergents.

She and I have begun our tanning contest.

She's going the slow approach--from 50 down to 14 down to 8 SPF. BUT she gets to add in a trip to florid in July (no fair!)

Me? I've found THE tanning oil. On an old shelf at Big Lots, behind all of the safe 60 SPF cream, was a bottle of $2.49 no-sunscreen-added oil with the initial ingredient of Mink Oil.

The same mom friend, a vegetitarian, asked: "What's the new oil? You're getting darker."

I tell her. She wants to see the bottle.

"My God it has mink oil in it--you're coating yourself with dead animal."

"You think? They probably just milk them."

"No, dear. I don't think that's how it's done."

"Well, It's working, I know that."

"What's it feel like?"

"Makes me fell kind of like road kill."

While she's in Florida using her slo-tan, animal friendly tanning techniqiue, I'll be splashing on my road-kill special.

We'll see whose tan rocks by the end of the summer.

[[*No minks were harmed in the making of this post, at least.]]

Knowledge is Power

Our KM Hero, Euan Semple, rides again, ridding the world of dis-collaboration, disunion, and the unsightly un-networked.

To describe talk.gateway, Semple uses an analogy of trying to build a collection of Cotswold villages with lots of footpaths between them. “You know where the pub and church are, you’re comfortable in the environment and you can locate yourself,” he says. “Corporate systems tend to be more like Milton Keynes. On the surface they’re efficient with lots of straight lines and signposting, but you get lost because everything looks the same.” He supports Dave Snowden’s assertion that you can’t manage knowledge, but you can manage a knowledge ecology.

He's just that smart.

Dear Ketchum 2

Constantin Basturea's Dear Ketchum post is extraordinary. Whether or not someone inside the borg hears him or not, it is worth reading if you're the NEXT BigPR company to decide to do new media while it's hot.

That means, dear Ketchum, that if you want to advise clients about blogging, RSS, and podcasting, you should show that you know what you're talking about. You can do that by having senior executives blogging for some time before trumpeting your blogging consultancy; that's what Edelman's Richard Edelman and Christopher Hannegan are doing. The same goes for Hill & Knowlton's Joël Céré and Niall Cook. Or you could launch a blogging community first. You can let the results of your expertise speak for you before formally launching a blogging practice and a corporate blog; that's what Hass MS&L did. But you can't just issue a press release about it, and hope for a cheerful "Welcome to the blogosphere!!!"

You mean, this press release won't get picked up by Business Week?

Don't forget, Ketchum did try blogging back in 2003, quite bumpily, and then gave up. They caught some heat because they tried to use the blog as a promotional celebration of their Kudos winners--and now that they've had two years to snoop around, you might think they would have learned a thing or two.

I am going to say again that the few employees who were blogging with me unobserved back in 2001 and 2002 are the people who should be running the program. Screw the hierarchy and let those with a blogging foothold and something to say MAKE THE RULES.

But it won't happen that way. Because the big agency model hangs the balance, and its organizational, pay, and pricing structure teeter like Humpty Dumpty when people start messing with who's in charge.

Personally, I'd like to blame that JOHO guy. He's been showing Edleman how to find a clue, and now all of them want in. ;-)

[Disclaimer: If you haven't been following the bouncing ball, you don't deserve one.]

Memory Maker

Cluetrain, Gluetrain, and Doc as a kid, not as Marilyn Monroe, below.

Okay, it's really not cool that my sidebar has slid down after x number of years w/ this template

No, I didn't add any wide graphics. No, I haven't been in the template.

I've just been here minding my own blogness.

Why my sidebar's slipped d o w n. ?

Apparently...

Doc is stacked.

and my sidebar is down at the bottom of the page because???

?

"White Paper" White Paper from The Content Factor

If you haven't gotten it yet, you can download the Rules for Creating Great White Papers free, courtesy of the Content Factor team.

We work hard to bring you the world and all that's in it. Oh, wait, I think that was National Geographic.

Either way...

The Business Writing Life - First Job

When I first started in business writing, I was a mere pup of 22, fresh out of college. That was 21 years ago, and I had the distinct pleasure of writing documentation for statistical process control software. w00t! Not really. hARd! I found the art and science of technical writing very taxing, especially when writing about a product that was so fundamentally mathematically intricate. I felt like A Beautiful Mind with no garage.

The interesting part of this first job was that we had a completely unrelated yet simultaneous business in educational publishing for the Rochester City School District and NYS Department of Education, as well as a kids' magazine division (another division of me and my business partner) that published YOUth Magazine on Long Island.

So what that job lacked was Focus, and I was grateful. If I'd have focused on the SPC software exclusively, I might be either mad or living on Slashdot. Fortunately, each day at work was as different from the one before--I might be photographing and writing a story on the Magnet Program at a city school one day, and disecting user instructions involving teensy tiny measurements the next. From teen fads to widgets. Sometimes in the same day. The only difference was the nature of the copy, the volume of content needed. And the best part of all--I lived 3 miles from my job. Little did I know then, one day I would be living 0 miles from my job. And I'm still trying to figure out which is better...

Second Job--Kodak. To Be Continued...

[It's career review week here on allied: Post about your first "real" job and I'll link to the good, the bad, and the ugly here... Notice, Real means I didn't include my K-Mart Door Greeter Job. You don't have to either. ;-) ]

The Bayou

At a mall, a plaza, running a quick errand with Jenna, me driving her in the van, through winding countryside, curvy roads, to a place I have not known, and then, in a mall of sorts, thankfully up high, looking out a window, on a platform, the architecture feels old, so old, solid and from an era outside of time. I am only eyes, looking out, looking down to the street, which is not there. Instead, a white-capped river, muddy and torrential, flows from right to left, licking the top of the sidewalk that I'm watching on the other side.

On the sidewalk, ugly miracles happen--a wolf is chasing a sheep, the sheep bleets and jumps into the water, thrashing, the wolf swimming after it, and other tsunami images of floating hubris, humans and animals and structures tossed like crutons in a wash of angry river water. These are the new archetypes: 911 burning buildings and Tsunami dreams. We are the first generation to have them. We will pass them down, Jung be damned.

I watch the action as merchants push carts down the sidewalk next to the angry river's edge. Another wolf emerges and charges a german shepherd, domesticated dog no match for the wild dog. I look to the left, where am I, place changes to billboard and I see the sign: Bayou, and another: Louisiana. I take Jenna back into the tourist shop, and we look for trinkets that say Louisian on them because she has never been to this state. Candles. Ceramic bells. Spoon rests.

And then I woke up.

George reminded me of my dream at naptime today.

Just Once...

I would love to see Mena Trott show up at a Your Typical Internet Conference in black face.

Just once.

You know, to prove a point.

Semi-Related Bonus Link:

In a city whose name I can't pronounce, Mena spots a Black Lawn Jockey with a body like a woman, apparently erected to give testimony to the talent of black men on horseback.

Something like this might have been better, but then all the white women would have to stay locked in their million-dollar homes:



I got your black lawn jockey swingin' Tiburon.

Race Mixin' and Assassination Among the Africanized Bees

Apparently the Killer -- AKA "Africanized" -- Bees that were expected in Arkansas have arrived, courtesy of Texas. Just to humor yours truly, let's examine the many adjectives and descriptions the media uses to describe these AfricanIZED bees, kay? We have: aggressive, killer, unwanted, dangerous, swarming, assassinators, and more.

I see then. When you Africanize anything, that's what you get--swarming, crazy, dangerous killers who like to fuck with the Europeans. Gangs, if you will. Made up of large members with big members and a taste for Europeans honeys.



You may wonder, how did we get the Africanized Bees in the first place?

Swarms of the Africanized honey bees have been moving north since the accidental release of some bees in 1957 from a program in Brazil, where they were being bred to improve that country's domestic bees.

Hmmm. Wonder why they're not called killer Brazilian bees. I guess that would take the sting out of the media's subliminal titillation machine, eh?



And then, of course, we have the reason that the well-hung Africanized bees have arrived in Arkansas in the first place:

Africanized bees have worked their way north by mating with European-strain queen bees.

Brings a whole new layer to the discussion around the birds and bees. Mommy, where do aggressive killer babies come from? Well honey, it's time we have a talk about the birds and Africanized bees....



Of course, you may choose to believe the scientist over the media: "The perception is worse than the reality," he said. They "are not coming to get people."

Yes, well, someone better tell FOX News.

Kaneva Beta Fun - You're Invited!

Having recently given beta feedback for Technorati, and for Highbeam, I'm now having beta fun exploring Kaneva.

It's actually fun trying to describe Kaneva. It's a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets ebay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host. Kaneva is really an interesting model.

What Kaneva is officially? "The world's first online digital entertainment marketplace enabling customers to watch, play, create, and market films and games." But you know the net--films and games are a start....video blogging, podcasting, combinations thereof, the sky could really be the limit. Kaneva could easily become a one-stop shop for downloading the newest (think blog-post frequency)amateur and indie entertainment. Because Kaneva also deals in currency, it gives new media creators a place and an audience for distributing and selling their work.

What Kaneva says:

The Long Tail represents that the aggregate of the less popular content is greater in revenue than only the blockbuster hits. Amazon and Netflix reflect this in their business models. There is a need for an infinite library of entertainment content available at all times for anyone from anywhere.

I think that's right on. Like blogging is to writing, and like flicker is tophotographyy, Kaneva could be to film, music, video and games.

Kaneva is the brainchild of Chris Klaus, founder of ISS and Really. Smart. Guy. See Chris' interview in Computer Games Magazine, and check out the Klaus Entertainment site for more Kaneva news.

Complete with tags, and a "blog this item" link to push Kaneva content outside the platform, I really like where Kaneva is going.

After watching some of the free movies and trailers, I'm transported back in time when there was no MTV and then there was. And, in college at the time, we watched it every night and felt something happening to our brains -- our visual and auditory sensory skills opening wide. Because most of us in our teens and early 20s watched MTV late into the night, MTV changed the way a generation dreamed. If you didn't know TV and Music before MTV, it's hard to explain. It has nothing to do with what MTV is like today.

But some of the original content on Kaneva feels like that first blush of MTV awakening. That expanding of possibilities.

Anyway, if you want to have beta fun, dig in. I'll see you there.

My House, The Disaster

Whenever George goes out of town, I look at the inside of the house with new eyes. Its as though having one less person here exposes the mess tenfold. What, was all of this shit hiding behind him, or have I just slowed down enough to look around and see the inside of my house as a stranger would. Say a stranger from DFACS. Who might condemn the place and take my kid away.

After all, you shouldn't have seven hamster poops laying on the livingroom floor for five days. Especially when you (vaguely) know they are there. I mean, you saw them, you didn't really want to know because the mess that has taken over the rest of the room, and adjoining rooms, really makes animal feces pale in comparison.

Today I cleaned the living room. Two baby hamsters and two grown hamsters, who must live in separate cages lest they create MORE baby hamsters, are just not helping the cause of cleaning up our act. But as I take the mama out of her cage and she rolls over in my hand to show me her belly, proud that she raised up her babies just fine this time, I'm glad we have them.

When it's quiet nighttime with just Jenna and me, and my imagination wanders to sudden noises and shadows moving, I'm glad for the three hamster wheels, squeaking away in unison, downstairs. No reason for a scare. It's just the hamsters, or the dog, or garbage bag full of old school papers and hamster shavings falling off the chair, or DFACS at the door.

The good thing about letting my house go to pot is that I used to NOT be able to do it. It used to be a source of anxiety, me moving things the minute anyone put them down. Trying to make order out of a lifetime of chaos.

Now that I've accepted chaos as chaos, now that I can identify it and at times have begun even to notice the specialness of disorder, to enjoy the free-form world, my life is more peaceful.

At the same time, I think I need a cleaning lady. Because learning to live in the moment can be really messy.

Bacons

I love when I get calls from Bacons verifying what topics I write on, how I like to be pitched, my contact info., etc. I love it because I use tools that contain me in them. I love the twisted metaness of it. (yes, meta-ness, not meatness). Only in a hyperlinked world can you be reporter, source, and subject matter all at once. Weee. What a time to be alive. What a time to be a cat.

Ethnic Tanning

I haven't been blogging because I've been living, which has been nice. At the pool. In the sun. Beautific sunshine water wrap cool breeze summer stuff. Yum! I have now surpassed any need for sunscreen, even 4 oil, and might just gravitate to baby oil and iodine next week. In the mean time, behind all of the #30 sunscreen on the shelves at big lots, I found two bottles of some off-brand Australian oil for $2.49, no sunscreen, no nothing, but shine shine shine and brown brown brown. People, they say, "Where have you been?"

As a result, I'm now nearly the hue of my daughter in the winter, and she is now the hue of a dark-skinned East Indian. What a mix we are. She, the Jamaican-African- Native American-Sicilian-Czech who is East Indian for the summer, and me the Sicilian-Czech who is now Jamaican-African-Native American as well for the summer.

And all from a bottle of Australian tanning oil.

Amazing.

Chris Locke Narrows "How Far Ahead of His Time" Gap by One Year!

Immediate Release

With the announcement yesterday by Ketchum of its Personalized Media Service, Internet Prophet and Micro-Marketing Pioneer Christopher Locke officially narrowed the number of years he is "ahead of his time" by one year, shrinking the gap from five years down to four.

Published in 2001, and noted among Amazon's "Best of 2001" books, Locke's Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices foretold of strategies that would tap into "micromarkets," where people (the artists formerly known as consumers) gather around areas of interest (the antidote to segmentation devices formerly known as demographics, psychographics, buying habits, etc.). Among these online conversation conduits, Locke discussed blogs, blogging, bloggers, and other traditional BigPR Agency Fresh Meat of the future.

"The Internet has always demanded that business read between the lines. Weblogs raise the bar. Now the challenge is to read between the sites."

Or

"Within a few years, many thousands of quality news, entertainment, and information sources will spring up on the Internet to serve highly-specific communities of interest."

--christopher locke, 2001

Having predicted that weblogs and interest-related, bottom-up media would become a threat to the mainstream broadcast model, Locke lent further proof to the well-known adage among Internetziens that Chris Locke is five years ahead of his time.

Unfortunately for Locke, showing up to the party with noise makers and sparklers five years before the pizza gets there can leave a guy kind of hungry.

"Chris has no idea that he's steering all of us in his intended direction--I mean the whole net simultaneously--but he is," Co-Clutrain Author Doc Searls might have said.

"He thinks he's just writing about interesting topics, which right now focus mainly on religion, race relations, the curse of The New Age, Jung v Freud v Alice Miller, and of course some gratuitous sex and violence," David Weinbergermight have said. "But what he's really doing is changing the course of business and humanity--and where we'll be five years, I mean four years, from now. Which is pretty amazing considering he hasn't changed his jeans in six days."

What does Locke say about narrowing the "ahead of his time" gap to four years?

"I felt something happening with the time-space continuum when I let the cat out this morning. Now it all makes sense."

For more information on enlisting the services of Mr. Locke to set your personal media strategy on fire, contact Chris Locke at clocke@panix.com.

Just one thing to say.

If a bunch of older white folks -- especially the elderly women who look like my grandma -- can clear Michael Jackson, then he's pretty much cleared in my book. Next Stop: Get the man some cult deprogramming therapy.

Aggregator Dysphoria Dysfunction Evolution

The TV remote control of the blogworld, aggregators have been fascinating me now for what, two full weeks? That sounds about right.

As a relatively new user, I have passed another milestone this week in the world of Aggregators. I find that I've stopped bothering to click on the various bloggers I subscribe to so that I might find out what the 23 new posts they've written say.

With lightning quick speed, I simply skim through the listings, see how many times my favorite bloggers have posted, and am quite sastisfied with that knowledge alone.

What about actually reading some, you might ask?

Why, my aggregator makes me far too efficient for that. Think of the time savings I'm realizing by reading who has posted rather than what they've posted.

Besides, I've been channel surfing all weekend, and it's amazing, isn't it, that with all these channels, there can still be "nothing on."

A blog-friend and I were talking recently, yack yack yacking away on the phone. (The phone is that medium where you really do LOL.)

"Jesus," he says, "Doc's posted 120 times since the last time I checked--STOP IT DOC, You're gonna go blind!"

Bloggers: Have you checked your eyesight today?

Best of Sunday

The Piano, 2003.

I blog from my couch. I guess if you saw the picture in the NY Times article, you've guessed that. I write on a laptop in what has to be the most unhealthy position for a spine you can imagine. I am the anti-ergomatic. I never had a choice really. Four years of simultaneous child rearing and working from home puts you in some precarious positions. A deadline is a deadline, and so, you work around the the general household insanity until one day you surrender to it, sit down on the couch, and say, Okay, I'll work from here.

Across from the couch is our piano. It was my father's piano--he bought it when i was three I think. An Ivers & Ponds baby grand. And while you may think, hey, nice that you have a baby grand, anyone who has had the responsibility of a piano for more than 20 years as I have can tell you--it's like owning a baby elephant that sings. I don't play--I goof around on it. George, of course, gets much use on it as he sometimes writes on the piano.

But the thing about pianos is moving them.

It's no small task, a huge expense, something you have to plan in advance for, and something you have to design one entire room of your house around.

I have moved this piano no fewer than 9 times since it officially became mine at age 18. There was the apartment it barely fit in. There wasn my English teacher who gave it a foster home for a year because no moving company would take it up the winding stairway framed with stained-glass windows. There was the house where it had a living room all to itself. And many more journeys.

When I think about moving, I think about the piano. And when I think about the piano, I think I'll never move again.

And yet, because it is something that touched my father's hands, because I have tapes of him pulling chords and notes so beautiful from it, I can never let it go. I can get back to that place in an instant, me on the piano stool him kneeling beside me, me stretching my legs down trying to reach the pedals, and finally being able to.

There is something about instruments, especially those made of wood. I have seen and held many, played a few (badly), and I know when an instrument is special. I have felt the presence of pre-played notes, that tingle that lets you know a piece of someone who touched it has been absorbed in the wood. If you listen very closely, you can almost hear the echos reverberating from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. It is a primal and joyous thing.

I'm tired, it's 5:13, and sleep won't come, my eye keeps driftin gover to the baby grand.

And I swear I can hear something.

Best of Sunday

What I don't Remember, 2004:

what I did that night
what I did the next day, or the day after.
the first time I saw his room without his bedcovers turned down.
where I went during the wake.
where his clothes went.
why no one saved me his paisley pajamas.
what my sister said to me about dad being dead
what my brother said to me about dad being dead
what I said to my sister about dad being dead
what I said to my brother about dad being dead
what my mother told me after that thing about mourning
when the next time anyone said his name was
where I went next
what I wore
why they sent me away before the funeral
what they said to me about the funeral
How I got to Illinois
who took me there
Why they slept my older cousin on the porch with me
How he knew about sex
What I said to my grandmother about my father
what she said to me
when I went home from Illinois
how I got home.
the first time I looked at the piano without him there
the first time I looked at the bass without him there
the first time I looked at myself without him there
what I ate that day
what I ate the next day
what I said when other people said, "I'm sorry."
when I stopped liking the attention it got me
when I started feeling guilty
when I realized it wasn't fair
the first time I cried
the first time I wished him back

Best Of Sunday

CDs From 2002

I'm sitting here tonight letting my mind wander, thinking about digital generations, resurrecting the dead through digital technology. Stuff like that. Because tonight I put on a CD my cousin had burned last year, a CD featuring my grandfather on mandolin, my dad on bass and piano, and my great uncle on guitar, playing, like they did every Sunday of every week of every year, while we children danced and played and sang off-key.

I know the CD. I mean, I've listened to it before. But before tonight, I had never listened to it with my own daughter. Here she is in front of me, almost five years old, the age I was day this family session was taped. I'm looking into her eyes, and I see them all. Every one of them gone, gone long before I had a chance to ask questions, to find out everything I needed to know. And I'm explaining to her that this is her grandfather, and her great grandfather--mommy's dad and grandpa. And she's looking at me, again in her eyes I see each of them. There is my dad, her chin is his chin. And there is my grandfather--her stubborn brow.

And I'm realizing that these oak speakers, yep, these right here on the floor, are resurrecting, if only briefly, her great grandfather and her grandfather. Here we are, four generations, gathered in my living room joined by music recorded in 1967. And I hear myself laughing on the CD, and I sound just like her. It's like an echo of an echo of something so familiar. I sound so happy. I was so happy.

It's all the history I can give her--the music. It's all I have. I was too young when he died to give her anything other than sounds, because those are what I remember. So we share them. And she shares them. And we're happy.

More about the Rochester Jazz Scene

It's the scene that contributed to the sound of both my father and my husband--or should I say they contributed to it. I guess we're a family example of what this article is getting at -- the Italian/African jazz dance that's gone on for decades in western NY.

It was just that sort of cross-pollination that got Chris Melito interested in jazz when he was growing up near the Public Market in the 1940s. When he went to concerts, like the one featuring Duke Ellington's Orchestra at the Sports Arena at EdgertonPark, there was a mixed audience. Jazz was one thing that brought blacks and whites together in Rochester. "We just listened," Melito says. "There was no awareness. Back in those days you didn't think black and white in regard to music, just good and bad."

Of course, me thinks the author and Mr. M. might be forgetting how close a neighbor Africa is to Sicily, but anywho... I do agree that there is something entirely fascinating about the genetic makeup and talent level of the Rochester jazz scene.

An amazing historic site here on the area and Jazz--I just emailed Noal to let him know about my father, who played with Mike Arena and Joe Romano, both mentioned on the site.

All in a day's work.

I'm gonna fly

More old Rochester music, circa 1970s, with Don Potter (who a deade or two ago chose to point his powerful voice in the direction of Christian music) on vocals, along with John Labarbera, Joe Labarbera, Mick Guzauski, Chip Jackson, Bernie Heveron, and more and more. So you have to love this version of I'm gonna fly someday.. I still have the vinyl.