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EGR - Bezos: "read the cluetrain manifesto"
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Christopher Locke
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Mar 09, 2000 17:44 PST
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EGR is graciously underwritten by Entropy Web Consulting
http://www.rageboy.com/ewc/people.html
"Industry Heavies Saying Nice Things About Us, For Money."
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Valued Readers:
All hell is breaking lose over here at EGR World HQ. And there's
hardly any time to report on what's happening, but here are a couple
major hits. To report them at all, we are forced to lift our embargo
on mentioning That Book, as we hope you'll understand from the
following...
Leadbelly once said Washington DC was a bourgeois town, but that's not
what we encountered there Tuesday night. The scene was unbelievable.
Just before our talk, the hall was filled with blaring rock and roll
and 1100 people batting three dozen beach balls back and forth around
the auditorium. It was great. It was insane. Here's a little clip from
today's Netpreneur News:
...if you missed it, it was a doozy. Sometimes we all get immersed
in the details, but speakers Chris Locke, David Weinberger and Tom
Petzinger "kicked it up a notch" to examine why all this Internet-
enabled opportunity is really there. "The biggest secret that
business is trying to hide from the market," said Locke, "is that
we are human." The human side is what's driving the Internet
business revolution, and companies that realize it will be the ones
that excel in the New Economy. Find out why in the summary article
available now, and look for the transcript and video next week.
Summary article:
http://netpreneur.org/events/cluetrain/article.html
From which this...
Mario Morino, who wrapped up the event, relies on a technique he
calls pulsing. "There is no longer a need," he said, "for any
company or organization to make a decision completely internally
again." Whether you are in research, customer support, sales or any
other decision-making role, it's foolish to keep it inside the
conference room. Go out and ask for help. "That's the cultural
challenge," he said. "Are we big enough, strong enough and do we
have the confidence to carry on that dialogue?"
That's a custom-made segue into breaking news of a dialogue that got
kicked up *several* notches today on Amazon.com. On March 2, Tim
O'Reilly outlined a far-ranging discussion he had with Jeff Bezos on
the issue of patents:
My Conversation with Jeff Bezos
http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/bezos_0300.html
Toward the end of this report, O'Reilly says he and Bezos agreed on
three immediate actions, the last of which was:
"For me to write up our conversation so far and share it with the
public, even in its inconclusive state. After all, one of the rules
of the Internet, as articulated so brilliantly in The Cluetrain
Manifesto, is that a market is a conversation. We don't have an
answer yet, but we're talking."
Today, a week later, the following was posted on the Amazon site:
AN OPEN LETTER FROM JEFF BEZOS ON THE SUBJECT OF PATENTS
http://www.amazon.com/patents/
In the final paragraph, Bezos writes:
"On an important meta-level, one thing to note is that this episode
is a fascinating example of the new world, where companies can have
conversations with their customers, and customers can have
conversations with their companies. I've been saying for 4 years
now that, online, the balance of power shifts away from the
merchant and toward the customer. This is a good thing. If you
haven't already, read the cluetrain manifesto. If you want the
book, well... you can get it at several places online..."
Both articles point to the cluetrain pages:
http://www.cluetrain.com
And while Jeff was ecumenically coy about pointing to his own site's
URL, we have no such compunction:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738202444/entropygradientr
Tim O'Reilly has penned a response to the Bezos letter...
http://www.oreilly.com/ask_tim/patent_reform_0300.html
...and there's surely more hot debate to come. What's important here,
however, is that a potentially head-on collision has been averted and
turned instead into a genuine market conversation. We're very happy
about whatever small role we may have played.
Mario Morino's words seem prescient in this context: "There is no
longer a need for any company or organization to make a decision
completely internally again." If your own organization doesn't believe
that yet, keeping passing these URLs around. This message not only
*wants* to move, it's already moving -- at light speed.
Seriously for once,
The Management
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