cluetrain ch 1

Cluetrain

Ch. 1

Introduction

• Fascination with telling tales

• The net has given free rein to play

• Hypertext is nonhierarchical

• Intellectual bravery; more comfortable with risk than regulation; vastly enhanced ability to learn things; pace of learning is accelerating

Intro

• The web reinforces freedom

• Convergence of the market conversation and the conversation of the corporate workforce results in commerce becoming far more naturally integrated into the life of individuals and communities

Ch. 1

• We long for more connection…

• Why do we come online? For each other

• Nothing online accepted at face value or taken for granted = values

yahoo

• Despite its hacker roots = “global media company” - what happened? What continues to happen?

voice

• Conversations

• Values

• Audience is connected to itself. Where do we see this today?

seditious

• The web as an acquiescent mass-consumer market is a figment

• The Internet is inherently seditious

Why do companies care?

• Without the conversation, companies can’t innovate, build consensus, determine what works and what doesn’t,

Markets are conversations

• Trade routes pave the storylines. Across the millennia in between, the human voice is the music we have always listened for, and still best understand.

commerce

• Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends

• The result is a vast chasm between buyers and sellers

• Commerce has come to ignore the natural conversation that defines communities as human

Drive out fear

• Central tenet of Deming’s TQM

• Conversations among all parts of the supply chain deemed essential

• Now, it’s a step further: drive out fear and talk to your customers and listen to your customers.

Knowledge worth having

• Comes from turned on volitional attention, not from slavishly following someone else’s orders

• Innovation based on such knowledge is exciting, inflammatory, even dangerous, because itt tends to challenge fixed procedures and inflexible policies

Businesses that have a future…

• Are about subtle differences, not wholesale conformity; diversity, not homogeneity; breaking rules, not enforcing them; pushing the envelope, not punching the clock; invitation, not protection; doing it first, not doing it “right;” making it better, not perfect; telling the truth, not spinning lies; turning people on, not “packaging” them, about building convivial communities and knowledge ecologies, not leveraging demographic sectors

building convivial communities and

knowledge ecologies, not leveraging demographic

sectors

The Internet invites participation

The internet greatly facilitates the sharing of relevant

knowledge within a community joined by like interests

Companies that are actually communicating with online

markets have flung doors wide open

The question is whether, as a company, you can afford to

have more than an advertising jingle persona

Can you put yourself out there: say what you think in your own voice, present who you really

are, show what you really care about?

Do you have any genuine passion to share?

Humans are great at this; companies suck at it.

Markets don’t want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the

conversations going on behind the firewall.

PR doesn’t work. Markets are conversations.

How do conversations get started? How do people with common interests find each

other? Ans: word gets around, and on the net, word gets around fast (uh…FB, etc.)