Once More unto the Breach

Wired Publishes Assignment Zero Interviews

If you visit Wired.com today you will see the Assignment Zero work as the banner story.  Wired published the first three features and one of the Q and A's.  They will continue to publish our collective/collected work throughout the week, rolling two or three stories out each day. 

I participated in the Assignment Zero pro-am crowd-sourcing journalism experiment, interviewing Beth Noveck on the Peer to Patent project.  The collection of interviews is incredible, however, including interviews with the likes of Lawrence Lessig, James Surowiecki, Clay Shirky, and Chris Messina.  (There were 80+ interviews in all.)

It's a fascinating experiment.  I'm still asking myself "why participate" (aside from seeing your work referred to by Wired.com).  It certainly forced me to research and consider how to interview someone to [hopefully] get them to tell their story.  As I start to resurrect the podcast again, the experience proved invaluable. 

In the mean time, enjoy the interviews!

Blogging and Traditional Marketing

Clearly I've reached some new plateau in my "blog" status.  I received anonymous email from CNN Marketing encouraging me to blog about a press release they sent along.  It touched the wrong nerve.  Here's my response email:

Dear CNN Marketing (marketing@cnn.com),
Come on, guys.  Really.  I (obviously) take credit for the writing on my
blog.  You should take credit for your emails.  Otherwise we can't have
a discussion.  It would be like talking with the CNN logo on your
building.  Decidedly impersonal. Without a name, we can't even begin to
have trust.  No trust -- no relationship.

As a marketing organization, if you really honestly want to reach out
through the "new media" you've discovered, then have the courage to
reach out.  Step naked off the damned cliff and be bold.  I am on a
personal name/email/mobile basis with about a dozen journalists.  We
share news.  Sometimes I'm quoted in their articles and on their own
news blogs.  It's a relationship.  We respect one another and one
another's integrity and confidences.

You want me to be your pipeline?  Build a relationship.  I'm not your
pimp.  I can imagine the script that culled my name and address from a
blog search on "China" to cough it up to you, but your 1:many broadcast
is so so so traditional media.  I could explain "social arithmetic" to
you, but I'm betting you wouldn't understand.  Indeed, I've confidence
the management chain in CNN marketing will be very sure I'm wrong.  Too
bad.

But ask yourself: What possible incentive would I have to do ANYTHING
with the impersonal advert you sent to me?  I didn't even crack open the
zip archive you sent along. I write for my readers.  Why would I want to
"place ads" in my content on your behalf?

You did NOT do me a favour by sending me your content.  If I knew who
you were, however, it might have been different.  If you took the time
to introduce yourself, and find out who I am, and what I write about for
my readers, you might discover I'm not a good target for this piece of
information.  But I might be a GREAT target for the next bit you want to
pass along.

Please don't waste my time unless you actually want to have the
discussion and are willing to put your name on your work.

kindest regards,
stephe

Here was their "original" personal email that provoked the response:

Dear stephen.walli (Once More unto the Breach),

xxxxx xxxx in Beijing, the latest addition to CNN.com's highly 
rated 'The Scene' series has just been released! As a well-written blog 
on the topic I thought you should be amongst the first to know.  I've 
attached some press material about xxxxx xxxx which you are free to use
on your blog.

<pithy quote removed>

I hope you and your visitors find this interesting!  If there's anything
else I can do for you please don't hesitate to let me know.

The scene itself can be found at:
<url removed>

Yours Sincerely,

CNN Marketing
--
CNN EMEA, Turner House, 16 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7HS
Tel: +44 20 7693 0939

As I said: clearly they hit a nerve.  At least the marketing person from UNISYS that tried a similar stunt last week (a.) was bold enough he signed his name to the email, and (b.) had apparently taken a look at my blog long enough to figure out my readers might be interested in the press release he passed on to me.  (I didn't think so.)

It's not like there aren't enough books on blogging out there.  Maybe they should hire Hugh or Seth to explain it to them, or at least they should read their blogs to understand better.  They definitely need to get a clue. 

Post to del.icio.us
digg it

Interviews and Blogs and National Public Radio

I was interviewed recently for a National Public Radio business segment titled "Microsoft Finds Itself at a Crossroads".  The story ran yesterday.  This interview is what provoked my post on Microsoft a couple of weeks ago and its follow-up.  I'm a little sensitive to what editors do to reporter's work to "punch up" a story.  (Think about what just happened to Shai Agassi from SAP.) 

I've been using the blog as backup to thoughts and ideas expressed in interviews that then pass through the editor's shears. Recognize that the one minute of audio on NPR was culled from a 30 minute interview.  The couple of quotes in Business Week came from about an hour and a half of discussion. Blogging (to me at least) is a great way to maintain the integrity of the ideas that would otherwise be lost on the cutting room floor.

Nothing Goes Away on the Web

Tom Adelstein has published an article recently in which he pulls an article using the Way Back machine that I wrote for USENIX ;login: a decade ago on the U.S. government bid protest in which the question was debated as to whether or not NT was a "POSIX" operating system. 

When I was being qualified as an expert witness in this bid protest, opposing counsel certainly had every thing I had published in old fashioned paper form to that date on the table in front of them, trying to get me to contradict myself in front of the judge.  (The entire experience was a fascinating introduction to the legal process.)  I am fortunately coherent (if not completely articulate) in my opinions over time with respect to software standardization, development, business economics, and open source.  My opinions evolve, but I have not (yet) changed opinions on these subjects in any sort of contradictory way.

I worked at Microsoft through a period when email was in the news constantly because of litigation involving evidence exhibits of interesting emails.  The unwritten rule of email was never write anything that you weren't willing to see blown up in 100 point type on a court room projector.   Debates continue about personal email in a work context.  This discussion will no doubt evolve to instant messenger chats and text messages.  The RADAR open source project we released certainly allows all such traffic to be captured and indexed if you were a U.S. financial institution needing to track every communication and still wanting to use the most current technology tools available. 

And now we all blog.

Our lives, however, are no more transparent than before it all went online.  In a legal context, everything is still discoverable (in the legal sense), but now that discovery is easier and faster.  In the social context,  when we communicate we need always to consider the context, peoples' perceptions and memory (fickle that it can be), and how it will represent us not just now but in the future.  This applies whether in a blog posted editorial or a refereed journal article, in a letter or card to a loved one, in front of a room full of people at a conference or in the pub over beer with coworkers.  The online world hasn't changed this. 

Even the reach I may have world wide through a blog posting found by Google doesn't change the necessity to consider international values and perceptions, as we have always had world-wide distributed media, books, conferences, journals, etc. 

A friend once (enviously) accused me of saying things other people only think.  But for all the things I "share" there is still a wealth of private material buried deeply.  (Indeed I can hide it better by boldly sharing other things.)  We self edit and self mediate all the time.  The online world doesn't make our lives more transparent than we already were willing to share (or not). It simply makes those things we share more accessible.