June 2012
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Helping one who helped our selves
Michael O’Connor Clarke is one of the world’s truly great guys. Besides being smart, funny, caring, hard-working, a good husband and father — and pretty much all the other positive stuff you could pack into a bio, Michael was one of the first people to not only dig The Cluetrain Manifesto, but to grok it… Continue reading
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One of the world’s great craters
When I visited the Upheaval Dome in 1987, I was sure it was an impact crater. But roadside displays and printed literature from Canyonlands National Park said otherwise. Clearly, they reported, this was collapsed salt dome. Since then German researchers have found evidence, through shocked quartz, of an impact. That now appears to be the prevailing theory. The… Continue reading
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Bridges covered
My sister and I received a durable lesson in generosity in the summer of 1963, in the heart of Iowa. That was where our family’s 1957 Ford Country Sedan station wagon, towing our Nimrod pop-up camper trailer, broke down. It was on a Sunday morning in late June, heading south from Des Moines on I-35… Continue reading
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Tonight in Santa Clara
… I’ll be speaking about The Intention Economy at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara, in the Winchester Ballroom, courtesy of the good people at Weber Shandwick. Here’s a link to the invite. (It’s open and free, but ya gotta RSVP.) The book covers a lot of topics, and the one I’m going to focus on tonight is… Continue reading
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Yes, please meet the Chief Executive Customer
Looks like IBM and I are in agreement. Last week the first image you saw at IBM’s site (at least here in the U.S.) was a larger version of the one on the left, with the headline “Meet the new Chief Executive Customer. That’s who’s driving the new science of marketing.”* At the “learn more”… Continue reading
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Missing Elinor Ostrom
Through my work over the years I have often been directed to the worlds of Elinor Ostrom, and toward speaking to her in person. Alas, the latter choice is now off the table. She died yesterday, at 78, of pancreatic cancer. On Monday evening, in the Q&A during my talk, I was asked about the… Continue reading
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How Apple will turn the Net’s top into TV’s bottom
Apple TV (whatever it ends up being called) will kill cable. It will also give TV new life in a new form. It won’t kill the cable companies, which will still carry data to your house, and which will still get a cut of the content action, somehow. But the division between cable content and other forms… Continue reading
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The absent market for personal data
I was interviewed for a story recently. (It’s still in the mill.) In the correspondence that followed, the reporter asked me to clarify a statement: “that the idea of selling your data is nuts.” I didn’t remember exactly what I said, so I responded, I think what I meant was this: 1) The use value… Continue reading
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On bubbles within bubbles
In When bubbles burst…, Dave writes, When any hamster-based startup can raise $50 million on a $1 billion market cap, there’s not much market for new ideas. Why bother, when the same-old-stuff can make you rich. But when the bubble fades, it’s time to get creative. Because techwill reboot. The question is, what’s the next wave. I… Continue reading
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Hard drivings
The hard drive is crapping out on my main laptop. I’m backed up, so that much is cool. Installing a Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB drive later today. We’ll see how it goes. [Later…] Lot of dependencies and such to clean up, but performance-wise, it’s like a new computer. Continue reading
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Writing with Bitly
Markets are conversations, they say. So yesterday I had one with MRoth, head of product for Bitly, the company whose service changes the other day caused a roar of negative buzz, including some from me, here. Users were baffled by complexities where simplicities used to be. Roger Ebert lamented an “incomprehensible and catastrophic redesign” and explained in… Continue reading