"We, the Media" - a book so relevant, I´m reviewing as I read
September 6 2004
Over the weekend, I started to read Dan
Gillmor's "We,
the Media". I'm
only about 100 pages into the book, but it is so tightly aligned with how
my thinking has evolved in the last 24 months, that I simply must start
writing about it now. Warning -- this book will probably prompt some
rants. I'm writing them as Ed Brill and representing my individual
thoughts alone. I should also shout out to the reviews of this book
posted by Tom
Duff and Christopher
Byrne -- they inspired me
to move this book to the top of my reading list (and to buy it, even though
Gillmor has generously posted the entire book online).
---
When I started blogging 21 months ago, I didn't have a particular objective
in mind. Simply, I thought I was just taking my online interactions
to a new place. I've been involved in online communities for many
years, actually. When I was in college in 1988-1990, I participated
in many usenet newsgroups...none really from a professional/academic perspective,
but stuff like ham radio and computer games and whatever. When I
graduated from college, I quickly found my way back online through dial-up
BBSs and CompuServe and the like. At US Robotics in 1993, I was the
project manager for our internal Internet access rollout -- doing (then)
edgy stuff like getting HR to put e-mail addresses on business cards, setting
up tech support and sales with e-mail addresses, creating an anonymous
FTP site, and echoing the comp.dcom.modems Usenet newsgroup into a cc:Mail
bulletin board. You can still find some of my postings to that group
and others in Usenet archives.
So it was only natural that when I came to Lotus in 1994, I found my way
into online communities, both internally and externally. I became
a prolific use of our internal Comms Sales Discussion, and contributed
early on to the Lotus Partner Forum and notes.net. When I moved to
staff assignments in 1998, I accelerated this activity, and was a regular
posted in the R5 and Rnext beta forums, which is where I got to know many
of you who read this site today. Even when I moved into the ranks
of IBM management, I continued to make all of these forums a regular and
important part of my daily activity. It seemed only natural to me.
In fact, there was a time where one of my managers told me that I was "wasting"
too much time in the forums, and I just ignored the input. Why? Because
I assert that my career success is based in part on my online community
interaction. It provides a connection between me as an individual
decision-maker at IBM and my customers, prospects, partners, and competitors,
in a way that is incredibly powerful. I am usually one of the first
to know of a press article about Lotus products or our competition. I'm
reading, and regularly directed, to blogs, white papers, downloads, and
forums where Lotus products are discussed. As such, it's evolved
to the point where specific postings in discussions on the
LDD communities and in the
Lotus Partner Forum are directed to me individually -- even when the question
is completely outside of my area of responsibility (I'm especially flattered
when it is a highly technical question :).
What does all this have to do with We,
the Media? Everything.
One of Gillmor's major points in the book is how the leveraging of
electronic communities can fundamentally change the interaction between
vendors and the market. He espouses the concept that I've embraced
for years -- how the web allows many-to-many and few-to-few interactions
in a way that was never before possible. He also spends a lot of
time describing the way that anyone with a blog can become a credible voice
-- changing the way newsmakers interact with the "media". We
certainly experienced
that in the Lotus community
several weeks ago -- a firm that appeared to have the old school view of
"any publicity is good publicity" ended up with an avalance of
negative writing, all of which will live on on the web long past the immediate
item being discussed. Gillmor cites several stories in his book that
parallel the analyst report discussion linked above -- blogs, IM,
RSS, and an intersection with "old media" have combined several
times to surface the story behind a story.
Yet that leads to one of the big questions that reading this book has raised
for me -- how is it that a "community"
even formed around Lotus Notes, anyway? And how has that impacted
the success of Lotus in the marketplace? I'm going to save
that for my next chapter.
Post a Comment
- 2
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/6/2004 4:56:25 PM
small circle of influential bloggers, that's for sure.
I'll race you to the finish of the respective books, then we can trade -- since after all, we are the same person ;)
- 3
Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 9/6/2004 9:16:13 PM
Interting as you bring up the community aspect. In my response to one of the earlier threads about the company out west, I talked about MS having nothing comparable to the Notes.Net fora. You pointed me back to the MSDN fora as a comparable resource. But this begs the question if that resource is as much a community as the Notes.net community? are they similar or dissimilar? what gives them the characteristics of similarity or dissimilarity?
- 4
Nathan T. Freeman | 9/7/2004 2:40:49 AM
"Cluetrain Manifesto" ROFLMAO! That's awesome.
By the way, if we're such a tight community, Ed, how come you flag Alan's and Chris's birthday, but not mine? RHS and I were also born on Sept 3rd, y'know. Where's the love?
I feel so dissed. :(
- 5
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/7/2004 6:30:14 AM
@3 - Chris, that doesn't sound like my response - can you find it for me? In fact, when you read part 2 of my book review, you'll see I draw the same sharp contrast.
@4 - Nathan, I only knew about Alan's because of course he and I are the same person. Miller - well, he asked for guest bloggers during his birthday week. You and Rich? New news. What is it with September 3? :)
- 6
Ben Poole http://www.benpoole.com | 9/7/2004 7:54:50 AM
> What is it with September 3? :)
You shouldn't ask what's with Sept 3rd rather, what happened in late December / early January I'd say... ;o) Anyway, belated felicitations to Richard and Nathan!
- 7
Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 9/7/2004 9:51:21 AM
Was that not the great blackout in the NE, particularly NYC?
Ooops, Ed, I thought it was your response:
#34, "A Sweet Little Competition"
".. and one comment that I have to respond to: "By the same token, I know I can go to the Lotus Developer Domain and either find the answer in one of the discussion fora or post the question, Microsoft has NOTHING comparable to this."
- 8
Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 9/7/2004 10:07:57 AM
the MSDN newsgroups, using NNTP, are hardly the same as LDD discussion forums. They are focused on developers only, not general product discussion. They aren't nearly as interactive as LDD.
I believe that comment was from one of the Cheesecake recipients.
"The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual"
Similar to what you mentioned, I am also just starting into this book. In the first few pages I was hooked. My summary of just the first few pages would be... "Most companies just don't get it! The internet is not about a new marketing channel, its about empowering everyone to have a voice." I'm looking forward to reading this book, armed with the background of working for IBM/Lotus for 10 years... a company founded in helping people communicate. It will be interesting to see where we stack up well, and where we don't... and what areas the book provokes me to dive into trying to fix.
You can actually read the whole book online, but I wanted it on my bookshelf.
{ Link }
"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."