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Thursday, September 12, 2002
Making sense since 1977 
| | And I think it is time to name Dr. Weinberger as the King of the Disclaimer. He has already authored the peerless "Elevator statement on file with the building inspector" among other delicious phrases. Now he adds this: |
| | In my will, I've specified that my heirs should keep my email address active and that all incoming mail should be automatically answered with a personalized response expressing my great interest in their products, services, offers of stolen government funds, webcam views of their hot coed selves and penis extenders. Count it as my own web-based perpetual flame. |
Next we'll be calling him LoveBoy®
| | Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy. |
Implementing Cluetrain
| | Back on the phone with Uncle Dave this morning, rambling across all kinds of topics. |
| | One thing we both found ourselves jazzed about is what we're starting to find at the most happening conferences. It's what Dave calls "the combination of online and physical presence." The combination is mind-expanding and extremely energizing. I saw this happen in a huge way at PC Forum last Spring, then again at SXSW, then at two O'Reilly conferences. Gnomedex too. |
| | Something very combustible happens when the physical and the virtual become one &3151; when we're operating on both worlds at once. In that combined place we really do start to experience the the "implementation stage of Cluetrain" Dave talked about a couple weeks back. Those of us who write can commit all-clue journalism. The rest of us can do research, check do email or otherwise enlarge the collective mind. |
| | Word gets out, word gets in. |
| | Connected conferences give everybody a lot more to talk about because their context enlarges to maximum dimensions. The venue becomes uncontained yet still very purposeful. |
| | You can charge more money for a connected conference, because the physical venue is no less scarce but a lot more valuable. Hey, there's no substitute for being there. |
| | Which is why everybody doing a conference should start saturating their meeting spaces with as much wi-fi Net connectivity as they posibly can. If their conference is a Happening Thing, nature will take its course. |
| | Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to hooking up with Dave, Halley and some other folks at the Harvard Business Conference on October 3 in Cupertino. It's a Strategy Leadership Summit titled Next Generation Growth, and features Andy Grove, Clay Christensen, Scott Cook, Randy Komisar and other top-drawer speakers. |
| | See you there. Or somewhere. Somehow. Eventually. |
AOL Time Bomber
| | Here's another piece about major AOL news that fails to mention the name Steve Case. Worse, it leads with a death-rattle quote from AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons: |
| | "...if (AOL) is going to live, and I think it is, it will be somewhat like HBO." |
| | If? Think?? Somewhat??? What the FUCK??? |
| | Why doesn't Ted Turner (the biggest stockholder and a board member) walk in, take over, and at least get it to start making some kind of sense? |
| | Or at least start listening to some good ideas that can save what's left of the company's sorry ass. |
| | [Later...] I finally picked up this morning's Wall Street Journal and found the biggest piece on the front page of the Marketplace section is Will Steve Case Leave AOL? It gets worse: |
| | The anger comes as speculation grows internally that Mr. Parsons may drop AOL from the company's name. Mr. Parsons doesn't rule out a name change but says that right now it would be the sort of public-relations maneuver he would prefer to avoid. Internally, he has also said he wouldn't change the name unless it was perceived to be damaged. |
| | There's leadership for you. |
| | Here's a prediction: if Time Warner kills the name AOL (and Time Warner's prints will be on that knife), all of the old AOL value will leave the company. It will become worthless. Or worse: a boat anchor the size of the Titanic. |
| | Of course, that's the way it's looking right now, given the fact that they're floating the subject at all. Looks to me like they're already be sunk and all we're reading is the bubbles. |
Value subtraction
| | In two days my ownership of the domain name "buckwash" runs out. Should I keep it? |
Good Morning!
What Dan Rather wouldn't
Send a Marine
| | An Unlikely Hero is an amazing story by Rebecca Liss in Slate about Marine Corps veteran Dave Karnes, who left his job in Connecticut, donned his old uniform, drove to Ground Zero, bluffed his way past Security and found two of the twelve survivors. |
| | Wake-up call is a story in The Guardian about retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper of the U.S. Marines, who, playing the role of Saddam Hussein in Millennium Challenge — the "biggest war game of all time" — kicked his own country's ass. An excerpt: |
| | Even when playing an evil dictator, the marine veteran clearly takes winning very seriously. He reckoned Blue would try to launch a surprise strike, in line with the administration's new pre-emptive doctrine, "so I decided I would attack first." |
| | Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Sixteen ships were sunk altogether, along with thousands of marines. If it had really happened, it would have been the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor. |
| | It was at this point that the generals and admirals monitoring the war game called time out. |
| | The name Van Riper draws either scowls or rolling eyes at the Pentagon these days, but there are anecdotal signs that he has the quiet support of the uniformed military, who, after all, will be the first to discover whether the Iraq invasion plans work in real life. |
| | "He can be a real pain in the ass, but that's good," a fellow retired officer told the Army Times. "He's a great guy, and he's a great patriot, and he's doing all those things for the right reasons." |
| | Here's the bottom-line question — one that frankly had not occured to me until now: What if we lose? Before reading what General Van Riper did, I really didn't think that was possible. Now I'm not so sure. |
Bracket yourself
| | I still want mine to say he was almost finished. |
Wave hii
| | My other blog, Skywave, is back on the air after a 4-month hiatus. It seems to have lost all the links on the left, but otherwise it's fine. |
| | And a huge thanks to Lawrence Lee for providing advice and assistance not only in rescuing Skywave, but for helping improve this blog as well. |
Collective memory
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