Great post on the Cluetrain list by Rex Hammock, pres & CEO of SmallBusiness.com. A sample:

The real impact of the Internet will come when coverage shifts from "the deal flow" onto "the idea flow" that permeates lists such as this and books such as Cluetrain and on weblogs and, in my humble opinion, sites like smallbusiness.com, where grassroots knowledge is being unleashed in ways we cannot yet comprehend.

He ads, As tiresome as the over-hyped "boom" story was, the "crash" story is long due for a correction. Exactamundo.

Hmm.... If we have any money left, where should we put it?

Think of humanity as one big meeting.

Nice piece by John Levine at IBM Developerworks. A key point: Whereas it's quite likely that the trade press will continue to talk about content, it's extremely unlikely that content will be where the money is. Why not? Because customers are willing to pay more for one-to-one connection than for content. Hal Cohen's piece in The Standard makes the same point, but in a different way. Interesting coincidence: Cohen opens his piece with a reference to the founding Quaker, George Fox. Apparently Fox originated the idea of the fixed price, which was picked up by retailers two hundred years later. (I thought it started with John Wanamaker in the American Quaker city of Philadelphia, but Cohen says it started with Aristide Boucicaut in the Catholic city of Paris. Can somebody get me the facts on this one? I need them.).

I believe we continue to have this pricing argument because we're still inclined to think of business in shipping terms, and of the Net as a shipping system. It's all about moving "content" from one party to another (usually from producer to consumer, which was the custom in the "mass" market mindset of the Industrial Age's golden decades). This carries the assumption that content is freight and should be charged accordingly. Want it fast? Pay more. Want more of it? Pay more. Want better quality goods? Pay more. Slide the price up and down combinations of all those scales. Look at it from the producer's end and just substitute "charge" for "pay." Want "multi" media? Multiply the price.

When we shift our conceptual framework from shipping to real estate — from the World Wide Freight Forwarding System to the World Wide Commons — we get a much different model. In this vast yet intimate commons, people just want to show up and connect with each other (the Quaker verb would be meet). Like we're doing right now. It's not a lot more complicated than that. Or at least it doesn't have to be.

Credits for pointers to both pieces gos to Tomalak's Realm and Josie Ottman.

Interesting coincidence: Evan Williams also finds much to agree with in the Cohen piece.

The beat goes on

Cluetrain is #1 on Amazon's periodicals purchase circles.

Grounding

First, a quick thanks to Kishore for finding a bad link in yesterday's blog, and for pointing me to a number of Quaker-related sites, including his own.

One of those is Quaker Business Meetings: How Friends Make Decisions, which comes to us from the Glasgow Quaker Meeting in Scotland.

From the Overview:

The meeting begins with silence. When the Clerk judges the time is right, he or she summarises the agenda before the meeting, provides any necessary background information, and lays the first item before the meeting. People rise to speak, one at a time. Each item concludes with the agreeing of a minute of the meeting's decision. When the business is complete there is another period of silence. The meeting is formally concluded with a handshake.

I went to a Quaker college. My first marriage was to a Quaker girl, and we went to Friends Meeting often, especially during the Vietnam War years. Our two kids were both raised as Quakers as well.

Quaker meetings still amaze me in the way they leave so little room for politics and so much room for respect. We normally speak once only on a subject unless responding to a direct question or giving factual information, the Quaker Business Meeting rules say. We speak plainly. We do not speechify, hector or attempt to filibuster. It is appropriate to speak with conviction or with passion, but not with prejudice.

This may sound idealistic, which it is. But in practice it is also profoundly realistic. With its plainness, its simplicity, its honesty and its respect for the worthiness in each of us, Quaker faith and practices are the most grounded I have ever known.

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