Doc's final Comdex Report is now in one long piece at the Linux Journal site.

From The Principles of New Marketing, by Christopher Ireland of Cheskin Research:

"As the common practices of marketing flail about and gasp for breath, a new approach is emerging from the chaos. This new approach is revolutionary. It is based on a fundamental reversal in the relationship between consumers and producers. At its core, it emphasizes authenticity, honesty, and passion, and it de-emphasizes hype, intrusion and image. It embodied one-to-one marketing principles, but it's the consumer who is doing the datamining, and it's the companies and brands that are being evaluated. This new form of marketing is already affecting the way consumers spend and will eventually completely replace the traditional practice of marketing."

"Consider a small thought-experiment: Whenever you see the word 'information' — as in the strategic importance of managing information, or the importance of timely information in solving problems, or the need to make substantial investments in information technology in order to compete in the cutthroat world of global competition — substitute the word 'relationship.'" That's from The Relationship Revolution, by Michael Schrage, published online at The Merrill Lynch Forum. By the way, we'd suggest the same experiment, substituting "conversation" for "relationship."

If you're looking for a primo example of what The Cluetrain Manifesto calls voice, Jamie Zawinski's site is a great place to start. "If you're like most of the zombies in the marketing departments at every place I've ever worked, you probably spend most of the day watching your screensaver while beating off to a phone-sex line," he writes in his brief against Pointcast. Among other things, Jamie is the influential hacker and Netscapee who named the Mozilla browser. Nothing humanized Netscape more than Jamie's voice, both inside and outside the company.

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