Moments of Clarity

Blog Wars: The Sundance Channel Documentary

I just watched the movie Blog Wars, a 2006 documentary chronicling the power of bloggers in the Lieberman - Lamont Senate race in Connecticut.  After watching it, I'm pretty sure that any outsider could easily dismiss bloggers as digital vigilantes exacting mob lynchings of their enemies. 

The bloggers, toting video cameras, would hound Lieberman asking tough and some might say volatile questions hoping to fluster him into saying something improper knowing that minutes later...the VLOG (video blog) would be up and linked to by thousands of supporters of the cause.

No matter the color of the sword you fall on: red or blue, the power of blogs in elections is undeniable.  Some accredit Bush's Ohio victory in 2004 to evangelical right bloggers getting people out to vote.  In the Lieberman/Lamont race, the bloggers got behind Lamont (even though they admittedly didn't care for him all that much) to prove a point, and they did.  Lamont emerged victorious from the primary that was targeted. 

2008 may prove to be the most digitally influenced election yet.  I'm not so sure this kind of blogging is undesirable really.  If you feel like many (especially twenty and thirty-somethings) do that politicians from both parties aren't even listening anymore, blogging may be the flintlock of the digital revolutionary militia.

Wiki - Collaboration Acceptance

Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, posted about his company's time line for acceptance of wiki technology.  It's taken them over a year.  As a principal at a small dynamic company, I can relate.  While I use Central Desktop vs. Basecamp, I know what his company is up against.  He says,

"We have a fairly small company. Even so, open and efficient communication is critical. We don't have the inertia that carries a large corporation forward. We also don't have any hiding spots for malcontents, non producers, rear-guard experts or those who can't cooperate and collaborate. We can't tolerate feifdoms, kingdoms of secrets and jealously guarded expertise. Wikis, the requirement to use them, helped flush all that out into the open and show how open and honest and constructive interactions made everyone's lives smoother."

Very accurate.  In my business, it took some authoritative top down management to break up the "fall back information silos" that cropped up when something didn't go exactly to plan or there was a feature that someone wanted but it didn't exist...even if it was a "two percenter" (a feature that only 2% of the human population would ever even dream up and thus can be jettisoned as unreasonable and not economically viable to ask for or even look for in another package).

I posted a short time ago on my case study in which I was going to use wikis to make a company's actual corporate web site easier to update and maintain.  I think I've taken the wiki idea to its extreme...literally replacing corporate web page and content management infrastructure with wiki pages that are instantly editable by the designated person(s).  I achieved the goal in my case which was to stir the pot and cause a bit of short term trauma to get my point across.  It worked, and the pages are still live. 

Personal vs. Business: A blogging conundrum

I blend personal experiences, business bits, and other things I'm interested in (ethanol) on this blog.  Some like to separate those things out into separate blogs...not me.  Time will only allow me to maintain 1 feed, 1 set of widgets, etc.  Besides, my blog is a tool for me to communicate with the world at large and share my Moments of Clarity wherever they show up in my life.  This blog gives readers an indication of who I am, what makes me tick, and what it would be like to sit down and have a conversation with me...whether it's business or just because. 

Today Fred Wilson posted a cool piece on what blogging means to him.  Fred is the real deal and he shows his readers what his life is like as A VC (A venture capitalist and rather good one at that) by blending personal, business, music, and other things that fancy him into blog topics. 

Fred says, "At first, I really didn’t know what to write about. So I wrote about the things I was passionate about; my work, my family, music, politics, new york city."

Exactly.  Share your passions...contribute!...and if others find them interesting...well...they'll read what you have to say. 

Domain Mapping

With the help of Mike Sansone, I was able to map my blog domain to my main company URL for The Mitchell Group, LLC.  Of course, I toiled about starting over in Technorati and wish I'd have understood some of these technical issues regarding consolidation of links and traffic some time ago...but it's done.

I'm taking the approach of having my corporate presence...BE THE BLOG.  I've generated more traffic and more first page google results for my name and various topics I post on frequently than I would have ever imagined.  And...all the while, my "corporate site" sits there and collects web dust.  After all, why do people want me to work with them/for them? It's not because my website is so brilliantly constructed that they can't say no.  (most have never seen it)

Rather they have a sense of who I am and what I can do...and the way in which I'll probably communicate with them...because of this blog.  I'm migrating some of the typical corporate stuff over and making design tweaks but it's live and official now.