July 2005

Some quick book-writing research turned up

• A blog about books and publishing
• A book design blog
• Dear blog, I worked on my book today
• With Covers, Publishers Take More Than Page From Rivals

And the best of the worst writing is recognized in an annual contest.

If you’d like more details about the event, in a full-color, brochure form, we’ve got one and it’s fabulous. BBS 05 SF Brochure (132K, PDF).

If you’re having any problems with registration of PayPal, please contact us directly. Also, please note that you do not have to register with PayPal to pay for the registration.

The Blog Book Blog (say it a few times it’s catchy, like, Museum of Online Museums) is up. It’s a companion site for the practical book about business blogging we’re writing. Much of what we talk about at the Blog Business Summit will be in the book, as well as, “concrete advice, no-nonsense research, warnings about common pitfalls, and real-world examples of business-blog successes—and failures.”

In the first post, I write about how writing a book is like walking down the aisle and how, “I always knew I’d write a book some day, but I didn’t know that it would be a book about blogging!”

Having dinner with Michael Nolan, our acquisition editor, a few weeks ago, I remarked that I always knew I’d write a book some day, but I didn’t know that it would be a book about blogging!

Who would? In my career, I’ve never seen a technology grow faster or change business more quickly. About a year ago, I was in meetings evangelizing blogging to clients who had no idea what I was talking about. Just now, when lecturing, I see more hands raise for “I’m blogging,” than, “I don’t know what a blog is.” And that’s what brought us to this book. The marketing part of blogging is easy. People get that. What’s more difficult is the actual how and why. The blogopshere talks to itself a lot about blogging theory. There are rules, etiquette, pre-requisites, and even manifestos. What we’re going to do is turn that blogging theory into business reality and write about business blogging success—and failures.

Getting back to dinner with Michael, I also told him that writing a book was like walking down the aisle. I was nervous, anticipating the commitment, and jittery about the details. It’s a long-term relationship and I hope I do it right.

Reflecting on the book, a few lyrical quotes

• “Ain’t gonna work for no soul-sucking jerk” — Beck
• “I’ve Got Depth Of Perception In My Text Y’all … So What’cha want” — B-Boys
• “Pressure’s gonna drop on you”
  
  “Speaking King’s English in quotation”
  
  “Overpowered by funk? Funk out! ”
  — Clash

We’re writing a “practical book about business blogging: a book that offers concrete advice, no-nonsense research, warnings about common pitfalls, and real-world examples of business-blog successes—and failures.” It’s coming out in the Spring of 2006. We’ll blog about it here, on the Blog Book Blog.

Our goal is to write a book that readers will reach for when they’re ready to bridge the gap between blogging theory and business reality.

Biz Stone at Google’s Blogger service was nice enough to post about the BBS up on the dashboard that several million registered Blogger clients use to manage their blogs, along with a nice conference discount offer. That’s another reason to use their free service, besides the fact that there is no faster way to get a great looking RSS generating site up and running…

Thanks Biz!

Thanks to the fact that Google has allowed RSS feeds (widgets, essentially) to populate their new and updated personalized home, I found my way to the the latest headline article on Wired.com: All Hail the Awesome Internet.

As I was reading through it, I was struck by some of the parallels between the early stages of the internet as a business tool and the current state of blogging. Although it’s hardly fair to say that the invention of blogs is comparable to the invention of the internet, one might correctly say that blogs are currently re-inventing the internet.

In the Wired article, Kevin Kelly warns about the dangers of dismissing a new technology before you understand it. In 1994 and 1995, businesses were avoiding the internet partially out of ignorance and partially out of fear:

It’s not hard to find smart people saying stupid things about the Internet on the morning of its birth. In late 1994, Time magazine explained why the Internet would never go mainstream: “It was not designed for doing commerce, and it does not gracefully accommodate new arrivals.” Newsweek put the doubts more bluntly in a February 1995 headline: “THE INTERNET? BAH!” The article was written by astrophysicist and Net maven Cliff Stoll, who captured the prevailing skepticism of virtual communities and online shopping with one word: “baloney.”

This dismissive attitude pervaded a meeting I had with the top leaders of ABC in 1989. I was there to make a presentation to the corner office crowd about this “Internet stuff.” To their credit, they realized something was happening. Still, nothing I could tell them would convince them that the Internet was not marginal, not just typing, and, most emphatically, not just teenage boys. Stephen Weiswasser, a senior VP, delivered the ultimate putdown: “The Internet will be the CB radio of the ’90s,” he told me, a charge he later repeated to the press. Weiswasser summed up ABC’s argument for ignoring the new medium: “You aren’t going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet.”

The companies that don’t take blogging seriously now, or flat out ignore it (Dell, for example, still hasn’t responded to the Dell Cluewatch) will stand to fall drastically behind as blogging becomes a more prevalent communications medium on the internet. Don’t get left behind!

At the first Blog Business Summit, I met Jon Froda and Jesper Bindslev of the Copenhagen Business School. Jon and Jesper interviewed me about business blogging and we discussed localization, a topic they were studying. I hadn’t heard anyone mention localizing blogs for cultures and countries and was impressed. They blog in English and Danish. Diago Expressed blogs in English and offers a crappy Japanese machine translation. Enter Catalytic Events, the world’s first bilingual business blog, updated daily in both English and Japanese. You can toggle between the versions, on their home page, read about catalytic business events, and the book they’re writing for MrCraw Hill.

The Q/A at end of my blogging lectures always includes a, “what’s next,” and it’s going to be localization. You’ve got your social network, conversing with your market, and the next step is taking that global. Look at the Wikipedia homepage for a good example . . . 10 languages.

While I was pouring over the Shuttle coverage yesterday (hoping to see an astronaut holding a Clip-n-Seal), I spotted, way down at the bottom of the page, NASA RSS.

Where the Shuttle can be described as a “an increasingly creaky baby boomer who can still run a marathon,” NASA is certainly providing much data to a web audience, including a daily image feed. I also found QuickTime HD movies of the Shuttle.

I added a link to the Blog Business Summit Blogpulse Profile to the sidebar and have been pinging it regularly. I use it to check how active our blog is, our reach, how it ranks, topics, what we’re linking to, and who is linking to us. The technology is impressive. Pete Blackshaw, the Chief Marketing Officer of Intelliseek explains the Blogpulse Profile big picture in a review movie. Pete is also one of our featured speakers and will join Evelyn Rodriguez, and Bob Wyman on the Staying On Top of the Buzz: Blog Monitoring Tools and Techniques panel.

Francine Brevetti, a business writer for Inside Bay Area, reports on how, “Some companies wary of unfiltered opinion — others welcome it.” The report includes discussion of Boeing’s blogs, quotes from bloggers, and more. Ian Kennedy, Six Apart’s Partner Development Director gets a good photo, as does Paul Rosenfeld, one of our featured speakers.

The shuttle flew today. While I paused to watch the launch and cheered, I also thought about how the blogosphere has changed business.
A few years ago, what started as a product and a blog for Clip-n-Seal, ended up at NASA and the Shuttle’s return to flight.

Shuttle blogs:

• AOL
• CNN
• Technorati

Damn, when I read the NYTimes report on a blogger that landed a book deal AND TV rights for her blog, I realized we missed that in our deal! Several bloggers, including us, have landed deals from their blogs, but this is the first deal I know of that includes a comedy series. Scrambling after reading the article, I instant messaged with Frank Steele and came up with some reality blog TV pitches:

• Survirus: two bloggers (one PC, the other Apple) in a race to connectivity, on a remote island, try to connect to WIFI, surf with no virus protection, and see whose system survives the longest
• Big Blogger: top bloggers submit to humiliating public weigh-ins via comments and trackbacks
• Barton Fink Blog: 20 bloggers try to write a screenplay of posts in a sweaty apartment
• Blunket: bloggers travel from junket to junket and the one with the most schwag at the end wins

More coverage of the Stratoblogging from the Seattle Times and Everett Herald, including insights on the event and lots of good quotes from Boeing and our featured speakers:

• “We’re working with that community to understand how it fits into the news cycle, how it fits into marketing” — Terrance Scott, Boeing spokesman
• “I’m blogging from the sky!” — Molly
• “The technology was flawless, the Boeing team truly delightful” — Buzz Bruggemen
• “Blogs gave us really good Google juice” — Byron
• “With more and more people using the Internet to research major purchases, companies can’t afford to ignore blogging” — Steve Broback
• “I’ve never been on a better flight” — Chris Pirillo

At the upcoming conference we’ll be fortunate enough to hear from GM’s Michael Wiley, who was responsible for launching GM’s Fastlane blog. Michael will talk about the lessons learned from their experience.

I thought our readers and attendees would be interested in reading a piece Bob Lutz wrote for InformationWeek. (Lutz is vice chairman, global product development, at General Motors–and writes the Fastlane blog).

Some great tidbits from Lutz’ piece:

“To any senior executive on the fence about starting a corporate blog, I have a word of advice: Jump.”

“To me, the blog is a way for GM to be culturally relevant. It allows us to be on the leading edge of new technology while getting our strong views out there about our cars and trucks. So far, response has been outstanding, with more than 5,000 visits and 13,000 page views a day.”

“We’ve found the blog to be a hugely effective communications tool and a terrific way to conduct a grassroots, largely unfiltered conversation with GM fans and nonfans alike.”

Five Across, the creators of Bubbler and the Five Across Enterprise Platform have joined the BBS as a Silver sponsor. I had a chance to talk with Peter Karnig of 5A at the last conference and played a bit with the service. Overall, I was quite impressed with what they have to offer.

I have spent some time with Bubbler and have to say that I really like the idea of using a desktop client application to design and contribute to a Blog site. They are one of the only companies to offer this combination of Web publishing service along with a local client app. The elimination of much of the browser-based latency hassles is a big plus. As PC Magazine said:

“This real-time, joined-at-the-hip method of content addition and modification can be truly liberating, since it lets you focus on the guts of your site without getting bogged down by the mechanics. And talk about instant gratification!”

Anyway, we look forward to seeing and hearing more from Five Across at the conference.

This is the title of the keynote being given by Dean Hachamovitch and Robert Scoble on August 19. Dean just posted about it on IEBlog.

Here’s a bit of Dean’s post:

Robert will talk about how businesses can use RSS to create strong, ongoing connections with their customers. I’ll talk about how the RSS platform in Windows Vista will make tapping into the power of RSS easier, as well as some of the new opportunities that businesses and bloggers can expect.

Here is the session description from our sessions page:

Keynote: Why Microsoft is Betting Big on Bloggers and RSS

Dean Hachamovitch, Robert Scoble

It’s no secret that Microsoft has been quick to understand that RSS is rapidly becoming a critical technology for timely business communication, and recently announced their plan to fully support RSS at the OS level in Longhorn.
In this session, attendees will learn the specifics of the compelling RSS growth numbers and the explosive growth of blogs and the blogging community that helped drive Microsoft toward their recent decision.
Microsoft will also reveal where the world of blogging and syndicated content is going as they create the largest single platform on which business bloggers will deliver their messages.

I have a Nutella Snack and Drink container that Pam brought back from Europe. She bought it at a euro-store called PAM. It includes dipping sticks and a straw with the Nutella in one compartment and iced tea in another. It’ll make a nice little snack and I told the children, we’d open it and celebrate when the book deal was signed.

Weeks ago my daughter said, “hey, when are you ever going to open this and get the book deal? I want to try it.” “Good point. I’ll fire off more emails.” Today, finally, the contracts are signed and mailed.

When the kids get back from Grandmas, we’ll open that container, celebrate, be part of the MyNutella Euro Community, and start writing on Monday.

The title of the book is being determined. The thesis is, “if you’re not blogging now, you should be. Here’s how and why.”

Echo Less & Write More

As I commented on Dave Taylor’s Why Authors Shouldn’t Be So Quick To Blog Their Books, the companion site will be much like the Longtail or Zeldman and not a post for every draft chapter. While some may find my stream-of-consciousness writing style for the chapters fascinating, I suspect, most (especially my coauthors) will not.

Another goal with the book is to echo less and write more. By that I mean, just because a blogger writes a manifesto or says other bloggers “must” do things, that doesn’t mean that’s what we should do for the book or what business should do with their blogs. I talk about that in my lectures. Suit your blog, or book, to yourself or business and not what everyone else is doing.

I rounded up the blogospheric buzz earlier and here are reports from the press on Blogging the Stratosphere.

KOMO: Wi-Fi In The Sky

Brian Gregory reports on the Stratoblogging for KOMO 1000 News radio. The 2 minute-long report (MP3) is available on their podcast. It was recorded during the Blogging the Stratosphere event.

Boeing shows off wired jet with flight to Walla Walla

A highlight of the event was flying into the Walla Walla Airport where a welcoming committee was waiting, waving and clapping. Bloggers usually don’t get that kind of attention! Andy Porter of the Union-Bulletin reports on the arrival of Connexion One. He interviews Terrance Scott, Boeing spokesman and Buzz Bruggeman.

Greetings from the Big Boeing Blogfest

Bryan Corliss of the Everett Herald reports on his blog that, “All the “real” bloggers are happily Instant Messaging their friends.” Correct! I was one of them. I got an instant message flood.

Bryan also reports about the new live TV service that Connexion By Boeing is offering.

Boeing builds Wi-Fi buzz with bloggers

CBS Marketwatch reporter quotes Boeing’s David Friedman, vice president of marketing and direct sales, “No other group demands constant broadband wireless connectivity more than the blogging and technical communities.

“We felt that fulfilling the in-flight needs of this particularly demanding audience would help spread the word about our performance advantage.”