Walking the talk Tom wrote "What if talk about corporations, technology and other inhuman things simply evades the human. I was thinking the proposition here is to talk about human things." and I have to agree.

When Jeneane included me in this group blog I felt slightly uneasy and I wondered why. Then I remembered the saying that "what you resist persists" and something about Mother Theresa saying that rather than being fiercely anti-war she'd rather be fiercely pro-peace. If we want to make the web a more human space, place, thingy (sorry David W) then surely we do so by being different in here than we would be in the "real" world.

What about making this group blog a place where we celebrate and articulate the way we want to be rather than focussing on other people or the way we don't want to be?  ¶ 3:58 PM

  Humans First At Last Thanks for the invitation. I have not written anything in a while. A bit rusty, or a bit less human maybe in my ability to explore the reverberations of the space I find myself in among the humanity of humans. Late last night I have managed to play the keyboard and write crazy stuff at Gonzo Engaged. Like I said, a bit rusty.

Since we are talking about Humans First I would like to thank Norwegians. Fabulous people those Norwegians are. For every $1 an American is willing to invest in Foreign Aid a Norwegian gives $17. I love those Norwegians already. They are the champions for Humans First and as far as I know they don't have any Bomb Factories. I would like to be a Norwegian, they have fjords. I think that is a blessing to have fjords. A place where you could explore the partnership between Earth and Sea. You don't know where one ends and the other begins. It's like there is this No Man's Land. Neither belonging to Neptune nor Jupiter. A place of not knowing. A place of exploring.

Speaking of No Man's Land there is a movie about it made by Danis Tanovic. Danis is 33 years old. It's his first movie. He wrote it. He got an Oscar for it. Most people don't know about his movie. Please promote it. Well, I recommend you watch it too. The movie is about Humans First. I also hightly recommend an interview with Danis. He talks about reasons for making movies and being a journalist - about being a hero he says this: "In war everybody is a hero. Just being there is heroism. That yee-ha kind of heroism just doesn't exist. Just in your imagination and in infantile movies. Nobody jumps and shoots. It does not exist, except in your wildest dreams".

I like Danis a lot. He is not a hero. I don't like heros. I like Norwegians. Danis is like a Norwegian for me. With fjords and all. Maybe in No Man's Land we are all Humans.
I will tell my mom that she is a Norwegian for me. My hero Norwegian. She has given so much. I want her to have fjords in her life.
Peace
Marek J
  ¶ 2:21 PM

  Close Call

Andy Bourland, founder of Click Z, has reportedly had a close encounter with the Grim Reaper. Andy suffered a massive heart attack earlier this week, but managed to survive and is recovering from open-heart surgeryat his home in Andover, Mass.

Andy was one of the first to be clued-in about humans-first marketing principles on the Internet. His influential newsletter. ClickZ, was a pioneering force in elevating and guiding the online marketing conversation. It’s lost a bit of its zip since Andy sold it to Internet.com last year, but that doesn’t diminish the importance of his contribution in the developing days of the Net.

Best wishes to Andy for a speedy recovery. For those who would like to send a card or note, Anne Holland, another clued-in internet marketing voice, has provided Andy’s e-mail and snail mail addresses: 39 High Street, Andover, MA 01810 or andy@bourland.com
  ¶ 12:24 PM

  What is human? What if talk about corporations, technology and other inhuman things simply evades the human. I was thinking the proposition here is to talk about human things. Give the inhuman a rest. Here's a human thing: boredom. Ennui. acedia. Spleen. taedium vitae. It is a great teacher and rewards study. If humans saw more deeply into ennui, perhaps they would have less tolerance for that which kills the spirit.  ¶ 10:02 AM

  Haloscan seems popular these days? Moxie's got a slam dunk if you ask me (that's meant as a humorous rejoinder, of course, not an assessment of her undoubtedly iron clad legal footing). I'd be thrilled to represent her; talk about a high profile client!  ¶ 9:16 AM

  quick state of the blog Outstanding invitees are Marek J., Euen Semple (who's been trying to get on; i just re-invited him), Locke (who asked to be added), and Suitt.

Who knows how to create comments in AFAIK? It's fun in here. I wish we had a few couches and a fireplace.   ¶ 6:55 AM

  MoXie and comments QuickTopic comments are great, but need to be manually created AFAIK.

Denise, could you send Microsoft a Cease and Desist on behalf of Madison Slade? - After all she's local to you. Could we run a write in campaign for her? I think she has prior claim on being Ms Moxie

And did you invite Marek? He's posting over at Gonzo Engaged tonight.  ¶ 11:52 PM

  cooool. kevin, cool logo! very cool. okay, now, I need to get comments working. Anyone have ideas? yaccs is a pain to get on because they are so full. where should I go?

Yes, the idea of awarding smart companies humans first seal of approval is a great one! We threw something like that around on gonzoengaged if I'm not mistaken but nothing came of it. I think if I can get comments working and someone posts about a loser company or a smart one, folks could say yes, it's worthy of going on our sidebar. Then we could contact them telling them why we think they're nifty and inviting them to come here and talk with us.... yes? no? crazy? stupid? ah well, maybe some fun if nothing else...
  ¶ 6:12 PM

  possible Logo suggestion

The Chinese characters say something like 'Human one' rather than 'humans first' exactly, but I think they make the point.  ¶ 12:35 AM

  Hey You guys!!!! How's About... The Customer Approved Excellence In Business Award I know it's simple and even possibly overused but, hey, you get the picture... This is a great beginning for laser pointing a purpose to change 'business as usual' mindsets in any given industry. So, lets pick a target. It's so nice to see so many responses from our Blogger community. OK, Jeneane...you can remove the clamps from my [name the body part] now...ouch!
  ¶ 12:28 PM

  Another great idea from Turner Absolutely. Someone needs to design some extraordinary logo for those extraordinary companies. We can start identifying them and then contact them to let them know that they received our award. Of course, they'll want to know who the hell we are. So we'll have to have a mission statement...... Uh oh. This is getting to sound like Blogtank -- except now we have a very specific project with a very specific goal. This just might be the spirit of Blogtank resurrected and ready to roll! (I was only kidding about the mission statement, but we probably would need some sort of one-liner to identify the awarders to the awardees.)  ¶ 12:08 PM

  Idea An award logo or hallmark that cool companies can put on their sites that says "Humans First".  ¶ 11:31 AM

  Send The Companies A Message... The message being that all those on this list are not going to deal with: 1) Planned Obsolesence [sp?] 2) Lame salespeople who don't know much about a product 3) Lame salespeople who don't care what happens to a product after it leaves the store 4) Stupid Rebates
5)Bait and Switch 6) Oh wait.....! Honey, are we talking B2B or.. nevermind. You guys define it. I'll be back...  ¶ 11:39 PM

  Can I add McAfee to the clueless loser list? My sad story is too long to post here. So read it here.

I know. I know. I should have bought a Mac. But at the time I was doing freelance writing and all of my customers used PCs.

I know. I know. What's the point of this site unless leaders from the companies in question join the conversations? Well, we'll see, won't we?  ¶ 4:05 PM

  Fish in a Barrel I try not to rag on Microsoft all the time, as I'm sure it gets boring, and then they come up with the beauty pageant marketing model for Office software.
  ¶ 3:37 PM

  one true one blue Bix, my (silly) hope is that if we develop this thing into a place where we say YAY about companies who are behaving and LOSER about companies who aren't that maybe some actual (gasp) folks from ain't-misbehaving and behaving businesses will join us here to talk and live among us. Might be surprised what happens when we hang out as people. We'll see if it happens. No Zzzzs the first week. That's not allowed until week 11, if I'm not mistaken on my team blog etiquette, which I make up as i go.


  ¶ 2:22 PM

  Zzz... Wake me when corporations start behaving well and I won't give a rat's ass how they talk.
  ¶ 1:36 PM

  Validation

I'm not quite sure that I'm human quite yet--still waitin' to have my ticket validated; but thinks for lettin' me hang around some.  ¶ 12:52 PM

  Game Show Hosts Remind me of sell-out sales people who put money above human morality. They should be discouraged.  ¶ 10:13 AM

  Intitutional Wisdom Jevon (of Blogtrack and Blogpeople) offers this dead-on bit of insight, in response to this article in Marketing Magazine:

Blogs are not an overt marketing tool. They are about creating a community that can make the back-door sale and which can influence sway in any group. If companies see blogs as a major "marketing tool", they are wrong. They have to see a community builder, a place where the established is still the grassroots and where they won't just put out marketing material, but where they will accept push-back from the customer, and where they will be expected to listen now.

I take it as an excellent sign that the thought of listing all the institutions I can think of who speak to the world through their representatives' weblogs already is too exhausting even to attempt. There's Macromedia ("Um, what are you doing?") and its bloggers, for starters:
Jeremy Allaire, Matt Brown, Greg Burch, Mike Chambers, Sean Corfield, Waldo Smeets, Bob Tartar.

There are the Utah.gov bloggers:
Phil Windley, Dave Fletcher, Bob Woolley, Dave McNamee, Joe Leary, Dave Willis, Al Sherwood, Q. Wade Billings, Craig Neilson.

Of course, there are Dave, John, Ev, Andre, ... (stop me before I start yacking about what's happening on the law side, ok? Just click down my blogroll).

It's not all about the tech, but it's the tech that propels "getting to know one another" at near light speed. Small example of big phenomenon: I found the quote that kicks off this post as a sidebar to the article it critiques. The author picked up on it from the guy's blog and realized, Damn, he's right, I should have made that more clear.   ¶ 5:52 AM

  Oh, the humanity The concept of "Humans First" is so radical it just might work. Way to go, Jeneane.  ¶ 5:11 AM

  Being t/here It is good to be among humans, a very large, rich, funny, erratic, rather unregimented category. Yes, it's good. Hi all.
  ¶ 4:48 AM

  There Is No U In Team "There Is No U In Team". What an imaginative way to fire someone.  ¶ 1:23 AM

  I'm Here! Okay, I've been invited to the prom. I'm all dressed up and ready to go. Where are we going to today? Mary   ¶ 11:37 PM

  Screwed, clued, and tattooed... I start a nice little six or seven month contract tomorrow. I was truthful about my technical competence, so the rate we negotiated took that into account. Screwed. But I told the truth and had a straight ahead conversation about how important could it be for that organization to put a lot of resources into Win Nt at this stage of the game anyway, and I think my honesty was what won me the contract (plus the part about how I'll work so cheap because of the aforementioned technical shortcomings).

Okay, I got the screwed part covered and I got the clued part covered... as for the tattooed part, hell... it rhymed. But maybe it has to do with the urge to shave my head and have a bar code imprinted across the top of my skull. I think the downside of that would be too many bad charges on the credit card when the crooks get their scanners set up to read my bar code from across the street.

I like "customer" too. Although what follows will show that "consumer" probably applies... Beth and I ran into a clued dude at Pottery Barn who made our transactions so painless and easy that Beth wrote to his management and told them they probably don't pay him enough, he is so good. The weird wired part of this is that we had input an order online, then applied for the credit card since there was a discount that goes with opening the account, then learned that we'd have to wait a week or so to find out if we were approved, so we went to the store to see if they had any of the things we are interested in and the guy said, hey, let's just do this thing... so he put this complex order together from the online catalog and the retail inventory and so on, and he got our credit approved while we were doing the other stuff and we got our discount and we have a real person shepherding our process so the couch and two bookcases and a media cabinet and a mirror and whatever, all due to arrive on different days, by different carriers, are all being tracked by this guy we have confidence in. Too bad about the credit approval bottleneck in the online transaction. I'm sure the brick and mortar overhead ain't worth it.

Hey, that turned into a "humans first" story didn't it?
  ¶ 7:27 PM

  Customers, not consumers Customer is the term I prefer, because no-one ever said 'the consumer is always right'.

(I now have 13 blogger blogs in that popup, only two of which I post to more thna once a fortnight...)  ¶ 7:02 PM

  Happy Birthday RageBoy So here I am again. What am I, insane? hmmmm. Well, there's that.

And then there's this. Cluetrain and our fine mentors in Locke, Weinberger, Searls, and Levine--where the hell is Levine anyway?--gave us an amazing legacy. Look over on BlogTree and see how many children they've spawned among them. (I'm not sure how they got three guys' DNA in a bunch of offspring, but that's for another post.) So I got to thinking that we--the kids--clued2--should start doing something with this shall-we-say important and well-imparted knowledge.

So then I do the only thing I know how to do--start a team blog.

Some companies and their "management" yada-yada-yada all day long that Cluetrain can't work in a down economy. That Gonzo Marketing's worst practices won't cut it in tough times. Bullshit backwards is what I say to that, to the nay-sayer corporations and the "management" among them. Now is the *best* time to get a clue, to get in, get your hands dirty, to talk with and understand your markets. This is just the economy to distinguish your company as one who gives a darn, so that when things turn up, and they will, the competition will be kissing your collective behinds as you fly past. Because we'll remember.

We never forget.

And you should know that. For CHRIMINY SAKE, we're out here blogging our hearts and brains out--we're telling you every little thing about our souls and families and lives and deepest darkest secrets. So don't sit there and wonder how you'll use blogging as the latest and greatest marketing tool. Get in here, with us, get engaged, wake up, talk to us. And when we find out you're talking to humans--you know, people just like us--and not consumers, and when we find out you're talking to us in a language we understand, not at us with marketing-speak, we'll feature you right here on this blog. We're going to talk about what you're doing, why you're doing it. We're going to ask you to chime in. We're going to get to know one another really well.

And when we find out who's doing it wrong, when you're treating us like consumers, demographics, spreadsheets and the like, we're going talk about that too. And we're going to because we can.

And because we've already been talking, and because you're already late.

So come on in. Let's talk.

Hey Team, who's in?
  ¶ 8:46 PM