Starting the day with former Chapel Hillian Doc Searls and an exegesis of the seven year-old Cluetrain Manifesto 95 theses – good enough for Martin Luther.

Why cluetrain? A friend told him about a Valley company where “The cluetrain stopped there for 4 years but they never took a delivery.”

Theses 90 – Henry Copeland of BlogAds is pulling in Heather Armstrong – Henry “you’re getting more hits than you’re old company” Heather – “yeah – it’s [the software outfit] a real trainwreck” – Henry can’t tease the Los Angeles software company’s name out of Heather…

Searls, et. al. – 7 years ago realized Internet forces implied a switch in power from supplier to consumers.

“It was all about capturing eye-balls” … “Hey, wait a minute! The people out there had as much power as the [marketeers]”

Doc’s marketting friends kidded about his defection from marketting to the markets.

Clark – “I sent Cluetrain Manifesto to marketting company’s as a litmus test” – “that was in the days when integrated marketting meant you hired the same actors for both the television commercial and print ad.”

Clark to Searls – “you understand the net empowers people”…you feel the passion beneath the words

Heather as a empowered consumer – stumbled on Nikon – husband used the power of the net to research good customers – thousands of emails from readers had bought Nikons because she mentionned “this picture produced by Nikon D70” – she generated hundreds of thousands $$$ for Nikon but hasn’t heard a peep from Nikon…now she’s having problems with Nikon and is thinking of moving to Canon – wonders if she should be speaking about this on her blog – Searls “yes, you have to” – Henry – “you must”

Clark – “Isn’t the net writing the product manual already?” “These companys still don’t recognize the power of R&D on the net” – chaining the intelligence of the user community to improve your product – Searls mentions some coffee machine company that let their user community improve their product – they trust their customers.
Searls – “Very few CIO’s blog” – Edellman good – mentions debate between Jarvis and Edellmann debate last night “but that was on televison, so I don’t believe it”.

Heather – “Cluetrain will be realized when Bestbuy goes out of business” – “I love BestBuySucks.com – it’s like watching reality television”.

Henry – “My favorite company is threadless – they let their users design their products”

Searls – “OSS is the demand side providing for itself”

Clark – “Give the community something to do together” – “find ways for people to feel part of the solution.”

Searls – some history – Barlow’s Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace precedes Cluetrain by 3 years – what influence on Cluetrain (death from above recc. by Searls 1995) – asymetrical service in folks homes – future cluetrain manifesto – “saving the net”

Clark – 7 years out – “integrated media centers @ home” “gaming – basic human trait that goes with conversation” “play now is allowing people to do things that sociologist say you can’t do – like having 5,000 to 10,000 people working together collaboratively” [without centralized management] “using peer to peer processes” to maintain their efforts “tap the spirit of play”.

Searls – media revolution – HD quality cameras/televisions that will force the pipes to expand to shuttle info about “we’re completing the age of independence that was interrupted by the industrial revolution”

Armstrong – lot’s of lonely women – ‘blogs saved her during her 1st year of motherhood – blogs of fellow mothers direct her purchasing decisions – cribs, etc.

Clark answering on “reputation economy” – wikipedia starting the idea – the internet didn’t create crazy people – “it just makes it easier to search and aggregate them” – we’ll be measured by how we deal with difficult people.

Searls – “I don’t subscribe to blogs, I subscribe to subjects.”

Henry is practicing a little bit of product placement – the whole forum his laptop lid has been positioned in such a way WXYC was prominently displayed…