Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, February 10, 2000. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM US Eastern Time (GMT -5) every Thursday.
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Since the chat itself happens at a rapid pace, it's often difficult to note interesting facts in particular URLs as they appear on-line. Here's a place to take a more leisurely look. I've rearranged some of the pieces to try to capture the various threads of discussion (which sometimes get lost in the rush of live chat).
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David Weinberger -- Howdy, yall. David Weinberger here, one of the authors...
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Hello everyone. Bob Zwick, independent consultant in the Dallas, Texas area. Involved in Internet business and Education on the Internet.
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome Bob and David. Bob -- are you still doing the distance ed chats? I don't get the reminder notes. And it's hard for me to tune in on Thursday nights. Sorry I've lost touch. David, glad you were able to join us again. I hope that Chris and Rick can too.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Richard - the chats have been going.
I assumed you didn't participate because you haven't signed up for the
NEW mailing list. The personal list was giving me too many problems, so
I went to a LISTBOT opt-in only list.
David Weinberger -- Hello, Bob.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Hello - David. Haven't seen the book yet, but I figure if Richard is interested, it MUST be worth reading.
David Weinberger -- You'll be shocked to learn that I agree with Richard. If nothing else, the book is occasionally fun and funny. I hope.
David Weinberger -- Richard, your summary is excellent. Thanks.
David Weinberger -- So why don't people listen? It's not a business decision. It's a psychological/sociological problem. We don't listen for the same reasons we're assholes in general. We're in a culture where (esp. men) are taught that To Talk Is to Be, and To Do Is to Be (and here we go directly to the joke about Frank Sinatra and Sartre...) In other words, I don't think there are easy techniques to create a culture that values listening. E.g., you don't listen to people you don't respect. And often you don't listen *in order to show* that you don't respect 'em. Watch just about any business committee meeting...
Richard Seltzer -- "Listening" -- sounds like some New Age touchy-feeling seminar topic. But it's a very serious matter. You can't carry on online discussions with fellow employees, customers, or partners if you aren't attuned to "listening" in the broadest sense -- paying close attention to what other people are saying and show the respect that comes with trying to understand and then responding on their terms, rather than just rattling out your pre-hearsed PR-trained messages.
David Weinberger -- I hate to say it, but learning to listen is a lot like learning to join the party. There's a global party going on. And it's where the real work of commerce is going to happen. It's very hard for many (most?) companies to take the party seriously.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- What are we talking about when we say "listen" ?
David Weinberger -- Bob, great question. I.e., I don't have a great answer. But listening has something to do with respecting others and controlling your urge to "own" the conversation. It requires giving up the reflex to manage every damn thing that exists.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- David you are absolutely right. I battle that all the time. It's like my ears are turned on, but I'm not hearing. Just waiting for a good opportunity to jump in and get my say in control.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- The typical manager in a major corporation has Internet access today, but uses it 1) to access static information and 2) to distribute edicts by email. It takes a change of mindset to start to "listen" to what's happening in forums and newsgroups and email distribution lists -- even to really "listen" when people you don't immediately know or work with send you email.
David Weinberger -- Here's a micro example, very simple. You can tell immediately, can't you?, when a tech support person is reading from a script or is listening to what you're saying.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- CAUTION - there is a new culture that thinks listening is FORWARDING all email to the entire world !!
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- It's easy to relate to that "Forwarding" phenomenon. I have friends that send me email every few days, and it's all just forwarded humor and news, never a personal thought. Reminds me to of the typical Web site of three or four years ago, that consisted just of links to other selected sites -- you used to be able to click half a dozen times without arriving at an original word.
David Weinberger -- Richard, I have friends like that also. It's both off-putting to me, but it also keeps me in touch with them *in some sense*; otherwise, I'd never hear from them (and would probably not get in touch with them on my own). And their choice of content does say *something* about them...
David Weinberger -- Richard, as for examples of companies that listen: Intel is a famous example of a company that refused to listen to (= take seriously) the concerns about their math lookup error. I like Western Digital as an example of a company that listens, at least at one level. Their tech support discussion board is open and unmoderated. People inside and outside of WDC listen and respond.
Richard Seltzer -- David -- what's the URL for Western Digital? and where there will I find the discussion? Any other good ones?
David Weinberger -- western digital: www.wdc.com
Richard Seltzer -- In a few weeks, I'm going to have to advise Compaq on how to get some community discussion going with customers. That's not an easy matter. It wasn't easy at Digital, which was much more bottoms-up and open. The more concrete examples I can point to the better. That's the kind of message they might understand.
David Weinberger -- There are also MS's tech discussion forums. Open, unmoderated, no attempt by MS to dominate or control.
Richard Seltzer -- David -- where at Microsoft's site do they hide those tech discussion forums?
David Weinberger -- Where does MS hide the tech boards? I don't know any more. I find it so hard to navigate the MS site that it ain't funny. (Don't get me started!)
Richard Seltzer -- David -- yes, Microsoft keeps juggling things and reorganizing their site. And they've been using ASP pages, so bookmarks (at least from Netscape Navigator) are useless, as are any links intended to take you to a particular page. By so doing they also lock themselves out from search engines -- it seems to be an arrogant statement: "we don't need your traffic."
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Richard - the MS forums are on a NEWS server requiring a news client like Outlook Express or winvn. I believe thaey are news://microsoft.public.WHATEVER TOPIC
David Weinberger -- Here's an odd place to visit. The single best site I know of for answering networking questions is run by a German named Helmig. The site is ugly and funky but in every case has solved my problem without requiring me to engage a human in a conversation. I.e., conversation is great but it's even greater when I can get the info I want. It's clear from looking at it that Helmig adds to it as users have new questions...
Richard Seltzer -- What's Helmig's URL?
David Weinberger -- Richard, I knew you'd ask :-) http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/j_helmig/ (this is the mirror I have bookmarked anyway)
David Weinberger -- The obvious place to begin is with Amazon and their reviews; they've recently deepened the structure of the reviews so we can learn even more about one another.
Richard Seltzer -- I love Amazon and find their user-contributed reviews helpful. But they don't have any direct dialogue at their site (that I know of) -- no forums or chats. (Strangely, Barnes & Noble do the chat thing, with authors, regularly, as an off-shoot of their author visits to physical bookstores. But even that isn't the right kind of experience to wake up business people, because that kind of experience more closely resembles talk radio or talk television -- with a auditorium style where very few of the attendees ever actually get to submit a question to the celebrity and no real peer-to-peer dialogue takes place.
David Weinberger -- Richard, I agree with you. But I wonder if people *want* more interactive chat at Amazon? Would people actually engage in it? I do think they need another level of interactivity with their reviews -- I'd like to be able to reply to some of them.
Richard Seltzer -- David -- I'm not sure that open chat or forum would help sell books. But they could easily set it up so authors could volunteer to chat at specific times or to participate in a forum of their own, just as now they allow authors to post "interviews" with themselves. That could be interesting, and it needn't involve a lot of work on Amazon's part. It would be self-selecting, with only the authors that feel comfortable in the medium stepping forward.
David Weinberger -- Richard, I like that idea! A chat for every book! I'd definitely do it, as an author!
David Weinberger -- Great question about where to point listening-newbies. Hmmm. Usenet for one.
Richard Seltzer -- David -- where in Usenet would you point them? and are there any good Forums? (most are empty, though the concept is great, most sites haven't bothered to seed them with interesting content and don't regularly moderate or contribute to their own discussions).
David Weinberger -- alt.showbiz.gossip? One of my favorites. A genuine community. More seriously, try one of the alt.something.laptop forums where there are local experts who will argue any point from battery life to the Bad Pixel question...
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- One service I provide my clients is a list of usenet groups that pertain to their industry. That get's there feet wet talking globally.
David Weinberger -- Bob, great idea. Does it scare them?
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- David, no since I give them a simple interface (one I wrote) to send to the groups without having to learn new client software. They then get responses via email. Managing usenet this way allows them to send questions, sugestions, and news about their products & industry and receive email in response. More personal and keeps the big mess of topics out of view to the newbie.
David Weinberger -- Bob, cool! Do you see any advantages that might accrue if you coached them in how to use a newsreader and throw the doors of chaos open to them?
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Teaching them usenet would only be advantagous if they had the desire to spend time and resources online. Most small businesses want the benefits from the Internet without the investment of too much time. Of course, coaching would be more $$ to me as a consultant, but I haven't had much interest from customers.
Richard Seltzer -- I realize that in the book you stayed away from simple formulas, and Chris, in particular, seems dead set against consulting to try to help the clueless. But it feels like there is an interesting business model here -- there's aa need for a bootcamp/training ground site where you can immerse clueless decision-makers and help wake them up to what they can and should do.
David Weinberger -- Richard, what would you do in the bootcamp, other than lots and lots of pushups? How would you wake people up?
Richard Seltzer -- David -- You could do a high-priced version where you actually handpicked some customers and partners and gave them an incentive to dive in and start talking about issues that mattered to them. But I'd prefer an industry-relevant free-for-all, where the clueless could lurk for a while, seeing their company and competitors mentioned, problems brought up and resolved or left dangling, until they couldn't stand to stay silent any longer.
David Weinberger -- Richard, are you reinventing usenet??
Richard Seltzer -- Before a recent design change, AltaVista used to be a good way to introduce the clueless to newsgroups. I could do a search for instance for all messages posted to computer-related newsgroups from people at Ford that mentioned Compaq or a particular product made by Compaq or its competitors. Unfortunately, they did away with that capability and Deja doesn't allow such precise searches.
David Weinberger -- And remarq was just bought. Wither usenet? Sigh.
Richard Seltzer -- Bob -- It's a one-two punch. You get them to read the Cluetrain Manifesto. That gets them good and scared and wondering what they can do to survive. Then you offering them coaching/consulting. :-)
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Sorry - my usenet practice is not "Listening". It's more like YELLING a message, then listening for the opportunities you are looking for.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Richard - not a bad idea at all. I'll definitely put that on my required reading list for my clients.
David Weinberger -- Thank you, Richard and Bob!
Rick Levine -- Hi folks, sorry for the late join - up. Ya, "astray" is a good word for it!
David Weinberger -- Yo, Rick!
Richard Seltzer -- Welcome, Rick -- what a dramatic entrance :-)
Richard Seltzer -- Rick -- if you have some things you'd like to say (maybe in response to reading what was said today), please send me email and I'll add it to the transcript. Unfortunately, I have to run now. But the chat room will remain open.
David Weinberger -- Rick, quick: Name some sites that could serve as examples of companies that know how to listen and talk (in that order)... And remember to phrase it in the form of a question...
Richard Seltzer -- Yes, Rick, some good examples would be very welcome -- especially ones that are publicly visible.
David Weinberger -- Ok, Bob, thanks again. Rick, pleasure to be in your presence even briefly... Bye.
Bob@CottageMicro.Com -- Thanks David & Rick. Best of luck with the book !
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