Recently in Cluetrain Category

As in the kind of "nakedness" talked about in a new book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, Naked Conversations: How blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. I think I read somewhere in the intro that this book could be considered a sequel to The Cluetrain Manifesto (by different authors with the same message, with updated stories and new blog-enabling technological innovations.

So I sat and read a little of the intro on the way home at a Starbuck's as I sipped my latest favorite, Toffee Nut Latte. (I got 3 gift cards for Starbucks for Christmas, so I'm still plowing through those a month later).

After a fairly troublesome and worrisome day, my reading in this topic seems to have enlivened and lifted my mood a bit. It seems that this is the sort of thing that makes me feel I am close to what drives me. As you might know if you have clicked around the various categories on this blog, I feel rather strongly about the possibilities for the church with blogging. I have written several posts in the past about how The Cluetrain Manifesto showed me into a new innovative world of conversation. The Web had been called a conversation before, back at its beginning, but the barrier to entry into the Web World was a bit higher back in the early 90's, when one had to be something of an HTML user to figure out how to build a web and tell a story.

The blog world has changed that. The Blog tools have created a Word Processor for the Web, but much more than that, they (the tools) have joined the blogs together via RSS and Blogrolls, BlogRings, and Technorati's blog aggregating service and their innovative "Technorati Tags", which provide for the means to find posts on particular topics.

Most importantly here, the tags, the RSS, and the blogs amongst which these things live and join together, is the conversation. Readers here may also know I have been feeling quite estranged from church as usual. THey have in large part allowed themselves to be dragged into the world's way of top-down/ even/entertainment programmming-oriented , one way communicaiton. The conversation is perhaps even given lip service. But there seems to be little room for the relationships. I'll have more on this later.

This interview with David Weinberger on CIO caused me to go back and read that chapter again in The Cluetrain Manifesto
the cluetrain manifesto - chapter five

Conversation that understands that it isn't a distraction from work, it IS the real work of business.

This again is a key concept for Churches to understand, as well as businesses. The act of conversing about those things on which we are most deeply concerned (and on OTHER things by which we are also "energized") IS itself the mission of the Church-- or a neccessary prerequisite to actually having the energy, the shared knowledge and affirmation of a community behind you, and the collaborative power of a CALLING to get something done.

If this were the case in Churches, there would be no problem with having a group of people who have felt CALLED to enable a support movement and voter-registration drive to get Bush out of office. If one views the role of the Church to "not offend" people, then they may as well close the doors. There would be a conversation-encouraging Web component that would do somethign along the order of what the Dem blogs have been doing, and more specifically, what theological issues are at stake; what "prophetic voice" of dissent and debate need to be voiced. Media study; holding media accountable, is also an important issue to a democracy that assumes that people know WHAT they are voting for, and not the bumper sticker slogans and "un-nuanced" proclamations along the "party line".

via Church of the Customer via Radiant Marketing Group via DocChurch of the Customer: Small businesses and blogging

The Future of Blogging, In Their Own Words, Part II is the 3 Clutrain Bloggers, Doc, David Weinberger, and Rage Boy (Chris Locke)

My favorite quote: Talking about some of his favorite "Corporate Bloggers", Doc says:

These aren't corporate orifices shitting messages. These are the top guys, speaking for themselves, and with remarkably little filtration, even by their own manners or good sense.

Locke: people need a place to BE people, with all the unique concerns, joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, passions, delusions, depressions, epiphanies, and those hugely various sorts of things that we have, qua human beings.

Weinberger: there will be thousands of bloggers who are read for the same reasons we read columnists. They'll range from A-List national political commentators to people in your community who always have a funny take on the high school sports team

All of this is their basic Cluetrain emphasis on voice, authenticty, and personal stories. Why I like reading these guys is that I often get a fresh set of "business points" to add to my "oral proposals" ; the various times when I get an opportunity to pitch to someone why blogs would provide an opportunity for doing X more effectively.

In his "Readers and Friends" entry on Monday, David Weinberger gave several angles on how writing Blogs is akin to our efforts to Make friends and also the comfortable zone of talking with friends, where we can be feel more free to wear our passion on our sleeve. And , as I usually segway with such things, such is the case with Theological-based Communities. Churches and such need to jump on opportunities like this to enable a wider-spread capability to get to know one another.

from the Weinberger post:
Yes, I read a bunch of blogs written by people I don't particularly like, but I am asserting (without evidence) that the bloggers are writing for people who do like them.

I relate this to the Church not as just "a tip from the secular world", but as a piece of the REASON why theological communities NEED to BE in the first place: to experience The other and to experience our interdependency, which I believe is a necessity for us to know the kind of collaboration in mission that God calls us to TOGETHER.

Joho the Blog: Readers and friends

That is, Weblogs are a relationship tool, and for me, a far less daunting tool than the "traditional" one (which is: living and being yourself and finding opporties to know and to be known). Weblogs bypass the worry (if you ever find yourself doing so, like I do) that we will come across as self-absorbed in trying too hard to let people know who we are (kind of like playing our music really loud in our car with the windows rolled down). In Weblogs, it's the expectation that here is our "platform of me", and it is where people look for others with whom they can identify. It's powerful stuff.

Weinberger:Weblogs filter readers the way people filter friends. That is, to the extent to which a weblog is a personal expression — leaving out some of the more "professional" blogs — the weblog attracts readers for the same sorts of reasons that people make friends.
Mass media write for mass audiences. Bloggers write for people who know them.

Wired News: Unleashing the Web Police

Consistent with his administration's standards, Bush's blog permits no public comment (from Waldo Jaquith)

Typical and entirely predictable about the Bush administration. Thelight of day is the last thing they want.

I picked up "The Revolution Will NOT Be Televised" last night, and haven't been able to put it down (except to laugh at several and various places aloong those first 40 pages I've read so far...the guy is funny too). I can sasy with complete confidence that the book is a gem after getting only 20% of the way through it (I had to go to sleep after I started it, to get up and go to work, but I made it a point to stop at the coffeeshop today on the way home and get a Vanilla Latte and sit down with it before I came home for dinner).

Trippi resonates with me, and we seem to have a lot in common (Born in 1956, like Baseball, media, politics, and the Internet). His insights seem to be plentiful as well. His stories of grassroots campaigns are captivating. And , did I say he's hilarious? Yeah, I think I did.

There will be lots of blogging material here over the next few days. Still makes me mad how as soon as Dean became the front runner and the media turned full gaze on him, they also did a number on him. It waan't just a bunch of geeks who thought it was cool that they used the Internet and Weblogs, but a fired up constituency who found a no-bull campaign where it was the people and the conversation that mattered. Trippi's opening chapter included a touching moment when Dean told him that he never expected it to get "that far" (December 2003). Tripp observed then and now that it happened just becuase it wasn't about Dean, but about the people. Sounds sappy into today's ullta-cynical political environment (and one is cynical for good reason, mind you.....and herein lies the point). The point being, that campaigns like Dean's awakened an awful lot of hope in the political process. Other campaigns woudl do well to learn from what brought them out of "nowhere" (the answer is: The People ---- sadly, the People are indeed "nowhere" in most campaigns, amidst all the lipservice to "the People", they are , in most cases, listened to only in the context of "representative samples" and polls. It is a dumb-down game with the intent of finding that "magical middleground" that contributes to the divorce of politicians from thew body politic.

Of course, knowing me, you know where I;m headed with this don't you? Yep, it's excatly the kind of thing that kills Churches; this "not listening to people" thing; this "not letting the conversation grow"; it's the great omission of the stories of people's lives. And like it makes JOe Trippi sick to see what politics has become (and it does me , too) it makes me sick that Churches seek audience rather than be attentive to the mission it was given; to be a "community of God's people" and dedicated to the building of the Body of Christ.

About The Revolution
I used an MT bookmarklet to blog this link to the Joe Trippi book (Howard Dean's Internet Campaign guru)

Such is the potential that could be realized by the Church, in harvesting this to support and grow their community. In typical churches, the content flows “from above”; the “connections” that are “recommended” are from a position of “authority” as filtered through the singular experience of the pastor.

Back to the rant that drove me to this conversation. In the fundamentalist world, the “conversation” is feared. The authority risks too much “assimilation” and challenge from the wider, broader experience of “alternatives” which are eye-opening in such a way to cast a host of questions on the heretofore limited system , based on “limited” and “filtered” news, all “postured” and “tweaked” with the editing of “public relations” pens and “dispersed down to the public. It’s the Music Man mentality, “trouble in RiverCity” that rhymes with “school” and that means “pool”; whipping up fears about consequences based on faulty sociology (or basically NO sociology, since the ability or expectation of the “subjects” in an authoritarian system to “observe” the behavior of their “leaders” is basically sidelined.)

I feel a bit “detached” right now, not because I have to have my “techno-fix”, but because the “connectivity” I sense I am missing is to the conversation I have with these “Feeds” and the emails, to people with whom I accustomed to communicating via these “electronic pathways”. If there were a physical meeting place with all of the elements I seek and find online, then I would take the trouble to get cleaned up and travel to that place. But there is not such a physical place. I would that God would lead me to something of a place that I would call a Church home, but I have not yet found such a place, and so , for me, online is the closest thing. There are real people, real ideas, and real comradeship in our writing and dialoging about the things we all care about; about the seeking and experiencing of human communityu; of taking part in the “conversation” (there’s that Cluetrain concept again).

I often seem to return to the critique of the fundamentalist mindsets of many evangelical Christians (and the Southern Baptists, my alma mater, as it will) because they seem to be the present-day representatives of the "people who killed Jesus". Not "the Jews" or "the Romans" , but an unholy mix and compromise between the two; between "Religion" and "Empire". Empires often employ their "court preachers" to "cast the script that theologically justifies the intentions and philosophies and modes of operation of the power structure", and do the "campaign" to "sell" the idea inj religious terms.

Tony Campolo, himself an evangelical Baptist, has come under fire from fundamentalist Christians for his "theology of works" (that's the label often given to these "liberals" who are supposedly "watering down the gospel"; theyDO things, and they HELP PEOPLE. The Church of the Saviour has, for 56 years, in the nation's capitol, worked in the poverty stricken Adams Morgan section of DC (and beyond) to help people get affordable housing (as in Jubilee Housing), given medical attention ---such as the Columbia Road Health Services --- feeding programs , job programs such as Jubilee Jobs, and scores of other programs that truly fit the distinction of being "faith based"....these "missions" derive from the Church theology of COS that believes that ALL OF US" are called; that we each have a call, and that the structure of the Church exists to "enable" this discernment of call, and to do this "as a community" who are accountabhle to one another" in ways which , in terms of Cluetrain "getting it", they "get it" that the "Mission" is "conversation"; that the call comes through individuals who have certain gifts bestowed byGod, and that they "discover" these gifts in community as the community helps them to "develop" these gifts, and to discover a "reason for being" for that gift by sounding a call to a specific task that begins to take shape as a "response" to the discernment of God's reign and their lives.

The previous post expresses som eof why I think The Cluetrain Manifesto did such a number on me. When I read that, I immediately sensed in this "Book about Business" , a spiritualityand recognition of a truth that the Church, of all places, has so little clue about: That people become energized when their own interests and passions about things that are important to them are given voice.

It illustrates for me whythe lay renewal movement of the 60's and 70's were so effective: they focused on putting people into situations that encouraged and provided a safe haven for authentic sharing.

Today, this is largely non-existent in Churches. It's so much "big production". Big productions are fine if there is some semblance of energetic and impassioned communty based on "being known" by each other (so that we have a REAL sense of CORPORATE WORSHIP and not some vague affirmation of unity of the BODY--- there's that word again).

I feel that the blog and things like it are on the verge of doing a "grassroots thing" on the Church, so that people begin to discover the treasure trove of "share-able" journey-telling via the vehicle of the Blog, and "companion portals" that together form themselves into a "living organism" not unlike the sllime mold following the trail of phenomes as written about in Steve Johnson's Emergence.

David Weinberger lists several things that indicated how Joe Trippi had several "Clues" about how to use the Web with politics.

See Loose Democracy

Below , in my "Continue Reading..." secton for this post, I have copied the list DW gave, with the intention "filling in" some of the insights I believe can be culled by the Church if it is to catch on to some of the lessons of grassroots camapigns.

From a comment ( by a fellow named Hank Prohm) on David Weinberger's article, Loose Democracy on Corante:

I think all of the folks on the Internet have to ask this question:

Are we willing to let the Dean candidacy die because a "hot" candidate from the "hot" medium of the Internet is having trouble translating to the "cool" medium of the networks.

Real good point. Hank goes on to point out that Iowa may not have been a good test of "internet campaigning" (at least this was my gist), and he suggested doing some research on the siginificance of the online community by state.

These questions also cause me to reflect on how the Internet and the online community is being handled (or NOT handled, or MIS-handled) by the Church.

I've expressed it in so many ways. The Churches are largely clueless about the nature of the Web. They are SOOOO missing the boat on the "conversation". Is it REALLY the case that "two or three gathered" is NOT at all a possibility on the Web in the sense that God might be there "among them"? It's not face-to-face, but although its different and new, it certainly "channels" certain personal elements, and even introduces new, and potentially powerful and benefical elements. We are, in a large sense, without Biblical precedent on this one. There was nothing like the Web in the days of the Biblical writers. We're kind of on our own, armed only with a new vision of what can be brought by the Church, to the web, and what needs to be communicated, and what kind of communication is and can be taking place there.

I may soon need to create an "Emergence" category. I'm reading Steven Johnson's Emergence
which a lot of bloggers read a year ago or a while back, so I 'm behind the curve, BUT, like with so many things, not finding too much written on how this is related to the Church, or IMPACTS the Church, or helps us to understand certain things better. AKMA has mentioned this from time to time, and he's a Church-related kind of guy, and the "Emergent Church" has been gaining ground on the "traditional forms" in terms of visibility --- This "Emergent" Church is the "postmodern" movement within Christendom. Len Sweet has spoken and written about it for years, in books like, the first one I read, Quantum Spirituality, published by Whaleprints, an imprint of the United Theological Seminary, and came out when I was a Communications student there in 1991)

The previous post, referring to my post about "WHAT MATTERS", pinpoints some difficulties I have in understanding why Church groups think they are "communicating" via the Web. There is certainly contact made, but the potential for conversation and the finding of such conversations via search are so much more powerful and useful than the email link that invites comments. The Website's audience misses out on the conversations, and the rate of response to such "invitations to respond" are likely very low, since the prospect of having our opinion read by "who knows" in some office somewhere is not much of an incentive to comment. There is no conversation there. The only response we are likely to get is a form response thanking us for our post and that someone will "keep it on file".

A quote from David weinberger in the WIRED feature on the Dean Campaign got me going on the power of the conversation, and how the Churches still aren't getting it about online discussion. It's on my dotText blog

Note (via Trackback) to David W: Hearing your account of how you were somewhat depressed about politics, and this campaign giving you "new hope" just may help provoke a similar awakening in me. I have been following with some interest the Dean campaign's unprecedented reshaping of political conversation, but simply have not jumped on board. I haven;t even visited the site yet. Guess I need to do that. But I heard the interview just a few minutes ago, and it sounds like something to which I need to pay more attention, and get a sense for what people are excited about. Thanks.

David Weinberger answers questions about the Dean campaign's use of the internet in an MP3 aufio interview with IT Conversations. Click the Stream button or downkload it. These two links will take you to a Stream Request or a Download request page, where you click "Stream" or "Download" respectively. It didn't make me fill out the form before it let me hear the file. The stream file opens in your system's default mp3 player.

I saw a piece on 60-minutes earlier tonight about companies using carefully, strategically placed "agents" to prominently postion a product , under the guise of public-but-private use, to "lure" people into catching an eyeful (the first example was a video game that utilized a sensor-glove-joystick to navigate and operate key operations in some environment). The question posed was whether this was "deception" or "manipulative". (see the write-up on cbs.com)

It occurred to me that this is marketing that uses a form of "CLuetrainish" philosophy: that people prefer getting their info and endorsements virally; IOW, to get the scoop about things from the views and experiences of acquaintances. (Another segment showed marketing of a movie whose name escapes me at the moment but it included the word Cowboy and it was animated--- but this marketing company was asked if there was something unethical about using a 13-year old as an agent, whom they paid in "Movie Merchandise" because the boy absolutely loved the movie; so, to him, it was justifiable reward. The marketer replied, "How is it wrong, if the person is passionate about it, loves talking about it, and is absolutely convincing because he is a fan himself?)". Again, very "Cluetrainish", and a very good point.

I have often written individual rants inspired by concepts gleaned (or ones that "jump out at me") from The Cluetrain Manifesto. They are very Theoblogical, or theological rants become blogs, but nevertheless go to the core of my theology; specifically a theology of cyberspace for the Church. That is, that conversations are holy. In them we discover the treasures waiting for us in one another, a nd the power of what happens when our callings come together to make something great happen.

Great piece in WIRED by Lessig on blogs and poliics

A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built.

The article's message is that Open Source is what works.  It seems the Church can learn here from the power of the movement in the software world. 

...you will absolutely suffocate anything that you're trying to do on the Internet by trying to command and control it...

Part of how the Church, mostly in it's traditonal and established , denominational forms,  does "command and control" is in systematically ignoring the open source nature of community.  They have Web sites and web developers,  but the conversations are lacking becuase they want to control them.  The publishers avoid allowing the customers to "talk" about their products because they're afraid someone will trash them.  Well, if the shoe fits.......On the otherhand,  if the product is worthwhile,  wouldn't we WANT to know how people are using it? Wouldn't this be the BEST endorsement,  replacing the theological/marketing hype of resources with the stories of how these are actually being used successfully?  There has yet to emerge an expectation among the resource producers that this content can become immersed in community,  and even,  as a result,  partly if not largely produced by that community.  But this would challenge,  seemingly,  the leadership.

community can't be broadcast. It gets built not from slick commercials squeezed onto a Web page, but from tools that enable, and thus inspire, hundreds of thousands of people to something that American politics has not seen in many years: hundreds of thousands of people actually doing something.

This again says something to the Church and her institutions.   People actually DOING SOMETHING.  Linking to efforts being created to address the common causes --- the "breadth" of which was not previously known until previously geographically and socially dispersed "pockets" of individuals discover each other's activities and conversations via Google and such,  and then end up working together FTF. 

Whoa man!  Some real "stickin' it to 'em/us"  from Jordon Cooper in these three posts (this one and the two before/below it):

I wonder if the reason that churches are afraid to engaged in the online discussion is that we know how unattractive our churches are to the new generation of postmodern church attenders and instead of facing that and fixing it, we would just rather bury our head in the sand and leave it to the next person who pastors the church. As long as the church keeps focusing on unconnected builders and boomers, the harder the paradigm shift to those who are a part of the digital culture is going to be.

Excellent point. I have also found myself shaking my head when I see the Church passing up the oppotunities to participate in REAL conversations.  (I say REAL,  because much of what we do now,  IN THE CHURCH meetings,  is not conversation at all.  I have not felt known at all via traditional Church channels and activities in , oh,  11 or 12 years.  Jordon continues:

People online aren't real because they don't sit in our pews, they don't help our numbers in our denominational reports, and they rarely tithe (although I believe people will give to a community they find compelling enough to give to).

Great Stuff from Jordon Cooper:

here

...This hits at what I think is the root of why the church fears the web. Many churches generally won't allow individuals the freedom to create compelling content and enter into a conversation. Churches aren't friendly to conversation. The worship is lead from the worship leader. The sermon is prepared and presented by the pastor. The congregation watches. It is one way communication. Early on when I was fooling around online I was apart of a mailing list that was hosted by Ginghamsburg Church's web team. Around forty or fifty of us would talk about web ministry and help each other out. One of the topics that kept coming up was how do we fit the web team into the traditional command and control structure of the church and have content approved and things properly vetted. The church didn't trust anyone to create any content. It needed a committee to make sure it was all okay. It was before the Cluetrain Manifesto was out and articulated it for us but it was true, organizations can't have a conversation and I think organizations also fear the individual....

A couple or 3 weeks ago, Ken Walker wrote an article that was a great Biblical articulation of something which I had noticed and written about in Allowing Voice. I was bemoaning the tendency of Churches to want to "be the whole content"; to have the people depend upon it (and its leaders) for the whole shootin' match. That tends to make Churches a whole lot like marketers. They want to "define" the needs, and then provide the "right perspective" on them, a nd sens us home all warm and fuzzy, all the while most of us go home feeling like no more of ourselves has been known.

JOHO (David weinberger) has this reference from Hiawatha Bray in the Business Section on the Weblogs Business Strategy conference last week (see my commentary below):

Every business needs to know what its employees know. Companies are crammed with experts on various topics whose knowledge goes to waste - because nobody knows what they know. Now give these workers an internal corporate blog, and encourage them to use it. Let them natter away on every topic that intrigues them. Harvest and index the results. You've mapped your workers' brains. With a few keystrokes, a manager can find out who's been blogging about skiing or bowling or restoring classic cars - just the thing when you're trying to sell something to an avid collector of '64 Mustangs. The company's hidden experts will cheerfully reveal themselves, and the firm's institutional memory gets an upgrade.

By the way, the link above will decay in a day or two. And, in any case, you won't get to see the big photo in the paper version of me and Doc.

What he said:

what to me is the most important aspect of blogging: the creation of a web of Web selves |  Read the article about AlwaysOn (this line is just above the paragraph that contains the bulleted points almost at the end of the post)

When Weinberger of JOHO (same article as The Web Self article below - or earlier) puts it this way,  I REALLY think Church Web/Church Weblog.  A "Web of WebSelves";  that image carries with it so much of what I thik Church websites need to be.  Church Websites use brochure language to try to describe it to us.  What they're trying to do is give us enough of a "feel" to get us to come and meet them,  or "experience" the worship,  or "try it" or all the above. 

David Weinberger of JOHO writes about the claim by AlwaysOn that they are a "SuperBlog", and David points out that there's not really a way for members to "write" in an area that is "them" (that's how I understand what Weinberger is saying, and that's what blogging is for me as well:  a place that's "Me" on the Web.)

The part of AO that might be considered bloggy is pretty clearly a commenting or letters-to-the-editor capability. That's good to see, and people are writing trenchant commentary. But it's missing some core stuff that's central to understanding why bloggery is important: Members don't get a home page where I can go to read what they've written today. The "members profile" page doesn't count even though it has a linked list of previous posts. This matters (to me, anyway) since I think the most important effect of weblogging is that it creates a persistent place on the Web that comes to stand for the person; a blog site is as close as we've come to having a Web self.

Tony is obviously a great marketer. Every time he proclaims AlwaysOn as a "super-blog," he's having an actual effect on the world. People who go to AlwaysOn thinking that it's a prime example of a weblog are going to hear interesting voices — good — but are going to miss what to me is the most important aspect of blogging: the creation of a web of Web selves. That objection is political, not semantics. | see the whole article, AlwaysOnDebate

This is also where I think Church organizations are missing the point.  (Read on in "Churches missing the point")