_This article is by Guest Contributor Kate Trgovac, reporting from the “BlogOn”:http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005 conference. Here are Kate’s impressions of “What Blogs are Not” by “David Weinberger”:http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/ – Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society and co-author of the Cluetrain Mainfesto._
I’ve been a fan of Weinberger for quite a while (not so much the Cluetrain Manifesto, but for his newsletter “JOHO – Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization”:http://www.hyperorg.com/ *and* because he has the best email address in the universe – self@evident.com). He certainly did not disappoint from an energy or content perspective. Weinberger (possibly by virtue of being a Harvard Fellow) gave a presentation that was a perfect mix of some ivory-tower stuff with some actionable takeaways.
The first half of Weinberger’s talk was about what blogs are not. Note: I think he is addressing his talk to marketers trying to understand how to enter the blogosphere (either as participants or observers); he’s not trying to describe the blogging process to the general public.
Category: Kate Trgovac
_This article is by Guest Contributor Kate Trgovac, reporting from the “BlogOn”:http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005 conference. Here are her impressions of “Damage Control – Communicating with Your Customers in Time of Crisis Conversation” with Gil Schwartz, EVP Communications, CBS Television._
Lisa Poulson, Managing Director of Burson-Marsteller led a lively discussion with Schwartz on the similarities and differences in crisis communication in the pre- & post-blog eras.
When asked what the big differences are, Schwartz suggested:
# Time frame. Everything happens *now*. Before, in PR, you had time to prep your clients, craft a message, get all the right people involved. Now, you have to respond immediately. And sometimes things get missed.
# Possibility for *any* issue to become a huge PR issue. Before, it was easier to predict what would become a big PR issue – for example, crises like the Tylenol tampering and the Union Carbide disaster. Now, anything can become a crisis – and that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
_This article is by Guest Contributor Kate Trgovac, reporting from the “BlogOn”:http://www.blogonevent.com/blogon2005 conference._
Heralding the call of the “Cluetrain Manifesto”:http://www.cluetrain.com/, this panel promised a discussion on becoming a smart voice in the market place and engaging your customers in a conversation. Moderated by Steve Rubel, VP at CooperKatz and author of the “Micropersuasion blog”:http://www.micropersuasion.com.
Steve started the conversation with the recent incident of “FedEx Furniture”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedex_Furniture — an individual who created furniture for his apartment from any used FedEx boxes he could find.
He then posted pictures of them on a site. Predictably, FedEx’s lawyers sent him a cease and desist letter. Which he posted on his site. He finally ended up being interviewed on NBC’s Today Show. And FedEx received more negative publicity than if they had just left it alone, or, gave him a few boxes.
Rubel asked the panel, “if markets are conversations (and really, as the example above shows, conversations are markets), what has substantially changed for marketers?”