Chris Heuer's Insytes

Well, we have heard enough of the “so when are you going to get married?” bit and after sleeping on the idea for several months it seems that Saturday July 7, 2007 is going to be the date of Chris & Kristie’s wedding – So save the date!

For me, the push over the edge was realizing that my grandmother’s engagement ring had two rows of seven diamonds – it reminded me of how superstitious my Irish grandmother was and how happy she would be about getting married on such a good date. Now I just need to check with the astrologers and feng shui experts to let us know if it is really an auspicious day for us – JK!

It will be a destination wedding, so if you need to, start saving up now as all friends will be invited. Exactly where is still up in the air – I would really like Big Sur or Napa or The Greek Isles, but I really want my grandfather there so we might end up doing it in Miami Beach, Napes, Key West or maybe even some other Florida beach town. After the last time I brought my grandfather out to California in 2001 (the month before 9/11) he refuses to fly and since he is my only family left, I really need to have him there. His 90th Birthday is coming up next month on April 30th, so it would be really amazing for him to be there for me – he is not only my grandfather, but growing up in his house, he is like a father to me, and since my Mom and Grandmother have passed, he is also a close best friend – in fact, I am probably the only person he really confides in now, though he is pretty much an open book just like me…

Anyways, thanks to my lovely fiance for understanding the importance of this to me and thanks to those of you who were not overly pushy about setting the wedding date. As for the rest of you bridezilla’s… well, I hope you are finally as happy as we are.

Love you baby – thanks for being you and loving me as much as I love you.

Technorati Tags: chrisandkristie, 070707

Well, it has been a long and somewhat silent week for me – or at least for my blog because my voice is hoarse from talking to everyone so much. Last week’s BrainJams in Berkeley gave me a lot to think about, but it was the right stuff to think about because the vision for BrainJams is getting clearer and so is the story around it. From the feedback I have been getting, it feels as if BrainJams is the early manifestation of a community of people who break through traditional boundaries and participate in open collaboration in the public commons.

This is good. The audience for the message is identified. The purpose is becoming clear. The message is getting simpler (though watch out for the buzzwords that follow). The format for the events is evolving in a great way. The discussions of the past few months are leading to action.

While I am driving the organization, I still feel like I am in the backseat and the participants behind the wheel, so let me put this idea to you as YAPMS (Yet Another Proposed Mission Statement):

BrainJams is a community of people who span traditional boundaries within and across organizations for the purpose of populating, organizing and enhancing the “Public Knowledge Commons” while teaching other’s to make the best use of the appropriate tools for their situation to connect, communicate and collaborate within their communities.

From initial discussions this week, it would seem that this resonates, is somewhat unique, matches my original intentions and just feels right, though admittedly it could use some ‘wordsmithing’.

While this includes the idea of unconferences as a primary venue for peer to peer learning, it encompasses more then this singular idea for real time human gatherings. In a very real sense, the name brought forth a format and the format developed the purpose as it was within those open space conversations where this idea really grew. Yes it is still about Web 2.1 and the people within it (or as I am fond of calling it now, the Human Centered Web) but it is also about much more.

It is about freedom of expression. It is about standing up and being heard. It is about making things right – because WE can, even when the system can not. It is about the simple fact that the knowledge I need to know, to do what I have to do, is out there somewhere. It is about the fact that technology alone can not get me that information reliably – but smart people like you can with the aid of technology, particularly with the technology of the Human Centered Web. It is about learning from one another. It is about the computer being good with information and people being the source of the wisdom of how to use that information. It is about tolerance for differences and embracing commonalities between us. It is about diversity of perspective and culture. It is about doing what is best for our communities because it is also best for ourselves. it is about seeking out the truth rather than pushing an agenda. It is about taking action as much as it is about discussing which actions need to be taken.

So where do we start? or rather, where do we go from here?

I could really use some help is with the following items:

1. Hire a grant writer to help us get a grant from a foundation
2. Build out the community web site completely to align with the vision above
3. With that grant, to hire a small full time staff to handle the operational aspects of the BrainJams organization (Executive Director, Administrative Assistant, Event Logistics Coordinator and Community Content Editor)
4. Begin a research project into mapping the history of groups, formats and tools to determine what works in which situations
5. Begin to map out which groups exist today, what their purposes are and who the members are. This will allow more people to easily find people who are passionate about the same noble pursuit that they share so they can more easily tap into that community for conversation and the knowledge they need to take action themselves directly. This also addresses the fact that many groups exist for the same purpose, but have not aligned in action or understanding yet – in effect to become a “Meta-Group” that helps them span their organizational boundaries.
6. Planning BrainJams New Orleans for May 4, 2006
7. Refine all this thinking into a clear plan for the organization

Wish there was more time to dive deeper into all of this, as there are still about 5 or 6 blog posts I need to get out to explain the thinking behind this, but work calls, so I must close for now. Please do let me know what you think about these ideas, whether or not this is too expansive or too restrictive, and how we might improve upon this concept even further…

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc collaboration, ad-hoc+collaboration, amateurevents, brainjams, brainjams:planning, net2, thetruthtellers, unconference, Web2.0, Web2.1

The fire hose has been turned on for the last 48 hours – both for a client and for BrainJams. So far I have about 7 pages of a word document that needs to be edited and remixed for easier consumption – once I get some rest anyway. Still, I wanted to put this out right away as it is important.

The vision for BrainJams has finally become clear for me – I am fortunate to have the input of some fairly sharp people on this and look forward to further insightful analysis from Shannon Clark and Paul Sas – Christoper Allen and Dave Buerlind – and much thanks to Lee for sticking with my loose experiment – am looking forward to more of his input on these issues as they come into the realm of online conversation.

So the key insyte so far is based on some of what David was referencing as the “SIG of SIGs” concept – but more so by applying an understanding of Paramedia as Cathryn Hrudicka referenced via Web Content Day. Still, it is the more generic pattern that is really at play here – the most important value that BrainJams can deliver is in the meta layer, the mapping of knowledge to situations through collective effort the contextual vision is much wider than Wikipedia, though it certainly benefits from their work thus far. An effort to bring together all the differnet projects and communities out there working on putting knowledge into the public commons. This is much bigger than unconferences, though it does incorporate them and leverage its learnings. It would seem that there is a need for an organization to work in the metalayer across all orgnaizations, tools companies and individual knowledge workers – connecting the dots across organizations and communities of practice with the ultimate goal of seeding the situationally aware knowledge commons.

We discussed the idea of having multiple events in the future for different purposes – this is highly likely to happen and is also so, so ‘meta’.

I need to hire a killer ‘grant writer’ – does anyone have any reccomendations?

The format of the next brainjams is seemingly known now that we have learned what we did from the Berkeley event. The next one we do here will be using a format similar to the one below.

10am – BrainJamming one-on-one)
Noon – Lunch
1PM – User Demos “My Favorite Tool/Tools” – 5 minutes each
2PM – Review Breaktrhough Sessions (more open space)
230PM – Breakthrough Session 1
3PM – Write and reflect for 15 Minutes
315PM – Breakthrough Session 2
345PM – Write and reflect for 15 Minutes
4PM – Breakthrough Session 3
430PM – Write and reflect for 15 Minutes
445PM – Wrap up the day

It is amazing to think that this might be the beginning of something along the lines of what I wrote about with The Noble Pursuit as a real possibility.

Thanks again to everyone who came out on SAT, it was very worthwhile for us, I hope the same was true for you despite the problems with trying the new format I had proposed – mea culpa… Thankfully something wonderful came out of it. Goes to show that the most difficult, crazy processes can still yield excellent insytes and real value when the intentions are in the right place.

Will put more links in tomorrow – off to bed for now…

Here is a mindmap of the answers we received to the question “What do you want to learn at BrainJams?” Click on the image or here for a larger view. The MindMap file will be available from within the BrainJams Community Site at the end of the day tomorrow along with the notes we are going to take on the topics we dive into deeper.

Unfortunately I have not heard back from the people at MindJet in several weeks, so a lot of things we hoped to do with the MindMaps won’t be happening. Instead we will be using the Wiki capabilities inside the Drupal community. Not as cool, but just as good if not better for ease of use.

Steve Wrubel talks about the crazy, overheated Social Bookmarking space – he is right in that there are too many of these services out there and a shakeup is coming fast, but thinking that the game is over because Yahoo! bought delicious is really Ri.dic.u.lous

I don’t believe Google has even touched the market yet, but you can bet it will once things start to get shaken up. More importantly, some of the existing one’s will survive and thrive in consolidation. Pluck certainly has a vision for the bigger picture though the verdict is still out and they have not received wide spread recognition yet as I thought they should have had by now.

What it really comes down to once again is that all the talent is dispersed and competing instead of collaborating towards common goals. Though it is supposed to be about the work, the users and real values now, it is still about the money and the dreams of a big GYM buyout or perhaps even public exit… Unfortunately for them, and for us, this is something that 200 different, very weak brands with commodity products will never ever do.

Technorati Tags: delicious, socialbookmarking, Web2.0

One of the reasons for my blog post yesterday on giving credit where credit is due is that The Four Agreements has been coming up again and again lately. Mike Prince of Mobido asked me about it the other night at MashupCamp, I talked about it the other day with Grace Davis at WoolfCamp and I pulled it out the other night to read a few passages. So it seems like a good time to tell a short version of the story of how I came to learn of his work and the good work of one of his students named David Dibble. But first, let me explain what the book is, what it says and why I believe it is so important.

Simply put, I feel he has hit on the core universal truths for living a good, happy and free life. In essence the most important ‘rules’ for being human. When I looked within myself and touched the things that pained me most from my life, I found that without exception, all of the pains and heartaches I experienced were a result of these things. As a systems thinker who excels at pattern recognition, these were perhaps the simplest to see and the hardest to correct. In fact, I sincerely believe that living by these agreements goes against the grain of our socialization and in some regards, against our very nature.

But I know from personal experience now, that striving to live by these principles is indeed liberating and my life is generally happier because of it (though I still struggle daily with #2 and #3).

The Four Agreements (from Don Miguel’s Web site)

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you wonít be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

When I was first introduced to his work, I was on a VisionQuest in Death Valley’s Owlshead Mountains with two great guides from Rites of Passage Vision Quest. Mike Bodkin and Linda Sartor are beautiful people who really helped me find my center, though I have struggled to remain there as I often live in my head rather than grounded in my heart – but that is another story for another day. A few members of the group I was with mentioned this book and tried to convey the wisdom it contained. It seemed that the interpretation of one of my fellow questers was a bit skewed and as such I missed a great opportunity to really learn from the book for a few months, but eventually it did jump off the shelves of a local Borders bookstore and it changed my life.

As I finished reading it that night, my head was spinning and my heart leapt with joy as I realized that I had finally discovered this important set of life altering insights. Having recently written my little manifesto, The Noble Pursuit, and with Worldcom’s ethics scandal in the news (along with all the others at that time), my first thought was “This is what we need in the business world. I am going to write this book for business.” Late at night the following day, I was searching around the Internet to see if there might be something related, when I stumbled upon David Dibble and found that he had already written that book and it was soon going to be published. I excitedly wrote David an email at like 330am telling him my life story and hoping to connect with him.

He wrote back, we talked via phone and he sent me an early manuscript of the book which I devoured and marked up with lots of other thoughts and ideas. He invited me to one of his early training sessions for New Agreements coaching in San Diego – this was even more transformational than the books. It was an incredibly deep, positive experience that really did lay the foundation for a lot of the philosophy I bring to my work around change management and how businesses should operate from authenticity. In fact, it was his suggestion about how to make email more personal that I follow when I sign my emails “With love”. I had hoped we would have opportunities to collaborate more, but they never materialized really as I was still seeking my path – though he and his lovely wife Linda have always been within my heart.

More recently, as I noted back in December, I had a chance to talk with him when I was trying to figure out what ice breaker to use for our BrainJams event in Menlo Park at SRI. He was kind enough to teach me about the hula hoop exercise which was a big success there as well as in DC. I hope to find the time and space to collaborate again with him on bigger things, though am not sure what those things are yet – I am going to call him tomorrow to see if he might have any more jewels up his sleeve for our Berkeley event, but given the last minute nature of the call, may not even be able to connect with him via phone. Regardless, The New Agreements in the Workplace is still a big part of the knowledge I share through BrainJams and more importantly, the manner in which I share it – from the heart, as a truth teller and always doing my best.

Technorati Tags: brainjams:related, changemanagement, donmiguelruiz, forBrainJams25feb2006, fouragreements, freeideas, heartofbusiness, daviddibble, spirituality, thenewagreements, thetruthtellers

We have all the details and some good directions for Saturday’s event on the Wiki, but just in case you are more visual, I have posted a Flickr set that will take you from the parking garage to the Lipman Room. Simple, but sweet.

Technorati Tags: brainjams25feb2006

I hinted at this earlier, but wanted to get the details and vision settled before writing it out and trying to explain it. One of the reasons I was so honored to get Lee Felsenstein’s involvement with our upcoming BrainJams is that I knew he had been thinking about ad-hoc collaboration for quite some time. In fact, there are several things he always wanted to try, but really could not due to time constraints and traditions with the Homebrew Computer Club. I feel very blessed that we were able to have our own mini-BrainJams the other day near The Fonley Institute offices in Palo Alto, CA that resulted in the following changes to the agenda and the format.

First, though, what might be considered mildly bad news – we are not going to have time for our one-on-one knowledge networking due to changes in the format. Instead, I would ask that you consider coming a little earlier where you can either mix and mingle beforehand – we are hopeful that someone may want to organize a short session to start at 930am, but this is unknown. DON’T PANIC – the schedule, as you will see, is filled with opportunities for what Homebrew called “Random Access” and what we consider “Hallway Conversations”. This is an essential part of making the unconference model successful.

I should point out here that we are still leveraging the open space model and still focusing on participant lead discussions. But as I have said in the past, we will always be open to experimenting, trying to improve on our primary goal, which is connecting people, ideas and resources. To this end we have identified four bottlenecks we hope to solve with the new format. 1) The same people choose and lead conversations on the same topics because they are extroverted leaders – this is not a bad thing, but does not allow for a diverse range of conversations in the limited space/time we have available. 2) We want everyone to get the most from the day but this is reliant on the unknown factor of who actually shows up and what knowledge they can contribute. 3) 30 minutes does not allow for people to get into the topics in a manner conducive to deep learning. 4) We need to improve the way that the knowledge shared during the conversations is shared beyond the physical space and encourage the conversations of the day to continue after we leave. We hope this may result in slight improvements to the open space format, but honestly we may find it just doesn’t work the way we hope and will make adjustments during the day if necessary.

So what will the day look like?

9:00am – Start arriving, help setup, meet other BrainJams participants, create account on BrainJams community site for sharing notes – coffee, fruit, muffins will be available courtesy of Rate it All

9:30am – Possible knowledge networking sessions (3 mins instead of 5 mins) standing instead of sitting

10:00am – Introductions and review format of day – aka “Tech and Flow”. Everyone’s three words and Blog URL will be printed in the program, but not their email address – you will need to collect these directly or connect with them through their Blog.

10:15am – Lee and Chris Heuer will kick off a conversation on “Learning from the past” and learning from other disciplines. This is essentially what is happening as a result of their collaboration on the format. But Chris never saw the Homebrew Computer Club format as a model to learn from because he did use the same language. This is an open conversation lead by the two facilitators for the day, it is not meant to be a fireside chat or keynote per se. We want to hear other examples and other insights from participants on this important topic that is at the heart of what BrainJams does.

10:45am – Everyone participates in a large group discussion on what they came to learn for the day based on responses to the registration form questions. During this period of time we will identify the three key themes that will become the focus of the day and each of the three groups. From responses thus far it seems that areas of interest include Blogging, Citizen Journalism, Collaboration, Building Community and just Learning New Stuff.

11:15am – Random Access / Open Hallway Conversations

11:30am – Everyone will choose one of the three groups for initial discussions focused on identifying key issues and/or sub-topics related to their primary group theme. To really have a broad discussion of the theme, essentially mapping out key questions or issues that are of interest to people in attendance. From this we also need to identify if any participants have enough expertise / knowledge to lead a conversation on the most important issues. In a very real sense this serves as an introduction to the theme for people who don’t know much about it while enabling those with deeper knowledge to point out what the most important considerations are.

12:00pm – Reconvene. Each of the three groups will have 10 minutes to present the top issues within their theme and get quick positive/negative feedback on their recommendations for the two afternoon Breakthrough Sessions. These will be posted on the board as the afternoon schedule.

12:30am – Lunch will be brought in from Togo’s courtesy of Lockergnome and Gada.be

1:30pm – Breakthrough Sessions. This is pretty much as we have done in the past, but based on the group discussions rather than on the individual who claims the spot fastest. There should be one person who is the conversation facilitator/leader who ideally would be an expert on the subject matter, but will not just be a speaker. This person should keep the conversation on topic and moving, while ensuring that everyone has a chance to be heard. Additionally, each session should be recorded to be Podcast later and each session requires a Note Maker who will be responsible for posting the notes to the BrainJams site.

2:15pm – Capture and Process Breakthrough Session – Everyone will have 10-15 minutes to capture their thoughts on the conversation, work with the note-maker to ensure key points are captured and to post any additional questions that are still lingering to the BrainJams community site.

2:30pm – Random Access / Open Hallway Conversations

2:45pm – Reconvene as a large group to discuss content of Breakthrough Sessions. Each note maker will have approximately five (5) minutes to share what was discussed and let us know if the topic for the next Breakthrough Session has changed at all as a result of the first conversation.

3:15pm – Breakthrough Sessions

4:00pm – Capture and Process Breakthrough Session

4:15pm – Reconvene as a large group to discuss content of Breakthrough Sessions. Each note maker will have approximately five (5) minutes to share what was discussed.

4:40pm – Provide feedback on format and wrap up loose ends for the day.

5:00pm – Day ends, clean up help appreciated.

5:30pm – Meet at Jupiter Pizza for a few beers courtesy of Laughing Squid and Rate it All. If we can get their early enough, the manager will let us have an area for ourselves. We will be leaving at about 7pm.

So that is what we would like to do this time. A bit different, but it feels like a good set of improvements. Many thanks to Lee for sharing his ideas on how to make this work better. We are all really looking forward to seeing each of you and learning from you. Much thanks and love to you all!

Technorati Tags: brainjams, brainjams25feb2006, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:planning, openspace, socialconference, The+Open+Web, unconference, Web2.1

I have been through a lot of drama in my day with all sorts of different people from different statures in life. I don’t particularly care for drama though I have also created my own share of it. Thankfully I have been reasonably good at keeping it out of my life lately – even when it is being forced on me through the actions of others. As Don Miguel Ruiz says in The Four Agreements, “don’t take things personally”.

This is perhaps the hardest of the Four Agreements to keep – even more so than “don’t make assumptions” – but it is often the most important as it can really throw a curve ball in your day when you are bounding along, happy as a lark and suddenly find out that someone you thought was your friend does something or says something against you, behaving more like a competitor instead of a collaborator.

So what to do when you find out that someone you trusted is actually trying to discredit you instead of working together towards common goals? What to do when someone smiles at you and lies to your face? What to do when you hear from other people the wild things they are saying about you behind your back? Simple. Don’t take it personally. It is their problem, not yours, so all you need to do is remain true to yourself and keep living your life with right speech, right action and right intent. Easier said than done – my initial reaction is usually one of anger, but with age and some experience I have learned to let go of most of it – even while the deep hurt remains inside as yet another scar to be healed.

Still, it has never stopped me from being the person I am, from trusting again, from sharing my insights with others or from loving everyone I meet – even when I don’t particularly like them. The other day I was talking with Kristie about the many places my ‘Idea DNA’ resides across the Internet. We discussed the many people I have spoken with – who appropriated my ideas as their own or merely built on top of them without even a word of thanks for the inspiration. Instead of this happening inside a big organization where the person leveraging the ideas would be a boss/supervisor/vp, it has occurred across multiple organizations, in the wild wooly entrepreneurial landscape. I can’t begin to post all of these experiences here, but there are nearly a dozen companies or products that were influenced by my insights through conversations with founders or key team members. In each case, it would have been great to get some sort of consulting contract from it. It would have been even better to have been acknowledged as a contributing influence.

While I usually don’t like to call people out by name for this sort of thing, this is one story whose time has come.

The most prominent example of where I believe my Idea DNA was appropriated without recognition is with BuzzMetrics. (The most recent situation will be written about another day after I have dealt with the matters personally and directly.) I have never written on this situation or publicly discussed this before beyond conversations with friends, but it is a good point of reference for this post with the intention of highlighting the important issue of honesty and attribution together with the issue of how to deal with people who are seemingly your friend but are perhaps working against you. Their recent acquisition by Nielsen, their subsequent acquisition of Intelliseek and some links sent to me about them being sued by New Media Strategies make it a good time to at least set the record straight regarding my involvement in the story.

If you are wondering, I am not worried about being sued for writing this, because it is all true. I am not making any claims against them, and besides, if they decide to sue they will just end up giving me a bigger platform for the truth which could possibly taint the company’s stature more than the recent lawsuits. This is the story of how I met the founders of a little known, barely launched portal called PulpFree and how my Idea DNA was imprinted on their company leading to a change in their business model.

I first met Jonathan Carson and Braxton Robason through Matthew Slaughter, whom I believe I originally met at a Netpreneur event on March 7, 2000 via an introduction from Sacha Cohen – it was the same night that Christopher Locke signed my copy of the Cluetrain actually. It felt like Matt was an old soul, who was smart and on the rise after leaving the Carlyle Group to pursue dotcom fame and fortune like all good MBA’s did back in 1998-2000. Matt had made an introduction for me to his VC firm which was playing incubator in Old Town Alexandria. The firm was called Paladin Companies and had not yet moved into their huge 32,000 square foot space – in fact we met over in a temporary office on South Union Street in Old Town. The first meeting with all of them (after giving Paladin an executive summary without an NDA – b/c they never sign NDA’s) was in early April of 2000 – the VC (I believe it was Michael Hartman, but am honestly not totally sure without digging up the records from storage) wanted to have the PulpFree technical team (Braxton) review my ideas for Conversal on the technical merits – so they brought Braxton in and I had a discussion with him in the conference room, sketching out the basic models for what I wanted to do. Jonathan came in briefly later and I had a separate conversation about the potential of the conversational intelligence industry with Matthew, Jonathan and the VC.

After pitching my plan for developing a conversational intelligence system, laying out the business model and explaining the backbone of the plan being based on The Communications Strategy, I got the usual VC pessimism about how it could not work and how PulpFree was the smartest, greatest opportunity etc… It would seem that after these conversations, and their follow on conversations with New Media Strategies about possibly working with them, that the PulpFree team may have realized their model was not going to make them money at the time. With the bubble bursting, they, like I, were seemingly forced to drop the B2C angle and look for a B2B opportunity (also something I discussed with them at length). [See an Internet Archive/WayBack machine version of their site from October of 2000 and one from May of 2001.] Funny thing is of course, aggregators are the hottest things right now, so in a sense they were seemingly on track with the PulpFree model, just not at the right time.

At the time we first met, Braxton and Jonathan had just finished working on a spider that I believe they called ‘Harvest’ which was being used to populate what was called in the now immortal words of Matt, “a portal for smart people – for twenty and thirty somethings who were not happy with the dumbed down content offered by Yahoo! and Lycos”. I told them I thought it was utter folly to try to compete with the big portals – especially on what I saw as a flimsy premise for distinction, but they were undeterred and seemingly offended by my challenge to their model. Over the next few weeks I tried to followup but got no more responses from their VC. I did speak with Matt though (supposedly with Jonathan on the speakerphone though I don’t recall hearing him speak) and given that I was running out of cash myself, I suggested we work together towards using their spider to mine all of the online personal communications out there on personal web pages, message boards, public chat rooms and especially comment systems. We would use it to analyze conversations, identify key influencers, monitor what was being said and most importantly, to enable companies to engage in the conversations where they were happening – to be proactive with customer service instead of reactive. I also referenced this thinking as eCKM (electronic customer knowledge management as opposed to CRM) and have lots of power point decks on this with original time stamps that support the story in addition to several emails with them.

In one phone conversation with Matt, I suggested that if they could perhaps come up with a few dollars to pay me, I could work out a discounted rate so we could all work together towards making this a real success. To see how we might be able to work together. He responded that he barely had enough money to pay the team he had. I never really heard from them again, though I occasionally saw Matt at various events – in fact I still haven’t heard from them or spoken with them actually and until recently, chose to stay away from WOMMA and the whole industry as I would rather not be associated with those who talk about “Pimping word of mouth” or paying people to blog about something without transparency.

After moving to Silicon Valley in 2001, I saw that they had moved offices to New York and changed their name to BuzzMetrics. I tried to reach out to Matt at that time, but never heard back from him. In fact, he is still pretty invisible in the online world and I can find no real traces of what he has done since. The interesting thing is that although they had access to my business plan and I explained my philosophy behind conversational intelligence in detail to them, I feel that they still have not gotten it right – then again, their experiences likely morphed what they did as a result of the needs of customers. While admittedly they became successful with the idea and I did not – I rest comfortably with my opinion that they really never got the big idea and have yet to do it right, despite the fact that others look to them as ‘leaders’ in the industry – this is a huge opportunity and why I have chosen to invest my time helping others who do ‘get it’.

A friend just asked me if I thought they stole my intellectual property – to which I replied that ideas are a dime a dozen, though good ideas like this one was worth considerably more. All I can say for sure is that I feel my ideas influenced their direction and it seems that the DNA of my idea may have been a key chromosome for the birth of their company. If they had just been more open to collaboration instead of seemingly focusing on their equity positions, we all would have been the better for it. Is this sour grapes? No, though I obviously have a tinge of disappointment that I did not make it as big with Conversal – but that was my fault and is separate of my reasons for writing this now despite what all the trolls and attackers may say tomorrow.

So why share this today? Because this is just one example of how I believe my Idea DNA is within the foundations of many different companies which choose to not recognize the contribution – how many other people has this happened to? Millions. And it is just wrong and has no place in The Open Web that is called Web 2.0 – it has no place within an open society that collaborates in the commons. I am reminded of the old VC adage, “100% of nothing is still nothing – you need to share the wealth in order for it the idea to grow”.

For me, it has always been about the recognition of the contributions. So when I take pains to recognize the contributions of others with honor, respect and link love, you now know why I do so. When other people, who approach me with hand extended in friendship, seek input or ideas on what they are doing, I gladly offer my insytes and will continue to do so. After all, it is better to have the ideas living in the world than stuck in my head. I just wish I did not keep running into assholes who seem authentic outside but are seemingly still holding onto narcissistic, ‘fuck everyone else’ beliefs behind false facades. I have gotten better at identifying those people, but occasionally one slips through the cracks as happened recently.

As much as I want to sit at the cool kid’s table like everyone else does, I am happy to be me and surround myself with truly genuine people who are respectful, loving and willing to share – and who give credit where it is due. In fact, I prefer to be with genuine people who are respectful of all people rather than those only concerned with power, fame and fortune. Everyone we meet has something of value to contribute – it is our job to figure out what that is.

It is important to point out here that I don’t want money and I don’t want to stir shit up (though I suppose it probably will given the stature of these guys now). I just want the truth to be set free and I want us all to make sure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated as the market begins to heat up again. I would like to see that the values of authenticity, transparency, honesty, collaboration and accreditation is at the heart of this important era of our economic recovery. For if it is not, we are doomed to repeat ourselves and watch a bubble boom and then bust.

[Disclosure: While I am now consulting with BuzzLogic, a company that might be considered a competitor of theirs, I can assure you that this has nothing to do with why I am sharing this story today. In fact, BuzzLogic would probably prefer I did not write this, but since it is truth and I am now active in this industry in many ways, it is time to set the story straight and also time to speak up to prevent it from happening again. In the future, I won’t be as silent as I have been for the past six years.]

Technorati Tags: co-operative, goodsense, conversationalintelligence, The Open Web, The+Open+Web

Sometimes leading by example isn’t enough. So I guess it is time to make a louder statement.

So I launched a new web site/wiki last night with the hope of spreading the message. Don’t Spread the Germs (http://www.dontspreadgerms.org/) is a simple WIKI hosted over on PBWiki where I hope people will contribute more ideas, posts and other knowledge about how we can stop the spread of flus, colds and other nasty bugs that make us all sick and miserable.

Maybe we can come up with a viral message to stop the spread of the viral biology…

Or maybe we can just spread awareness of the idea that people who are sick should not be going out in public and getting others sick. I know some people think the possibility of a Flu Pandemic is some conspiracy or something, but history shows us that such a global pandemic is indeed possible if not highly likely. According to an Australian study reported on CNN, a Bird Flu Pandemic could take up to 142 Million Lives worldwide. The economic devastation would plunge the world into a deeep depression that would take quite a long time to recover from. This is why Kleiner Perkins recently announced a $200 million pandemic fund – these guys are some of the smartest in the business and they know where to place their bets.

Many of us have the technology to work from our homes when we are sick, so why don’t we? Because we feel compelled to get outside, we want to have the opportunity to meet the right person, we think we have to do it. We don’t need to – we need to respect our associates, co-workers, friends and ourselves enough to help other people stay healthy. Don’t Spread the Germs! Stay home and maybe one day this attitude can save a few million lives…

If you agree or disagree with this, tag your posts with ‘dontspreadgerms‘ and lets see if we can all work towards making a difference.

Technorati Tags: citizenjournalism, economics, flu, goodsense, pandemic, dontspreadgerms