The Cluetrain Manifesto

Dave's Log:  Cyberdate 6.17.07

Today we are going to test Emma, like she's never been tested.  But first...  It began a couple of days ago while a few of us gathered in the lounge.  Elle told us of a conversation that she had with Christopher Locke.  Christopher was in 1999, Elle 2007.  Elle was curious, prior to the explosion of blogs and social media, who or what was, in Tom Friedman's terminology, flattening hierarchy in the business world?  So she queried a sector of thought particles in the year 1999, using elevated emotion as a filter.  Here is a sample of the data stream that led Elle to Mr. Locke: markets...hierarchy...corporate...ivory towers...subvert...rage boy...conversations...community...tired and not gonna take it any more.

"Destination: the planet Conversation located in the in the quadrant of Change."

Avelina's voice drips with excitement and anticipation.  Is Emma doing this or is Avelina emerging as a life of her own?  Time will tell.

With the coordinates of Conversation as it was in 1999 secured in navigation, Emma is challenged to take the Starship back in time.  She must get our craft 100 times past the speed of light, to a value known as the speed of thought.  It is at this point that we cross over.  Emma pulls it off without a hitch.

We land a short distance outside of a town called 95 Thesis.  Wood burning and food cooking loosen our taste buds and place us in a festive mood.  The town is a series of cobblestone roads and open front shops.  A wooden plank sidewalk that in places juts out to full fledge porches, lines each side of the roads.  Not only have we walked into a vibrant town, we have been swallowed by a community bent on sharing.

Over plates of barbecued pulled pork, baked beans, potato salad and tall glasses of ice tea, we talk to the town elders.  They tell us of four energetic lads who road into town on a private train.  This train was unlike any ever before seen.  Picture the ice-cold Coors Bullet mashing up with a fire breathing, vapor spitting, version of a train created by a sixteen year old fantasy gamer.  They called it the Cluetrain.

The four men barnstormed the country online and with a sacred printed document.  Their message was simply an illumination of what was already going on - the end of business as usual.  The World Wide Web allowed conversations between networked employees, customers and companies, networked employees and customers and maybe most profoundly, customers and customers.  Message boards, chat rooms and e-mail were the greased conduit.  Conversations eroded boundaries, ivory towers and conventional media.  Who listened to the ad media when an online community of people either ranted or railed a product?

The elders thought the lads had a legitimate platform from which to build upon their message, elevate the Cluetrain movement, and even perhaps, carve out a new philosophy of management.  We could only imagine the management instruction that coaches how to conduct your business in a transparent world, a world view open to employees, customers and the corporate world.  But that was not to be.  Before tee shirts were printed, Web sites were spun off or cults formed, the Cluetrain blew out of town leaving a vapor trail of imaginative what-could-be's.

Elle believes that the Cluetrain mindset still prevails today.  It has become more a way of life though, than the shock and awe it produced in the nineties.  She thinks the tools of blogs, podcasting, video-sharing, instant messaging, wiki's and others take the art of conversation from single engine prop planes to the Space Shuttle.  We raise our eyebrows and stare inquisitively at Elle.  "Elle, we just traveled back into time, flying one-hundred times faster than the speed of light.  Isn't the Space Shuttle so 21st century?"  "Yes David it is.  It is what is yet to come in methods of conversations that I save the description...from Space Shuttle to Starship for."

Ahhh youth.  We should have known better.