Other metaphors I like...

California bans smoking in office buildings. People slip out for a smoke and huddle around the doors or the ashtrays in smoker exile. For those 5-15 minutes, your small group of fellow addicts shares the moment. Sometimes you break out in conversation. Usually casual, sometimes deep, occasionally the start of a labor union or a new product or a lawsuit. Despite yourselves, repetition of exposure fosters trust. And people take it from there.

Sometimes I think of blogging like amateur night at a comedy club. You step up on stage for your five minutes, probably at one in the morning, greeted by a random audience who laughs at you and maybe your painful story told in a funny way. You thank the audience, who were just barely awake anyway and who were never vested in your barely coherent ramblings, and you leave the stage. Until tomorrow. When you come back for more. And the next day you look at the world a little differently, noticing things that could be material for your set, and you rush home, write them down, and that night you try it out on a mostly different audience. And your material gets better, and you start to build a reputation, and you relax into the doing of it and start to pay attention to the two-way conversation that takes place between a performer and those cheering and jeering on the other side of the microphone. From utterance to rapport.

Company cafeterias or regular happy-hour spots are as much about being seen, and with whom, as it is about the conversations you have. Food? It's a heartbeat check, a status reinforcer, a clique definer. Depending on your role, it may not matter at all, or it may be everything. Presence is everything.

An automotive supply store (tires, I think) had a big sign by the street. Each night the owner put a new witticism, twisted proverb, or insightful comment on the sign. And commuters on Atlantic Ave chuckled or thought on the way to school or work each morning. 10 words or less, but those "posts" became a landmark amid the drab clutter of an interchangeable commercial district. Now in Oakland, California, about 500 miles away, the owners of the Grand Lake movie palace put one side of their historic marquis into the hands of their movie programmer. He writes strong messages about blackbox voting, the Patriot Act, a possible military draft, the Iraq war. Some people think he's an ass, others applaud, but everyone slows down to see it on the way to the market. In both cases, the author had no control over readership. A consistent voice, regular updating, and strong points of view defined both personal and corporate identities.

Dina, Ton, Peter, Gary, Scott, Drakaal, back to you.

What's a "Why Sayer"? LEO says:

I suspect it may be an attempt at a play on 'nay-sayers' -- people who never do anything but criticize. 'Why-sayers' is a coinage that emphasizes positive thinking, creativity, and questioning authority. (Go Ikea!)

On a flyer at Ikea:

We're Hiring
Why
Sayers

People who want to make things better. Make things more fun. More clever. People who aren't restricted by convention, but challenged by it. People who fit perfectly at Ikea. Because it's the why that makes us successful. Just give us a call and submit a voice application. We'll be in touch with you as soon as possible.

Call (866) 831-8611
or visit us on the web at
www. IKEA.com.

On the reverse...

Tied together by a hand-drawn triangle:

The Dream
to create a better everyday life for the many people

The Business Idea
by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them

The Human Resource Idea
by giving down-to-earth, straightforward people the possibility to grow, both as individuals and in their professional roles, so that together we are strongly committed to creating a better everyday life for ourselves and our customers

Followed by:

The Realization
it takes a dream to create a successful business idea
it takes people to make dreams a reality

Things I love about this: 

1. The inner rhetoric of the organization, plainly exposed to the public. Values, goals, the mental model holding things together. Do you speak our language?
2. Psychographic positioning. Being stark about who you are improves the quality of the inquiry pool. Are you in or are you out?
3. Simple action directions. Call us.  
4. The promise of prompt human contact. Competitive advantage in an era of form-letter-non-response.

[aka staffing]

Dan Gillmor wonders about blood lust as searches for the executed Nick Berg top the major search engines.

So you're asking, why does traffic slow down at a car accident, why do people crowd a murder scene, who pays for boxing matches and hockey games? That's one trigger.

Another. We've just fought a war where none of the violence was televised. We're hearing death announcements but no coffins, high school snaps, but no bodies. This video is unfiltered truth about the conflict, our conflict. Bloody, wretched, simple. 

And. We trust our federal government less than before. They admit to screening what we see, hiding "morale damaging" evidence from the general view. We trust our media less than before, wimps when we needed courage. So we scavenge for facts, for truth, for context and interpretation. For sense.

Click. Click. Click.

 

p.s. Almost no mention that Nick Berg is a Jew. He's not the first Jew executed on TV by Islamic terrorists after being captured working in a dangerous zone. Talk about derivative cinema.

Capping the number of users at 20, the new Movable Type 3.0 release pricing structures me out of its market. 

Enterprise blogging is a team sport. So are grassroots, educational, and community blogging.

And teams have personnel turnover. New people replacing departures, temps filling in. So the total number of user accounts grows over time. The average person changes jobs every four years, more frequently when you're younger; 25%-50% new faces a year, assuming you're not in a troubled economy, facing personnel problems, or coping with growth. Did I mention no more guest blogging?

I can no longer, in good conscience, recommend MT to small businesses, workplace teams, or any of the 1000 Kerry grassroots teams any more. They'll max out any of the five MT licenses in six months. Or minutes. My East Bay Kerry communications teams (writers, speakers, media relations, rich media) have more than 100 volunteers.  Repeat that for every county in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, etc.

I'd love for MT to offer a parallel pricing structure for non-governmental organizations, for unlimited numbers of users/blogs.

What are my alternatives? Scoop and its derivatives are looking better. So is Traction, which, while more expensive per user, doesn't cap the number of users on a server. More choices.

[aka strategy]