Was Deleting All Daniel Brusilovsky’s Posts an FTC Blogger Guideline Violation? [#bruhaha]

February 5, 2010
Filed Under: in Analysis, Featured Articles, New Media vs. Old Media, Social Media, Tech Policy
Author: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

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At this point, there’s no question that Daniel Brusilovsky is obviously the “intern” that Michael Arrington is referring to in his post over at Techcrunch last night (despite the “attempt” to obfuscate his identity). This all came in on the eve of the Teens in Tech conference this morning at 9:00 AM.

What’s most interesting, particularly as someone like me who’s followed very closely the FTC guidelines for blogger disclosure is how Michael Arrington, not Daniel Brusilovsky, is running afoul of what I believe to be the proper ethics that the FTC is trying to force on the blogging public.  While it may make sense from the perspective of a business person protecting his many interests, taking down the blog posts that Daniel put out over the course of his nine months at the company is exactly the opposite of the transparency that the FTC wants to enact.

The Breadcrumb Trail Leads Back to Arrington’s Culpability

September 17th of 2008, Ken Kaplan announced on the Intel Insider’s blog that the new crew of “Intel Insiders” had been announced. Intel Insiders is, according to Ken Kaplan, their “social media advisory program.” During the 2008-2009 run, the program included Erin Kane, Corvida Raven, Frank Gruber, JD Lasica and iJustine, Steve “Chippy” Paine, Brian Solis, Tom Foremski, Pete Cashmore, Cathy Brooks, as well as Daniel Brusilovsky. The announcement, as of the time of this writing, was still viewable on both Ken Kaplan’s entry at Intel’s Scoop blog as well as Daniel’s personal blog.

On January 8th of 2010, Daniel Brusilovsky posted at Techcrunch and Crunchgear about a new App Store, “this time, from Intel.” The full text of the post is below, pulled from my Google Reader cache, as well as screenshot next to the quote:

Intel CEO Paul Otellini at CES announced an app store for applications on netbooks. The store is called AppUp Center, and it’s a place where users can purchase programs that cater to a netbooks’ unique screen size and mobility. Intel AppUp center launched today for Windows and will support Moblin-based open source operating systems and a number of runtime environments later this year.

The first set of apps are now available for download, for free or to purchase, and more will be added as they are validated. App categories include entertainment, business, games, education, health and social media. Additionally, Acer, ASUS, Dell and Samsung have announced plans to collaborate with Intel on their own app stores.

According to Intel, by participating in the program, developers gain access to the fast-growing, consumer-centric computing netbook category. In addition, developers gain revenue opportunities from the netbook-installed base, and potentially hundreds of millions of other Intel processor-based computers and devices — should Intel and partner storefronts expand into new market segments.

Intel is also working with partners to bring the app stores to consumers. The partner stores give access to the developer and store services the Intel AppUp center offers. The services include validating and categorizing apps and utilizing a common transaction infrastructure to administer purchases and downloads for these tailored stores.

(original link: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/01/08/yet-another-app-store-this-time-its-intel/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)&utm_content=Google+Reader)

This information, Daniel’s involvement in the program, was quite common knowledge, as was Intel’s sponsorship of the Teens in Tech conference, displayed prominently on the front page of the conference site.

According to Intel, loaner review units would regularly be given out to the group, as well as non-disclosed information ahead of the public’s general knowledge. They would adhere to WOMMA standards (generally, FTC supportive and compliant), which states that any gifts or loans of equipment as well as any special relationship status must be disclosed in all posts by those belonging to Intel Insiders.

I did extensive searches through the Techcrunch network archives I store in Google Reader, and the only major conflict of interest I noted was the single Intel post.  Regardless of how many incidences of malfeasance exist, the culpability lies with Techcrunch, not Daniel, since it appeared on their blog and not his.

Techcrunch’s Culpability is the Only Clear Thing in this Story

There is a great deal of conflicting and intentionally confusing information coming at us from all sides, and without a clear paper trail (which we hear there is none, just like in the Crunchpad-JooJoo debacle), it’s difficult to determine who did exactly what. We know what Michael Arrington alleges in his post, which was flatly denied to us by multiple parties, including Daniel himself.

Daniel later last evening issued a public apology, which if you’ll carefully parse the words, admits no culpability.  I desperately want to believe Daniel’s side of things, because a very clear narrative what probably transpired is obvious to me, but Mike Arrington is more concerned with tanking a young man’s career as quickly as possible than adhering to the law, and for whatever reason Daniel would rather move on with his life outside of tech and not stand up and defend himself. Either way, the culpability lays with Mike Arrington and Techcrunch, not Daniel Brusilovsky.

The proper course of action, according to FTC regulations, would be to go back to the effective date of the new FTC blogger guidelines, and re-insert disclosure statements on all of Daniel’s posts, and then hope and pray that the FTC finds that enough (because after all, once the post is initially published, the real damage, if any, is done).

What he’s done is akin to the executives of Enron bringing in the paper shredders days ahead of a federal investigation.  The difference, of course, is that Michael’s actions can be easily remedied (especially now that Wordpress offers “undelete” functionality). My guess is that the malfeasance is a lot less severe than what’s been indicated by Mike in his apology, or it’s a lot worse.  The only reason you’d go through and erase all record of his work there (when it’s under suspicion of being put there in violation of federal guidelines) is that every post was pay for play, or a lot less than what was indicated was pay for play and it’s all a link baiting ploy.

What’s Really Going On Here, Aside from a Lynch Mob?

I won’t venture to guess the true motivations behind Mike’s actions, and despite all the shakeout, I still think there’s a lot more than we’re being told. We attempted to shake out the story as much as possible via Twitter and private conversations all last night, and received a great deal of flack for it.  Whether it was deserved is up to you to decide, but staying up late and getting all sides of the story gave us a much fuller perspective than the rest of the public seems to have, which is why we’re sharing it here with our analysis.

Very quickly, the moves by big names in the blogosphere were to immediately lynch Daniel for what Mike said he did, far before all the facts were in or Daniel had even stated his case. I talked about this very same lynch mob mentality when I analyzed the Kathy Sierra blogosphere debacle of 2007 (which, ironically, involved a great deal of redacted blog posts, hateful invective and jumping to conclusions). Most notably, Loic Lemeur, a fellow I generally admire, incidentally, came out almost immediately with a thoughtful plea to Daniel to apologize, all of it predicated on the total veracity of what Mike alleged. Similarly, last night, Ryan Block called out John Furrier with invective for his efforts to investigate all sides of the story.

But as in the Kathy Sierra situation, it looks like, at least from initial impressions we’ve gotten privately as well as from Daniel’s blog post, that he’s going to be backing away from his involvement in the tech world completely, and some have said that this is the end of any career he could have had in this sector (Loren Feldman said he might as well go pick up a job at the GAP). It’s sad to see that happen, and it’s unnecessary. This whole thing could have been handled privately and legally. Mike Arrington knows how to spin a story, and if he wanted to save face for Daniel, rather than force him to fall on a sword, he could have done so.

What the blogosphere needs now, for the sake of old guys like us as well as the new kids like Daniel: true mentorship. We bloggers like to hate on Old Media, but I’m not sure if any of you have looked around lately – we’re not all getting any younger. Fresh blood has to exist in this industry, and creating a closed off club where youngsters and newcomers are by default excluded is, in general, a bad idea.

Keep an eye on these pages, as we’ll be revealing more details soon about the nature of our mentorship program. It’s something we believe in the importance of, is in the spirit of which SiliconANGLE was founded, and something we’ll be following through on.

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I personally am appalled at this whole discussion. I know Daniel! He interviewed me a couple years ago and while he may have been precocious, he's certainly deserving of better than he's getting by his so-called friends in the tech industry. It almost feels like he was brought under someones wing to be used at a later date to redirect attention when necessary. I don't get it and none of it really sounds legitimate. Sounds like Daniel got to take a fall. Even if he did something wrong, wasn't there a less conspicuous way of handling this? And enough with all the chatter about his age being unimportant. Who hasn't justified the failure of some marriage on being too young to know better? We all have said that about someone we know at some point. I know I've used it myself. My first marriage was at 18 and just because you might be legally able to make such a decision doesn't mean you have the life experience and intelligence to know why you shouldn't.

For some readers, this post will feel like scraping the asphalt, then rubbing rock salt in the wound. If it feels that way, you might want to get used to the

Something to keep in mind when reading this, I didn’t do a technical review. If you want that, you’ll have to wait for Ken to write something. These are personal experiences and feelings from a pseudo geek.

You’re probably aware of the queries both Ken and I have thrown out about iPhone stuff. We’ve been such strong proponents of RIM, I’m pretty sure most of you can’t fathom us switching sides. We didn’t, at least not exactly.

We got iPhones.

I know, that’s got to be the big shock of the year. So how come I said we didn’t switch sides? To switch sides implies we are no longer rooting for the other team, and no longer view them as quality and that simply isn’t the case.

We took a little road trip this last weekend and our friend Dameon, aka @phoneboy called while we were in transit. Something I thought about while talking to Dameon was how much I still loved my Blackberry. My Blackberry Bold found a new home with my son who swears it’s the best phone ever – that coming off the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone which we loaned him a year ago and he LOVED.

What I loved about my Blackberry.

Both the Blackberry curve and bold are impressive devices. They thread messages wonderfully, their messaging service works almost flawlessly, to send both text and mms is super simple, and the apps for basics like twitter and facebook work better than their native platforms work most of the time.

I also loved typing on Blackberry. Typing on a qwerty keyboard is so much easier than a non qwerty, and when I say that I mean it beats hands down my use of the iPhone. If I had to say one thing would make me think twice again it would be that feature, or lack of a feature that could cause me to rethink.

The Blackberry messenger service was incredible. The iPhone may have over 100k apps but nothing I have found touches what Blackberry messenger could do, from basic messaging, one on one, to group messages, as well as file and picture transfers I simply don’t see anything in iPhone that comes close.

Multi tasking is yet another feature the Blackberry does well. With the Bold I was able to have multiple applications running at the same time, and did. I could have a call up, apps running, all while web browsing, something I’ll talk about later.

There are a few apps on the Blackberry that I miss but the truth is, if I were to shift back to that device I would miss some apps from the iPhone. Still, worth a real mention here is an app that I used in beta called socialscope. There has not been another mobile app that remotely functions the way socialscope does. That one app is a struggle and why it took me a while to buy the tweetie app on iPhone, something I wish I hadn’t purchased because I don’t find it better than anything else on iPhone that’s free. I remember hearing how fabulous it is and all I can say is, those who said that never had socialscope. ‘Nuff said.

Now web browsing. If all you’ve ever had is basic browsing like those non-smart phones offer, the Blackberry browser wouldn’t seem bad at all. I know because that is all I ever had pre Blackberry. However, once you have experienced other types of browsing you quickly see that RIM has a lot of catching up to do in order to provide a comparable experience. I’m not sure they can, actually. It’s unfortunate because so many things about the blackberry are actually superior to the iPhone. The appstore and browser make all the difference in the world. So let’s talk about that.

Experiencing the iPhone.

Many of you know that about a year ago Ken and I both got an ipod touch. Why that matters is because getting an iphone meant we already had a clue how to use it. Using the iPhone isn’t quite like using other phones or pda’s. It simply behaves differently, has a unique interface, which ultimately anyone can use because you don’t have to tell someone what to do to use it, it’s incredibly intuitive. It functions and works so easily and that is one of the great things about it.

We spent a year using ipods yet were pretty hesitant to get an iphone. There wasn’t any one straw that broke this camels back, it was many things.

First, while we don’t much care for the typing experience on iphone, something I’m sure we will eventually not have is a keyboard. Certainly not in the way we have them in current iteration of computer systems. I think touch, and ultimately voice will be our interface. We both think it likely.

Second, we are growing more and more mobile. Down sizing if you will. We want a device we can use in more ways than just to text or im and talk on the phone. Certainly I was able to watch youtube on my Blackberry, but if you put the Blackberry screen next to the iphone screen you can quickly see that there’s much better ability to see things on the iphone. I don’t have to squint as much and that is a big deal as I rarely have my glasses. Ken wears bifocals which also makes the iphone much more user friendly!

Third, the browser. There is not enough white space to talk about how brilliant the browsing experience is on the iphone. I LOVE the browser so much! It is the BEST browser on any mobile device I have ever used, and I have used several. I like that you in essence get tabbed browsing, and so far I haven’t found a limit to the number of windows I can open.

I love the ability to both pinch the screen to make it smaller or bigger, depending on need. The way I can scroll so seamlessly across a page not optimized for mobile browsers.

I don’t like the way my messages are threaded in the message box. It has made it impossible to respond to pokes much of the time. If I get a poke from someone and immediately following get a message, the message can be addressed, the poke can not.

I also don’t like that I literally have 3 different inboxes for mail. They all fall in the mail section but are separated there into 3 different boxes. It is more tedious and  I don’t care for it but it’s certainly doable.

The appstore, that’s incredible. If you’ve tried to use an appstore for any other platform you can appreciate a simple click and install process and how nice that would be. Blackberry appstore would like to be good but it isn’t. It’s a real pain.

Itunes on the other hand makes everything awful. I do NOT like itunes. Now, I will grant you that maybe I don’t use it to it’s best advantage, so that could be user failure. But many people I talk to despise the itunes interface and I wish it wasn’t so annoyingly cluttered, or processor intensive. I also wish there were better directions for how to prevent your non DRM’d media from becoming owned by itunes. I know how to do it should I need to, but it is a non-intuitive process. Funny how all the rest of the things about the iphone just work on an intuitive basis but not itunes. Not sure what happened there but someone clearly dropped the ball.

The sum of the total…

I wish I could tell you all that I wouldn’t change back, but that wouldn’t be fair. I probably would in the right circumstances. But for now, I’m an iPhone user and it’s not that bad. It’s not perfect, but I’m still learning. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as time goes by. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks and I have a lot to learn.

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Gosh people get so upset about a gadget that not only isn't in their hands but isn't supposed to replace current devices. This is supposed to be a new category

Like many other people I sat on my sofa watching as patiently as possible for what was coming for Apple. Having recently switched to an iphone from a

Many of you know, Ken’s phone, a blackberry curve, went kaput just prior to the Christmas holidays. Ken and I have been predominantly Blackberry users since my arrival in the US 2 years ago. My initial experience could have had me forever a fan girl, actually, it did leave me a fan girl. I am a Blackberry fan. I don’t think that’s in danger of changing anytime soon. And why would it? So many things to like.

Of course, what I realized as time went by is that the things I most appreciate about a blackberry are things any smart phone could have offered me. It really comes down to the connectivity. The ability to connect to a variety of people and places from virtually anywhere. The form factor was fantastic, the QWERTY keyboard, outstanding, the multi-tasking superb. Even the browser, though certainly not what many have come to expect, still brought me to the world in ways I hadn’t conceived of 5 years ago.

Today my world is different. I look to the future with a different set of eyes. Eyes far more attuned to possibility. Where is mobility heading? I listened to a webinar by Gartner, an analyst group who has a lot of gifted people sitting in their offices studying trends, people who take real data and make smart projections and predictions based on a variety of factors. One of their projections struck a chord in me.

Gartner has suggested that by the year 2013, 3 years from now, the mobile browser will overtake todays browser in a pc. This makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes sense because the smart phone industry on a global level is growing at a huge pace. People will be browsing on their phones, or whatever we call the next device we pocket that we can use for voice and data.

Something else that has been on everyone’s mind, the Apple tablet. Who knows if they have one up their sleeve or not, I think it entirely likely, but whether they do or not, what is likely is somebody is making one and it will more closely approximate the apple iphone than it will a blackberry curve or bold.

Now, why would I say that? One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to have enough perception to know that the swoosh of a finger on a screen beats the hell out of a mouse. Do you remember what it felt like the first time you used a mouse? The inability to control it perfectly, the way the cursor would run all over the screen, and how you felt incredibly inept? The mouse hasn’t changed much in all these years and the lack of control, with practice yes it got easier, but what could be easier than touch with your finger and being that exact? What about voice controls? These are both things the iphone does well and are really the beginning of a new way of computing. I realize all of you who have been using an iphone for what is now nearly 3 years, are laughing and thinking, DUH. We already knew that. But that thought shouldn’t take away from the fact that other devices have had a lot to offer as well.

But the times, they are a changing, and with it our computing habits, and that brings us to devices that also must change to keep up.

I don’t know what you all read on the web, but everywhere I look there are articles talking about smart phones and tablets. These are almost buzzwords today. A few short years ago if you had a mobile phone, all you really cared about was whether it would give you the ability to talk to someone when you were out. Then it was all about text. How many stories have you read about the massive cost of not having unlimited text plans? Today with global travel so prevalent, it’s data costs. What is data? It’s the web pages you view, the things you download, the newspapers you read, the youtube video’s you watch. And we all do watch and read those things, or anyway it would seem so. In a few years it really will be world acceptance, not so different than what the telephone became as it caught on, the only significant difference is the speed that it will do so.

So today I write this on a netbook. The little 10.1 inch screen a far cry from my desires a few years ago to sit in front of a 21 inch screen. No my eyes haven’t improved and I haven’t gotten a stronger prescription of eyewear. What I have gotten is a device that is mobile, handy, wifi enabled, capable of doing basic computing ’stuff’. Beside me sits my trusty Blackberry Bold. But waiting for me in my living room, bleeping away is my new 32 gig iPhone 3GS. It’s ready for me to do what I will. Will it take me to the next iteration of technology? Of course it will. That’s all it can do. But it isn’t perfect and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a technology out there that will wow me the way I could have been wowed a few years back. Technology is too much a part of my world. I can’t see the future, but I have it on good authority we’ll recognize it when it happens.

Technorati Tags: blackberry bold, iphone, technology, sheryl breuker

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Cybercivility: The Golden Rule Revisited

Posted in Communications Technologies, Opinons, Sheryl Breuker, Social Media, Video by Sheryl on December 31st, 2009 Edit This

This morning I received a message from Andrea Weckerle.

Andrea wrote, “I promised I’d tell u about my new project: CivilNation/cybercivility See WSJ op-ed I wrote w/ JW. Would love ur thoughts & support!” Of course I went straight away to see what she said.

I read it and think Andrea hit on something that’s incredibly valuable, so much so I wanted to not only share what she wrote but some of my own thoughts on this as well.

Class: Whatever happened to it?
We’ve become a crude and crass global world. It’s as though we’ve stepped back in time and all become what once was called the lower class. Cue the music for the song that was cut in the musical Chicago. The words are definitely raw, but in a sort of tongue and cheek way, they hit the nail on the head.

Click the words above for the rest of the song, but you get where I’m headed.

No longer does anyone stop and consider how what they have to say may impact others. Which is rather ironic because our individual reach has grown and as our arms have gotten longer, we have used less decorum. It’s almost as though we’re determined to hurt others as much as possible. Or are we?

I’ve thought about this a lot and I’m guilty of saying things I regretted later. Andrea makes a really great point when she says this:

Just as we’ve learned what is deemed appropriate face-to-face communication, we need to learn what is appropriate behavior in an environment that frequently deals with purely written modes of communication and an inherent absence of nonverbal cues.

I’m not entirely convinced we want to hurt so much as we want attention. Any kind of attention, but attention none the less. I’m reminded of children and how in an environment where they are not given enough positive feedback or boundaries they frequently rebel and become aggressive. Is there a corollary? Is it possible as a society we have stopped behaving well because there are no longer well defined boundaries, or is it something else?

Enter video.
We’ve been dragging our feet to adopt video, but what video has the ability to do is remove the barrier to those visible cues Andrea talks about. I think video might be a tool that has great potential to influence our relationships with those from other cultures, and even those in our own who would otherwise misconstrue our words.

It’s interesting that one of the topics of academic boards is how our kids are failing at language skills. Yet, most are involved in communication daily online. How do we give them the tools to communicate and be understood, so what is written is actually not misinterpreted? Video.

I don’t want to get so long winded you all no longer have the energy to go read the article by Andrea. I merely wanted to put out a couple of thoughts, incomplete though they are and stimulate some thoughts or dialog from others.

If I have one suggestion, it would be to treat each other kindly and with respect. That you have a voice or the ability to think and type out words doesn’t give you the right to be cruel. Be thoughtful. Maybe think of that as a New Years Resolution? I am terrible with metaphors and quotes, but treating others as you would wish to be treated isn’t such a bad idea, is it?

Technorati Tags: Andrea Weckerle, Jimmy Wales, WSJ, Cybercivility, CivilNation, Sheryl Breuker

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Transformation Starts in the Mirror

Posted in Communications Technologies, Ken Camp, Opinons, Rants, Social Media by Ken on December 30th, 2009 Edit This

Every writer blogger feels compelled to spew at times. It’s one of our inner demons. We must write. This is my spew as we leave 2009 and look to the next year. If something I say here doesn’t make you angry, I will have failed miserably. If something I say here doesn’t motivate you to change how you view the world for at least one day, I will have failed miserably. If one of you reads this and takes some small action to change our world, even one, I will have wildly succeeded. Read on if you dare.

I’ve been focused on a word the last week or two that echoes in my brain. Transformation. I’ve used it a number of times lately, and as I begin writing this, I think of a friend who asked “what are we transforming?” Thank you Eran, for making me reach for an answer that came effortlessly, without thinking…the world. We are going to transform the world.

I’ve spent 30 years of my life in the tech sector. Telecommunications and networks, switches and routers, bits and bytes. Bullshit and dollars my friends. Bullshit and dollars.

Depending on how you count the decades, we’re wrapping of the decade of decadence. Gadgets and toys, we’ve got plenty.  As the song says “whoosits and whatits galore.” And with any collection of gadgets and gizmos, we’ve been awash in a sea of marketing/sales/pitch babble that has threatened to drown out our own humanity. Threatened and failed dismally.

I work in sector that’s all about information movement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s voice or data, pictures or video. It’s information and we hunger for it. Or so we tell each other. We need more. More more more. Faster. Bigger. Cooler, Slicker. New UI. Broadband. Wideband. High Definitiion. Let’s concentrate the bullshit so we can inject the essence of crap directly into our brains and a concentration of 1 million ppm. That’ll sell right? People will buy it. We’ll get rich. Then we can have more!

What a crock!

If I learned any real lessons in 2009, it came as a result of being laid off in January and spending almost the entire year looking for work. Not very successfully I might add. God has this mysterious way of slamming us to the ground hard before he let’s us bounce back. Crying uncle isn’t enough. Not really. But I’m not alone. I won’t call out the names of friends and colleagues who are unemployed or underemployed. You know I’m pulling for you every day. Just like you do for me. And every day is still a scary new beginning. But the lesson I learned this past year, is that I’m alive. I’m well. I have a wonderful woman I love by my side, and she loves me back. I have dreams. We have dreams. We have friends far and wide.

I’m not decrying technology. Not at all. We’re geek freaks and admit it. I’m a geekaholic, and it’s been 2 hours since I last lusted after some new gadget. We’re human. It’s our nature. But with technology comes a price if we pay it. We don’t have to pay it, but sometimes it’s easy to choose to pay the price. Let me explain, and I’m going to use a phrase I will abandon this year. It’s something I intend to speak about in the past tense. It was a bubble, and I’m just the prick to call bullshit and burst the damn thing. That’s right, I’m talking about the elephant in the room, social media.

There are very few more ill-conceived terms in use, but they do exist. Web 2.0. SEO. SEM. Convergence is another. They are the cornerstones of buzzword bingo. Designed to either befuddle us or set our salivary glands to drooling so we’ll write a check and buy something. Dammitall stop that foolishness. Now.

Is social media about technology? No
Is social media about business? No
Is social media about marketing? No

Dictionary.com has a number of meanings for social. Let’s just look at the first nine:

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.
3. of, pertaining to, connected with, or suited to polite or fashionable society: a social event.
4. living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation: People are social beings.
5. of or pertaining to human society, esp. as a body divided into classes according to status: social rank.
6. involved in many social activities: We’re so busy working, we have to be a little less social now.
7. of or pertaining to the life, welfare, and relations of human beings in a community: social problems.
8. noting or pertaining to activities designed to remedy or alleviate certain unfavorable conditions of life in a community, esp. among the poor.
9. pertaining to or advocating socialism.

I used to talk a lot about what I called digital common sense and it’s time to get back to that. Look at the definitions and you’ll see that social is all about people and human society. It’s not about bits and bytes. It’s also not about how many followers we have or how often we get retweeted. It’s not about whuffie in any way shape or form.

Forget media. Your voice is media. Writing a grocery list uses media. Think about the core. Social is about people. What we practice online, badly for the most part, is a form of digital socialism. Did that make your back teeth hurt? That same dictionary defines socialism as

a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

Ouch you say. Why? Does that hurt. What the Internet has given us is real democratization where every individual has voice. The real question is not what toys you have. It’s not whether you have an iPhone or Blackberry, tablet or netbook, Kindle or Nook. The question that matters is how are we using our voices?

I know you’re wondering where I fell off the planet and lost my theme of transformation right about now. So put your thinking cap on and hang on. It’s about to get bumpy for those of you selling trinkets, gadgets, and yes, services.

Fire did not transform the world. How we used it did.
Gutenberg’s printing press did not transform the world. How we used it did.
The light bulb didn’t transform the world. How we used it did.
Same for the automobile, the airplane, and countless other inventions and discoveries.

Radio and television changed us into receivers. We became fat, dumb and happy. Spoon fed by an industry created of greed that became the choke point of information that fed us what was popular. And we know that because people (advertisers) paid lots of money to spoon feed us that stuff. They changed the world in ways that are neither good nor bad at this point. Some of each.

The iPhone did not transform the world. How we use it hasn’t either. But it can.
Netbooks did not transform the world. How we use them hasn’t either. But it can.

Technology, used by people, can and does transform the world. And let me give you some examples. First, remember the story of the little girl throwing starfish into the ocean. A man told her she couldn’t make a difference in the number of starfish dying. She simply tossed another one back into the see and said “it made a difference for that one.“

Now I’ll give you some off the cuff examples of some people I met online this year. People who make a difference one person, one child, one village, one cause at a time. Transformation heroes who are out to make a difference. They’re using social tools for social causes. Helping fix broken pieces of our society and make the world a better place.

Jeff Power – Schools in Africa
Lotay Yang – Cause after cause
Pete Miller – Children, our most precious resource
Mark Horvath – Homeless people and their value
Drew Olanoff  – Cancer awareness
Alex Plank – Autism education

These folks are simply a tiny handful of the people I’ve met this year who through either little things every day, or major investments of their lives are transforming our world by using the tools of technology to bring about awareness, involvement and change.

We, yes we the people of the world, can transform the world in ways technology cannot. We’ll do it in the ways we come together to support causes, to support one another, make friends, engage, and share our lives. Technology won’t do that.

Used one way, technology is a great enabler for mankind. Lose sight of that and it becomes a great obstacle driving lust and greed. In the tech sector, I see fartoo much lust and greed. I’m too often guilty of it. If you’re honest with yourself, so are you.

What we have every day is something best illustrated by Hugh.

We reinvent ourselves every morning when we awaken. Are you awake? Who are you inventing today?
Are you inventing a marketer? Are you selling snake oil or making the world better?
Are you inventing a maker of products? Are you distilling snake oil or making the world better?
Are you inventing a commercial service? Are you selling illusions or making the world better?
Are you inventing a conference to promote hype? Are you selling tickets on a carousel or making the world better?

Many of you…many of us are far too busy building a house of cards. We chase money, success, prestige, and objects rather than real good.

2010 is a year of transformation. It’s a year of change. When we leave it on December 31, 2010, the world will be transformed. How are we all going to help?

One thing I’m going to do is pay far more attention to real change, real transformation and real commitment. Companies that do things that can changes our lives will get far more attention than bit twiddlers who can shave a penny off the cost of a phone call. Gadgets and services that are me too responses aren’t creators or innovators. I’ll do my best to either ignore them or call them out. I want to focus on the things that matter in the world.

Sure, I’m a geek. An enterprise architect. Technology strategist. Business professional in marketing and sales. But before all those things, I’m a person on this planet we call home. In 2010 I’m going to do something to make it a better place for you and me.

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2 Responses to 'Transformation Starts in the Mirror'

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1. Tweets that mention Transformation Starts in the Mirror | Stardust Global Ventures -- Topsy.com said,
   
   

   on December 30th, 2009 at 11:07 am

   [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ken, Ken. Ken said: My last 2009 post: Transformation Starts in the Mirror http://ping.fm/apPGD [...]

2. Eran Even-Kesef said,
   
   

   on December 30th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

   Ken,

   What a fantastic blog post. I am amazed that you mentioned my name, glad to have had an influence on your thoughts. You have an amazing perspective on communication and I look forward to learning from you now and in the future.

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