Preparing
for Conversations with David Weinberger
K-Biz's Most Entertaining
Thinker Explores
What Makes Smart Companies (and People) Smart
 Introduction
Members
of the AOK Knowledge Architecture/Structure Community of Practice
are in for a fun two weeks, September 17-28, 2001 with knowledge
work's most entertaining and deeply thoughtful guru of the hyperlinked
organization, David Weinberger. His own bio is titled "Who
Does David Weinberger Think He Is Anyway?" and includes
left brain, right brain and no brain versions:
Right
Brain Version:
A
fully non-linguistic version awaiting the development of tactile
and aromatic plugins <http://www.hyperorg.com/speaker/bio.html>
No Brain Version:
Him write good.
Him help companies do stuff. Him smell okay.
Left
Brain -- The Resume
David Weinberger
is a co-author of the national best-seller, The Cluetrain Manifesto, which
InformationWeek called "The most important business book
since [Tom Peters'] In Search of Excellence." 
He
publishes an influential Web newsletter (JOHO: The Journal
of the Hyperlinked Organization) and is a frequent technology
commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
He writes columns for Darwin Magazine, Knowledge Management
World, and Intranet Design Magazine. He has written
for many national and industry magazines, including The New
York Times, Information Week, The Industry Standard, Smithsonian,
and many times for Wired.
He
is president of Evident Marketing, Inc., a strategic marketing
company that helps high tech companies figure out what they do
and how to talk about it. He is currently working on another
book, entitled Small Pieces Loosely Joined, about the
deep changes the Web is bringing to key concepts such as space,
time, commerce, morality, self and spirit. You can read
the rough draft in real time where he actually collaborated
with his readers on the writing of the book.
Career
Dr.
Weinberger began his "career" in the late '70s teaching
philosophy at New Jersey's Stockton State College for five years.
During this time he maintained his steady freelance writing of
humor, reviews and intellectual and academic articles, publishing
in places as diverse as The New York Times, Smithsonian, Alfred
Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and TV Guide.
In
1985, after being denied tenure because the tenure quota was
filled, and after an enthusiastic but well-mannered student demonstration
in his support, he became a junior marketing guy at Interleaf,
at that point an innovative start-up with new ideas on how to
create and structure documents. At Interleaf he helped launch
the industry's first document management system and its first
electronic document publishing system, years ahead of the Web.
He left Interleaf after eight years, as VP of Strategic Marketing.
He
founded the one-person strategic marketing company, Evident Marketing,
in 1994 and within two years counted among his clients a wide
variety of companies,including RR Donnelly, Sun Microsystems,
Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 and CSC Index.
In
late 1995, he joined Open Text as VP of Strategic Marketing because
he saw an opportunity to help shape the way intranets are used.
As part of the senior management team, Dr. Weinberger helped
Open Text move from one of the first Web search engine companies
(the engine behind Yahoo!) to market- and thought- leadership
in Web-based collaborative software.
After helping to take Open Text public in 1996, Dr. Weinberger
returned to consulting, writing and speaking, helping to found
a couple of dot-coms, and serving on industry and company boards.
In 2000, Perseus published The Cluetrain Manifesto which
became a national best-seller.
Education
Dr.
Weinberger earned his doctor of philosophy in philosophical studies
at the University of Toronto. His undergraduate degree, summa
cum laude, with honors, is from Bucknell University.
Speaking
Dr. Weinberger speaks around the world on the effect of the Web.
He is consistently rated very highly as a speaker.
Writing
Dr.
Weinberger has been writing and publishing in national magazines
for over 25 years. He has been a technical columnist for a computer
magazine, a humor columnist for Oregon's largest newspaper, and
a gag writer for Woody Allen's comic strip for seven years. His
online newsletter, JOHO, has an influential following which appreciates
its insight and its humor. He is one of the authors of the best-seller
The Cluetrain Manifesto. He is currently a columnist for
several sites and magazines and is working on another book, publishing
drafts online at www.smallpieces.com.
Honors and Boards
Dr.
Weinberger has been appointed to the AIIM Emerging Technology
Advisory Group, the Seybold Conference Advisory Board, the World
Congress of Philosophy Advisory Board, the Virtual Business advisory
board, and the Xplor Business Strategies Advisory Board. He serves
on the Board of Directors and Advisory Boards of several innovative
companies.
Personal
Dr.
Weinberger lives in the Boston area with his wife and three children
where he is made uncomfortable by writing about himself in the
third person.
It is difficult
to steer you to the single document that will prepare you for
the Conversations with David Weinberger. His depth of knowledge
and catalytic thinking defies a single focus. And so, we present
to you some of the many fires being lit by the editor/publisher
of the Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization (JOHO). Go where
you are most interested, and then bring your own thoughts to
David during his tenure as guest moderator in the AOK STAR SERIES.
Oh, by the way,
the last in this series, "The Question Question," explores
what makes a company (or a person) smart. Perhaps that's where
David Weinberger will guide us during his upcoming STAR SERIES
thread -- What Makes a Company Smart?
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Background
articles: What Makes a Company (or Person) Smart
Stories are Fractal Interests;
That's Why We Like OJ and Monica
OJ. Monica. Elian.
The Election. It's like global warming. After a while, you think
that these hot spots aren't happening entirely randomly. But
for whatever reason they're happening, and no matter what else
they're doing to our national psyche as they replace issues with
personalities, these maelstroms bear witness to some fundamental
facts about the mystery of human attention.
These storms share
some characteristics. First, they go on longer than anyone expects,
and they maintain the public's interest surprisingly well. Second,
they get obsessive about details -- the minute-by-minute timetable
of OJ's movements, Bill's Christmas list for Monica, and, of
course, the birdwatcher's guide to chads. Third, they're about
people. Sometimes they're about more than that, little things
like who'll be president, but without the faces of Bush and Gore
we'd be left with legal arguments about Florida laws we never
knew existed and the entire event would be lacking the requisite
show biz pizzazz.
Information isn't
like that. Information consists of well-defined chunks, preferably
in a cell in a spreadsheet or database. At least, so it seems.
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The New Common Sense
By "common
sense" I mean the set of values and rules that are so obvious
that we don't even think about them. For example, if your rocking
chair has caught a dog's tail under the runner, you lean forward
to free the tail. If someone wants to argue about this -- seriously
argue -- we will think, quite properly, that this person is significantly
out of step with our culture.
Now, take our current
world, viewed through common sense, and remove space and matter,
and thus many of the laws of physics. Change the rules of the
world and what was once common sense now makes no sense. That's
why the Web is so puzzling so often. It's lacking common sense.
Elements of the
new common sense include:
- Content ought to
be free.
- Strangers are fun.
- We are fallible.
- Be generous with
advice.
- Be direct.
- Real genius requires
a group.
- Humorlessness is
pathological.
- Digressions are
essential.
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Tribal Knowledge and Objective
Madness
Here's how to get
yourself fired toot sweet from your job as a marketing VP at
a software company. I know because I saw it happen. During your
first week, mark your territory by coming in way early one morning
and posting enthusiastic, morale-lifting slogans on every floor
of the building, including where the developers dwell. These
posters should say things like "We're not all in the Sales
Department, but we're all salespeople," and "It's not
the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight
in the dog." The engineers will immediately think you're
ridiculous, and it will only be a matter of time before you're
laughed out of the business.
But why? Truth is
not enough. Knowledge is tribal. It has to be relevant to the
tribe.
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Random Knowledge
There's plenty of
knowledge in your company. The problem is telling who has it.
The fact that Maria was right about the great Steel Wool crisis
of '93 and the great Marmite crisis of '97 gives her some credibility
when it comes to the current flannel crisis. Second, we listen
to those above us in the hierarchy. Not only do they have the
authority to tell us what is knowledge and what just sounds like
a good idea, but presumably they got there by having a track
record like Maria's.
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The Question
Question
(This may be the
clue to our thread in the upcoming STAR SERIES discussions.)
Imagine that everyone
in your organization has a head stuffed full of mental content
but is unable to express any of it. They can't explain a thing.
They can't answer a single question. They may be geniuses, but
who cares?
So, if merely having
knowledge doesn't help, then what makes a company smart? I'd
suggest that it's what makes a person smart: she's able to answer
questions and -- closely related -- she has great conversations.
The most interesting
questions bring you to answers you hadn't already thought of
(another reason to think that knowledge isn't a content). Sometimes
you get there by thinking. More often, you get there by asking
some questions of your own. A conversation ensues. An answer
emerges. Now that's fun, and that's being smart.
This is, in fact,
the origin of philosophy and of dialogue itself. Remember Socrates?
His dialogues tried to uncover the truth about a topic by asking
questions organically related to one another; they grew out of
the previous questions, making his dialogues structured like
narratives in which the ending is contained in the beginning,
just as the tree is contained in the seed. Truth, biology, nature,
essence, storytelling, and questions - this is the right context
for talking about knowledge.
Questions are a
deep structure in our thought and language and social nature.
When we ask a question, we not only express an interest, thus
exposing our own passionate natures, but we also have some sense
of the type of answer we're going to receive. At the dessert
bar we don't ask, "What forced you to take the brownie?"
and when we ask why our computer hates us, we know we're making
a sort-of joke. As Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions" made so clear that it's seemed obvious ever
since, a paradigm shift (the real ones, not the buzzwordy ones
imagined by vendors trying to inflate the importance of the fact
that their paper collator now collates at 110 pages per minute
rather than 95) is characterized by an influx of new questions
and new types of questions. For example, when Aristotle asked
why a plant grows, he looked for an answer that had to do with
intentions and values. Darwin asked the same question differently.
Questions are also
primarily social. We may ask ourselves a question the way we
may sing in the shower, but first and foremost, a question is
something we ask someone else. And rarely is it in a pure question
and answer format, like a transaction with a knowledge vending
machine. Because of the organic nature of questions, they grow
best in the light of conversation. They head us in a direction,
and illuminate the way ahead, but they are not deterministic
... except when we're taking exams or responding to our bully
of a senior manager when at a meeting he demands snap responses
to questions such as "Who are our real competitors?"
and "How are we going to get back our market share?"
Real questions,
like real conversations, require mutuality and equality. Behind
every real question is the preface: "Here's something neither
of us know, but I respect you enough to think that spending time
with you will lead us toward an answer neither of us may have
anticipated. Let's surprise one another! Let's get some sliver
of delight while we can!" (Yes, great sex is also a question,
not an assertion.)
The implicit promise
of the phrase "knowledge management" is that we're
gonna corral some of them knowledge puppies, rope 'em, brand
'em, and build up our ranch. Yeehah! Now compare that to the
implicit promise of a question. No cowboys, no spurs, no whiff
of the manure-rich committee meeting in the wind. Just great
questions, undiscovered directions, wisdom larger than any one
cowpoke can contain, and the miracle of time unfolding the way
it only can in great stories and great sex.
Every pleasure in
life worth having comes in the form of a question. Doesn't it?
Oh David! You take
my breath away! Someone is actually talking about the role of
communication in the knowledge biz. I can't wait for the
Conversations with David Weinberger to begin. See you in the
Knowledge Architecture/Structure Discussion Group, September
17-29, 2001.
For more light reading/heavy
thinking
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