Comments on: cluetrain was right.

By: Lionel Menchaca

Lionel Menchaca — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:52:53 +0000

Hugh,
Thanks for the post… you already know my reaction to the cartoon. Love it. I’ve lived our reality in the blogosphere since the early days. We’ve seen some success so far, but we have a lot of work to do on the social media front.
I’ve always believed that social media has the power to transform companies, and more importantly, how we interact with customers. That’s the game changer. I’ve seen it work on a small scale. Our focus moving forward is to get more Dell folks beyond our teams to be actively engaged in social media.
I’m starting with the folks who live on the edge and will work my way in.
Thanks Hugh.
Lionel

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:57:19 +0000

how do you guys see corporations changing into something that promotes sustainability and morphs into a creature serving mankind not having a life of its own?
in other words how can we stop taking the gifts of Earth, making trash out of it and piling it up faster than Earth turning our trash into its gifts…

By: David Everitt-Carlson

David Everitt-Carlson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:29:09 +0000

The Saigon BarCampers will sure be happy. Here’s a note I posted on their site: http://www.BarCampSaigon.org
—————————————–
Just a note to all Saigon BarCampers: BarcampSaigon has been picked up by http://www.Gapingvoid.com . Gapingvoid is written by Hugh MacLeod, an old buddy of mine, and is rated as one of Technorati’s top 1000 blogs worldwide. Hugh is a gifted writer and cartoonist and has worked as a consultant and artistic motivator for Microsoft and Dell. His “Blue Monster” has become an underground in-house sensation for MS and whatever he does for Dell is sure to be interesting as well. Hugh’s book “How To Be Creative” will be published by Penguin next spring and his overall take on the tech business is both refreshing and revolutionary.
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/2008_11.html
Check into the Gapingvoid and go to the bottom of the post to see the “Bonus Link” on BarCampSaigon

By: James Cherkoff

James Cherkoff — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:30:24 +0000

Almost all commercial copy increasingly sounds like something from the 1950’s when compared to the bazaar of the live web. The example I use is one very close to my heart — Arseblog, the super-popular blog about Arsenal FC.
While Arseblog offers insightful, balanced football analysis his colourful language is very much of the terraces — not the boardroom. For instance, here’s a description of the morning-after his return to Dublin, following a long stay in Barcelona : “My brain is discombobulated and I have had to send Blogette off to her new school wearing my runners which are at least 4 sizes too big for her because all of our stuff is in a box coming from Spain. I now have no shoes at all but I am wearing her fleecey red dressing gown. So all of you who might have a hangover today at least be thankful you have some shoes. I have no shoes. I am like a bag lady in a red dressing gown without any bags.” You would be forgiven for thinking that such rhetoroic wouldn’t ingratiate him with the club, a famously conservative organisation. In fact, the opposite is true and the Arsenal Chairman, an old-Etonian, and Amy Lawrence, a journalist at the Observer, are both regulars on the blog’s Arsecast podcast.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:22:46 +0000

IE vs Firefox, Office vs Google Docs, Windows vs OSX, Live vs Google, AIM vs Instant Messenger… the battle of next generation, cloud-based software is going to make all this stuff look like pretty small beer. I think Microsoft’s preparedness for this battle will surprise a lot of people. But I’m not ready to go public with this stuff yet…

By: Zo

Zo — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:27:52 +0000

“…they seem to get blogging so well …”
They do? In what parallel universe?
“How come they didn’t invent Firefox?”
Okay, I think I see where the disconnect is.

By: Jack Goes Forth

Jack Goes Forth — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:00:50 +0000

After purchasing the Mini a few weeks ago I sent an email to Lionel Menchaca (Dell’s Chief Blogger) mentioning how pleased I was and how I blogged about.
He not only linked to my blog post on one of Dell’s blogs, he also apologized for taking a scant 6 hours to get back to me. I was shocked at the level of intimacy and personalization someone in such a high position as himself was able to provide.
By the by, I’ve been on the Mini all day today (just got it yesterday) and it’s safe to say, I’ve found the new love of my life.

By: An Shov

An Shov — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:04:06 +0000

That Umair guy seems to think it’s a DNA problem. I can’t think of anything else. Firefox succeeded as a business basically in spite of itself. Microsoft has been a great business because its good as business. Maybe that’s the problem online. They aim too much?

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:38:15 +0000

An, I am not aware of Microsoft doing anything that prevented any other large company from using the blogs to get closer to their customers. Where I could name scores of examples of Microsoft doing exactly the latter.
I find your phrase, “Microsoft has been the weight around the pack’s neck”, utter, uninformed hyperbole.
That being said, I have always seen a paradox at Microsoft= they seem to got blogging so well, why can’t they get other parts of the net as well? How come they didn’t invent Firefox? Or Google? Where’s the disconnect?

By: KAPITEL

KAPITEL — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:49:57 +0000

Crazy? Hope so…
Get your guilt-free, back from the dead over here at KAPITEL.
Dell must be on the right path because they‘ve managed to resurrect popster Dave Stewart as a cultural engineer on the nomad site!

By: An Shov

An Shov — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:38:17 +0000

I sent this in an email but I figured I'd repost it here. When I saw this this morning, I thought "Why is he picking on Hugh? What an asshole." http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/the_worst_thing_about_blogs.phtml Then you wrote this a few hours later: "Same with Microsoft. As far as big companies are concerned, in this department, they're leading the pack." That's not even remotely true and you know it. Microsoft has been the weight around the pack's neck, literally, preventing it from doing anything. Last week, Balmer was in the news saying Google wasn't a competitor. Anyways, c'mon. Don't you think this is a little ridiculous?