Saw this on Doc’s blog, and had to talk about it. It’s on the practical PR blog, which (it says) is a “conversation with PR students at Kent State”.
They’re walking through each chapter of the Cluetrain Manifesto, starting with the preface, and are discussing the book’s ideas along the way. That’s so great! I wish I was in that class!!
I’m re-reading Cluetrain right now. I’m about 1/3 through, and finding so many little insights I missed the first time! Tom and I bought 300 copies to give out at 360|Flex Atlanta as our way to showing the attendees what is we’re doing as a business and why we do it.
We show what money comes in and goes out. We talk about the software we’ve built to help us, and when there’s a bug (as there always is), we tell everyone about it so they know and can get the latest version.
Tom’s Paragraph: In other words, we believe in transparency. Our company is not a secluded citadel where things are done in private. It is a product of our customers money and therefore, they deserve to know what’s going on inside. This way, if something is broken (like speaker compensation) we can fix it.
It seems to really resonate with attendees. I’ve heard that a few are already reading their copies. Only Amazon or eBay will know if there’s a sudden flood of unused, ‘new’ copies hitting the market. We tried though, and as a business, that’s all you can do.
I’ll be following the Pratical PR blog discussion. I’m very interested to see how the students relate and react to the manifesto.
Tom’s Paragraph: John and I didn’t go to business school. Heck, we didn’t even finish college. We jumped straight into the business world. We always wonder if kids that never participate in the business world can truly come to understand it just by reading books. They’re reactions to Cluetrain will be very interesting indeed.