Listics

Technorati Tags: dancingbear, dancing bear, hugh da bear, huge effing bear, hugh macleod, hugh’s whuffie, meth lab texas

Alan Herrell posts Clay Shirky’s recent O’Reilly Web 2.0 talk at Raving Lunacy. It’s an eye-opener for anybody who is the least bit of a cliometrician. He posits that millions of brain dead hours we’ve spent on the couch staring into the TV set have begun to be converted to something new, something shared, something constructive.

What dazzled me is that Shirky is done flogging his recent book “Here Comes Everybody,” and has moved on to share other insights. I heard him last month at Isen.com’s Freedom to Connect. Heath Row live blogged that talk with the accuracy of a court reporter.

In this election season, it’s great to hear a public speaker who isn’t simply delivering schtick.

Technorati Tags: Alan Herrell, Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, Raving Lunacy, Where’s the mouse

Received this info in an email today from Liz Ditz… after I read it, I clicked through and took the survey.

Ronni Bennett writes “Time Goes By — what it’s really like to get older.” She is conducting a survey on the universe of bloggers over 50 (”elderbloggers”).

“The goal,” she says, “is to find out what elderbloggers are like, how we may be similar and how we are different, how we relate to technology, how we came to be bloggers or blog readers, how we feel about it and what our demographics are.”

The survey is multiple choice, anonymous, and hosted at Survey Monkey (a reputable firm). There are 57 questions. It took me only a few minutes to complete.

NOTA BENE: This survey is for elderbloggers and elder blog readers who do not keep blogs. Readers and commenters are as important as bloggers to the elderblogging community and help equally to make it as lively and compelling as it is.

Here’s the link to the survey: Elderblogger Survey.

Would you be able to publicize the survey? It’s going to be running until end of day, May 1, 2008. Ronni will collate and report results at Time Goes By.

While I wrote the preceding bit, trying to unravel the puzzle of one company’s bankruptcy and another’s purchase of their assets (including a “brand” or two) and just what that means for the people who make the wine, the cyber-vintners of Stormhoek were sharing info online at least two different ways:

1. On twitter this morning we see a note from Stormhoek that refers to a couple of bottles any oenophile would want to try, a bottle Jack & Knox Chardonnay and a bottle of J&K Outsider shiraz.
2. At the Stormhoek blog, they report success recovering sums lost when the UK wine agency company Orbital Wines FAILed. Jobs remain at risk and the “Own a Vine” fund raiser is still underway, but some of the damage done by the mismanagement of the distribution firm has been mitigated.

At Stormhoek, they say that “In just 2 months since inception, seven of the South African suppliers to the failed UK wine agency company, Orbital Wines, have received relief.” So here’s my aha moment: of course wine is both a commodity and a product. The marketing people who built the Stormhoek brand in 2005, were buying bulk and bottling a commodity. The South African wine farmers were pleased to have a wider distribution for their product, and building a Stormhoek brand opened that door to wider distribution.

I hope I can be forgiven for my Little Orphan Annie wide-eyed “gee whiz” exposition, but none of this is transparent to the outsider. The marketeers have an intangible they are interested in capturing, the “Stormhoek brand.” The growers, I assume, also want to protect the brand. and benefit from the identity and visibility they’ve developed over the last three years working with the marketeers.

Technorati Tags: Stormhoek, Orbital, origin, sharp practices, J&K Outsider shiraz, Jack and Knox Chardonnay

I’ve created a hashtag for Freedom to Connect. If you’re there and twittering tomorrow through Tuesday, use “hashtag” #f2c in your tweets and they’ll be aggregated here. (Clue: you have to “follow” http://twitter.com/hashtags in order to use the service.) endClue

Technorati Tags: twitter, freedom to connect, f2c, hashtags, #f2c, faketwitter beta

No subpoenas! No mental health diagnoses! Little character assassination and absolutely no death threats! Just plain old fun and good old rock ‘n roll!

Technorati Tags: kathy sierra, no hard feelings, defamation, deprivation of income, pain and suffering, steal your face, who’s your uncle

I have a lot of work in front of me over the next couple of weeks, so naturally I started my Monday morning with a walk around the blogs. These two posts by Tom Matrullo provided food for thought and opportunities for procrastination:

The first, “gathering small crowds,” offers a link to a Jerry Michalski screencast that should interest anyone who uses a combination of Facebook, twitter, and FlickR. Michalski demos how two applications provide bridges among these social network tools and offer a level of integration you might find useful.

The second post (at FASTforward), “An adjacency of opposites,” contrasts Clare Hart’s corporate perspective on net services emerging provision to knowledge workers of highly managed and contextualized information via “dashboards,” versus David Weinberger’s more populist, idiosyncratic, spontaneous and non-commodifiable vision of the messy, miscellaneous, “here comes everybody” internets.

Technorati Tags: tom matrullo, david weinberger, clare hart, jerry michalski, and a nod to, clay shirky

The previous post came from reading two Stormhoek blogs and trying to make sense of what the Brits were doing. As Hugh MacLeod is fond of saying:

Are the sellers of Stormhoek wines involved in something slippery? A company that appears to comprise middlemen and marketeers says:

Stormhoek, the business, was bought a few weeks ago by our long time bottler, Origin Wines. And, despite all our very best efforts, we seem to be unable to come to terms with our partner Graham, at the vineyard.

The vintner (the people who grow the grapes and make the wine) says:

Thousands of South Africans have been hurt by the collapse of Orbital Wines in the UK. These are people who do not have the opportunity to fight back.

When the crunch came in December 2007, R6 million ($800 000) was owed to South African suppliers. The list of unpaids includes the Stormhoek vineyard, the Stormhoek home cellar and in particular, the whole out-sourcing network (label printers, transporters, too many to mention).

One thing about bankruptcies. The money is lost.

South Africa’s wine industry is not rich. Household income, averaged out across every employee: boss, labourer, supervisor, receptionist, driver, manager, foreman, all of them, is less than R2500 per month.

Who are the owners of “Orbital Wines?” Who are the owners of “Origin Wines?” What were the terms of the sale? Who bought the goodwill that went with the brand Stormhoek, who did they buy it from, was it theirs to sell, and how was it valued?

I’ll assign Listics ace reporter, Scoop Fisker, and try to get this thing sorted out. (A single consonant does not imply a shameless rip-off of the reputation of the esteemed Scoop Nisker and you should be ashamed of yourself for going there. But it would be great if we could afford to get two Scoops on the job! Also, it would be great to bring in Robert Fisk, but our budget is limited for this story. I’ve sent an IM to Scoop Fisker about this but I’m afraid he’s under a table at SXSW somewhere. More tomorrow…)

Technorati Tags: marketing, Hugh MacLeod, Stormhoek, branded, bitter creek, alpine texas