John. (01)
I apologize for having been careless with personal mail. Getting a
little soggy in the upper chamber. (02)
Just to be sure, I much appreciate your remarks. In fact, I might well
have made some similar ones to others. (03)
Crazy thing is, I wrote a long article about the merits of a medium
being as short as possible! But as Einstein might have said, not
shorter. (04)
Henry (05)
On Thu, 2005-02-17 at 17:14, John Sechrest wrote:
> I had sent my comments to henry off list, but since he mentions
> them in his note, I think it is probably correct to send them
> to the list.
>
>
>
>
> ------- Forwarded Message
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 08:18:06 -0800
> Subject: Re: [yak@collab] Re: A medium for global civics
> From: John Sechrest <sechrest@jas.peak.org>
> To: vaneyken@sympatico.ca
>
>
> Hello Henry,
>
> I think that the idea of driving an online magazine
> into a specific Online tool that will enable
> complex understanding is a good idea.
>
> And I think it is important to try to carry it forward.
>
> However, from a marketing point of view, it seems
> you are seeding your own barriers.
>
> Fleabyte.... How does this present an image of great progress?
> It makes a image of something insignificant but annoying.
>
> How many people would read all the way to the end
> of your note at http://www.fleabyte.org/Flb-future.html
> who were not already vested in the idea and vesting
> in the notions and culture that has been being discussed.
>
> In order to succeed with fleabyte, you have to aim
> at crossing the innovation gap between the innovators
> and the rest of the population. Presentation, word choice
> and style have a lot to do with that.
>
> In addition, you have to stop pointing at the pitfalls
> along the way, but focus on the dream.
>
> The dream is to provide an example of how to be a great
> resource. However, most people don't care about that.
> They care about things closer to home. So you have to
> present material about specific things that are of
> specific value to specific people. Not broad abstract views
> of what is possible, but what can you do for someone today.
>
> The vision of where it can go is valueable for the yakkers
> and the various followers of Engelbart. And we all love
> to play in that space. But it does not capture the hearts
> of the wider world.
>
> You say you need funding. What do you need funding for?
> For a magazine? For a foundation? For a resource?
>
> What is the 30 second elevator pitch for what you want
> to do. Very very focused?
>
> <pause and think out the elevator speach in your mind...>
>
>
> Now, who wants to fund that? (what you just said in your mind)
>
> For any great idea or technology, it is not the technology
> that matters for business. It is the application of the
> technology to a problem. Some advantage is created by that
> application, which makes it cost effective to do it.
>
> Not cost effective in 5 years. But cost effective right now.
> I give you a dollar and you save me two.
> I give you a dollar and you generate three.
> I give you a dollar and you empower me to earn four.
> I give you a dollar and you make it more convenient for me to get five.
>
> What is the specific application of OHS which will generate
> immediate return on investment?
>
> If a group of people used your expression of OHS as a group
> and cooperated with each other, how would they
> have a tactical advantage over another group doing the same thing?
> How much return on investment would they make from doing it?
>
> Journalists?
> Businesses?
> software developers?
>
> IE, what market can be argued will benefit from it?
> How much will they benefit?
>
> IE, what is the return on investment?
>
> How can a small company (less than 25 people)
> use a methodology and following that methodology make
> more money?
>
> Without this kind of business plan, you can not garner investors.
>
> You can garner donations, but donations are hard to get
> for abstract ideas. So it is hard to drive it forward this way.
>
> How can I help you turn this into a business plan that is
> is possible to sell in an elevator speach?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Henry K van Eyken <vaneyken@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
> % I like to express my thanks to Peter Jones for his careful editing of
> % "Fleabyte: A Medium for Global Civics." The improved presentation has
> % now been posted as www.fleabyte.org/Flb-future.html
> %
> % Anybody who has read it will know that I doubt we can make a go of it,
> % but it seems so irresponsible not to give it a try.
> %
> % Major obstacles at this point:
> %
> % 1. My own limited capacity and capabilities.
> %
> % 2. We haven't got a project manager, whose first concern would be help
> % bringing in the funding, etc.
> %
> % 3. We haven't yet an editor who can generate and steer volunteer
> % contributors.
> %
> % I am trying to address these points. In the meantime there is something
> % a technologically savvy volunteer in this group can do and that is to
> % make the workings of the Fleabyte site more efficient. I mean, not tell
> % me how, but actually do it.
> %
> % I spent almost all day yesterday trying to convert the site to decent
> % XHTML which I am told is the most likely stepping stone for future
> % development. But (a) I have trouble recalling XHTML details (haven't
> % touched it for about to years) and (b) I jave troubles with the Mozilla
> % (on Linux) composer. I seem to recall that I ran into that twice before
> % and for another job went over to handcoding on a plain text editor.
> %
> % Point, however, is that one must be able to quickly move articles onto
> % and off the front page while updating the contents bar and the
> % click-step feature. Similar for the archives. I'll be glad to share my
> % access id and password to the server with a conscientious, competent
> % person who shares my notion that this work IS important.
> %
> % My private email address is vaneyken@sympatico.ca
> %
> % Henry
> %
> %
> %
> % --
> % This message is archived at:
> %
> %
>http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=1108642396.3002.28.camel@localhost.localdomain
> %
>
> - -----
> John Sechrest . Helping people use
> . computers and the Internet
> . more effectively
> .
> . Internet: sechrest@peak.org
> .
> . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest
>
> ------- End of Forwarded Message (06)
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