‘Too many have never spent any serious time online.’  This sentence which refers to corporate managers charged with building a corporate intranet is I find intriguing probably not for the reasons that the C.T.’s authors want me to however. 

 First observation is yes it’s probably true. I know this because during my career I have been asked to do a lot of things to ridiculous deadlines that I know Jack about. The reality of the situation is I don’t have time to learn about what ever it is quickly so I have had to knock something out to please The Man that frankly I would not want to put my name to in real life. This I know is very bad but unfortunately although I am a great believer in delayed gratification, (thank you to my Sociology A Level for teaching me that little phrase) unfortunately in the world of pleasing the corporate viper that’s not the case. It’s all about pleasing people NOW so they don’t get bollocked by whatever Man’s shouting at them so they can then shut themselves in a board room and get on with their next tiresome job.  

However, do you not think you can sometimes spend a little bit too much time online? Like anything if you get too into it you tend to get a little blinkered.  I have found in my dealings with those that spend a great deal of time online that they know how to talk to each other but the ability to communicate to those who are new to all things Internet are a bit lacking. This is a great shame.  

I was part of an Internet related event last year the second day of which was to supposed to communicate to a non-techy, non online savvy audience the beauty and importance of being part of the online community. From someone who I guess sits in the middle of this I was kicking myself and others at the result. If you didn’t have a Scooby about this stuff it was like joining a conversation half way through. Then because it was a room full of people who aren’t often the ones that don’t know what they are talking about they go a bit annoyed. It could have been a great opportunity to get some influential industry people into the fold, instead I think it did exactly the opposite.  

The thing is as The Cluetrain says to move things on you have to talk in a human voice and at that time I don’t think we used that many words those particular humans could understand. Six of one half a dozen of the other I reckon. Compromise, it’s a beautiful thing.