Started reading Naked Conversations book

I've started reading the Naked Conversations book which I posted about here. I read the foreword while I was riding the bicycle in the gym this morning, and I read the first 2 chapters coming back from the train. It's interesting that Robert Scoble (one of the authors of the book) got recruited by Microsoft to work on the Channel 9 web site and blog (since Microsoft looked very closely at Scoble's blog, and he used to work at NEC).

The Channel 9 site actually started from Lenn Pryor who joined Microsoft in 1998 as Microsoft's technology evangelist. In dealings with customers, he had this feeling that customers didn't like Microsoft and said bad things about them and were bad mouthing Microsoft. He wanted to know why that was the case, and apparently the customers found him to be a very nice guy, easy to talk to, not like what they thought Microsoft would be (I'm sure many of us still think of Microsoft as the bully in grade school). Microsoft wanted to change their image to have a better relationship with customers, and be more open. So apparently that was the job of Pryor. And how did Channel 9 come about, since Microsoft wanted to explain themselves and what they do with no holds barred and be public and open, they named their blog and site Channel 9 after a public voice channel on United Airlines, where passengers can hear the pilots talking. Pryor wanted to some kind of reality TV show of Microsoft, to make the public hear what Microsoft is talking, and to change the image of Microsoft as a bully or the devil. And that's when Pryor recruited Scoble.

Microsoft is an example of how blogging can work in businesses, to improve business culture and relations with customers. Why? According to Scoble and Israel in Chapter 1 and 2, it's because blogging brings the human side up front. It's not like e-mail or instant messaging, where these technologies allow you to communicate, but the conversations are private, rather than public. Blogging is public, and blogging is public conversation. And they bet that blogging will be the norm, and if you as a company, are not into blogging, you will miss out.

I believe that blogs provides the social aspect to pervasive computing, which we so much need. Mark Weiser's vision was for computers to become a part of our lives, well blogs can become part of our lives. In fact, blogging has become a part of my life. Right now, I am blogging about what I just read today from the book. And if others are reading my blog right now, they can link to it and write comments (are there any who have already have the book?). Also, the book came about from the authors' own blog on Naked Conversations. So come join on the conversation about this book!