Good Grape Wine Company

March 1 2006

The Cluetrain is Coming into the Station

Back in the 1999 - 2000 time frame a website called the Cluetrain Manifesto made waves in the dot-com community.  Fast Company, I think, did an article on it and it generally received a lot of fanfare and then subsequently a good deal of revile.  I was working for an Internet Systems Integrator at the time and the general modus operandi was to shy away from alot of the jargon that had previously become a part of the tech lexicon.  This, was <yawn> another addition to that, <yawn>  verbal  diarrhea of the time.

I forgot about it.  Then, while reading a book on blogging (which, trust, has its fair share of hype) it gives wide credit to the Cluetrain Manifesto for forseeing the coming revolution in the way that people and business communicate--transparently.

So, I checked it out online, bought a hardcover copy for .52 cents off of the used Amazon marketplace and revisited the topic.

The funny thing is, darn if this book did give a lucid if not expansive insight into the near term future of marketing.  It’s kind of like daily horoscopes where Capricorn has as much validity as Scorpio for an Aries on any given day, but nonetheless there is some insight that is just now beginning to shape the marketplace.

I urge you to check it out, and I’ll be spending a good amount of time on it myself ...  the first 10 of the 95 theses are appended below:

1. Markets are conversations.

    

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

    

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conductedin a human voice.

    

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissentingarguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open,natural, uncontrived.

    

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

    

6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings thatwere simply not possible in the era of mass media.

    

7. Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

    

8. In both internetworked markets and amongintranetworked employees, people are speaking to eachother in a powerful new way.

    

9. These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms ofsocial organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

    

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, moreorganized. Participation in a networked market changes peoplefundamentally.

What does this have to do with wine? 

A lot really the world of wine is one of the most dynamic, changing industries in the business landscape, but, in my humble opinion, its changing from underneath the people that have created the industry. Globalization, demographics, over-production, organics, technology ... The rules are changing and I think it would be interesting to explore wine through the filter of something like the Cluetrain theses .... so I’m going to ... one by one through all 95 ...

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