I thought I’d toss in a quick comment about advertising and conversation while I work on kind of a ’12 step’ list about implementing conversation-centric organization using social media tools…

There’s a lot of discussion about why it is that social media is challenging advertising and on the roles of each in the future. Let me make a homely metaphor, and talk about bars and dating.

I worked with a guy once who had a remarkable plan for picking up women – he simply asked every attractive women he met to come out with him. Literally. If we went to a restaurant for lunch, he would ask out five women on the way to the restaurant, and once we were there, he’d walk past every woman on the path from the door to our table and ask them.

I’m an inside > out guy; it’s difficult for me to make a plan without having some basic idea about the deep, underlying models that my plan is supposed to interact with. In any situation, I’m more of a hedgehog (knows one great thing) than a fox (knows many things).

So when I explain things, I tend to start with central principles and work my way out.

I’ve been a user and fan of social media for a long time (a really long time…thing AOL, the Well). But it’s only in the last few that I ‘converted’ to the belief that they are central, not add-ons, to creating successful organizations in the 21st century. And so to explain that, I need to make some conceptual points.

And I’m taking your time to do it because I think it’s critically important that people become convinced that this isn’t just a fad –

In my world, conversation is suddenly a very hot topic; I’m suddenly sitting down with my institutional customers and they are all talking about how they can build business and technical systems that make conversation easier – with customers, with employees, with vendors, investors and stakeholders.

And everyone is excited about it, which worries me, because it suddenly feels like the ‘concept of the day,’ which we all know will be replaced by a new one tomorrow. And I think it would be a very bad thing if that happened, because I think the idea of making ‘conversation’ the center of our public activities is a very good thing. Why, you ask?

A starting point ought to understanding what conversation really is. Because when I ask people to tell me what ‘conversation’ is so we can design systems to make it easier,

I’m Marc Danziger, and this is my professional blog. I’ve had a personal blog – mostly about politics – since 2002. It’s now over at www.windsofchange.net.

I work in technology strategy, which means that I work at the crossroads of how tech works and of how people organize themselves and use the tech. I’m a passionate believer in William Gibson’s line – “the street finds its own uses for things” – and that the best thing managers can do is to help that happen.

You can learn more about me on LinkedIn, reach me by using the contact info on the sidebar, and learn a little more about my consulting practice there as well.

As a consultant, I’m always moving forward, looking for work and looking to learn new things.