Thanks for the Attention
Yesterday we recorded Identity Gang II with most of the people Doc Searls gathered together a year ago. A few couldn't make it, including Dave WIner, Marc Canter, and Craig Burton, but others who have joined in over the past year did. As with last year, I stayed mostly out of it, jumping in toward the end to throw some political grenades and neutralize Doc's occasional and well-meaning tendency to break out in a premature Kumbaya moment. I thought it went well, and will mix it as soon as my voice returns long enough to thank the sponsor (Earthlink) for their kind support. If you are looking for another good show in the meantime, listen to last week's Gang with Firefox's Brendan Eich and a special Death-of-Office Gillmor Daily two-parter with Robert (Attention Bunny) Scoble.
Speaking of support, I'd like to thank Adam Curry, Ron Bloom, Kris Jacob, and all the fine folks at Podshow for their support of me and the Gillmor Gang, Gillmor Daily, and AttentionTech during 2005. Thanks to Dan Farber for his friendship and tolerance of my counter-intuitive and page-view-model-deficient approach to this blog. Thanks to Hank Barry for his encouragement and fierce integrity, and Seth Goldstein for his committment to attention rights.
And a special thanks to those who disagree, disrespect, and otherwise diss me about attention, gestures, RSS, the people I talk with and about, and all the jumble of words, ideas, and opinions I spout here and in the podosphere. It's wonderful to hear from people who appreciate what I'm trying to do here, but it's the bad reviews that keep me up at night, realizing how poorly I'm communicating what seems so clear to me. To be sure, sometimes I'm pulling my punches, leaving things diluted or unsaid for various reasons: foreshadowing, politics, occasional mean-spiritedness, garden-variety confusion or stubborn stupidity.
Obviously I can do better. Thanks to Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, and all my friends in the blogopodsphere, I am regulary reminded how to improve. In this new conversation we call the Net, we're each in the other's Peanut Gallery. Every day I log onto Rojo to learn just how badly I f*cked up, or alternately, how little anybody cares what I did or didn't do. In a trailer for the Johnny Cash biopic, Keith Richards reminds us that the canvas is silence. Thanks to anybody who moves the needle.