This is why I’m here…
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
One of the things that I want to do with this project is validate and idea that I have been having for a long time regarding the union of story telling and blogging. When Scott Annan talked to me about doing a launch plan for Mercury Grove, I jumped at the opportunity. I was so interested because I think how Mercury Grove works as a company is how all modern and innovative companies should work together. Also given the fact that they are just beginning the process of creating three useful business applications over the next four months, I saw this as a great opportunity for the people involved to share their experiences regarding each every aspect of their roles in the project. For me, I think that telling this story will finally break development out of the black box that is usually at other companies. It’s just going to be a great story and it needs to be told.
These days, blogs are often just a compilation of cool stuff that we find on Techmeme or Digg, although they are fun to read, they are not innovative nor are they taking advantage of their true potential. What I want to do with this project is change the way that people develop and promote the launch of their web apps and I want to do it using only social media story telling. Not because social media is cheap but because it is the smartest and most flexible tool to use to create buzz around what you’re doing. The future of marketing is learning how to create communities and mobilize people and that is exactly what we’re trying to do here.
There are a few real challenges with this project and as you can guess none of them are technology related. To make this work, we’ll have to transform the culture at Mercury Grove from one that was insular where everyone shares within the company, to one that is open to sharing their work with everyone on the outside as well. Not only that we have to do it as a a group starting now.
The best thing about this experiment though, is that I already know its going to be a success. Regardless of what the metrics, what we are doing is going to produce solid content that people can use the help them grow their own ideas. How much better can it be than that?
