From the first day I met Mark and Trevor, we began an ongoing, ever-evolving conversation about the vision of Digett. We all seem to have a common passion for all things web, yet even more interesting, we all seem to bring something truly unique to the table.
Anytime I get involved in an organization, a position, an entrepreneurial endeavor, a team, a band…it is as if I am programmed to automatically begin to develop a vision, a mission statement, a mantra, a business plan, a classroom philosophy, etc.
For Digett, I began to notice Mark’s almost reverance of the Cluetrain Manifesto and Benjamin Franklin.
My passion for the web really began to take off while managing the Tuscarawas River Band. It all clicked when I read a great book by Michael Levine called Guerilla Marketing. As a business, we patterned ourselves after bands like Phish and the String Cheese Incident: real, legitimate business people that provide authentic musical products and services to enormous followings that were powerfully built through grassroots virile word of mouth , and mobile marketing campaigns, a.k.a. living on the road. In my mind, these folks are genius business people – tackling one of the most difficult lines of work out there and becoming hugely successful at it. Anyone who has taken on the challenge of managing tour operations of an independent band knows that the casual, laid back public appearance of performing sharply contrasts the less glamorous, behind the scenes work that it takes to manage the beast. For many independent bands – life on the road menas little sleep, yet non-stop excitement.
I am big into Manifestos. I once sang about the Turner thesis I onced live by the Vountary Simplicity mantras of the Earth First! Manifesto.
Before that I followed the TEAM philosophies of Coach Willis Wilson at Rice Uninversity, and even earlier than that I led a team of slow white boy misfits to the AAU national Championship following what our fearless coach Robert Johnson called the G.A.T.A philosophy. (Get After Their Arse)
Soon following it was MSCE(Mulit Sensual Color Explosions) a Post Modern School of Thought, and then onto the dynamic TRB business model.
Next, it was onto Portable2b.com: A teaching philosophy that involves teacher content management systems, student-centered classrooms, paperless-multimedia assignments with an emphasis on creativity, differentiated instruction for various learning styles, assessments that validate the existence of multiple intelligences, and the extensive use of instructional technologies and the world wide web.
I have come up with an idea for what I have coined ‘Manifesto Meetings.’ I am proposing a regular meeting in which members of the organization add content in the form of to the Manifesto through the use of a public blogpost.
Martin Luther and the Cluetrain Manifesto wrote the 95 theses Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues
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