Why Change?
Why change?
I’m not a devotee of Seth Godin’s. I’ve started Permission Marketing twice and put it down twice. I guess I like techno-thrillers and murder mysteries more right now. I subscribed to his webfeed, and deleted it. I just wasn’t getting anything out of it.
So what’s this and why do I find myself intrigued by ChangeThis.
Here’s the premise. Great ideas change things. So Seth Godin is starting a movement where people post manifestos on a topic. These are to be well thought out, deep thinking, challenging the status quo kind of things.
In the PDF introducing the manifesto, it all sounds good. It discusses that no one has long discourses any longer. Short articles, sound bites, etc are depriving us the chance to think. Probably so.
Amy, commented on the choice of PDF as the distribution medium. PDF, unlike, say, Flash, isn’t ubiquitous; I’ve seen estimates of around 70% of Internet users have Acrobat Reader installed. I have to agree with her there. Could pose a distribution problem. On the other hand, it’s easy to e-mail. It is cross-platform. PDFs can look really nice too. I think the approach of blog-type posts with the option of on-the-fly PDF export is a nice middle ground.
But back to the idea. Well, I have to see how the first manifesto comes out, that is besides the Manifesto on manifestos…which by the model Seth proposes, if enough people think it’s a good idea, the idea will spread. If the idea is a stinker, it just dies. Also interesting in this discussion is how Seth implores people to be open minded, respectful, and kind. Listen to other ideas, especially ones you don’t agree with. And even if you don’t agree with it, if it challenges you, maybe still pass it on. Comment on your blog, he suggests, and say “I don’t agree with this point of view, but this is well written…”
So, I’m passing this idea around. Let’s see how far it goes.
Amy Gahran’s discussion of ChangeThis, and some excellent commentary on it. She raises good points⁄questions here. Source link: http://blog.contentious.com/archives/000297.html
The main ChangeThis website Source link: http://www.changethis.com/index.htm
The ChangeThis blog. Posts are just okay at this point. By I think it’s worth me going back for another read (instead of a skim). Source link: http://blog.changethis.com/
Link to the PDF. If you want to save a copy on your drive, you have to right-click on the homepage and select “Save this link as…”. The standard PDF toolbar isn’t available for this PDF. Source link: http://www.changethis.com/files/CT-manifesto.pdf
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