Chattering Clusters - and me - are to input to Obama-Biden Transition Team....

Here is the letter I received today as an email inviting me to contribute to US Climate Change and Energy issues, ideas, and policy formulation process. So I did just that... If you would like to become part of the new Chattering Clusters advising the next President of the United States on America then you can simply follow the prompts on my invitation....

Dear Richard,

62 days. That's how much time we have left to prepare for the Obama-Biden Administration that will bring the change Americans demanded so strongly in this past election.

President-elect Obama has set a high bar for the Transition team: to execute the most efficient, organized, and transparent transfer of power in American history. As a co-Chair for the Transition, I want to tell you about a few steps we've already taken to achieve this goal.

First, we adopted the strictest ethics guidelines ever applied to any transition team. President-elect Obama pledged to change the way Washington works, and that begins with shifting influence away from special interests and restoring it to the everyday Americans who are passionate about fixing the problems facing our country.

Opening up the Transition means listening to your ideas and stories and providing a window into how the process works.

To give you a look at how we're approaching some of the nation's most pressing issues, we filmed this meeting of our Energy and Environment Policy Transition Team and interviewed team member Heather Zichal.

Watch the video and submit your ideas on energy and the environment:

President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden have set an ambitious agenda, and we are going to make Change.gov a source of information, as well as a place to participate in the decisions being made about your government.

Since the decisions we're making affect all Americans, we're counting on citizens from every walk of life to get involved. You can help us right now by making sure your friends and neighbors know about Change.gov and give their input, too.

We're continuing to develop new ways to open up the process, and we'll keep you posted along the way.

Thanks,

John

John Podesta
Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team

Hold the phone on Obama as President....

Obama will win the White House - I have been predicting this for a long time now.... The upcoming election is locked in I have repeatedly told you all - well it was until Sarah Palin arrived to help John Mc Cain.

Governor Sarah Palin is a real person in a world of virtual celebrities like Barack Obama. She adds a new dimension to this contest. Senator Joe Biden (Democratic Nominee for Vice President) adds nothing to the Obama Camp except the illusion of age and experience. Biden has never really done anything of note outside of the Sentate so he is there as window dressing.

Palin is a 'hands on' Governor of a small but tough State. She is a mother with a large, and colourful, family. She hails from Alaska where things are done a little differently. She is a huge asset to Mc Cain.

So hold the phone just now and let's see if Sarah Palin can do the impossible and get John Mc Cain elected. She could well do it. How so? Well now Mc Cain (or more accurately Palin) will be the talk of the 'chattering clusters' . On the web and in real life Palin will be an inspiration to the deflated Republican voters who supported Bush. She will ensure the 'chattering clans and tribes' re-think their long-held proposition that Obama is their next President.

Palin is social networking gold for the Mc Cain campaign and she is already bullet proofed because she (or her family connections) have already provided more shocks than could have been imagined. Thus she is just the type of person who makes Web 2.0 social networks glow with viral marketing traffic. Palin will ensure that Mc Cain get talked about.

I thought Obama had the web social networks all to himself but Palin could out do him in this arena. If she does Mc Cain will win this election........

So forget what I said before Palin arrived on the stage.... Just hold the phone there might be an upset brewing in the US Presidential Election....

Talk directly to 'chattering clans and tribes'....

Brands are dead long live the Internet.....

Both Barack Obama and John Mc Cain have given up on their brands - Democrat and Republican respectively - as they endeavour to talk directly to the digital age clans and tribes. The clans want change. They want an end to Bush. They want an end to the mindless handouts from Washington DC and the meaningless political games politicians play on Capital Hill. Obama and Mc Cain know this and they are doing precisely what your business should be doing - they are going directly to their customers with their messages of change.

I coined the term Chattering Clusters. On closer inspection I noted that these clusters were either clans or tribes.

The clans are early adopters - you would think that means they are young (generation y or x) and they are in large part. The emerging truth of the matter though is this is not an age or generational issue it is an access and connection issue. If you have broadband access and a reliable connection to web social networks you can be a clan member at any age. The change you are looking for if you are a retiree maybe different to those you seek as a teen nonetheless you both want change and you both are advocates for a point of view. Blogs tell the story as their creators, in all age groups, pound out their messages of change.

The significant feature of a clan is it can form and dissipate quickly. The tribes are slower to form and more long lived. They are clusters that have a clear and present purpose. They are working hard to achieve an outcome with the content of their blogs or the formation of a social network. Within these tribes there are rules, taboos, protocols, etc that do not exist within clans. This makes the tribe a more stable entity as a social networking cluster. However, a common side effect of their stability, focus, and purpose-driven nature is that their chatter is repetitive and stale. Tribal conversations, on the web, are often a digital version of 'group think' what we might refer to here as 'cluster think'. Cluster think makes the tribes much more coherent and manageable than clans.

Obama and Mc Cain will spend the next ten weeks or so before election day talking directly to their clans and tribes. Their aim is to have those clans and tribes work for them as viral marketing agents to convey the most meaningful parts of an Obama, or a Mc Cain, election platform to their peers.

Obama will do this job better because he has set up a web-based social network of clans and tribes the like no one has seen before. He has harnessed the power of the internet to motivate a range of disgruntled voters who are forming into political clans and tribes to support his candidacy. Because Obama has organised the 'Chattering Cluster' to hear his conversation above and beyond that being presented by Mc Cain he will win the upcoming election for the White House.

What Obama will do with and for his new digital electorate as their President is hard to know but if he continues to talk directly to them then he will get himself re-elected in four years time.

Obama can do no wrong......

It is mildly amusing for me to watch the media at the Democratic Conference trying to find something new to say. Truth is it has all been said or left unsaid. Obama will be the next President of the United States because the chattering clusters on the web have already deemed it to be so. The world has changed and Obama is the change candidate. The media covering the convention have not changed they are still trying to find or to invent 'the story' that will impact the upcoming election. The only story is that Obama won over the chattering clusters with his refusal to be an old styled politician and his insistence on being the first 'internet generation' public figure. The only thing left to report on is just how big Obama's majority in Electoral College will be. It is locked in now and yet it is still not clear how big it will be. I suspect it will be huge.

My C21st business pitch....

I have a real C21st challenge ahead. Pitch a new way of doing business to clients who, in the main, are still doing business the old way. Here is my pitch...

Richard Lipscombe is an online asset for you and your company. He works online and occassionally onsite. He will travel to other countries and regions but sparingly. He believes in digital business models because they are cost efficient and effective. He runs a spartan business model.

Richard has developed business models in heathcare and social networks. Otherwise he works on issues as directed with a simple three phase approach. Clear, hold, and build. Clear out the old ideologies to allow new ideas to breath. Select the best of these ideas to go forward by placing them into context. Design a framework for action to develop the potential of these ideas. Hold these ideas within a business model. Construct prototypes to test them. Test them to breaking point. Reframe these ideas as executable initiatives for the business. Build these ideas into new revenue streams.

Richard has also developed a social networking model. He has studied the ways people gather on and use Web 3.0 links. He has identified three patterns of conversations that can impact your business. These are Chattering Clusters, Clans, and Tribes. Clusters form on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, Ning, etc. They can have 150 or so people in them chattering about all manner of things. Within these conversations they trash products, services, and brands they dislike and praise those they like. These conversations are full of positive and negative viral marketing. Clusters form with a low level of trust. Clans have a slightly higher level of trust and are populated by the early adopters of new ideas, technologies, products, and services. They form and implode quickly. Tribes are purpose built – they tend to be built to last and populated by people who have common ideologies or shared values. Environmentalists tend to form into tribes because they are dedicated to saving the planet from the worst effects of Climate Change, etc.

Engaging Richard to work with you on your problems is simple. Contact him by email at the above address – setout your issue in the email. He will reply by email stating where and why he might be able to help or suggesting some other course of action for you and your company.

Obama the politician....

The Chattering Clusters have chosen the right man in Obama even though he is a left leaning Democrat. Or is he?

Having dispensed with the race to become Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama now faces up to a tough electoral college battle with his Republican Party opponent John Mc Cain. All through the Primaries the media commentators had Obama pinned as a Liberal Democrat. He was clearly an ideologue and this would be in undoing because the electors did not want such a President.

But hold the phone! Obama is moving his political rhetoric and his policy positions towards the center of the continuum. Oops! What does this mean? What is a media pundit to make of this move? What does it do to all those projections about which candidate wins which States in the fall election?

Well the first thing Obama has to do is win an election so these moves are seen as part of the political strategy to win the White House. So he had to move to policy positions that appealed to the wider electorate and more especially to the so called 'independent' or non committed voters. These voters were not his concern when he was facing down Hillary Clinton for the nomination. Now they are front and center in his political calculations for winning office. That is as it should be.

What we are seeing with Obama is emergence of a gifted politician in a race for the highest office in America. His ability to read the politics of the race for the White House is beging to be his greatest asset. Why?

First he has won the Chattering Clusters and they will elect him no matter what he says in the lead up to the fall election. He is their teflon candidate and so nothing sticks to him except their votes. Second he has to now appeal to the Chattering Clans. Those independent minded voters who might either stay at home and not vote or vote for Mc Cain. Obama can appeal to them by showing how he will govern. Yes govern. They are going to see Obama running for the job of President of the United States with the same strategy around issues that he will have when he sits in the Oval Office.

It is important that Obama runs a campaign based on what he intends to do not what he has to say to get elected for two reasons. First he needs to win over the support of the independents so that he has a resounding victory in the fall election. Second he needs to demonstrate to the Democratic Party how he will act as the incoming President.

My guess is the 'independent voters' will like what they see of Obama in this election but the Democratic Party leaders will not.

Obama and Clinton unite a nation over a bottle of water....

The reality is the upcoming election of Barack Obama is a foregone conclusion. How can I know that to be a fact when it has not happened? I listen attentively to the Chattering Clusters, Clans and Tribes and they tell me they want change they can believe in. Barack Obama is the only candidate offering what they want. How do I know that to be a printably fact? I observe those 'little things' that tell the Chattering Clusters that Obama is their man.

At an open air gathering the other day Clinton was praising Obama. She was telling the collected gathering that he offered them "change we can all believe in".... As I looked at the video I saw a tangible sign that she certainly knew what she was talking about... Next to the microphone were two plastic bottles of water - you know the type with the light blue screw on lids. As Clinton spoke Obama took one of the bottles of water and drank from it. He was immediately identifiable as one of the Chattering Clusters. He was one of them - that is what they would do if they were sitting there. He was sipping water from a plastic bottle just like they do - no glass, no jug, nothing but a plastic bottle with a blue top.

Obama is 'change you can believe in' .........