Naked Conversations: Why I Created This Blog

This blog, like so many things that have to do with your personal computer, is Microsoft's fault.

I don't normally read non-fiction. I like escapism. But, since I have put my foot in the door of writing as a business, I have been reading things that will help in many aspects of my career. At my library was a book titled Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. These names probably don't mean much to you, but here's what Scoble has done: turned around the bad PR Microsoft had to the point that even the most rabid anti-Microsoft website called "Evil Empire" shut down because the company is no longer hated. The people running the "Evil Empire" site said it was an issue of time being scarce now. But their post counts and hit counters were not recording high hits any more, and had steadily gone down in count from the day Microsoft's blog called Channel 9 began broadcasting about how things are done inside the company and who was doing them. The more developers who blogged, the less people felt angry at Microsoft.

Lately, we've been having trouble with our own little community. Chatters haven't been happy with the product we offer, or the people who offer it. It was all right when we had a chat system and a public room rising against us, or chatters flaming us, making competitive rooms to "take ours down" so to speak. But all that's gone and now the little things we overlooked in our solidarity against a common enemy have begun to be major irritants to our nerves.

And our host-ship has been seen increasingly as evil.

We have a rule that we can't unload on someone in chat. That's all of us. No bashing players, other rooms or chat systems. No bashing story lines or characters. This doesn't help the IM/PM fury that seems to be making things go around lately. There's so much "he said/she said" happening, there's so many misconceptions going around, that even some of my fellow staff began to feel I was going to pop them for something they did, when, in fact, I was behind their actions 100%.

So this blog was created to allow the chatters and staff of Tales From The Daily Prophet to communicate in a completely different way--without having to censor ourselves.

Why? Won't that break up a community such as this? Not according to Lucky Altman!

Lucky Altman is a dear woman I met about 13 years ago. Her job is to design techniques of dialogue and sensitivity training to help end discrimination. Talk about a woman of vision! She honestly thinks it's possible to end discrimination in our time.

I've known her casually in many situations, but one week I was privileged to hear her talk to an organization I was in, a pagan church for those who have to know. She was talking about meetings within organizations and communication. In a nutshell, lots of communication is good, no communication is bad. While no communication is not healthy, there is something worse: Parking lot meetings.

Yes, I know. There are no parking lots on the internet. I mean something more like this: There's a meeting, it's productive, or so one thinks. Then one or two people are standing around, unable to leave the meeting behind. They have these opinions of what happened in the meeting, and felt like saying something to contradict the message the people in charge said, but they couldn't say it in the meeting! So, they have a meeting after the main meeting about how things -really- are going and how things aren't ever going to improve, how they won't ...

You get the picture. According to Lucky Altman, this sort of communication, these parking lot meetings, is the death knell of any and all organizations. "If you aren't able to say what needs to be said in the main meeting, if you're people are having parking lot meetings, then your organization is doomed."

I can't IM everyone and have everyone in on the conversation, our hours alone won't have us all online at the same time. And we could have a PR just for stuff like this, but, again, the hours conflict. The forums -could- have a thread there, but I'll be honest, that's such an extension of the room, I have a feeling we'd all feel a bit more like we can't be honest; In other words, we'd censor ourselves.

I don't want us to censor ourselves anymore, and I don't want it to disrupt our role play environment. And all this back-biting and gossiping in IMs and PMs is actually disruptive to the RP environment. Emmy said it best--it's like a couple going through a nasty divorce. So let's stop it.

Now.

While we can.

Open up, say what you feel. Trounce on me, on my staff, on yourself, on each other! Do it! I dare you! Clear the air, get it off your chest, and don't mince your words. If we are to remain friends we have to be able to say anything and everything to each other, or we, as a role play group, will not survive. I want to hear from the people who are in the room every day. I want to hear from the people who haven't been able to come in for a while. I want the guy who happens in once a week, once a month, or just now and then. I want to hear from everyone, absolutely. If I don't agree with what you say, SO WHAT? That's what this is about.

Do you know how I think or feel? NO! I've been keeping stuff bottled up so long I'm on a program to combat my rising stress levels. It's a medical issue. I am incapable of bullshit.

I think this is a medical issue for the community known as Tales From The Daily Prophet. Let's all become, at least amongst ourselves, incapable of bullshit, here, now, on this blog.

I double-dog dare you!