Welcome and Apology

No no no no no no. I do NOT want to write a blog. Nope, nope, nope. And I particularly DO NOT want to write a blog just because some smartypants somewhere declared 2005 “The year of the blog” (okay, it was Tom Peters). Hence, I have lived with the dread of what I am about to do for over a month (kind of like that feeling as you pour yourself a tall glass of syrup of Ipecac). I found the prospect of starting a blog in the “Year of the Blog” downright nauseating. It was so Me Too; it was so American Idle, so trendy in an "Ashton Kutcher in a trucker hat" kind of way. And as such, it contradicts everything I stand for. I predict. I prognosticate. I lead. I think outside the wrapping paper the box came in, and get blissful satisfaction out of NOT going along with the crowd. How could I possibly reconcile this? How could I look at myself everyday in the cracked mirror by the Icarian Smith Machine in the Washington Sports Club and still respect myself? It ultimately came down to this. Most ideas, like bread, have a “shelf life” – a finite period of time when they are at their best. By creating this blog, my hope is to maximize the shelf life of some of the insights and ideas pinballing around in my brain, by immediately sharing them with the online community at large. Another unintended benefit of blogging is that it provides a universal ‘carbon dating’ system, where Conceived On dates for fresh commentary can be traceable should it be necessary to track the origins of a new concept. And finally, as blogger Seth Godin so eloquently stated, “It keeps me from having to publish a book for every mundane idea I have” (and, in my case, storing the 998 unsold copies in my basement).

I think I’m going to like the challenge of a blog because – if done correctly – it should quickly winnow out the wheat from the chaff in the cyberworld of new and good ideas. Several years ago, I conceived of the idea of Innovention and my plucky moniker “Dances with Words.” Only later in a search did I discover I wasn’t the first. Naming this blog I considered “Thunder Enlightening” and “Venture Capital Punishment,” only to discover that I was late here as well. It seems that the global community will only embrace and reward those with truly unique ideas and the first one with a vision of something new. I welcome the challenge.

Before I started this project, I did a little snooping around to determine the current state of the blog. What I found was a mix of self-proclaimed experts, combined with frustrated writers with self-esteem issues who start every other paragraph with the disclaimer “In my humble opinion.” My hope is for this blog to settle somewhere in between these two extremes, and keep it real and relevant. Not real in a “reality TV” kind of way, but in a “real life” kind of way. This blog will take you inside my head and, as you’ll quickly find, I’m not good at small talk. Never have been. And that goes for writing too. My preference is to keep this blog short on entries and long on ideas. I want this to be like that friend you can call up once every 4 weeks and instantly connect right where you left off, NOT that other annoying friend that calls every other day and just blogs, er blabs, on and on. Hopefully each entry will offer you a nugget of an idea that you didn’t have before.

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