I usually love meeting bloggers in person. For me, certainly, its a chance to talk about things that I rarely get a chance to talk about with friends in my own social circle — and I think my wife has heard my crackpot theories about Digg about once too many times. But as I bask in the warm togetherness of happy memories, there is one funny downside to meeting bloggers in person.

And that’s when you actually do … its hard to write about them critically thereafter.

Take Dell’s most recent gaffe, for example.

I was going to write about it one way — but, well, some recent experiences made me almost change my mind.  For example, I’ve found that when you meet bloggers in person they’re all reasonably normal in their sense of humour, outlook on life, and how they like to keep their sense of personal space. Happily, everyone I’ve met seems normal in that regard.

And that’s the problem.

Sort of.

Before, you were happily analyzing what they might say or do with a coldly critical eye, without a care in the world about throw out a jovial remark or three in a blog post, sometimes personal, sometimes not.

Now — you kind of second guess yourself. Wait — they aren’t really thinking that, were they? Hold on, perhaps *this* is what they meant. I was going to write “hackneyed, tired and pedestrian”, but perhaps I should rather substitute “… this was not, actually, their best effort?”

At Mesh, for example, I met Lionel Menchaca, the guy who blogs for Dell at Direct2Dell. A brilliantly humble fellow. To be honest, you can’t help but like the guy. Now, recently there was a dust up around how a former manager at Dell released some thoughts about the purchasing experience at one of those Dell kiosks you might see at a Mall. It was published at the Consumerist, Dell got upset, asked it to be taken down — and voila. Streisand Effect.

[where trying to remove a piece of information causes more backlash and publicity than the initial offending piece of information]

Good ol’ Lionel has a post apologizing for their goof up, titled “23 Confessions”.

Now, I think that there is a lot to learn from Dell, in the way that they’ve engaged their consumer base to try and turn things around. Furthermore, Lionel’s Mea Culpa on behalf of Dell is the right way to do things. Do it quickly, do it honestly, and keep the conversation open on all frequencies.

That’s good.

The post, “23 Confessions”?

The pre-Mesh Tony [who, let’s say was in a deliciously foul mood] might have said “this piece is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at damage control, and in the context of their prior efforts, is seriously lacking; moreover, several of these confessions are not “confessions” at all, but unabashedly contrived attempts at selling more of Dell’s stuff.”

The post-Mesh Tony, on the other hand, might say something like “Dell’s making a good attempt at customer relations, and while some of these confessions aren’t quite confessions — its clear that they’re meant to be taken tongue in cheek. Good for Lionel.”

And I suppose what this all *really* means is that its been an epiphany for me as a blogger. Journalists, for example, have had to deal with interpersonal conflicts between what needs to be put down on paper and the relationships they have made with people in industry to get the story — relationships that need to continue to allow a certain degree of access that is critical for their continued success.

Bloggers, on the other hand, particularly ones that blog about topic events, may never get close to the participants or newsmakers in their field of interest. They write “at a distance”, and I think, in some respects, that its a good thing. It keeps the ideas and opinions impartial — or certainly more impartial than if you’re in the thick of things.

Now that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few interesting individuals in the area that I write about, will that change what I’m going to write? Will it water down my opinions, or cause me to pause as I prepare a particularly acerbic post?

Well, I really, really hope not.

Rather, I’m hoping that as I mature as a blogger, that I’ll be able to divorce my opinions of the people that I meet from their actions, their words and their deeds. You know how it is — hate the sin, love the sinner and all of that. After all, at the end of the day, they are all real people who are trying to make a go of things in their own way. Yes, even Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost, who is vilified in the blogosphere is actually quite affable, honest and transparent about exactly what he intends to do. And Loren Feldman, who can appear brash and abrasive, is actually a really nice guy. Heck, even though he was prepared to hate Mike Arrington, it seems like even he was taken aback by how easy going (and real) Mike Arrington was.

So, will it be a little harder to write some posts about some people? Probably.

But will it stop me from telling it like I see it?

Not a chance. ;)

Some of whom I met, and some who I observed. All were interesting in their own ways.

1. Mike Arrington doesn’t want to be thought of as a guru — he wants to be first to report things. Being outrageous helps him, but why are you paying attention to him or what he’s saying? He’s not a guru or anything.

2. Tom Williams and Austin Hill *are* inspiring.

3. Loren Feldman is a funny guy and has a uniquely sharp talent of cutting through the BS in a funny way. That’s valuable. And funny. But I mentioned that already, didn’t I?

4. Paul Sullivan is a smart guy who knows a lot about journalism — and who is as enthusiastic as hell about it for being in the business as long as he has.

5. Steve Herrman has never been to Toronto or Canada until Mesh. I hope he had a good time. ;)

6. Ethan Kaplan is wicked smart. The way that he talks so smartly and so abstractly about — let’s face it, pirated music — makes it sound like thesis material. And it probably is for someone somewhere.

7. Richard Edelman, in spite of the Wal-mart fiasco, seemed really genuine about a desire for transparency and authenticity in public relations — in a this-guy-isn’t-faking-it kind of way. I mean it.

8. Jim Buckmaster only had one thing to say: “we do what the users want”. In spite of the wonder that is Craigslist, there wasn’t a lot of sophistication to his message. On the other hand, is that any surprise from someone described as a social anarchist or a communist?

9. Jeff Howe seems like a cool dude, and whose message about crowdsourcing was interesting and important: crowdsourcing is good for filtering. Not so much for certain kinds of content creation — like journalism.

10. Will Pate, in spite of his youthful looks, knows a hella lot about creating and maintaining community. How old is this guy anyway? :)

11. Lionel Menchaca was so down-to-earth and self-effacing about Dell’s community initiatives its a wonder that he’s a face of Dell. But he is. Which is amazing.

12. Ted Murphy isn’t the most evil man in the world, and PayPerPost isn’t. Well, probably isn’t. But he’s actually a pretty personable dude who really believes in what he does.

13. Mike Masnick is also wicked smart. I’m not sure who would win in a face off between him and Ethan Kaplan, but one thing’s for sure: *my* brain would explode.

More on building a community with Lionel Menchacha, Will Pate, and Jordan Banks:

• “How do you manage that passion?”
  • WP: When I started at Flock, pick your title — well, I chose “Community Ambassador” because there were groups that weren’t happy with each other.  Its tough to manage but its important to create a safe environment
  • JB: Being passionately objective is important on all sides
  • LM: At Dell we don’t have the same issues, but we do have to deal with negativity.  We launched the blog because we have issues with customer support — and we’ve been going the wrong way for a while.  We had to deal with pent up negativity right out of the gate.  We had to know the reality we were up against — the other issue was what is the strategy … we’re going to blog about the problems but the ongoing process of improvement.  And apologizing for things that messed up.  And that’s scary for most corporations — just saying sorry.  But that what makes the company human — and it resonates with the company.
• “When you look at the business decisions EBay has made, how do you deal with satisfying business results at the expense of the community?”
  • JB: One of the tough thing about EBay is that we’re the biggest marketplace and we have a responsibility to tweak to create a fair market — because its not perfect.  We talk to lots of suppliers and buyers about how to create a fair equilibrium on all sides.  Not everyone likes the decisions, but at least we’re talking to people about pricing reductions or additions.
• “Do you believe there will be a time for a syndicated reputation service?”
  • JB: Absolutely.  Its shocking that you can’t carry your reputation with you.  Is it up to augment that?  Maybe.  But its no different than passwords.   One day we’ll walk around with a single password — and the same thing will occur with reputations.
• “Favourite or Worst Example of community impact”
  • JB: We have an active member in Montreal.  And she came upon 6 kittens that needed a home.  Someone who was a virtual friend wanted these kittens.  Members on EBay from Montreal to  New Brunswick managed to bring kittens from Montreal to New Brunswick.
  • WP: There was a kid in Florida, but he’s sick.  He probably won’t make it to 20 or 30.  He’s always sending me long emails.  But he says that the only thing that matters is that when you’re online you listen to me.  I may not live to tell my story — but come on, what tops that?
  • LM: We launched Ideastorm in February 16.  On that first day someone submitted an idea about Dell shipping with Linux which stayed the top idea for months.  What we did from there is get more information from the community.  I blogged about the survey, and in 9 days of the survey going out we had 100k respondents.  From the time we had the survey results, from the time we got that information there was 60 days to shipping out Ubuntu on Dell.  We saw a lot of interest in the US and around the world — and that’s the next thing we’re looking out for.
• “What if Michael Dell didn’t care?  Why should anyone do it?  How have you illustrated the value of building community?”
  • LM: The reality is that we still launched many of these things quickly.  We did it 4 weeks after the request for blogging came.  There were not many people who realized what we were doing when we did it.  We did encounter resistance within the company — for lots of reasons.  We’re airing dirty laundry and so on.  We were fortunate because we were launching it one way or another.  And it was a gradual process where I can show what happens when we talk about negative topics.  But what we can show is that people are happy we’re sharing information.  That we’re talking about it and the nature of having conversation carries dividends.  How do you measure it?  That’s a tough things.  But Ideastorm its great.  Its a closed loop system where we can show people how we’re getting to it.
• “How Do you illustrate to people who just don’t get it?”
  • JB: Discussions and community forums were the proxy for our initial measurements.  And what we’ve found is that people who do participate is that you’re 2-3x more valuable on the buy OR sell side.  Or, that the churn rate is 1/3 the normal user.  Its a powerful equation to demonstrate the power of community.
  • WP: Saves support, increases pageviews — its all available.  Just google “community ROI”.
• “How about Microsoft?”
  • RM: Its exactly the same — blogs, user groups — its the same.
• “Sellers can withhold feedback until they get a positive feedback — that’s changed.  Buyers are not really represented well.  What do you do to get to your real users?  Are folks that are active really representative?  Are they the norm?”
  • JB: Yeah, it drives me crazy when the feedback isn’t sent back until the transaction is completed.  But the sellers are different.  WE have a new system though that allows buyers  to give a more  colorful and full description of the seller.
• On building a community
  • WP: Community compliments all the other stuff you do — but the more you do the more it benefits you.
• On multi-lingual community
  • WP: Its a big challenge — its hard enough in one language. I am not sure if I have the answer to that problem
  • LM: From a Dell perspective, the question is how we spin into other languages.  A few months ago we released a Chinese version.  And we’ve recently released a Spanish version.  Look at all the languages in Europe — it creates a lot more departments and a lot more resources, there are no easy answers.
  • JB: There’s not a lot of play between people of different cultures and languages — its a hard thing to get it to work.
• How do you deal with community to drive things in a way that you never expected?
  • LM: The onus is on us to say that if something isn’t feasible to say why.  The worst thing is to have an idea that rises to the top and not say anything about it.  Before we launched the blog, the initiative came from Michael — to monitor the blogosphere, and match bloggers who have issues with appropriate support people.  We knew there was a lot of negativity out there.  Its that kind of homework pays off — ou can’t just jump in without knowing what’s going on.
  • JB: If we didn’t let the community decide where to take us we’d be a shadow of what we are today.  Example: eBay Motors was launched at the behest of the community.
• On Fraud:
  • JB: Our community has a vested interest to make sure things work right.  They’re on the look out to make sure about what does goes right and we’re lucky we have the size to make things go right.
• On When THings Go Bad:
  • JB: We choose to be part of the discussion.  As long as you’re transparent and fall up with issues its hard to continue to be angry.  And shame on us for being angry.
  • WP: You can kill people with being kind and transparent.
  • LM: We had a lot of negativity in the beginning and that has to be the strategy.  I’ve looked at things from the customer point of view — and they’re frustrated.  Let them vent.  Air it out.  Then start the conversation.  Reaching out diffuses the anger to solve problems.
  • WP: If you can turn negative people around they will be your most passionate supporters.  If they didn’t care they wouldn’t hang around.

Mark Relph talks to Will Pate, Jordan Banks, and Lionel Menchacha about How To Build a Community

• “Community means different things to different people — what does community to you or organization?”
  • LM: Communities can be formed around similar interests or common goals.  We look at things in terms of our customer base.  We use things like blogs ad ideastorm to build that sense of community — and give people a reason to work with and interact with Dell.
  • WP: Communities mean I can go to a conference and talk to people and do so without a badge for most of it! (laughter).  Community is those who engage with you. RE: CommandN –what it means is stories that are fed to me and Amber every day and commenting and evangelizing for us.  We all have day jobs, so we rely on our fans to do that for us.
  • JB: Community means people who have my back.  Who have my interests in mind — who want good things for me and are willing to make it happen.  Its not a very different online than off.  We think of community as people with like passions and desires who get together.  We never lose sight of who our bosses are, and they are people who use the site.
• “What about awesomeness?”
  • WP: People are attracted to things that are awesome — people will get passionate about it and get attracted to it.  That’s my theory.
• “What has been the implications does community have for your business?”
  • LM: Before we launched our community initiatives, our focus was on launching things and focusing things on how great Dell was.  It was a change where we became more customer centric — the blog and ideastorm is what its all about.  Ideastorm was launched 4 months ago, and its the combination of Digg and a messageboard.  Anyone can login and submit an idea about how we can make things better.  The voting helps decide which ideas are popular.  If we launched this tool it wasn’t going to work, and that’s why action is important.
• “Has there been an internal fight around transparency?”
  • LM: At Dell its not something we had.  Michael Dell himself has been passionate about it, and he was behind launching Ideastorm right away.  Different heads of businesses need to be aware of what’s coming through to Ideastorm and they are.
• “What about taking feedbacking and using it?”
  • JB: Its hard to hide on the Internet.  The biggest successes involve listening to the community.  The challenge involves trying to listen to disparate opinions.  The best thing to do is to acknowledge that they’ve been heard, if not acted upon, and the reasons behind it.  We fail probably more than we succeed — but at least we try and that’s important.
• “How do you *do* it?”
  • WP: A lot of companies go in and try and expect something magical to grow; figure out where your passionate users are.  They might be on blogs, facebook, or wherever.  Its important to listen to what the rules of engagement and rules of the game — listen first.  Then ask questions.
• “Is it important to own these things?”
  • WP: Its always good to have someone pushing it — like an evangelist.  Community success is probably defined about what people internally say as well.  You don’t have to be perfect — but you do have to be honest.
  • JB: At the heart of the community is passion.  And its easy to figure out what those favourites are.  Its easy to think of community as a vertical function — we tried to do that and we weren’t good with that.  Rather than having community as a vertical silent function, we now run it horizontally along the entire company, through different departments.