BLNW blog

Robert Scoble has been at Davos, one of the most exclusive events in the world. Robert is one of the world’ most well known bloggers. He goes to a lot of events - a lot of geek tech events. But Davos is different. It’s that kind of an event where you get a mix of heads of state and leaders from the worlds of business, non-profits and more so now, the blogging geek, web crowd. (BTW: Interesting post by Mike Arrington about how Davos used Facebook during the conference.)

You can tell from the tenor of Robert’s posts that there is a feeling of uncertainty at Davos. It’s an admission that what seems to have worked before does not apply anymore. People care less for how the most powerful are feeling about changing the world. They want to know how we can help small business. Robert is looking for answers to that question.

The problems we face are just as much about the resulting social ramifications of our economic crisis as they are about the devastating mess created in the financial markets. I compare it to a house with a hole in the roof.  You can clean up all you want but until that hole is fixed, nothing is really going to work. Your family is going to suffer. When it rains, the furniture will get wet and moldy. You can go out and buy new furniture but it will eventually get ruined, too. The hole is like an open door, greeting the world’s forces with a space for them to fill. Whatever can make it through that hole is now a part of your life.  The forces do not care if you are sweet, kind, tough or brilliant. They will enter your world, affecting you in endless, unexpected ways.

In some cases, you may be able to fix the roof yourself if the hole is not too big. If it is of any size, you are going to need help. You may not be able to afford the cost of the wood or the labor.

In another time, I expect we would be more inclined to say “that is your problem.” It’s your roof. But something is different now. I sense a greater feeling of community. We all are looking up at a broken roof. It’s a big hole. We are all getting wet. The world’s forces are filling our space, giving us pause to think how is this mess going to get fixed.

The answer is in how we can get things done, depending less on money and more on the people who you feel can help fix the hole in the roof. We just don’t have the money that we used to before. It’s frozen, locked. Wealth is a perception and the outlook now is that we don’t have much of it all.

We do have wealth in other ways. It’s so much these days about the wealth of knowledge. I can help a small business reach out to more people. I have an understanding for ways that online communities build. I have friends and colleagues who share these skills. I have other colleagues who are web developers. They create applications that can help a small business. I know people who are deeply familiar with how a business works.

Events can play important roles in bringing different groups of people to get things done. We do it all the time in the blogging community.

For example, how can the geek and blogging community work with business leaders to create a community that helps business and customers better network? What can we do to help fix the roof?

That’s going to be a focal part of the discussion at the Business Blog Pavilion. I’d be most interested in seeing how we can use existing web application api’s such as those from Shizzow and Twitter to link people and places in the Portland and the Pacific Northwest.

The discussion is just starting. What I’d love to do is creat a network that allows for a collective effort in fixing that big old hole up there in the roof.