Small Pieces Loosely Joined

Last week, I got a chance to visit a cocktail reception for the Social Computing Symposium put on by Microsoft. I wasn't able to attend any of the sessions (next year!), but many of the talks are online! After attending our worldwide sales and marketing meeting, I met up with Scoble who introduced me to some folks unwinding after the first day. I spent a lot of time with Josh Peterson, discussing Microsoft culture, families, and social computing. I got to meet Marc Canter (we talked about online gaming, and promised to meetup at E3).

I went there to meet one of my biz heroes, David Wienberger. He is one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and the author of another great book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined. His JOHO blog is a must-read.

I told him the story of when I introduced my son Steven to the Internet. I had just finished reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and when visiting the website, I saw David has posted a Kid's Version of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. It was great to sit my (then) six year old down, and explain how the web can keep us in touch with people from all over the world. That day, we set up an MSN email address, I set up a (parentally-controlled) account on MSN, and he's been sending email to his cousins and surfing the (Nickelodeon and Disney) web ever since.

David mentioned that he doesn't often get comments on that ebook, and appreciated hearing my story. I told the story to Halley Suitt, a friend of David's, who hadn't heard of the kid's version of the book. She wrote about it on her blog, Halley's Comment. It's cool that I can actually teach a thing or two to a blogging goddess!