Go for it. Writing a paper or business plan that is intended to get others up to par on your ideas is the best way to streamline your thoughts and give you a better and clearer understanding. Plus if they truly are good ideas, the paper published on your website will do more good than notes stuffed in a word document somewhere.

Just a thought…

What have you got to lose?

I've helped write a couple, one of which made it and one of which didn't. And yes, the only direct result is a virtual pat on the back. But you also end up with a "position paper" that can serve as a single reference, rather than a scattered collection of ideas. And as Michael said, the very act of writing a coherent whole often improves your thinking.

I'm meant to be writing another one this week. Want to trade proofreading duties? :)

"The question is whether there are any folks out there interested in reading such a paper?"

ABSOLUTELY.

In my mind, having a "position paper", as Jonathan called it, is the real reason why you should write it. I've been reading your other writings on this site (which by the way seems to bob up and down like a cork in the bottle), and I believe you have a pretty good knack at producing papers of such class. "Think Week" thing is just a motivator.

+1! The fact of having it all clearly explained in one place is incentive enough. The potential for the "virtual pat" is just icing.

Absolutely looking forward to reading such a paper. Not only for a single point of reference, a lot of folks who work in enterprise software would be interested in understanding what blogging/syndication means for enterprise communications rather than person-to-person communications.

Dare,

In keeping with the finding by economic psychologists that fear is a better motivator than greed, you may want to include a section -- or even foreground -- the full potential of blogging, syndication, OSS-enabled blognet search, etc. to disrupt MSFT.

Toward this end, you may be interested in my business plan for a provider of customized lifelong learning and career services (CLLCS). Not long ago, after the plan was circulated within Microsoft, I received the following e-mail from Randy Hinrichs, Manager of the Learning Sciences and Technology Group at Microsoft Research:

"Frank, you are a good man. Have you thought about joining this team? Your only alternative, of course, is venture capital. But their usual models require getting rid of the 'originator' within the first eighteen months. With Netscape it took a little longer, but you get the idea."

In relation to MSFT, the plan is just brutally disruptive...

The current version (~80 printed pages) is online at http://www.go-ogle.net/businessplan.html

An excerpt:

The earliest internships will focus on Go_Ogle's leading-edge technology for searching social networks, which is also a 'must-use' in corporate turnarounds.

We will market our interns, suppliers, intern employers, Go_Ogle and OSG [i.e. my company, The Opportunity Services Group] through profitable comedy programming, online and on television. The initial television program -- The Secret Life of Windows of Opportunity -- will center on the comic plight of OSG's CEO: like many men, he wants to succeed in my professional life and also be the best boyfriend, and later husband and father, he can. In his case, achieving this balance:

* is complicated by the magnitude of the stakes in the early CLLCS market.

* will be further complicated by OSG-affiliated actresses and models, who will routinely employ their beauty, their charms more generally, and the latest innovations from the burgeoning sciences of enhancing desirability, to make a favorable impression on him.

--------------------

As MySpace.com and Friendster already have (lesser) TV shows in development, I am trying to expedite by pushing MySpace to embrace my approach.

For details, see the Better MySpace TV! Group (http://profile.myspace.com/users/3748393) I started at MySpace.

In particular, note the models in the Membership section ;-)

I'm sure it will be an interesting paper to read. In the long term, I think it's more important to have your vision on this topic than another round of cool features in the already cool RSS Bandit.

"the current and future landscape of blogging and syndication technologies "

So what do you see?

Now you really have to write it.

go ahead!

You are going to leave it up to Scoble?

Go for it. Having a clear paper is worth more than a scattered collection of postings.

Dare, definitely. You're already a leader (like it or not) in the space by starting RSS Bandit and your continued involvement. I would definitely like to see your ideas written down as I believe it will really spark discussion.

I have alot of ideas (http://haacked.europe.webmatrixhosting.net/archive/2004/02/18/201.aspx) where the space might go, but not having others to bounce these ideas off of, I don't feel they are as well formulated as I'd like them to be. I'd really like to see what your thoughts are.

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