|| Return to On The Road... ||
May 4, 1996
Virginia, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina workshops
Dear Friends:
We teach workshops on the Internet each week. One joke is:
The job of every business is to create consumers for their products and services. It doesn't matter how you do it, you have to do it. In our workshops, we are there to teach the Internet and how to use it as a business tool. With or without lights, the show must go on.
It was 9:20 am, just before the first break of our morning workshop. Jonathan Mizel was teaching the building blocks of Internet marketing. I surf the Web, following what he says and finding sites. And somewhere near Washington D.C., a transformer blew out. The screen went dead, the lights were out, and we were facing the best challenge of learning how to profit from the Web:
Jonathan left the room to get some light, and the crowd immediately adapted to the ultimate lack of technology, no electricity. People found lighters and held them up. It looked like a weird rock concert, people nervous because their eyes hadn't yet adapted. But they found solutions to get out of the room.
In the hallway the hotel was beginning to react, people missing planes, sitting around, hotel clerks looking around to make sure no one was stuck in an elevator. The hotel tried to start up its diesel generator; I was outside with the smokers (I don't smoke but that's the best social scene on earth, and its outdoors). The generator burped out a smoke cloud so thick that we probably all will suffer from secondary smoke damage from that burp alone.
I stepped inside to find the group crowding around Jonathan, asking questions. My part wasn't until later, but a few people wanting to design Web sites had picked my brain for ideas. Instead of running around, freaking out, Jonathan kept on going. He has an amazing knack for adapting and changing, which is why he does so well on the Internet. You can't rely on old ways, or get stuck in patterns, you have to keep adapting. So Jonathan changed the workshop into a hotel lobby brainstorm, leading discussions on products to sell online, secrets to marketing, and the innovative ways to make money. Amazing as always, but even more in that he was taken away from his plan and forced to wing it.
The show must go on, and go on it did. We put that show on the road because Jonathan and I would never give up to something as stupid as electricity. We keep telling people it's not the technology, then the lights go out and they show us it isn't. They are the ones interviewing us, asking questions, being proactive, taking advantage of the time, whether in a room or in the hallway.
I noticed that with all the others milling about, maybe it would be best to go back to the room. No one knew when or if the electricity would go on. I walked up to Jonathan, who mentioned the word "encryption" in talking about security to a group crowded around him in the hotel lobby.
I hate that word, I interrupted him and said that most people thought encryption was something Egypt did to its mummies and suggested we take it back inside. We decided to move the crowd back in the room; I went and got candles, he began to speak, and as it developed, it looked more like a seance or a spiritual gathering than an Internet workshop. Candles have a way of doing that.
What was amazing was what the people were doing. They were gathering around, selecting things to do, seeking us out, holding up their lighters and getting the candles going. The conversation became more two-way out of necessity; Jonathan adapted his approach to what the audience needed. It was amazing, as it always is. The power is in the audience.
After awhile I was planning to do the whole show, including my part about how to promote, plan, and create a Web site, without the computer. We had arranged lunch and were working when the managers of our workshop made it back from D.C. Because of the electrical outage, the traffic and impediments made it difficult for them to return. I told him what I thought and how the electricity might not come back on.
I'll never forget what he said: "We will have to call it off today."
The second that last word left his mouth, the lights went back on. And we were able to use the computer. But the fact is, it was more powerful without that computer. We were talking together, not jabbering or lecturing. They were exploring what they needed. Such free form approaches wouldn't work in the long run as a plan, but for that moment, without electricity, I learned the power of the Internet as I've always known it.
The power is in the exchange of information, commerce, and dialogue. Interactivity doesn't need electricity.