Ustream.tv is not the technology used by justin.tv.  But if you’d like to do your own bit of lifecasting or livecasting, check out ustream.

I’m weighing in on the Spock controversy, even though the tech gossip blogs are calling people names when they do.

Background:  we’re talking about a presentation by the co-founder of Spock, a search engine in beta, to the Web 2.0 conference last week.  The purpose was to showcase the product.  He began the demo, and his own home page on the engine came up on the screen.  Which is how we learned that his favorite search is SPORTS ILLUSTRATED swimsuit models.

So after the first cringe, I
prayed the guy wouldn’t go there — for his sake, for his backers’
sake, for marketing’s sake.  Prayer unanswered.  He went on to use the
supermodel subject as an example of how you can keep specifying the
search on his marvelous little engine. 

Yes, I was offended, even hurt.  For the obvious reason — but I’ve been dealing with insensitivity for ages.  Do the workaround.

There is another gorilla in the blogosphere.  If you startup founders, and any other kind of management figure, for that matter, wrestle it to the ground, you won’t ever find yourself in hot water again.  At least on this topic.

Presentation content featuring people of any gender, in any stage of undress, is inappropriate for a business audience. 

Use another example in your demo, for crying out loud.  If your search engine is so fabulous, show us something a little more arcane.  Of course you’re going to get a lot of hits for semi-dressed human mannequins in your demo.

OK, fine, Mr Co-Founder’s favorite search is supermodels.  Very cute.  But do I and every other stranger in the
audience, gender whatever, need to know this?  That’s more information than I’ll ever need, and some habits are better kept private.

Besides, you’re in front of a
massive audience,
with professional women whose jobs require them to remain dressed, whether you like it or not. 

Rule Number One in
speechmaking is to make everyone in the audience feel welcome to your
message — not to exclude them from the dialog you want to establish.  And even though Rule Number Two is to inject a controversial point into a speech, this wouldn’t be it.  We’re talking thought leadership, not hormonal pandering.

I did a little research about Mr Co-Founder.  He is a guy with a sterling pedigree.  Accenture and Wharton among
the names dropped in his resume.  And, I’m not kidding, he went to Rutgers, too. 

I know for a fact that Accenture puts its people through sensitivity training and presentation practice.  Goodness only knows what Wharton is teaching its MBA candidates — but I’d be willing to bet that this isn’t it.  And one would think that the VCs backing Spock would be offering some coaching.  But I’ve been wrong on that one before.

Please, don’t remind me that this was one of the highest-ranked presentations at Web 2.0.  Or that the Spock website is getting more hits as a result.  Sometimes, we should be responsible for responsibility’s sake. 

Now, there’s a controversial idea for all of us in the Silicon Valley startup community.

Some random impressions from the Web 2.0 Expo this week in San Francisco.

O’Reilly and CMP did an excellent job.  This was the first conference, which John Battelle describes as an expansion of the Web 2.0 Summit that this team created.  Content-wise, they covered a lot of territory.  Kinks to work out, but they’re aware of them.

I appreciated the option of attending on an exhibit hall pass, which provided access to the keynotes and a few breakout sessions.  This is nice for entrepreneurs, companies with a small training budget, people who can’t commit three full days and evenings and those of us who just wanted to check out the approach before committing budget.

A lot of people have blogged about the embarrassing, irritating,
offensive example the Spock co-founder used in his presentation.  More
on this in the next post.

Still hearing the term "disruption," and I still don’t like it, even though it’s here to stay.  It’s a negative way to describe an organic, necessary and positive aspect of the advance of technology, innovation by innovation.  Of course, I don’t have any suggestions yet for a new term.

One of the best developments out of this era [Web 2.0] is the evolution of enterprise-scale technology solutions.  Companies can now create what I call, in my own non-techie way, hybrid systems — combining traditional hardware/software tools with web-based applications — to fuel higher productivity and collaboration.  A great example is Suite Two.  More on this in a subsequent post.

One of my favorite encounters was with Chris Pirillo.  This week, he started streaming video from his website.  He’s developing even more relationships as a result — lots of people logging on and talking with each other via the chat room — and with Chris while he’s "on camera."  Chris showed me how it works, live.  It’s fun.  Plus, I really like how Chris is establishing rules of the road without being heavy-handed about it.  Everyone seems to be remembering their manners without stifling opinions or conversation.

Since Chris’s laptop was running out of juice, Johnny Ham of ustream.tv loaned him his — which has a camera built into the screen.  Nice example of the collaborative feeling of the entire conference.  Johnny’s technology is responsible for San Francisco’s latest hot topic, JUSTIN TV.  Don’t know whether to thank Johnny for that or not.  And, Dave Winer is testing the technology, too.

While the sponsors probably want to expand attendance, this was the
perfect size for me.  It was in the smaller Moscone West, so it felt
more intimate.  Which leads to my next point.

Like any conference,
the thing I liked the most was breaking out of my circle to meet new
people, who, in brief conversations, can share a lot of insight and
actually teach you something.  Goes double for this one, because it was about technology.  Also, the breakouts were relaxed and
content focused, which also encouraged conversation with the speakers
and panelists. 

Some new faces [for me]:  Mark Schulze of Quantcast; Gregg
Pollack, Ruby on Rails evangelist; Jeremy Pepper; Luis Jose Salazar of
Microsoft Office Live; corporate training advisor Dan Baldwin; Matt
Corgan, John Fitzpatrick and Douglas Pope of hotpads.com; Marc Levin; internet strategist Stephanie Agresta; Terre Layton.

The lovable familiar faces:  Sylvia Paull — featured in May’s FAST COMPANY, Kaliya Hamlin, Susan Mernit, Marissa Levinson.

THE WASHINGTON POST ran this article in today’s edition.  It’s about a 12-year-old girl in Alexandria, Virginia — Megan Coyle — who has a dog walking business.

One of the things I’ve learned from the VCs during the funding pitch process is to show how the product or service already satisfies customers and why the entrepreneur thinks the business has a future that’s worthy of financial backing.

Ms Coyle captures what she has learned in a most matter-of-fact manner.  No puffery.  Maybe she’ll be up for reviewing the business plan of the next startup I do!

Daniel Henninger delivers a powerful essay [subscription required] in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL today.  It’s about the fuzzy boundaries over what he calls the "infallible children" of baby boomers, the coarsening of our culture and the misappropriation of First Amendment rights to free speech.  The chief consequence:  a general lack of civility, reflected in language as well as behavior, expressed in every possible communication medium.

I’d like to take the point to another level.  Corporations, now led by the boomer generation, could step up to the plate.  Hit a few home runs for civilization.  The example du jour:  the Imus incident.  Look at it in terms of Mr Henninger’s thesis. 

NBC’s cancellation of the Imus program coincided with the departure of key advertisers.  Still, the network cited the outrage of its staff as a primary driver of its decision to cancel the program. 

I, for one, cannot believe that this incident was the first time that journalists and employees of the network complained about the language and behavior used on the Imus program.  So why didn’t management act earlier?  Because two boomer-based factors were at work. 

• First, a general reluctance to confront problems of management’s own making because they can’t believe their ideas would fail. 
• Second, the almighty buck and caving in to the ever-ridiculous standards for profitability and growth, at any cost. 

I say that by waiting until a crisis emerged to address a longstanding problem, NBC management demonstrates why short-term thinking is chipping away at this country’s leadership positions in everything from culture to corporate excellence.

It doesn’t matter that the crisis was exacerbated by some grandstanders who are playing the race card while indulging in name-calling themselves.  What matters is, NBC did not anticipate this scenario, even when it had multiple opportunities by way of prior incidents to do so.

Here’s what NBC, and probably CBS/WFAN, could have won by dealing with reality months ago instead of just counting the greenbacks.

• Credibility.  It’s pretty hard to believe that the decision to cancel or suspend Imus was due to integrity, when even this time, it took a week for the networks to act.  They make a big point of wanting to hear what stakeholders think.  In a situation like this, integrity means taking the risk of making an unpopular decision when you know it’s the right one.
• Long-term revenue.  What’s better?  Forecasting profits by the quarter or by the year?  Edgy programming doesn’t have to be inappropriate to be sustainable.
• One-of-a-kind programming.  Don Imus is one of the top interviewers of political figures, authors and pundits.  Instead of emphasizing and franchising this unique strength, however, he and his babysitters permitted the increase of locker room antics until they destroyed the Imus sub-brand and tarnished the NBC and CBS brands.
• Internal loyalty.  Professional journalists might stay with NBC, but just because their employment options are few.  If management had acted on a more timely basis, it would have sent a clear message of respect to its own employees.
• The ability to emerge as media thought leaders when the country really needs them.  NBC and CBS could have been the first to use the professional bench to take programming to a level of dialog without ugly, nasty diatribes.  Whatever card they play, the exploiters feed on those diatribes.  Afterward, they retreat to their gated enclaves, leaving networks and sponsors to hold the bag.

At some point, someone is going to have to stop hiding behind "but it’s what the audience wants."  That kind of thinking has created an emptiness of our collective soul.  I hope, as Mr Henninger asserts, that the someones are finally beginning to come out of hiding.  It would be terrific if American corporations could back them.