Have you called Sprint lately?

You may notice that their answering machine says things like, “and Oh, by the way, the total for you next bill is…” or “Oh, I wanted to add, you can subscribe to…” As if these thoughts just suddenly occured to the machine recording. It’s pretty annoying if you ask me. I think they should spend more time improving their speech recognition software and less time trying to be clever. And Oh, by the way, I can’t stand Sprint.

I attended Brave New Web (http://www.mitforumcambridge.org/ww07/agenda.html) today at MIT. It was a best of breed event. As one panelist commented, “There’s more than 5 billion dollars of managed money in this room.”

The importance of thought leadership was the single take away. Rather than investing in marketing, these successful web companies invest in thought leadership: championing their category; producing useful content and adding to a discourse on technology, media and society.

Their focus on collaboration and dialogue exemplifies the values of the web 2.0 movement. It also made their speeches much more interesting. The CEO panelists of web companies emphasized their personal experiences, their hopes for their category (podcasting, video, online community, etc.) and the real challenges they faced. Their candor made it very worthwhile.

My favorite quote today: “Iterate in the marketplace not in the board room,” Jeremy Allaire, CEO Brightcove.

My first time in an online chat room was over 15 years ago. Discovering a chat forum for the first time was exciting. And you pushed the limits with people you never met. Some members of the chat room created stories about themselves, assumed false identities and made threats and promises that would never be actualized.

I visited a video chat room tonight. It’s a different experience when you are staring at a real person in a video directly in front of you. I wonder if friendships and relationships that form over video chat are stronger than those that form over text chat. Your thoughts?

One of the video chat rooms I visited was created specifically for the deaf. Cool.