David Weinberger

David Weinberger co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999, a book that told companies the internet was going to fundamentally change the relationship between organizations and the people they served. Most dismissed it. Then it turned out to be correct. Twenty-five years later, Weinberger remains one of the most original thinkers on how digital networks reshape knowledge, business, and the nature of expertise itself.

Too Big to Know

Weinberger’s more recent work, Too Big to Know, argues that the internet has not just changed how we access information. It has changed what knowledge means, who counts as an expert, and how decisions should be made in a world where no single person or institution can hold all the relevant facts. His keynotes apply these ideas directly to organizational strategy, the challenges of leadership in networked environments, and the opportunities created when the smartest person in the room is the room.

Harvard, Fortune 500, and the Long Game

A senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Weinberger has been advising major corporations on digital transformation since before most organizations knew they needed it. The Wall Street Journal called him a marketing guru. What he actually is, is a philosopher of the internet whose ideas have consistently arrived ahead of the moment they became urgent.

David Weinberger keynotes are booked for events focused on digital transformation, knowledge management, the future of expertise, internet culture, and the strategic implications of networked information for business leadership.

The War Against Customers: What Marketing Can – and Must – Learn from the New Connectedness

The fundamental fact of marketing is that you’re trying to get an unwilling customer to do something they don’t want to do. That’s why customers want to flee when they sense they’re being marketed to. But suppose waging war against our customers – “targeting” them via “strategies” and “tactics” – isn’t such a good idea? And suppose customers simply won’t stand for it anymore?

Traditional marketing views itself as a type of broadcast, wherein a single voice gets to send a message to a mass of people. But the Internet is the anti-broadcast medium: it’s not mass, it’s not one-way, and it’s not controlled by companies that can pay to send out a message. The Internet is, in fact, a conversation among your customers who are discovering that they are a far better source of information about products and services than the companies ever could be. This is the most fundamental shift in marketing since the creation of mass media. And it affects all marketing, on or off the Web.

In this keynote speech, the audience will learn how old marketing techniques actually alienate customers; the keys to engaging in the new customer conversations the market expects (and demands); and how to anticipate the most important change in customer dynamics and marketing since the invention of mass media 80 years ago.

The Information Revolution That Wasn’t and the One That Will Be: How the New Dimensions of Information Are Transforming Business… and Life

Remember how in the ’80s and then the ’90s we were all going to drown in information? The information tidal wave crashed all around us… but we barely got wet. But don’t relax too soon. The real change is already upon us.

We managed to survive the information tsunami by coming up with surprisingly good information management tools – who would have predicted Google would be so great? – and, frankly, ignoring much of the information that we’ve gathered.

It turns out that the quantity of the information hasn’t changed our businesses or our lives so much. But changes are on the way that will bring about deeper and more profound changes in the most fundamental dimensions of life and work:

• Place: Thanks to wireless networks, mobile devices that know where they are, and clever tools that figure out what spots documents are talking about, information about places will be available at those places. For the first time, the earth itself will no longer be speechless.
• Groups: As weblogs – online journals – become commonplace to the young generation, the line between private and public is being erased… including the line between company and customer.
• The Past: As digital photography becomes pervasive, and as sharing files among friends becomes the norm, personal memories will become communal.
• Truth: In order to manage vast quantities of information, we have to deal explicitly with information about information – tags, labels, categories – which can lead businesses to ignore the real roots of their value: the messy, personal relationships that are the source of all innovation and loyalty.

In this talk, Dr. Weinberger looks at these trends and others, painting a picture of the future that challenges business to change or be left behind. Audiences will walk away with a new understanding of the latest technology trends and their effect on business, as well as how to take advantage of these new technologies.

The Knowledge Management Oxymoron

Messiness Is a Virtue: Information Management in the Age of the Web