Pat Meier (=public relation of Openmoko)

[Steve Mosher]

  Hi,

   I have to quibble a bit here. Any PR firm, including Pat's, is at the 
mercy of the mouthpiece. That's me. Before they release the information 
they look me in the eye and ask me to vouch for the veracity.
Think of them as a messenger. You hand the postman a letter professing
your undying love for a woman.  he delivers the letter. Later, you break 
the woman's heart. Should she shoot the postman who was paid to deliver 
the message? But PR firms do more than simply deliver your message. They 
also help you correct false stories in the press.

WRT wikis as a tool for putting information into the world. I'm not
entirely convinced that a wiki can serve as best tool for every 
situation. This is something I used to teach in rhetoric class.
Every message has a speaker, a channel, an audience and a purpose.
One channel doesn't fit all. So if my purpose is to speak to the press
with the purpose of giving them information that they can re transmit
easily across many other channels, then a press release is a great tool.
We send a press release to a reporter ( press releases are for the press 
) that reporter uses another channel, the phone, to talk to me. He's got
the release in his hands, I've got it in mine. We do an interview, live.
he questions me. listens to my answers. Pushes hard on me. It's hard
to do that in today's version of the wiki, which is really a non real 
time, consensus version of the truth. the interview, well that's very 
often "thunderdome" two men enter, one man leaves. It's a "best man 
wins" version of the truth. When it comes down to it, I tend to be
a pragmatist. If a wiki proves to be the best tool for the job, use a 
wiki. If a blog gets it done, blogit. Does a tweet work to get the
thing done? then tweet. phone call? email? press release? these all
are various species of the thing we call communication. not to mention
winks, nods, coughs, and twirling your hair between your fingers.

WRT plan B or any other product at OM, Sean and the design team will
announce they decide the time is right. It's not for me to pre-empt that.


Christoph Pulster wrote:
> Hi Steve,
> 
> thanks for explaining the way PR with PatMeier works.
> It was a mistake by myself to approve some quotes in the realeases about  
> Pulster, so blame it on me.
> In general I still believe PatMeier & Co. style of public relations and  
> philosophy of Openmoko doenst match. PR is a paid service to put non- 
> objective informations into the world. This is the opposite of community  
> based and managed information (Wiki).
> 
> Now as Openmoko deceide to put the future of GTA02 in the hands of the  
> community, I suggest to open communication also in radical OPEN way.
> Let us know Plan B. Community will discuss it and this will improve the  
> product and this process will create quality news by itself.
> 
> Christoph
> 
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