Seeing the Big Picture

By on July 21, 2006 in Blogging with 4 Comments

I was looking through my Creative Whack Pack cards and saw one that spoke of an old boy in Iowa (this caught my eye) watching the construction of a railroad (this caught my imagination).

"In 1866, an Iowa farmer watched the construction of the transcontinental railroad near his fields. After seeing the track laid and a locomotive steam through, he thought, "So, that’s what railroading is all about: tracks and trains." What didn’t he see?

That he could get his products to markets more quickly, and that once there they would have to compete against products from many more places. That people could travel from coast to coast in less than a week. That more ideas would be shared, and that different people would meet and get married.

He saw the steel and the wheels, but he didn’t see the consequences."

Is it so different in 2006? We see the tracks being laid across a global neighborhood in a business world that’s flat. We hear the Cluetrain and the Hughtrain speeding by.

Do we say, "That’s what business 2.0 is about? Blogs and Wikis and Podcasts and Microformats? Do we only see the tools? Or can we see the implications, the possibilities?

technorati tags: Creative Whack Pack Hughtrain Business 2.0

Follow on Twitter or Facebook or on Google+

Find Your Social Media ROI

I hear it from a lot of business owners: “Where is the ROI with all this Social Media?“ If this is a question you ask yourself, maybe we should work together a bit more. We can work together solo, or via a professional learning community. Find and increase your ROI. There is a “there” there.

About Mike Sansone:

All Posts by
  • http://www.mpdailyfix.com Ann Handley

    Mike — Interesting analogy (and so appropriate for you, too)!
    My guess is that if the Iowa boy had observed railway cars stuffed with cargo flying by, rather than tracks being laid, he would have had a whole different take on the possibilities and the bigger picture.
    The problem we have is that we ARE seeing the tracks still — and not the cargo cars. The technology has to be more invisible before we can see the possibilities, too.

  • http://www.qaqna.com/ Tom Vander Well

    I hear the train a comin’, Mike.

  • J.D.

    I think that’s a VERY apt analogy. Thing is, today the tracks are laid, the trains are ready, the cargo cars are just waiting to be loaded, and people are refusing to get on.

  • http://www.converstations.com Mike Sansone

    Ann – Good point Ann. And even if we see the cargo cars, we’re not looking at the cargo. This stuff does need to get simplified tho – For Sure!
    Tom – I’m hummin’ along, buddy.
    J.D. As long as folks aren’t standing on the tracks, they won’t get run over. All Aboard!

Stop SOPA