I’ve seen this one for awhile and admittedly haven’t taken much time to pay attention to it because I didn’t see any actual applications of it or examples in real world use. To properly explain an organization, a cause (?), to people, examples are usually not just nice to have, but essential to widespread adoption. This is where the whole AttentionTrust plan, idea, scheme whatever you want to call it, falls apart, IMO.

Andrew Teman, someone I’ve sparred unceremoniously with in the comments section in the past, thinks AttentionTrust is bullshit:

I think this could be the one. This could be the masterpiece. This one blows my mind. I have read this post 5 times … each time struggling to stay awake, and still have no god damned idea what the hell it is all about. Talk about a man who knows how to write a long winded, 3,000 word post about nothing.

I read the AttentionTrust post Teman is roasting here from Seth Goldstein. First of all, from a writing style perspective, Mr. Goldstein needs to break up his paragraphs more and ease up on the flowery prose. I was turned off after just part of his first paragraph:

It is exciting to think about ways to get people to pay attention to their own attention, which means organic value that they rarely if ever recognize. By putting up the site in advance of much other than putting up the site, we wanted to spur an agile development process around a fundamentally good purpose.

Why do people write stuff like this: “By putting up the site in advance of much other than putting up the site, we wanted to spur an agile development process around a fundamentally good purpose” when this could have been said much more simply: “We need developers to help us.”

Somewhere Professor Strunk is slamming his fist and yelling: “Omit needless words!” I hope Goldstein has The Elements of Style on his Amazon Wish List.

I’ll tell you why: because if you use elegance and multi-syllable, dictionary lookup words in marketing, it is believed to be more compelling, intelligent, inviting and improve the mystique factor of a new project. In other words, you’ll confuse enough people to draw interest in the project. Maybe.

The marketing strategy: confusion = curiosity != clarity.

For some, I guess. For me, these kinds of marketing tactics draw suspicion and/or disinterest. Wrapping a non-profit tag around it doesn’t purify the smell of a turd. Look, Teman’s post was from the end of July and I backburnered this stuff until now, some two months later. A very low, low priority to look at, much less write about.

So why am I torturing readers with this topic if it sucks so much, then? Because maybe, just maybe some of you will be able to show me the diamond in the rubble, if it exists. AttentionTrust is not dead in my mind, only on life support. And of course, the writing here at Hmm is also for entertainment purposes, so maybe readers will get a chuckle out of the exchange. The best medicine for a bad day is a smile or laugh.

Here’s some more information that might help you, but didn’t really help me.

For those hoping an audio version of Goldstein trying to explain himself, the Gillmor Gang (Mike Vizard, Jon Udell, Steve Gillmor, Dana Gardner and Doc Searls) attempt to provide the fix. Along with Seth Goldstein, the Gang attempt to discuss and explain AttentionTrust in this podcast (66:05).

Doc Searls nails it in the middle when he says: “I’m looking for a simple, human understandable definition … I’ve already lost control of it to some degree.”

I laughed out loud when I heard him say that because he was serious. You could hear in his voice the cogwheels turning and burning and ultimately a DANGER! ABORT! message causing his ejection. Houston, we have a problem.

In the ‘Web 2.0′ world, which Teman also blasts (and I agree with him that term belongs in quotes), it’s more stylistic, elegant, chic and snobby to talk/write like Goldstein does, I guess. People who talk straight like Teman or I — us blue collar types, I guess — aren’t often made part of these cliques.

People who don’t/can’t/won’t cut through the verbal gymnastics, are awed by the intelligence of the speaker and move towards the light in some cult-like trance. Somebody get the apple sauce and purple Nike shoes it’s AttentionGate.

Scary.

I remember a similar speech at last year’s Northern Voice blogging conference from a professor. I thought 95% of it was buzzword marketing bingo, but there were people who actually thought this professor’s speech was incredible and blogged it as so. I kept thinking how good lunch would be when the clock struck the magic number.

While the speaker rambled on about “the long tail” and “transparency” and (insert your buzzword) on the web, my mind wandered to where the closest burger joint was in downtown Vancouver BC. These people who want to spend time analyzing how paint dries have their place, don’t get me wrong, but I’d rather use what limited breaths of air I have for something more productive.

I’m a developer and I pay more attention to clear, straightforward material. Yeah, I can surf through programming books/material and examine and postulate on theories but I’d rather see code and basic real world examples and take action. Life and time on Earth is too short to listen to some wordsmith crank thousands of words to communicate the following about a project:

1) we need developers
2) we have this idea about how to share information and we’re going to call it AttentionTrust
3) we need users to buy into our idea
4) we need money
5) did we mention that we need developers and users?

Because without develoopers and publishers utilyzing and users allowing and adopting these AttentionTrust principles, this project will never take off.

Theatrics aside, just set up some real work examples and code and a good API structure and developers, if interested, will partake. Look at the excellent Yahoo APIs for examples. Unfortunately AttentionTrust.org is a little short on examples like this since they want to be the collective idea, the foundation and principles, not the actual execution of the idea.

The execution is on the rest of us out here.

Technorati seems to be the more in tune with the developer and practical use side of things and has jumped in on this : attention.xml uses. For what developers need to actually get involved with Technorati’s take on attention, if they want, see the Attention.xml brainstorming developer wiki.

Why there are no links from AttentionTrust with a clear “developers” link is lost on me. Most other sides have figured out that having a link to “developers” will actually invite developers. Instead, the AttentionTrust website links to “RESEARCH” which largely points to more of the same literary black hole.

So visit the AttentionTrust website and see a lot of marketing speak and buzzwords, and an orgasmic keyword use of the word attention, but not much in the way of substance (practical, real world examples of usage). At least as of this writing anyway.

Currently, site owners can join the AttentionTrust site and assert your right to be you. The list shows a few people who have already applied to be part of the attention Borg.

One of Teman’s buddies, Peter Caputa, seems to have already been assimilated and believes “they” are listening:

The coolest part about building this whole Attention Economy is: that the only way to get it right, is if we get it right by our standards. I guarantee that the people starting-up this effort are listening, will be engaging us in conversation and co-creation and are hoping that you take up the baton.

Hmm, ok, since “they” are listening (cue the scary music) and allegedly want me to take up the baton:

I can assert my right to be me, but I think I’m going to keep on not paying attention to AttentionTrust, hold off on applying until I see something less frills and idealistic gobblety-gook, without the baggage of marketing goons running around talking about how utterly cool is “the declaration” without providing real world examples that people can sink their mice into.

Please, no more diarrhea of the mouth explanations, just provide some real world meat and potatoes applications, uses and sample code. There is a blog … sort of, that might be a good place to point to examples of what they want to do. More of what Technorati has done, for example. This entire post could have been summed up with this paragraph and the short next one. Maybe I should repost with just the screenshot, the link to AttentionTrust and these two paragraphs to make my point, seriously.

So, intrepid readers, this is how to get at least my attention. XML languished until RSS came along. AJAX revitalized the use of an old JavaScript call, thanks to Google. It takes example applications to drive ideas and user, developer and business attention on the web.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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