From June 1996 to November 2003, I ran weekly chat sessions focusing on Business on the Web. I enjoyed it, made good friends from it, learned from it, and built a business on what I learned from it. But the Internet environment of November 2003 is very different from the environment when I started; and now it simply makes no sense to continue.
I started these chats at the request of folks from the old Boston Computer Society, and first held them at boston.com We soon migrated to Sudha Jamthe's Web-net (a face-to-face forum for free sharing of Internet-related business information). And later we moved to Web discussion space provided by Sitescape (at www.webworkzone.com/bootcamp)
While the subject was always Web-based business, the chats themselves were always non-commercial, with all the decisions made by me, based on what I felt was best to promote free sharing of useful information related to Web business.
Each session had a specific topic, and often had a volunteer expert guest. The average session had about half a dozen to a dozen active, knowledgeable participants. Much of the benefit came from the edited transcripts, which I posted on the Web, and which, because of the content, generated lots of traffic to my site. (The average transcript brought about 1000 visitors in the first year after being posted.)
Often, it was an exhilarating experience -- typing and thinking and responding rapidly -- generating new ideas that might never otherwise have occurred to me, and learning from others about technologies and business approaches that I had never heard of before.
But in today's environment, in which over 95% of the mail I receive is spam/scams/fraud, and in which many people have over-reacted to email pollution by use of draconian filters and other blockers, it's impossible to get the word out.
While I still have nostalgia for the good old days when so many people were so helpful to so many others, without asking what they'd get in return, I have to admit that those days are gone.
I'll continue to write articles on the same kinds of topics and post them at my Web site www.samizdat.com In the process I'll revive my old newsletter Internet on a Disk www.samizdat.com/ioad.html And I'll keep all the old chat transcripts at my site www.samizdat.com/chat.html But there will be no more regular/irregular weekly chat sessions.
I'd welcome suggestions on how to breath new life into the old idea. And I'm open to holding an occasional special session for an outstanding topic, when it's obvious that there is an audience with strong stake in participating. But this is good-bye for the old tried and true "Business on the Web".
Thanks to all the folks who participated over the years. I'll miss our fast-passed interactions. Please keep in touch by email and other means. And good luck in all your ventures.
PS -- As an alternative method of sending out chat reminder messages, I have set up a Yahoo Group for businessonthewebchat It is an announcement only list. And I'll continue to use it to send out short messages about articles I write on "Business-on-the-Web" related topics. If you would like to receive such messages, simply send a blank email message to businessonthewebchats-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/businessonthewebchats and sign up there.
How to Make Business Chat Work an article by Richard Seltzer
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
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