Cluetrain Green-Room Convo, Defrag09: The Bootleg MP3

So, it's the second and final day of the Defrag Conference (see Twitter search: #defragcon), and I jump out into the hallway during the afternoon break, rarin' to mingle through the crowd and find some unsuspecting CEO to interview next by shoving my whiz-bang Olympus LS-10 handheld digital recorder in his face… and then I hear it.  Hey, that's Chris Locke's laugh! 

I knew the "Cluetrain at 10" panel was coming up in an hour or so — and I was greatly anticipating that.  I quickly look to my left and see Chris, aka "Rageboy" (blog, Wikipedia page) and some of his Cluetrain Manifesto compadres already gathered around a table off to the side — the green room, as it were — and deep in conversation.  Oh my god, I'm thinking — I can't miss this!  (Background: I've been lucky enough to know these guys long before they were famous, going back to '97 or '98, mainly through my buddy and former client, Steve Larsen — who just happened to be right there in the middle of this green-room gabfest. He goes back even further with Chris, which is definitely worth reading about here.)

So I switch on my recorder, and think — could I? dare I? — record this session?  "Hell yes!" I immediately say to myself.  I walk over, shake hands with Chris (hadn't seen him in two years), and set the recorder down in the middle of the table.  Instantly, I catch both Steve and Chris' eyes as they notice the recorder is flashing "Record," and we all kinda get it at the same time, without saying a word.  Yeah, we're gonna capture this fun little moment in time!   After all, how often do we get a chance to all be gathered around the same table together?  And I just happened to have the technology in my hot little hand to do so….

Some guy from The Motley Fool (whose name I didn't catch) had just pulled away, and Rick Levine, another Cluetrain coauthor, was about to jump back in, followed closely by JP Rangaswami of BT, all the way from the UK, who met the Cluetrain guys starting in 2000, and helped them spread their message worldwide. Then, soon after, Doc Searls (web site, Wikipedia page) joined us.  The only one of the four Cluetrain coauthors missing this day was David Weinberger (blog, Wikipedia page), who couldn't make Defrag because he had another commitment.

So, here's that conversation, all 43 minutes worth — the complete, uncut, uncensored  MP3 of this totally unplanned and unrehearsed session, F-bombs and all. Warning: there's a major amount of laughing here… we were having waaay too much fun!  It's a completely free-form, free-association conversation, largely reminiscing about the "old days" (hell, it was only the '90s, but seems so long ago) — with more than a few inside jokes mixed in.  Sure, it loses something without the visual, like at the end when Doc starts showing us the slides he plans to use in the panel to follow, and you just hear all of this laughing as each one comes up on his Macbook screen.  And many of you may not know who's talking at any given time.  But, hey, that's what makes it fun — you get to guess who's talking!  It's fresh and it's real… just like you were there.  I'm so glad I could be, so I could capture it all for you.

• Download or listen to the "Cluetrain Defrag '09 Green Room MP3".

(The photos in this post I shot before and after the recording. For more, here's my Defrag '09 Flickr set, which includes some of Doc's funny slides, which are towards the end.  And here's my complete liveblog archive of Defrag '09, right up to the final session, the "Cluetrain at 10" panel.")

To connect with this great cast of characters, to whom I really feel we owe a ton as early Internet community and social-media thinkers, here are some more links:

The Cluetrain authors:
– Chris Locke: Twitter and Facebook
– Doc Searls: Twitter
– Rick Levine: Twitter
– David Weinberger: Twitter
And two of the biggest Cluetrain supporters out there:
– Steve Larsen: Facebook and a great video interview
– JP Rangaswami: Twitter