that enough times, you won't take anything seriously anymore either. It's an unavoidable occupational hazard.
Well, OK, you're right. That's just cheap hyperbole. Of course I'm serious about some things. Like researching my Next Big Book, which is becoming less a tiresome chore, and more a true addiction. That is to say: I'm liking it. I hate to admit it, but it's true: I'm an unreconstructed information junkie, and I have no plan to recover. What I want is more and better information. Deeper thinking. Spanning the vast array of interests that constitute my deeply disordered mind. My shorthand for this is The Beautiful Mind Garage. If you saw the movie, you may chuckle. But I'll have the last laugh! The guy did win the Nobel Prize in the end, right?
It was just such delusions of grandeur that first brought me into contact with HighBeam Research -- only then it was called eLibrary. I used it to research my books, and (much as I love Google) it helped me find wonderfully germane stuff that I never would have located without spending months, perhaps whole decades, in the Library of Congress.
Not that I'd really mind spending months, perhaps whole decades, in the Library of Congress. But it's a hell of a commute from where I live in Boulder, Colorado.
Through much of this year and the year preceding, I managed to enpauperize myself through... well, let's call it a series of unfortunate events. I mean, I was b-r-o-k-e. Nonetheless, I knew I had to re-subscribe to HighBeam if I wanted to hold out any hope for that Next Big Book. No way could I bring that off without access to their stash. It was a hard decision: 99 bucks would buy enough groceries to keep me going for another week or two. But of course I popped for the year's subscription.
I lost weight, sure. But I needed to lose weight anyway. Meanwhile, I was in data-hog heaven, downloading all this amazing loot as fast as my pathetic dial-up link (yes, another painful confession) could scoop it into my hard drive. For 99 bucks. Are you kidding? I go way back with textual databases, and the ones I remember from those days of yore -- Dialog, WestLaw, LexisNexis -- would charge you that much for an hour.
Still, 99 bucks is 99 bucks. And in my impoverished state it seemed more like a cool grand. I began to dream of all the many pounds of exotic Arabica coffees I could have bought with that. So the next step was clearly to con the management of this fine institution -- to wit: HighBeam Research -- into giving me my money back. This would take skill, I knew: fast rap and high cajolery. But I felt up to it. I was ready for the challenge. And I'd already done it years ago with eLibrary. So I had tradition on my side.
But who were these interlopers who'd bought out my old pals that I'd snookered and snowed so easily? I decided to do some... um, research. So I go to HighBeam's corporate background pages, and the first thing I see is this guy I know. Holy crap! What's he doing here? And would you look at that: he's Chairman & CEO. Now, you'd think I'd be delighted at this discovery. But the problem was: he knew me too. Plus, he's smart. Unusual for a CEO, I agree, but it does occasionally happen. So in fact, this was going to be a lot harder than I thought. Damn.
Fortunately, it turned out that Patrick Spain and I had been thinking quite similar thoughts about blogs and bloggers and their voracious -- nay, legendary! -- hunger for the very best in high-test information. I'd been telling people about this service for years, but I knew they'd never "get it" (can we still say that?) unless they had a chance to get inside and really bang on the thing, see what riches it contained, etc., etc.
I suggested that I set up a blog to showcase some of those riches and demonstrate how they'd be especially useful to bloggers. Who are, lest we forget, writers first and foremost. And thus natural plagiarists.
Patrick had a better idea. "How about you go enlist a couple dozen of your weirdo cronies to do the same thing on their own blogs?" he said. Words to that effect, though I don't think he really called you weirdos. Clearly, this was a superb idea. I had a panic attack on the spot. Was I losing control? Already? And to my sworn enemy, no less: other bloggers who write better than I do!
But the panic abated when he said he'd give me my 99 bucks back. Plus another 99 if I got the site up and running before December. Since then, the coffee maker's been cranking full tilt, and here it is only mid-November. I think I deserve at least a $10 bonus for that.
OK, no more low comedy. Barring my trademarked Poetic License™, that's pretty much how it happened. And tomorrow morning, gods willing -- and Patrick Spain not having taken too much umbrage at my jesting with his sterling reputation -- I'll invite the first wave of bloggers to join in. What they do with HighBeam Research articles on their blogs will determine whether there'll be a second wave. I dearly hope so. This is more fun than I've had in years. The results will be linked from the left column of this site's front page.
My plan is not to endlessly plug HighBeam Research here. It's a good solid service, the best I've found. But how many times can one say such laudatory things about a company before it gets deadly boring? My guess is three. Maybe two. What I do plan to show off on this site is the depth and scope of the knowledge collected in these databases. And -- to me at least -- that is endlessly fascinating. The material the HighBeam engine serves up is literally coextensive with the full spectrum of concerns we humans harbor, and that's saying: a lot.
Please bookmark the site, feed the RSS to your favorite blog reader, come around often, and send suggestions, kudos, gripes, and more coffee (it can be our little secret) directly to me, Chris Locke: clocke@panix.com. Please put "CBO query" in the subject line if it's not there already after you click on the address.
Thanks.
Named in a 2001 Financial Times Group survey as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world, Christopher Locke is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual (with Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and Rick Levine), and author of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices and The Bombast Transcripts: Rants and Screeds of RageBoy®. He is editor/publisher of the widely acclaimed and justly infamous webzine Entropy Gradient Reversals (long since morphed into a blog; click at your own risk).
Chris has delivered keynote talks to organizations such as Accenture, the Direct Marketing Association, e-Business Expo, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, First Union Bank, Gartner Group, Key3Media, Peoplesoft, The Public Relations Society of America, SAP, Sun Microsystems, and Swiss Re.
Now based in Boulder, Colorado, he has worked for Fujitsu, Ricoh, the Japanese government's "Fifth Generation" artificial intelligence project, Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, CMP Publications, Mecklermedia, MCI, and IBM. He has written extensively for publications such as Forbes, The Industry Standard, Information Week, Harvard Business Review, Publish, Wired, and Release 1.0. His professional work has been covered by Advertising Age, Business Week, The Economist, Fast Company, Fortune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and many others.
HighBeam™ Research, Inc., operates an online research engine for individuals, filling the gap between free search engines and high-end information services. By delivering sophisticated research tools with convenient access to the free Web, paid online services, and its proprietary library database -- 32 million articles from 2,800 respected publishers -- HighBeam enables individual researchers to efficiently locate, organize and deliver answers. The About HighBeam page on this site includes direct links to additional background.
