the day’s objectives, actions and ideas

Dale Peskin is reflecting on the conference-so-far. Some quotes:

“Yesterday, we compiled a lot of ideas – they came into us, came out of us. This morning, we’re going to try to make sense of these ideas. That’s the first step to doing something with these ideas.”

“I loved the Fred Friendly conversation – entertaining, interesting, addressed all the great things. Here’s my problem: I’ve been having that conversation for ten years and I can’t seem to get past it. i don’t know why. We tried. The conversation isn’t just a few years old, it’s a hundred years old. It’s circular, it gets in the way of things. We should be having the conversation about doing things, not agonizing over them.”

I think that thought is shared by a lot of people in this room.

“Here’s what I’d be doing…writing a memo to my boss. A very careful, somewhat risky memo…less buzzwordy. A two-page memo, a risks and benefits brief, the implications…Then, my own advocacy document – what does it means for me, in context of what it means for the company.”

Somebody said, “A lot of us have written this memo – in 1990, I wrote it to ABC news. Maybe it’s the battering ram against the wall.”

Peskin replied, “The memo’s probably better now because fear is a powerful motivator.”

Later, Leah Gentry: “I am so tired of having the audience treated like we’re three-year-olds…You know better than that. Stop having a conversation that is ten years old.”

update 9:24 am: corrected Peskin’s name