Thought Leadership Glossary
PREFACE
Thought leadership, once we dare to take it seriously rather than treat it as a buzzphrase, is actually a vast field. To learn it properly, one must stick one’s feet into many disciplines. It is also important to refrain from trying to go too deeply into any of those disciplines (unless it be out of pure love) because it is at their peripheries, where they intersect, rather than their depths, that the craft of thought leadership is found.
In light of which fact, I introduce this glossary with the following suggestion: Don’t ever be ashamed of needing to consult a glossary, especially in this subject. You can’t know it all. In fact one of the essentials of thought leadership is the capacity and desire to learn what one doesn’t already know.
GLOSSARY
blog (n) 1: a weblog, i.e. a web site which is frequently updated using software designed to make this process simple. Blogs may have many properties, but the only one that is common to all blogs is that entries appear in reverse-chronological order on the main page. (I.e., last entry first.)
blog (v) 1: to employ blogging software to publish words, pictures, audio or video objects. 2: to log another blogger’s published materials on one’s own blog. (e.g. “Who’s blogging who?” D. Winer) This does not refer to plagiarism, which is a bad thing, but to engagement with the quoted or linked item, which is a good thing, and is usually signalled by commentary on the thing being blogged.
RSD (n) The Rock Star Daughter of Max Christian Hansen. This appellation, and the extended version, PEBRSD (Precious Excellent Beloved Rock Star Daughter) will be used in Hansen’s blogs until the daughter in question explicitly gives permission for her real name to be used. The following facts about the RSD are public as of February 2007: She is in her mid-twenties, is a professional writer, works in marketing for a professional association, and is actually a rock star, in a modest and non-degenerate sort of way. As readers of Hansen’s blogs are aware, he is every bit as fond of her as a father ought to be. He also respects her a great deal, as being 1000 (+/- 32) times as mature and responsible as Hansen was at the same age.