From: Mark Walker (mdwalker@quickclic.net)
Date: Mon Jan 21 2002 - 00:24:29 MST
----- > Well-known business analyst Al Ries's outlines a marketing
language --
> "positioning" yourself and repositioning existing organizations to make
> more room for yourself. (The best selling book _Positioning the Battle
for
> the Mind_ outlines this strategy.) Trying to put ExI or extropians in a
> small corner of transhumanism and claim all the rest while also welcoming
> that small corner, is a clear machination of the true situation.
>
> I had hoped that WTA would realize its original premise of being an
> academic organization. I don't know why that didn't work, but trying to
be
> a "new" political organization for transhumanists is going run into some
> problems. It simply won't work with the current strategy, which I stated
> above.
>
Al Ries--Yikes.;) Perhaps we should take a page from his _Focus_ (his
digression from marketing into business management) and concentrate on our
core business (which is promoting transhumanism). The WTA seeks to have a
fairly broad political umbrella and its Executive committee exemplifies
this. The WTA has not attempted to position in itself vis a vis ExI in terms
of politics.(Indeed, it would be very difficult to. It has been made
abundantly clear here lately that ExI is not to be identified with
libertarianism in its political orientation but I haven't seen any
discussion of exactly how far "left" one can be and still qualify as an
Extropian. I did notice, however, Max mentioned a while back that he thinks
that government investment in research can be justified in some cases). If I
were to advocate a Riesian marketing strategy to the WTA it would be that
the WTA is a democratic organization--somewhat of a rarity in transhumanist
circles. But of course this would be pointless because we are not
competitors--we share the same Focus.
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