Reputation.com is proud to hail the inauguration of Barack Obama, the new president of the United States and leader of the free world.  God Bless America on this historic occasion!

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “For Whites Only”. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

The panel on “Managing multi-directional communications” took place yesterday toward the end of the conference.  I thought it was very interesting!  The panel was moderated by Prof. Oren Kaplan of Tel Aviv University and consisted of Haim Romano, CEO of El Al Airlines; Holly Weeks, CEO of Holly Weeks Communication; Adam Bly, CEO Seed Media Group, and Dr. Eva Berger, the Dean of Media Studies at the College of Management in Israel.

Smart discussion, I thought.  Holly Weeks connected her theme of intelligent navigation of difficult, emotionally-laden conversations to the recent sit-in at the Chicago factory filing for bankruptcy. She recently published a book with Harvard Business School press called Failure to Communicate.

I failed to get a (signed!) copy of the book, so I will have to find a way to get one!  She’s very smart.

Adam Bly gave a visually rich and sophisticated talk about the way information is organized and presented.  He offered novel insights on the future of informational presentation, given the accelerating rate of both data generation and the availability of processing power, the combination of which will necessitate new ways of presenting information sets so that they are useful.

Haim Romano is an obvious badass.  He is the CEO of El Al, Israel’s national airline.  Previously, he was Deputy CEO of a mobile communications company.  He gave a practical view of a corporation’s communication strategy in the age of the Internet.  His formula: because everything that can leak will leak, anticipate that inevitability and communicate honestly, quickly, and as completely as reasonably possible.  Sounds pretty good to me.  And this guy is clearly smart and on his game.  But I think he can do even better.  For example, if you look Romano up on Google, it’s hard to find a simple bio of the man!  Come on, Haim, you should use Reputation.com’s MyEdge service!  We’ll fix it for you.  Also, if you want to get better control over Google’s searches for you (a quick scan yields what may be an unwelcome article from Haaretz about a “riot” caused aboard one of your planes by ultra-orthodox passengers), we’re here for you.

Eva Berger offered analysis of “talkbacks,” which are comments left, often anonymously, by readers of articles published online, typically in newspapers and other current media.  She has been studying talkbacks formally for some years now.  She noted that the comments left by readers are often oddly negative, ad hominem attacks that very quickly become abstracted from the topic originally covered in the article.

My presentation was about what I called “massively multi-directional conversation”.  I argued that the Internet has, for the first time, offered up a truly democratic (or at least potentially truly democratic) discussion.  Our modalities of communicating before the Internet were either unidirectional (advertising on radio, for example), bidirectional (a conversation between one customer and one company, or between two companies), and small-group multi-directional (i.e. among political parties).  The Internet finally allows (it doesn’t always have this effect, but it does allow) one-person, one-vote, one-comment, one-participation-in-the-discussion multi-directional conversation.  I hope to write up my notes at greater length for later distribution here or elsewhere.

Samuel Dergel of CFO2Grow, a Montreal-based company that offers both outsourced CFO needs as well as recruiting and headhunting services for accounting and finance staffing, attended the panel and kindly sent me a couple of photographs.  Thank you, Sam!

According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, suicide is “the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds”. Claiming thousands of lives each year, suicide has been called an “epidemic” by some youth health professionals and proves to be a difficult problem to manage.

So, what makes the story of 19-year-old Abraham Briggs unique? At approximately 3 AM early Wednesday morning, the Florida teen overdosed on a combination opiates and benzodiazepine to a live audience of 185 viewers at the website Justin.tv.

According to reports, Briggs announced his intent in a forum at bodybuilding.com which subsequently linked to the webcast. While some viewers pondered Briggs’ seriousness, others jokingly encouraged his actions. It wasn’t until 12 hours later that police received a tip to check on the young man. By then, it was too late.

While it is arguable that the actions of the viewers had any real effect on this young man’s decision to end his life (his parents have acknowledged that he suffered from bipolar disorder) it is nevertheless sad to observe such callousness on display. Even after it was clear that Briggs had died, the comments continued with people writing things like “LOL” and “OMFG”. Some of the comments can be seen in the below image which shows police retrieving the teen’s body.

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Suicide is an absolute tragedy. What’s even sadder is the way that technology and the anonymity of the net have made people cold to the terrible hurt their actions are capable of causing. From the sad case of Megan Meier to this most recent story,  it is apparent that people are becoming increasingly disconnected from reality every time they sit down in front of the computer. As the Internet continues to take on an ever more important role in people’s lives, it is important that we learn to practice the same kind of civility and respect on the web as we do in our everyday lives.

This has nothing to do with Online Reputation Management.

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But it is exceedingly awesome.