I’m writing this from Helsinki, Finland! At Crescenzo Communications, one of our many mottos is:

“Think Locally, Drink Globally.” And we’re doing just that.

My boss at Ragan, Jim Ylisela, and I are over here doing a two-day workshop on Social Media and writing for today’s employees, for Nokia. Jim is a Finn by Heritage, and if he tells me one more time that someone on the street looks just like his grandfather, I’m going to slap him in his big Finnish jowls with a pickled herring.

But we’ve been having a great time. Last night, after a really great session on social media with some smart people who are way ahead of the game, we went out to dinner with all the great communicators from Nokia—Elizabeth, Heidi, Jussi, and Harry. We feasted on reindeer and much Bordeaux, and it was one of those “client” dinners that quickly dissolved into a hysterically funny, politically incorrect talk on everything from sex to politics.

It turns out the Finns are a fairly taciturn bunch . . . until the liquor starts flowing. Then it’s anything goes.

I love doing global communications!

The sad news, however, is that it turns out that I kind of suck at it.

Let me explain:

First, before I even came to Helsinki, last week I was the keynote speaker for a German company’s communication conference. The conference was in New Jersey, but 90 percent of the attendees were from Germany.

Now, I thought I was ready for this global audience. I knew it would be a solemn affair, because everybody kept telling me that the Germans are notoriously “serious.” So I took a lot of the humor—most of which is terribly inappropriate for a corporate audience anyway, let alone a German corporate audience—out of the mix.

No stories about acid trips, ass-less leather chaps, or getting drunk and falling out of a plane.

And I was careful to also take all the references to American pop culture out of my presentation.

And I took out anything that might offend a German, too. For example, at one point in some of my presentations, I refer to one particular company as a “seething Nazi hell-hole regime.” I took that out.

There is also a section where I refer to “starting World War III” with one particular bastard of an IT person. I took that out, too.

And finally, I told myself to slow down when I talked. I even wrote “SLOW DOWN” on a pad and put it on the lectern, to remind myself. Those of you who have seen me speak know that I get a little excited and worked up, and tend to talk fast.

That’s a small problem with an American audience . . . but for people whose English isn’t that great, it’s a disaster.

But I knew that! At Crescenzo Communications, one of our other mottos is: “Think Locally, Speak Globally,” so I was ready to go slow, remove all American cultural references they wouldn’t understand, and avoid words like “Nuremberg,” “blitzkrieg,” and “Luftwaffe.”

Well, I did manage to avoid any references to Bennifer, that slob Dr. Phil, or World War II . . . but I am just incapable of slowing down, I guess.

I mean, I thought I did okay.

In my head, I thought I sounded like Billy Bob Thorton in Slingblade, talking about French-fried potaters.

But apparently I still sounded like an auctioneer on speed.

And afterwards, Germans being Germans, they had no problem telling me about it.

“You gave a nice presentation,” one woman said in her heavy German accent. “But you must slow down.”

“I enjoyed, but you talk too fast,” said another.

“You must clean up PowerPoint, you are professional communicator,” said another one, looking at me like he wanted to take me out and have me shot.

I felt like I was in a bad movie. I kept waiting for someone to tell me:

“We haff vays of slowing you down.”

It should be noted that even though I talked too fast, I think overall it went okay . . . and the night ended with me, the American woman who hired me, and her British boss, who is funnier than John Cleese, all closing the hotel bar at 1 in the morning, laughing hysterically about anything and everything.

And two days later I flew to Helsinki with Jim, to do the work with Nokia.

Well, yesterday Jim and I showed up at the corporate headquarters for the first time, armed with the name of the person we were going to meet: Jussi.

So we show up at the security desk, and I say in my best big, fat, ugly American, slow-speaking English:

“We’re here to see Jussi.” Of course, I pronounced it Jussi, rhyming it with Gussie and using the soft “j.”

“Yes?” said the beautiful woman, Linda, behind the desk, in perfect English. “You are here to see Jussi?” Only she pronounced it Yoosie, using a “y” instead of a “j” and rhyming it more or less with Juicy.

“Oh, yes. Yoosie,” I said. “We’re here to see Yoosie.”

And I smiled. And she smiled back at me. And I smiled at Jim. And Jim smiled at her. And we all sat there smiling like idiots.

“Do you happen to know Yoosie’s last name?” she said.

I didn’t, of course. I mean, the man’s name was Jussi, or Yussi, or Yoosie, or whatever. How the hell many of them could there be?

“No, I don’t,” I said.

And the woman just nodded. So I nodded. And Jim nodded. And then we all smiled some more.

“There are 350 Yoosies working here,” she said, finally. “Can you give me more of a clue?”

Oh. I thought for a second.

“He works with Heidi?” I said, pronouncing it like Hi Dee. The woman just shook her head. “We have many Haydees here, too,” she said.

Well, we finally sorted it out, and Jussi came and got us, and the session went great, and later, over dinner when all the cultural barriers had come down, I told them the story.

“Yeah, that’s a little like showing up at Motorola’s headquarters and asking to see John,” said Heidi, pronounced Haydee, who is a smart alecky little communicator with a terrific sense of humor and a good appetite for life.

Then they told me that I need to slow down a bit when I speak.

I really like the global communication stuff. I just wish I didn’t suck at it.

Nokia, by the way, is doing terrific things with social media tools, and look to this space for some of the highlights after I get home and sober up.

Have you heard about this “International Association of Nobodies” thing that’s happening in the communications blogosphere?

It’s sort of an interesting story, as far as these things go. And since it involves a lot of people I like and respect, I thought I should weigh in on it. Here’s the background:

My colleague David Murray, writing in the Journal of Employee Communications Management (where I also write a column), wrote a piece about the Social Media movement. He basically questioned whether it was really happening inside companies yet, or is it still a lot of hype?

That’s fine, as far as it goes. It’s a legitimate question, given most internal corporate cultures. I happen to think Social Media is changing corporate cultures, but I respect David’s right to ask the question, and to look for examples. That's what journalists do.

But David made a mistake. In the piece, he mentions Allan Jenkins, a blogger who promotes Social Media quite a bit. About Jenkins, David wrote:

“I read his blog a lot, despite the fact that Jenkins is pretty much a nobody in the communication business. I read it because he’s smart and unpredictable and rude sometimes.”

Well . . . that started the firestorm. Jenkins equated “nobody” with “every blogger everywhere,” posted a rant about it, and the communications blogosphere rallied behind him in outraged protest.

In the old days, when you picked on a nerd, he would go home and eat paste and maybe wet the bed out of anxiety.

Nowadays when you piss off a nerd, he gets all his friends together and they build wikis and web sites. And that’s what Jenkins and a bunch of other bloggers did. They built a blog for Nobodies; they started an International Association of Nobodies; they built a wiki for Nobodies, and a Nobodies store where you can buy things like Nobody buttons (watch for them at the IABC Conference in Vancouver).

Serious, terrific communicators like Shel Holtz and Eric Eggertson—whose blogs I read and respect—joined the club and declared themselves Nobodies; they even put the “I Am A Nobody” logo on their sites. Look for a Nobody podcast soon. It’s crazy.

And to me, there are a few very valuable lessons to be learned in this little dust-up.

Lesson Number 1: First, you should never call anybody a “Nobody.” To do so implies that you think you are a Somebody. Murray should never have called Jenkins a Nobody.

He should have called him a Jerk. Because Jenkins is a Jerk. He’s the kind of Jerk that gives bloggers everywhere a bad name.

Last time I had an argument with him, he posted a picture of me on his site and attributed phony quotes to me, to make me look stupid. During this latest fight with Murray, he dragged me into it for some reason (despite the fact that I teach classes on Social Media, and obviously believe very strongly in it) by saying he stopped reading JECM years ago, because, basically, I wrote for it, and I was an obnoxious drunk.

Jenkins is unprofessional (and do you realize how unprofessional someone has to be in order for ME to call him unprofessional?). He is borderline unethical. Bloggers like him are a big part of the reason many people don’t take bloggers seriously. He writes whatever he wants, and slams whomever he wants to without regard for facts.

He likes to take things out of context and start a pissing match, just so people will come to his site. He’s the supermarket tabloid of the blogosphere.

But he’s not a Nobody. And David shouldn’t have called him that. He’s just a Jerk.

(Allan, if you read this, please, please start a “Jerk” web site. Start a Jerk store. Do a Jerk podcast. I’ll even pay for a thousand "Jerk" buttons that you can hand out to all your friends.)

2. Lesson Number 2: Don’t use the word “Nobody” at all in the blogosphere. The blogosphere is incredibly insecure. They want to be seen as real journalists. They want to be viewed with the same credibility as regular “dead tree,” as they would say, columnists and commentators.

Some, like Shel Holtz and Eric Eggertson, have, in my opinion, more than earned that status. And some, like Allan Jerkins, will never have it.

But the blogosphere, as a whole, is very insecure about their status and credibility. That’s why 80 percent of the blog posts in the communication blogosphere are about . . . well, blogging. And it's why they all link to each other and trackback to each other constantly. It's an electronic circle jerk.

Bloggers count the links to their site like a miser counts his money. In fact, when Murray called Jenkins a “Nobody,” some bloggers came out and started listing how many people link to Jenkins’ site. How can you be a Nobody if people link to your site? is their mantra.

(I am purposely not linking to Jenkins’ site, because I know it drives him absolutely batty. That’s the only thing he cares about . . . links to his site, and trackbacks to his site. Content doesn’t matter one iota to him, as far as I can tell. It’s all about visibility).

Granted, I think many of the folks who posted the “I Am A Nobody” logo on their blogs and wrote about the new Nobody Association where just having some fun. And Shel actually mined some good material out of it, by asking people to post examples of how social media is changing their organizations.

But still. Don’t piss off the blogosphere. They are nerds with skills, and they will come after you.

3. Lesson Number 3: Portions of the communications blogosphere are incredibly hypocritical. They hate it when someone disses the blogosphere as a whole, but many of them are the first ones to dismiss print publications entirely.

And make no mistake: That’s what this is all about, with people like Jenkins. He believes print publications like JECM have nothing to offer him, because it’s the old-school, traditional model of communications: People write, other people read.

No links! No trackbacks! No Technorati! It’s just . . . . well, good writing. Researched stories. Fact-checked articles. Well-reported case studies. Longer pieces on complicated subjects.

And that is all incredibly boring to people like Jenkins . . . because it’s not about them. And it’s not going to drive any traffic to their site, so they can move up in the Technorati ratings.

What people like Jenkins don’t realize (and I certainly don’t put people like Shel or Eric Eggertson in this category) is that it’s not about the medium. It’s about the content. You can have really good content in print . . . even if nobody can link to your blog from the story. And yes, you can also have great content on blogs. Maybe not on this blog . . . but on many blogs, like the one PR pro John Wagner does, or on my pal Ronnie Shewchuk's blog, For Your Approval, there is great content.

But to bloggers like Jenkins, it's not about the content; it's all about the medium. To them, the medium is the story.

During the dust-up, Jenkins challenged David to “come out and play” in the blogosphere. To "join the discussion." David countered by saying that he is part of the discussion. That’s why he wrote the damn column that generated so much attention in the first place.

And Jenkins wrote:

“No, David, you aren't a part of the conversation. You write, Ragan prints, and the rest of us talk about it.”

Yes! And is there a problem with that? Only to people like Jenkins, who want the conversation to start on a blog, and not a (gasp!) dead-tree “newzzzzzzzzzletter,” as one blogger put it.

How obnoxious.

It’s Corporate Communicators Conference week in Chicago!

More than 430 communicators are coming to Chicago, my hometown, for Ragan’s 15th annual CCC conference, which starts tomorrow. I’ll be blogging from the conference for those of you who can’t be here, doing my best to share some good ideas and funny anecdotes.

For those of you who are coming, a word of warning: The conference is at the Hyatt Regency. It’s been a while since I stayed at the Hyatt . . . but I have a very clear memory of the last time I was here, because I had a very traumatic experience that I've never truly gotten over.

Some background:

The Hyatt has what is known as “exfoliating” bars of soap in the guest rooms. In case you don’t know what “exfoliating” means (and I certainly didn’t), it means that there are chunks of sharp rocks and jagged pieces of glass embedded in the soap.

The idea, I suppose, is that these sharp things help scrape the dead skin off your body as you wash with the soap.

But here’s the trick: When you first pick up the soap, you don’t see the jagged rocks and glass. You have to start washing with it first, and then as the soap erodes away, the jagged glass and rocks poke through.

But they don’t tell you that’s going to happen. The soap does not come with instructions. And there is no warning label of any kind on the soap. And that’s how I got into trouble.

When I shower, I have a routine. I start at the top of my head, and then wash down to my feet. Some people start low and then move up; some people go haphazardly around the body; and some people, I’m sure, have no system whatsoever. I’ve always been a top to bottom guy.

Well, the last time I stayed at the Hyatt, I grabbed the bar of “exfoliating” soap (the name comes from the Latin word, exfolia, which means “excruciating pain,”) and started washing with it.

Everything was fine at first. I did my head, my face, my neck, and chest. And then just as I got to, shall we say, the more sensitive parts of the male anatomy, the chunks of glass and rock started to to come out. Of course, since I'm not in the habit of studying the soap I shower with, I didn't see what what was happening. So I kept washing.

At first, I thought it was just an odd sensation. And I actually started scrubbing a little harder. Within five seconds, that odd sensation became a blinding, searing, red-hot flash of pain knifing through the most sensitive area on my body. I dropped the soap, grabbed the wounded area, and staggered out of the shower and over to the bed, still covered with soap, and curled into a fetal position until the pain went away.

When I could walk again, I called my wife Cindy and told her what happened.

When she was done laughing, she told me that you’re not supposed to use that kind of soap in those sensitive areas.

Well . . . shouldn’t that be written somewhere on the packaging? Shouldn’t it say: “Not for use on genitalia,” or some such thing?

And here’s the other problem: The torture soap was the only soap in the room! If you’re going to have one bar of soap with jagged glass and rocks, shouldn’t you have some special testicle soap, too?

So beware, any of you people who are staying at the Hyatt. This episode actually happened a couple of years ago, so maybe they had enough complaints that they got rid of that soap. But maybe not. And if not . . . wash at your own risk. And I don't need to tell you where on your body to start if you are going to risk using the torture soap.

More on the conference later . . . it kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday, with the pre-conference sessions and the Awards Gala . . . and then the moves into full gear on Wednesday.

If you’re a reader of this blog and you’re at the conference, make sure you say hi if you see me. I’ll be all around the joint; I’m doing a pre-con on Tuesday, and then three sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.

If the timing is right, maybe we can blow off a session together and go have a drink at the hotel bar.