Work on What Matters - Great Idea, but How?

I've been hearing extra buzz lately about Tim O'Reilly's "Work on What Matters" theme, particularly now that it coincides with a paradigm shift in the administration of the US Federal Government.

Although I apparently know how to work with others, I don't know how to get others to work with me. I could bore you with examples, but what's the point? You either read it and understood it immediately (because you are there in the same boat with me), or you read it, didn't understand it and never will because it has never happened to you and never will.

I spend a lot of my time and energy helping other people realize or get closer to the end result that is important to them, but whenever "my turn" comes up-- well, it's like people hear their mother calling them home for dinner or something! They can't be bothered to listen to my point of view for three seconds.

Case in point, remember in the "early" blogging days a tool called "Greymatter?" I tried offering a suggestion to help improve that tool during a major revision period, and was pretty much kicked in the teeth by the "in crowd." The simple truth behind the demise of Greymatter is that the core team decided they knew what was best and they were mistaken. The competition (Blosxom, Movable Type, etc.) focused on things like syndication feeds, trackbacks/writebacks and features that dovetailed nicely into the entire social networking paradigm that would spark "Web 2.0." Greymatter's core team decided to show what song you were listening to when you were writing your blog entry; small wonder everyone migrated off that platform then?

So, Tim O'Reilly, Seth Godin, the conjoined ghosts of Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary, or some expert on human nature-- please tell me, what are hard-working, passionate, creative and technologically sophisticated people supposed to do when they are repeatedly and deliberately ostracized by communities or movements because the in crowd/clique has decided to adopt a xenophobic, gated community outlook?

(sigh) It could be worse, I suppose. At least no one is trying to kill me because of my skin color.