Archive for June, 2007
Audio-The Down Engine
This is a short audio post to address a comment about my recent posts from when I was feeling a bit down. The commenter, a good friend, wondered why I would write blog posts about being down, when the general nature of my blog is about positive things like community and self-improvement.
My answer is that I believe it’s important to remember that your heroes are human, that humans experience the full range of emotions, and that it’s important to understand where one can get strength from their dealing with down moments. I talk about my “Captain America vs. Batman” concept, and I give you pointers on what’s good to say when someone you care for is feeling down.
The audio is exactly 5 minutes long.
Photo credit marymactavish
Split Personality
I am not easy to peg to any one identity. I am a media creator. I run a small, free unconference. I run a big professional conference. I work for an Internet TV startup. I’m a dad. I live in a small town. I live in Massachusetts. I write for Lifehack.org. I blog here, there, everywhere.
For social networks, how do I absorb these relationships, and then manage them?
When I do a quick scan of my LinkedIN, it contains people I know from my pro conference, people I know from my previous jobs, people I know from the podcasting community. It doesn’t let ME group them. I have to take the service’s representations for themselves. I guess I need something different.
Twitter doesn’t let me have any groups or identity management or what not.
Relationships Without Borders
On the other side, there are relationships that span companies. For instance, what if I’m working on a project that involves other organizations than my own? Products like 37 Signals’ HighRise take that into account.
But what about me? What about a guy who has his hands in a lot of different things? How can I manage my various digital relationships simply, such that I know who’s who, I know who to bug about what, and I have an easy way to reach out to these groups across software platforms?
Should I keep multiple identities? Should I build accounts with post-fixes of which hat I’m wearing?
Your Turn
How would YOU solve this? If you’re part of the Social Networks Architecture Project (and that means YOU decide that you are, because it’s your project), then what can you do to help me solve this problem? I need some solution that allows me to send messages to people in various contexts, that allows me to update status or send events for those contexts.
Is this a problem you need to solve, too?
5 Things to Do Thursday- Summer of Projects
No excuses. Do these 5 things on Thursday, June 28th:
- Delete 5 emails or action items or “save for laters” you MEANT to respond to but haven’t yet.
- Take a 20 minute unplugged walk. No phone. No ipod. No whatever.
- Do just one thing you’ve WANTED to do for months but have been putting off.
- Buy someone else near you a cup of coffee or a soda pop or a beer, and ask them about their future plans.
- Believe in yourself. Close your eyes for a moment, and just BELIEVE that you matter, that you’re something special.
That’s it. Do that. I mean it.
Just
(If your RSS reader of choice can’t see it, I’ve just put a graphic up here.)
Vocabularly Lesson for Innovators
True - consistent with fact or reality. You know the trick about that word? It’s f-ing subjective! If you tell me “This is the one true way to use this,” I’m going to tell you that it’s your opinion.
Realist- viewing the world in terms of what is. Same thing. Subjective. My definition of realist: pessimist. Because I’ve rarely met someone claiming to be a realist that isn’t a big wet woolen sweater on my thoughts and opinions.
Practical- concerned with actual use or practice. Ditto. What’s practical for you isn’t practical for me.
The Power of Words
Here’s how YOU use the above. Immediately take weight away from these words. If someone says there’s one true way to do something, it’s almost always bullshit. It might be their experience. It might be their best practice. But there’s always another perspective. It’s your choice whether to follow the “one true way” or to reinvent the wheel. But innovation doesn’t come from “one true way” types.
Realists are useful to have around. But don’t be one yourself if you’re not already. Just get their thoughts. Nod. And then decide if you’re going to break the rules. Learn the rules, break the rules. Make new rules.
Practical is a demon. Practical is the excuse people give you when you’re trying something big and bold and new. Banish practical to the operations teams of the world, those who strive to execute. It’s great to have practical people around. They make wonderful, energetic workers. But they’re not dreamers and innovators and new-try-ers. So, keep them near, but not on your “big new idea” advisory group.
What other vocabulary should we discuss?
Is this A-Hole Week
Seriously. Is this a** week? I just had some guy call up and chew on me for a while, so I let him have it. I had no time for it. His accusations? That I was discriminating against him. I said, “I’ve never even met you. How would I know who I was discriminating against?”
By the end of the call, I’d hooked him up with everything he wanted and more.
Here’s an idea: maybe don’t lead with being an a**hole. Maybe realize that you don’t know me. Then assume the best, and work from there.
3rd Grade Sci Fi
Look out Galacticast, these guys are gunning for you:
Even better, the behind-the-scenes:
Part 2:
Social Network Fat Discrimination
In the last few days, I’ve uncovered a conspiracy. Facebook, LinkedIN, Dopplr, and who knows who else, hate fat. Yep, it’s true. They hate fat contact lists. They hate that I’ve developed a large social network and that I’m trying to link it up over various platforms. And I’ve been stopped.
LinkedIN got mad at me for sending tons of invites. In their case, they were partially right. There were some names in the ton of folks that I invited that I didn’t directly know, but that I’d met tangentially from my work with Video on the Net. That’s at least fair. They don’t want someone blanket-spamming every email address they ever had.
Facebook got mad when I tried to import more than 150 email addresses at a time to send invites. It just kept choking on them. So, I had to parse my 1790 contacts I was pulling from, and dump them 100 or so at a time into the platform.
Dopplr just can’t even contend with me. They won’t take my Gmail contacts, and they’re choking on my Twitter friends list, too.
Somehow, I’m Too Fat
Back in the day, Twitter handled it just fine. They used that nifty Plaxo widget. Pop. All my gmail contacts had an invite to Twitter. (They’ve since stopped doing that because they’re fat and happy, themselves.)
So what’s a man to do? Go on a people diet? Delete most of my contacts? Spoon feed it? Dopplr won’t let me do that.
Stop fat discrimination in our time. Fat social networkers are people too. : )
Staying Energized
I went through a rough patch last night. It’s really hard to get me down, but sometimes, something happens that really sinks my mood. But from this, as I do with most things in my life, I came out with something to think about.
First, The Social Net Has Changed
Years ago, I was fond of saying that the Internet is a crappy place to take a bad mood. When you’re feeling down, don’t go looking to the social networks of the day (mostly chat rooms and forums) to make you feel better. But last night, when I mentioned briefly in Twitter that I felt down, I got a bunch of responses all at once from friends. That was new. Different than normal.
I don’t advocate asking the Internet for support when you feel a little blue. It just turned out okay last night. Believe me, I know quite a few “sad sacks” that will never feel happy, and that love to throw sad moods on you like a soaked wool sweater. But if you find yourself in a rare, weird bout of the blues, try Twittering. You never know.
How Do I Stay Energized?
Friends and reading. Learning and accomplishing. Trying, reviewing, and trying something new. Sharing what I’ve learned.
These are all the bread and butter of what keeps my engine going. When I read about what friends are up to, it motivates me. When I hang out with an energized crowd, I take that creative energy with me for days afterwards. And when I learn new things, or hit some kind of goal, I feel alive and ready to do even more.
Trying out all kinds of ideas and sharing the ones I’m either about to try or haven’t the time to try are other ways I keep topped up on energy and motivation.
Energy Comes from Doing
Observing, sitting back, reacting are all words that keep you from feeling top shelf and moving through your challenges towards something bigger. I find that by reaching out, trying new things, making new friendships bloom, are ways that I keep my “doing-engine” purring along. When I fall back into a pattern of passivity, for whatever purpose, is when I feel a bit down.
Stay aware of your moods, your energy, and what you’re doing in given days. Be attentive to which friends boost your energy, and which tax it. Try having more of the A column, and less of the B.
The Basics
Exercise, good food, and sleeping well help. No, really. If you can manage those, you’ll have more energy than the average palooka. Believe it or not, sleep isn’t an optional commodity.
And You?
How do you stay energized? What do you do when something comes along to scuttle your mood? Are you known around the office as someone energetic and upbeat? Or are you the low-energy downer person?
Social Networking Architecture Project
You have an account on LinkedIN, one for Facebook, a Twitter and a Flickr page, not to mention the other thirty-dozenty-twenty sites out there doing social networking.
Fool With a Tool
But what value are they? How do you USE them? I know one human alive who makes the most out of every social network, and his methods suit his business very well. For the rest of us, I still predict that there’s something we can be doing better in the space of making use of these social media tools to develop further relationships.
Someone at Supernova 2007 said that most of these social apps make him think of the phrase that tools in the hands of fools make for fools with tools. Monkeys. Hammers. Right?
So, how do we take these tools and use them to, say, promote a specific action, drive a requested outcome, better develop our casting net for potential future jobs? How do we use these tools to press a virtual DIGG button and get the exposure some posts deserve?
Whatever the end goal, and maybe we make some use cases for end goals, the idea behind this project is to plumb up the pipes, and then use them to direct a certain desired action. Can we measure the results of the action? Is it sustainable? Does it have to be?
Project Lead
So when I say I want a project lead, this isn’t a job. It’s not a technology (though it could be). I want someone to volunteer their blog, a sliver of their focus, a fraction of their time, and some of their interviewing skills to finding out whether the existing social media tools, when harnessed and dashboarded, might make some kind of formidable tool in the world of drawing attention, establishing a relationship, and then driving part of the relationship’s actions towards an outcome.
Sounds like marketing. Maybe it is.
Can Jon Swanson use the same method to promote his church organization’s actions as Matthew Ebel uses to sell albums? Can these tools get me attendees to Video on the Net and get Phil Campbell a sustainable flow of business to his Internet project farm?
What ELSE can we do with this? Can we convince Jonathan Coulton to come to Boston and do a double-bill with Ebel at the PodCamp Boston2 party?
Are You In?
Beyond a lead, we’ll need people to attempt some of our stunts once we plumb things all together. I need the lead to organize, but once we get it, the “call to action” will have to be answered by SOMEONE. Is that YOU?
And what do you think about all this?
