Brian Smith from Downtown Cartel and I are drinking a few beers at Sara Dornsife’s posh pad right now. An amusing way to pass time? Coming up with pickup lines the way Yoda would say them. Does this make me a geek officially? Oh well. Here they are though:
1.) Tired your legs must be. Running in my mind you have been.
2.) Nice shirt you have. Look better on the floor it will.
3.) Hurt do you? Fall from heaven you did?
4.) A ninja you must be. Kicking your legs are.
5.) Windex in your pants you must have. In your pants I can see myself.
Can you think of any cool Yoda pickup lines? Please share for others so they can enjoy wasting their time at work.
I tend to like to be behind a camera instead of in front of it, but I felt that the issue of data portability was important enough to step up and lead a discussion at SocialMedia Camp.
The semantic web can fix the issue of data portability in social media. How? By using associations to group different profiles together. It also allows people to own their data instead of being at the mercy of every social network.
My apologies for the technical difficulties. Many thanks to Paul Walhus for filming, Juan Sequeda for engaging the dialog, Whurley for fixing my internets, and Giovanni Gallucci for buying me some time while i figured things out.
When I was growing up, I took every computer problem to my dad. Why? My dad liked computers to the point where I debating banning him from CompUSA. When I worked at Dell, I put together a $2000 computer for him and he bought a $3000 one. He liked helping me with my problems because my dad is a 72 year old dude who just loves his PC. Me? I just wanted the stupid thing to work.
I still hate computers. People call me a geek, but they are so far from the truth. I like what computers do. I hate computers. I like playing tennis and skiing and enjoying the company of friends. In sum, I love living. I don’t want to be behind a computer if I can help it.
So you can imagine my excitement that people are building iPhone apps and are dedicated towards using the semantic web to solve data portability issues. Why? IMHO, social media is boring. Very boring. I’ve driven Ferraris, skied down black slopes in Colorado, and gone crazy on a jet ski. I’ve built roofs for churches in rural Mexico where the streets were not paved and the children looked like they came from a Diego Rivera painting. Life is beautiful and fun, and we shouldn’t sit behind a computer and miss it all.
I need to read more about social media like I need a hole in the head. I just want the stupid stuff to work on my iPhone so I can move on with my life. I like people–just not in the context of sitting behind a computer.
So, for the love of God, so I can move on with my life, BUILD APPS FOR THE iPHONE. GO TO THIS EVENT AT CONJUNCTURED TO DO IT. AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE SEMANTIC WEB SO I DON’T HAVE TO SPEND ALL DAY UPDATING PROFILES. GEEZ.
Here’s the post I put on Seeismic dedicated to this issue:
The Yahoo stock price hit $20.50 a share today. Last week, Microsoft CFO Christopher Liddell said Thursday that Yahoo is a “declining asset” and that the chances of a full-on acquisition are now “negligible.”
This sucks.
It doesn’t suck that Microsoft is choosing not to acquire Yahoo. It sucks because Yahoo has an open source initiative that no one in the press seems to be paying attention to. A good example is Search Monkey. If you can’t compete with Google, just open it up and let others improve the search engine.
Who ultimately is the loser in all of this? We are. People are afraid of Google for a reason. They have their hands on a lot of different industries and have the power to shut a lot of people down. When Yahoo struggles with a good idea, Google gains strength in market share. Google can therefore charge more money to us as advertisers so it can further improve its reaches in other arenas. It’s a slippery slope.
I was with a lawyer who is a client of mine and showed a simple demonstration. I Googled “criminal lawyer Houston” and clicked the first ad. I said, “That just cost that guy $20″. With Yahoo struggling, that same ClickAd will go to $30 before you know it. Perhaps the biggest spenders on AdWords should get a clue and throw some developers Search Monkey’s way.
Twitter users are as unique as they come. Sometimes you’ll follow someone only to find out that this person tweets any time he or she eats a brownie or goes for a walk outside. Other Twitter users are pseudo politicos out to change the world. What unifies them all?
When they see you in person, they expect that you’ve read their Tweets.
TweetDeck helps you organize your tweets into segmented lists so you can better keep track of the people you follow. Here’s why it’s important that you use TweetDeck if you follow a lot of people:
whuffie:
A slang term coined by Corey Doctorow in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom to describe reputation-based capital.
This is also described by Tara Hunt as “social capital” (i.e. cred that isn’t money).
At Volusion, I never felt like I could use my talent. I wasn’t writing with my voice. It’s a very hollow feeling to come home and feel like your work isn’t really your own.
Lynn at GeekAustin suggested I write for him. He’d had the site “in the garage” for a while and had had some success with the GeekAustin Happy Hours. We decided we’d do some interviews of geeks in the Austin area. Although I never felt I could write in a way that appealed to geeks, Lynn watched as the RSS subscriptions went up.
Lynn felt that writing for GeekAustin was a way for me to show people my talents and build my “whuffie” so that I could get a better job. Although I wasn’t happy at Volusion, I couldn’t be aggressively looking elsewhere because my boss told another employee that if we were caught, we could get fired. It was the best shot I had at establishing myself.
What ensued? I wasn’t pummeled with job offers I wanted. I was pummeled with people asking me to write for their own organizations for free.
I’ve been asked to head up NetSquared Austin. I’ve been asked to be more active in Austin Social Media Club. People remind me of their events completely out of the blue. I’ve been asked to “pimp” a design firm who said they’d swing work my way, but never did. I’ve had random startups calling to pitch me their product ideas, saying, “Yeah, we could use you later on”. I’ve been told my face is on every Facebook event in the Austin area.
I don’t have health insurance right now. I haven’t been on a vacation in over a year. I’m worried about paying my bills.
Man, whuffie sucks.
I lost one client already which I blame on my extracurricular Web 2.0 activities. I have others lined up which may or may not fall through. I will not volunteer for anything again until I know I can take care of myself. Whether this is with a series of clients I help freelance or at a company that actually understands that I work well with little supervision and with adequate compensation, that’s up in the air.
I’m even looking at two positions in Houston. Houston, people!
I love the Austin 2.0 community. I love Austin period. That’s why I take pictures and write posts with tons of link juice and throw people’s resumes around. But I have to learn to say no, and this post is my first step to saying no.
I’m revising this blog complete with all my services this week. If you know someone who needs help with website branding, copywriting, press releases, blogging or social media, have them contact me at michelle(at)michellesblog.net. Just make sure they pay me in dollars and not whuffie, because I don’t think my landlord takes that yet…
This anti-Twitter stuff coming from House Democrats is absolutely ridiculous. This is a perfect example of politicians playing politics instead of actually acknowledging someone’s freedom of speech.
These politicians raise millions of dollars just to get a bunch of cheesy 30 second TV spots and conduct polls. Who the hell actually listens to those worthless ads anyway? How genuine are those user surveys? Here is a medium that is TOTALLY FREE, that gives them direct access to a user base that is educated and votes, and they want to turn it off? I say, get them all on there and let them duke it out for the hearts and minds of voters. I’d love to interact with Congresspeople. It will tell me who’s sincere and who’s smart, and who would be better off selling life insurance somewhere.
Let Congress Tweet? I say, bring it! You can’t hide from the internet, so you might as well embrace the tools that better allow you to leverage it.
2.) Contact the Franking Commission regarding this issue. The Franking Commission determines how Congress communicates with constituents. Since you cannot obtain House members’ emails (to prevent spam), I’ve included a link with each Franking Commission member’s contact form. Please let them know that we want to follow our Congresspeople on Twitter, in blogs, on Qik and Utterz, so that we may be more involved in our political process.
If you are busy and want just a pre-filled message, you can use this one if you wish:
Communication between Congresspeople and constituents is a natural part of every healthy democracy. Social media tools such as Twitter, Qik, Facebook, and blogs facilitate this communication better than any other tool throughout history. Twitter has saved people from forest fires, bailed a man who was unlawfully thrown in an Egyptian jail, organized blood drives and raised money against cancer, and spread the word about natural disaster relief efforts. It is a powerful tool that can help you make strong decisions for our nation. I would like to invite you and other Congresspeople to use these tools to more effectively serve your constituents.
Here are the people on the Franking Commission. Just click on their name and it will take you to their contact page.: Michael Capuano Robert A. Brady Zoe Lofgren Zoe does not allow for emails outside her district, so here is her phone number: (202) 225-3072.
Charles Gonzalez (no contact form. What a bum!) Susan Davis Artur Davis. He also requires you to be a constituent, so you might want to call at (202) 225-2665. Vern Ehlers Dan Lungren Kevin McCarthy
Let’s let Congress know that it is more communication and not less that will improve our democracy.
So I’m freelance, and I’m starting to line up clients but it’s going a little slow.
This DOES NOT mean that I am willing to give up free advice on social media, website architecture, SEO, SEM, copywriting, blogging or anything of that nature. I spent two years perfecting a layout to sell cars online for BMW of Austin. I spent one year as an Ecommerce Consultant for Volusion, and one year as their internet marketing blogger. This means I have a total of four years understanding what does and does not sell on the internet.
You don’t ask lawyers for free legal advice, or doctors for free medical advice. You pay them for a consultation. This is how commerce works and what allows us to pay our bills. If I give one company free advice, it is not fair to my paying customers.
Please do not take this personally. I just need to earn a living just like everyone else.
Jim Kukral recently wrote a rather entitled “The Death of the A-List”. The article by Jim Kukral, an online marketer, postulates that people are now seeing that Web 2.0 celebrities are just normal people who became very good at self-promotion. This will open the doors up to what Clay Shirky would call “everybody”. Apparently, Hugh MacLeod discussed this matter with Clay and you can read their thoughts on Hugh’s blog.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve known some web 2.0 “celebrities”, and some of them I really like. What I think people are realizing though is that many of these celebrities often become this way because 1.) they have an absolute focus on obtaining as many followers as possible and 2.) these followers believe that knowing or being associated with that person will also earn them a status of fame. It’s like hanging out with that boring, popular girl in high school. It gets you noticed, but it probably won’t accomplish much.
Why do I think the “A-List” will and should disappear?
The online space has the power to equalize the entire world. The barriers for entry in terms of exposure have never been lower. We have a medium allows us to present information in an interactive way. There is no soap box. There is no corporate entity telling us what to do. Information is delivered not from the powerful leaders who can afford to push out information, but from a cloud of people with different perspectives, experiences, and skill sets.
The web 2.0 early adopters showed us how to use the tools so we have to give them credit for opening the door. However, the sooner we encourage people to go beyond the simple vanity of new media, the sooner we can attract the vast numbers of people who are actually set to improve our world by communicating with these advanced tools.
What would this look like? Imagine the following scenarios:
1.) Instead of just Robert Scoble Qiking everything, victims of natural disasters like Katrina Qik what is happening during and after a storm. How much easier would it be to mobilize people?
2.) Imagine all the world’s major AIDS researchers forming a Ning group with AIDS victims and others involved in the fight against AIDS.
3.) Imagine watching an world renown economist Jeffrey Sachs giving a lecture to anyone who wants to see it using Viddler. Watchers could leave comments on the timestream that Sachs would actually answer. Watchers could also engage in a discussion in comments, or could chat about the discussion using Oovoo or a chat room.
The possibilities are limitless. I say, let the 21st century Renaissance begin.
I am amazed at how many pats on the back I get for trying to support Elaine Allan’s efforts to help Burmese refugees here in town. All these people, all Obama supporters. All clamoring for change. Few choose to step up and actually help out.
Awareness is great. People willing to “get their hands dirty” are so much more useful though.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I suppose awareness is better than indifference. But when I see a kid who is a year old who isn’t wearing a diaper because his mother can’t afford them, and I meet a man who doesn’t have a job, can’t speak English, and has sought political asylum here in the States, I have a hard time settling with awareness. I met a family that was down to six eggs to eat right here in Austin, Texas.
How excited should I really be about the new iPhone apps? Why should I follow your dogs on Twitter? I love geeky people and feel they want nothing but the best for this world. I just don’t think they quite get the disparity in our world, and how little effort it takes from each individual to fix it.
So please support Obama. Support change. Just appreciate that you, and not your government, are responsible for the change that this world needs. Whether you believe that we need to find the cure for cancer, or bridge the digital divide, or solve world hunger, you cannot rely on your government to fix these problems. It doesn’t matter how many tax dollars you throw at it. Anyone who’s dealt with the government knows that their programs are wasteful, inconvenient, and run by people who are rewarded for being tenured rather than competent. Try this on for size: I am still dealing with crime victim’s compensation paperwork A YEAR AFTER the the situation that warranted it. When I asked a woman who worked for this division to just email me a fax number, she said she was unable to do this. EVERYTHING IS PAPERWORK WITH THE GOVERNMENT, AND THIS IS A WASTE OF YOUR TIME AND MONEY.
Change isn’t just a buzzword. It is an action that we all have to take to make society better.
BTW, if you want to improve the Burmese people’s situation here in Austin, please email Elaine at borntohelp(at)earthlink.net. She will tell you everything they need.
