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Jun 29

Attend Austin’s MOST EXCLUSIVE Tech Event–The Tweetup Blood Drive

June 29, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

Foo Camp. TED. Michael Arrington’s Twitterfeed. None of these are as exclusive as the Tweetup Blood Drive occurring in Austin, Texas on Thursday, July 3rd from 10 am to 4 pm at the Blood Center of Central Texas.

Why is this event so exclusive? If you go to the reservation list, there are only 96 spots available from 10-4. As of 4:23 on Sunday, five spots are already taken. That means if you want to be one of the tough guys or smart women who donates blood to save lives, you have to book your spot before everyone else does or your spot will be totally gone.

This event is sponsored by the Austin Social Media Club, the 501Tech Club, and Austin Jelly. You don’t have to be a tough guy or a smart women to be a member of these groups, but it couldn’t hurt. David J. Neff of the American Cancer Society will be organizing the event throughout the day.

To be sure to beat Scoble to the punch, follow these instructions:
1.) register or log into the Blood Center of Central Texas’s website.
2.) Choose the location at 4300 North Lamar.
3.) Be sure to pick a time slot from 10 am-4 pm on Thursday, July 3rd.
4.) Show up at the appropriate time. Give a shoutout to David J. Neff.
5.) Give blood. Eat a piece of the sammichometer. Give thanks that you are healthy and can offer health to someone else who needs it.

Be sure to blog, Tweet, and spread the word about this event as soon as you can. If you blog it and are lazy, just copy and paste steps 1 through 5. Please refer them to the Facebook event for it. You want to make sure your followers know that you know the latest cool happenings in Austin.

If you aren’t in Austin, sorry. You will just have to have a Tweetup Blood Drive in your city on your own ;-) .

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Jun

Planting Seeds in Austin with Innovation Camp and Conjunctured Opening

June 29, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

Yesterday was a full day for me at Innovation Camp and the Conjunctured Coworking Space opening. I can’t imagine what it was like for the guys at Conjunctured though. Unfortunately, John Erik Metcalf was sick, but I assure him both events were successes.

Why do I say that these events plant seeds?

Innovation Camp was a great place for people to discuss new ideas in a free way. What was the best part? People openly critiqued ideas to make them better. The guys at Downtown Cartel do not think my idea of a community for open source projects that aggregates donations from multiple users in exchange for functionality was that innovative. I told the guys at Conjunctured that getting worked up about a Startup District is step 1o when we should focus on step 1. At the end of the day though, I like both these groups and respect their positions. It was a great way to bounce ideas off of other people because in the end, people just wanted to make each other’s ideas better.

I like the concept of coworking. I enjoyed visiting the Caroline Collective in Houston and am really excited for Conjunctured and Launchpad. Coworking plants seeds for good companies and good work because it promotes voluntary collaboration between people. Imagine: no more pouring through Monster.com, only to get a boss that ends up being the devil reincarnate. No more coworkers who are so grating, they end up ruining your day causing you to take out your frustrations on the people you love. We choose to enter a coworking space and no one forces us to collaborate to appease shareholders or greedy bosses. We can leave at any time. Coworking by its very nature encourages good work, because we work on projects we love with the people that we work with the best. If we aren’t feeling particularly productive, we are not confined to do work at a certain time at a certain place in a certain manner. This allows ideas to flow rather than being forced. As a former UT philosophy geek, this seems like an existentialist’s dream.

As someone looking to hire someone for a project, I’m not sure why you’d want it any other way.

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Jun 26

Exploring Open Source with The OG Open Source Guys at OpenNMS

June 26, 2008 • View Comments • Open Source

Me in NC with the Guys from OpenNMS

I just got back from North Carolina to meet with the guys at OpenNMS about their website. These guys are OG open source network management software guys, since OpenNMS has been around since 1999.

It truly is refreshing to see a company that gets open source. Open source isn’t about some pie-in-the-sky ideal of what software or community is. Open source makes sense business wise.

To me, open source is about:
1.) freedom, since we can customize the code to do what we need it to do rather than what a software company decides is right for us.
2.) pragmatism, since we only have to pay for the part we need customized and yet we get all the other features for free.

It’s funny, everyone always asks, “How do you make money with open source?” This question equates open source with free, which open source is not. That is freeware. The OpenNMS Group is profitable because it provides support and customization for the OpenNMS project. The more they get the OpenNMS project out there and the better services they provide in helping customers’ networks run more efficiently, the more money they make. It’s pretty simple.

Open source empowers the user to put in as little or as much into a product as they wish. No other software model allows us to do that. Think of it like a political campaign. Generally those who spend the most money or effort have the most impact on how the software functions. If it works great as is, you don’t have to do anything. If it has bugs, help fix them. If you need it to do something else, make it do something else or hire someone else to make it do what you want. Just like democracy, open source communities are only as good as the people in them and need good leaders to keep mob mentalities in check.

Many thanks to Tarus, Dave, Ben and Matt for treating me so well and dealing with my 10,000 questions while I was in North Carolina.

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Jun 24

Are We Really Keeping Austin Weird?

June 24, 2008 • View Comments • Social Media and Society

I am laying in bed at a the Rosemary Inn, a bed and breakfast in Pittsboro, NC. Although Pittsboro is not the tech hub that Austin or even the Triangle is, it is the home of OpenNMS, the open source network management software company I am consulting for.

Everybody raves about how cool Austin is. While I love Austin and still want it to totally kick Silicon Valley’s ass, I have to say, are we really keeping Austin weird?

I ask this question because here in the town of Pittsboro, most of the stores are locally owned. The diners are locally owned and try to serve local produce whenever possible. Tarus at OpenNMS took me to a grocery store that looked like what Whole Foods used to look like that served locally grown food and offered locally grown products. I even went to a biodiesel plant that uses waste from the town to fuel vehicles. Pittsboro is quaint for sure, but at least it truly is unique and reflects the personalities of its residents.

I truly love Austin and want nothing more than to see local companies take off. I’m tired of reading about Silicon Valley companies in Valley blogs like TechCrunch. There is a wealth of talent in Austin and I don’t think we need Silicon Valley’s shady VCs to succeed. However, we do need to Keep Austin Weird.

We need to support locally owned businesses. We should watch local acts (I’m bad at this one, so if y’all want a friend to see a good show with, ping me). We should use Austin hosts and use Austin software. A person living in Austin should feel like he or she can open a business and people will support it. If it sucks, tell that Austinite what their business can do to earn your business. If we don’t support each other, who will?

Remember, Keep Austin Weird, or watch us turn into a Strip Mall Hell or even worse–Silicon Valley’s Cheap Labor Force Whipping Boys (and Girls).

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Jun 22

Rocking the Lebowski Bash with a Nihilist and a Little Dude Who Was Stoned

June 22, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

One of my favorite films of all times is “The Big Lebowski”. When I heard Jason McElweenie of Schipul Web Marketing fame was having a Lebowski Bash at the Caroline Collective, I felt compelled to check it out.

I have to admit, I felt a little weird about driving to Houston for it. After all, Austin is a Lebowski town and I’m thinking our Lebowski factor outweighs Houston’s by about four to one. Why go to Houston to see a bunch of people dressed up like a bunch of Austinites?

I decided to say, “Eh, fuck it.” My sister is from Houston and is also a tremendous Lebowski fan and I wanted to check out the Caroline Collective anyway, so I figured it would be worth it.

I busted out my Maude with stoned Lebowski spawn costume and my sister rocked the Houstonian nihilist look complete with scissors necklace. I was close to winning the costume contest but lost to a very badass dream sequence Maude complete with viking helmet and bowling ball bra. There’s just very little competition for bowling ball breasts. A crowd favorite every time.

It was nice to catch up with some of the Houstonians I knew already as well as meet some for the first time that I’d only previously known on Twitter. A good group of people, for sure. 650 people showed up and they had to make a beer run because everybody drank all the St. Arnold’s. We listened to the Ton Tons, rolled a few even thought it was shomer shabbas, and then sat down and watched (and quoted) the movie. Fun times.

Anyway, many thanks to Jason, the folks at the Caroline Collective, and the sponsors for throwing this fun event. If you haven’t checked out coworking at the Caroline Collective already, you should.

I’m off to Austin again. The Dude Abides.

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Jun 17

Great Times at GeekAustin’s Semantic Web Austin Launch Party

June 17, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended

I have known Lynn for some time now. Lynn totally saved my life (truth), so it makes me happy when the GeekAustin parties are successful.

Yesterday proved no exception. It was a great format. The people who wanted to discuss the semantic web could, while others who just wanted to socialize could do that too. Substance but fun–a great combination.

I took pictures last night and encourage everyone to tag their photos and photos of others they know. This is how people get to know one another, especially people who are known only by goofy cartoon avatars. Here is the set from the
Semantic Web Austin Launch Party.

Many thanks to Lynn, Juan Sequeda and John de Oliviera for helping putting it together.

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Jun 11

Why Plurk Will Fail

June 11, 2008 • View Comments • Other Social Networks


I like Plurk. It’s fun to put out a message and then have all subsequent threads neatly organized underneath. It definitely needs an API and a way to track @replies, but it is a neat tool. I was excited when it first came out.

Why then the harsh title, you ask? Plurk rewards us for Plurking and punishes us for not Plurking by using a “karma” system. Go to an important meeting for a day, have a fun day with your family, save a homeless shelter from being torn down. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t Plurk, Plurk lets you know that they are not happy with your Plurking activity and take away Karma points.

People should not feel obliged or punished for not wanting to use a social network. That’s just silly. It’s like the mother who always whines at you for not calling. Come on now, sometimes we get busy, and it’s hard to call you as much as you want us to because you are retired and we are not.

What is the result of this plurking karma nightmare? Karma obsessed goobers with nothing better to do than Plurk any dumb idea that comes to their head. Uh, sorry you don’t have a lot of followers on Twitter and have resorted to something else. I still do not care what you have to say.

I do give props to Darren Rowse from Problogger. He uses it, but doesn’t abuse it. There are others like Connie Reese and Omar Gallaga who pop in once in a while, but their Plurks are vastly outnumbered by plurking nightmare people. What’s kind of nice is you can stop following your “friends’” plurks without actually taking them off and thus risking the incitement of a Plurk war. God forbid.

That is not a community. That is a competition without money or really any benefit whatsoever. What a Plurking nightmare.


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Jun 09

30 Burmese Refugees Bust into Anarchistic Craze at the Outta School Super FunFest

June 9, 2008 • View Comments • Events I've Attended, Social Media for Social Good

What happens when you take
1.) 30 Burmese refugees in who don’t have cars to go anywhere and
2.) Texas heat (a given in the summer)

and give those refugees 250 water balloons?

You get THIS!

Outta School Super FunFest from Michelle Greer on Vimeo.

Check out Grant Hutchins’s pics on Flickr. Too awesome!

Many thanks to Josh Seaver and Grant Hutchins for helping out. It was an entire day of awesomeness.

These refugees have led a very hard life and could use them help. We are trying to score them computers as well as internet. If you are interested in helping them people out, please leave a comment or get in touch with Elaine Allan. Her website is www.borntohelp.org.

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Jun 08

Tired of Web 2.0 Celebrities? Here’s a Hint: QUIT PAYING ATTENTION

June 8, 2008 • View Comments • Social Media and Society

I read Hugh MacLeod’s (gapingvoid’s) post “10 things I hate about web 2.0″. This post got 35 comments, generally to the tune of “right on, Hugh”. Now I like Hugh, and that’s why I’m writing this sound piece of advice.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE INTERNET CELEBRITIES, STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM.

Seriously, do you know how many people are in this world who actually have interesting things to say? Do you know how many of them are not on Twitter, don’t blog, and will never Plurk? Do you know how much good work you can do if you just say in the words of the infamous “Dude” by saying, “Eh, fuck it” and just move on to something constructive?

I’m not knocking every internet celebrity. Some actually use it to offer interesting insights. Honestly though, do I need to see every moment of your life? Do I have to rush to follow your dogs on Twitter or , and if I actually did, would you have even an ounce of respect for me? Geez. To me, this is like following Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or whatever other skin and bones the gossip rags decide to throw at us. It’s a total waste of energy.

Here’s the test: if these people ceased to be famous, how would history remember them? What does the their work contribute to other people?

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Jun 02

Showing the Internet to a Burmese Refugee Who’d Never Seen it Before

June 2, 2008 • View Comments • Social Media and Society

Yesterday I went to Elaine Allan’s house to buy a couple of computer cords for the machines I’m giving to Burmese refugees. A lady named MuMu was over there. MuMu is a Burmese refugee who currently watches children for other Burmese people here in town. She speaks a little English, but is far from fluent. She has never used a computer in her life.

MuMu and other refugees like her are very interested in what has happened to Burma. MuMu didn’t know where her only sister was even before the cyclone due to the oppressive nature of the government. She’d heard about the storm from Elaine, but didn’t know the details.

I sat at a computer and showed her Google. I explained that this was a resource greater than all of the libraries she could imagine. There was a wealth of information at her fingertips, and she like anyone else could publish her story and connect with others.

She had seen a computer, but she had never in her life truly recognized the internet.

In seconds, I pulled up Google news and typed in “Burma cyclone”. I showed her pictures. Elaine and I explained headlines. She looked in amazement and a certain quiet sadness. I cannot imagine what was going on in her heart at that moment.

I messaged my friend in California and explained that this person was over 1000 miles away and could instantly communicate with me. I sent out a message of what we were doing to over 300 people on Twitter. All of this was new to MuMu. All of this could help her get better employment, educate herself and her children, or bring assistance to her family back home. None of it is at her disposal.

Social media is power. Believe it.

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