You 2.0

For better or worse, I'm viewed as the social media expert within my school. A side benefit of this is the opportunity to share what I know with whoever is willing to listen. Recently I was asked to conduct a brief series of workshops on behalf of the Office of Career Services.  The presentation you see here was a part of that effort. 

You can view another one, focused on how Twitter can be used for research and other professional purposes, here.

Those who participated had great questions, and gave me ideas on how I could refine these types of presentations even further. With any luck I'll get to do them again in the fall!

You 2.0

View more presentations from Jodi Sperber.

The power of collaboration

I spent a few days last week at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Atlanta, GA.  It was fantastic to have the opportunity to dive headfirst into a group of people as enthusiastic (if not more so!) about how to use social media to help forge social change.  I walked away with inspiration, ideas, and new connections with great folks, and am already looking forward to next year's, being held in DC. 

Of course, being a technology conference, there was an abundance of people tweeting, blogging, sharing slides, and otherwise sharing their experience.  So much so that the infamous Twitter fail whale made an appearance once or twice...


My personal goals for the conference were to meet others in the social change/social media space (check!), see examples of how others approach social media use in their organization (check!), and get some concrete advice for strategically bringing social media into existing communications activity (check!).

One of the mot difficult aspects of the conference was having to decide which workshops to attend.  With so many good options from which to choose, it took several rounds of reading, rereading, highlighting, and then narrowing to come up with my final six.

I was happy with my decisions and all, but could tell via conversations and the twittersphere that I would have been equally happy with other sessions.  Sadly, it is not possible to be in more than one place at a time (yet).

After I got home, still high off of the conference energy, I saw that someone had posted their notes from one session into Google documents.  Smart thinking!  "Self," I thought, "why not do this for all the notes?"

Within two minutes I had a public folder set up, and all of my notes were pasted into Google docs.  I also created a quick spreadsheet for people to list links to blog entries, slides, videos, or any other content.

I then began spreading the word of its existence via Twitter, using all the ways I could think of: sending a note out to my own followers, retweeting and thanking others who participated, including relevant hashtags, and including influential users the tweets.  With a little persistence, others started championing the idea as well.  Hooray for teamwork!

As of this writing, we have 23 sets of session notes being shared, with over 100 collaborators reading and editing.  I think this is fantastic, and I've already found great value in going through these notes.  As I couldn't attend everything, this is the next best thing.

I'm pleased that others have found this to be a useful resource, and more pleased that others have ideas on how to make it even better.

I hope to see this type of collaboration put into place at next year's conference (mark your calendar: March 17-19 in Washington, DC) - one more way to keep the NTC love going!

I’ve been lazy with the blogging as of late. However, after a super fun dinner party last night, I’m reinspired to give it another go. Hats off to JordonCornblog for reminding me that they can be about anything, and they are fun to read.

Thing is, whenever I sit down to type an entry, I suddenly lose all the clever thoughts I have been thinking since I awoke. Any moment of the day could be blown out into a full entry… Some examples from this morning:

• On my way to work, I passed by Olympian Joanne Dow out for a workout. She is a speed walker who probably walks faster than most people run. She and I overlap with our standard routes, it seems. Although I am guessing she doesn’t notice me in the same way that I notice her. I’m just another silver Jetta, not an Olympic athlete.
• About three minutes after seeing what it takes to be an Olympian, a man on a Segway rolled on by. It isn’t uncommon to see these machines around here, as they were invented in our fair city. Still, they always strike me as sorta goofy. I kinda want one, but in the same way that I kinda want to walk Ari the Cat on a leash every day – that is, I think they are good ideas, but I’m not sure I want to be seen doing it in either case.
• We have some new security posters in the office. They have goofy sayings like “Loose Clicks Sink Ships” (with, of course, an image of a ship going down). You can see the full repertoire of posters here. A silly reminder that I work on the set of Office Space, complete with TPS reports. Yes, we really have TPS reports.

All this, and it’s only noon.

Culturegraph, take 2

My culturegraph made it up to the website this morning - I even like the title they gave to it.

With the bug in me, I am on a bit of a tear. Basically, any song can be detailed in this way if you are so inclined. Not all achieve clever results, though... While it's still fun, though, I'll submit a few more.

Here are my latest that are worth sharing. Hopefully soon to be found on culturegraph as well. The first is a departure from the standard charts and graphs, but I thought it was fitting for the song.

The second is, admittedly a bit obscure. not in the song, which is well known, but in the presentation. My first shot at a visio approach:

If nothing else, it's a fun way to exercise both the right and left sides of my brain...

Wikicrastination

I am in the process of writing up an evaluation proposal at work. To get a reminder of the more technical terms for some qualitative research methods, I headed over to Wikipedia. I've come to use this site as an entry-level shortcut, when true depth of subject matter isn't required.

I searched the term "qualitative research," and one of the page editors had added the concept of coolhunting as a methodology. I was struck by this term, knowing it from William Gibson’s novel “Pattern Recognition,” so followed the link. Embedded in this page was the term “uncoolhunting” which I hadn’t yet heard, along with a suggested external link. I followed. The Uncoolhunter seemed like more of a blog, listing a few stories and stating their manifesto. One of the stories, dated 4/8, was about Leslie Hall, who I had seen on youtube a couple of years ago, showcasing the song “Gem Sweater” and other fantastically unfantastic ditties (one of which was clearly filmed in my former home of Jamaica Plain, MA). Turns out she has a mobile museum of the sweaters, along with a pretty fab photo gallery.

So I started at a genuine research question, and ended up at Gem Sweaters. All in the span of about 5 minutes.

And that is why I love Wikipedia.

It's an eBay world

I recently purchased my mom's bithday present on eBay (link provided, as if you didn't already know it), and the feedback I received from the seller was both bizarre and fantastic. It read:

"You are a golden God, enveloped in a veil of excellence"

My most unique feedback to date, for sure. Should you ever need to describe me to someone else, feel free to use that as the descriptor.

I've been on eBay for a while. I warn you that the following paragraphs are evidence of this, and of the fact that I sometimes put a lot of thought into seemingly inane topics. I like to think of it as homegrown sociology, or general societal observation.

My relationship with the site is going on 8 years at this point. A friend mentioned it to me as she knew I was a collector of female action figures. If you've ever tried looking, you'd know that it is pretty hard to find good ones, and back in the 20th century (oh, those ancient times!) it was even more so. To add to the difficulty, I was - and still am - particular about what I would purchase. I didn't want silly girly looking figurines; they had to be girls that could kick your ass should they choose to do so. They also had to have a good level of craftsmanship. In other words, I was less interested in frilly cartoon characters, and more interested in comic book characters. Like She Spawn or other Todd McFarlane creations.

These "toys" are not easily found in stores. And when a store does get a shipment of them, the more fanatical collectors (think: those who keep them in their original box, or buy glass display cases) immediately buy all of the good ones and then resell for a small profit. Once eBay came around, I could tap into all of those fanatics and feed my harmless habit.

When I first hopped into the scene it still had that yard sale feel to it, where people would just sell whatever crap they had lying around the house. Plus, of course, the niche markets including my action figure category. While it never quite had the touchy feely community feel of craigslist, it still created a zone where you engaged in temporary relationships during a sale. Feedback was personal. I like to think that I still come in to it with the same level of personal service and kindness, although a few things have clearly changed.

For example, it used to be that a seller would provide feedback as soon as payment for an item was received. Before the days of PayPal, this meant checks or money orders. Real, live envelopes and stamps were employed. Little notes accompanied the payment, often acting as a pseudo thank you note. It was a buyer's market, and if someone came across what you posted and actually wanted it, you were stoked that someone was actually interested in your stuff. You made money, they saved money, champagne toasts all around.

These days, sellers generally do not provide feedback until after the buyer has done so. And prices on many items are approaching prices in brick and mortar establishments. This, to me, is evidence of eBay tipping more towards a sellers' market. As so much empasis is placed on feedback as a means of garnering a reputation, you want positive feedback in your profile. If you leave negative feedback for a seller, do you expect that they'd turn around and leave you positive feedback? Doubtful. Thus, neutral or negative feedback is discouraged, and with it an honest rating of the experience for transactions that took a bad turn.

That criticism aside, as eBay has grown to the behemoth it is today, there is a culture behind it that I still find pretty fascinating. The feedback mechanism, while partially flawed, does provide insight into a member's personality. All you have to do is click through the other items that they buy or sell, and you begin to form an interesting picture of who is on the other end of the screen.

I came across one of these interesting profiles when I was trying to help a friend sell an old printing press. It was a huge press, and thus required a very specific type of buyer. I had no idea there were so many collectors of old presses, letters, and other printing memorabilia. Hunting through members' feedback, I found one woman who was an avid collector of marbles. That's all she had purchased in the past few months (and many of them). Where would this press fit into her marble-filled home? Would she use the marbles to help roll the press into it's new space?

I have also done a lot of poking around for cars and motorcycles (mostly research in trying to help others sell their vehicles, although partially so I can have an imaginary ride on lots of bikes I can't afford). There is a whole market of small-scale resellers out there, buying and selling cars like they were sneakers. Seems like a lot of effort for minimal profit, but if it's your thing, who am I to judge?

The marbles lady I judged a little.

Joining in the gadetgy fray, and race countdown

Ok, so after reading a friend's post, i may have changed my opinion on the iPod phone. Kudos to Apple for continuing their reputation as the pretty electronics people. I envision their employees as wearing high end jeans, tight ribbed sweaters, and cool urban kicks. Maybe a snarky t-shirt here and there, although that seems more of a PC thing.

I remember when the first combo telephone answering machines were coming out. I was nervous to purchase one, as I worried that if the phone broke, thus went the answering machine. It seemed wasteful in a way. Nowadays, more and more people are looking into smartphones, which allow you to carry all of your contacts, calendar, music, and files in one (quite compact) space. What if it drops into the bottom of your laundry basket, or the toilet, or is otherwise lost? I wonder if there is an emerging counseling field specializing in the loss of personal gadgetry and the high levels of inconvenience and personal pain that creates...

I guess you can lead a horse to totally cool water, but you can't make it give up its frugal nature.

In other news, I am five days away until my road race in Phoenix. I ran 10 miles on Sunday no problem (beautiful day, felt great) and haven't run since due to time constraints. That and my unwillingness to get up before 6am. Anyhoo, tonight is my last run (likely 5 miles) prior to the race. I can't decide if I'll be better off for such a light week mile-wise, or if that will hurt. Or if it just doesn't matter. In any case, I fly out to Phoenix tomorrow!

I have started collecting talismans for the race. I got a pair of socks from my wife, who can't make the race in person, which I will wear for the first time on race day. I recieved a beautiful, simple, handmade necklace from friends that I will wear as my only piece of jewlery. Another friend has been sending daily running-related inspirational thoughts and encouragement as an introduction to the running community, which has been really lovely and appreciated. In the less talisman but still fun bucket, I got myself a red Road ID bracelet, both for the race and beyond. As I run alone so much, I thought it would be a good idea.

There's a song brewing in my head about my recent 10 miler, particularly as I had to go through a tunnel that is long and dark. This tunnel previously served as my unofficial end of the line, limiting the distance I would go before turning around. Having run through it (and back) and survived, I think a victory song is in order. Stay tuned!

Nerd? Geek? Dork?

As I was calling my friend a geek, I was reminded of a quiz you can take to determine whether or not the term applies. I took it a while back, but it's always good to see if you've evolved any.

Me? Still nerd.

Pure Nerd 73 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 17% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations!