Category: Online Work/Life

The morning after Gnomedex

Gnomedex 9 at the Bell Harbor Conference Center was everything it was cracked up to be and well worth the $300 price tag for two days. (Yes, you should register to attend next year.)

Some of the best minds at the intersection of technology and social media were on stage, most of them giving frank, unvarnished presentations. The classroom/style auditorium (free wifi, plenty of outlets, great visibility, not-so-great chairs) was just the right size, and easy to get around in between sessions so you could chat with other participants.

People were friendly; three of the folks I ended up chatting with in the hallways and the dining room turned out to be invited speakers: cyber anthropologist Amber Case, Micah Baldwin (inventor of Twitter’s Follow Friday meme who blogs at learntoduck.com), and Mark Horvath, a former media exec and former homeless person who does guerilla public relations at invisiblepeople.tv for homeless communities (“some content may be offensive. Our hope is you’ll get mad enough to do something.”).

I also had the opportunity to meet Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute (an expert on open source sensing and nanotechnology who talked about life extension), Phil Plait (who writes the Bad Astronomy column at Discover), and Bre Pettis. Bre’s three-dimentional printer, demo-ed onstage an in the lobby, was unquestionably the hit of the convention.

The “un-convention” session on Saturday was an opportunity for me to give a 1-minute presentation on a type of social media data I’ve been exploring.

Speaking at Gnomedex (photo: Alberto Serafin Lopez)
Speaking at Gnomedex (photo: Alberto Serafin Lopez)

I came home with ideas, inspirations, and a stack of business cards from people who said “Let’s talk about this.” One of those cards is from a social media executive I’d love to work with.

But I came home to a sizeable pile of small, low-return projects with firm deadlines that will fill all of my time until I leave town on vacation next week. I’ve made promises to people that those small details will be taken care of. And I keep my promises.

So…which do I do? Pursue the big opportunities, or keep my promises?

The betting is open. I’ll report back at the end of the week.

The three forbidden words of web design

IE6 has long been the bane of the web design community. You design a site and it works in Firefox, it works in Opera — heck, it even works in Safari. But in IE6? Anything can happen, and, usually it does.

Just as superstitious thespians say “the Scottish play” when they mean MacBeth, web designers shudder and talk about “other browsers” when they mean Internet Explorer 6.

IE6 has long been the bane of the web design community. You design a site and it works in Firefox, it works in Opera — heck, it even works in Safari. But in IE6? Anything can happen, and, usually it does.

It takes just a few minutes to download and install Firefox (and it’s free), but most middle-of-the road PC users are still accessing the Internet with exactly what came installed on their PCs: IE6.

As a web content producer, I’m often involved in evaluating a site’s design or redesign for functionality. I test in several browsers, including IE6. But often, if we discover problems, the client doesn’t want to take the extra time or money to make the site anything more than minimally functional in IE6. It’s ugly, but it works, so it’s done.

Jeff Starr, of the excellent design blog Six Revisions, has written a comprehensive article on “taming” IE6, right from the beginning of a web design project. The good news is, it’s possible.

Are you ready for the black swan?

swanflipBryan Alexander, the research director at the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, has written a sweeping article on the implications of emerging online and digital technologies. If you’re interested in thinking about how we may be living our lives, online and off, in the next 20 years, this is a great read.

Two more things

A few final words (from me, at least) on Macworld 2009:

I missed Chris Pirillo’s talk on community (ironically, while having a wonderful lunch with a key member of my own community, a person who mentored me at Apple). But I watched the video of Chris’ talk on YouTube, and it was impressive.

“Putting something in front of people and expecting something to happen is asinine,” he warned. “So what is it that makes community happen? It’s all about what happens in your heart.”

This is a must-see for anyone who is attempting to create a community, online or off — or for anyone who works, as I do, with clients who aspire to create communities. Now I’m budgeting so I can attend the next Gnomedex, Chris’ annual tech conference.

Huge accolades go IDG, the company that organizes Macworld. This year’s conference seemed to delight presenters, vendors, and attendees. Everyone was crediting IDG’s vice-president Paul Kent for the success of the event. I am still trying to figure out how this guy orchestrated the conference and managed to play in rock bands at two late-night conference parties during the week!

What’s Twitter, and why I love it

If you work in an environment filled with friendly, fascinating people, where you continually hear about exciting news (local, online, and around the world), and you are encouraged to be witty and playful, then you don’t need Twitter.

If you work in an environment filled with friendly, fascinating people, where you continually hear about exciting news (local, online, and around the world), and you are encouraged to be witty and playful, then you don’t need Twitter.

However, I work in a cubicle in my house (really — I had a surplus Herman Miller cubicle installed here) and the cats have their limitations as colleagues.

Thus, five or six times a day, I Twitter. I take a look at what people are saying, throw in some of my own teasers, check “@” replies, answer publicly posted questions, and look at private “direct mail” I receive. My Twitter breaks correspond to the pattern I followed when I worked in a traditional office: Greet people on arrival, mid-morning coffee break, lunch, mid-afternoon break, and departure in the evening. The one addition is that I’m likely to check Twitter once or twice in the evening — by which time most of us are talking about what we’re cooking for dinner or what activities we’re up to (shopping, yoga, classes, crafts, dealing with the kids, etc.)

Who, you might ask, are these people I’m Twittering with? Well, unlike the real office where you are usually stuck with a few folks you don’t want to deal with, on Twitter you hear only from the people you want to hear from — you select the individuals you follow.

I’ve selected colleagues from my past jobs in tech, clients and colleagues from my current SEO work, leaders in the Seattle social media and blogging field, some belly dance, yoga, and fitness folks, and — here’s the twist — their friends. This “second tier” of Twitter is where it gets really interesting. I see my friends commenting on other people’s remarks, and I get curious about the other people, who often get curious about me, and the next thing I know we’re exchanging tips on everything from cooking to software. Or meeting in Ballard for lunch.

Twitter is also a great way of keeping up on what’s going on with friends from out of town. This way you don’t end up finding out, months after the fact, that they’ve changed jobs, moved, or split up with their significant others. You pick it up on Twitter, and can jump in with an appropriate private direct message.

I most often use Twitter from a web browser, but there are a variety of third party apps that let you read and post Tweets from a smart phone. (This list includes desktop widgets and smart phone apps.) I use PocketTweets but also use Twinkle, an app that lets me see other Twitter/Twinkle users within 1 mile, 2 miles, 5 miles (you get it) from wherever I am. It’s fun during an event (such as Folklife) or when you’re traveling. Or during a snowstorm, when you want to know what’s open in the neighborhood.

Yes, some people do take Twitter a bit too seriously. Some try to game it as a social networking tool, posting a bunch of marketing messages thinly disguised as clever repartee. (It’s like having a colleague at work suddenly launch into an attempt to recruit you into their religion, or sell you Amway products.) Fortunately, Twitter makes it very easy to “unfollow” these folks. And I do. (I’m not selective about who follows me, but Twitter offers a blocking tool for people who are.)

The competitive types get all excited about Twitter Grader, which ranks your influence within the Twitter community. I don’t know what the grading algorithm is, but I suspect it looks primarily at the quality of your followers (how long they’ve been on Twitter, how often they post, and how many followers they have).

There’s a trend towards merging all your online communications into one dashboard, so you’ll see people having their Tweets appear on their blogs, or on Facebook. That’s too large, and too uncontrolled an audience for me. What happens on Twitter, stays on Twitter, as far as I’m concerned.

Warm wishes for the holidays

The winter holidays are pretty much contiguous this year, which means we can light our menorahs, Christmas trees, and Yule logs all at the same time.

I like it — this feeling of everything all together.

In the 60s people talked about “integration.” In the 80s, it was “celebrating the differences.” Now you hear words like “transparency,” “remix,” and “mashup.” Whether it’s done carefully and intentionally, or it just happens, it’s all about the blurring of what once were differences — differences between our work lives and home lives, our public activities and our private activities, and even elements of our identities, such as race, ethnicity, and age.

Of course there’s are frightening aspects associated with this feeling of everything coming together. People of my generation were educated to think that things were better off clearly defined, categorized, and controlled. This wasn’t the best preparation for a world that now prizes the abilities to perceive connections, to keep moving forward despite ambiguity, and to monitor fast-moving, continuous feedback loops. Problem-solving has become more important than problem-prevention.

Interestingly, the new ways of thinking, and the new technologies inextricably mixed with them, are leading people to revisit older ways of doing things. Many of these old ways pre-date my generation and pertain more to my grandparents’ lives: eating locally grown food, and appreciating the aesthetics of handmade crafts. Many of the younger people I work with in the tech field are enthusiastic gardeners, knitters, cooks, musicians, and do-it-yourselfers.

The more I explore the new, and revisit the old, the more I enjoy myself! I can’t always control the long-term outcomes, but I can, each day, control the steps I take toward my goals. I think often of Steve Jobs’ assertion that “the journey is, and will continue to be, the reward.”

My best wishes to you for a happy and healthy year; one in which the rewards of the journey are many.