I've been fiddling around with a couple of different Twitter backgrounds and just created a new one.
I like it.
What do you think?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Stephen King: Lisey's Story
I just finished Lisey's Story by Stephen King. It's a few years old, but for some reason I had missed it when it originally came out. The story reminded me a lot of The Dark Half. Of course, much of that was due to the subject matter. Both are about authors. And, both are about authors with some disturbing mental health issues, which is also part of where their gift comes from. You can also see a bit of Stephen King's personal demons in both stories. There were parts of the story that I found hard to read. I prefer Stephen King books that are built in the world of fantasy and not in the world of real-life. His books based in real-life can be a little too real for me. Overall, I liked it and would recommend it to other Stephen King fans. I wouldn't list it in my top 10 of his books.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
What Am I Passionate About?
I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor yesterday. It gave me a little bit of an epiphany, although its something I've been thinking about a lot. My neighbor was laid off from his job on Friday. To be honest, before the conversation started I was a little confused about what he did for a living (I thought he was in computers / software engineering, and it turns out he's a tech / medical writer). As soon as he cleared up the confusion about what he did for a living, I immediately started throwing out resources for him about recruiters that I know in the area that he should contact for potential job opportunities. I also do that on Twitter. One of the first "Follow Friday" recommendations I received was for being social and trying to make connections. I like connecting people to other people that can help them get what they need. And, sometimes it may not be a person. Sometimes it may be a business. In some ways, I want to be like the Santa Claus from the Miracle on 34th Street. One of my favorite parts of that movie is when the Santa Claus tells the mom about a better place to go find the toy the child wants for Christmas. We should all be like that.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Work / Life Balance
I have always struggled with work/life balance. And, ever since I caught the social media bug it just seems to be getting worse. While I find social media fun, and I enjoy the connections I'm making, it still feels like work sometimes.
One of my struggles is time management and getting over the feeling that I have to "read everything". Working on that over the next couple of months is going to be one of my biggest challenges.
How do you manage work/life balance? What tools do you use to not allow work to take over your life?
One of my struggles is time management and getting over the feeling that I have to "read everything". Working on that over the next couple of months is going to be one of my biggest challenges.
How do you manage work/life balance? What tools do you use to not allow work to take over your life?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
SD Forum - Real Time Social Media Monitoring and Marketing
The SD Forum Semantic Web SIG held a forum on Real Time Social Media Monitoring and Marketing. It was a mixed bag of two companies that do social media monitoring (Techrigy/Alterian & Scout Labs) and one that's using blogs and other online social media to do marketing (BuzzLogic).
Most of the folks in the room were techies, although there also seemed to be a bunch of marketing folks there as well.
The presentation by Connie Bensen of Techrigy was disappointing. Her presentation seemed more pedestrian than it should have been for the audience in the room. She also seemed a bit nervous, which may be her natural presentation style. One of her most interesting slides (and not in a good way) was a set of two slides trying to show where the community manager fits into the cycle. The slides made absolutely no sense.
The second company to present was Scout Labs. They do social media monitoring. Top clients include Netflix and others. Margaret Francis and Jochen Frey were the two presenters. Francis is on the marketing side of things and Frey is the CTO. Margaret Francis did a fantastic job describing the social media platform and why especially an enterprise sized company should be using a platform like Scout Labs for monitoring. Her take on why folks like @comcastcares are doing customer service on platforms like Twitter was definitely interesting. They expect to monitor 100M in 2009. That's compared to 10M in 2008. They don't expect that same level of growth in 2010. The currently only monitor English language results.
The final presenter was Keith Kilpatrick of BuzzLogic who talked about how they are using online social media, and blogs specifically, for digital media and advertising for their clients. He shared information on how they are using Comscore and other ratings to determine where and how to advertise.
One topic that was covered by all three was the importance of listening before leaping. There are a ton of free tools out there to listen even before you have to pay. Alterian/Techrigy is a freemium model and Scout Labs allows you to do a 30-day trial.
Most of the folks in the room were techies, although there also seemed to be a bunch of marketing folks there as well.
The presentation by Connie Bensen of Techrigy was disappointing. Her presentation seemed more pedestrian than it should have been for the audience in the room. She also seemed a bit nervous, which may be her natural presentation style. One of her most interesting slides (and not in a good way) was a set of two slides trying to show where the community manager fits into the cycle. The slides made absolutely no sense.
The second company to present was Scout Labs. They do social media monitoring. Top clients include Netflix and others. Margaret Francis and Jochen Frey were the two presenters. Francis is on the marketing side of things and Frey is the CTO. Margaret Francis did a fantastic job describing the social media platform and why especially an enterprise sized company should be using a platform like Scout Labs for monitoring. Her take on why folks like @comcastcares are doing customer service on platforms like Twitter was definitely interesting. They expect to monitor 100M in 2009. That's compared to 10M in 2008. They don't expect that same level of growth in 2010. The currently only monitor English language results.
The final presenter was Keith Kilpatrick of BuzzLogic who talked about how they are using online social media, and blogs specifically, for digital media and advertising for their clients. He shared information on how they are using Comscore and other ratings to determine where and how to advertise.
One topic that was covered by all three was the importance of listening before leaping. There are a ton of free tools out there to listen even before you have to pay. Alterian/Techrigy is a freemium model and Scout Labs allows you to do a 30-day trial.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tweetup - Have you attended one?
Tweetups are the "in person" extension of Twitter relationships. I'm one of those people that is more social on Twitter and other forms of social media than I am in real life. I'm either an introverted extrovert or an extroverted introvert. Either way, I don't do well in large groups of people that I don't know.
I've been planning on going to a tweetup for the past several months, but they were either up in San Francisco or at an inconvenient time.
The first tweetup I attended was sponsored by Cadillac and featured a guest - Chris Brogan. The tweetup part of the event seemed under-advertised so it wound up being a fairly small group but with awesome food at the Sino Lounge at Santana Row in San Jose. There was plenty of time to get to know folks and it was relatively quiet and relaxed.
The second tweetup I attended couldn't have been more different. It was held at Rosie McCann's pub (again at Santana Row in San Jose) and was a loud, crowded affair. I didn't decide to go until the last minute. I talked to a few people I didn't know and then thankfully my introverted self was saved when someone I knew showed up. I talked with him and a few of his colleagues before calling it a night.
Two tweetups is not a large enough sample size for me to really base a solid opinion on whether or not the events are worthwhile. Hoping to attend more in the future.
The next Peninsula Facebook / Twitter Meetup is on Thursday, Nov. 5th at 7 pm at the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto.
I've been planning on going to a tweetup for the past several months, but they were either up in San Francisco or at an inconvenient time.
The first tweetup I attended was sponsored by Cadillac and featured a guest - Chris Brogan. The tweetup part of the event seemed under-advertised so it wound up being a fairly small group but with awesome food at the Sino Lounge at Santana Row in San Jose. There was plenty of time to get to know folks and it was relatively quiet and relaxed.
The second tweetup I attended couldn't have been more different. It was held at Rosie McCann's pub (again at Santana Row in San Jose) and was a loud, crowded affair. I didn't decide to go until the last minute. I talked to a few people I didn't know and then thankfully my introverted self was saved when someone I knew showed up. I talked with him and a few of his colleagues before calling it a night.
Two tweetups is not a large enough sample size for me to really base a solid opinion on whether or not the events are worthwhile. Hoping to attend more in the future.
The next Peninsula Facebook / Twitter Meetup is on Thursday, Nov. 5th at 7 pm at the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Brand Loyalty
I follow a lot of folks on Twitter who talk about branding, and I worrying about branding quite a bit at work too. For our non-profit's brand, it's more about visibility than loyalty.
For consumer brands, building that brand loyalty is key to repeat customers. There's only one brand that I'm absolutely devoted to and that's Rubbermaid. On Friday night, I went to multiple stores looking for Rubbermaid containers and that was after doing several web searches to see who might have Rubbermaid on sale.
Sterlite, at least in the home organization market, is probably Rubbermaid's biggest competitor and while I do have some Sterlite in my apartment, I'll never buy it again. I find it cheap and unusable. I can't tell you how many pieces of Sterlite I've had either break or buckle.
Rubbermaid isn't perfect and I've broken a couple of lids (mostly due to my own fault of dropping something heavy on top of the Rubbermaid lid).
What brands are you loyal to and what are you doing to support those brands?
Other great ideas on branding:
For consumer brands, building that brand loyalty is key to repeat customers. There's only one brand that I'm absolutely devoted to and that's Rubbermaid. On Friday night, I went to multiple stores looking for Rubbermaid containers and that was after doing several web searches to see who might have Rubbermaid on sale.
Sterlite, at least in the home organization market, is probably Rubbermaid's biggest competitor and while I do have some Sterlite in my apartment, I'll never buy it again. I find it cheap and unusable. I can't tell you how many pieces of Sterlite I've had either break or buckle.
Rubbermaid isn't perfect and I've broken a couple of lids (mostly due to my own fault of dropping something heavy on top of the Rubbermaid lid).
What brands are you loyal to and what are you doing to support those brands?
Other great ideas on branding:
- Chris Brogran - The multi-branded human
- Hajj Flemings - What is Your Message to the World: Personal Branding [video]
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