Tommy Vallier - New Media Strategist

Yesterday, I spent a large amount of time inside the website known as Facebook. Most of this time was spent browsing people’s profiles or managing how I was connected to people. I’ll likely do more of the same today, but I thought I’d report on what I did, and what the plans are.

Spring Cleaning

I started the day by removing the nearly 40 applications I wasn’t using. This brought me down to 22. Half of those are official, Facebook-created apps such as groups, and events, and 3 more are applications that I play a role in as a Developer. So I’m left with 8, really. Not bad.

I next went through and tweaked my Facebook privacy and limited profile settings. This was going to play a bigger role in my plans later in the day. I also moved a few things around on my profile, and tidied things up there.

Lunchtime Reading

I ate my soup and garlic bread while browsing the immense application directory. After recently removing applications, this might seem like an odd choice, but I wasn’t adding anything - yet. Facebook’s application platform (which, I promise, will be a whole post unto itself shortly) offers a lot of widely varying applications for use. I was looking for those that would help make my time insdie facebook more productive.

I’ve got a list and will be expermenting soon.

Managing People And Connections

More and more, Facebook is becoming my Rolodex. While some people use LinkedIn for this, Facebook allows me to not only connect to people, but to get a small glimpse into their lives and what they’re doing. For me, it’s really an advance marriage of LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’ve been making a big use of the friend groups within facebook to keep track of my connections, and a large amount of time (A few hours, in fact) went to re-organizing those. In all, I now have 37 of these groups. Some of these, like my “Canadian”, “American” and “International” cast wide nets, while other groups only have 3 or 4 people in them.

Every event I’ve attended (Except for one) has it’s own group, and people I met, or visited with, at an event goes into that group. This means that I can quickly pull up a group and see who was around. As I friend more people, I can then add them to their correct groups, and keep them sorted. Something I couldn’t do with my physical Rolodex. Not easily, anyway - and I tried.

When Worlds Collide

Facebook is, with the exception of email, the only place where my “work” world and my “real” world come together. It sure makes for an interesting dynamic when I sign in, too. It’s because of this that I’ve always been a heavy user of the limited profile option. People in my limited profile group, for example (Don’t check, you likely are) can’t see my friends list. Nor can they see photo galleries I post (Unless I specify they can) or my mailing addressor my home phone number.

I use the privace settings more to manage the fact that this is a place where two - very different - worlds come together and it allows me to be a complete goofball with my former room-mates, my wedding party, and my high school buddies, while being a complete goofball with new friends I’ve met through the world of social media. Sorting people took a LONG time, but it means that my Facebook world can have the balance it, apparently, needs.

Your Turn

I’m going to write more on my tricks within the Facebook walls soon (Including a full list of my privacy groups, and a look at my apps), but I want to know how you’re using the site. What does it bring to you? Who does it connect you with? What apps do you use? Why? Let me know.

I’ll admit it, I’m not a music buff. I don’t generally attend concerts, I don’t buy a lot of music (In either the digital or physical senses) and generally my radios (Again, digital and physical) are off. I listen to podcasts when I’m near my computer or traveling solo, and I let whoever I’m with control the background when I’m not alone.

But the other day I bought some music. Specifically, I bought 2 CDs worth of it. Now, being that I don’t listen to music often, this might seem a little silly. Especially when, and my memory is bad - so I may be wrong here, I have yet to really enjoy much of anything this group has put out before.

Lost? I bought the new Nine Inch Nails albums Ghosts I-IV.

Why? To support the idea. NIN has released two distinct versions of the digital download. The first is a free download from the website containing only the first part of the collection, Ghosts I. You can go, right now, and download that from their site for free. They also released a torrent file of it to help things along. The second costs 5.00, but is all four volumes, and contains a 40-page ebook and a bunch of extras, like wallpapers and avatars. Your options when you pay for the download are MP3 (320k, LAME encoded, already properly ID3′d, for the techies) and both Apple and FLAC lossless formats (In iTunes and not).

But NIN has gone beyond that. For 10.00 you get physical copies of the CDs. For 75 you get the 2 CDs, a Blu-Ray of the albums (With slideshow) and a DVD of the multi-track parts that make up the songs. Perfect for re-mixing. There was a 300 dollar package too, containing autographed vinyls. All 2500 of them have been sold, though. You still get the downloads, too, when you buy a physical copy.

The greatest part of this release, and the reason I jumped up and down when I saw this, was the FAQ page. More specifically, the line that read Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Podcasters? Go nuts - you can play ALL of the new track. Or mix them. Or add to them. And if you pick up that remix package? You can then mix up all sorts of goodies.

I haven’t listened to the music yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s good… But I can tell you it was worth my 5.00 to support the idea. Well played, Trent.

Alright - so this stirred the pot on Twitter, so I thought I’d expand on this here.

I tossed a comment onto Twitter today which read: “Pondering unsubscribing from 3 blogs who are using “retroblogging” techniques. Sorry, but I simply don’t have the time.“. A lot of people commented back to me about this, and wondered what it is and why I’m no longer going to be reading them… So I thought I’d expand.

First, I’ve been explained that “retroblogging” is creating blog posts that are past-dated, though publishing them on a later date. The people I’ve seen doing this have explained to me that this is done to put additional perspective on when the thought hit, and not when the post was written. This would mean that my handful of blog post ideas in my notebook from PodCamp toronto would all be dated … last weekend. Part of the “retroblogging” thin, though, is that posts are still published in order… So this post wouldn’t be “allowed” until ALL of my posts “from” last weekend went up.  That way everything stays in order and retains the perspective of when things are thought of.

Here’s the problem, though. If I’m a reader  of your blog, which I may have been until today, 3 posts in 10 minutes is CRAZY. I make a point of trying to keep on top of my blogs. I use my “mark as read” buttons very frequently, and try to go to bed with a clean slate. Why? Because it lets me start each day fresh and new and able to keep up. I do, occasionally, let some things drift, but that should be my call. If it’s March 2nd and you’re posting something dated February 27th,  along with 3, 5 or 8 other posts, IT’S OLD NEWS. And having to devote 10, 20 or 45 minutes to catch up on your blog, because you, for whatever reason, didn’t post it when it should have been posted, is TOO MUCH TIME - and I’m not going to put up with it any more.
If I’m no longer a subscriber to your blog, I’m sorry. I’m hoping important things you have to say reach me via others. If you think I was (And am no longer as a result of this) a reader, feel free to get in touch. Especially if you change your practices.

I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from people on this year’s Mentor Lounge at PodCamp Toronto and I’d like to take a quick minute to explain where it came from, and how it became the session that occurred this weekend.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m a big believer in the spirit of PodCamp organizers learning from other PodCamps. This means that where NYC slips up, Boston improves on, and the mistakes Boston make then get improved in Toronto, and so on. This allows us, as event organizers, to not only build an event that was better then our last event - but to try to build one that is better then ANY of the last events. This played a big role in my bringing the Mentor Lounge to Toronto.

Hello, Pittsburgh

I’ve attended all of the PodCampy events in Pittsburgh. They’ve held 2 full-blown PodCamps, and a single-day, newbie-focused BootCamp sandwiched in the middle. They’re also in planning mode for their 3rd PodCamp this fall. Prior to the BootCamp, the organizing team noticed that people new to the space were hesitant to walk up to someone else and say ‘hello’. They often didn’t mind talking to a presenter immediately following the presentation, but beyond that, they kept to themselves.

Online, there is no “barrier” to connecting. If you want to say hi to someon, you go to their blog and leave a comment. Or you send them an email. If they never respond, so be it - you simply assume they were busy and move along. No harm, no fowl. But if you go to say hello to someone in person, there’s a much scarier risk of rejection. People are scared they won’t be noticed, or they’ll be ignored. This stings a lot more in the real world then it does in the digital one.

So the team in Pittsburgh wanted to break down that invisible wall at BootCamp and make it easier for someone to say hello. The idea was pretty simple: A room was set aside, called the ‘Mentor Lounge’ and people could consider it an open space where anybody within it’s walls was willing to be talked to. You could approach them and say hello, or ask questions, or trade business cards… Anything you’d like - with no fear of rejection. Sadly, the room stayed mostly empty. A follow-up attempt at PodCamp Pittsburgh 2, this time with coloured dots on name badges to represent interest areas, also didn’t go over so well.

Toronto and Beyond

I knew the idea could be improved upon, and set out to do that with Toronto. This time, rather than create an empty room, I’d put people in it. Specifically, I’d put together a panel of people willing to answer questions from other people. No slide decks, no presentations, not even a projector. Just a panel, a moderator and an audience. It went over wonderfully. People were, at first, a little hesitant to raise hands… But once the ball got rolling (Occasionally with a “So everyone in this room knows everything they’d like to about [topic]?” prod) things kept moving pretty well. Questions were answered, people connected, and that invisible barrier was all but gone. At least for the hour and a half we were in there.

A lot went right with my attempt at the Mentor Loung, but in the interest of helping the other PodCamps looking to adopt this, I’ve already asked myself what went wrong. For one, we only had 75 minutes - start to end. This meant that to break things up into the four major categories we covered (audio podcasting, video podcasting, blogging and social networking) each only received 15 minutes. At the end of all 4 there were still questions in the room, so this could have, and likely should have, gone on much longer. I also regret not giving more of an introduction to who people were. When we swapped panels, I simply gave names and continued into the next question - I think more details on who the person was (And why they were on the panel) would have helped.

One other thing I think went really well was opening up a seat to the room. When I found myself with a free seat during the video panel, I simply asked the room if anyone knew enough about creating, editing and posting video to answer questions on it. Someone volunteered. The same happened in the blogging panel. I think this really drove the fact that the people on the panel are simply human, too, and that anyone in the room could be a part of this space.

I know that some of the organizing team from Pittsburgh, NYC and I believe Ohio were watching the Toronto event closely and I look forward to seeing how, or if, they adapt and integrate the lounge into their events.