For the past couple of weeks I have been SUPER excited. Not long after my last post, I got a call from a friend in the new media space that I’d seen a couple of times at events. We actually had a nice long talk about a few different topics at PAB this year and have kept in touch (fairly) regularly since. He called to ask about having me help him out on a couple of projects of his and I ended the call with the biggest smile on my face I think I’d ever had. And the closer I got to my start date, the more excited I became.

My New Gig

I am totally thrilled to finally announce that as of today I’m joining Marko to help out with both pets.ca and photography.ca!

I don’t have an “official” title over there yet… Though I’ll come up with one soon enough… But I’ll be helping out with both the website development and makeover, as well as online community building and development. It’s very much a hybrid of what I was doing with the team at TalkShoe, mixed with what I was doing on the side and the fit couldn’t be better. My first tasks will be with the pet site, and we’re going to expand my roles from there.

Sharing Pages

Part of the reason that I’m so excited about this role is that Marko and I see very eye-to-eye on a lot of things. We’ve spent a great number of hours since our initial call a few weeks ago talking about the site, where it is, where it’s been and where it’s going - and we’re both looking at the same possibilities. It seems that every time him or I have a question for the other, we almost already know the answer before we ask it because the answer is generally exactly what we would hope it to be.

The site already has a vibrant community on it’s message boards, so that’s where I’m starting. My first role is to work with the community - and Marko, of course - to develop a new look, feel and style for the site.

So that’s my new role! I’ve turned down the other offer that had me breaking out in a sweat, and am smiles all over to be starting this one. Marko’s a fantastic, community-focused, down to earth guy and I couldn’t be happier to work with him.

When I went into the summer, I gave myself a timeline to do this on my own of three months. Beyond that, I was going to start handing out resumes, and looking for “real world” style work. Well, after a few talks with a few people, it looks like I found work with a web development company in downtown Kingston. I don’t want to dive into too much about what I’ll be doing (Or who the company is), as I haven’t discussed my “public” life too much with my likely-soon-to-be boss, but I do want to comment on the change.

Fear and Frowns

The new work will bring two substantial changes for me, one I’m scared of, and one saddens me deeply. The first, and the change I’m scared more of, is the shift in industry. I’ve been working in customer service/support, and generally with people, for 8 years. In fact, with the exception of one summer job, ALL of my work has been in customer service or user support. Even my most recent role with TalkShoe centered around making sure our users were happy. Shifting from a customer service space to a development space - and away from a space I LOVE to be in, social media - scares the crap out of me.

But in addition to being scared of the shift, the new job has me pretty sad. I’ve been working from home for just over 2 years now, and have really enjoyed it. In addition to the idea that I’m more at liberty to set my own schedule, working from home has allowed me to keep up with house work, blogs, emails and phone calls. Most importantly though, it’s allowed me to spend more time with my wife. As a nurse, her hectic schedule doesn’t leave a lot of time to spend together - working from home allows us to spend time together, at least in the same room, even if I am busy on my computer.

A Final Push?

When I last posted, I had a TREMENDOUS outcry of support, both from past colleges at TalkShoe, as well as users, friends and connections from all around the blogosphere. I was touched. I’m wondering, a little, if I can’t use that same outpouring now to help out.

While I have heard of the company it’s looking like I’ll soon be working for, and the idea of working with a bunch of geeks again is SUPER exciting, I’ve done web development work in a “corporate” environment before… and didn’t like it. I also REALLY don’t want to leave either customer service, or the work from home environment. So this is my appeal to my community: If you can help me out - and maybe find me work in the customer service space between now and Monday (So I can stop before I start), please get in touch.

The whole TalkShoe experience (The platform, product, staff and users) has been incredible and there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t loved being a part of the team - or the community - that makes TalkShoe work. But like every good pair of shoes, sometimes a change is needed: So I’ve decided to leave TalkShoe at the end of the month.

The More Things Change

While my time at TalkShoe is coming to a close, it doesn’t change my connections to the people I’ve met along the way. I’ll still be on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and will still be reading the blogs and listening to podcasts. It doesn’t affect some conference plans, either. I’ll still be attending (and helping) with those, too. And hey, maybe I’ll actually start writing in the blog more.

The team at TalkShoe has invited me to remain dedicated to the community and I intend to do just that. So while I won’t be as active in the community or interacting with the staff as much as usual, it also means I’m not going to be abandoning the Ning or the Facebook stuff quite yet. My email address will still work and I’ll still be answering questions, too.

Looking Forward

I’ve always looked toward the future with a fearful anticipation - nervous of change, but excited to try something new. It’s with this attitude that this exit is being made and my next steps are being planned. I’m looking, right now, at stepping toward the consulting and public speaking worlds - helping business and individuals get a handle on what this whole new media thing is. That said, I’m always open to the opportunity to work with a new team on something exciting.

The time I had at TalkShoe has been amazing and I’ve made some incredible connections as a result. It’s been an absolute honour to work with a team as diverse and intelligent as they are. The whole team knows I hope for nothing but great success for all of them. They deserve it.

That’s it for now - until next time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I gave 2 sessions this weekend: one on how I’ve been slowly abandoning desktop application in favour of web-based alternatives, and the other one was a getting-started session on TalkShoe. I also moderated the ever-evolving Mentor Lounge, and sat on a panel called “Twitter 101″ to a standing-room-only crowd.

As this was my first time helping to organize one of these events, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I ended up doing a lot of registration desk sitting and hallway monitoring over the weekend, just to make sure attendees were able to find what they came in to see. It was really interesting to hear the reasons why people were showing up throughout the day.

I want to give a big thanks to Connie Crosby, Dave Fleet, Rob Lee, Katherine Matthews, Sean McGaughey, Jay Moonah and Eden Spodek who were all involved  in organizing the event. I also want to congratulate Mark Blevis, Bob Goyetche, Rob and Katherine on the very successful “Zero to Podcasting” track they put on this weekend. There was a lot of buzz in the halls about it.

I’ve always supported the idea that PodCamps, as a whole, should learn from our own mistakes and over the weekend I took a number of notes about what I felt we did right, and wrong, so that other events such as NYC, Ohio and Pittsburgh can learn from where we slipped and better their own events. This can the let us better our own event in 2009.

I’ll be posting more about the weekend as the next few weeks go on. That’s it for now.

Customer Service Went First

I keep my profile on Twitter protected. Not so much because I don’t want people following what I say (I do) or because I have things to hide (I don’t) but simply because if I don’t protect my profile, my Twitter page jumps to the top of Google and out-ranks my own web site. That, for some reason, bothers me. I’d like to see Twitter implement a “no index” option, so I can keep my profile public but not have it show up in Google, but alas, that’s likely a dream.

Nearly 3 weeks ago (Jan 14th, to be exact) I noticed that when I clicked on  the friend request link on the side I received an error. I emailed support about it. I received an answer on the 16th stating that it was a bug, they were aware of it, and were working on a fix. I replied on the 20th looking for a workaround as I saw the number of requests grow from 1 to 5 to 8 to 11. Nothing. I emailed again on the 28th, now at 14 people. Nothing. I’m over 20 requests now. No word from support. No workaround. Still broken.

Ready To Move On

After the issues I’ve had with support, and now with the large amount of downtime - I’m ready to pack it in. Permanently. I won’t, yet, because Twitter currently provides much too much value to me to abandon it. It sounds though, to me, like the sentiments throughout the Twitter community are starting to sway the same way. If they pass that all-too-famous tipping point, I think Twitter will be looking at a mass exodus.

And hey - maybe that’ll help with the stability issues.

Drawing The Line

I’m a fan of the idea. Twitter is a vast, vast community of people and trying to find groups of like minded individuals in it is getting more and more difficult by the day. I’ve been able to find other local Twitter users using the built in search, but finding other people who like, say, bowling, or who work at a specific company is not easy. So the idea of a list that answers “Who on Twitter is into bowling?” or “Who on Twitter works for ACME, Inc” is a really useful tool. I can understand, too, that not everyone is a fan of the search field, or fills in profile details, so a “Who on Twitter lives in Anytown” is also handy to have.

What I’m not a fan of is the execution - but I’m going to be a little shadowy here, so as to not hurt feelings. At the time of writing there are 8 people listed in the Toronto Pack. Now, in the interest of disclosure, I was following all of them prior to the pack’s creation. Had someone were to ask me “Who in Toronto should I follow on Twitter?” I would have probably rattled off a list of 10-12 people. Only 5 or so of the pack list make my list of recomended folk, despite me following all of them. I can also list people I feel are missing from the Montreal, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, PodCamp Pittsburgh and PodCamp Toronto packs.

So… Why Not Add Them?

The comment came up when I mentioned my stance to someone last night, that I could just add the people I feel are missing. The site is, after all, a wiki, and was designed specifically for any user to be able to add people. I have added a couple of people (Never myself, I don’t ever add myself or my projects to wikis), but then I decided I didn’t want to play anymore. Why? Well, what am I supposed to do with the people I DON’T feel should be on the list? I guess I leave them alone, right?  What’s to say they didn’t add themselves to the pack just to get a large number of followers? Or maybe Jane added John because she values his opinions - but she’s the only one who does?

The few people I added, were added because I either value what they say, or feel they bring unique perspective to conversations. Or both. I didn’t add myself to any of the packs I’m on, and I’m not sure who did, but I hope they did so looking at what I post to Twitter (Or my blog, or elsewhere) and added me based on who I was and what I have to say, and not simply because I know then through a specific channel or because we’re friends.

Next For Me

The TwitterPacks project is a really neat one to watch, but I’m not sure of a really neat way to FIX it. There has been some discussion on the original blog post, as well as on Chris’ follow-up, of new ways to “fix” the project, but I feel any method would be fundamentally flawed. A voting system can be gamed, a central body can be bribed (And sway based on personal opinion) and an open system, well, we’re seeing how well that one would work right now.

I chose to step out of the TwitterPacks project based on the fact that the decentralized, all-access system simply has too many holes. While I’ve been a fan of Wikipedia for years now, I’ve been known to critique them for similar issues. The major difference is that Wikipedia entries, most of the time, can’t be looked at as popularity contests. I’ve never been one to add or remove details about myself (or work I do) to any wiki, this one included - I only correct details. I’m not sure what the “removal” policies are on TwitterPacks, but I could easily see someone angry at this post removing me from the lists I’m on - and that’s OK by me.

I’ve always discovered new people to follow through word of mouth, or in-person events - and I’ll likely stick to that. A comment from someone else suggesting I follow you is a thousand times more valuable to me then seeing your name on a list. And finding me on a list of people? Well, hearing that someone personally recommended you follow me is a much larger compliment then any list could ever be.