Thanks For A Great November Meetup!

November 17, 2009 2 Comments
Courtesy flickr: Kingstonist

Courtesy flickr: Kingstonist

So… I’d planned on doing a nice, long post today and add in a paragraph about last night’s meetup… but writer’s block struck and I’m stumped… So all you get today is the meetup stuff.

Last night the LNMG entered our 3rd year of meetups by getting people together at the Coffeeco location at the Kingston Centre for some coffee, snacks and tech talking. In addition to our largest turnout yet (11 people showed up, but we only had 10 simultaneous there), we launched a new format for the meetups with a local speaker and discussion, followed by the more general tech chatter we’re used to.

We opened the meetup around 6:30 or so (Though official start time was 7:00) and invited our guest speaker – Rich Ottenhof of Coffeeco – up to speak around7:30. Rich talked about how the company is using Twitter to build brand recognition using geocaching-style giveaways every week and then asked everyone for some feedback on a larger-format, Twitter-based game he’s been thinking of.

The snacks (Thanks, @delilahevening!!) were tasty, the coffee was flowing and the chat was wonderful. Thanks to the whole crowd who came out last night! Stay tuned to this blog, the LNMG blog and the @LimestoneTweets account and we’ll announce December’s as soon as we confirm the date.

Filed Under Local

Meta Bits: Speaking and Projects Sidebar

November 16, 2009 Leave a Comment

Just a quickie from me today with two new bits on the site:

1. I am SUPER excited to finally announce that the speaking page is live. I’ve been presenting for audiences large and small for over 2 years now and while I’ve still been doing presenting in the private, corporate world for select clients, I haven’t been advertising these to date. I’ve got two “Keynote” style presentations listed (Living On The Cloud and Making Minutes Count) and am putting some finishing touches on presentation #3 (Broken Fishbowls) right now.

Even MORE exciting on that page, though, is a series of talks I’ve built that I’m calling ‘The Twenty-threes’. These are short (23-minute) presentations that were built to be modular and sectional so that they tie themselves together quite well when presented as a group. There are 35 of these right now, and I’m on track to be adding one each month or so.

2. I’ve also added a sidebar widget (Based, actually, on a few emails I received) that highlights some of the projects I’m involved in. This will, in time, become a page, too, but the widget should suffice for now.

That’s it. Until tomorrow!

Filed Under Projects, Site Announcements

The Honour Of Being An Early Adopter

October 6, 2009 4 Comments
ac-logo-generic-small

Courtesy: @applecrispmusic

Being an early adopter is an exciting game with ups and downs every day. Sometimes, you get yourself into an awesome service before they close the doors and tell you you’re not allowed in. Other times, you end up paying more for a product than you probably should have. And sometimes, you get to see something so early that it you see it start, grow and die before it gets the chance to go mainstream.

As one of people behind the Limestone New Media Group initiative, I’m always keeping Kingston – and Kingston’s businesses – in mind as I browse the web. Fairly early on, I had a feeling that Twitter was going to get pretty big, and I registered a number of account on behalf of local businesses. I did this again earlier this year.

Twitter’s position on these names is pretty clear: Don’t do it. According the the use policy, bulk registrations, impersonating others and trying to sell names back to corporations for profit is a clear no-no and will end in a suspension of the account – as well as potentially other accounts you manage/’own’. I have, twice now, flown straight against this rule and registered a whole bunch (8-10 each wave) of accounts.

I bring this up because I got a wonderful email the other night that allowed me to turn over another account to a local business. I didn’t charge them anything, didn’t have them buy a time share and didn’t even add their email to a mailing list. They wrote to me – and I simply replied with the password.

While it may be that Twitter’s not shutting me down because the haven’t found me, I’ve also been very careful about what I’ve done with the accounts:

  1. I don’t tweet on their behalf. In fact in the second wave, I only post a single tweet that reads “This account has been set up as a placeholder. If you feel you should have it (It’s free!), follow the link in the profile for details.”
  2. The profile links to this page – which is a letter explaining who I am, what the LNMG is, why I’ve ’stolen’ their account, and what to do to get the password.
  3. I don’t edit defaults: The background, icon and everything else stays to whatever Twitter says it is.
  4. Once I get an email, I check who it’s from. If it’s from the domain I’d expect it to be, I just turn over the account. If not, a few quick Google searches will usually confirm who the person is. In either case, once I can verify the person, I blank out the profile link, delete the tweet and send them the password.
  5. I don’t market them – I don’t want to be seen as ‘that guy’ who’s squatting the names and approaching people with them. Though I’m not asking for money (Or even suggesting they turn to me for a strategy or consulting), I know that “cold-calling” in this way is frowned upon, so I just don’t do it.

My entire first wave of accounts went to their proper owners in just over 6 months. This second wave is taking a little longer to be disbursed - but I crossed the halfway point by turning over @applecrispmusic recently.

It makes me SO excited to see so many Kingston companies beginning to to adopt social media tools – and I’m honoured to be able to play a small role in helping them along.

Filed Under Methods, Projects, Twitter

First Monday Butterflies

October 5, 2009 1 Comment
flickr: way2go

Courtesy flickr: way2go

Just a super-quick post from me this morning!

Some of you have seen a handful of changes around what I do online in the past few months. Some things have morphed slightly on my Twitter feed, I updated a few things on WordPress By The Minute and I completely overhauled how I connect to people on Facebook.

These changes were complementing some other changes in my life, too – A haircut (I need a new avatar at some point), a new office, I’m shopping for new glasses, we tore up some of the yard and threw a few new coats of paint on the house, too.

And I’ve barely scratched the surface: There’s a whole list of changes behind-the-scenes that allowed some of these other ones to happen, and a whole list left to start in on. One of the places I’d been making very few changes so far, though, has been this blog. But that’s changing now, too.

I’ve been running my own website for nearly 15 years now, and I’ve always enjoyed having the chance to completely refresh it every so often. Usually, these are more evolutionary changes than they are revolutionary ones, but every now and then I really mix things up and go all out. This one falls under the former in terms of appearances, but the later for what it means.

I’m going to reveal more bits and pieces of this – ahem – web every Monday for the rest of October. For now, though, swing on by the site and take a look at the pretty new layout.

Filed Under Site Announcements

Please Comment On This Post

August 16, 2009 21 Comments

Hello!

I’m experimenting with IntenseDebate for the comments on my blog and need a whole bunch of comments, tweets and so on to test it out.

If you can come over to this post on my site and leave a comment, that’d be great. You can do it anonymously, just leave your name OR you can sign in with ID, Facebook or Twitter to identify yourself.

Please pass this along, too – the more comments, the more I can test this thing out and see how it works.

Thanks.

Update: Thanks for the help on this. Due to excess spam, I’m closing off comments on this post now.

Filed Under Site Announcements
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