Forrester’s CEO, George Colony, made a fantastic presentation at LeWeb this year in which he talks about three major shifts, or as he calls them Social Thunderstorms, that we will be seeing in 2012.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it! Enjoy!
I’ve been working on something recently that I haven’t done since moving to Cincy- gearing up to do workshops.
So here is my question: what sort of workshops or classes would you like me to do? Keep in mind these can be geared towards individuals, small businesses, or national businesses. I’ve worked with all three.
Best practices, campaign management, basic how to’s- Let me know!
At the moment the two that I have in mind are Intro to Blogging and Intro to Social Media (there are versions of each of these geared towards both individuals and organizations).
I am planing on both face to face workshops in the Cincinnati area (and possibly in New Orleans periodically) but I am also available to provide custom instruction over Skype (which I will teach you if you don’t all ready use it).
I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
Image by cdsessums on Flickr | CC 2.0
As many of you are aware I have a long standing business relationship with SixEstate Communications. I do a lot of blogging and social media work on their campaigns and I also contribute a weekly column to their website’s blog.
Imagine my surprise when one of my colleagues over there told me that a campaign we run (Law Offices of Daniel Rosen) had been used as a positive case study in Peter Shankman‘s newest book -Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World! (affiliate link) Sure enough as soon as Amazon had turned around my order I discovered that my blogging work for Daniel Rosen, a gig for 6E, was one of the case studies on how to do it right.
It is always gratifying to be acknowledged by people whose work one admires. In that this was no different. I’ve followed the Skydiver’s work for a few years now and must admit that it helped me form my own stance on things as I made the transition from Hurricane Katrina blogger to being a pro.
Thanks Peter, you’ve helped kick my 2011 off to a lovely start!
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
Web Design Depot has a wonderful condensed history of social media that I often refer people to. Cameron Chapman did a great job on it back in the later part of 2009 and it’s still quite solid halfway through 2010 (incredible on the Internet).
Social media has become an integral part of modern society.
There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries.
There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there.
There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends.
It seems there are social solutions to just about every need.
In this article, we’ll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day.
From the days of Usenet and BBSs (days I mostly spent in the primitive confines of an LSU dorm room) to the present immediate gratification of Twitter and Facebook he presents a condensed yet easy to read view of social media. It is fantastic for gaining perspective on the explosive growth we’ve seen in it over the past several years.
I think anyone who spends time on the Internet, or has an interest in human communication patterns, should give this a read. So what are you waiting for, go read The History and Evolution of Social Media.
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
Image: Oversocialized / CC 2.0
Here is an updated version of the Socialnomics video “Social Media Revolution.” I highly advise it if you are using social media either as a business or as an individual. It’s quick, its fun, and it will blow your mind. Very useful if you are on the fence about social media or if you are trying to impress its importance on potential clients. Go on, just click play. You will thank me!
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
Sometimes your run across something in your twitter stream that just makes you immediately unfollow that person. Many times this is caused by political or religious content, other times it is the dreaded sledge hammer like barrage of sales pitches.
Now I’d be the last one to say brands and businesses should not use social media, but I would suggest developing some basic familiarity with it before diving in. Case in point: I had recently followed a small business on twitter. I was already interested in them and went into it knowing that a lot of the content would probably be broadcast style (i.e. all projecting outwards rather than being interactive and personal). I had opted in and was good with it.
Then I discovered that every few hours or so I would be barraged with about 15-20 tweets in a row from this account, effectively clogging my twitter stream each time. What made it even worse was discovering that this biz has several different twitter accounts that would each send out burst content like this. As you may imagine a rapid series of unfollows occurred.
Think about what the people seeing your content see. Ten tweets for ten different products sent out that rapidly can completely block up some-one’s tweet stream. Is this the type of thing you would want to see when logging into your account? It’s like the guy at the really great party who wants to talk to you about insurance, even if you need a policy the barrage of sales talk will likely turn you off. Even just spacing these out more instead of ten at a time bursts would be an acceptable alternative.
This also brings to mind one or to other things you can do to get more out of twitter:
See, now wasn’t that easy? There is a ton of “noise” on most social media channels, these simple steps will help you in not accidentally becoming part of it.
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
Maitri Erwin (@maitri / LinkedIn) is a geoscientist, blogger and all-around technology geek. After almost a decade in the oil industry as geologist and geophysicist, Maitri is now technology director at TechniGraphics, where her research focuses on the visualization of 3D geographic and engineering data. Maitri is the author of Maitri’s VatulBlog and also writes for VizWorld, a weblog dedicated to the latest in computer graphics, animation and visualization. Made in Kuwait of Indian parts, Maitri has lived in Illinois, Wisconsin and New Orleans, Louisiana. She now makes her home in Ohio and various world airports.
Loki: So technology is both your livelihood and your recreation. Could you tell us how you got started on that path? Any advice for people, particularly young women, on dealing with any gender/racial bias while taking that course?
Maitri: As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a scientist. Hailing from a family of scientists surely has something to do with it, but while they are primarily biology-focused, my interests run towards the physical sciences, which include geology, physics and engineering. So, I am a scientist primarily and technology is a natural set of tools with which to discover, analyze and share. One must never lose this focus because it’s very easy to create and foster technology for its own sake. How does this process move people and communication forward? The same question goes for hard science as well as online social media.
You will not believe that I was afraid of mathematics as a child, preferring dental work to it, until one instructor cared enough to teach me mathematics in a way I could understand, not the way the textbook prescribed. Once mathematics is unlocked, physics and engineering are easy, just application. Most schools worldwide are extremely rigid in their teaching styles and teachers are not encouraged to cater to the various ways their students’ brains are wired. Luck also favored me with concerned parents, but they thought I’d end up a doctor, not an earth scientist. My advice: 1) Math isn’t hard because you’re dumb, you just have a bad teacher, 2) You are dumb only if you give up on yourself or your kids, 3) Young women are particularly suited to the logical framework of mathematics and science, but 4) It requires ignoring authority, hypocrisy and “the way things are.” If folks say you can’t do something because you’re a girl, brown, poor or too stupid, they don’t want you to succeed. Stay away from these people.
Loki: Tell me about your work with Project Gutenberg and why you feel it is of such vital urgency. How does this relate to your idea of how the web should operate?
Maitri: Project Gutenberg is the first producer of free electronic books (eBooks). Free, as in public-domain or creative-commons free; the eBooks are text or HTML files that are yours to download, read, mark up, etc. Founder and good friend Michael Hart and I share the philosophy that the more the folks around us are enlightened, the better our world becomes to live in. How better to realize this than getting maximum books to maximum people via disc, internet or telephone?
We live in an age of publishers viewing books as little more than sales units, be they free-standing, dead-tree editions or marked-up eBooks plugged into proprietary readers accessible only by those with the disposable income for such disposable gadgets. Obviously, most booksellers don’t share our goal of increasing global literacy. My aim for Project Gutenberg is to keep it in the business of file formats that have as little proprietary markup and DRM as possible, which can be read from the oldest and most ubiquitous computing on the planet, i.e. old computers and cellphones. This is why Michael and I go on about “plain, vanilla ASCII.” Ultimately, I want .txt versions of every one of our books, now up to 30,000 in over 20 languages and growing, so an American city dweller, Indian fisherman or African schoolchild can plop it onto a cheapo cellphone and read immediately. Books are words, ideas that can do without the growing amount of infrastructure and bars placed around them.
The web, a very democratic medium with the potential for unlimited good, is similarly hampered by those who see huge dollar signs where I see a free flow of ideas, news and technology. Fighting access control technologies, net neutrality, privacy, surveillance self-defense, etc. are all very crucial steps in maintaining freedom and competition as we become increasingly digital entities.
Loki: I know we went through this together, but I’d love your perspective on the early days after Hurricane Katrina when the NOLA Bloggers were first starting to meet and mobilize. Why is what we did important?
Maitri: Quite honestly, I would have completely fallen apart without us. I turned VatulBlog over to reporting about Katrina, the Federal Flood and the recovery to stay sane and properly informed in the months after August 29th, 2005. We then banded together virtually to get information out, to do good with what we were good at, and that made all the difference.
Loki: As a digital native what are your thoughts on the evolution and exploitation of social media that we are watching occur? Any thoughts on grassroots vs. corporate use of these tools?
Maitri: Social media thrills and scares me. As someone who has lived all over the northern hemisphere and did not get the opportunity to visit Kuwait or close the door on it after the Iraqi invasion of 1990, Facebook, Orkut, etc. helped put me back in touch with folks I haven’t seen or heard from in two decades. Many survived the invasion and are safe, sound, living their lives all over the world and such a basic thing means so much. Twitter helps me receive and disseminate emergency, technological and esoteric information and that I am, for example, part of a geospatial community of folks in America, Europe, Australia, India, is unprecedented and fantastic. It’s the web on steroids. But, as I said in a recent post on Google’s privacy philosophy, anyone from government to corporation to psycho can find out anything about me, even if I didn’t put it out there, and this frightens me to no end. The private information we enter in good faith and with trust should not be used against us. Additionally, social media abuse by spammers and companies, like impersonal corporate Twitterbots or folks marketing products directly to users in del.icio.us or LibraryThing based on those users’ tags, is irksome and really dilutes the internet experience.
Loki: What are your favorite new internet / social media tools and how are you using them? I know you’re on Google Wave, what’s your opinion so far?
Maitri: I’m experimenting with Foursquare as a way to increase the visibility of small-town America and its venues, which do not seem to share in this social media explosion to the same extent as large cities. Almost everyone has email or a Facebook account with which they stay in touch with their existing circle of friends and family. But, how does a small town – the people, communities and venues within it – break into the larger technological conversation currently dominated by metropolises? Still, since Foursquare is location-based, privacy is once again a concern and I have a strict policy of friending only people I know in real life when using map-based apps.
Google Wave strikes me as a big marketing whoops. The cool folks who got the exclusive first round of invites sat there talking to themselves and quickly lost interest. Now when many more are onboard, we remember to go to the Wave website approximately once a week. Co-workers, fellow bloggers, academics, proposal writers and I have discussed that it can be a great tool for collaborative writing, but it lacks a certain interface something. Perhaps if it were integrated into Gmail?
Loki: So now the time has come, please hare one of your favorite recipes with us. Having had Indian food at your place I cannot wait to see what you decide to share!
Maitri: My family is from the south of India, which in my opinion has the world’s best food, but North Indian food is quicker and easier to make. A fan of garbanzo beans, one of my favorite dishes from the north is chana masala. I’ve cooked and served it at work potlucks, krewe gatherings and our famous New Orleans geek dinners and it’s always been a big hit. As a service to those who have requested the recipe as well as for this interview, I posted it (as a set of mind maps) to VatulBlog where you can download it and start cooking away!
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
L to R by Twitter Handle: @alexshebar, @katiberz, @socialgumbo, @geekjames, @hrmargo
Five days ago I had the pleasure of meeting a small cross section of Cincinnati’s Twittersphere. The good folks at Take The Cake Cafe hosted the gathering which was organized by @takethecakecafe / @geekjames, @rainie1u, and @simpleton001.
Back home in New Orleans there is a lot of face-to-face interaction amongst local bloggers, tweeters, etc. It’s something I have not had much chance to do since I moved up here,and with Take the Cake around the block from our house it was nearly impossible to miss.
The thing that is really great about this sort of gathering is that you already know something about the people you are meeting from their output online. When you start off with acknowledge of a person’s character at the outset conversations develop rapidly.
People started drifting in around 1pm and in short order the front of the Cafe was filed with milling people. Every once in awhile the door would open and someone would look in with a questing glance and tentatively ask “is this where the twitter people are?” Yes, my friends, yes it was.
It was great to meet @redshoegirl finally. I had several interactions with her over the net when my wife and I were preparing to move up here. We had a great talk about the pro side of social media, trading thoughts about ROI and communicating how social media works to clients. I really enjoyed the conversation, she is quite intelligent and a bundle of energy.
Also got to chat with @alexshebar, a young journalist with a pretty impressive resume. A real good guy with a some real energy to his conversation as well as his writing. Witty guy. Talked with him and @katiberz for awhile before going down a tangent about music with @fadi_elkhaja. That talk led us into the street where we could indulge our nicotine habits while passing my iPhone back and forth to share music. He’s a really interesting guy who is originally from Lebannon, it was interesting comparing our former homes.
@hrmargo seems to be just diving into social media, but doing so enthusiastically (which is important). We actually talked a bit about teaching and video conferencing. Funny thing is I discovered later she’s a Xavier grad, and I co-teach a periodically recurring Skype Class at Xavier in New Orleans.
@urbancincy and I talked a bit about New Orleans. He has an interest in the study of cities, and he’s been down there before. I can’t wait to pick that conversation up again over coffee or a beer. @recycledbin and I had just enough interaction to find common ground on green topics. Sorry we didn’t chat more this time around.
@simpleton001 was running things and he and had little time to converse. We did talk a bit about my background and the events of the four years since Katrina and the levee failure. Another conversation I look forward to continuing.
All these and other short conversation were packed into about 2-3 hours worth of time. Even after so brief and interaction I feel more like I actually live here now. Digital connections spawned real world interactions which in turn introduced more people into the mix both online and off. It is a cycle I’ve seen in action a lot over the past few years, a cycle that seems to be continualy accelerating. Finding people with common interests in a new city was always a hard thing in the old days, now it’s as hard as a twitter/Flickr/blog search.
Want to start your own tweetup? Here’s the page on Twtvite for the Take the Cake event as an example. Twtvite is a free ad useful tool that allows you to organize, share tweets about it (via hashtagging) and generally make it happen. Go ahead and set up your own, the service is free. Bring some face to face time to your twitter based social circles.
George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC
