It’s Time to Get Busy! (AOC 3)

It’s just about here!

The third Age of Conversation (a group-authored book on social media) is due to be released in a few weeks – the subtitle is, It’s Time to Get Busy. I’ve been privileged to add a chapter to each of the three AOC volumes, along with a cast of stellar thinkers and writers (not sure how I got in there, but hey…!)

Once again, the project was spearheaded by community-minded bloggers Drew McLellan (Iowa) and Gavin Heaton (Australia), with contributors from all over the globe. Except Greenland. Still looking for an author/blogger there…

Here’s the listing of authors for AOC 3:

Adam Joseph	Priyanka Sachar	Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos	Stefan Erschwendner	Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna	Thomas Clifford	Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg	Toby Bloomberg	Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe	Uwe Hook	Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin	anibal casso	Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder	Becky Carroll	Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson	Beth Harte	Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel	Carol Bodensteiner	Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld	Dan Sitter	Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar	David Zinger	Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti	Deb Brown	Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra	Dennis Deery	C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead	Heather Rast	Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings	Joan Endicott	Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost	Karen D. Swim	Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi	Leah Otto	Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans	Leigh Durst	David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop	Lesley Lambert	Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak	Mark Price	Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman	Mike Maddaloni	Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend	Nick Burcher	Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski	Rich Nadworny	John Rosen
Tim Jackson	Suzanne Hull	Len Kendall
Amber Naslund	Wayne Buckhanan	Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg	Andy Drish	Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton	Angela Maiers	Paul Williams
Gary Cohen	Armando Alves	Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai	B.J. Smith	Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard	Brendan Tripp	Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan	Casey Hibbard	Andy Hunter
Julian Cole	Debra Helwig	Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith	Drew McLellan	Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans	Emily Reed	David Petherick
Katie Harris	Gavin Heaton	Dennis Price
Mark Levy	George Jenkins	Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer	Helge Tenno	Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder	James Stevens	Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser	Jenny Meade	Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher	David Svet	Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn	Joanne Austin-Olsen	Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson	Marilyn Pratt	Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg	Michelle Beckham-Corbin	Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel	Veronique Rabuteau	Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari	Timothy L Johnson	Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler	Amy Jussel	Rick Liebling
Eric Brody	Arun Rajagopal	Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton	David Koopmans	Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace	Don Frederiksen	Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre	James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw	David Reich
Lynae Johnson	Jasmin Tragas	Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O’Toole	Jeanne Dininni	Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee	Katie Chatfield	Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones	Riku Vassinen	Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan	Tiphereth Gloria	Mike Sansone
Lori Magno	Valerie Simon	Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren		Peter Salvitti

Stay tuned for final word on availability – should be within a month!

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Being Purpose-full

I was reading in the Old Testament book of Proverbs this morning: “Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you” (Proverbs chapter 4 verse 25).

This is the picture of someone who is purpose-full.

A clear goal. Eyes fixed on it. Ability to recognize distractions on the left hand and on the right, and (by and large) put them aside.

I want to be purpose-full. I want my boys to be purpose-full. Even allowing for the serendipity of life, and its unpredictable evolution. The details of our purpose might change, but being purpose-full has to do with choice, and character, and courage.

When we meet, once we’ve gone through the comfortable social norms of small talk, what I really want to discover is this: What’s your purpose? And how can I help you get from here to there?

In 1 minute or less, can you tell me what you’re purpose-full about? Even more important – can you tell that person in the mirror?

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“Monetizing” Social Networking

Of late, there has been some noise in the socialsphere about how some have created real, paying businesses out of their involvement in social media.

Shocking.

Unless you live in a basement on a permanent inheritance stipend, you have to think about paying the bills. Making money. Using your abilities to build something that adds value and creates income. I suspect that would include…most of us.

I don’t see social networking, for all of its (wonderful) leveling of the playing field and ability to give free voice to anyone, as something fundamentally different from the rest of life. If you’re going to use your abilities to create value, at some point, that becomes a value worth paying for. And if people choose to pay for that value because it fills a need, well, that’s what life and business have always been about.

A browser and WordPress and widgets and 140-characters don’t change that basic dynamic.

My current business is to build and use networks to add obvious value – there’s a layer of it that is specific and paid, and there’s a layer that is “promiscuous” and free. All of it is geared toward creating win-win situations and long-term value for all involved. Chris Brogan and others do fundamentally the same thing, with different areas of application and approach.

Is that any different from many other businesses? In one respect, it is: most other traditional businesses monetize based on specific transactions only, and don’t offer a bunch of value for free. There should be even less whining in this space when people succeed by being generous to so many others.

If you’re uptight about people making money in this arena by honestly working hard and adding value, then get over it. It’s life. At least, it’s life outside the basement…!

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Entire Internet Lost

What began as a curious blackout during the annual South by Southwest geekfest in Austin has exploded into a major on-line crisis today.

The Internet has disappeared. Shockingly, the backup copy of everything on the interwebs has gone missing.

“It was just here last night!” exclaimed Shannon Whitley, applications programmer and Chief Global Internet
Curator. “I had the whole web continuously backed up on this 8-track tape. Someone must have thought it still had Waylon Jennings music on it, and removed it for a 70’s party or something!”

The loss was detected when SxSW presenter Biz Stone tried to access an old copy of Twitter using the Wayback Machine. A strange 404 page appeared displaying only the song lyric, “Stop the world and let me off, I’m tired of going round and round.” Except for a few locally-cached copies of Amazon.com and the SxSW session chooser, all other Internet sites vanished.

A frantic search of all local DJs with 8-track tape equipment did not turn up the archive, and a mimeographed copy of the Internet was also lost the same day due to a warehouse fire covering most of the state of Nevada, fueling speculation by conspiracy theorists around the globe. However, the geek class had to share their concerns by FAX and registered mail.

New social geolocation services due to be launched during SxSW have now been replaced by nametags and business cards. AT&T wireless executives were spotted yelling “It’s not our fault! Not us this year!!!!”

Outside the Austin conference center, a chuckling Jason Falls took it all in stride while munching a funnel cake, saying only, “They should have used Backupify. Heh.”

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Prior StickyFigure spoofs

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Each and Recently

The old marketing model emphasized “reach and frequency.”

Try to expose your message to as many as possible, as often as possible. A certain percentage will respond.

It’s a numbers game. And, it de-personalizes your audience. They’re a target. A demographic. Occupiers of a business funnel.

Been there. Done that.

Instead, let’s think in terms of “each and recently.” There is a growing pool of people who rely on you for information, connections, and services. They become customers, friends, collaborators, and, in a wonderful way, the most effective sales force you could possibly have.

Touch each of them. Make sure, as their names come to mind, that you’ve somehow touched them recently. And don’t worry a whole lot about the reach and frequency numbers game.

They’ll do that for you.

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Is This the Future of Knowledge-Sharing?

I love books.

I also enjoy magazines and newspapers. But we’ve all known for quite some time that the publishing world is changing rapidly, and a lot of our knowledge-sharing would be digital.

Despite that, I have not invested in a Kindle or iPad, nor am I reading books on my iPhone, because the idea of a simple porting of text to (smallish) screens isn’t compelling enough for me (yet).

Maybe that will change. For a long time, I’ve had the notion that the whole way we go about publishing “books” (static bodies of content that are obsolete the moment they’re published in a rapidly-changing world) needs to undergo a revolution.

We need to have multimedia, mobile, update-able knowledge-sharing. Perhaps even subscribe to people and knowledge-sharing projects over time (“progressive publishing“), not just buy a “book.”

Seth Godin wrote this post today. I promptly downloaded the Ideavirus iPhone app (worth the 99 cents just to evaluate!) because perhaps this is starting to approach the new way of knowledge-sharing. Video tied to abbreviated text. Potentially update-able. Looking ahead, all sorts of on-line community-building bolt-ons could be integrated.

I think we’re getting there. I’d urge you to invest the 99 cents and think about the possibilities. Because this looks to me like just a first-inning single, with plenty of power hitters in the on-deck circle….

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Needed: Virtual Tweetup Platform

I’ve been experimenting with a group of folks in my “inner circle” with the idea of doing virtual tweetups on-line.

Do you know of a platform that works well for this?

We tried TinyChat – great concept, but significant issues with audio quality and access.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

– Ability to host 6-12 people at once, with webcam video and VOIP audio (or maybe dial-in audio). Note: not one-way video, but everyone able to see each other simultaneously.

– Ability to support both Mac and PC without problems (maybe even Linux?)

– Easy ability to setup private discussion room(s) with simple login procedures

– Simple invitation management would be a plus

– Web-based: no download/installation preferable

– Free (or, perhaps a company with a paid solution would like to gain exposure by sponsoring a growing group of influencers?)

I figure the best way to find a solution is to crowd-source – so, what solutions do you know of? Any ideas? -please add your thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

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