I want my iPad

Unlike most the comments I've red since THE keynote, I want my iPad!

But I remain puzzled by the quantity of moaning and bitching comments that overflowed the internet, while "mass media" such as TVs and radios were so embarrassingly enthusiastic.

Being the mother of an adorable, though noisy teenager tribe, the online world reaction really sounded to my ears as the reaction of a spoiled child.

My favorite comment remaining: it's just a big iPhone that doesn't allow you to phone.

Duh!

Anyway, I can't wait to get one! Maybe just one thing to fix before I buy it though: how to print ?


lol!

Social media vs. Propaganda

Hey guys! You know what?

I got a great news for you!

Social Media holds social in it... and therefore relates to individuals... with (most of the time) more than one field of interest. No kidding.

(Yeah I know how you feel, no need to thank me. I'm proud to release this secret to you, to bring some light in this age of darkness).




You think I'm overstating this?
Well, I wish I was.

I recently had intense discussions with friends, who were literally sick of the non-business related tweets of some of the folks they're following on twitter which I was claiming as "salt of the info", the extra compound that makes you listen to what another person's saying.

One of the major argument was based on: on social media, one must keep a strong firewall between personal and professional life. I have to admit that I had ignited the discussion with one of my recent re-tweet of a statement of the kind, adding in my RT that I violently disagreed.

So let me explain this in two steps:

1 - Social media relates to individuals not to propaganda.
Most companies on twitter / facebook etc. do take advantage of their employees' own pages / network and followers. Aren't they?

Even though companies do have a corporate account, it is their employees who actually enrich
any announcement thanks to the comment they post on their personal accounts. Leveraging their own network to deliver the info.

Right?

In my profesional life, I follow quite a bunch of marketing, social media, Open Source and ECM experts. Those I'm really fond of are those who, on top of their area of expertise, tweet on what really matters to them.


Here's a recent example (Damien is one of Nuxeo's customers and an active community member). His initial tweet enabled me to discover about a worldwide 24-hour observation campaign simultaneously conducted by 35 radioastronomy observatories, in order get redefined, global and extremely precise space map.

(More info in French here and here in English)

2 - Imposing rules to an evolving phenomenon is at best a waste of time, at worst an incredible waste of time.

I'm not comfortable with the emerging trend that accompanies emerging social tools: declare and impose rules and code of acceptable (and non-acceptable) behaviors.

Very not comfortable with that. Going this way is missing the point of what social media is about.

Social media are new channels for individuals, allowing real-time one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-one exchanges vs. the asynchronous tools we had so far (email, "static" websites...). We shouldn't expect the former behaviors of asynchronous tools to duplicate with social media.

My feeling is it'll settle accordingly to the way each of us behave in real life: by field of interest, by geography, by gender, by music preference, by family... and if you don't actually go naked to fill in the tank of your car in real life, I doubt you'll pose in the nude on your Facebook page. And even though I deeply regret it, deviant behaviors will exist on social media the way they do in real life.

To wrap-up with my inital RT that allows such (great) discussion, let me tell you:
If my boss / company/ RH people / recruitment company (past, present and future) solely base their perception of my value as a professional on comments or pics I would have broadcast on my Facebook pages / Twitter / LinkedIn... then at least they'd get a comprehensive picture :-)

(popart pic from: http://popartmachine.com/machine/daily/092208/Lichtenstein-style-pop-art/Woman-Whispering-to-Man-pop-art.jpg)

What if good enough was actually enough?

I went lately to one of Eric Ries's leanstartup seminar, in Paris.

Very inspiring and thoughtful as expected. Some of it reminded me of Balzac's "The Unknown Masterpiece": an artist, never satisfied with what he considers his life's masterpiece, keeps on amending it during years. When half mad he finally shows it to a friend, the poor fellow has to face the lamest doodle ever.

The Unknown masterpiece is amongst the most famous novel challenging the sense and the meaning of Arts.

Now, transpose it to IT. Especially to innovative IT. You know, those products and services that have and will undoubtedly change the way we work, the way we communicate, our relationship to others etc.

- Craiglist: the most popular online classified ad site in the US ? The poorest UI and functionnalities we've ever seen = 20 million people visit the site each month, viewing and self-publishing more than 17 million ads and forum posts (check this Wired story)

- Twitter: a limited number of caracters to tell everyone non-sense all day long =
and the list goes on like that.

Now I've been recently talking to a bunch of startup-ers and, as so funnily illustrated by Ries, they're all of them more or less stuck with existential issues of the kind:
- my product/service isn't ready - I must add features
- I have to delay the launch
- How can I raise interest (not mentioning money) with semi-finished product?
- I need 10 extra genius-developers to finish it
...

Basically those guys are changing the way we will buy on the Internet, travel, manage our inbox, manage and animate our community, and obvisouly invent a new way for us to do so.

How on earth could the know how we - users- will react to it?

Well they can't.

Ries best advice remain: try, fail, ask your users, correct, try again...


As one of those happy "early adopters" of those new services I'd love to say:
1 - Don't forget that we -the users - have, first of all, to understand your product
2 - Need support to use them
3 - would love to exchange with you on our experience
4- would then, and only then, love to have more features :-)

Digital Shebang - the Plumbing - "How to deal with your lamest user"

OK, now that you have created your blog, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, you'd propbably love to connect them all.

Don't you ?

I've spent hours on the web, talking to my own family Geek, to my co-workers and other fellow geeks and ... didn't find a simple straightforward post/scheme/description of any kind describing how to do it, in which order, what tools to choose and why.

Pleasure of Digital Life: let's stay messy, cryptic... reward is in deciphering... yeah... talk to me about it.

So here's what I've (finally) mastered - or so believe I have :-)

Basically all exchanges rely on RSS (really simple syndication - hahaha: I love it). Whenever you want one content to feed another of your applications, you need the RSS from the platform where the content has been create and "plumb" it in to the destination platform. What??? Do I need to draw it?

The trick lies in the plumbing tools - which one and why and HOW?

1 - Automatically feed your twitter and/or Facebook account with your latest blog post:

I recommend: Twitterfeed.

Create your account in twitterfeed , select the destination platform:

Now you need to give your Twitter/Facebook accounts [The new OAuth protocol seems to ease even more the process (hurray).]






And the funniest is ALWAYS to find the rss feed from your content platform. The first 3 or 4 times, it just drove me crazy!
The trick is: on the right hand-side of your blog url, click on this icon , select either RSS or ATOM format (my geeks say ATOM is MUUUUUUCH better - I believe them) and on the next window, just copy the url and paste it in Twitterfeed.

Done !

Breaking News: Nice thing is Twitterfeed allows to do this to your Facebook account AND to your Facebook page (as long as you're administrator of the facebook page), a well. Which wasn't the case 2 weeks ago when I first thought about this post:-) It says a lot about how long will my present post remain accurate

Bonus: Twitterfeed can ALSO feed your twitter account/ Facebook account with the posts and blog you read and want to share - same process from your content aggregator (Google reader/netvibes)

2 - Feed your Linkedin status with your twitter account

Most the posts I read on this subject converge to "are you sure you want to do that?" - Keep in mind that more and more recruiters check your social avatars as part of the regular recruitment process. Are you sure you want them to discover the last MAJOR announcement you made on you twitter account, that early morning, after partying like hell??? probably not.

However there's a trick - Mickael Bentz found it for me on the LinkedIn forum :

As far as I know there is nothing that will insert your latest Tweet into the "What are you working on?" status of LinkedIn. However, you can easily post your latest Tweets using the BlogLink application in LinkedIn.

Click on the Applications link in the left hand column. Add the BlogLink application. Now go to your profile page and edit your profile. Add your Twitter address (in my case http://twitter.com/grahamjones) as one of your web sites.

The BlogLink application will automatically then collect your Tweets and post the most recent ones into your profile.

3 - Feed your linkedIn group news with your blog content

You need to be administator of the group to access the "manage pages" . You just need to add the RSS url from your blog, here :







4 - My personal failure to understand: FeedBurner

If any one can explain WTF this does apart from nice and clean URLs, please do :-)
The minimum I can say about feedburner is... I enjoy the user experience much less than with twitterfeed - to put it nicely.

Special note to vendors and online platform providers: for god sake, guys, do you really think that I am the one who should write this? How is it that this:
a) isn't available from each platform?
b) is a hell to find/understand, anyway?

Digital life is spreading out of your control (and basically, that's what you expect): adapt your customer service to your users. Better: to the lamest of your users. Stop the non-sens: if you can't figure out how to use it, then you shouldn't use it.

I've head this sentence so many time that I can say it backward without thinking : ti esu ton dluohs uoy neht, ti esu ot woh tuo erugif ton nac uoy fi!

As life 2.0 expands so a dedicate efficient customer support should. And an automated plumbing in would be appreciated - special kudos to Twitterfeed, by the way.

Anyway, now everything is connected: your blog feeds your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, enjoy!

And get ready: next step is find the applications to access all this from your smartphone- hahaha! (evil laugh) :-)

Master the Digital Shebang

I keep on praising the wonders of 2.0 world and life, but to be honest, the setting up of a smart traffic and flow of information remains something close to a nightmare.

Here's a view of the tools I use on a daily basis... WDYT?



Yeah, pretty scarry.

I can tell you that having all of those working smoothly together has been quite an experience :-)

That's why my next post will present some hints that I gathered while drifting in the digital matrix, presenting possible business strategies and the related plumbing.

Keep posted.