Your Failure to Plan Ahead Is Not My Emergency

As many of you know, I have been involved in the planning and execution of a number of Podcamps to date, and I’ve also been involved in providing onsite services to people with disabilities at the Super Bowl in the past. Being part of these large events, inevitably there are last minute fires requiring attention and creative solutions, ranging in degree from “tea candle” to “forest fire”.

And I am left with on default position: “Your failure to plan ahead can no longer constitute an emergency on my part.”

When planning Podcamps for example, schwag like T-shirts have to be ordered weeks in advance. Catering menus need to be set at least a week or more in advance. Yet, at almost every podcamp, there is a mysterious increase in the number of people deciding at the last minute to attend or not attend. This includes speakers cancelling at the last minute, not just attendees, after a schedule has been set, and there is no time to get someone to take their place nor disseminate that information adequately.

I’ve come to expect a certain amount of this last minute stuff with our internet/social media crowd. But I still don’t think it’s really okay. And I think unless planners are willing to put their foot down at some point and say no, no matter how much we would rather say yes, we will continue to get people expecting last minute accommodations because they are unwilling to commit, one way or another, in advance.

We all have last minute emergencies. People get sick. Life happens. But if I buy tickets to a concert and find I am unable to go, that is not the performer’s problem, nor the venue. It is up to me to find someone to go in my stead, or simply “eat” the ticket. If I fail to make dinner reservations in advance, I might not be able to eat at the time or place I wanted to. That’s life, pure and simple.

For Podcamp in particular, every additional person means providing an additional bag/shirt/coffee/chair well after the plans have been solidified and put to bed, and if we haven’t been able to “guess” appropriately in advance, we end up with either too many or too few shirts/food/rooms etc. to meet demand. We can’t do our jobs as well as e would like or have planned, because the last minute folks want to come play.

Don’t get me wrong- I am thrilled when Podcamps seem to develop a buzz and people get excited to attend. I love hosting an event that people find engaging and sometimes even life changing. There’s nothing better. But i do hope people understand as well that their last minute changes cost the organizers lots of extra time and energy just when they are most stressed. When you are in the run-up to an event, there are many details to pin down, and all the last minute changes can make you crazy. The more people fail to plan ahead, the more difficult the job.

So I ask for your cooperation. Please plan ahead as far as possible. Be considerate of the organizers, who are doing this as volunteers. Please be patient, and understanding if things aren’t perfect. And please understand, before changing plans at the last minute, how your changes impact others. And please understand if your last minute change is not the only thing on our lists to handle. We love you and want to help, but so does everyone else. And please understand your last minute need can’t always be my emergency. The tickets for that show have been sold out for days.

The Drop Out Rate- Let’s Do Some Math

Once upon a time, a boy from a political family got to be Governor of Texas.  He put in place some programs that looked good at the outset, but digging deeper, these programs had fundamental flaws.  Never the less, convinced of the topical success, said Governor was elected President of the United States and brought these pet programs national.  One of these programs is what we now refer to as No Child Left Behind, or NCLB.

Today, Ken Thomas from the AP reports that seventeen of the nation’s fifty largest cities had a high school graduation rate of lower than 50%, meaning 1.2 million students in the US are dropping out annually.

Let’s rewind time a bit.  Molly Ivins appeared on Fresh Air with Terry Gross on October 8, 2003.   She had just published her book, Bushwacked, a follow up to her first book on George Bush, “Shrub- the short and happy political life of George W. Bush.”  Molly Ivins says in the interview that “It’s as if W has gone to Washington to spread the gospel of the Lone Star State, ” and “That I’ve often thought that Texas is the national laboratory for bad government.”  Terry and Molly then talk about education and the “Texas Education Miracle”.  While Texas public schools did improve since 1970, but what appeared to be initial improvement in test scores in Texas were actually fraudulent, because the scores were improving by increasing the drop out rate, which was approaching 40%.  When kids drop out, they don’t take the test; these kids are largely those not performing well, and therefore, you drop the lower performers, raising the overall scores.

Now that the Texas program has become No Child Left Behind, the testing, but no additional funding to do better, and this pattern is replicated nationally with these dismal graduation rates now on a national level.  Is this the real explanation for the increased performance on standardized tests nationwide???

Now I will be the first person who will state that giving children normed tests can be useful.  You get to compare your child’s performance with others of their same age and grade level.  However, we get this data, but it often is not used for very much on a child level.  We don’t use these tests as precursors to diagnosing learning disabilities or specific problems or deficits with a particular child.   We use this data as a whole sale recommendation or condemnation of curriculum, teacher and schools, which I think is grossly unfair.

There are many problems in education, but most of them stem from treating education as a widget factory for citizens, rather than the development of thinkers and future innovators and problem solvers.   This short sighted “business” approach to education is going to haunt us for years to come.  I hope we can do something concrete to begin fixing it soon- that’s what the whole Education 2.0 movement is about, and I hope we can make strides towards this goal at Podcamp NYC 2.0 as well.

I am presenting at Podcasters Across Borders!

Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche of the Canadian Podcast Buffet have put on a great conference, Podcasters Across Borders, affectionately known as PAB, now entering it’s third year. Unlike Podcamps, where the speakers list is open to anyone who wants to speak, you have to be selected to speak at PAB. I applied, wanting to talk about the importance of development of community, and my proposal was selected!

Here’s a bit about what I’m going to talk about:

Community- Why It’s the ONLY thing that matters

In Podcasting and social media, we talk a lot about community. Community can be a very fluid subject, as we all belong and identify with many different communities- the Podcasting Community, our Twitter friends, the people who listen to our show, developers, geeks, second life- you name it. Then there’s the offline communities around built around work, school, music, the arts, church, etc. that we equally align ourselves with.

Each community has its own written and unwritten rules of conduct, that help make up the canon that holds the group together. We’ve all witnessed times when the community values are breached or sprained- How do we handle those situations when they occur? How do we navigate friendships and trust relationships when someone breaks the rules or violates the collective trust? When someone tries to join a community, how do we make them feel at home? How do we moderate behavior and sensibilities? And how do we lead and steer communities over time as our interests and podcasts change? (Think how people feel abandoned when someone podfades and what happens to that community now that the leader and the space no longer exists.) When people have had “enough” of a community, how do you exit a community gracefully without destroying friendships or reputations? Can you “save” a community that has hit some uncertain times?

As we build cyber-communities that span great distances and are not always happening in real time, we’re starting to confront the social issues that face real life communities. When does a community get too big to be manageable? When do you start your own community? When is a new community seen as competition and get treated as such by others? How do we define and sub-define our groups?

These are questions that we all need to talk about together, and I’m so excited that we’ll get to discuss them at length at PAB. I’m not sure there are going to be any hard answers, but I look at this conversation as part of the “Solutions Playground”- it’s only by talking about it as a community that we’ll get any closer to understanding the difficulties we face, what to do when bad things happen, and how to avoid these “dangers” in the first place.

I hope you’ll be there-because as in all communities, it’s your participation that’s most important.

Podcamp Revisited

I’m getting a reputation for being the Podcamp girl, having been to and organized many of these events to date.  I recently attended and presented at Podcamp Toronto, not only because I love the Canadian podcast community, but to see the innovative things they try out at this conference every year.  The beauty of Podcamp being an open source conference is that each one not only has its own local flavor, but each one brings a different innovation to the table.

Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, Mark Blevis and others have been talking about how we can adapt podcamp to meet the changing needs of the community, and how we are exploring “verticals” or topic-based podcamps, to theme an event, so to speak.  This was first tried out by Vivian Vasquez and Andy Bilodeau at Podcamp Edu, and we’re trying to expand the concept at Podcamp NYC 2.0 being held at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY on April 25 & 26th, 2008.

Last night, the Podcamp Toronto team did a great job talking with the community about the pros and cons of their event, and I think this is a key aspect of Podcamp to share with others- what went well, what didn’t, what’s worth repeating, what’s worth reworking.  To that end, I thought I’d blog about what I think are the most successful elements at Podcamps so far (that I know about- I am sure I am missing something), and I would love it if you would include your thoughts about what you’ve liked the most if you’ve been to an event, or what’s been the most disappointing, so we can work to tweek the model for the benefit of the whole community.

1. The Power of Coffee and Donuts: Jay Moonah and his team at Podcamp Toronto pioneered this simple thing and it really helps people start chatting before the sessions begin and people are milling about with registration.  Ideally, putting the coffee as close as possible to registration keeps everybody contained and talking, and this brings a nice social aspect to Podcamp while everyone is still searching for conciousness.  I like to think we did a great job getting the Starbucks “open bar” sponsored generously by Comcast Interactive at Podcamp Philly, but we were blessed by a Starbucks in the lobby of the building where we held the event, and really, I was copying Jay.

2. Tracking: I look at this like storytelling- somehow, stringing sessions together, in one room, so that from the beginning of the day to the end, you could stay in that room and get a whole complete picture of say, video podcasting and production.   It gets tricky scheduling sessions and working out the details, but when possible, making a room a “marketing room” or How To” room makes it easier to find what you are looking for if you are bouncing between sessions, or looking to learn something in more depth- you can construct a workshop-like experience between the offered sessions.  This puts a bit of a burden on the organizers to check the sessions list and maybe even asking some people who are coming to speak or facilitate a conversation, to fill in any missing spots, but I look at this as meeting the needs of attendees, not trying to turn Podcamp into a Conference.

3. Keeping People Social: Feeding a variant number of people at Podcamp can be tricky, especially when registered attendees versus the number who actually show up is rather unpredictable.  What seems to work is to let everyone grab lunch on their own with whomever they’ve met, but have an evening social gathering where everyone is invited, allowing people to really talk and meet in a way that may not have been possible during the day and in sessions.

There is a growing number of younger people starting to attend Podcamps, making it necessary to consider a non-bar venue to accommodate those under 21.  I think the best idea on this was floated last night by the Podcamp Toronto team-maybe scope out a group dinner place that will accommodate everyone if they wish, and let any pub-activities or concerts happen afterwards.

It’s clear people want a “structured” way to meet up with others in the evenings, at least for part of the time.

 4. Keeping People Together: This is a logistics thing as well.  There was some thought that the great Zero to Podcasting sessions at Podcamp Toronto isolated this track from the rest of the conference.  This may have been due to the fact that the room was on a separate floor from the bulk of the conference session rooms, but it also created a sense of community and comraderie maybe a bit separate from the rest of the conference.  I hope to have some hands-on, how-to sessions at Podcamp NYC, but I am looking at trying to make sure that these sessions are right next door to some more “advanced” sessions, so the newer people do not feel segmented out of the larger community, and the more experienced people also feel free to come, learn, explore and help mentor others.

5. The Mentor Room:  Tommy Vallier successfully pulled off a session called the Mentor Room, I suspect similar to what I tried to have happen at Podcamp Boston, which I wanted to call “Stump the Chumps” (after the segment on Car Talk from NPR) where veteran podcasters and new media folk would answer any question at all from the audience, brainstorming solutions for them on the spot.  I think we’re going to see if we can’do this for Podcamp NYC, both for a longer period of time, and to help understand the problems and confusion some people face when they decide to give podcasting. video, or new media a try.  I think this will serve to make veterans better teachers, as well as answering the very real and frustrating problems people face when confronted with “all this web stuff”.

6. Hyper-local:  I think any Podcamp should be about the local community.  It should be about bringing local people to your event,  and growing the community from there, rather than expecting the handful of visible “regulars” to attend every podcamp. For Podcamp Philly, this meant involving the local tourism folks, having events in different parts of town, so people got to see Philly as well as the conference, and developing a local sponsor base.

Why?

I met Linda Mills at Podcamp Toronto- she lives about 15 miles from my home, if that.  I met many more people from Philly at the originial Podcamp Boston than I had met around Philly proper. It is absurd that I had to go to another country to meet one of my neighbors with similar interests, or drive 500 miles or more to meet my local folks.  Podcamp Philly and BlogPhiladelphia were events about bringing our community together, and I think it succeeded on many of those metrics.

So these are a few of the things I think help make Podcamps special and worth-while events to hold in your town or area.  But what do you think?  What makes Podcamp special and worthwhile to attend?  What works well for you and what doesn’t?  We can only improve if you share your thoughts and we make Podcamp what it has always strived to be- a community based new media conference- about the people even more than the cool tech tools.

Redesigning the Conference Experience

I’ve been involved with the Podcamp and the Podcamp Foundation from very early on, having attended the first Podcamp in September, 2006 and having helped organize four others so far. Most of you know this. What’s intriguing though, is the thought of redesigning the conference business as a whole.

I was bouncing ideas around with Chris Brogan this morning, talking about the benefits of small versus large, tracks, and what makes Podcamp special and different. How is an unconference, and podcamp in particular, different from other conferences, and how do we seed change in the stogey conference business to make it useful and engaging?

A couple of quick ideas, to get you thinking and maybe coming up with other ideas to add to the mix:

1. Heterogenous groups are much more interesting than homogeneous groups. People like differences and the surprises- it shocks our neurons and keeps us engaged. I like being a “hybrid” myself, not easily classified as just a geek, just a lawyer, or just an anything. This means I also feel I can learn something from just about any situation, and try to stay open to that learn whatever the kernel is from a new person or experience.

If we only associate with birds of a feather- people just like us all the time- we will share and learn some new things, but I think not as much as when we have people out of our day to day fishbowls along for the ride. Podcamp’s mix of business folks and hobbyists, audio and video geeks, developers and people who only have their geek training licenses brings the ability to cross pollinate, deal with real world situations, and solve problems that aren’t just theoretical. It’s sort of like creating a giant working group, where everyone can bring their issues and if they choose, throw the issue open for group think and dissection. Where else does this kind of on the spot trouble shooting happen with the best minds around?

And frankly, I am much better at taking a real problem and thinking up all different possible solutions, things to try, and different approaches to take than when something comes up theoretically. (I guess it shows that I had an engineer for a Dad, and I love to tinker and dissect things.) I have a “Let’s take it out for a spin!” mentality. But I do believe the mix of people is part of the spark, the secret sauce, that makes people sit up and take notice.

2. Architecture and Design Matter. I have a husband who loves architecture- we have books from Sarah Susanka and Robert Stern in the house, so we look at how buildings “work” as a hobby. Then you look at someplace like Pixar, where the creative people have been unleashed to create their own environments, yet work collaboratively, and you find out how much good design matters even more.

This means the more the environment works with people and does not create barriers between them, the more interactions you will have. Apartment buildings and hotels encourage us to retreat into cubes, not free associate. Even traditional conferences at convention centers have an infrastructure, as Chris Brogan noted, that is designed to have you in a specific place or to simply leave as soon as possible. It doesn’t say “Come hang out here!”

Contrast this with retail environments. What about the success of Starbucks and Borders, which have a design that says “please come hang out here!”? Even in the Best Buy Store, only the high end audio/visual encourages people to come and hang out to test drive the equipment for more than 10 minutes. The Apple Store, however, often provides chairs and an area for kids, along with an environment than encourages play and interaction. The Apple Stores near me never seem to be empty. CompUSA, in contrast, is often like a tomb.

Best Buy attracts a wide range of buyers based on its inventory, but there’s no hands on experience that is all that helpful. What if you could actually do a load of laundry and see if you liked a machine before buying? Saw a stocked fridge and got a better sense of whether it would work for you? It would be different, it would be remarkable, and I bet they’d sell a lot more stuff, as well as encourage the sales people to know an awful lot more about the widgets they are selling, instead of acting as a bricks & mortar catalog for things.

3. Leaving with Ideas and an Education.  One of the topics Chris and I talked about was the educational nature of the Unconference.  It’s like a weekend long college experience, often complete with some of the frat party atmosphere, for good or for ill.  There’s also been a compelling discussion about the value of a college education on Chris Penn’s Financial Aid Podcast  blog, and how it’s often the hands-on and real world experiences that provide the best education available, at any price.

Chris Brogan often talks about ideas having handles, those ideas that stick and you mull over long after they have been shared.  I hope one of the things we provide traditional media and PR types with at Podcamp are ideas and the ethos of the community- the spirit of sharing, transparency, and original voice.

I attended a traditional conference recently, and I am amazed at how many people still read their slides as their whole presentation.  Or read off of  a prepared speech, with occassional glances upward.  I spoke with relatives about this phenomena this past weekend, and they remarked at how their experiences were exactly the same, at University lectures, tech conferences, and continuing legal education seminars.

This way of presenting provides a security blanket for the speaker, but it is a big ZERO on the engagement scale with the audience.  I would rather see someone speaking from the heart, talking TO me, not AT me, any day of the week.  The same goes for any marketing campaign whatsoever.  And I hope we can teach people in the traditional business world the fundamental skill set needed to implement the Cluetrain Manifesto is all its glory- that the community, the connection, the being just plain old honest and accessible, the treating the “market” with respect and as intelligent humans, is the way to win in the end.  People want what you have, but you need to approach them in a way that is welcoming.  Like family.

(This is why I think Martha Stewart, HGTV, and the Food Network are so popular- at the heart of it, it’s about creating welcoming experiences to share with family and friends- everything from the napkin rings to meals is about doing something special and remarkable, to bring people together and let them know they matter.)

So what does this have to do with conferences? I have clearly digressed, but the point remains that people interact with an environment based on its architecture- both physical and organizational. If you can organize conferences in a phsycial space that says- “come talk and interact” rather than “Hands off- we’ll tell you where to go and what to do- Don’t step on the grass!”, you’ll get a dramatically different experience all the way around.

This will mean giving up perceived notions of “professional” and “business-like” – it will require a willingness to stop preaching and start listening. But can you think of anything that would be more interesting and compelling? I have seen “stiff” people come to Podcamp, totally relax and get the wild eyed look of a religious convert after the event, realizing conferences, and unconferences in particular, are a different animal, but what a difference! It’s like finding a zebra in your living room- quite a surprise, but perhaps a good pet in the end?

Time will tell, of course. But in the end, I think we’ll find design and organization, meeting up with heterogeneous groups will radically change the usefulness of conferences, making them worth the money spent far more than ever before. But it means willing to try the new and not be satisfied with the old and traditional. And that’s a radical notion whose time has come, especially when money is tight and business needs to maximize the results of mass gatherings more than ever.

What do you think? Am I crazy? What is your version of the perfect conference? What matters most to you?

I have a dream….

….that this next year we take Podcamp and make it like Summer Camp.

….Phase 1: We find a place where there can be a multi-day, even weeklong retreat of New media Folk and their families.  Kinda like the Podcamp Cruise idea, only somewhat more back to basics.  Shoot, I’d have everyone here at my house, but I only have non-tent space for about 7 people.  Let’s not even worry about formal sessions at all, let’s just get together with the people we like most and spend time getting to really know each other, and take these online relationships and solidify them in the real world.  Most of us don’t live close enough to let backyard barbeques or margarita parties do the trick, so we need to meet someplace and do the background work we miss in this fast-ramp-up to friendship world.

…Phase II-teach others, maybe even kids and adolescents about new media.  You could do a crash course, a summer camp, an immersion- where we take newbies and let them loose on social media with guidance.  Project based things like LOLSaur. Workshops.  Anything we can dream up, we make happen.

…Phase III- Figure out a way to index people’s knowledge and talents in a way that makes their skill sets easy to find and access.  Let’s face it.  We all have a virtual roladex in our brains of who we’d at least start calling if we needed a certain kind of help, but I have no idea if the people I’d call are the same as the people you’d call or not.  I wish I had some greater database to see which people have which mad skills, that even if I don’t need to tap them today, I could keep track of this information for times when I’m asked for a referral, as well as for my own purposes.

…Phase IV- Find a way to aggregate the talent base at our disposal to take on some really great, larger than life project.  I’d like to do something that makes a tangible difference in the world this next year.

Anyway, these are my post-Turkey, too much sugar dreams.  What are yours?  If you could imagine anything happening, what would it be?  What can we do with this amazing community?  How can we share more and make more things happen?  How can we change the World, Together?

Family and the Holidays

My family is coming to join us for Thanksgiving.  While my “blood” family is important to me, my internet family is also important.  Before things get totally crazed, I thought I’d give thanks to the blessings of this past year:

• Rob & Megin Hatch- these are two of the greatest people you’ll ever meet.  Rob is dedicated to his job, and got to spend time with T berry Brazelton this Spring; Megin is the fearless leader of the GNM Parents blog and keeps everyone in line.  I feel solucky to be involved in this project and to consider the Hatches as friends.
• Paige & Gretchen- Last year, I called Paige and Gretchen from Mommycast on Thanksgiving and thanked them for inspiring me to start podcasting.  This year, we’re teaming up as part of the Mommycast & Friends Family Channel of Podcasts with Podango.  A lot has changed in the past year, and I can’t wait to see what the next year holds.
• Chris Penn & Chris Brogan-  I’ve been lucky enough to work with The Founders of Podcamp closely this past year.  Chris Penn is a thoughtful, deliberate person, with an inner peace I seek to emulate, and the patience of Job.  Chris Brogan has truly become a blogging superstar, and is changing the face of new media, while keeping a sense of community at heart.  It’s going to be a great new year.
• Mark Blevis, Andrea Ross, Bob & Cat Goyetche: through Podcasters without Borders, I learned that meeting with your peers incside the fishbowl is as important as reaching outside.  These four people are not only at the heart of canadian podcasting, they are some of the best friends you could ever have.  Mark & Bob plug the gaping holes in my audio knowledge bit by bit, and I am very thankful to consider them friends.
• John Havens, Jason Van Orden, Howard Greenstein, Eric Skiff, Kathryn Jones, Adam Broitman, Laura Allen, Kathy King and the whole Podcamp NYC crew- what a fanatstic experience that was.  We changed the face of the unconference, broke new ground, and explored new possibilities.  It was amazing.
• Chel Pixie- Thanks for being you.  You are my rock.
• CC Chapman, Mitch Joel- Thanks for teaching me being myself and my own brand are the most important things of all.
• Linda Mills- Thanks for being a fellow grownup when things get crazy.
• Adam Plante, Bill Rowland, Jen Yuan, Alan Chaess, Alex Hillman, Geoff DiMassi, Annie, Lisa Marshall, Steve Lubetkin, Drew, Rand, and everyone else who helped out with Podcamp Philly.  Ready for another???!?
• Charles Cadenhead for being such a great guy
• Dale Brown from WETA for believing and the possibilities of the future.

I know I forgot some people- it is not intentional.  I’ll have to post more soon.  But I wanted to take a first pass at thanking everyone for being part of a truly great year, and to tell you in this semi-public way that I am thankful for each and every experience over the past year, and to count you among my friends.

The Advantages of Small

I attended two conferences this past weekend. One was the CHADD annual meeting, and the other was Podcamp EDU. Both had an educational focus. Both had impressive speakers. Both had topics that could be seen both as narrowly focused and broad subjet areas- ADHD in children and adults, the other, education and podcasting.

The CHADD conference was held at the Hyatt Hotel in Crystal City, Arlington VA. It was huge. Break out sessions too place over 4 floors. The one large conference room for the major presentations must have held over a thousand people. Break out sessions took place in smaller rooms, but it was set up “speaker/audience” style- no place to put down a notebook to take notes (other than on your lap) and no one was using a laptop. It was a conference that cost a minimum of $250 to attend, and to attend special events and the professional section of the conference, significantly more.

The attendees were professionals, educators and parents. Very few had business cards. I tried to talk to some, but there wasn’t a lot of reaching out past the boundaries of already established relationships, which is really too bad.  Even networking tracksfor the evening were set up as “birds of a feather” events, rather than getting people like the pre-eminent reserachers talking informally with parents and educators-  that would have been something amazing for everyone involved.

Podcamp EDU, in contrast, was free to attend. It was held in one large room with round table tops at American University. There was one projector and screen, and reasonable wifi. Some people were using their laptops, live blogging and twittering what was going on.  People were attentive, and they spoke with each other and mingled in between sessions. I finally met New Media Jim, a twitter buddy, and GeoSteph- an educator and scientist at NASA. I met Sashi, who is in charge of my website host and the page creation software, getting some of my most important questions anwered. I saw old friends, and became really intrigued with new ones. And it was awesome.

Podcamps can work very well when you subtract out all the bells and whistles.  They work great with bells and whistles, too, but require so much more work to put on, it makes you wonder whether you get net return for the effort expended.  Not that I think Return on Investment is necessary for an education-based event.

Maybe gatherings need to be separated into smaller segments.  Podcamps by Topic.  Podcamps with Limited Focus.  Podcamps for “Pros” looking for something new and different.

I know after this experience, I am convinced normal conferences have a lot to learn from events like Podcamp EDU.  Podcamps can learn a few things from “normal” conferences, but what Podcamps do best is put like minded people in one room, have a list of topics, and then mix- see what happens.  Normal conferences are speaker vs. audience, and while content can be compelling, it prohibits the interactive learning that can be so valuable to people in the audience, who are ready to ask the next question, push the envelope, and find out more.

Trying to Keep Up- I need a New Media Guru

Every day, I find out about some new application or tool that’s going to “save me” in some way. Some of these tools are truly helpful, others are added to the pile of things I should look into, others I start to play with, but rapidly become overwhelmed with the learning curve. These new gizmos and programs are probably great, but the adoption time to put them into my workflow is too great, and I drop them long before I learn to really use and adapt them into my functional everyday toolbox.

At conferences, I check out the stickers on people’s laptops- it’s like looking at a NASCAR vehicle, visual clues about what tools the smartest people I know and respect might be using this week. Yet what I really need is some sort of database that not only tells me what tools are available, but cross compares features, and even gives a pro/con list to help me figure out what’s worth my time and what’s not. I know I’m missing key things in my toolbox. But the learning curve on what will work best for me is still kind of steep.

I’m thinking it might be fun to have a New Media Oracle- like the Oracle at Delphi who could see into the future and predict what you might need or what you should do. Someplace where you could put in some information about yourself, and what you wanted to do, and the Oracle would spit out the latest and greatest tools, sorted by cost/convenience/reviews and point me in the right direction. A Consumer Reports of New Media. SEO optimization makes Google pick the most popular stuff, not necessarily the best, for example, so this won’t work alone for what I’m thinking about.

My time is my most precious resource, and there’s only so much information I can assimilate at one time. I have decent tech skills, but hey, I spent years studying biology and law. That makes me great at understanding things like motivations and outcomes, neurological basis of behavior, but this doesn’t help me read XML like a native or really understand PHP or MySQL.

What kind of resources do you use to find out what other things are out there? Is it magazines or websites like Lifehacker? How do you find what will help you, and how long do you stick with it before reverting to your old ways?

How much of your work flow do you outsource?  How do you manage your time?

Inquiring Minds want to know!

Philosophy & New Media

What’s the difference between thinking and doing?  Where is the value add?

We all have had moments where you say “That’s a great idea!”  You might write it down, play with it for a while, but without any execution, the idea is just a passing thought. For example, I might intend to go to the gym, it’s a great idea,  but if I don’t get myself dressed appropriately and drive on down there, my thought and intentions, all good, are nothing but air.

In New Media, things change, fast.  Many people go around and secure their intellectual property by buying domain names, with the intent to use them, or to keep others from using them, but until they have the bandwidth to execute, they are simply hoarding.  I’ve done this. I will still do this, since no matter what you think now,”good” domains will be snapped up by others with the same Good idea if you wait too long.   Good ideas are competitive on the internet.  In this grand marketplace of ideas, there is a “time is of the essence” mentality.

This is the middle ground of thinking and doing.  You had an idea good enough to warrant a small financial investment- (remember to use all those great GoDaddy codes, like IOYH3 or Hash3).  What’s next?

There are plenty of good and great ideas out there.  But in the end, the universe rewards action.  Making things happen. Making the rubber meet the road.  Caring enough to take the risk and the chance in the real world.   Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak didn’t stop at wondering what a home personal computer would be like, they built one.   Everything we see and interact with, from lightbulbs to software is an homage to people who didn’t wait for something to be delievered to them, they went and made it happen.  It’s all in the execution- good, bad or indifferent- the execution moves the equation ahead to the next step.

So thought and sharing of ideas is largely philosophy; when those ideas turn into actions- writing, doing, implementing- then they become more than fluff- they become real.

What Gets in the Way of Action

My podcast is all about learning and learning disabilities.  One of the biggest things for kids with LD are the tasks that form road blocks or hurdles for them every day, causing frustration at every turn  We want to help parents find ways to make those hurdles smaller and more managible for kids.  All the topics like motivation and strategies apply equally to kids without LD and to adults, so while these short cuts are mission critical to kids facing problems like ADHD or dyslexia, they are equally useful to everyone else, as well.

For most adults, lack of action can be divided into a couple of categories:

1. Priority.  If a task isn’t #1 priority, it won’t get done. The further down your list of “intend to someday” something goes, the less likely it will ever happen.

2.  Lack of resources.  This can be a lack of financial capital, lack of skills, lack of knowledge- but if you don’t have the resources you need, you can’t execute.  The way around this is either to make a detailed plan on how to acquire the resources, or outsource and find people who can help you execute.

3. Bandwidth.  This is a sister concept of # 1 and #2.  If you don’t know how much you can reasonably accomplish, if you cannot self-monitor and know when you no longer have the time or energy to execute, you will constantly over promise and under-deliver.  Perfect example:  I have several half-finished knitting projects, and yarn coming out of the closets.  I love it, and every skein was bought with the best of intentions.  However, at the moment, and probably for the next six months, I am publically acknowledging I will not finish the sweater.  And that’s okay.  And this leads to #4…

4. Acknowledgement of Strengths and Weaknesses.  If you keep trying to do something but aren’t making it a priority, devoting time and attention resources to it, you can keep telling yourself you’ll finish the book, revamp the website, or whatever it is.  but it will never get done unless you change something else to make it happen.  This said, you will feel much better about yourself when you acknowledge to yourself and others it isn’t gonna happen.  You give up guilt, and in return, to stop wasting the time and energy of people who were waiting for you to execute your part of a bigger project.  Let them move on-don’t hold other people up because you are too afraid of saying “I can’t right now” or I won’t”.  Subset of this rule- be a mensch and tell yourself the truth.

So in closing, I always have 2 choices.  I can sit around and wait for something to happen, or I can get on email, on the phone and help make something happen.  Making things happen feels so much better that just complaining.  Doing feels great and active, while waiting is dreadful, boring and frustrating.

Since last year’s New Year’s Resolution of letting go of fear worked out pretty well, maybe this year’s will be to look at situations that are frustrating for me, and find work arounds.  Taking action. Taking responsibility and make it happen.  If not, you’ll find me sitting around a coffee bar grousing, and frankly, I wouldn’t talk to me, either, if that’s the case.

PS. Socrates sat around and talked about ideas but ended up dying by drnking hemlock; Plato wrote it all down and is the true father of Philosophy.