100 – ɔimoɈɒ

Russell going to tackle the 100Blogs challenge

As you may have noticed, my 100Blogs challenge stalled at #25 because I was using it to fight my way out of some writers block. I’ll likely pick it up again when I’ve got less to talk about 🙂 The 100Blogs Challenge is a list of 100 Blog titles that Chris Brogan hopes that people … Continue reading “Russell going to tackle the 100Blogs challenge”

As you may have noticed, my 100Blogs challenge stalled at #25 because I was using it to fight my way out of some writers block. I’ll likely pick it up again when I’ve got less to talk about 🙂

The 100Blogs Challenge is a list of 100 Blog titles that Chris Brogan hopes that people will tackle. Chris’ idea is for the community to have addressed all of them but I think it’s a good idea for anyone wanting to up the content on their blog or work through some block issues to start at #1 and aim for the sky.

Russell McQuillan, wireless guy and all-round scout, is giving it a go.

25/100 Books I Want to Write

Continuing my coverage of Chris Brogan’s 100 topics: Qabal Really one for the LateGaming site more than here but this is a book I’ve wanted to write, more than any other, for a decade. Qabal is a roleplaying game about magic and the occult in the modern day. It draws heavily from archetypes and tries … Continue reading “25/100 Books I Want to Write”

Continuing my coverage of Chris Brogan’s 100 topics:

Qabal
Really one for the LateGaming site more than here but this is a book I’ve wanted to write, more than any other, for a decade. Qabal is a roleplaying game about magic and the occult in the modern day. It draws heavily from archetypes and tries to update a mediaeval worldview for a modern one. Magic in the middle ages worked because people believed it did – pretty much the same these days. In this way, it’s kind of the ‘anti-Mage’.

Frontier
Another one for LateGaming , this RPG explores the things I loved about various science fiction. It incorporates aspects of Iain M. Banks ‘Culture’ novels, aspects of Star Trek (only the series’ that I liked) and explores themes of race, xenophobia, transhumanism, nostalgia and privilege. I’ve actually written a few pages of prose for this one. You never know. Maybe some day I’ll take a year off.

A poignant book about relationships and loss
Some of the books I’ve read (and, I suppose, films I have watched) which have affected me most have been about relationships and loss. For movies, P.S. I love you would be an excellent example, as would The Notebook. For dead tree, Anita Shreve’s “The Last Time They Met” left me feeling the lurch in my stomach as if the cabin in a plane hit an air pocket and plummetted hundreds of feet. Sometimes when I think of it, I’m still falling. I don’t have a copy of it right now, but I’ll buy it soon.

The Great Irish Novel
Slightly more difficult because I’ve never read one.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

24/100 Does a Big Brand Need You

Somewhere in the shady world of sales and marketing and the cheery world of consumers is a role which transcends the paycheck: the evangelist These are individuals who become fans of your product to the point that they will devote increasing amounts of time to the promotion of that product. Sometimes, like in a technology … Continue reading “24/100 Does a Big Brand Need You”

Somewhere in the shady world of sales and marketing and the cheery world of consumers is a role which transcends the paycheck: the evangelist

These are individuals who become fans of your product to the point that they will devote increasing amounts of time to the promotion of that product. Sometimes, like in a technology company, there may be a paid role for someone as a technology evangelist but they are often not much more than creative ways of saying ‘manager’ or ‘liaison’.

The biggest and most visible example of evangelism has to be in the Mac world. In all my years as a technologist I have never seen anything like the evangelism of the Mac. GNU/Linux has something of it but is hurt by the limited scope of the individuals (who tend to be technologists). With the Mac you might have an IT guy a teacher, a photographer, a civil servant, an artist and an athlete able to converse together about the same subject which they all enthuse about. The proliferation of Mac User Groups as shiny, happy places where you can meet like-minded individuals in a kind of social-network (years before the term gained such household acceptance) meant that even in the dark days of the mid nineties, when Apple’s future hung by a thread, there were still places to go and meet with other people (and to a degree, commiserate).

Other companies have evangelists too. Microsoft’s evangelists tend not to be as colourful or as interesting but they make their presence known by pushing through ‘homogenisation’ of networks and ‘standardising of operating systems when what they really mean is ‘move to Windows because it’s the only thing I know. Thankfully, apart from in straight IT disciplines, this breed is dying out.

Google has evangelists which is creates by giving out limited beta invites to some people and allowing them to give invites to their friends, creating cliques of application users who inadvertently give the service exclusivity (and therefore value) as well as acting as a scaling test for the service.

Another breed of evangelist is the guy who just invited you to join FaceBook/Bebo/Myspace/LinkedIn or any of the other sites where they encourage you to rat out your friends to their marketing department. They want you to join because it makes their network bigger, they seem more popular, they can keep track of you or remember your birthday easier.

These big companies absolutely need you. They need you to attract your friends to these services so they can charge your eyeballs to their advertisers and make money.

This is how Google is a $150 billion company, why FaceBook was valued at $15 billion. Because they own you, the individual.

Apple needed the individuals to ‘keep the faith’ so they would continue to buy the product and, at the end of the day they need people to buy the product. Google and FaceBook need you to just try the product as they give it away for free. As Web 2.0 is all about moving the content from the traditional providers to the end users, Web 2.0 also means the revenue source comes not from the end users but because of them.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

23/100 My Mother is On Facebook

Continuing my work on writing about 100 different topics… My mother is not on Facebook nor is she on any of the other social networking sites but there are members of my family who are. To be honest, my mother has just about gotten used to using a computer for email (though her replies are … Continue reading “23/100 My Mother is On Facebook”

Continuing my work on writing about 100 different topics…

My mother is not on Facebook nor is she on any of the other social networking sites but there are members of my family who are. To be honest, my mother has just about gotten used to using a computer for email (though her replies are very infrequent).

My own Facebook profile is/was very tame. I had links to my blog posts, links to my friends, music I like and places I’d been. I deliberately cut back on Zombie Fights, Werewolf invites, Admission to be a member of the Knights of the Round Table, SuperWall, FunWall, MetaWall and all the rest of that and my main reason was that My Mother could be on FaceBook

If you log onto a standard profile on FaceBook you’ll see a lot of these mini-apps and you’ll see the content (a lot of it adult-rated) that finds it’s way onto the SuperWalls and similar applications if you’re not monitoring the content. If not your mother, imagine a prospective employer reading this stuff. You might have an innocent profile but if you’re linked to someone who sends adult-rated content and you’re on their photo gallery shitfaced and dancing naked from the waist down at a local bar, it could damage your ability to get a job. That said, I’m relatively convinced that most recruiters here don’t have the time or wherewithall to use tools like LinkedIn or FaceBook to help them find or vet candidates. And none of my managers throughout my history of being an employed lackey would have the forethought to search for me online.

It is, however, only a matter of time.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

22/100 If I Were an Advertiser Today

#21 was listed separately on Lategaming If I were an advertiser today, I’d be nervous. I’m talking from the point of view of being a producer or seller and that I have a product or service to advertise. There’s probably more choice in the methods of advertising now than there ever has been and to … Continue reading “22/100 If I Were an Advertiser Today”

#21 was listed separately on Lategaming

If I were an advertiser today, I’d be nervous.

I’m talking from the point of view of being a producer or seller and that I have a product or service to advertise. There’s probably more choice in the methods of advertising now than there ever has been and to my mind they are becoming increasingly less effective.

Dead Tree
I’ll tell you right now. Junk mail I receive goes in the recycler. I don’t look at adverts in magazines. I don’t look at billboards for product advice. I do look at billboards for event advice however, like a robot turning up at W5? My kids would love it. A Wedding Fayre? Her indoors will love it. A Tech conference? Yeah, sure, though my expectations will be low.

Zombie Hordes
Unsolicited commercial email, and much of the solicited commercial email just goes straight into the trash. Being spammed with ‘articles’ written by small-time CEOs doesn’t inspire either. If you’re emailing me something, make it content and make it something I want, not something I might be interested in. I’m not interested in offers of free laptops and phones, performance enhancing drugs or business opportunities where I get a commission on vast amounts of money being transferred from one place to another. Figure it out.

Jaded Eyeballs
Does anyone pay attention to commercials on TV? What about adverts on web pages? I don’t even process them these days. The only ads I watch on TV are Apple adverts because I’m a sucker for Apple. I don’t look at or click through on most adverts on web sites. Sponsors links are different however – so make your advertising targetted and relevant and make sure they’re relevant to the web site I’m on.

Conversational Media
Advertising via Blog seems to be just dishonest in some ways. Sure, I might rave about Rickshaw but that’s because I’m using it every day. It’s a product created by me and my friends (my input is solely advisory). But what about companies that give free product to bloggers? Or pay them? Or for journo-bloggers who get paid to write reviews? I think there’s a line to be drawn. If it were me I’d provide product to a group of bloggers and tell them to be honest. Because if you’re not in this to be honest in your business then why even bother. Mr Mulley has a recent post about fakeblogging which is being seized by PR houses who see it as a quick way to generate some buzz. Is this much different to the online viral campaigns being created by movie producers to support their releases (Cloverfield had one)?

Something new and exciting?
It’s not my job to think of new and exciting ways to advertise? Uh, yeah, it is. Ways that would appeal to me? The biggest issue of any business is awareness. The number of people who told Mac-Sys they were so happy to hear about a Mac Service Provider in Northern Ireland but they’d never heard of the company before. And the number who were referred from PC companies was startling as well.

You also have to consider the potential damage that unsubstantiated word of mouth can cause and you have to wonder why people have such negative things to say. That’s why it’s important for a business to engage with bloggers who have an opinion. Not so bloggers can get special treatment but so the company can show that the rumour is false and that the real performance of the company cannot be judged by mutterings from a couple of guys. I have no idea why Andy’s friends told him not to go to Mac-Sys but I would hope that Andy’s experience with us has shown him a little insight into how we work with every customer. As it happened, Apple and Mac-Sys worked together to provide a solution that was palatable to all. Not every situation will play out like that but engaging a company directly should always provide some sort of palatable result. Not everyone may be happy with the results but there’s been a miscommunication if people are badmouthing you – you’ve obviously not communicated the message correctly (or, in many cases, the individual is too angry to listen and in my experience the anger is usually at themselves but directed at others.)

If I were an advertiser I’d not waste money on TV or Radio. If I were hosting an event I’d put the event on billboards. I’d definitely start a blog and do detailed breakdowns of the products and services. I’d provide free samples to bloggers and ask, not bargain with, them to write honest reviews. Engage with bloggers, challenge their assumptions, respond to their blog posts and take on board their criticisms.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

21/100 Making a Miniseries

See here Related posts: 100% electric transportation and 100% solar by 2030 Making it Mac-like The Making of: Battle: Los Angeles From your experiences in Northern Ireland making games…

See here

20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What

Far away in some coffee shop there are three guys sitting, taking gulps of their frappes and writing an insanely great idea on the back of a napkin. They’re going to blow apart the world of social network and provide the basis for the next great revolution. Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering … Continue reading “20/100 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What”

Internet/Web 1.0 seemed mostly to be about discovering how to sell things online – dog food, books, videos and content. We discovered that food was a bad thing to sell online unless you were local to your customer. We discovered that books and videos can be compelling if you have a great supply chain and a few huge warehouses. We discovered that people don’t like paying for online content but if it’s a reasonable price, they’ll part with their readies.

Web 2.0 was hyped as being about the conversation but it really continued the idea that content should be free. Not just free to the consumer but also free to the provider. That’s why YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook are all doing so well. They chewed through investor money and then were either acquired or got huge investments from massive companies. What’s paying for these services? Eyeballs. Companies seem convinced that online advertising is worth billions.

Our three entreprenerds are working on inventing Web 3.0.

I see it as being some of the following (inspired by the Web 3.0 article on Wikipedia)

ubiquitous mobile connectivity
open identity, portable reputation
semantic web and service oriented architecture
distributed databases
intelligent ‘pro-active’ web (building on intelligent applications)
more open access to data and services
cloud, as opposed to grid, computing
persistent statement-based datastores
expansion beyond the vanilla web

I’m expecting better and more intelligent heuristics in my mobile applications. I think SaaS/SOA only works with properly ubiquitous networking, something which we do not have yet and it will be a while before we do. So we need storage and processing power locally – not a lot though more than ever before. A rich client accessing web services is obviously the way to go as evidenced by the Google Maps application on the iPhone. The experience is much better than the vanilla web

I’ve used that term twice now, vanilla web. That’s the web we access every day using a web browser. It’s a lot better than it was, with all this AJAXy goodness but it’s hard to beat a dedicated client. That’s why I prefer an RSS reader app compared to Google Reader. Why I prefer Maps on the iPhone to maps in my browser. Why I want an IM application rather than using web-based IM clients.

I think Web 3.0 will be the start of the end for the Vanilla Web.

What do you think?

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write. Technical The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it … Continue reading “18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How”

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write.

Technical
The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it published via RSS. It’s a little high level but I guess this means that my mum would find it easier than me as I tend to overthink things.

Non-Technical
I’ve left the non-technical issues until last. This actually involves the content itself and is best covered by the Podcast Recipe on the link above.

Talking for 15-20 minutes is a tough job for a lot of people which is why you have to plan it. I’ve only ever been involved in one Podcast as a guest (The Spodcast (#28) and it wasn’t hard to fill the time – mainly because it was a conversation about interesting stuff that was timetabled and, at the end of the day, there were four people talking. 20 minutes of talk-time is a lot easier to fill when there’s four of you.

Accessibility Issues
Not to be sniffed at, there are real problems if you’re producing podcast content and that is simply accessibility. The first issue is obvious – anyone who is deaf or has a severe hearing impairment will probably not be able to access your content. In the US that’s possibly 2% of the population (link). If you include any kind of hearing impairment it rises to almost 14%. The solution here therefore is to offer a transcript which, as you can guess, is a poor substitute, but if your content ain’t rubbish then it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Another problem related to accessibility is what is required to listen to your content. MP3 and AAC formats should be fine because one is a defacto standard and the other is an actual standard. Once you start making a political statement (like Ogg Vorbis) then you’ve just thrown away another chunk of listeners. This becomes even more problematic when a format is owned wholly by a company, like WMA, and is poorly supported on other platforms.

There’s also the problem of file size. A minute of conversation might take 512Kbytes, which is the same as about 500 pages of plain text (or seven and a half lines of text in Word 2008). Using plain text means you can feed it into a braille machine or a screen reader or magnify it to ungodly levels without much distortion. A 20 minute podcast is a much higher bandwidth and storage sink compared to the same amount of content as text.

My recommendations:

Get a Mac – using GarageBand will just make your life easier. If you’re in love with Windows, then keep using it I guess but you’ll have to find your own killer podcasting app.
Find a Friend – I don’t think Podcasting is a lone activity and some of the least interesting podcasts come from people who do it alone. Look at popular talk radio shows – Chris Moyles seems to have about 17 people stuffed into his booth.
Do it regularly – Weekly is probably what people expect. Don’t disappoint them.
Careful with Commercials – no-one likes commercials. Everyone wants to skip them but if you do accept sponsorship then make sure you don’t ram them in your listeners faces. Try to be objective about and don’t just think of the “free” money. It’s not going to score you a Mercedes or anything.

I don’t know how useful this was, taking podcasting advice from someone who’s never really done it. A lot of it is common sense. But I’m going to be starting topic 19 from Chris Brogan’s 100 blogging topics. If any of my readers (yeah, both of you) do a podcast, chuck the URL in the comments as I’m interested to listen.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

17/100 After the Event – Carrying the Conversation Forward

I may be a tad old-fashioned but if someone gives me their number or their email address, even in the form of a business card, then I assume they want me to use it. The Business Card is an amalgam of the Visiting Card and the Trade Card. Wikipedia provides: Visiting cards included refined engraved … Continue reading “17/100 After the Event – Carrying the Conversation Forward”

I may be a tad old-fashioned but if someone gives me their number or their email address, even in the form of a business card, then I assume they want me to use it.

The Business Card is an amalgam of the Visiting Card and the Trade Card.

Wikipedia provides:

Visiting cards included refined engraved ornaments and fantastic coats of arms. The visiting cards served as tangible evidence of the meeting of social obligations. The stack of cards in the card tray in the hall was a handy catalog of exactly who had called and whose calls one should reciprocate. They also provided a streamlined letter of introduction.

With the passage of time, visiting cards became an essential accessory to any 19th-century upper or middle class lady or gentleman. Visiting cards were not generally used among country folk or the working classes.

Trade cards first became popular at the beginning of the 17th century in London. These functioned as advertising and also as maps, directing the public to merchants’ stores, as no formal street address numbering system existed at the time.

When I started out, I was a lot less comfortable with making these lukewarm calls. It’s not the same as a cold call because there’s been some contact but it’s certainly got a chill about it.

If you’re not sure about the call, then attempt another way to remind the contactee. Using services like LinkedIn or FaceBook can be a good way, even if they don’t accept you as a contact or friend. You’ve made contact. Just pipe an email to them through the built-in invitation features and wait and see. The problem with this is that you have to have your LinkedIn or FaceBook presence updated. That’s easy enough on LinkedIn but be aware what “friends” can see. It’s not just that a potential contact may be offended by the photos of you in your gallery bench-pressing barmaids with the tagline “Absolutely shitfaced on the company tab and loving it” which might be career suicide in many cases, but also what people write on your Walls. Remember also that your friends can see your friends which means that a lot of the content produced by the eejits who shared your trip to the Canary Islands will be on show as well. I’m not telling you who to have as friends or to edit out friends who might be embarrassing, but if they are likely to be putting up photos of you dressed as Freddie Mercury with a racoon in your boxer shorts, then you might want to reconsider using FaceBook or any of the non-professional-oriented web sites. There’s always LinkedIn which is a lot more no-nonsense!

The old cliches are true, of course.

Women can smell desperation, and so can Venture Capitalists and other business operators. It’s not about getting the money or the business, it’s about doing the right thing for your business. Treat it like a child. You want to nurture it, not raise it to literacy and sell it into slavery.
The one about the chickens and the hatching? Conversations are just words. Just because you start off a conversation with someone, it doesn’t mean that you have to see it through. Business is about taking a few eggs and keeping them warm. Depending on the heat you apply, some of them will hatch. Some of them will burn. And some of them are really nice with toast and a little salt.
You’ll wait for an age for a bus, then three will come at once. Remember that you don’t have to get on any of them. You can be choosy with your business deals and I’d recommend that if you are sensible you can avoid picking up business partners that will, in the long run, bugger things up.
Any landing you can walk away from is a good one. So it failed, so it bollocksed up. You’ve still got your health, right? There’s always tomorrow? The rule I live with is that it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as they’re not fatal mistakes.

The point being, don’t be afraid to take the next step. The next person you meet might be the person who changes your life. And maybe it won’t be today, it might be in a years time when you’re in a different place.

But if you don’t make that callback. If you don’t make that first step, then you’ll never know.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]