Written by Joe Hackman on 07 February 2010
This past week I attended two different “networking” or social events. One was a chamber like event and the other was the Mashable/Social Media Week party Friday night in SF. Not long ago you would be hard pressed to find me at either of these events but I have really become more of a social being this last year or two. Why did this occur?
- The economy tanked and I had time to think about such things.
- I read a blog article by Guy Kawasaki about Schmoozing.
- I read a book called “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazzi.
My eclectic reasons
I think among the list the economy tanking is the most self-explanatory. As the owner of what had been a growing IT services business a sudden interruption in that growth led to more time on my hands. The Guy Kawasaki thing dates way back to a suggestion that came from my friend Patrick Lee, now CEO of Rotten Tomatoes YEARS ago. Patrick gave me some great suggestions of books I could read as the owner of a technology business. Among them was Guy Kawasaki’s book Rules for Revolutionaries. Of course it took one more catalyst, this happened to be from neighbor and friend JP McDermott who reminded me that Guy had a blog and that it was great – which is where I found and read the schmoozing article. Ok, so now you know how I found the article but why was it instrumental in making me more social? The answer is quite simple – because guy tells you to give and help others. This was something I could do, naturally, daily and consistently. Never Eat Alone was the nail in the coffin for my anti-social positions. One thing in particular, when Keith Recounts the story of the guy getting choked up about everyone forgetting his birthday – except Keith, really struck a chord with me. You see I am that guy, the one that sees one person struggling and can’t help but reach out and offer at least a smile and a bit of encouragement. I was dead set on being more social and connecting with more people.
Why I wrote this article
Now on to the meat of the story, the real reason I wanted to write this article. I had interesting experiences at these events that I feel I have a unique perspective to share with the world. My hope is that people who are both part of the positive experiences I had and negative or just similar in their presence at these events will benefit. Most memorable among my experiences (actual names and specific details often omitted to protect the innocent and guilty):
- The over aggressive Bank Sales VP.
- The old acquaintance.
- The Gimmick Lady.
- The loner.
- The high energy dreamer.
- The over aggressive Social Media Tool person.
The Over Aggressive Bank Sales VP
So you’ve probably heard of “that guy”. You know the one you’re not supposed to be. Well this guy was “that guy”. The banking business is evidently extremely aggressive on the sales side of things. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. This guy approached me and my “old acquaintance” (see part 2) and could not wait to sell us his services. It was really bad, almost laughable, I could not believe it. It will be hard for me to take that company seriously again, he so poorly represented them. He was sure of himself, had no problem asking for the sale. Someone back at the bank loves him, but not me.
The old Acquaintance
This is one of the great things about any social event. I was able to reconnect and have a fine conversation with someone I knew briefly through Toastmasters. Very nice guy, quality conversation and I am happy to be back in touch. Class act and I hope we are able to maintain a connection.
The Gimmick Lady
She had a gimmick to give you a sample of her product and a business card. She also approached a group of us and executed the gimmick. While personally not my style I respect her courage and willingness to be out there, trying to make things happen. It wasn’t over the top by any means. I sent her a nice follow up email because I wanted to encourage her to keep doing what she is doing. It did not seem like the approach was by any means second nature to her.
The Loner (Loners?)
This was at the Mashable party Friday night. I had arrived maybe 5-10 minutes, was checking Twitter, etc, as that seemed like “the thing to do” at a Mashable event. Then I noticed another guy just hanging out by himself. He was, like me, at this event alone so we shared at least one thing in common. I approached him and we had a pretty decent conversation going. I think this guy will be an entrepreneur one day, and I hope to encourage him to pursue that dream so I will be following up periodically. That is when the high energy dreamer showed up.
The High Energy Dreamer
She was great, full of energy joined the conversation and really kicked things in to high gear. She had just learned about 20 minutes before she arrived that her dream of having a certain job at a certain company had been fulfilled. She was riding on a natural high and passing on that positive energy with many people. I checked out her blog and I find her story very inspiring and humorous. Definitely a great person to connect with and I will probably keep in touch because I love to hear about happy endings and people winning.
The Over Aggressive Media Tool Person
When you’re having a conversation with someone else and someone comes along with the business cards already in hand, brace yourselves. This was very similar to “that guy” but in this case it was “that girl”. Please don’t be that girl/guy. You are the reason I didn’t want to be at events like this until I realized there were other reasons to go and much better philosophies and ideas about how relationships work with human beings in business or personally.
What I took away from the experiences
- Pride – that my comfort zone is much broader.
- Joy – making connections with new friends.
- Inspiration – watching people try and do.
- Happiness – helping others.
So I am not sure how this article will resonate with readers, but I truly hope that it helps you find what I’ve found and perhaps get you to go outside your comfort zone. The Mashable party was a spur of the moment thing. I learned about it and decided to go very late Friday afternoon. Please let me know what you think.
Resources:
Written by Joe Hackman on 06 February 2010
The past few days Facebook has been rolling out a new user interface and I absolutely love it. Not hearing rave reviews from some folks though so I thought I’d do a quick screencast and explain where the important features are located.
Written by Joe Hackman on 03 February 2010
Tonight I interviewed H Abram Wilson current mayor of San Ramon and candidate for Assembly District 15. Mayor Wilson is a public servant that promotes values that are lacking in many leaders. He believes that law makers should read the bills they are voting on. He believes that they should be accessible and responsive to constituent’s calls, letters and communications. Most importantly he believes that they should not forget who they are there to represent, we the people. It is refreshing to hear a politician whose values are in step with their actions as Mayor Wilson has walked the walk in his service to the San Ramon community.
Clearly individuals like Abram Wilson cannot succeed without the citizens of our state taking a more prominent role in policy. We need to vote on Election Day. We need to stay informed of issues that affect us. We also need to make sure that our voices are heard by calling and writing our representatives.
Evidently Abram’s message is resonating with voters. His campaign announced today that his fund raising efforts are out pacing incumbent Joan Buchanan by 2 to 1. I wish Abram the best of luck with his campaign and respect his efforts to make positive changes to move this state forward. I hope that his values and message gain traction, because I agree with him that we as citizens need to be more involved in forcing better policy decisions going forward.?
Written by Joe Hackman on 30 January 2010
I want to thank Socratoad on Amplify for sharing this. As a Toastmaster and someone who is interested in public speaking and quality speech I absolutely love this poem. What a great reminder to all of us.
Written by Joe Hackman on 29 January 2010
I had the opportunity to interview Internet entrepreneur Eric Goldstein founder/CEO of Clipmarks.com and Amplify.com. Eric is not your traditional technology innovator; his entrée into this industry is the result of his appreciation for conversation. While growing up in Long Island Eric’s family would often have discussions around the dinner table where he would learn and appreciate the value of different opinions and ideas. Ultimately this led Eric to pursue a career in Law.
About 10 years ago the foundations of Clipmarks.com were originating in Eric’s mind. By 2004 the site was launched and evolved to be a community that he is very fond of to this day. There was one small problem with Clipmarks from the internet entrepreneur side of things, the model was not scalable. Eric was forced to make decisions that would provide insight into his character. Despite the suggestion of at least one potential investor Eric opted to keep the Clipmarks community alive and create a new scalable site – Amplify.com.
The emphasis on conversation is still the driving force but the new site has scalability in its DNA. Amplify was officially launched in 2009 without much fanfare. Eric realized that if a site was to succeed it had to be viral, so there was no hype, no pre-launch party, no balloons, advertising or marketing push. The site was officially launched by about a half dozen employees and family members. Amplify has since proven that it can grow organically and viral with the number of posts and users growing substantially month over month. As of the interview there were approximately 800 posts per day on the Amplify.com website.
When we talked about the priorities of the site evolution, Eric mentioned that the feed portion of the site will be undergoing an overhaul. It will not come as a surprise that the overhaul is intended to further improve the quality of the conversation. After the overhaul is completed it is likely that support for pushing the content you create on amplify.com to other blog sites such as Wordpress or Blogger. Presently you can choose (via checkbox) to push your content to:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- Friendfeed
- Tumblr
- Posterous
- Plurk
- Diigo
- Delicious
- Clipmarks
When the blog integration is complete it will allow most users to rely solely upon Amplify.com to generate their content. This will really be quite an achievement.
I will be following Amplify.com very closely both as a user and a fan of their technology and conversational approach. For me 2010 is the year of the conversation, and that extends from Social Media, Family, Work, Blogtalkradio, and face to face meet-ups. While we were wrapping up the show Eric and I agreed that we would explore having another conversation down the road perhaps where some of the users of the site will call in and interact.
Written by Joe Hackman on 25 January 2010
Here is a podcast I recorded this morning over at Cinchcast.
Written by Joe Hackman on 24 January 2010
I was posting to a discussion about Amplify being a “better Posterous” and decided I would share it here on my blog also for the people who follow my blog. I basically moved from “living” on Facebook and Twitter to Amplify this week. I still access Facebook and Twitter in fact in ways the move has enhanced my experience. Here is the post, there is a link after to the original thread if you want to see what others have said.
Wow great discussion! The hook for me that exceeded Facebook, Twitter, etc. was the fact that there is a GREAT community interaction and the site is absolutely unique in what it can do right now. Of course over time I am sure the team here (and elsewhere) will work to innovate and disrupt but I hope that amplify will continue to build on the strength of the conversation portion. Prior to making Amplify my home, I bounced between Facebook and Twitter. For me this was a really simple shift because I can still selectively engage those audiences but also just casually share the stuff that I read throughout the day.
There are some special things about Amplify for me that I had not anticipated at all, and would have stuck around anyway:
1. I made some great Quality friends quickly (the site attracts energetic, kind, supportive and savvy people).
2. I had a big increase in my mentions and interaction on Twitter. (Go figure!)
3. It encouraged me to use a couple of other sites a little more (sites I was basically passively updating already via ping.fm) Friendfeed, Posterous.
In summary Amplify is a site were individuals of all skill levels can effectively communicate without being forced into a closed system (like Facebook). In my view it has the most important aspects of Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed right now. It will also truly “amplify” the effectiveness of your message, ideas and experience.
A bit long winded and worthy of a blog entry on my site, let the ctrl+a, ctrl+c begin! <EOM>
See this entire discussion.
Written by Joe Hackman on 23 January 2010
Today while exchanging some tweets with @simbeckhampson I recognized that my social media and web footprint has evolved over time and in the process different tools have been useful for different things:
- Facebook is where most of my real life friends are. I also find it more personal interaction wise.
- I get news from Twitter, share news and interesting info. More informal interaction wise.
- Blogtalkradio has opened up a nice niche for conversations with interesting people.
- Cinchcast – I love to call in and get ideas out while driving then I share it later.
- Youtube – I am big on screencasts and moving towards more personal messages (videos of me mixed in)
- Amplify – I am making new friends, sharing more what I am reading more and selectively share to FB, Twitter, etc.
These aren’t all the tools I use, for me the key is really the data that comes in via Email. I need to re-evaluate my use of Google Reader and RSS also for incoming information. Here is the podcast that was inspired by my conversations with Paul:
Written by Joe Hackman on 22 January 2010
I’ve made a lot of very cool new friends over at Amplify.com. Consider this part II of my Amplify series. In this video I do a demonstration of sharing content on Amplify and realize that they have not seen a lot of my choice old content yet so I need to build my Amplog over there.
Written by Joe Hackman on 20 January 2010
Today I discovered an app that I can confidently say is one of the most under-hyped web 2.0 apps I’ve come across. I happened to be searching for something on google and one of the results was at amplify.com. When I got to the content I was very interested in what I saw, it was like Friend Feed meets Alltop. For best results I recommend using this with Mozilla Firefox.
Why is this a Killer Web 2.0 App?
- You can easily share entire pages or snippets of pages via a number of channels.
- It does all of the heavy lifting including tagging your content, yes it generates suggested tags!
- Includes a social component and feed similar to Friendfeed.
- Provides the ability to include categories to better organize your content.
Sharing snippets or pages via a number of channels
By allowing you to configure Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and a number of other services you have the ability to share the message with the audience that you think it is most appropriate for by simply checking or unchecking the box next to that service. You can uncheck the twitter option for example if you want to add some hashtags you can come back and share with Twitter after you post it. It also has integration with bit.ly that allows you to track the URL’s that it parses and shares with the various sites you choose. For me the flexibility here is really helpful. If I’ve been busy on Facebook for example I might give those users a break and share it with Twitter. I don’t send everything everywhere, that is a decision we all must decide fits our needs best.
Check out my Amplify Page.
Heavy Lifting and Tagging Content
So many of us out here in internet land are lazy, we don’t always want to think about brands, messages and SEO. Sometimes we just want to post something and share it with our friends without consideration of how it will play out strategically for the next 90 days. For some of us tagging articles is the web 2.0 equivalent of heavy lifting. Someone was wise enough to figure this out and there are suggested tags generated automatically for each article or snippet you amplify. Yes!
Social Components and Friendfeed Like UI
I’ve noticed a lot of people on Friendfeed say not so nice things about Twitter. I can understand it, Twitter is like the wild west of the internet. It can be chaotic, it is very fluid and loose. Friendfeed is very structured and user friendly. Most importantly Friendfeed offers the right mix of features to make it very comfortable for social media savvy people to communicate. Amplify delivers this level of comfort and familiarity to the novice or pro alike.
Categories Better Organize Your Content
I discovered this option after I recorded the screencast for this post. I am definitely not about perfection and my screencasts, podcasts and writing will indicate that if you’ve followed me very long. So lacking the retention of a perfectionist I did not go back and add the category information to the video but it really is great to have it.
You will be cooler than all your friends
You can be cooler than all your friends, I cannot imagine how this site will not catch on. It has the most important criteria:
- Ease of use – it doesn’t get much easier
- Social – Check!
- More features – Check!
- Tags – Check!
- Categories – Check!
- URL Shortening/Tracking – Check!
Welcome to my favorite new Web 2.0 App:
