Welcome to the personal blog of Joe Hackman. Joe is an Entrepreneur, IT Consultant and Blog Talk Radio host. Joe has great interest in community and conversation.
Today I wrote my first article in a series for the SF Startup Business Examiner. The article is entitled “A to Z Series Web 2.0 Apps for Startups – Amplify.com”. For those of you that follow my blog you know a couple of weeks ago I dove into Amplify.com because it had filled a significant void in my social media needs. This of course became the inspiration for my first series of articles as the SF Startup Business Examiner. Please check out my first article A to Z Series Web 2.0 Apps for Startups – Amplify.com
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.
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.
I just moved this article over from my old personal blog due to the Haiti crisis. Here is a brief podcast followed by the original article.
On any given day I process quite a bit of information. From the alert emails I review for my job, the Wall Street Journal news alerts on my phone to my friends and associates statements on blogs, LinkedIn, news feeds, Twitter and on Facebook. My point really is there is an abundance of information bombarding me every day. I am always amazed how rewarding the process of reading is when I stumble across something truly profound:
“All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.” Bill Gates – in a speech to Harvard University 1997
I believe this quote identifies an important part of human nature that every single one of us will struggle with in our lives. In the face of human tragedy or extremely disturbing situations we often feel powerless or over-whelmed and do not know how to respond – so we do nothing. A perfect example is when we are a witness to an auto accident, it is our legal and moral responsibility to stop but how many cars zoom by and do nothing with drivers confused and un-sure of how to respond. Understanding this can lead to a very reasonable outcome – being prepared.
Self preservation probably plays a large role in this, but we know human beings can overcome these instincts and remain calm in these situations. One key is preparation. First aid classes are a good example of a responsible and meaningful thing you can do to be prepared for some of these situations. Another key is mental preparation – try this exercise and after doing it you may decide there are additional things you would like to do to be more prepared. Consider what you might instinctively do and what you should do in the following scenarios:
You are on a train and a passenger collapses to the ground near you.
A patron in line in front of you gets very verbally abusive and threatening to the cashier.
You witness an automobile accident and several cars in front of you do not stop.
By preparing and visualizing, it is much easier to do the right thing when you face the situation in real life. Item #2 was a real world example for me; I was in an office supplies store when this occurred. I did not intervene but I was mentally preparing myself for what I would do if the situation escalated beyond threats to actual violence. Had I not had a chance to prepare, what would I have done? Hopefully the same things I had planned to do if it had.
I’ve reduced this issue to a much smaller scale and made it more personal for effect, but I would encourage anyone reading this article to consider this same concept when facing a significant crisis anywhere in the world. Instead of not acting, understand that these issues are complex and find out what you can do and do something. It does not have to be huge but I believe the greater your commitment the greater the reward will which reminds me of this Chinese proverb:
If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.
If you like what I’ve said here I would recommend you visit a local service club, for selfish reasons I will recommend Rotary. I have been a part of the Danville/Sycamore Valley Rotary club for over 2 years and it has definitely given me inspiration to build a lifetime of happiness.
In my day to day travels both personally and professionally I am often encouraging people to check out and use certain social media sites and blogs. When I mention RSS it seems like a lot of my audience drops off comprehension wise. In response to this I’ve come up with a video that your parents could use to understand and use RSS and more specifically Google Reader. The video will get into detail but it will be useful for people who:
Might want to get updated content from certain web and blog sites.
Like to organize all of their media content in one place when possible.
Don’t know what RSS is but would like to be able to explain it to others.
Want to learn more about blogging and how the content gets delivered.
Have an interest in Feedburner for promoting their blog and RSS feed.
I found a very useful video capture application today that just blew me away. It supports full HD, upload to YouTube and even has a feature that allows you to add notes to your captured video. Needless to say you can expect much more multimedia content from me as a result.
I follow NYT Best Selling Author Joel Comm on Twitter, he posted a link to this article this morning. This is a great reminder that so much of success is about doing things. If you lack the motivation and drive to get things done start there.
“But I can’t create success for the people I’m trying to help. Nor do I want to. If someone isn’t so driven to succeed that they’re not prepared to put in the long hours, the worries and the investment necessary to create their own business, then I don’t want to waste their time. They’re never going to succeed and they should stick to their J.O.B.” – Joel Comm
Please check out my first article A to Z Series Web 2.0 Apps for Startups – Amplify.com