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Expand your content sharing with Print Friendly and PDF

October 21, 2011 By 8 Comments

As bloggers we’re always looking for ways to make our content more friendly, encourage conversation and encouraging distribution of the content to amplify our voice. I recall seeing the Print Friendly plugin for the first time over at Waxing Unlyrical. I thought it was interesting but didn’t connect the dots until yesterday that is.

Why some of your readers will love this plugin

Think for a moment about your less tech savvy readers, the ones who may not even have a Twitter account or won’t bother to click the LinkedIn share because they rarely log in. Or think about the friends and connections of your tech savvy readers that won’t want content delivered anywhere but the old tried and true – Email. This is where the true power of Print Friendly lies. In this video I demonstrate how the plugin works and describe in more detail why I think it is great for the web 1.0/Email crowd.

Video not showing up? Try this direct link.

Filed Under: Productivity, Technology, Video, Wordpress, YouTube Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Efficiency is the essential 21st Century Skill

October 12, 2011 By 3 Comments

You’ve probably heard the term sustainability thrown around a lot recently. It’s for good reason, we see evidence everywhere that businesses, governments, educational systems, laws, and everything else under the sun has to be able to survive the tests of time. There is no such thing as “too big to fail” just look back in history and we’ve seen Empires collapse under their own weight. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how great you think you are, if you aren’t prepared to sustain whatever you are doing it won’t last forever. Knowing that we need to be sustainable and actually functioning in a sustainable fashion are totally different things.

Be careful what you ask for

It’s time for every individual, business, political party, interest group, etc. to think long and hard about what they are asking for. If you are thinking today that someone else is going to rescue you, think again. At best they will delay the inevitable.

A society of individuals that aren’t taught to sustain themselves will fail.

Who doesn’t love the idea of a social service? I believe it is part of human nature to want to care for each other. I would even go so far as to argue that life without caring and serving others is probably not life worth living. Sometimes really caring though is asking for the right things, sustainable things, like teaching people that they matter and can stand on their own. Mentoring kids, especially those in difficult situations is one way you can really do this.

Never pass up a chance to tell a young person that they can do anything they set their mind to do.

Why Efficiency is the essential 21st Century Skill

We don’t have the luxury of excessive budgets to pay for inefficiencies and blow money on things that don’t work, the party is over and we just got the bill. Today we all have to emphasize the reality that we have to do more with less. With our debt piling up and our social systems strained to a breaking point there is only one real answer to the crisis – doing more with less while also being mindful of what we ask for.

3 Years ago my company leased an entire rack at a co-location facility to the tune of $900 per month. Today I rely on companies that leverage resources in a much more sustainable and efficient way to provide those services. The co-location facility has to do without my business, and so does the staff that is no longer needed to operate it, but in hindsight it would be pointless to place my business in the precarious and un-competitive position to support that co-location facility and the staff to operate it. This could easily be looked at by many as “killing jobs” but if my company goes under I’ll be out there competing for a new one.

The old way was not sustainable, the new way is and in the future it is my responsibility to ensure that it stays that way.

Opportunity is everywhere

Human beings have adapted to survive some incredibly challenging environments. We’ve launched successful business ventures during economic crisis’s including the Great Depression. We’ve huddled together to survive unimaginable natural disasters and hardships including horrific wars and genocides. Today you don’t have to look too far to see an incredible amount of energy being exerted, people are angry, they are fed up, many appear desperate and I think many of us are yearning for something I know that I am. What am I yearning for?

I yearn most for people to seize the opportunity to work together to solve the problems we face, instead of blaming others for them.

What do you yearn most for?

Filed Under: Community, Leadership, Parenting, Politics, Serious Topics Tagged With: , , , , ,

Coffee Shop Insights from Dups

July 22, 2011 By 5 Comments

"Dups" Duleepa WijayawardhanaAre you familiar with Empire Avenue? I met with co-founder and CEO Dups (aka Duleepa Wijawardhana) for coffee this past Wednesday in San Mateo, CA. Dups is one of a team of 5 that built and operate the Social Stock Market Empire Avenue. In all the pictures I’ve seen of Dups he is always smiling and he is no different in person, though he does blame his persistent smile on his 3 hours of sleep per night that has become typical for him. After chatting for about an hour with Dups, I had a much better grasp on what Empire Avenue is really about and felt grateful for time well spent.

(Please note all quotes in this post are paraphrased, I was not recording or taking notes, Dups if I got something wrong let me know.)

Value is relative and Virtual Currency.

While discussing virtual currency and the possibilities it represents, Dups was quick to point out to me that value is a very relative thing. We all see value in different things, it’s not always cash in hand. Sometimes it is virtual currency or even a Castle upgrade for your personal empire on Empire Avenue. The fact is people will trade resources for almost anything, and if I understood Dups bullish position on virtual currency it seems he has a strong belief that virtual currency can in fact drive profits and opportunity for a tech start up.

Good questions make good conversations.

You’ve probably heard that you can learn a lot about someone by the questions they ask.

Dups: “What do you hate most about Empire Avenue?”

Me: “I can’t really think of anything.”

Dups: “What would you change if you could change one thing?”

The follow up prompted a long explanation about how I was not a heavy user of the site and eventually I did come up with the fact that I had asked fellow EAV member Laurie DesAutels a few questions about how some things worked.

Dups: “Yes, you need more information about how the site works. We know that, we can do better there.”

Putting the Social in Social Media

One of the topics we covered in our discussion was social interaction. When I was queried about why I had reached out and invited Dups to connect while he was in town it led us to discuss the “in person” versus “online” connections. It’s definitely clear that you can establish meaningful relationships online. The best example I know of this is Shonali Burke, she met her husband online and he flew half way around the world to marry her without ever meeting in person. Online relationships and friendships are great but at some point human beings will want to communicate directly with each other. We need and crave this connection.

Influence

Many people have observed that as EAV supports a broader range of services than Klout. EAV also does activity based scoring and one’s share price may be an alternative to a Klout score. Dups did not think that Klout considered them competition and he indicated also that EAV does not consider Klout competition. He was very clear though that he does not believe you can fashion an algorithm to truly analyze influence. In fact he went so far as to say:

Dups – “Show me any algorithm designed to measure influence, and I will show you where it is flawed.”

The most convincing supporting argument that Dups mentioned was the fact that different cultures measure influence differently. Think about that for a minute and you will see why any algorithm designed to measure influence is flawed. There are simply too many variables that cannot be included that will prevent the results from being accurate.

Robert Scoble vs Joe Hackman (Influence Part 2)

One interesting point that Dups brought forth to further his position on influence was when he asked me:

Dups – “How many Twitter followers do you have?”

Me – “Just under 3,000″

Dups – “Ok, well you may have under 3,000 followers and Robert Scoble might have a whole lot more but I’ve met you and you have the same influence over me as Scoble.”

What a great explanation. So I’ve long been planning a podcast about measuring online influence and now I have a must be present candidate in mind. Clearly Dups has put a lot of thought into the subject.

Check out EAV

So I am going to give Empire Avenue a little plug here. I think they have some pretty interesting things going on, it wouldn’t hurt you to create a profile and link up your social networks. You may not have time to “play” the stock trading game but consider it a hedge against some kind of explosive growth in the future. If Dups is right about virtual currency you might just find some value that you might be missing out on.

Filed Under: Business, Empire Avenue, Interviews, Networking, New Media, News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How I am working to find focus

April 25, 2011 By 12 Comments

FocusI am sharing this in the hopes that you will find it helpful if you are finding it difficult to manage your time in this 24/7/365 connected world.

How am I working to find focus? Perhaps will start with a little bit of background. In addition to my freelance work with Web 2.0,  Blogging, WordPress Dev and Social Media I am also the founder and owner of Managed Solutions. As a result I’ve had to wear quite a few hats since January of 1997. One of my priorities recently has to become more focused and effective with my time, largely out of necessity (sad eyes looking at the gaps in my blog postings!). In an effort to help gain focus I started keeping track of every minute of my work day, not just my client billable time. That process provided me with the inspiration to write this post which for the record took EXACTLY 61 minutes start to finish.

Since I spend a good part of my time doing IT work it is hard to really schedule my time effectively. That said I have a general flow to my work schedule right now, this is the general framework that I work with by day of the week:

Mondays – Sales and Marketing

Ok so in theory I am performing sales and marketing efforts on this day. The truth is I often get a lot of customer calls on Monday mornings. Many a Monday becomes a response fest – a good chunk of my living comes from providing IT services to my clients.

Tuesdays – Field Days

I schedule foreseeable appointments on Tuesdays most of the time. I have a Rotary meeting at 7AM in the morning so I just keep on going from there.

Wednesdays – Work Days

Work as in billable project work, I schedule foreseeable projects for Wednesdays. Objective is to be logging time on projects all day every Wednesday. Usually the early in the week fire drills of Monday have concluded and I am able to focus on finishing longer term work.

Thursday – Flex Day

Thursday is pretty much a catch up day; ideally it is a carry-over of Wednesday.

Friday – Finance and Flex Day

I catch up on finance and accounting on Friday’s. I also tend to schedule meetings on Friday’s because it is lighter on the IT side of things most of the time. I also have time on my Friday agenda for Social Media posting for the next week. This can quickly fall in the priority list if it’s been a busy week or customers have urgent needs.

After Hours and Weekends

I tend to do a lot of remote tasks that require me to work after hours so I plan for and execute these tasks on week nights or over the weekend. I do my best to balance the time I spend with time spent with family. I make sure I limit the discretionary time for non-family and work items to avoid allowing my work or family to suffer.

A little exercise

As I mentioned I started to track everything I do, every minute of the day to identify my true activities and to help remove bottlenecks. I’ve not been doing this long but I discovered a couple of really important facts:

  • I work for free a lot more than I realized.
  • Accounting and Finance are very time consuming.
  • Responding to Social Media and Email especially can take up a lot of my time.
  • I usually take 30-45 minutes for lunch/family time during a typical 8-5 work day (even though I work at home)

Making adjustments

Now I am starting to make adjustments. I am already a serial un-subscriber and a master Email filter writer both help me cut down on Email time, but I am also trying to keep my responses short and to the point. I am also ignoring and deleting a lot more non-essential Emails. One thing that I find that really helps is to always consider my long term objectives in everything I am doing. If for example I am getting notices about technologies that really don’t fit then I don’t even file them for later reading, I just delete them. I think keeping long term goals in mind is a great way to reduce the burden that all these tools (E-Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc) can help to create. I always make time for things that are important to me, that is one thing that won’t change, much to the contrary.

What’s Next?

I will continue to refine my process. I am also going to make sure that I am being compensated for more of my work or at the very least keep track of the freebies and make sure the customer knows about them. I can also use this as a basis to fine tune my compensation and estimating. I am also narrowing my long term focus and planning to be more specialized. I have in my business these last 14+ years always responded to what the market (and more importantly my customers) were needing. I can still do that but sometimes it might be by recommending a trusted third party to handle certain aspects of their needs. These relationships can be great sources of new business. I’ve had several of my partners send leads to me for more of my core business.

Do you have any similar practices? I would enjoy hearing about them.

Photo credit ihatatho

Filed Under: Business, Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

What is Podcasting with Guest Host Erica Allison

April 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Erica M Allison

Erica Allison Guest Host

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Summary

Listen as Erica Allison asks panelists Adriel Hampton and Joe Hackman (yep, that’s me) what is podcasting? This episode is the result of a guest post request by Erica for her blog as she was analyzing the value of operating a podcast for one of her clients who is currently on AM radio. If you are curious about Podcasting or don’t know what it is, here is an opportunity to learn.

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Filed Under: Business, Interviews, New Media, Podcasts, Social Media Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Panel discussion on Measurement and Monitoring

March 21, 2011 By 8 Comments

Measurement by Sterlic

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Summary

Listen to the panel discussion with Shonali Burke of Shonali Burke Consulting and Gini Dietrich of Arment Dietrich . These two intelligent, fun, humorous and dedicated professionals represent years of experience. Listen in and learn about measurement and some misconceptions. Our conversation also eventually strays to an interesting discussion about Klout and both panelists give their candid opinions on the service.

Download this episode

Filed Under: Interviews, New Media, Podcasts, Public Relations, Technology, Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Facebook makes big changes to Pages Interface

February 10, 2011 By 10 Comments

Facebook has long neglected the Pages interface but that all changed today with some big changes. The best way to summarize the changes is that your Facebook page will function more like a user profile does. A couple of the extremely welcomed new features:

  1. The ability to comment on your page as yourself and not the page.
  2. Notifications via Email when users comment. (Cool but Hyper-Alerts is still better!)
  3. A cleaner more familiar user experience.
  4. A news feed for your home page.


This is the image that greeted me tonight when I logged into my page:
Facebook Pages Upgrade Dialogue
I will be providing a lot more data on this, but this ought to get you started with this new feature.

Filed Under: Facebook, News, Productivity, Technology, Video Tagged With: , , ,

Monitor any Facebook Page for Posts, Comments and Content

January 28, 2011 By 13 Comments

As someone who manages and participates on a number of Facebook Pages, I have always wondered why Facebook does not give us the means to monitor user activity on pages such as posts and comments. Until recently I used a Google Reader entry that uses Feed My Inbox to deliver this content from other pages, but I’ve been stuck with manual visits for user comments and posts. Earlier this week I saw a wall post from my Friend Shonali that pointed to the Facebook Page Alert App SmackDown. The authors statement really sums up which app was worth even trying:

All I’ll say about Hyper Alerts is this: it is THE BEST THING EVER. It’s free and sends you real-time updates when people post AND comment on your posts. I’ve been managing Facebook Pages for two and a half years and I’m telling you right now, the past week since I’ve started using Hyper Alerts, have been a freakin’ cake walk. – Maggie at Mizzinformation.com

That was the kind of reference that I can appreciate, so I tried the app out. Since using it I have been anxiously awaiting the opportunity to share how much butt it kicks to anyone who does not want to constantly “spot check” pages for updated content, comments and posts. You all know who you are, you are the ones who are getting excited right now.

How to use Hyperalerts

Using Hyperalerts is extremely simple, you navigate to their site and setup an account. Once your account is created you are able to add alerts. I started by adding what was the most critical page for me to monitor, my businesses Facebook page. While creating the alert you are able to choose how frequently you will receive alerts and what type of content you will receive alerts about. The user interface is very simple, but I will of course be happy to provide a video tutorial for anyone who’d like a little extra help. For demonstration purposes I setup a second alert for my Rotary Club’s Facebook page, because unless I am posting something there I don’t want to visit it unless I know there is something to comment on (or delete if someone has spammed the wall, though this is becoming less common). My alerts are now setup, this is what the page looks like where I can edit them or add more:

hyperalerts edit screen

Now that the alerts are in place I receive notices when the criteria I have setup are met. This saves me from those periodic “spot checks” that I was doing previously. Now that it is setup there is nothing else required. Here is an example of an alert:

Hyperalerts Email Notice

Fresh from the idea farm

Since this program uses Email and you can monitor essentially any Facebook page, it could easily be used in to achieve some heavy lifting. In conjunction with an Email list you could distribute content notices to a number of users. For example, with a club you might be a part of you could with a little tinkering allow the entire club to receive notices when a particular page had been updated. Or you could even have alerts from your businesses (or a customers, competitors?) page go to a team of people who are at the ready to respond. You could also feed the notices into a system that creates tickets for a team to assign and respond. These are little hacks that might make this already powerful and useful application even more so. Do you have any other suggestions?

Update: 2/5/2011 – Hyper Alerts just got easier!

I was pleased when I logged in to Hyper Alerts today to notice a new button “Add alert from your Facebook user” this makes adding alerts so much easier. Nice to see great changes so soon!

Add alert from Facebook user

Update: 2/11/2012 – Facebook Pages now do alerts but they stink

Facebook included an alerting function with their big changes to Pages but it is not very user friendly. I still strongly recommend Hyper Alerts.

Filed Under: Idea Farm, Productivity, Social Media Strategy, Tools Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Chain of Life 2.0 and what it means to the San Ramon Valley Community

January 25, 2011 By 8 Comments

I had the great opportunity to get a sneak peek of Chain of Life 2.0 a few weeks ago and several weeks to ponder the impact of it in the San Ramon Valley Community (and beyond for that matter). I was attending some of the afternoon sessions of the Leadership San Ramon Valley “Media Day”. I was present to observe Adriel Hampton‘s talk on Social Media in a political context. I had recommended him and they ended up booking him to be one of the featured speakers.

A Meeting with the Fire Chief

While Adriel was giving his presentation Richard Price, the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District Chief and current president of Leadership San Ramon Valley (Disclosure – the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District is a client) asked me if I could arrange a meeting for us to meet with Adriel to discuss something. That meeting ended up happening later that afternoon. During the meeting I learned what the Chain of Life 2.0 was and got to see the video that is at the end of this blog post. The video is amazing and the implications for open source, gov 2.0 and overall use of location based services of this new application are substantial. Or as Adriel shared in his post:

I felt the world change. – Adriel Hampton

What is Chain of Life 2.0?

The chain of life is the process used to describe the reaction and treatment of victims of a heart attack. The first 10 minutes after a heart attack are crucial. One of the key elements of heart attack survival in the chain of life, is how quickly CPR is initiated. It has a drastic impact on the survivability of a heart attack. That is where this exciting web 2.0 application comes into play. This iPhone (available on Android and other platforms eventually) app is location aware and allows people with CPR expertise to sign up as knowing CPR. The system then notifies anyone close to any heart attack incidents and also advises them where the closest Automated External Defibrillator or AED device is located. Here is a visual of the app in action:

Chain of Life 2.0 iPhone App

There is a hero in all of us…

The users of this application will be able to get to heart attack victims even ahead of the traditional first responders (The SRVFPD goal is 7 minutes). This will equate to lives being saved that would otherwise be lost. It is hard to quantify the impact that the loss of a loved one has, but it is great to know that this new breed of application will empower individuals to become heroes for heart attack victims in their community.

What does it mean to the San Ramon Valley Community?

We can be very proud that perhaps the most significant location aware application was born here. We will be empowered to help our neighbors in ways we never thought possible as the first market in the world to have it. Imagine the feeling that a heart attack victim’s family will have knowing that an initiative born in the San Ramon Valley saved their loved ones life.  It is worth mentioning that a Foundation is being formed to bring this open source effort to Fire Districts throughout the US. The end result will mean more people will survive heart attacks which is something we can all be thankful for.

You might also want to check out the landing page for the latest on the announcement.

Filed Under: Community, Leadership, News, Serious Topics, Video Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Learn about personal branding from the Brandapalooza panel

January 14, 2011 By 7 Comments

Personal BrandingWhat is personal branding and why might it be important if not essential to you and your success?

Our panel: Amber Osbourne a.k.a. @missdestructo, Olivier Blanchard a.k.a. @thebrandbuilder and Mitch Neff @mitchneff will be discussing building personal brands in Social Media next Wednesday on my Brandapalooza Blog Talk Radio show. All three of these individuals have built strong online personal brands. The discussion will bring to bear a tremendous amount of knowledge  about building your personal brand in Social Media.

Is there anything you’d like me to ask the panel? Leave your questions in the comment section below or via Twitter.

Image:  Stefano Principato

Filed Under: Events, Podcasts, Social Media Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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