Hi I am Joe Hackman, welcome to my personal blog. I am an Entrepreneur, IT Consultant, and Blog Talk Radio host. I also work with social media professionally as both a consultant, and by developing Wordpress based blogs/Websites.
It seems like it should be simple, but there are a couple things that you should do if you plan to listen to a podcast on Blogtalkradio.com in advance of the episode you plan to listen to. It is really important to register in advance so you can easily participate in the chat channel that exists for most Blogtalkradio programs. I personally use this chat extensively for audience interaction and questions for my guests.
Sign up for an account
Before you navigate to Blogtalkradio.com to create your account login to Facebook if you have an account there. It will definitely save you time because you can “Connect with Facebook” option instead of the full blown manual account creation. Once you are at Blogtalkradio.com choose the Create Account option in the upper right hand corner of the landing page. That will bring up the registration page where you can use Facebook to connect or manually add the information. If the Facebook option doesn’t work or if you don’t have a Facebook account, just go ahead and fill out the information in the sign up form. You will need to confirm manual setup via Email, the system will send you a message to your Email address from service@blogtalkradio.com to the Email address you provided. Once confirmed you can login and complete your profile.
Using the chat, favorite programs, adding friends
Once you are authenticated to the system you can access the podcast(s) you want to and participate in the chat. While logged in you also have the benefit of favoriting shows, becoming friends with other users and even setting up your own free podcast. If you’d like to connect with me at Blogtalkradio visit my show’s page.
No Internet Access during the episode? No Problem.
Every episode has a dial in number that you can call. Just keep in mind the free accounts have a limit of 5 callers so you may have issues getting through. My program is upgraded and allows up to 50 callers so if you get a busy signal the first time you might want to keep trying.
Many of you are aware but some of you may not be, that I have been doing a weekly internet talk show. I’ve had some great nonprofits, technology CEO’s and inspirational guests. What probably won’t surprise most of you is how much I’ve enjoyed it; I really enjoy the interesting conversations that have occurred.
My most recent guest was Stuart Hing. I met Stuart and his wife Rhoda at another talk show called “Ground Level Perspective” where Stuart and I had both been guests. Stuart is a judge at the Alameda Superior Court and prior to that he was a district attorney. He is a very thoughtful and interesting person and I think people like Stuart will provide solutions to a lot of problems that plague our society. You can listen to my interview of Stuart here: http://bit.ly/b88dzh
I’ve had many other wonderful guests in the 28 episodes since I started the program but here are some highlights if you’re interested in catching up:
On April 4th, 2010 3:40PM a 7.2 quake jolted Northern Mexico and Southern California. After having a number of exchanges with friends in San Diego I began to evaluate my disaster preparedness resources and found them to be inadequate. I solicited the San Ramon Valley Regional Fire Protection District for an expert that I could involve on an informational episode on Blog Talk Radio where I do a talk show. They provided Debbie Vanek who is a expert on emergency and disaster planning. One friend from the San Diego area Claudia Esquer participated and shared some personal experiences from the earthquake. The episode addresses earthquake safety, preparation and even myths. One of the myths being the “Triangle of Life” that does not apply to our construction methods and is very controversial in the States.
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.?
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.
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:
While driving to meet a friend for coffee to discuss some upcoming business plans I was reminded how important social interaction is to me professionally and personally. I personally find what I refer to as analog networking and social interaction to be very rewarding. I have really come a long way in this regard from the IT guy who was content to sit behind his keyboard and interact mostly through IRC, Email and IM. Now I just couldn’t see living any other way, the connections I make with people inspire me to give that much more, to work that much harder and remind me of the important things in my life. Here is the Podcast I recorded while driving to my coffee appointment.
While looking at options for a collaborative project I am working with a group on, I settled on Ning instead of a Yahoo or Google group. This was a departure for me and I realized that Social Networking Tools have changed me.
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