Are missing what’s right in your backyard? Many “social media” types (explorers I like to call them) are connected with peers across the country and around the world. That’s great! Connecting with people from different places, with different views is great way to learn new things and discover new possibilities.
What about the people in your city or neighborhood? The people in the lane next to you commuting to and from work, in the grocery store, at the ball game – these people are part of your local economy and community. You know, the one that affects your daily habits and your local career opportunities.
Are you connecting with this group? How many fellow Twitter users are there that you could be sharing info with? What common values and ideals could you leverage with them to do something bigger, something better? Have you looked for these folks, met with them, had coffee with them?
Now’s your chance to change that. Who says you aren’t the one to get the ball rolling? Search Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and the like for your local area and start making some local contacts. Seek your neighbors out, and find what interests them. Is there business opportunities, or civic needs, or groups aligned with your faith? Get out there and connect with these folks.
Even if you’re in a more rural area, getting to know fellow “social media explorers” in the area can allow you to plan. Going from a small town to a big-city meetup may be daunting alone, but if you’ve got a local group to share the experience with, it can become more fun.
Some of the things you can try for very little time and money invested is a Twitter meetup, or a Social Media Breakfast, or simply let people know where to meet for coffee. So get out there and network on the local level, there is bound to be social media people in your area thinking about the same thing.
If you have organized, or are thinking of getting the ball rolling, what ideas have you come up with? What have you tried that works or doesn’t work? Let’s share our ideas and experiences with others to make future networking better!
So Andrew Baron has his Twitter account for sale on ebay? Can anyone tell me what the point of this exercise is? Other than a money grab that is.
I mean, who among his followers would keep following the account when they discover it’s not actually him? So that negates the value of his follower list – without that the account has no monetary value.
Heck, any one of us can go and build a “Fake Andrew Baron” Twitter account and follow the same people that the real one does. Then go sell it on eBay for half the price the “real” account goes for. In the end, it’s essentially the same account.
Just for fun, I should start creating “Fake <famous blogger here>” accounts, following the same people that the real person does and sell them on eBay. The absurdity of it all just stuns me to the core.
Andrew, if you’re that hard up for cash, maybe you should take up a paper route… it builds character, at least it did in my case. 😛
I was just thinking about the promise of Java some 15 years ago or so (I forget exactly) about being the answer to cross-platform programming. For sure it’s done quite a bit of that, and also been a pain in the but at the same time.
Now fast-forward to 2007 and the development of Adobe AIR. All the AIR apps that are popping up for different web services. That you can run AIR on Mac, Windows, and Linux – and all those AIR based apps is a huge shift in not only how we use apps, but what systems we decide to run them on. Sure, Microsoft has a (very good) also-ran platform in Silverlight, but do you think that’ll end up on the Mac, let alone Linux?
It allows us to forget about what our favorite operating system is and focus on running the system that is relevant to what we’re trying to accomplish. What’s your thoughts on this? Have you tried any AIR apps? What ones are your favorites?
I suppose I should be upset by the current wave of tools & services like shyftr that aggregate blog content and also host commenting features for that content. In essence, these services could be accused (and are) of stealing content.
I guess the short of it for me is that I hope people read my feed, visit my blog and comment because I’m providing some piece of information that has value for them. Like many bloggers, I may have had ideas of being a professional blogger and deriving my living simply by blogging – I’ve long since dropped that assumption. I blog because I want to participate, or want to voice my opinions or ideas. If what I have to say is important, people will show up at my blog.
There are legal aspects to these arguments, but I’ll need to think about it a bit longer.
UPDATE: What I really think this trend means, is that its time to change. When the playing field is altered, the players need to adapt. As such, new perspectives on blogging and conversations need to be adopted.
I’d like to congratulate my friend Thomas Knoll on becoming the new SeesmicCustomer Service and Community Support person. Thomas has a great interest in helping people use technology, and an easygoing manner that will benefit Seesmic’s growing user base.
Kudos to Loic Le Meur as well on hiring one heck of a great social media enthusiast!
You can find Thomas on Twitter and Seesmic as “dydimustk”.
Today was the second Social Media Breakfast in the Twin Cities. We had a great turnout for the small space that I had booked. I won’t make that mistake again, even though it worked out ok. Albert Maruggi commented awhile ago on how much talent and interest there is here in the Minneapolis & St. Paul area in social media. I have to agree as our meetups keep backing up that interest with really great, dedicated, intelligent people who want to get involved for so many great reasons.
The group here in the northland has a mix of great perspectives and intentions – I honestly am honored to be able to spend time discussing new ideas and opportunities with this group and encourage anyone interested to check out the social media site for our meetups. We’ll be hosting more meetups and I’m planning on keeping it interesting and helping the group in whatever direction it wants to go.
UPDATE: Connie Bensen had a nice recap & comments on the video feed that we set up for this event. You can visit her post here.
