Jan 6, 2010 | blog
Its been awhile since I talked about sharing information, so I thought I’d drop this quick post and let folks know where I’m sharing some of the things I’m finding and reading around the web these days.
Google Reader Shared Items
The time tested, sharing features of Google Reader still apply. Some of this information in my shared items is quick hits, that I don’t have anything to add opinion-wise. Simply things I think you may find interesting. Things included span from social media, to gadget/mobile devices, software, opinion/editorials, and cultural/social topics.
www.google.com/reader/shared/rickmahn
Posterous
I’ve set up a Posterous account, like many folks, and post items I’ve read and may be relevant to folks I know, or that may be in social media professions and have interest in technology as well. This is a bit more focused than my Google Shared Items.
rickmahn.posterous.com/
Reading Lists
I’ve got a number of reading lists for myself and for peers at work & clients. I currently use three lists, though I’ll try to narrow that down in the future.
Read It Later – This is a list that I use as I find links from Twitter, or from other social media resources. The topics cover social media in general and a bit of mobile technology. FYI, this is an RSS feed.
Instapaper – This is a list of things I share for peers at work and clients. This list is social media specific, and focuses on business use, communications, marketing, PR. FYI, this is an RSS feed.
FriendFeed – If you want the firehose, this is it. It’s basically my lifestream of all online services and content.
I also happen to use Google Reader Starred Items though there doesn’t seem to be a way to share that list. It, of course, is the list of things I have marked for my personal consumption. Hopefully I’ll get to all of them.
I try not to duplicate shared or bookmarked items, though it could happen. I hope this helps in your daily reading and information-gathering efforts. Maybe if I pre-read and filter out the nonsense posts out there, these will be of more value.
What tools for sharing information and links do you use?
Aug 21, 2009 | happiness
Learning something about myself: I’m not an IT guy anymore.
Dec 24, 2008 | blog
I’ve been working in the technology field for a long time and the thing that really keeps me engaged is the fact that it’s always changing. Technology evolves and there is a constant need to be upgrading or planning on upgrading. It’s made a great career for myself with a number of great projects and experiences that I can look back on with fond memories.
"IT" as it’s called has also enabled me to push boundaries that were uncomfortable for me, allowing me to grow and continue to learn about things that I needed to but was uninterested in. To my mind, this is what a career should deliver; experiences, personal growth, team participation, leadership, and providing a decent living for a family. This is something that a technology career has rewarded me with for my investment.
So with that knowledge, experience and expectation, I wonder just how big the social media market is for it’s practitioners. As every site integrates more social media and "web 2.0" technologies and methods, how will social media professionals remain in demand? Ensuing generations will be even more well versed in the concepts, tools, technologies than even the much celebrated millennials today.
As the online world continues to circle around and pick up the once-forgotten "human face" that it lacked in the .com boom/bust, it becomes harder to distinguish just what a social media professional is. I fear that most of them will simply be absorbed into the existing professions as Marketing and Public Relations – already, the social media sphere is mostly made up of this demographic.
Am I off base here or is there really a career path for social media specialists or professionals as we know them today? Or will it just become another skill listed by bullet point on the resume of future marketing professionals? What do you think?
Photo credit: Jay Dugger
Jun 24, 2008 | blog
Mark Evans has a post today in which he talks about the importance of thinking through our contributions to conversations. It’s something that I’ve learned myself in various businesses & projects that I’ve been involved in.
Taking even a half hour to contemplate and let the questions or ideas rattle around in your head allows you to better understand what was sent to you. It also gives you the time to formulate a more informative and relevant response.
Since we’re so connected and probably overloaded with communications, it’s too easy to simply reply right away. Sure, in doing so we demonstrate our ability to respond, we show that we’re connected and are willing to participate.
However, do we really give every communication we receive the full attention it deserves? How often do you take the time to fully contemplate the full context of what someone is asking? Do these quick replies really add value to the conversation or to the person who sent the message?
I think Mark is onto an interesting line of thought lately. Thinking about blogging, conversations and the quality involved simply in communicating with each other. Sharing information is a great thing, and we can do it so easily these days. The responsibility is upon us to use these opportunities of sharing information in a useful way. That means not sharing incorrect information, or being too verbose in our replies, thereby wasting time in misunderstandings.
What else fits in this area? What more can you add to what Mark is pointing out? There are many great tips that you have to share – leave one here or on your own blog. How do you handle replies? Quick or thoughtful?
Sep 3, 2007 | blog
I’ve been on a crusade of sorts lately, looking for unique voices in the blogosphere, to find more interesting and relevant content. In the process, I’ve been finding better ways to absorb the information I find.  Many of these methods are a change from how I consumed information in the past and I cover five of them here today.
First, of course, I’ve gone through and gotten rid of all the “dead” or abandoned feeds that added unneeded bulk to my daily Google Reader adventures.
Second, I’ve identified my top 10 all stars, and started visiting their blogs directly to read what they’ve written. This has been a huge improvement for me in getting their point of view on a more personal level, one of the biggest things that I felt I was missing in a feed reader. By the way, that original list of 10 has expanded to 18 blogs that I visit every day (but hey, that’s another post). Yes, it takes much more time than a reader, but these people’s work is important to me and deserves more time than a quick scan in a feed reader.
Third, I’ve started to “speed read” in Google Reader. The difference has been a boon to my information consumption because I no longer try to build each sentence from it’s component words & letters. Instead, I have been scanning each paragraph, using a visual recognition technique that constructs the concepts the writer is presenting. This has allowed me to reduce the time it takes to read the feeds in my reader and continue to add more feeds as I come across new & interesting sites.
This has not been easy, as we’re programmed at an early age to read every word, and then practice this function for decades. Of course all those years of traditional reading builds up a visual library of words & phrases that are more quickly recognized than mechanically assembling each sentence a word at a time.
Fourth, I’ve used the tagging feature in Google Reader to separate out the news feeds from the rest of the blog feeds. These news feeds I literally scan for keywords and quickly move on it they aren’t new, informative, or otherwise don’t interest me. The remaining blog feeds, I’ve also tried to tag specific to different genres like blogging, mobile technology, social media and so on. This way, I can either read the “river of news” of all my feeds from top to bottom, or just focus on a specific genre if I’m limited on time and need to prioritize my reading.
Fifth, the last thing that has been helping me is to perform a “quick glance” at the post in the feed to see if it is visually appealing before starting to scan the text. This quick glance impression of the post along with looking for the “meat” of the post in the first sentence or two quickly indicates to me if it’s worth continuing to consuming it. While this has backfired in some instances, I usually find the post again by another blog pointing to it, and I give it more attention on the second pass because of this.
So these are my latest methods and techniques to consume content faster and give me back a few precious minutes each day to use for writing, working, or relaxing. I don’t know if any of this is of value to you, but it’s how I currently handle a growing number of feeds.
Oh, and one last thing – three of my latest “top bloggers” jumped from “oh, this is an interesting blog” to my top list in less than a week – and I have my original 10 bloggers to blame thank for linking to more quality bloggers! 😉
Photo credit, austinevan
Its been awhile since I talked about sharing information, so I thought I’d drop this quick post and let folks know where I’m sharing some of the things I’m finding and reading around the web these days.
