Aug 12, 2008 | blog
Social Media in real life
SMB-TC6 is coming together quickly and seems to have a theme: social media in real life! We’ve got many great things happening that really show how social media is changing everything we do. From writing books, to our political process, social media is transforming social interaction, bringing more interactivity and a voice to more people.
I didn’t plan on this, but as the event materialized, we ended up with a theme of sorts: social media in real life. The agenda is full of it – we’re writing a chapter of a book, we’re learning of new tools by their creators, we’re talking with citizen journalists at the kickoff of a major political conference… all these things are part of the lives of our community. We get to share these things, and make them even better. At least, that’s my thoughts as we finish pulling this together.
We have a very special event at this SMB: live-writing a chapter of Pioneer Press Journalist Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s new book Twitter Means Business – How microblogging can help or hurt your company. How will this work? We’ll be using Twitter of course! The project kicks off on Monday August 18th, 2008 and runs through Friday, August 22nd at SMB-TC6! More details on this from Julio (@jojeda) shortly!
Also, we have a new sponsor this month: MarketWire (thank them for the bacon ;).
Ok, on to the details:
Location: Best Buy HQ in Richfield, MN (map link)
Date: August 22nd, 2008
RSVP on Upcoming*: SMB-TwinCities 6
- Julio Ojeda-Zapata (@jojeda on Twitter) will talk about his upcoming book Twitter Means Business – How microblogging can help or hurt your company
- Participate in live-writing a chapter to Julio’s new book on Twitter, we’ll wrap that up live at SMB-TC6! Read more here!
- Live remote update from Noah Kunin (@noahkunin on Twitter) of TheUptake.org from the first day of the DNC in Denver, CO. Noah will be demonstrating how social media, specifically mobile video, is being used for citizen journalism.
- Phil Wilson (@Philson on Twitter) talks about ComicTwit
- Bring your conversation topics and share your knowledge of Social Media
- Complimentary continental breakfast (I’m working on the bacon!)
- Celebrate a half a year of SMBs in Minneapolis/St. Paul
- Watch remotely via our new video channel on Mogulus: www.mogulus.com/smbmsp. Have a webcam – let us know and we will try some remote Q&A too!
- As always, additional agenda item suggestions are welcomed!
New video feed on Mogulus:
* Due to requirements at Best Buy, we do require an RSVP prior to the event. Remember, the event is no cost!
Sponsored by:
Jul 18, 2008 | blog
I’ve been reading a lot of bloggers and fellow social media travelers lately and they’ve all had a common thread. That commonality in opinion is that there is a shift in blogging vs. social networks, and I have to agree that there is.
It appears to me that a lot of the interactivity that used to occur on blogs is moving to the major social tools (pick your favorite). As usual, there is a blogging meme to go along with that, something like blogging being ‘dead’. While I can’t speak to the realities of that & it does seem to me that many of us are spending a lot of the time we used to spend on blogging, now on the social web.
Instead of posting opinions or taking hours crafting a great informative post, we immediately share what we’re currently doing and where we’re doing it. We can do it on the fly with most phones, and since status updates are a mere sentence or so & it’s nothing to whip off a few of these messages and move on.
Does this have a negative consequence for blogging? I think not, but I’ll admit to being biased. Even so, anyone can point to my own blog and see that I’ve been lax in posting in the last couple months. Sure, it is due (in part) to the social web and all the easy-to-use tools. Sure, there are a number of known bloggers either hanging it up, or going on hiatus. However, I think that there are many times when people simply need to do something else in order to rediscover themselves. I remember Robert Scoble doing this about two years ago for a few months. Russell Beattie took a long break before coming back to the blogging sphere as well.
Neither of these guys had preconceived ideas of how long or why, but just knew they needed the change. It’s something I’ve thought about myself when I’m struggling.
I guess the point is that blogging is dead, but the realities of the social web are the same in every part of life: change is constant.
Jul 17, 2008 | blog
The more time I spend working in the Information Technology field, the more I see opportunities. Usually, it’s simply a an old technology being consumed by a newer one – like traditional telephones being taken over by VoIP phones on the corporate desktop. I’ve championed that notion for nearly a decade, and only now is that really happening at an increasing pace. Cool stuff if you get a chance to use it too.
However, that’s not what I see happening right now. It’s much simpler and much more fundamental than another Microsoft Windows server taking on another role from another team or technology. The changes that are afoot are at the root, the foundation of enterprise computing and it has a social media tie-in. I have a message for my peers in the Information Technologies field. Your world is already changing, and if you don’t see what’s happening, you’ll be left behind.
The change that’s taking place renders the corporate desktop as we know it, obsolete. The disparate servers, inefficient. This is something that I’ve been watching for some time, but only recently have seen some indications that convince me that the world has turned the corner.
What are these things that change the entire game? Why, virtualization, thin clients and “web 2.0” software of course. You already are talking about these things. You are probably working with a couple of them if not a combination of all in some way. What’s convinced me that IT ten years from now will be a wildly different landscape than it is today is the fact that virtualization works, thin clients are actually viable now, and “web 2.0” software is past the “wow” stage and into solving business needs. Add the idea that many software solutions don’t care if they run on Windows/Unix/Linux and you now have a broad base of reliable, sustainable open source systems to choose from.
There is also the introduction of Gen Y into the workforce, who bring a different expectation to work. By being more mobile, working remotely via the web, and having social media & networking as second nature, this workforce alone will bring an impressive amount of change.
So what is the bottom line I’m saying for corporate IT? I’m saying that the desktop as we know it is dead. Windows “7” may be the last “legacy” operating system to be deployed. Desktops will disappear completely as well as individual servers. Servers in general will all be virtual machines run from high availability clusters (OS does not matter) in remote data centers. If you don’t have room for one, it’ll probably be cost-effective to simply lease them from companies like Amazon and such.
While Microsoft Office will still be the “gold standard” that we compare things to, it will become irrelevant in the coming years as open source and online versions of this type of software bring more options faster, and simply chip away at the venerable office suite.
Windows itself will still remain – remaining a popular option for the consumer computing device, all of which will end up being the laptop format. Windows, along with OS X and a couple popular Linux distributions will continue to drive these machines, merging more business and entertainment functions together.
The coming change is huge, and with it the opportunities as well. Like the change that started 20 years ago where mainframe and minicomputers were starting to be replaced with microcomputers, our current definitions of enterprise computing will change radically in the next few years. Are you ready? Will you be a part of it? What else do you see?
Jul 10, 2008 | blog
Join us to network and chat about using social media and social networking tools in your business and careers.
Our fifth gathering will be at the beautiful Minneapolis Central Library in the Doty Board Room. They’ll be plenty of room, Wi-Fi, and lots of coffee and pastries (thanks to our generous sponsors!). What a perfect opportunity to show off your new 3G iPod!
Agenda:
- Special guest speaker: Jon Gordon (@jongordon onTwitter, Public Radio Tech Reporter and host of “Future Tense“)
- Special guest speaker: Paul Saarinen (@taulpaul on Twitter – talking about “How online gaming taught me everything about social mediaâ€)
- Presentation on how Hennepin County Library uses social media by Meg Canada and Jody Wurl (@MegCanada & @Jodyth on Twitter)
- Review of PublicRadioCamp
- SMBMSP logo reviewOpen discussion (Anything left over from last time, or things you want to see addressed, or things you had heard in conversations on Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, Identi.ca etc.)
Visit & join our own social networking site: http://smbmsp.ning.com
RSVP Here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/872412/?ps=7
Maps, Buses, Rail, Bikes, Parking, Directions: http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/centralmap.asp
See you there!
A special thank-you to @myklroventine and @megcanada for their work on putting this event together!
Jul 7, 2008 | blog
So I’ve been doing an experiment of sorts. Staying off most social networks, answering requests and status on only those I believe actually bring value. This was not totally planned, but is something I have meant to do for some time, as it’s my opinion that I was spending too much time on social networks.
During this period, I have also been paying attention to my productivity. You know, the real work I do to actually make real money. Of course, it’s not surprising that reducing the time involved in social networking will increase productivity, it is the ratio that seems interesting. I’ve no scientific data that indicates anything, and it doesn’t seem anything more than a one to one relationship to me.
That’s the main reason I’m not very active right now on many social networks. So that begs the question: What social networks do I find valuable right now? That would be Twitter, LinkedIn, and FriendFeed – not in any particular order. These are the networks that I’m finding value, sharing with friends, and meeting business opportunities.
I am, however, curious about other’s experiences. What networks do you find the most valuable right now, and why? Is it the tried & true, or the up & coming?
