IDEA 2009 – Social and Experience Design in Toronto, September 15-16
Written by Russ on August 11, 2009 – 5:23 pmAs Director of Events and Marketing for the Information Architecture Institute, I’ve been more than a little busy diligently working with a fantastic team of people to put together this year’s IDEA Conference, which will be held at the MaRS Centre in Toronto.
Everyone–and I do mean everyone–on this team of exceptional individuals–has been burning the midnight oil to bring you an outstanding program at a gorgeous facility. Oh, and at a price that is reasonable given our economic climate. I am more than a little proud of this conference, and I really hope you’ll join us!
IDEA 2009 runs September 15 and 16 in Toronto where the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners will share big ideas that inspire and practical solutions that improve the way people’s lives converge with technology.
Whether you’re a designer, strategist, writer, UX professional, IA, or working in anything interactive, you should attend IDEA 2009.
Create the future now
You see it at Starbucks. People gather, but they don’t talk with each other. They communicate with their networked public. Facebook could be considered the fourth largest country in the world, yet it’s dwarfed by the over 300 million Chinese who use Qzone.
IDEA 2009 explores how to design these experiences. From the psychology to create more loyal users, to the design strategies and practices that bridge the physical and virtual world. This new world is already becoming a reality for your clients, employers, and customers.
Speakers you need to see
Social and experience design isn’t your typical design issue. IDEA gathers leaders from a multitude of disciplines and perspectives to provide inspiration and practical take-aways on creating valuable experiences. Some of the speakers include:
- Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group, cofounder of Razorfish
- Christina Wodtke – Principal Instigator at LinkedIn
- Mary Newsom – Associate Editor, Charlotte Observer
- Michael Fassnacht – Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, Draftfcb
- Christian Crumlish- Curator, Yahoo! Design Pattern Library (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)
- Luke Wroblewski – Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo! Inc.
- Stephen P. Anderson – Product Strategy and Design Consultant
- Leisa Reichelt – Design Researcher & User Experience Designer working with Drupal’s open source community on Drupal 7
- Thomas Malaby – Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
- Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible UX (and co-author of the forthcoming Designing Social Interfaces)
Beyond the speakers, many of today’s brightest minds will attend and share what they know. In the intimate setting of the MaRS Centre, you’ll have the opportunity to exchange ideas and connect with leading practitioners from all over the world.
Built for today’s economy
IDEA presents the greatest combination of accessible industry leaders, valuable topics, and companies looking for professionals in the social and experience design space. You can talk directly to representatives from Critical Mass, Mad*Pow, Sapient, Usability Matters, Rosenfeld Media, and more.
All the information you need to know about the program, speakers, and sponsors can be found at the IDEA 2009 conference site. Hope to see you there!
Posted in Conferences, Social Networking, User Experience Design | No Comments »
Do We Really Need Associations, Anyway? Do They Need Us?
Written by Russ on December 1, 2008 – 12:00 amWithin the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of things happening around me that have made me wonder about the validity of professional associations of sorts, and if we really need them.
In general, I think the answer is “yes”, but mostly, I have to wonder if the add-on to that is “but for how long?”.
I’m not going to pretend that organizations like the IAI (full disclosure: I am on the Board of Directors) and IxDA haven’t helped me, personally, make many of the social and professional connections that I have today. But, that was before.
Before all this social network stuff sort of just asploded in our faces and made everything so intimate, public and NOW NOW NOW!!
I’m grateful for these organizations, actually, as long as they work.
So, to answer my questions, I’d say the answer on both parts is: YES
But the time is critical for them, I fear.
BUT… I think both need to evolve a little in order to find the right way to keep it all under the same roof. There’s no problem with people owning initiatives, and it’s awesome that people can, over the course of a holiday weekend (in the US, of course) crank out 110% awesome. The world wants things RIGHT NOW, and that makes waiting even more difficult than Tom Petty ever imagined. Organizations love to talk about and hate their red tape and people love to talk about and love/hate their organizations response times and excuses of the red tape.
It kind of stinks. But, it’s also a reality. There’s got to be a way to make things happen and get organizations and “their people” all engaged, enabled and empowered to “get stuff done” so they can meet in the middle. There’s got to be some sort of an open framework we can create where people start running as fast as they can and as fast as they want with great (or not great, half-cocked, hair-brained) ideas and make them work for both in a way where both reap the rewards.
I’ve watched as people have identified a number of reasons why events should be near them (and sadly, watched while even less than Pareto would be happy with identified themselves as those willing to take part in the preparation and organization of such things), griped and/or yelled and/or bullied about certain attitudes and approaches to different locations and even, I’m sad to say, as people have thrown up their arms and politely asked, urgently requested and all-out yelled and hollered their requests for assistance.
Unfortunately, I watched those requests get sent, and then watched forward motion get made without support.
In fact, over the course of a holiday weekend in the United States, I watched Steve Baty take his half-baked “UX Book Club” idea and start to bake the hell out of it with his peers–many he’s never met, and some he may never meet in his life. Will Evans and Andrew Boyd jumped-in to help, without any real call for support and they helped inject more excitement and energy into the project.
They organized.
They plotted.
They schemed.
(Admittedly, I got involved, thumb-tapped away on my iPhone as furiously as I possibly could and tried to keep up from the remote reaches of the inner-midwest USA)
They found new ideas from their existing ideas.
They created new ideas–blew them up to bigger than better than any one of them had dreamed-up before.
Mountains were made out of idea molehills, and frankly the whole world looked a helluva lot better from a “wow, that’d be really kick @$$” perspective.
They used the hell out of the back-channel to get people active, excited and to make sure they were missing as few opportunities as possible while engaging as many people who could help them.
They did this without the assistance of associations, organizations, fax machines, the USPS or DHL delivery service. The did this without worrying about whether or not the location was one that suited everyone.
They did this because they love what they do, they love being active and they have heart, soul and no real spare time to donate to their communities, but they figure they can give up an extra hour of sleep a night to make something worthwhile.
How come so few people want so much but can’t come up with the same type of inertia–if I tried to stop Steve right now, he’d plow through me like a Mack truck going over a puddle. This thing is happening!
And it’s awesome.
But “they” own it. That is, there is no owner beyond this collective of unorganized people who decided that their locations could read books once a month.
They DO need the support of organizations–organizations can help them with (perceived?) purchasing power, greater reach, and the potential for more opportunities and growth beyond these local book clubs.
I mean, if someone has the gusto to pick up a book and read once a month, maybe they also want to sit down once a month and watch a presentation on <something> or they want to grab a beer with others and talk about <something> or they want to schedule their own “camp” type of thing.
They DO need organizations. As Marc Andreesen says (courtesy of Christina Wodtke), “Organizations are GREAT distribution channels.” (okay, so Christina clarified this below, but I think it still stands)
Hell, they’re a great place for like-minded people to get together and change the world, rattle the status quo and shake the foundation of just about anything they set their minds to.
Organizations DO need them-these people are THEIR leaders of TODAY and TOMORROW.
One can do without the other, however. One can create the other, however.
One SHOULD inspire, engage and activate the other.
My point is that I think a lot of us get frustrated–I know I have, and I do–and we forget that these things all really do have connecting points and dependencies.
Most of us work in the User Experience space (if you’re reading this blog, at least I think you are)–you/we should all be connecting these boxes and we should all be wanting to solve these problems. We should be taking advantage of this “whatever-point-oh” web/world that we’re in and FIND NEW WAYS to be excited and energized and CREATE SOMETHING BETTER.
Because if we don’t, someone else will.
Will you?
I will.
In the upcoming weeks–nay, days, I will be sharing my initiatives for 2009 as a member of the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute. None of these are impossible to achieve and all of them are valuable and will be worth your time if you choose to participate and/or lead these initiatives with me.
I can’t do it alone, and I want your help.
And you can make my ideas better. More awesome. More YOU. Oh. My. God. Think of how cool that is to see a seed turn into a tree right in front of your eyes and/or from the work of your own hands!
There are so many opportunities for us–from having fun to getting really dorky-technical.
It’s there. If someone hasn’t thought of it–and even if they have–pick up the idea torch and give it a try.
There are big things to be accomplished in 2009, and there are all types of leaders needed–in organizations and in the world at large. Organizations always need more leaders and volunteers and will present you with opportunities you’d never dreamt of. If an organization cannot or will not support you, challenge them–better yet, challenge yourself–and start building something great, and present it to them.
Don’t just BE the change you want to see…
CREATE the change you want to see.
Posted in Community, IAI, Information Architecture, Rant, Rave, Resumes, Social Networking, UXD Book, User Experience | 4 Comments »
Friendship is Dead – See You at SXSW! (Core Conversation)
Written by Russ on November 30, 2008 – 9:21 pmWay back in May I started noodling with the notion of a panel for SXSW in 2009.
I’d say a few thousand people started noodling with the same notion, and then about 1300 of us took the plunge and submitted panels and topics to the Interactive part of SXSW.
My panel topic was “Friendship is Dead” and it is meant to be an exploration of how the word “friendship” came to be and around how our online social networks have begun to erode away at what friendship has meant. Friendship has become increasingly NOT dependent upon location and has odd sort of ways of being defined now, and it seems that the word itself gets tossed around loosely as a noun or a verb (She’s my friend, Friend me on Facebook and I’ll add you) and that once ever-valuable handshake seems to be dying away.
On the submission, I wrote:
So what is a friend anymore? Is it a checkbox or something to collect? Have social networking tools diluted the meaning of “friend” to be someone to add to your collection? Or do these tools allow you to connect with people you’ve never met before? How does friendship differ offline and online?
And, it apparently was not picked as a panel.
They selected somewhere around 200 of us in three different rounds. I received the first two rounds of rejections, but never really noticed that I didn’t receive the third–I just noticed that I did not make the cut when the last round was posted.
However, on November 25th around 1:30p CST, I was just returning from lunch and got an email that pretty much knocked me on my rear end. Here’s the (minorly edited) email I received:
Hey Russ,
Greetings. I hope that you are well and that you are having a great November. Any big plans for Turkey Day?
As you are probably aware, we received more than 1300 panel proposals for the 2009 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival. Most of these ideas are extremely impressive in their analysis of current (and future!) issues in the new media landscape. Unfortunately, we only have the physical space at the Austin Convention Center to host about 200 of these proposals.
To this end, we really like the “Friendship is Dead” idea that you submitted. While the panel program is now pretty much full we would very much like for you to present this idea as a Core Conversation.
WHAT IS IT?
Like panels, Core Conversations last for 60 minutes. What is different however is that Core Conversations remove the traditional speaker / audience interface. Instead, imagine one person in a chair (you) surrounded by 30-50 attendees who are intensely interested in your topic. Your role here is less to give a presentation and more to direct a conversation (as the title implies) about the topic at hand.VERY POPULAR IN 2008
Introduced last spring at SXSW, Core Conversations proved to be an extremely popular part of the event. But, don’t take my word for it. This is what Scott McDaniel of SurveyGizmo says about the Core Conversation he led at the 2008 event: “We were blown away by our attendance at GTD for Startups. We counted about 50 people there and most off them stood for the entire session. Because it was more intimate than a panel, our crowd really interacted with both questions and their own tips. We felt even we learned a lot from the session. If you have a good topic people care about, you’ll get both a great turnout and a great discussion.”WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW
If you want to be a part of the Core Conversation program for 2009, then please respond to this e-mail ASAP with a simple “Yes, I’m on board to do a Core Conversation.” At that point, we will get you a little more information on this program, as well as send you comp information.As always, please fire away if you have questions.
Best regards,
Hugh Forrest
SXSW Interactive Festival
March 13-17, 2009
Austin, TXhttp://www.sxsw.com/interactive
So, uh, yeah.
That is, “YEAH!!”
I’m still a bit taken aback by even the remote consideration for such a thing, but I’m excited as hell about it.
The Core Conversations at SXSW appear to be something that has growing interest, and while it does not allow me to hang out with all of the insanely brilliant panel members I had selected to work with, it still allows me to talk about a topic that I think is growing more and more relevant. While I will miss my partners in crime: Matthew Milan, Bill DeRouchey & David Armano (this just in! David & I will be unveiling our Felix & Oscar routine together!), I believe that the topic is relevant and will spark some great conversation.
If you’re at SXSW, I hope you’ll join me us.
If you’re not at SXSW, I’m nearly 100% positive that we’ll find a way to have a little fun with this and engage as many people around the world as possible.
Posted in Community, Conferences, Presentations, SXSW, Social Networking | 1 Comment »
An Opportunity for Twitter, Recognized as Aching Mothers Band(wagon) Together
Written by Russ on November 17, 2008 – 11:05 pmI swore that I would not jump on the Motrin bandwagon myself and talk about how awesome it is that all of the moms came together to rally against the big bad advertisement.
So, I won’t.
Most people are observing the groundswell, sharing the videos, talking about how powerful Twitter is, and the voice of the consumers really is.
I say that’s only partially true, and to be honest, the voice of the consumers was only effective to a point–and then largely ineffective.
Yeah, I said it.
I think the voice of the “Motrin Moms” did a great job of “getting their way” and getting the advertisement pulled.
And Motrin did a great job of saying, “We heard you” to a select handful of people who are a small margin of the users of the web, but who have the power of Twitter, the blogosphere–and may, or may not, actually sell a few of those damned slings that seem to get everyone so riled up to begin with.
But, as Gabby Hon poetically said:
“Okay motrinmoms, now that you’ve “won”, so what? What did you honestly achieve via your twitter tantrum?”
Anyone who’s dug a little deeper into this blog will know how much I love the “So What?”, so I’m totally hearting what Gabby’s saying.
Michael Rivera takes things a step further and makes suggestions (which, by the way, seem to be in short supply out there–lots of criticism, but few people trying to be part of the solution) for what Motrin could do:
- Build the Motrin Mom’s Advisory Board
- Own the idea of “mommy ergonomics”
- Co-brand with a baby sling manufacturer and send out free, and branded, baby slings to all the offended twittermoms, with an invitation to join the Motrin Mom’s Forum.
Good, solid suggestions–for Motrin.
In fact, I’ve been saying all day that this whole fiasco is a brilliant opportunity for Motrin!
I mean, OMG! Like, thousands of “Motrin Moms” all started twitter-screaming at the top of their lungs that this is ridiculous! This is hurting my feelings! Motrin doesn’t get moms! Slings are totally FTW!
All. Weekend. Long.
Oh–for an ad that was released on September 30th of this year, for what it’s worth.
Somewhere out there, one rather vocal–and rather popular–twitter/blogger/etc. social mom got her feathers ruffled and shared those feelings outward and the pond rippled from there.
But, as Gabby says:
So what?
This is where the Twitter opportunity comes in to play.
The joke I made today about all of this to Cindy Chastain was:
Twitter was great to allow them to bully and megaphone their way into getting attention–from Motrin to the New York Times to David Armano, Jeremiah Owyang and anyone else who could catch on.
Good for them.
Bad for Twitter.
The reason this is bad is because this group of “Motrin Moms” had a somewhat collective voice–they were all pissed off. Most likely, this was all for similar reasons, however, there appeared to be no true leader identified–regardless of who posted what first to uncover this egregious ad that had been out for nearly 1.5 months.
They had no Jesse Jackson of their own.
They had no single point of contact to make some demands, to stand up as an organized mob and get more than just an ad pulled down.
So, to a point, they achieved an unknown–yet mutual–objective. But, now, they go away.
Fade…fade away…
(Oh, and thanks for all of you standing up and providing Motrin with an idea of who all the right people are to talk to–seriously, you just made it really easy for them, and I would personally relish that opportunity if I were them!)
So What?
So, Twitter, your opportunity is here. Allow the disorganized mobs to organize. Allow them to find their leadership and voices and share within their sub-communities inside of your Twitterverse. Allow new communities to form, grow and thrive with focus and purpose.
Heck, I bet you could even make some money at it.
Posted in Community, Social Networking, Viral | 8 Comments »
Passive-Blind Voyeuristic Social
Written by Russ on August 26, 2008 – 1:52 pmThat title alone makes me feel like this entire post should be written by a slew of people who are a whole heck of a lot smarter than me, so I apologize in advance if you stumbled across this and thought you were going to get something highly academic.
It seems to me that there is a perception that “being social” means that you have to actually engage other users actively.
I do not think that is true.
I think that you can be socially involved with someone by quietly watching them–lurking, if you will. In fact, “lurking” has been going on in email discussion lists, online forums and, dare I mention it, BBSes for years and years.
Lurking, I believe, is sitting back and watching the conversation–letting it all happen around you, without anyone knowing you’re even there. However, with lurking, you also begin to understand the behavioral patterns and personalities of others.
Just by watching.
Seems kind of passive, if not voyeuristic to me.
So, if someone serves you up content based upon the actions of others who share similar traits with you, or have identified similar likes and aspirations, then it would seem to me that is rather blindly doing so–you don’t know who those other people are, just that they’re like you.
It’s like seeing a bunch of nameless, faceless “you”-types running around and doing their business and getting content served to you based upon their–and your–collective actions.
So, Passive-Blind Voyeuristic Social would be sitting back and watching content as it is served to you based upon actions that others, identified as being similar to you, and then acting upon it, which in turn influences someone else’s results as they do the same.
Or, at least, so I think it is. Sure, there’s a good chance that someone else has already thought of this and has a better definition, but this kind of works for me right now, and it makes sense to me as another way in which we can interact–socially–without having to actually cross any lines of “faux friendship” and add to our ever-growing lists of contacts that we may not actually even know.
It’s a great way to provide context and direction to users without forcing them to reveal themselves to each other.
There is an unbelievable amount of power in the following statement:
People <like you> who <do something> also <do something else that you’re not doing>.
Don’t you want to know? iTunes has been doing it for us for quite awhile (and have since taken quite a few nickels from my coin purse), but that is very loosely based upon qualities of music–and not “qualities of Russ”; there’s an opportunity to go a little deeper and deliver content to our users that don’t require them to becoming visibly engaged.
I’m going to go ponder this for a bit. I’d welcome additional thoughts.
Note: Search engines have been offering up “What People Are Searching For Now” types of content since, like, forever. This is different as it is actually based upon some identifiers that you have selected, and have in common with others, without actually having to engage them.
Posted in Community, Social Networking | 7 Comments »
Book 'em, Dano
Written by Russ on July 7, 2008 – 8:44 pmI’m writing a book.
About User Experience Design.
For Peachpit Press.
With my long-time friend Carolyn Chandler.
(I had started this blog post with the background first, but let’s face it, the news is better than the back story!)
Ever since the IA Summit back in March, my life has been an absolute whirlwind. No single event has energized me more and excited me more about the career that I am in. There are so many kind, talented people in this field–there’s never a loss for someone willing to offer input and/or advice–and only out of the interest in helping a colleague succeed.
It makes me feel lucky even to be in this field.
If I had a nickel for every time I sent out a private message to someone on twitter, shot an email off to someone I’ve never met but have bonded with through the various social, etc. tools out there or sent an IM or text message to all the other folks, I’d be more than willing to buy us all our very own chumby.
The good news–for me–is that I’ve not had to pay those nickels. The bad news–for you–is that I’ve never gotten paid those nickels. So, you know… No chumby for you.
It was a couple of months back that I sat down and started to put together some of the thoughts that were banging through my head. I had been mentoring a few people through the IA Institute and there were some common themes bubbling up and they seemed to be in line with some of my own experiences. As a mentor, I hope to guide my mentees through some of the challenges as best as I can, hopefully avoiding some of unfortunate situations that I’ve been through.
Frankly, I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Some embarassing. Some financially unpleasant. Some caused bridges to be burned. Some bridges did a fine enough job burning themselves without any real help from me. Some were filled with a lot of disappointment.
In all cases, I made sure that I learned with every failure, no matter how microscopic and no matter how much it banged up and bruised my ego. There were a lot of times where I questioned whether or not I had what it takes to be in the business of business at all.
Like most things in life, however, tomorrow is always a new day, and all of those heartbreaking challenges led me to new lessons and new opportunities, and eventually, those painful situations started to be a thing of the past. Don’t get me wrong, there are always going to be bumps in the roads, but the bumps are a lot more managable these days and I’ve got an arsenal of all those experiences to help me out.
I thought that, much like some of the mentees I’ve worked with, many other people might share a lot of the challenges that I have had. I thought that, perhaps, I could spare them some of that pain, embarassment, bridge burning and even some of that financial discomfort.
I’m a nice guy, right?
(Yeah, well, take that with the humor it was intended with, please!)
I started putting together the outline for a book based upon those experiences and lessons learned. My thoughts were pretty simple–put this all into a nice little tidy package where someone could open it up and jump to any section and get the right information that they would need to appropriately arm themselves to handle the UX task at hand.
As I was writing the outline, I sent a networking email to Carolyn and we got into the “What’s up?” game with each other. I ended up sharing my outline with her and she had some fantastic feedback. Frankly, she also added a couple of ideas that were beyond my comfort zone and experience, but that also fit perfectly between the covers of the book that I was thinking of.
Carolyn is kind, brilliant, and generous to a fault. She offered to step-up and take on authoring challenges of some of the chapters for me–out of the kindness of her heart, and out of interest in being involved in such a cool project.
I would be foolish to turn down such a generous offer, so I didn’t. I didn’t stop there; we had been brilliantly playing off of each other in the back-and-forth of the outline, we had a built-in respect and sort of a nurturing and guiding toward each other’s content.
It was pretty cool and pretty exciting to process to be a part of.
So I asked her to simply be the co-author of the book.
She accepted.
We started putting together an outline and started going back and forth between some peers, asking questions, doing the research, making connections and, as of right now, we have officially signed with Peachpit Press to write a book that was tentatively titled:
User Experience Design for Small Teams with Large Responsibilities
We’re pretty sure that’s going to change (try saying it 10x fast!), but the book itself is underway. We’re going to cover a lot of a UXD process and a couple of other fun things that will help guide individuals who are new to the field, new to freelancing or who need some guidance through a project.
I am very excited about this opportunity and very lucky to have such an awesome co-author. I would also be remiss if I didn’t thank a bunch of people (who are not Carolyn), in no particular order: Bill DeRouchey, Christina Wodtke, Dan Brown, Lou Rosenfeld, Steve Baty, Donna Spencer, Wil Wheaton, Xian Crumlish, Mario Bourque, David Armano, Troy Lucht, Tom Napper, Brad Simpson, Kevin Cheng, Chris Miller and Kurt Karlenzig. All of these folks (and I hope I haven’t forgotten anyone; apologies if I have!) happily offered advices, reviewed notes, kicked me in the seat of my pants and/or criticized and praised where it was needed just to get this to point.
I can’t imagine what they’re on the hook for next, but when you’ve got even a moment of time to bend the ear of folks of this caliber, you should consider yourself pretty blessed.
I know I do.
Posted in Presentations, Social Networking, UXD Book, User Experience, User Experience Design | 4 Comments »
New Word: Friend-igrated
Written by Russ on June 30, 2008 – 10:13 amOh, these wonderful social thingies allow for so much flexibility with our language. Here’s a new one for you, and hopefully you heard it here first.
Friend-igrated:
When creating social identities, the ability to show friends intertwined in your own thread/feed/etc.
Example:
I just signed-up for Swurl and I like how it displays all of my feeds in a familiar blog-like format. I’m still looking to see if they let you see a friend-igrated display so that I can keep track of the people I follow, too.
(Catch that “friend-igrated” refers to people you “follow”? heh)
Posted in Community, Social Networking | No Comments »
We Are All Friends Here. Right?
Written by Russ on April 17, 2008 – 1:12 amAlternate Title: How Much of Your Friend Am I?
I’ve returned from a ridiculously refreshing trip to Miami, and I am more exhausted than I’ve been in recent years. I feel like I’ve got so much ahead of me and a lot on my plate right now, but none of that is a bad thing.
The IA Summit was fantastic. There was a slight hitch in the initial giddy-up, but it did not take too long to forget about it. We moved on with the great learning, sharing, connecting and, oh dear lord the Twittering!
No, really. The Twittering was unbelievable.
The Twittering was constant; it was almost a backdrop to the entire event. Twittering was shared notes, timely jokes, a loudspeaker and an invitation system. Twittering kept pelople connected and helped in making decisions about various presentations, meals and meet-ups.
In 140 characters or less.
My New Friends
I’ve got all these new “friends” who are following @russu, and all these great people that I’m now following. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we’re probably going through a touch of IA Summit withdrawal–but it’s very nice to hear that everyone is arriving home safely, or at least well on their way. In the time that has passed from authoring to publishing, I’m surprised to say that the twittering remains pretty active.
And that is all pretty cool stuff, right?
Right.
Really!
But it’s a “level” of cool. These followers–some mutual and some one-way–are possibly a “level” of friend/acquaintanceship that is introduced into Andrew Hinton’s preferably titled “Cyber Space”.
Huh. That all sounds like I’m new to Twitter. I’m not, but I’m a new and improved “extreme” user now, I think. I’m trying to dial it down for the folks who still have to listen–that is, I want to keep you listening, so I want my Tweets to be minimal on the worthless noise side, whenever possible.
As I was looking over my “Twitterati” (as Livia Labate coins), I was trying to figure out how many of them I have as friends on Facebook and/or LinkedIn, Instant Messenger or otherwise. I’ve also been trying to understand and evaluate the “currency” of the following/follower lists–and whether or not the currency is legit or just in/outbound popularity whoring. With someone like Guy Kawasaki, I do not believe it is the latter, but for a regular Joe like me, I think there would be a lot less value if my numbers skyrocketed for no real reason. I guess there is something to be said about selective-friending based upon your own ecosystem credibility.
Huh. Now I sound almost kind of pathetic.
Maybe I should figure out just who “Russ” is in all of this, first.
Who Am I?
If I could quote an Indigo Girls song here, I’d say this:
“I’m just a mirror of a mirror of myself” -Least Complicated (there’s some irony for you)
See that? I’ve always thought that line was really taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
“I am not who I think I am and I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”
That, to me, also tells me that with each Identity I create, I have the potential to become a different person to each person that I think is watching me at any particular moment. That also means that Identity (and I’m looking at you Christina and Gene) may connect to a variety of different channels that, based upon how they are used, force you to manage your multiple identities in multiple ways.
So, uh, WTF, right?
It’s bad enough that I have to figure out who I am as a husband, a father, a larger family ecosystem with its own subgroups, as an employee and/or an employer and as a client or a co-worker. That’s a lot to manage–you simply cannot just be Ward Cleaver these days.
I wonder if this is what Flip Filipowski meant when he said [paraphrasing here] that he would not want to be alive in the future, because even the smartest of people today would probably come across as fairly feeble-minded.
We have a lot more to contend with. A lot more social structures. A new personality for each identity and a new set of the 3 mirrors to consider, calculate and present. The layers upon layers of honeycombs that we’re forced to manage, keep up with, and continue to add to as each new Next Big Thing(tm) is introduced is only increasing.
Holy Multiple Personality Disorder Batman!
Maybe “friends” now has varying degrees of intimacy. On Twitter, my friends (people I follow/follow me) are people I can share micro-formatted quips with. Perhaps I know all of them, perhaps only some of them, but mostly, there’s some level of shared interest (with the exception of the TwitterSpam that was bound to happen). In many cases, they may be people that I find interesting enough to want to hear what they have to say and they’ve simply extended me the courtesy of returning the favor.
On LinkedIn, I’m Russ the Professional(tm). It almost sounds like it should have a theme song. But that’s who I am. I can perform a few activities that may provide a bit of whimsy around me, but I want people to see me as a resume.
On Facebook, I’m Russ the family man. Pictures of my family abound and my contacts are mostly personal or innocuous sort of connections with people that I probably would have had a difficult time saying “no” to.
On Twitter, I seem to have flocked toward connections that share the same professional passions, or people that I can learn a lot from. Watching the rapid-fire splatter of these 100 or so people pushes me more than I ever could have imagined.
Who am I everywhere else? More importantly, who do I think you think I am, right?
For some, this must feel like being in many secretive dating-like relationships, if you’re not managing your identities in the context of your “true” personality.
I Think What I Think You Think When You Don’t Tell Me How You Think
This does not imply that you are aware of my desire–or that you even care–about how I want you to think about me. It does mean that it has to be dealt with; dealing with friend/fan requests, messages, emails, tweets, etc. are all two way.
I’m crazy, right?
Think about it–barring the “email must have gotten lost in the tubes” or “caught by my SPAM filter” scenarios, in general, the emails make it through the system (and I still SWEAR I didn’t receive the Xbox emails from Microsoft!). The Tweets may not, and other “Beta” types of things may have failures, but email mostly works. Even if its usage may be declining in youth.
“You cannot not communicate.” -Erik Spiekermann
That is my point.
When you do not reply to an email, an SMS, a telephone call or even a D message or specific tweet, you run the risk of sending a message that is open to someone else’s interpretation.
If I send you an email and I don’t hear from you within a timeframe I deem to be acceptable, some little voice somewhere starts to churn out an interpretation.
“Russ hasn’t replied to my email in 2 days–he’s always online! What a jerk, he must be avoiding me…”
Ugh.
Now we’re dealing with response times that are becoming almost uncanny. Think about it–even in the mid-90s, people really weren’t using much email (but, oh, for those of us who were, Pine was simply awesome!). You still had to get a birthday card from your grandmother with a $5 bill in it. Now, your mom can send you an eCard and dump $50 into your PayPal account, and as long as it’s before midnight on your birthday, she’s cool.
This also forces us into shifts in etiquette–if not presence, right? This is where I am. This is why I’m not responding to you RIGHT NOW!
We all know how to set our statuses in Instant Messenger, but how do you handle explaining your (in)ability to not respond timely?
In Twitter, people sometimes “sign-off”:
Off to bed.
about 3 hours ago
Why? To formally announce a status and not offend anyone who is within the realm of Twitterspace that is being co-occupied. Apparently, there is some new twittettiquette going around (yeah, I just made that word up, but I own it now: twittettiquette).
That, however, just depends. Upon you. The type of person you are and/or the type of person you want to allow others to perceive you as. Sounds familiar…
My New Friends?
I’m not sure I’ve figured out exactly who I am or what I am thinking all the time just yet, but I feel like I can at least start to discuss this whole friendship thing a little better. Don’t get me wrong–I know who Russ is, I’m just not always sure that he’s being perceived the same in all places.
This exhaustive social system is sometimes hard to manage–and difficult to interpret.
How many places are we all connected today? We’re all aware of LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, the blogosphere and all the other variations like Bebo, Naymz, maybe Spoke and the new one that will launch tomorrow.
We all have some of the same people in all of those connection points, but most likely not all of them. We share different friends with different people in the different social locations. The Cloud that connects all of the people in the world to me–and it’s not like I’m Captain Popular (more like Æsir, I’d say)–is probably so very large at this point that even a single new connection is likely to have a very large cloud of their own that would ultimately expand both clouds… The notion is kind of daunting.
Are We Friends?
That’s the big question, right? Has the word “friend” started to become as meaningless as Disney’s use of the word “princess”? Don’t get me wrong, Disney still makes tons off of princess (and many princesses’ fathers), but the more the term is misdirected to an inaccurate source, the more it seems to lose its value.
Does that mean I should not want my new “friends” to be my friends? Heck no! I consider myself lucky to have the connections that I have. I consider it to be a requirement on my end to stay connected and to reconnect in the future as much as possible.
What it does mean, however, is that some of our friends most likely aren’t people that we’re really friends with, at least not like it was “back in the day”. Back in the day, people had high school friends that were lifelong friends and who often stayed within the same communities for generations.
Today, we can meet new people online and form lasting relationships–I’ve run a message board for several years and more than one couple have met there and gotten married. I’m not making this up, but I’m not doing Warfel-level research, either. Certainly, most of us have heard of Second Life Marriages, right?
We’re Not Friends
Sometimes, it can be as simple as that. We’re not friends, I don’t want to be friends with you and I don’t want you to be lurking around in my “trusted” circle.
But sometimes you just can’t say “No”.
How do you tell the annoying co-worker that you don’t want them lurking into your Facebook? (How do you know if you’re the annoying co-worker? I’m not arrogant about my relationships, but most of the time I don’t want to impose on “acquaintances” lives by “friending” them inappropriately. Imagine the (mis)interpretations possible) They don’t need to be looking at your Jamaican escapades or peer into your family photos or whatever–but we fear the hallway discomfort or retribution from not accepting a connection. We feel obligated to share ourselves to the point that the selected membership of our friends starts to turn into a college kegger where someone always ends up throwing up in your room–and the door was locked when the party started.
Have you ever had someone on LinkedIn ask you for a recommendation even though you barely know them? How did that make you feel?
Exactly. Even the avoidance of the request can sometimes be difficult.
The concept of “Friend” is becoming more and more watered down. Acquaintance still exists, but acquaintance doesn’t sell page views.
Let’s Keep In Touch
Never since the IA Summit have I ever even considered that the notion of a business card could change so much. I wondered, in hindsight, if it would have been useful to have linked to my blog on my business card and if my twitter account would have been acceptable as well. Is that extending an open invitation to follow me around and converse? Am I desperate for friends if I do such a crazy thing? Do I think that anything I say is that important that I other people actually care?
For that matter, what do you think about it? What if my business card linked to a single page where you could sign-up and show a pre-determined part of your “online social-ness” to me and in return, I could show you as much as I am willing to show?
The image above represents all of the social presences/identities that you have, with one interconnecting point. The grey areas are “allowed” access points that each user is providing. The blue and green display the others that are unshared/private. That doesn’t mean that they’re still unable to be found, just not unlocked to someone else, which means that there is still a potential for social fallout with people that you are not sharing certain accesses with. Even if we find a single, unified standard approach to all of this… There’s still a management issue.
This, Too, Shall Change
I’ve recently gone “Facebook Dark” in my status at (where else?) Facebook. My interest has waned. My desire to keep my status updated to the dozens of folks who are connected to me has gone away. I’m tired of worrying how someone down the hall from my office will (mis)interpret something that may have nothing to do with them or work or whatever. I’m tired of the chore it is to be Facebook Russ, with the exception of uploading a few photos for a specific set of friends. Most of the people that are connected to me are not parents and most likely won’t care that Avery smiled for the first time today.
Maybe it was the work on the Facebook Application that I did that had me playing in that sandbox a bit too long. Or maybe it’s just exactly what I stated above. Maybe I want a new walled garden and maybe I don’t want to have to hurt anyone’s feelings in order to do it. Maybe I no longer feel the need to keep count of my friends and maybe I no longer feel as connected to some people I (selectively?) added.
Maybe, as someone joked at the IA Summit, that “People You May Know” widget on the side is really just a “People You Don’t Like That Much or They’d Already Be Your Damned Friend.” Maybe I’m tired of being reminded about people that could be in my Facebook Posse. Maybe it’s just Facebook overload.
Do you even talk to everyone you’ve Facebooked? Have you ever felt like typing the URL for (insert social networking site here) is just too heavy of a task? Undoubtedly, someone you haven’t spoken to in years is trying to bite you with their zombie or someone has sent you the latest kitty photo that you’ve yet to see in one of your 20 email accounts. When it becomes a chore to keep up with an identity, it can be difficult to figure out what has changed.
Most likely, the change is in you.
The Nail in the Coffin
Death and the Social Networks: It’s kind of a grim thought, and no one really talks about it. I’ve had loose discussions with others about how companies simply do not think about death. Companies never really consider that someday, we’re all going to die. We’ve yet to lose an entire generation of emailers, if you think about it.
Sure, people have died, and Yahoo! has had to be taken to court to be forced to give up private information, but people and companies do not think about the mortality of their connections.
What happens when I die? Where do my social networks go? Who gets to see them? Who gets to tell them?
I don’t even know how obituaries work anymore! The new connections that I’ve been making are very rarely geographically close enough to read about my death in a newspaper. My wife wouldn’t know how to track down anyone and let them know. My “local” or “in real life” friends wouldn’t know about this type of thing; half of them are just barely getting into LinkedIn (although most of them now seem to have a Blackberry Pearl–I’m not sure what that means).
In the future, probably not long after we start seeing a generation of emailers begin to die, companies will have to face the morbid task of requesting users to select a “proxy” or some other designated person who can have access to their accounts and handle any affairs that may need to be wrapped up.
The social implications can be huge. The more global, the more connected, the more we are not required to pick up the phone to hear a voice or walk into another room and physically see someone in order to communicate together, the more it will seem as if a voice just fades, and then ceases altogether.
This Brand New Era of Communications can be awesome in its unending methods of connectivity.
But, it might even be kind of sad.
Posted in Community, Resumes, Social Networking | 5 Comments »
NotchUp, Privacy Down
Written by Russ on January 27, 2008 – 11:03 amLately, I’ve seen a few discussions in regards to various forms of social/business networking, etc. I’ve also received a few invites to join NotchUp, which appears to be the new kid on the block, and I started to enter into their process since I was invited to the “Beta” by a couple of known and trusted colleagues.
In part of checking them out, I do what I always do whenever I see checkbox that says that I agree to someone’s terms of use–I read their terms of use.
From the start, NotchUp’s terms of use doesn’t read like the other places I trust. In fact, it reads like something familiar. It reads like something from a company I worked for many years ago that tried to sign people up for a job site only to in turn sell their information to companies. I’m sure you’ve seen several of these, some of them are akin to College Scholarships “just for signing up for free magazine subscriptions”.
Since my spider-sense was tingling, I knew I needed to read on–so I did:
9. NotchUp reserves the right to offer third party services and products to You based on the preferences that You identify in your registration and at any time thereafter; such offers may be made by NotchUp or by third parties.
That’s right: NotchUp can sell your information to third parties.
Full disclosure here: I did not get through the rest of their registration because, frankly, I don’t like to agree to Terms of Use before I get to see just what my privacy settings can be. They do offer up such a tab in their settings, but it is disabled and not viewable.
10. Without limiting any of the other disclaimers of warranty set forth in these Terms, NotchUp does not provide or make any representation as to the quality or nature of any of the third party products or services purchased through NotchUp.com or any other NotchUp Site, or any other representation, warranty or guaranty. Any such undertaking, representation, warranty or guaranty would be furnished solely by the provider of such third party products or services, under the terms agreed to by the provider.
This basically says that once you’re on someone else’s email list (after they’ve sold your information), they no longer take any ownership of how it is used. Think about that one. It can translate loosely to this:
Once we sell your information, it’s out of our hands. If you change your privacy settings with us, we’ll follow that setting, but if someone we’ve sold your list to sells that list or does not allow you to remove yourself from it, etc. etc. we’re not responsible. There would be a lot of hurdles to overcome to find out just where in the heck your name has ended up.
Not only that:
18. You understand and acknowledge that you have no ownership rights in your NotchUp account (“NotchUp Account”), and that if you cancel your NotchUp Account, all your account information from NotchUp, including resumes, profiles, cover letters, network contacts, saved jobs, questionnaires and email mailing lists, will be marked as deleted in NotchUp’s databases and will be removed from any public area of the NotchUp Sites. Information may continue to be available for some period of time because of delays in propagating such deletion through NotchUp’s web servers. In addition, third parties may retain cached copies of your Information.
“Marked as deleted” – got that? Not removed, but flagged as deleted and no longer publicly displayed. They’ll still have it, still own it. Those third parties may retained “cached copies” of your information–which means that they’ve got a snapshot view from a specific purchase point and they may continue to use the list from a specific date or merge it with a new list, etc.
19. Your email and other data that you submit as part of the resume will be made available to our recruiters and employers. NotchUp.com doesn’t have any control over how that data would be used. If you don’t want any such data to be displayed your only remedy is not to post any resume.
At least this is pretty black and white. But, of course, since the purpose of NotchUp is to connect employers and candidates, it sure seems pretty useless to have a profile without a resume, right? At least the listed this right up top and not 2/3s of the way down on their Terms of Use page.
Oh. Wait.
I should also mention that the only way you can find out about their privacy policy and terms of use is currently, at the time of this writing, by attempting to sign-up and following the link.
They do a fine job of telling you how safe and secure their site is. You have to read between the lines to understand just how little they’re actually offering you. My gut feeling was that they want you to feel that your information is secure and you can control how the other users of the site can view you–which is great. But what about the people who buy lists from them?
There is the potential to give up a lot of your rights to your resume and personal information, in my opinion. I’m posting this as caution to folks here—this site feels like a bandwagon with a “generate a mailing list” approach to it. I’ve worked for those companies in the past and the end result seems to be me feeling as if I need to create a new email account and trying desperately to remove my personal information from, well, just about everywhere.
Maybe it sounds a bit overly-concerned, and I’ll accept that. I’ll also say that I’ve been the victim of identity theft more than once in the past and it’s not fun having to deal with it. Since NotchUp takes ownership of your information and sells it to who knows who, you really are just exposing yourself without any real means of controlling how that works. And NotchUp isn’t on the hook for anything.
LinkedIn, for what it’s worth, takes its approach this way:
• We will never rent or sell your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes
• We will never share your contact information with another user, without your consent.
• Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with all industry standard protocols and technology
That’s pretty nice of them, and I think that’s what we’d all prefer.
Interestingly enough, NotchUp allows you to “instantaneously import your LinkedIn profile into NotchUp to use as your NotchUp profile.” That means that all that privacy protection you get at LinkedIn could be gone within moments. In essence, they’re taking advantage of our lack-of-desire to fill out yet another profile form, using technology to ease that pain, and then potentially reaping the rowards of selling that data.
Likewise, Facebook says this (and we all know they’ve faced some scrutiny):
Facebook follows two core principles:
1. You should have control over your personal information.
Facebook helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.
2. You should have access to the information others want to share.
There is an increasing amount of information available out there, and you may want to know what relates to you, your friends, and people around you. We want to help you easily get that information.
It’s easy to jump on the proverbial bandwagon when it comes to social networking—or even professional networking. We all have a couple of things about any site or application that we wish were improved–even the ones we’ve worked on the design for. It makes it easy for a company to come out with an updated approach to something we already find some benefit in using. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy for these companies to throw out a privacy policy that is easy to ignored—and then your privacy could be as well.
I urge you all to proceed with caution and I urge you to take the time to read—very carefully—the terms and conditions, privacy policies, histories and about us sections of any websites you consider joining. NotchUp’s next-to-last statement kind of summarizes what’s happening on their site:
The only winners in all of this are job boards and headhunters.
That’s right, they summarize by saying the above, but the truth is in what they do NOT tell you:
They’ve created a new winner if enough people sign up: NotchUp.
Posted in Rant, Social Networking | 10 Comments »
The Failings of Facebook, Etc.
Written by Russ on December 11, 2007 – 1:37 amLike a lot of people, I’ve got a Facebook account. I even check it with some frequency (thanks to that BlackBerry application that allows me to check for any status updates when I’ve got some spare moments) and update it with some regularity. But I wonder, just how honest is this?
Quite a few years ago, perhaps around 2000-ish, I started writing a personal blog. In my mind, that was well before blogging was big. I used a fun little nickname (which also fails, once everyone knows who you are) and I ranted and raved about whatever I’d chose. I had enough insight to be careful not to name names, but for the most part, nothing was off-limits on my blog.
For awhile.
Shameless self-promotion took over as readership increased (and perhaps those things fed each other). There was an addiction (and it probably took me until right now to admit that) to getting those updates about comments or various other interactions on the site. I checked-in frequently, often refreshing stats on advertising and readership. I enjoyed being in the fishbowl–and knowing people were watching me. In fact, I went out of my way to try and find humorous (juvenile, immature) antics to write about for the sake of maintaining an image I was trying to portray.
In retrospect, it was definitely an interesting experience, and I’m glad that one is behind me and I’ve turned the corner on that chapter of life.
That is an experience that, I think, makes me a bit wiser now. MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and the others all draw you in and they play on your desire to know about the updates of your various connection types, or your own desire to share what it is that you happen to be doing at this moment. It is intriguing and sometimes a little exciting to get caught up in their experience.
They certainly hope that you do. There’s big money in it for them.
But, what’s in it for you? I think a lot of people do not entirely realize what some of the ramifications of being a bit too flip in online communities can be. Ask anyone who has had to write a few personas in their day and I’m guessing that, like me, they’ll tell you that they utilize these social networking sites to do a little bit of background research. I bet that they’ll also tell you that at times they’re shocked at what people are willing to display to the general public about their habits and preferences.
I am a pretty caffeinated person, but I am fairly laid back when it comes to online content. I can laugh with the best of them when I’ve got my Russ hat on. However, if I were wearing a hiring manager hat and Googling your name to see what the professional behind the resume looks like on line, well, my take on your professionalism may shift a little bit if you are not practicing a bit of discretion.
Think about that. For those of you who work in a client-services industry, do you ever use LinkedIn, FaceBook, etc. to get a view into the client or the vendor? Most likely. I’ll admit that I do. I think it’s a bit of human nature to find out just how qualified someone that you are working with–I’ve seen it done at previous employers, and with negative results for other people. Perception was shifted based upon information that was readily found online in some public forum.
And therein lies a big enough problem. Still, this is not the biggest problem that I see with the social networking sites.
The biggest problem that I see is one that involves how you interact with your friends, peers and acquaintances that you allow yourself to be connected to.
First and foremost, have you ever declined an online connection with someone on one of the social networking sites? I once had someone–a co-worker–tell me NO on LinkedIn and I did not even want to see him in passing in the hallway anymore. Awkward, thy name is Social Networking Rejection.
Have you ever accepted a connection with someone that you work with–but that you are not really social with? For example, my current boss and I are connected on Facebook. We don’t go catch a movie together or go and grab a beer together, but I think he’s a good guy and I would not work for him if I felt otherwise. That said, the instant that the connection was accepted, I noticed that I began to lightly filter things that I posted. The more that other people from work were added, the more that I noticed I became less flip and more cautious about how I would allow myself to be perceived on Facebook. I’m older, and I like to think a bit wiser, and I feel comfortable enough in my skin that it really is a lot easier to be “me” online these days, but I do not think that a lot of people are at that point–at least after reviewing over a hundred various Facebook profiles.
However, by virtue of a professional relationship, it may be wise–if not necessary–to apply a filter to your publicly available social networking information. Perhaps it is best to just maintain a private profile that does not allow itself to be easily found or added. Of course, what does that say about you? Are you too private? Are you hiding something? I think that seems silly, but I also think that history should show us that we can all be silly from time to tome.
Likewise, if I would no have allowed my boss to be my friend on Facebook, what would that say about me? I ask this regardless of what it should say–when it comes to feelings and impressions, most times what should be done gets thrown out the window. If I would have rejected his offer of friendship, would I have look like an anti-social jerkwad? Do I look like one because I don’t have a large number of friends as it is?
This is where I see the biggest failing of Facebook, etc.
Just last week, a friend of mine posted a status update that she had the just been on one of the worst interviews of her professional career. There is no way on earth that I could post that on my Facebook status. Instead, I would need to find the right way to get ahold of my closest friends and let them know what was going on–perhaps IM, email or a call on the cellphone (while driving). If one of your connections is an acquaintance and not a friend, could you broadcast a status update about a gathering that the friend was not invited to and risk hurting their feelings or having them invite themselves? There is a breakdown that starts to happen as you allow yourself to become the equivalent of “online popular”. Eventually, you may find yourself censoring yourself.
Ultimately, you return a very personal method of communication with your inner circle. That may be an instant message, an email to a small group or even 1-to-1 conversations via telephone or in-person when it comes to truly personal or sensitive matters.
FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace–you name it. These have become a personality promotion tool for yourself. These are tools that allow you to promote yourself in the way that you want people to see you, but ultimately not the person you really are. There is a famous quote out there that loosely states:
“I am not who I think I am, I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”
These tools are here to help us all take that the whatever Nth level we desire. However, the internet has a memory, and we need to remember that. Google caches pages. There are archive sites with previous information stored, and even those brief snapshots could be just enough to cost any of us something important to us tomorrow from a lapse in judgment or discretion.
This also serves as a notice to users: When you eventually do tire of your social networking flavor of the week and move on, you may want to consider revisiting your existing profiles and do a bit of house cleaning.
The realization of this, or the impact of this may not be immediate. It may take quite awhile to even recognize that it is starting to happen, and when it does, the shine will start to fade a little on the shiny new toy, no matter how many new tools, applications or vampire/werewolf attacks you may endure (I ignore those faster than you can send them, just in case you are curious). Eventually, you may move on to the next big thing–until everyone else finds you and you begin to feel that you may be censoring yourself again. And then it’s on to the next next thing. I made a nice Venn Diagram to help illustrate how this particular point may play out in the future:
Posted in Community, Social Networking, User Experience | No Comments »
