Tag: personal

• Lets meet up at SXSW 2010

  Why? Because as great as the SXSW panels, discussions, and product launches are, there is also HUGE value in meeting people and networking in real, face-to-face interaction. It’s part of what makes the SXSW conference great, and it’s a nice way to break down the wall that technology sometimes creates between communication on Facebook, blogs, and Twitter.

  Let’s get together and talk about how our organizations and communities are doing innovative things in social media, content management, government and community relations, media relations, online marketing, and public relations.

  I’ve created a SXSW-Interactive Resources page on my site so you can view my tentative conference schedule, my SXSW profile and my Twitter feed, and soon I’ll be adding a Flickr photo stream from the conference.

  Drop me a line if you want to see a panel together, show me what you’re working on, grab lunch, or just meet up in the halls and chat.

  2010.02.16

• On Giuliano Bugialli’s The Fine Art of Italian Cooking, a photo essay

  I learned to cook from my parents. Both are wonderful in the kitchen, typically cooking dishes that begin with the sautéing of the holy trinity: garlic, olive oil, and onion. My mom can make green peppers stuffed with extravagant Spanish rice, fist-sized meatballs, and chicken and dumplings anointed by higher powers. Memories of my father put him beside a charcoal grill, turning steaks that spent entire hours soaking in garlic oil and sea salt.

  To bring my own element to their lessons, I have found that it helps to consume at least one and a half bottles of red wine to better dull any sense of impending culinary doom. Doing so creates an environment where errors in measurement, fires, flare-ups, second-degree burns, Salmonella, and sliced, scalded, or amputated digits are not only dismissed, but celebrated flagrantly.

  Fortunately, I married a woman who shares equal abandon for rules ­­­– and sobriety — in the kitchen.

  For that reason, this Valentine’s Day we decided to try our hand at a higher order of cooking. We consulted a book that is held in high regard by a friend of ours who lived for some length in Italy.

  Giuliano Bugialli’s The Fine Art of Italian Cooking, is considered by some, more or less, as the gold standard of fine Italian cooking.  Bugialli takes the unique approach of stressing an OCD-like obsession with authentic Italian ingredients, measurement, and preparation. For one dish, he dryly remarks that unless you have imported, canned Italian tomatoes, the dish should not be attempted. Substituting, say, organic whole tomatoes would simply undermine the historical context of the dish.

  As an exercise in culinary discipline, we attempted three Bugialli dishes: Pollo in porchetta (delightfully described by Bugialli as “a chicken made in the manner of suckling pig”), Spaghetti coachmen’s style, and a tomato and mozzarella salad blended with fresh basil, sea salt and black pepper.

  These are our pictures.
  http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf

  2010.02.14

• Can a case be made for chief social media officers?

  I’ve written before about the multidisciplinary aspect of social media project management. For the past few weeks, I’ve also thought about how internal structures of social media projects work.

  Social media management is viewed as a highly collaborative discipline, requiring the feedback and insight of group managers, information technologists, communications strategists, public relations staff, Web developers, designers, and writers and editors.

  But these needs are increasingly automated thanks to content management systems, widgets, PlugIns, and the outsourcing of data and information to communities, which over time decreases the amount of strategists a project would typically require.

  Why a chief social media “officer”?

  A CSMO can take the approach of top-down management. Decisions and strategies for social media may be better administered without the current “bottom-up” approach that is prevalent in most organizations. Currently, social media tasks and strategies are typically developed at the staff- and mid-management level and passed upward through corporate governance, where strategies can become diluted and misaligned by managers and officers who are not as close to social media initiatives and tools.

  An executive-level CSMO is closer to high-level administration and management strategies, and is in a better position to execute tasks without having the strategy redefined through the bottom-up approval process.

  A few questions to consider:

  • Will advances in technology allow social media project management to be reduced to such a streamlined function that one “super manager” can carry out tasks?

  • Is it possible for one person to manage both the outward facing structure of your social media communication efforts, while managing strategies, content and communities?

  • What risks are associated with consolidating these tasks to one chief officer?

  I’d like to hear your feedback. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

  2010.02.06

• What if Wes Anderson directed Spider-Man? [video]

  What if Wes Anderson Rebooted the Spider-Man Franchise? A parody by Jeff Loveness.
  
  
  

  2010.02.06

• CDC’s Twitter guidelines document is nine pages of viral goodness

  Here’s the Center for Disease Control and Preventions extensive advice on using Twitter and making content viral. Puns intended.

  CDC Twitter policy http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

  2010.02.03

• Playing with Wordpess for iPhone

  uploading a photo to my blog from WordPress for iPhone. This is my Dell Mini 9 running Mac OSX.

  

  

  2010.02.02

• Lessons in social media policy from the EPA

  When social media tools and techniques are applied to government communications, agencies are able to meet the obligation of transparency and “open books” initiatives in ways that were impossible to imagine just a few years ago.

  One of the tricky things about overseeing social media initiatives is introducing tried and true marketing, public relations, and editorial techniques into a realm that is chaotic, unpredictable, and often unforgiving to missteps.

  As if that wasn’t challenging enough, government transparency increasingly is becoming the responsibility of staffers from a variety of disciplines and positions outside of public relations; Web developers, writers, editors, and content managers all play a large roll. Where we once created static documents and pitched media, our jobs are expanding toward not only spurring discussion, but also participating in it.

  A strong social media plan and policy is critical to success.

  Jeff Levy, director of Web communications at the EPA’s Office of Public Affairs, was kind enough to share with me his agency’s social media policy.

  Jeff’s shop has developed a terrific flow-chart that adds a visual methodology of determining when and how to participate in online discussions. Also check out the EPA’s social media guidelines. Both documents are well worth examining.

  Kudos to Jeff and his team at the EPA.

  Flow Chart http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

  Interim Guidance Representing EPA Online FInal http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

  2010.01.28

• 7 things I like about the Amazon Kindle

  It’s been a few weeks since I got an Amazon Kindle as a gift from my  wife. Here’s a quick and hastily written review of the device based on my experience thus far.

  1. Portability

  I went to West Texas to visit family over Christmas. I brought six books, three magazines and several newspapers with me on a device just a little bit bigger than a DVD case. I travel quite a bit, so it’s great to carry books, magazines, and blogs with me without eating up a lot of physical space. In terms of virtual space, Kindle can hold up to 1,500 books.

  2. Selection of Titles

  This took me by surprise. Amazon says they stock just under 400,000 e-books in their Kindle Store. So far, every book I’ve searched for has a Kindle edition, usually priced around $8. Titles are delivered straight to the device in about 15 seconds. I can shop for new content directly from the device.

  3. Internet

  Kindle includes a lifetime subscription to 3G wireless that Amazon is entitled to change on a whim, according to their TOS. So far, I’ve had a good connection to the cellular networks that tether the Kindle. The device has a simple, built-in browser. The browser’s display isn’t very pretty — it resembles cell phone Web browsing from 2003. Regardless, I can easily check my Gmail, access Wikipedia, or read CNET and Slashdot from the Kindle with little effort

  4. Ruggedness

  Kindle is less than two inches thick and weighs about 10 ounces. While I wouldn’t take it to the beach, I wouldn’t have a problem taking it camping or carrying it in my backpack to read on my lunch break or on a layover. Sadly, the newest generation Kindle doesn’t include a case, but you can pick one up on Amazon for about 30 bucks.

  5. Readability

  My biggest fear was that I wouldn’t like reading the Kindle. How pleasurable can a digital screen be? I was surprised that Kindle’s display allows for easy reading. I’ve noticed that reading in low-light can be problematic, more so than with a printed book.

  6. Free Stuff

  Amazon offers quite a few free titles. There are also a lot of Web sites and blogs that specialize in connecting Kindle users with free content. My favorite is the Gutenberg Project.

  7. Battery Life

  I go four to six days before I need to charge.  At this point, I can get a very solid charge in an hour or two. Battery life is greatly improved with wireless connectivity turned off.

  The Not So Good

  Navigation on the Kindle is clunky and a little slow. It’s easy to reach the Home screen, which is where you find your list of titles, but navigating indexes of newspaper stories and book chapters is not very intuitive. I expect this to improve quite a bit in future iterations.

  DRM. This is a big one for me. I celebrated when Apple removed DRM from the iTunes Store, giving customers freedom to move their purchased audio tracks around as they see fit without the restrictions of Digital Rights Management. It bothers me that Amazon could potentially remove purchases from my device or monitor what and how I read.

  Paying for Blogs. This one really sucks. Kindle users can subscribe to blogs for .99 each per month. I read dozens of blogs daily. The idea that I have to pay to have this otherwise free content sent to my device is ridiculous. One way around this is to bookmark Google Reader in your Kindle’s Web browser, but navigation is still pretty lame.

  Overall, the Kindle is a great device. A few glitches aside, I really like what it does.

  2010.01.03