Blogging Notes - Must Mention to Jim

1. About Me Profile -- anything here to set the stage? Purpose? Intent?

2. Comment screening -- consider to avoid need for deletion

3. Pictures

4. More Linking

5. Read other blogs and connect

Erractic Picture Tagging Behaviors

So this is the scoop. The last couple of times I've posted photo albums on Facebook, the kids were swarming over them with tagging requests. Between 10pm one Sat night and 10am next Sun am I received 50+ tagging requests on the Big Bend Trip.

48 hrs ago I posted a bunch of pics of a graduation event ..... and nothing ...! Did I restrict permissions accidentally? Have they all fallen into a summer stupor already? Did I break some unknown-to-20+'ers and unwritten by anyone rule of FB etiquette, and they are now giving me the cold-cyber-shoulder?

Stay tuned ... must consult with my teenage expert

Psyched about Jim Nutter starting to blog

Finally got an appointment with Jim Nutter to help him embark on the blogging path and I come home tonight to find that he's out there as of today with Reflections From Jim Nutter!!!

Now I need to rustle up all those Best Practices from Luiz Suarez and others to pass them along. It's worth taking a look at his blog periodically to get a flavor of what a SuperStar blogger does.

Here is a Best Practices Posting I ran across by EchoDitto. Very worthwhile reading for beginners!

... and here's another interesting one from Stephan Spencer's Scattering on Optimal Blog Posting Frequency ... actually it has lots more than just frequency. Good description of frequency vs. recency vs. relevance and their relative importance.

No PC in my living space is huge problem

Feeling very disconnected from email, Facebook, Blogs, etc.

I've reverted back in time to the I-go-to-cyberspace mode vs. the new I-am-with-cyberspace-all-the-time mode. It's a huge difference. Great reminder of where most folks still are hanging out.

No PC in the Kitchen - feels like kitchen sink OUT

The downstairs laptop is overheating and it's gotta be switched off, boxed up and sent in for repairs. I feel like I don't have a functional kitchen sink anymore. I now have to "go to" the internet instead of it being integrated with my living/working space ... i.e., the kitchen at our house.

Now I'm reminded why so few of my friends are on the internet as frequently as I am. They probably have to "go to" it somewhere in a different room. It's not just part of the kitchen/living space where they hang out most of the time.

... I can see an iPhone in my future.

Tagging pics is cool, but be fast or it's very uncool

Saw this floating on my Newsfeed this morning. Teenager Boy A says to Teenager Boy B.

"you just commented on a post that's 5 month's old. What the fuck Nxxxi"

he just got virtually 'slammed'

RickyF Launches aBlog inside the OCZONE

TO protect the innocent, we're going with code names here. Let's talk about OCZONE company and RickyF the young KM'er in the making.

RickyF went to a "gangsta" (read: cool) conference in a cool city with lots of skyscrapers last month. He came away pumped (read: fired up), stoked (read: enlightened) and ready to take action back at OCZONE.

He slips back inside the fence and starts up a 'blog' ... no response. So he re-crafts his outpouring of enthusiasm ... and no response. So he re-groups yet again (this guy is very resilient) and gets one Comment and one email with a long list of excuses about not having time for such frivolous activities.

What will his next move be? Will RickyF regroup a 4th time? Will RickyF give it up? Will he stall out and wait for them to forget, then come back? What will RickyF do????

Watch this station for the next episode!

Mandatory Social Networking inside the Firewall

Talked to an old friend last night about her company's introduction of an internal, custom-built social networking site inside the firewall. They have mandated usage. This is a "Big n" firm, where n used to= 8, then dropped to 6, then somewhere along the line dropped to some new lower number, that no one can remember.

Anyway, seems that it's a bit confusing for folks that are already established in other SNS like FB, etc. It must be like having multiple personalities, that can't talk to each other. Obviously this must be a US mandate, even though the company is global. Can you imagine how this would go over in Europe? Puhleeess !

mental note to self: call her back in 6 months to see how that is really working out

Google Docs Update - 96 hrs later

Here's the outcome - amazingly did get 2 people to edit the actual Google doc, BUT these two were pretty IT savvy. One of them is even in Facebook and will actually watch for updates.

The other 2 didn't even try. They just sent me the content back in an email and I had to plug it in for them.

Curious to me that they would not even try it.... why? must find out why? how can I find this out without being rude about it ... Need more grace for this type of work.

Blogging Frequency - Notes - #1

I definitely can come up with a story , vignette, anecdote everyday, but somehow just yesterday was apparently 2 days ago. What happened? 2 days just slipped over the waterfall and I didn't even notice?

How can this be? I'm online all the time? How do I really DO this daily?

89 Online Friends

How can you make sense of long list of 89 friends online? I thought I was pretty well plugged in, when I would find 10-13 friends of my online, but 89????

I was just watching Daniel "facebooking" (new verb, as far as I'm concerned) and noticed that 89 of his Friends were online at that moment. His response to my amazement was "duh ..., of course everyone is online, this is THE time of day that we do this!" It was 9:20 pm on a Wednesday - school night.

"Add as Friend" then go under the Radar

It seems that many teens are willing to "Add as Friend", but then don't ever let them know that you are out there watching what's going on, or they will drop you. With most of them now having 300, 400, 500, ... have even seen a couple with 900+ Friends, they quickly forget that they have accepted you as a Friend and obviously aren't doing any housekeeping of any sort.

My friend Tiina reported that her son accepted her at first, but then dropped her. I witnessed another Wall-to-Wall discussion between two 15-yr old boys about why one would never in a million years accept his Mom (well,,,, that's not exactly how he phrased it :). Ironically, he had accepted me, and in fact has even engaged me in a couple of dialogues. However, when I told Daniel that I had 'talked' to Scott, he thought that was very weird, almost bordering on the 'sick' level.

So. Best approach is to Stay Low, if you want to stay in the game.

Experimenting with Google docs - First 48 hrs

Heard about the new Google docs from a Google whizz kid who spoke at the Chicago APQC conference last week. Check out Cyrus Mistry if you want to get a feel for this guy speaking about Google to 25,0000. Big focus on Search, but he got me turned on to the new Google Docs capability.

So thought I'd try it out to help us collaborate this week on the church silent auction. Came home from the meeting, setup the document - pretty easy and intuitive - and sent out link with sharing permissions to everyone.

48 hrs later, the only person to respond is .. someone I didn't invite in the first place. I think it's maybe through one of the Mom's who's in IT. So far, no response from anyone else.

Now I'm wondering --> Did they get the email? Did they try and fail? Are they too busy to have checked it yet?

Stay tuned ...

The virtual teenage shopping experience

So we were at Urban Outfitters in Rice Village. Friday night. I'm the only one over 50, over 40, omg over 20 probably! Cool looking teens circulating; I'm lounging on the couch checking my blackberry (aka BB) in my corporate garb. My kids steer a wide circle around me to avoid any sense of connection.
Heidi comes out of the changing room and can't decide IF she should buy the shirts and WHICH one. Even though my advice is sought, it is really not wanted. What she wants is advice from a truly trusted source - i.e. another 13-yr old girl. I tell her to please make up her mind, I want to go home (nothing more I can do on the BB now and can't be bothered to graze through the store looking at clothes I love but would look ridiculous in).

Here's the point of the story:
She tells me she's just waiting for Sarah and Jessiah to respond to her text/photo message. She took a picture in the changing room and sent it to them. Within a couple of minutes we had the answer and were off to pay! The group decision was for the plain purple one and not the one with the peace symbol.

Love it!

Re-start in May 2008

Ok let's give this another try. Could I keep up a blog for a consistent period of time? What would my "passion" be? What would anyone else want to read about?
Maybe it's just a collection of stories about how the web and social computing connects people?
Will I be able to tease out my world a new story everyday?

Let's see....