EchoDitto

If you do, you're probably better off than you think.

In case you're a client or partner of mine and were wondering--- I'm alive and well. I just completed a two-day training on agile project management given by Sanjiv Augustine of LitheSpeed. I have to admit it, I'm kind of a sucker for information organization and process theory.

Even though I may be a process junky, I'm generally pretty skeptical about any type of training. Am I going to learn anything? Will I be able to apply this to what I do? What is the point?

I almost bought it. A moment of nostalgia almost made me long for "the good old days" when you had to go to a record store and rifle through the bins if you wanted to buy music. I really should have expected it, after hearing the news that iPod sales have topped 100 million. 

But I think I can be forgiven a momentary lapse. After all, I had my first "dream job" working at a record store (just using the term "record store" is dating myself, for sure), and went to college in a town that was known as the "Liverpool" of its time. 

If you're like me you feel like you have a million lists going at once: a couple online, one in a random notebook, 2 post-its stuck to your computer, a list on the magnetic notepad on the fridge... I feel like I need a list of lists sometimes to keep track of everything. Turns out your constituents probably dig lists too (or digg them, if they're super geeky like us).

Using lists on blogs or in communication is something we've been talking about around the office recently. Yeah those super activists that you're trying to reach out to - they're most likely super busy just like you. They're happy to advocate for you - just spell it out for them ASAP. One "ask" is usually all you need, but "how-to's" are great too.

Well, yesterday I attended a business blogging seminar sponsored by Six Apart. The best part of the seminar was listening to Alison Byrne Fields talk about best practices for 2.0 Politics and Advocacy. Alison gave me another reason to be the fan club president for "lists" - bloggers love them to.

Fresh off of last night's NetSquared MeetUp featuring Marty Kearns of Green Media Toolshed, I totally just crowdsourced!

Marty spoke briefly (and compellingly) about crowdsourcing tasks to help the general environmental movement, as well as crowdsourcing in the general progressive world. Crowdsourcing is an idea where an organization can use the wisdom of crowds to accomplish small tasks within a larger goal.

In my case, the goal wasn't very high and lofty, but it was something that was proving to be out of my reach. For those who don't know, I maintain a shareware program called Pukka and occasionally it gets written up here or there by a blogger. Frequently, the posts are in a foreign language, so I make regular use of Babel Fish to translate them. Today, I noticed a post written in Swedish, however Babel Fish does not provide a Swedish translation service. I figured it would be an easy task to Google up a service that did, but it actually proved quite difficult and I came up blank -- most people wanted to sell me either translation products or translation services.

Having spent the past 7 years working in the Internet space at a variety of for-profit and non-profit companies and organizations, I've noticed that the differences between the two become increasingly blurred. While the goals of each may be different--selling software and driving traffic to media outlets vs. raising money and promoting online advocacy--the methods and overall objectives are surprisingly similar.

In both cases, everyone wants to see some kind of measurable result--whether that means selling more Adobe Acrobat 7.0 versions than the other guy, or breaking fundraising records in a time of national crisis. The tools we use to accomplish these results are also quite similar--drive traffic to the site, offer compelling reasons to buy or donate, and make a case for why your site or cause is unique. In the end, it's all about marketing and message. The tools are simply the means to an end.

I'm kind of left in awe of South By Southwest. I think the thing that best sums it up is what Wilson said: that everyone was excited about something. The buzz was palpable, and it was widely distributed.

I roamed the convention center, I attended a panel during every slot, sometimes jumping around to keep my interest piqued, and I definitely participated in the essential nightlife. I drank it in (no pun intended), from eight every morning until past midnight every night. I'm not sure it would have been the same without the posse, but even then, it wouldn't have been the same without all the great people that I met and got to hang out with.

I was surprised to learn that some of my coworkers had not heard of the Sony debacle, so I thought I'd give a quick run-down. The progression thus far:

1) Sony ships new music CDs for purchase by retail customers.
2) CDs are discovered to have DRM software (basically, copy protection) that auto-installs on your Windows PC when you play the CD, without warning.
3) Sony issues an uninstaller, which creates a security vulnerability on your Windows PC.

Have you noticed how our "what's happening now" del.icio.us feed has gone nuts lately? Well, one link that warrants additional explanation—and which i want to be sure doesn't get buried—is Amazon.com's announcement of an "artificial, artificial intelligence" program called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Basically, it's a system that connects regular web users (and computers) to a large decentralized network of humans who get paid to complete "Human Intelligence Tasks," or respond to info requests -- tasks for which humans are better equipped than computers. This investment is a Big Deal because it speaks volumes about the company's appreciation for (a) the online multiplier effect, where many small, individual actions add up to a larger whole, and (b) the proven nature of distributed and decentralized processing via the 'net.

On September 28, I listened to a key note from Cammie Dunaway, CMO of Yahoo!, at the OMMA East conference. She gave an engaging summary of the online advertising campaign for Yahoo!'s recent music service launch. Cammie was a great speaker particularly because she spoke with a lot of energy in her voice and explained the reasons for many creative choices she made.

For example, the online ads featured celebrities like Shakira and Missy Elliot because Yahoo! has seen much better results with ads featuring photos of celebrities. No surprise, but it's always good for those rules you take for granted to be reinforced by recent experience.

I especially liked her mnemonic device to remember best practices with online advertising:

Integrated

Hot on the heels of my personal blog getting picked up by the Washington Post Express paper, it turns out that I accidentally stumbled upon some info that shows that the Post uses the popular TypePad blogging service to host their own blogs.

Basically, it was all about the favicon.

I was looking over blogs.washingtonpost.com when I noticed the site's icon up in the navigation bar: