This is a workshop I did this week for The Center for Investigative Reporting and their Board members. I work at CIR as their web strategist, and have trained lots of people in using twitter for more focused purposes that just chat.  I'm pleased with this preso because I think it concisely addresses A LOT of the questions people have. So, here's the document. Enjoy!

Our web host for Oakland Local is flaking on us bit time, so I asked for recommendations that people liked. Here's what I have so far:

1. Dharmishta
    
   @susanmernit I <3 mediatemple--I've called them day and night and they're always helpful. about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck
   • Reply
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2. bLaKtivist
     
   @susanmernit Hey NY transplant :) about 4 hours ago from UberTwitter in reply to susanmernit
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3. webhostinghelp
     
   @susanmernit I host with loads of companies and can help u pick the right one for you. How many sites do u have to host? about 4 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
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4. Gotekky
     
   @susanmernit Hi Susan, sorry to hear that. Take advantage of our holiday vps specials to try us out, 30 moneyback http://gotekky.com/vps.htm about 4 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
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5. pearlbear
     
   @susanmernit Slicehost is our favorite. Linode is good. As is Rackspace Cloud servers. about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck in reply to susanmernit
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6. ItsJustHosting
     
   @susanmernit Check out our line of fully managed VPS plans here: http://bit.ly/6jQW3F let us know if you have any questions! about 5 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
   • Reply
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7. honyocker
     
   @susanmernit EmpireReport.org uses slicehost. Been happy with it so far. Don't feel like we're getting hosed. :) about 5 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
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8. ClarisaClarity
     
   @susanmernit we just signed on with Media Temple. about 5 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
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9. therealmrscienc
     
   @susanmernit fatcow.com is pretty good. Several choices of page building tools. Servers R 100% alternative energy powered. High reliability about 5 hours ago from web
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10. linode
      
    @susanmernit let us know if we can answer any questions or be of service about 5 hours ago from web in reply to susanmernit
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11. raminf
      
    @susanmernit I've been pretty happy with Slicehost. A lot of people like Linode, though. Who are you using now?

And Facebook folks say:

Are you a female entrepreneur or small business person who launched something new in 2009? Let's chronicle your successes and celebrate them. Use the form to add the following: your full name, company name, company link or relevant article and twitter name. We'll share the results across the web.

We're six weeks into the launch of Oakland Local, the new news & community site for Oakland myself and a merry band of co-conspirators launched about six weeks ago. Talking with people who have not yet spent time on the site, I'm always asked How are you different from (insert name of one of 3-6 Oakland or Bay area blogs).

So. here's what I say:

• Oakland Local is a news  & community hub that combines reported stories with grassroots community news and events from local non-profits and neighborhood organizations.
• Because we are organized around issues of concern to Oakland, we focus on topics including environment & pollution, food access, transportation, development & gentrification, gender & identity. We also cover arts & education, local politics and social justice/social change issues.
• We provide Oaklanders with a place to connect and talk about issues, to post news they care about, and to find information that isn't widely available. We also help organizations working in Oakland bridge the digital divide by helping them build capacity to use the web--and Oakland Local--to share their stories, get the word out, and ask for help.
• Our team is made up of Oakland residents with backgrounds in journalism, community organizing, media, business and community organizing..
• There are no other blogs or news outlets in the area that provide the diversity of voices, the range of perspectives and the resources we're offering.
• One of our goals is to  fill the gap that leaves many people in the Town without enough voice and/or information.
• Another is to to build civic empowerment and community engagement by building capacity for the non-profits, neighborhood groups, and community organizations we work with to use  OL as a platform to be heard, as well as to gain skills to use on the sociable web (Facebook, twitter, etc.)

How are we doing?

• 1st month of operation: 12,000 unique visitors
• Average time spent on site: 2.84 minutes
• Highest time: 9.4 minutes
• Pages viewed:3.2

According to Google Analytics, most of our visitors are from San Francisco, Oakland, Piedmont and Pleasanton.

We're registering people who want to write, comment, blog, and post on our calendar and we have about 85 of them. And we're got a core of about 15 community groups who are now posting regularly to the site, with more coming on.
 
Our commentators and forum posters are also growing, but this is the area where we need to do the most work; we don't yet have that critical core of, oh 10 engaged talkers, who make a site's community seem so engaged and busy.

On Facebook, we are zooming, with more that 1,760 members, tons of discussion, and vibrant postings. On Twitter, we've got about 500 followers, and a nice build.

Next up: Selling ads. We're got the pricing, we've got the ad serving system, and now we need to really commit to the sales.

Note: Kwan Booth and I will be at a USC conference on local sites and entrepreneurship, so this data is very much on my mind.

Seeing the family back east, away from the California high-tech bubble, always gives me a great sense of where the educated mainstream is around the tools and technologies I take for granted.
Two years ago, I could barely get online, because they didn't now the passwords on their security--or had no networks. Last year was about setting up the new laptops (all Macs). And this year--Hallelujah!--is about getting mature adults onto Facebook, Twitter and a blog, as quickly as possible, please

"@larfo,  did not expect a photo of my hand to be viewed by 15,000+ people tonight... wow. i was just trying to block the sun"--Twitter user Joe Mitchelle, who took a photo of the Bay Bridge roadway as a cable snapped and fell and posted it.

This was an amazing ONA conference for me for so many reasons. For one thing, I'd spent the year working with Liz Lufkin & Katherine Fong and others on the ONA conference program; for another, as I'd suspected when I went to ONA09 with Gary Kebbel, Jose Zamora and the Knight News Challenge, team, this was the year I'd get re-involved with online news and helping ONA plan a SF conference would be relevant.

At the ONA conference this year, I felt like my work had a long shadow--there were the three keynoters, Ev Williams, Lisa Stone and Leo LaPorte, all of whom were kind enough to say yes to my requests (and each of whom did a superb job). Then there was the hard work Mark Briggs and I put into 6 in 60, an ignite-style pitch session for media entrepreneurs, and the keynote I gave at career day (Yes, I am proving to be a reinvention princess), and the talk at Jan Schaffer's all-day workshop about the work I've done starting Oakland Local from scratch this summer (and hopefully, launching it later this week).

But what was really stirring for me (besides the relief at doing a good job while on the hot seat with Ev) was the degree of connection I felt, and the delight and interest in so many of the people I talked to.  You see, online news and I have had a love-hate relationship for many years, and ONA has borne the brunt of it.  I sulked out of an ONA conference a few years ago (2004?) vowing never to return because of the bitter, whiny voices I heard, and when I volunteered last year, it was really as an experiment.

But I have to echo Jay Rosen and others that this ONA was full of an energy and verve that was very engaging. For me, it was a real welcome back. a re-absorption into a world I'd (frankly) almost written off a couple of years ago and that now I find myself passionately engaged with.

Confession: it's not only that I am an unrepentant news junkie, it's that I believe that the ability to be heard, to engage in discourse and tell stories in a through and accurate way is the basis for civic engagement. As great as the stories are, its our ability to inform people, or to showcase their data, so that they can be informed enough to take action, should they care to.

At the end of the day, what I care most about with news is not only the information, but the way  new sites can engage the community, help make their voices heard, and build capacity for creating positive social change.

My ONA09 was all about connections--with the great students I've gotten to know, like @suzannayada and @annabloom, the recent grads including @pickoffwhite and @rhyencoombs, the news vets including Neil Chase, Rich Jaroslovsky , Jennifer Carroll and David Westphal, and the friends and colleagues including Ryan Sholin, Dan Pacheco, Leslie Walker, Amy Gahran, Lisa Stone, Robert Rosenthal, Mark Katches,Scott Rosenberg, David Cohn , Scott Lewis and Louis Freedberg.

And all the new people I connected with and got to know, including my Montclair Goddess, Debbie Galant--the excitement I feel about what so many of these folks are doing, and working on made me feel great to be a part of ONA, and to be at the conference.

Yep, I am re-engaged for sure.

Over 1,000 people were at the ONA09 keynote, probably the largest group I've presented before. Sitting on stage with Ev Williams of Twitter was very exciting, but my biggest focus was making sure I stayed calm, connected with him, and asked the questions I'd crowdsourced. I think the interview went really well; I am now a lot more interested in doing more video interviews.

My favorite moment: Ev talking about handling uncertainty and listening to himself, not others.

2nd favorite moment: Liz Lufkin telling me she thought this would inspire lots of people in the room to start their own ventures.

The past two weeks have been social media school at California Watch, the new investigative reporting./data visualization projects from Center for Investigative Reporting, where I work as their web strategist. The reporting teams runs the gamut, skills wise--from ace reporters who avoid social media, to social media experts with Twitter followings the size of a small New England town. Goal of trainings: teach everyone basic skills, explain how this fits into their work life, get everyone online and using the new tools.

Ready, set, go.

I haven't been writing here recently.  Twitter sucks up the micro-links I used to post, and FriendFeed and Facebook capture the numerous links I push around the interwebs. The blog feels best for longer and more thoughtful pieces, and while I typically have alot to say, I also have tons of deadlines and things to do.  Ergo, less writing.

I'm deep into working on Oakland Local, the Oakland news & community hub launching this fall, and have been working with the tech team, the editorial and writing team we're forming (ping me if you are an Oakland writer and would like to know more about writing for us, or if you are an Oakland blogger who should be on our blogroll).  It's very satisfying, and fascinating--I am talking with great people and learning so much about what Oakland Local could accomplish in the city--it feels very worthwhile.

But it's a start up. And I'm busy, So, I apologize for not posting here more--I will try to be more current and as we get closer to launch I will say more about Oakland Local.

Thx.

Just doing some site clean up and reposted links to these handout on the site:

• Social media for social change, We media paper--the brief on using social media for social change, commissioned for the We Media conference, Feb 2009,
  ifocos_wm_socialmedia.pdf
  

• Social Media for Social Causes, detailed case studies of Knight News Challenge, Women Who Tech Telesummit and Twestival for charity: water, done for We Media, March 2009
  309 full social media for social causes white paper.pdf
  
• Basic tools for online media, What you need to get started, Feb. 2009, basics for small online news sites
  Basic tools for online media.pdf
• The social media tool box: Essential tools, tips and framing strategy, white paper for Knight community foundation conference, Feb. 2009
  THE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL BOX.pdf
• Building your brand through social media, preso done for The Maynard Institute and redone many times since Feb. 2009
  March 2009 build yr brand thru social media.pdf
• Women and the dynamics of social capital, w/Deanna Zandt, done for WAM! as a social media workshop framer, March 2009
  socialcapital-socialmedia-090328095213-phpapp01.pdf
• Glossary for twitter terms: the basics, March 2009 for WAM!
  glossary for twitter terms.pdf
• Getting started with Twitter, why take the leap, Maynard workshop, March 2009 Getting started with Twitter--and why you should take the leap.pdf

I slept 9 hours last night, 10 hours the night before, At home, I sleep 6, maybe 7.  It's been raining here for 3-4 days, so we run out and do a walk or a hike in between downpours, sit on the porch and read books.  I have been writing the product specs for oakland local and for some maps we want to build.

Being in a new place ans have more unscheduled time feels like a gift. Stepping away from twitter and the web except for very sporadic bits of a day is totally a gift. My sprained thumb (!) is starting to feel a bit better.

I'm also starting to look ahead to later this summer, when  Oakland Local will kick in as  a major focus, along with some other smaller projects. We'll be doing some Public Media Collaborative training as well, and planning our own one day event of social media for social action.

But right now is that space between the worlds, the re charge and vacation space, and it is wonderful.

Of course I just love this service!

 Will three guys in suits in a plenary session get off news and get into nabes and nerds? This is clearly the academic session debating the issues; energy in room diminishing.

The academics are MUCH more conservative that Albert Ibarguen, which is delightful to watch, but pretty annoying, actually, Newspaper academics, please just get over yourselves.

@agahran:Why am I having Deja vu in this #kncmit plenary? Oh yeah: 1000th time I've heard it (content, views, format). Sigh... #fncm09 #knc09

This 52 hour stint in Atlanta, teaching social media and technology skills at a workshop for ethnic media leaders (mostly newspaper owners/publishers/top editors) has been transformative. What a great group!

The Knight Digital Media Center and the New American Media group convened this group of about 30 ethnic media executives--some from large and multi-publication companies, other small hyper-local news organizations-for a weekend of teaching around moving to digital. 
Arturo Duran, Michelle McClellan, Craig Matsuda, Dana Chinn and myself were the faculty; themes included the social media ecosystem, making money in the digital realm; managing change in your newsroom and organization, setting priorities for what to do online, and measurement and metrics (always critical).

As someone re-engaging with news folks  first via The Knight News Challenge and now both through teaching and workshops and starting Oakland Local, a hyperlocal news  community hub for Oakland, working with this group was fascinating. 

For one thing, many participants are small-business owners, for another, many have invested little to nothing in the web (at least 2 post PDFs of their print editions, no more). Additionally, while monetizing their efforts are critical (no surprise), jiust about everyone was eager to find the right strategies for their products--and so passionate about their media AND their communities. So, we had the feeling of really progress--I am sitting here listening to the teams present what they will do when they get home--what projects will they do to move their businesses online in a more meaningful way.

Some plans so far as these groups present plans based on what they learned:

• Add blogging and partner with a social media portal to serve the Korean community in their area
  
• Redesign their web site (ethnic site with only PDFs, very static) to reach Pinoys more effectively
  
• Add an online photo contest and build a presence on Facebook and Flickr to promote and engage community around a historic African-American hyperlocal news organization
  
• Start a social media presence to engage the community and grow audience/page views: YouTube Channel, Facebok and MySpace pages, Twitter stream--and build a feedback loop to be leaders in the Hispanic community in their state
  
• Training all staffers at Hispanic news site to do blogging and social media within their workflow and incentivizing them
• A community engagement project for a hyperlocal African-American community newspaper site  that will add an online community of citizen journalism through their web site (this is SO exciting). Planning to use NIng or KickApps.
  
• A Native American newspaper, hyperlocal, that will start creating original content online AND adding social networking on FB and Twitter.
• The midwestern African immigrant  focused-site is going to use mobile to target a broader base of African ethnic communities, and to recruit citizen journalists who will write for them.
• The hyperlocal Middle Eastern newspaper, with very little web presence, is jumping in to become THE online multimedia destination for Arab Americans in the US, with RS feeds, ads, and so on(moving from paper focus to the web!)
• The local historically Black paper that is going to do a jobs-focused site with user generated content and social media.
  

Susan sez: In such a brief time, I have come to feel so attached so some of these projects.These teams have the passion and the committment I so admire; by taking on web projects they're jumping into a new learning process that is going to change their businesses--and their lives. (yes, I am an idealist).

I just came back from 36 packed hours in Reno, NV at the University there. The J-school is hosting a sexi week Multimedia Editing Program run by The Maynard Institute,  Fourteen working journalists from around the country (yep, there are still people who work at newspapers) have converged on Reno to spend six weeks with Deborah Gump, Evelyn Hsu and a parade of guest teachers to sharp their skills in multimedia, Web 2.0 and online.

And of course, on day two, I was the batter on the plate, Miz Social Media whose job it was to teach the basics of blogging (the group are keeping blogs for six weeks chronicling what they learn), explaib the social media ecosystem, get them into Twitter (tho the Twitter expert is arriving tomorrow) and show them the glories of Facebook.

It was a blast.

Not only are these folks all smart, they're a different set of ducks. As in, working as a reporter in a smaller town or city has all sorts of sensitive issues around who you friend and what groups you join, problems Silicon Valley social media types don't need to ponder as deliberately.

And interestingly, more than a few of these students defined themselves as editors--media folks who job it was to assign, fix and smooth other people's outputs. Watching an editor struggle to post a blog post without reading and tweaking it five times is interesting, but it doesn't always make the editor happy.

What I loved most about teaching these folks was how quickly they jumped into putting it all out there. In less than 24 hours, they each started a blog, set up twitter and FB accounts, started posting to these accounts--and then started cross-posting--making that social media ecosystem I talked to them about start to be real.

I did a preso for them (see this one) and two handouts--one on twitter and one one tools--help yourself if you're interested.
twitter tips for journos.pdf
6 09 build yr brand thru social media.pdf
NEWS PROPERTIES AND THE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL BOX.pdf

Oh yea, and here's the landing page for their group blog if you'd like to follow along..but the real paydirt is just to find a couple you like and follow along.

"Dr. Tiller was the only person in his state that performed a variation of the procedure that saved my life. In fact, he was the only doctor in the entire middle of the country that did that procedure. His loss will cause more than just grief for his family and friends; his loss will quite possibly cause the death of women like me. It will certainly cause unnecessary pain and grief.

I'm trying hard not to go off into tangents, like the outrageous hypocrisy of MURDERING Dr. Tiller in the name of "saving lives." Or how enraging I find the argument that babies matter more than women, how I feel that at the heart of that argument is really the possibly male babies that matter. Or the fact that the crowing of joy on the internet (twitter in particular) at Dr. Tiller's death makes me sick to my stomach in a way that makes me want to shuck off being American."
--Cecily K, UpperCase Woman, writing an essay entitled RIP Dr. Tiller,

Susan sez: My dad, Dr. Arthur H Mernit,  was an OB-GYN, solo practice, who made house calls and practiced till late in his life because of his sense of committment and dedication to  his (mostly working class) patients. Dad prescribed birth control and did procedures for young women who had no money (like a couple of my friends) and was very committed to freedom of choice, within responsible limits, It is hard to read about Dr. Tiller and not think of my dad.

I had to ask myself what Dave McClure, who says he was raised by a single mom and who has funded more than one woman entrepreneur was thinking when he resorted to a big butt porn image as the only way to make his point about usability and how much people (and their faces, not their butts) matter on the net.

Dude, do you think the people you want to speak to are only capable of listening if you dish up porn with your message?

Or is it that you think (male) the young turks(aka 'jedi) you're speaking to are only going to listen if you add in some porn?

I can't believe that this tasteless judgement call will improve getting your point made for anyone reading this post, and I dearly hope that you're not going to turn into one of those bored 19 year olds and say illustrating your point with porn images of women is cool--cause you know what? It ain't.

Hope this is one of those never again, even late at night things, Dave. The message that it's okay to use cheap ass porn images of women to make your point just kills listening to the good stuff you are trying to say.

Update: Dave has two women he funded who say they don't mind this, s it's all cool. Thanks, Dave. See http://twitter.com/davemcclure/status/1997815324

Hey there, if you liked my little piece on twitter and oversharing in the NYTimes, you might also like this presentation Vivianne Tang and I did last year for a conference called Arse Electronika
on oversharing, twitter and blogging.  

I blog here about tech, product development, social media, working with non profits, women in tech, feminism and consulting.

I blog over at BlogHer about sex & relationships, a nice complement to my "work" life.

I have a grant to start a hyperlocal site, called Oakland Local, which will launch this fall, and I am a co founder of Public Media Collaborative, a group that is training small nonprofits and community organizations to use social media to plan campaigns, reach new audiences, organize events, and deepen engagement with members.

And I do consulting...for more on that look here and here.

Robert Niles, no search engine slouch himself, took great notes during the KMDC entrepreneurs' bootcamp session on SEO. Here's a summary of the tips, with more details right here. The tips in brief--

1) Use Google AdWords' keyword tool to find the most popular keywords related to your website and your beat.

2) Use key words and phrases in your HTML title tag

3) Write an engaging meta description tag for each page

4) Switch from AP style to "SEO style" on references in body copy

5) Use keywords in your URLs whenever possible

6) Never publish the same article under two or more URLs on your site

7) Create standing pages as linkbait for popular ongoing stories and issues

8) Never retire or change page URLs without providing a 301 redirect

9) Use bit.ly or other URL shorteners that use 301 redirects and provide click stats when posting to Twitter

10) Link to other great, original content and invite other publishers to link to yours

For WordPress users, Sullivan recommended the All in One SEO Pack as an effective plug-in that can address several of these points on their WordPress sites.

Think--Curation by the crowd,in the cloud,  in almost real time.

John Borthwicks's got a typically articulate post about the new overlying stream of news/info/actions that has become the first stop and information filter for so many (think twitter, FB news feed).

The big point here is that our tools let us skim interactions off the surface of content (NY Times, blogs) and transaction sites(twitter, digg), and follow the posts/links of those filters.

 Curation by the crowd,in the cloud,  in almost real time is another way to think of this shift--The other key think is that it's all about mobile.

Ye[, the stream Ishorted from life stream) will drive mobile, along w/gaming.

Back in January 2009, I posted the  2009 Ultra Mega conference list of about 80 upcoming conferences that interested me in the social media, tech. feminism and community areas.
That list went through about April 09.

I've just pulled together another list, which is Part 2 of the 2009 Ultra Mega conference list. This time, it's a bit broader (online news and sustainability are bigger themes), and there's a PDF file at the end that you can download.

Here's the list.  Conferences I am attending are in bold.
________________________________________________________________

• May 18, San Francisco Music Tech Summit, San Francisco, CA
• May 18-19, Where 2.0, San Jose, CA
• May 18-20, Internet Identity Workshop, Mountain View, CA
• May 22,  WhereCamp, Palo Alto, CA
• May 26, 27: Netsquared conference, San Jose, CA
• May 30, Maker Faire, San Mateo, CA
• May 30, Word Camp SF,  San Francisco, CA
• May 31, Twitrcon,  San Francisco, CA

• June 1,  National Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup, San Francisco, CA
• June 1-2, Conversational Marketing, FM Media, New York, NY
•  June 4-5, New American Media, Atlanta, GA
• June 6-7,: Atlanta, GA, USC KDMC program on online leadership and strategy for ethnic news
• June 3-4,  Multimedia Editing Program, Maynard Institute workshop, Reno, NV
• June 9-11, Found: Search Acquisition & Architecture Conference, San Francisco, CA
• June 10, Online Community Unconference, Mountain View, CA
•  June 15, Twitter Boot Camp, New York, NY
• June 17-19, Knight News Challenge/Knight Future of Civic Media conference, Boston, MA
• June 20, Privacy Camp, Washington, DC
• June 23, Social Gaming Summit, San Francisco, CA
• June 25, Structure 09 by GigaOM, San Francisco, CA
• June 29-30,  Personal democracy forum, New York, NY
  
  
• July 13-18, Localize This! Action Camp, Vashon Island, WA
• July 21-22, Open Government & Innovations Conference (OGI). swashington, DC
•  July 24-26, BlogHer, Chicago, IL
  
• Early August, 2009, Public Media Collaborative,  Social Media for Social Action, Oakland, CA

• August 10-14, Search Engine Strategies, San Jose, CA
• August 13-16, Netroots Nation, Pittsburgh, PA
•  August 15-16, California Coop Conference, San Francisco, CA
• August 20-22, Gnomedex 9.0, Seattle, WA

• Sept 9-10, Gov 2.0 Summit, Washington, DC
• Sep 14 - 15 , 2009 TECH CRUNCH 50. San Francisco, CA
• Sept 25-26, EngageHer, Multicultural Women's Leadership Conference , New York, NY
• Sept 25,  BlogHer Food, San Francisco, CA
• Sept 30-Oct 3,Grace Hopper Celebration, Tuson, CA

• October 3-4, Online News Association, San Francisco, CA

I will publish an updated Fall and winter list in September 09; meanwhile here's the PDF of this post.5 16 megaconference list 2.pdf

A couple of folks have asked for copies of my white papers and presos on using social media, twitter, etc and have had trouble with the links on the blog, I will comb back over them, but meanwhile, here's a list o links that work:

• Big white paper with lots of case studies and how tos: Social Media for Social Causes 309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf
• There's a brief of the paper here, from the WeMedia conference
• Twitter glossary for newbies-glossary for twitter terms.pdf
• Building your brand with social media: build yr brand thru social media.pdf

Would you like to be better at using social media? Have a sense of how Twitter, Facebook, flickr, YouTube and other tools could help you promote or organize events for a business, project or caouse? Understand how search engine technologies have made you visible on the Net, whether you've crafted your identity or not, and whether you should do anything about that.?

Those were the topics we discussed when Stefanie Pomponia Butler, Trishs Okubo and Sherrie Wu joined me to co-lead a series of workshops on using social meda at the first EngageHer conference at UC Berkeley (there is going to be another one in the fall in NYC).

We had wonderful participants--very diverse in age, ethnicity and experience level--but united in their interest and engagement with social media tools and their desire to be expert users. Much of what we covered was similar to what Deanna Zandt and I taught at WAM, and what we taught with the Public Media Collaborative at #jexpo, and it was a pleasure to share knowledge and pass it on.

(side note: when the economy tanked and I worried that maybe we were going into a deep recession, I imagined myself making marmalade and bread and trading them for services with others if it came to that; I now think what I'd be trading are social media skills, since the number of people who actually seem to be able and interested in teaching others to use social media in a focused and measurable way seems alot smaller than I assumed (though I know there are lots of consultants working with big companies in  this area.)

(side note 2: I started my working life as a writer, teaching writing to people around NYC, and working in many diverse communities, including the South Bronx, Chinatown, Flatbush and Harlem. I learned some very important lessons doing this work; the most valuable that if your workshop leaders or team  don't reflect the community you want to serve, you're not truly respecting the people you hope to work with   I so valued the change to work with such a range of women at EngageHer; it was an energizing group) and appreciated how we reflected our participants..

Completely thrilled and exhilirated by the energy and people of the IndyMedia Journalism expo in SF yesterday and the reaction to the first set of workshops in using social media that the Public Media Collaborative taught.

@allaboutgeorge captured much in his flickr stream; some positive blog responses, notes from presenters Ytalenna Lopez and Amy Gahran--

Here's the thing people: each session had 30-50 people attending. They were smart, engaged and eager to learn--and there just hasn't been anywhere for them to go. So, I learned PMC09 can indeed fill a gap...and have fun while doing it.

The 2nd Annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit is just one week away. Again, this year there is  have a great line up so don't wait to sign up.
When: May 12, 2009. Panels run from 11AM EDT to 6PM EDT.
Where: Everywhere via phone and web
Fee: $10

Check out these awesome panels and sign up today. When you sign up for one panel, feel free to register for a couple more complementary - that's right it's on us.

•    Social Media ROI
•    Women and Open Source
•    Tools Galore in Online Communications
•    Transparency and Government 2.0
•    Video Activism
•    Launching Your Own Startup
•    Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling
•    Tech Marketing in a Recession
•    Social Networks and Diversity Barriers
•    Innovation and Tech Career Reinvention
•    What Shirky Didn't Tell Us
•    Feminine Mystique

Here are a few of the rockin' women who will be joining us this year:  Lisa Stone of BlogHer, Allison Fine of Personal Democracy Forum, Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, Charelene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rebecca Moore of Google Earth Outreach and so much more.

Don't miss this year's telesummitt. It's a wonderful opportunity for our community to share our collective wisdom with inspiring stories and practical tools that help women professionally and personally and of course, change the world.

Click here view the full panel descriptions and register now!

And, like last year we're going to celebrate with a PARTY afterwards. Come out and hang out with Women Who Tech.  You'll find us in Washington, DC, NYC, San Francisco, Atlanta, and London so save the date and come get your tech on with us. More details soon.

Questions, comments? Email  Allyson@womenwhotech.com. You can also reach me on twitter @womenwhotech or our Facebook group.

Susan sez: I am part of this cool event, speaking about Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling with Charlene, Connie Reece and Lynne Johnson.

The blurb: Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling - 12PM EDT
Women in tech and social media experts identify strategies for breaking through the digital ceiling. The panel will discuss topics such as getting heard by upper management, how to effectively advocate for your work and expertise as well as how to break through the barriers of being too young or too old in the tech sector. Panelists: Lynne D. Johnson, Fast Company, Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell and Founder of Altimeter, Susan Mernit, Consultant, Connie Reece, Every Dot Connects and Social Media Club. Moderator: Allyson Kapin, Rad Campaign and Women Who Tech
Register Here!

The Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California, University of San Francisco and Independent Arts & Media present ...

*JOURNALISM INNOVATIONS II: NEW WORK & IDEAS FOR MAKING THE NEWS*
Twitter hashtag: #jexpo

May 1, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. * McLaren Hall, University of San Francisco
Sliding-Scale Donation * No One Turned Away * Info (415) 738-4975
Directions to USF: http://tinyurl.com/cg3r2p

=FULLY UPDATED! Programming Quick Links:

- Full event schedule & locations:
http://tinyurl.com/ctt7gu

- Full exhibitor list:
http://tinyurl.com/c866xu

- Speaker bios:
http://tinyurl.com/czm4vf

=PRE-REGISTER through 12pm Thursday to guarantee entry; walk-ups attendees are welcome, though access to some panels may be limited.

- Keynotes & Panels registration:
http://journ-innovations.eventbrite.com/

- Digital Divide & Communication Rights: Training Workshop
http://digital-divide-training.eventbrite.com/

- Social Media Training Lab (English & Spanish)
Produced by the Public Media Collaborative
http://socialmedia-journalism.eventbrite.com/

- Speed Career Coaching: All 50 sessions are booked. However,
some cancellations are inevitable; check-in at the main
entry station to sign up for the waiting list.

=SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
.... See online for full panel descriptions: http://tinyurl.com/ctt7gu
.... Locations: McClaren Hall, UC (University Center), Cowell (CO)

8:00-9am McLaren Hall Lobby
EXHIBITOR LOAD-IN + BAGEL BREAKFAST

9:00-9:15am: McLaren 252
OPENING REMARKS
* Father Steven Privett, President, University of San Francisco
* Ricardo Sandoval, President, Society of Professional Journalists-Northern California
* Clare Morales Roberts, Executive Director, Independent Arts & Media

9:15-10:30am: McLaren 252
MORNING KEYNOTE: "OTHER FUTURES FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE"
Must the San Francisco Chronicle disappear into a vortex of debt and mismanagement, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News? Or are there other, happier futures for the Bay Area's leading newsprint daily? Bay Area leaders in finance, philanthropy, and commercial and nonprofit media address the question.
* Warren Hellman, Hellman & Friedman
* Carl Hall, Media Worker's Guild
* Jon Funabiki, former media-program officer, Ford Foundation; Director, Center for Renaissance Journalism, San Francisco State University
* Holly Kernan, KALW-FM
* Robert Rosenthal, Center for Investigative Reporting
* Moderator: Ricardo Sandoval, Sacramento Bee/SPJ-NorCal

10:45am-12:00pm: McLaren 252
"NEW BUSINESS MODELS: CROWDFUNDING, ADVERTISING, FISCAL SPONSORSHIP & L3C"
* Bill Densmore, Reynolds Fellow, University of Missouri
* David Cohn, Spot.Us
* Hal Plotkin, ReelChanges.org
* Barry Parr, MediaSavvy.com
* Yesenia Sanchez, Fiscal Sponsorship Consultant
* Cynthia Typaldos, Kachingle.com
* Moderator: Tom Murphy, RedwoodAge.com

10:45am-12:00pm: UC 421
"JOURNALISM EDUCATION & CAMPUS NEWSROOMS"
* Chris O'Brien, The Next Newsroom
* Richard Kochi Hernandez, Visiting Fellow, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
* Rick Rodriguez, Southwest Borderlands Journalism Institute at Arizona State University
* Cristina Azocar, Director, Center for the Integration & Improvement of Journalism
* Geneva Overholser, Director, Journalism Program, Annenberg School of Communications
* Moderator: Teresa Moore, journalism professor, University of San Francisco

10:45am-12:00pm: UC 419
"NEW LABOR REPORTING"
* Steve Zeltzer, Laborfest, Labor Video
* Steve Stallone, President, International Labor Communications Association
* Dick Meister, Independent journalist, former labor reporter, San Francisco Chronicle
* Collette Washington, New Media Director, California Nurses Association
* Moderator: Susan Ferriss, senior writer, Sacramento Bee; co-author, "The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement,"

10:45-12:00pm: CO 323 + CO 326
SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING, ENGLISH & SPANISH TRACKS
Presented by the Public Media Collaborative. Preregister through Thursday, April 30; walk-up attendees welcome thereafter.

NOON: LUNCH, UC CAFETERIA

12:30-12:55pm: McLaren 252
"DIGITAL JOURNALISM REVIEW: STUDENTS UPEND EXPECTATIONS"
Students from Santa Clara University's Digital Journalism Review blog provide insight into digital media and young people, and wind up challenging the status quo and expectations of the established mainstream press.

1:00-2:15 pm: McLaren 252
AFTERNOON KEYNOTE: "WHAT WE WERE & WHAT WE MUST BECOME"
Newspaper veterans, media futurists and nonprofit innovators look back at the business that once was, and the many changes, challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
* Gilbert Bailon, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Al Dia, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
* Sandy Close, New America Media
* Chris Peck, Memphis Commercial Appeal, ASNE
* Lam Oi Wan, globalvoicesonline.org, Hong Kong In-Media
* Jessica Clark, Center for Social Media, American University
* Moderator: Bill Densmore, Reynolds Journalism Fellow

1:00-2:15pm: CO 326
SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING, SPANISH TRACK
Presented by the Public Media Collaborative. Preregister through Thursday, April 30; walk-up attendees welcome thereafter.

1:00-5:15pm: CO 322
SPEED CAREER COACHING
All 50 sessions are booked. However, some cancellations are inevitable; check-in at the main entry station to sign up for the waiting list.

2:30-5:15pm: CO 323
SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING, ENGLISH TRACK
Presented by the Public Media Collaborative. Preregister through Thursday, April 30; walk-up attendees welcome thereafter.

2:30-3:45pm: McLaren 252
"NEW MEDIA VENTURES IN HEALTH JOURNALISM: IS PHILANTHROPY-FUNDED JOURNALISM THE NEXT RESCUE PLAN?"
* Matt James, Senior Vice President Media and Publication, Kaiser Family Foundation
* Michelle Levander, Director, California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at USC Annenberg School of Journalism, Editor, ReportingonHealth.org
* Spencer Sherman, Director of Publishing and Communications, California Health Care Foundation.
* Moderator: Laurie Udesky

2:30-3:45pm: UC 421
"NEIGHBORHOODS & COMMUNITIES: CONNECTING THE DOTS"
* Amra Tareen, co-founder, Allvoices.com
* Tom Negrete, Managing Editor, Sacramento Bee
* Eve Batey, SFAppeal.com
* Becky O'Mally, Berkeley Daily Planet
* Barry Parr, Coastsider.com
* Moderator: Susan Mernit, Public Media Collaborative, former program manager, Knight Foundation 21st Century News Challenge

2:30-3:45pm: UC 419
"BROADCAST: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM"
* Ed Cavagnaro, Director of News & Programming, KCBS News Radio
* Franc Contreras, Al Jazeera, former NPR broadcaster
* Ben Temchine, Your Call Radio/KALW-FM
* Bruce Koon, News Director, KQED-FM
* TBA
* Moderator: Dina Ibrahim, professor of journalism, San Francisco State University

2:30-3:45pm: CO 326
"THE DIGITAL DIVIDE & COMMUNICATION RIGHTS: TRAINING & ORGANIZING STRATEGIES"
Learn strategies for media literacy, technology and communications-training for communities that lack access to established or emerging media.
* Pre-register for this event!
* Eloise S. Lee, Program Director, Media Alliance
* Kami Griffiths, Community Technology Network-Bay Area
* Renee Yang-Geesler, Co-Director of the First Voice Media Action Program
* Luz Ruiz, co-founder of COMPPA, Coalition of Popular Communicators for Autonomy
* Moderator: Dorothy Kidd, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco

4-5:15pm: UC 421
"ETHNIC NEWS MEDIA: NEW VOICES & AN EMERGING MAINSTREAM"
* Eleanor Boswell-Raine, The Oakland Globe
* Franc Contreras, Al Jazeera
* Gilbert Bailon, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Al Dia, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
* Dawn Garcia, Deputy Director of the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists at Stanford University
* TBA
* TBA

4:00-5:15pm: CO 326
SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING, SPANISH TRACK
Presented by the Public Media Collaborative. Preregister through Thursday, April 30; walk-up attendees welcome thereafter.

4-5:15pm: McLaren 252
"JOURNALISM CAREERS: MAKING YOUR OWN FUTURE"
Career management experts and news people with experience on both sides of the hiring line share survival and success strategies for navigating an industry that's been swept by a sea change.
* Tom Ballantyne, Career Management, Coaching and Recruitment Consultant
* Adrianne Cabanatuan, HR Manager, Northern California Public Broadcasting
* Bob Butler, Reporter for the Chauncey Bailey Project and KCBS Radio
* L.A. Chung, Writer, Editor, Media Consultant
* Moderator: Leslie Guevarra

4-5:15pm: UC 419
"STUDENT MEDIA: LEADERSHIP & OPPORTUNITY"
The Foghorn and USFtv are two student-run media outlets and both have recently migrated to the web. Staff from the 106 year-old Foghorn and the 3 year-old USFtv will discuss why this web presence is important in creating community at USF, and what changes have been made to their respective outlets.
* The Foghorn: Laura Plantholt, Nicholas Mukhar, Stephanie Luu, Michael Villasenor
* USFtv: Kate Elston, Alex Platt, Ashton Bothman, Meghan Raab, Chris Begley

=EXHIBITORS
.... See full exhibitor descriptions and links: http://tinyurl.com/c866xu

* The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships at USC Annenberg School for Communication: "The USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships offer journalists a chance to step away from the newsroom to hone health reporting skills."

* The Center for the Integration & Improvement of Journalism: "Founded at San Francisco State University in 1990 the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism believes that accurate and responsible journalism reflects the changing demographics of the society it serves."

* Daemonized Networking Services: "Daemonized Networking Services builds Internet-ready Web servers. We're creating a FREE Web server, on a CDROM ... built to industry standards ... protected by an integral firewall, incorporating the latest software, built entirely from license-free sources. All you need is a computer and a network connection, and you're online - just add content."

* The Economic Edge on Crosscurrents Radio: "'The Economic Edge: Documenting the Downturn' is a series of in-depth reports on KALW-FM's Crosscurrents Radio news program, featuring work by our professional journalists and contributions from the community at large"

* Freelancer's Unit, California Media Worker's Guild: "The new freelance unit of California Media Workers Guild, which represents newspaper workers and other journalists from throughout Northern California, is a volunteer-based, member-run organization that aims to support independent and freelance journalists through a variety of services and programs, including contract advice, credentials, job-search assistance and professional training. We're also exploring group benefits bids."

* Independent Arts & Media: "Indy Arts is a nine-year-old 501(c)(3) service group that expands civic dialogue by increasing access to independent voices. Indy Arts provides fiscal sponsorship, services and support to independent, commercial-free media and culture producers, and works to expand the idea and activities of public media to include the cultural, media and democratic commons."

* Media Alliance: "Media Alliance is a 32 year-old media resource and advocacy center for media workers, non-profit organizations, and social justice activists. Our mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility."

* MyTwoCensus.com provides watchdog reporting and blogging on the 2010 U.S. Census, a $13 billion project with funds that can be spent without caution. "We want you to be counted as accurately as is humanly possible, so you can be fairly represented by your government for the next ten years, and so billions of your tax dollars will be spent wisely."

* National Radio Project/Making Contact: "National Radio Project produces Making Contact, an award-winning, 29-minute weekly public affairs program heard on over 200 radio stations in the US and Canada. Showcasing voices rarely heard in media, Making Contact focuses on the human realities of politics, the connections between local and global events, while highlighting solutions."

* Newsdesk.org: "Newsdesk.org is a commercial-free, nonpoliticized news project that empowers journalists and the communities they serve. Newsdesk.org was a Changemakers/WeMedia finalist in Miami in February 2009, advancing a proposal to establish a national network of independent but affiliated 'local.newsdesk.org' bureaus that can produce nonpartisan, commercial-free journalism and civic dialogue in underserved communities."

* SF Engage: "SF Engage is a community outreach program sponsored by The Public Press, a startup, nonprofit news organization based in San Francisco. Using technology and face-to-face journalism outreach, SF Engage supports The Public Press' efforts to report on undercovered issues and underserved communities in San Francisco."

* The San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association: "With nearly 300,000 copies hitting the streets every month, the San Francisco Neighborhood Newspaper Association's 16 newspapers reach more city residents than any other print publication."

* The San Francisco Public Press: "The Public Press is an emerging concept for a noncommercial daily Web/print/broadcast collaborative news service. The idea is to put journalism first -- operating as a nonprofit organization that prioritizes public service over commerce. One idea is to eliminate advertising altogether, creating a robustly independent specialized vehicle for serious news."

* San Francisco School Volunteers: "San Francisco School Volunteers recruits, trains and supports a community of volunteers who inspire public school students to achieve their full potential. Journalist volunteers play a major role in developing students' interest in reading and writing. One journalist started a school paper with a 2nd grade class. There are opportunities at all grade levels."

So, I've spent alot of the last two months doing workshops that teach non-profit staffers, in transition journalists and media activists how to use social media. 

Building your brand with social media, getting started with twitter, planning a social media strategy for a program and project, measuring success--I've been teaching them all.

And you know what I learned? People need this.  People need high-quality, affordable training where they feel safe asking what they are afraid are stupid questions. They need knowledgeable people to talk with who can translate the jargon and explain outcomes to shoot for.

And you know what else I learned? For all the way we techies talk about Web 2.0, and all the blogs, and the tweets and the books and so on--many, many people have NO WAY to learn these things, no access to knowledgeable people they feel comfortable asking.

I've seen this with EngageHer, WAM, my Maynard trainings and so on.  And it's a big reason I am so thrilled that folks from the Public Media Collaborative are spending this Friday, May 1st. volunteering to do workshops in social media at Journalism Innovations II: New Work & Ideas for Making the News.

Folks from the PMC--along with our compadres from Nuestra Voz--are going to teach free sessions in social media--signups are here--walk ins welcomed IF there is room.

Only here's the deal--we already have 100 people registered for the social media workshops!!
(Like, is that wow or what).  We're going to talk 25 more--and then hopefully have some room for walk ins.

Hey everyone--
Public Media Collaborative is doing its first teaching event May 1st, We already have over 60 people registered to participate, and about 15 people who will be teaching and/or volunteering to man the tables. (And we'll have a logo! And a flier!)

You can help by spreading the word about this event to everyone you know who might be interested and encouraging them to take part.

Blog. Twitter. Agitate. You know.

We also have a team of people who are starting to plan a mid-July social media for social action day of training--if you'd like to be a part of that project, check into the wiki and sign up that that here:

Meanwhile, please help spread the word on this:

Public Media Collaborative: Social Media for Social Action--free, hands on workshops in using social media happening all day long--in English and Spanish track

s--at the Journalism Innovations conference on May 1st at McLaren Hall, University of San Francisco.
REGISTER FOR FREE SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING LAB: by the Public Media Collective. English & Spanish tracks, pre-registration required
http://socialmedia-journalism.eventbrite.com/

*JOURNALISM INNOVATIONS II: NEW WORK & IDEAS FOR MAKING THE NEWS*
http://artsandmedia.net/expo/journalism/
May 1, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. * McLaren Hall, University of San Francisco
Directions to USF: http://tinyurl.com/cg3r2p
Sliding-Scale Donation * No One Turned Away.
Contact: (415) 738-4975

REGISTER  FOR ENTRY TO JOURNALISM, NEWS INNOVATIONS ON MAY 1ST
All are welcome, but walk-up attendance not guaranteed:
http://journ-innovations.eventbrite.com/
 
REGISTER FOR FREE SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING LAB: by the Public Media Collective. English & Spanish tracks, pre-registration required
http://socialmedia-journalism.eventbrite.com/

WHAT IT IS
Public Media Collaborative will offer a series of FREE workshops on using social media for social action, given by trained, expert practitioners in social media marketing, web 2.0 technologies and social change management online
.  
All those with basic computer skills and an affiliation with mission-driven organizations are welcomed to attend; if you have a laptop and wish to bring it, super--no additional computers will be provided.

We will offer the following hands-on sessions throughout the day:

Social Media 101: Getting started with Facebook, and all the other SN tools
Twitter and social networking. Is social media something you just don't get--but think you should? This is the workshop for people who need an easy and safe starting place to ask questions and understand WHY and WHAT the fuss is about.  Beginner level
.
Building your brand with social media
Why it is important to establish a social media identity--and how do you do that without spending hours a day? This hands-on, interactive workshop gives you a chance to hear about strategies that work and to plan your own on--and get started with it. Intermediate to advanced
.
Twitter: A User's Guide for individuals, non-profits, bloggers & writers
Twitter usage doubled in March 2009--studies say there are now 14 million people on the popular micro-blogging site. Whether you're already on, or thinking about it, come to this hands-on workshop on getting the most out of using twitter.  All levels welcomed
.
WITH NUEVA VOZ, TRACKS IN SPANISH

Twitteando Para Cambio y Periodismo
Esta revolucion no va ser en Ingles
Un blog que hasta tu abuelita pueder escribir

Let's pretend that Twitter is the over the fence *telephone* of a neighborhood where all celebrites live, 

Reality Star @kimkardashian  (424, 000 + followers) is friends with @AngieMarintez (32,000 followers) and she and @deniserichards (a measly 10,000 followers) plan  where to go together to get their nails done without bumping into @heidimontag (60,701 followers) and @serenajwilliamsI10,000 followers.

WTF?

Welcome to a twittersphere that's really the bizarro world, where starlets tweet to one another and the rest of these fame whores get to entertain our selves by watching.

NOT.  (Makes me vastly prefer to godlike genialiity of the 1MM followers @aplusk, aka Ashton Kutcher, whose handlers clearly feed him tweets from the common folk to comment on.)

Just a year ago, I was on a blogging trip in Israel with an amazing bunch of folks--Craig Newmark, Robert Scoble, Sarah Lacy, Cathy Brooks, JD Lasica, Renee Blodgett, Jeff Saperstein, Brad Redderson (I hope I am not leaving anyone out).  Our handler on  this travelling geeks roadshop was the amazing Ish Khaldi, the first Bedouin diplomat in Israel.

Not only is Ish an amazingly disciplined and passionate person with the drive of a Navy Seal, he's a good hearted guy who soaked up all our talk about blogging, social network, twitter, tech and so on.

Now, he's leaving the area, because he's been appointed as Middle East advisor for israeli 

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.  If you're in the diplomatic service, that's a great excuse to leave town!

Best of luck, Ish. I bet you are the only Middle Eastern Policy Advisor who has in-depth, hands on knowledge of social networking tools.

 

The past 10 days have been so full--with working on client projects, getting involved with the Public Media Collaborative meeting on April 15th, and prepping to teach workshops on April 24/25 at EngageHer  in Berkeley and at Journalism Innovations II  on May 1st in San Francisco--I don't feel like I've had the time to blog I might like.

I know I am busy when I am so busy that this reality doesn't even bother me that much, I feel so pressed.

(And my twitter usage has fallen way off as well...no tweeting while writing spes for moi.)

I will try to do better. Like now.

Are you interested in using your tech, social media, and/or journalism/communications skills to create positive social change? Would you like to be involved with an interesting and diverse group of people in the Bay area, all committed to sharing knowledge and making good things happen?

The Public Media Collaborative is a new group started by some local bloggers, journalists, encironmental justice activists, techies, community organizers, video bloggers and other folks. We meet monthly to share information about projects, hear guest speakers. and plan training and knowledge sharing programs.

Our Facebook group is at http://snurl.com/fx4nx, and our wiki is at http://snurl.com/fx4pi.
If you're interested, check them out and get involved.

Right now, we're organizing and seeing people to help teach and organize for the following events:
April 25/26: Engageher.org women's leadership event in Berkeley; need people to work with us on teaching building a brand with social media, using twitter, planning a social media strategy and getting started with Facebook

May 1, Journalism Innovations event, McLaren Hall, University of San Francisco: PMC will be offering a set of workshops and free consultations on using social media, with a focus on serving non-profits and community organizations. Topics for the session will include Planning a social media strategy, using twitter, and organizing online with social media tools.
(Sign uo to volunteer here http://snurl.com/fx57j

We will also be planning a mid-July day of training focused on serving small non-profits, community organizations, community activists. Join our committees to help plan this event, create something we can replicate. Click here to go there. http://snurl.com/fx5g5

The next PMC meeting is at Tech Soup Global on April 15th at 7 PM. Light refreshments will be served, You can RSVP at Upcoming (http://snurl.com/frnp8) or Facebook (http://snurl.com/fx5m5).

(TSG Global is at 525 Brannan Street, SF, 3rd floor.)
.

So the British version of American Idol brought on a 48 year old villagw woman whose plain looks, unplucked eyebrows, bushy grey hair and stocky build suggested skin peels, eye-brow waxing, hair dye, Spaanx and so on were unknown (or uncared for) in her world.  This middle-aged wild english rose triggered eyerolling and snickers from the (mostly younger) crowd, and restrained hilarity from the judges till she began to sing--in a voice that was amazing, a song so well chosen it brought tears to my eyes.

As the middle-aged know--and wish to remind the young, who don't often want to listen--everyone, at every age, has dreams.

Susan Boyle is living hers--to sing in front of a large audience--and it is smashing.

Track the twitterstream here-it's busy and interesting

Oh, and did I mention the video has done almost 2MM page views in 24 hours?.

(Via Kwan)

Just read this wonderful novel-The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. wow.

In our WAM workshop on social capital and the social media ecosystem, I talked a lot about social capital and the gift economy we're moving into--the way that people derive value from the ideas, links, and support they contribute to others.

An effect of this, which I have become very aware of in my own life, is what I call CRM (customer relationship management) for social networks, or, abbreviated, reputation grooming.

To put it briefly, I probably spent 40 minutes a day, 5 days a week, scrolling through twitter, twitter search, facebook, friendfeed  and other more random services checking what my friends and community are saying, if there are retweets of my tweets, comments on posts, or message to me I need to reply to.
 
 I think of this work not as creative thought that helps move my ideas forward, but as maintenance.  It's pruning the garden, not putting the plants in.

How much time do you spend in this activity and how do you think about it? Would love to hear what others think.

(Note: This post is based on a workshop on twitter presented at Women! Action! Media!, Boston 2009  by myself and Deanna Zandt and a post on Deanna's blog called A non-fanatical beginner's guide to Twitter)

So, what are the twitter terms you need to know?

• Following. These are the people whose tweets you've selected to read; their tweets appear in your "feed" or "stream."
• Follower. This is someone who is reading your tweets.
• The @ symbol. Put this before any other Twitterer's username to refer to them. Why? It creates a link to their profile automatically, which is handy for your followers to track conversations or look at people you're referring to.
• Reply: If you put the twitter name in front of your message, the person you address will see your tweet whether they follow you or not. So will everyone else following your stream. (Ex: @PresidentObama, make sure you eat those veggies from the White House garden, now.)
• @replies will usually also show up the rely section of someone's twitter account. This has to be turned on in the settings, but most people select it.
• Retweet: Rt, RT or rtwt. These stand for "retweet." If you read someone else's tweet and you want to share it, put this before copying and pasting the whole thing, including the original tweeter's username into your tweet.
•  Here's an example, where Deanna retweeted something that Nancy Scola posted: "rt @nancyscola: isn't there something uniquely DC about 1/5 of Politico's "top 10" DC Twitterers not actually tweeting? http://ow.ly/qmy"
• (Via): Instead of using retweet, you can use "via @username" to attribute something that you saw with another user. This is good when you are not directly quoting word for word, but paraphrasing or passing a link along.
• Hashtag: The # symbol. Words that follow # in Twitter are called "hash tags." It's a way of assigning a keyword to a tweet so that so that others can follow the topic.
• For example: When folks were attending the WeMedia conference in February 2009, they would tweet information about the conference and put #wemedia somewhere in the tweet. That way, everyone else interested in news from the conference could easily find and track them via twitter search.  
• DM or Direct messaging. This is a way of sending a message to someone so that only they can see it- like sending a txt message. The person has to be following you in order to receive messages from you, though! (No DMing Jane Fonda or Henry Rollins unless they're following you, ya hear?)
• To do this, you can either go to the person's twitter page (aka, their profile page), and click on the "message" link in the left sidebar. Or, if you're using another device or application besides the Twitter website, you can type the letter d, the person's username, and then your message. I.e., "d randomdeanna let's go to happy hour at abilene later"
• The Find people tab: The Find People tab on twitter allows you to search for people you know, and to import your email contacts from many web based services and  see who you know and then follow them.

This glossary is also available as a downloadable, free white paper right here.
glossary for twitter terms.pdf
 

Deanna Zandt and I did a workshop at WAM! on using twitter and we shared a lot of tips that I realized were worth capturing both for this blog and as a handout for people who'd like one. So, here's a recount of what we covered, tools we talked about and links to note.

Twitter newbie set up tips
Why are you using twitter? And for what purpose? If you're tweeting to share knowledge, build community or have a virtual water cooler, set up an account for yourself. Use your real name, or a virtual name, whatever works.

Tips on setting up your profile
On your profile, make sure you add a web link. People are going to go there and check you out. I've seen people point to a LinkedIn profile or a Facebook page in lieu of anything else, but, clearly, pointing to a blog, a tumblr, or a web site is better--after all, the idea is to provide more data about yourself for people who might want to follow your twitter stream.

Also make good use of those 140 characters you get to put in your bio.  Because twitter is searchable, people will look for specific terms that match their interests. My current twitter bio says:" blogger, urban homesteader aspirant, product developer, consultant & geek."  
Deanna Zandt's bio says: "Je suis techgrrl extraordinaire, occasionally silly & surly, etc. I love pirates. And lamp."

Point here is to remember that people are going to search on terms that interest them on twitter search (search.twitter.com) and phrases in your bio are going to pop up. So add phrases to your bio that reflect your interests--and feel free to change them as often as you want.

Adding a picture
You MUST add a picture to your twitter profile. No picture=Dork=Not real--and not in a good way. Find a picture. And add it. Pronto.

Setting up a Twitter account for your organization or project
You can have multiple twitter accounts, for yourself, for different personas, or different projects. Each one can have a unique user name and/or a unique (or the same password). It's better to have a unique user name for an organization or project than to use your personal twitter account; that way your own digital identity stands independently--and persistently--from your current work and focus.

Protected and open updates
Everything you post to your twitter stream is public and index able unless you lock your tweets and make them private. This means that someone who is not following you (i.e. importing your tweets into the twitter stream of their twitter account for a specific user name where they appear as you post them) can still see your tweets by searching search.twitter.com on your user name, or typing your username into the twitter.com URL (ex:  twitter.com/susanmernit). In other words, twitter is not private unless you lock your updates--On the other hand, it's very hard to participate in the conversation if you lock your tweets.

Following people-and being followed back
The way you build community on twitter is to follow people and have them follow you, then have a conversation via the tool. Here are some ways to find people to follow:

The Find people tab
The Find People tab on twitter allows you to search for people you know, and to import your email contacts from many web based services and  see who you know and then follow them. However, you don't need to follow everyone you have ever exchanged email with; be more selective.

Searching on an interest or keyword
Another way to find people to follow is to search on keywords that interest you. Whether you are searching for "board member" or "reproductive justice" or "social media" or "micro-donations" you will get results, tweet by tweet. Check out the links to those posters; you will find people who share your interests and concerns; follow the ones that interest you.

Some, but not all, will then follow you back.
Search Google for the name of someone you're interested in and see if they have a twitter account.

If you search for "Susan Mernit" + twitter, my twitter account comes up. You can click to that link on twitter, get my user name, and follow me. Delightfully, this system works as well for people who have accounts using other names (like randomdeanna) as for "real" names. (Try searching for Deanna Zandt + twitter and see what comes up, just for proof it works.)

Click on a name in a tweet or retreet
Serendipity and exploration are tools to use. As you see references to other twitters in your stream that seem relevant, check them out. There is no stigma to following someone you do not know, quite the contrary.

Getting started and jumping in
Deanna has a great post about getting going with twitter right here.
Some of the highlights of her post about what to say (and do read the whole thing):

Here are some methodologies you can try out:

• Pure professional. You're an expert in your field and you want to share this with the world. Pick a couple of "beats" and focus your twittering on those beats. Find other folks tweeting about these topics and have conversations with them.
• Pure personal. Your cat is hilarious, you're thinking about moving to Wisconsin, you're on your way to Miami for a much needed vacation. You get the idea here, but do try to keep your audience in mind as you post some of your life's minutiae. I'm guilty of posting weird stuff, for sure.
• The blended model. This is the way to go, and what ultimately makes Twitter so interesting, in my opinion. If I wanted to know people's political analysis only, I'd go read their blogs. There's a humanizing effect of reading about a distant colleague's child's first words, or seeing that people you think are on top of the world have bad days, too. It creates empathy and insight. When I tweeted that I'd had a really rough, emotional weekend once, I was surprised to see which followers spoke up to say, "Hey, we're with you." And it helped further complete a picture of me for them, as well.

Also remember that Twitter is a conversation. One of the joys most everyone gets out of it is talking to one another. Reply often (remember your vocab? the @ symbol is your friend!) to your followers and people you follow. Use Twitter as a two way street, with many, many lanes going both directions.

The toolz
What tools do we like and use? In addition to Twitter (at twitter.com), which of course is your starting place, there are lots of other tools to enhance or modify your twitter experience. Some of the ones we currently favor include the following:

• Socialtoo:  Sign up for a free account that will report on twitter follow and unfollow stats via email updates, also use to create automatic follow-backs if you like.
• Twitpic: Great too to take photos with your cell phone camera or camera and then post to twitter, viewable web site.
• Qwitter: track who unfollows you and which tweet it happened after..
• Twitterfall: Twitterfall gives you a way to follow tweets on a specific topic in a constantly refreshed, almost real time basis. This is a great tool for tracking breaking new stories or conference updates. You can select both a term or a hashtag and a location and sort geographically as well.
• Tweetdeck: This downloadable client allows you to create and view multiple twitter streams at one time, by sorting them into groups. Great for high octane twitter scanning, overwhelming for many folks.
• Backtweets: Search for web links at twitter 
• WeFollow: twitter directory created by Digg founder Kevin Rose. Add yourself and your #hashtags to a category.

Download this post as a white paper right here:
Twitter tools that work for me--and tips for beginners.pdf

(Note: This post is based on a workshop on twitter presented at Women! Action! Media!, Boston 2009)

The most amazing Kate Bornstein, a woman and writer and activist I deeply admire just twittered the nicest thing about me (and the most unexpected): "Susan Mernit is the Sylvia Poggioli of Twitter, covering conferences, combing the Internet for women & gender news & views. Pls follow her!"

Thank you, indeed.

At WAM and settling in for the 11 am session with Julia Serano, Jack Aponte(angrybrownbutch), Miriam Zoila Perez and Kate Bovitch. This is the one that focuses on the reality and representations of transgendered people in the media as well as the intersection of gender non-coforming identities and feminist spaces.  The audience--about 75 people out an an expected attendance for today of 550--is mostly under 30, which makes me feel like there is alot about more for me to learn about younger womens perceptions of gender and identity (just as these is around sexuality and identity).

Miriam: Thinking about gender variant people and their roles in our culture; introducing herself as Cuban/Hispanic and an activist, gender/queer blogger. #wam09gnc--Miriam Perez-can people who are gender queer or not woman identitifed sign up for the terms womens space etc? Good question

Julia Serano-transwoman and gender variant person who has faced misogny as both a woman and as a transperson on the transfemine spectrum , as she says. Within a feminist context, there is a tendency she says for women to see transwomen-especially M to F-as outside of their concerns or experience.  Julia Serano: all gender variant people experience transphobia-media focuses on trans feminine side(men in drag jokes). She identifies and lives as a woman, but she is also a trans activist and experiences transphobia--discrimination from yet another angle. media erases diverse voices, says Julia Serano,our images are distorted-even feminists may not get transwomen & the issues.  Transpeople are also objectified and sexualized just as women are, and we need to see this--how images are manipulated and how genital issues are focused on, very sexalized, not a focus on identity.

@angrybrownbutch: organizer, activist, blogger, brooklyn, NYC-slp.org (Brooklyn in teh house). If she gets to identity her own gender, gender queer butch is preferred. Shes check woman over man, but she likes male pronouns. People want to put you one place or another, even out of good politics."   At the end of the day, Jack feels discrimination as both a woman and a gender queer person and she feels her community is under the womens umbrella, thats where she feels roots and kinship.  BUT...some people feel her gender presentation means she is disowning that. (this is a great point).

#wam09 #wam09gnc: @angrybrownbutch: Online doesnt convey enough of who you are--@womenwhotech & @drupalchix are difficult choices for her--and she sees herself as a gender marginalized person in the broader community.

RT @randomdeanna @boricuajack: i don't want to squeeze myself into a gender binary just for kinship purposes #wam09 #wam09gnc

Miriam: There are the issues about feminists writing about trans people--do you need to be part of an identity group to talk about it? NO, and yet everyone has a gender identity  Talking about gender is beneficial to everyone; I try to talk about gender in a much broader way and reflect on how mainstream media reinforces gender stereotypes and what is sterotypical and problematic about how gender is framed. (Susan sez: This is another really good point..we make too many assumptions in our wish to divide things neatly.)

Julia: What does it mean to be a good ally to any community you dont personally identify with but wish to support? Listen, educate yourself. With gender issues, the issues that get focused on are those the non trans people find appealing...Always focusing in transition and usrgery feels sensationalist. With feminists or the greater queer community the issues are distinct but perhaps nut really central--ex-talk about mutual issues around feminism, but little on the way transpeople are judged as mentally disordered to get medical support for how you understand themselves...this is huge in the trans community, but largely ignored in the broader progressive community.  Ask people what issues are most important to them, not what you find compelling.

@angrybrownbutch: there is no one trans answer--but dialogue and listening matter. So does sharing your access-guest blogs. Share your platform to create and support communications.
If we have power, we have priviledge.

Kate: How about that language thing? Miriam: I came out as queer when I was 20, 4 years ago, and she didnt know lesbians in her town; she wasnt Ellen, so she wasnt a lesbian (laugh). Her coming out process was aided in college where she met other gender non conforming women--that had to proceed sexual issues--the movement of LBQTI and feminism is bringing the gender conversation not only in queer spaces but in a broader space...feminism drives her as a core (I love this, says Susan).

Miriam: the 70s feminists felt they were coming together as women, we are evolving now around identity/gender fluidity etc; she sees older women she meets as afraid of losing the word women as part of their feminist identity."We can no longer assume what everyone means when we say the word woman"

 (Susan sez: I can tell I live in rhe Bay area because I accept everyone as a woman who tells me she is one).

Julia: Feminism for me is a movement to end sexism, not a movement focused only on women. transphobia is sexism. needs to be a shift from "lets have a dialogue & educate" to recgnzing ppl shld know better now

Audience question: How do we engage with communities of color on these issues?
@angrybrownbutch: Are communities of color worse? Well, lecturing wont work. Historically, gender was more diverse in Hispanic communities...but for queer and trans orgs, dont show all white people, have people who are identifiable with the community....This can be someone you love or who lives next door.

Julia: Trans should not be depicted as a white thing; violence against gender non conforming youth is disproportionately against people of color. But this doesnt get enough attention, she says.

Miriam: As a Latina, some people think queerness is a white thing, and gender nonconforming is a white thing, but thats tied to colonialism,which stamped out gender diversity. Language is hard because queer identity for her has been assimilated in a white context. Gender queer feels like a white word, how to translate that into her community is a question.

Self-identified hetrosexual ally to gay, trans and queer people in audience is asking if her perception transfolk are recipients of more intrusive questions--is this true and how to deal with it?  Julia says : Dont need to focus on body issues, on the same old same old who do you sleep with, when did you transition, when did you know--arent people ready to move beyond these same questions the media always asks?

never had anybody call me he who hasn't known that I was trans -Julia Serano

a question on generational issues: second and third wave feminists seen as opposed, but Miriam wants to build on what has come before (Susan sez: this is a vague answer, maybe we need alot more time on this one, generational lines...).

Jack: Transphobia is not age related.

Great point from Julia Serano: Dont assume about gender and sexuality based on impressions you have, its marginalizing.

My new Blogher essay on Love & Devices--tech, relationships & more tech--this is one of the funniest posts in a while. An excerpt:
"Truth is, I don't see the tweets, the texts and the email scanning I engage in almost as frequently as breathing as a rejection of my sweetie and my pals, I see them as my chance to take hits of an Interwebs oxygen that keeps my blood gases stable, a virtual relationship CRM that--much to my shock--can make my real life significant other and my pals feel a little slighted. ("Uh, sorry," I mumble, as I slip it back into my pocket.)

And then, there is my computer. It's not that my MacBook Pro--now covered with stickers and a little banged up from 12 months of travel--is any different than anyone else's--it's that this little machine is the gateway to my LIFE. Email, blogs, twitter, facebook, writing, poetry, photos, music--they're all crammed inside this machine, my very own looking glass and two-way mirror to Wonderland."

The rest is here.

In one of those fits of West Coast on the East Coast insomnia, I've just pulled together the twitter IDs for 60+ of the people attending WAM this weekend.  Here's the list.  Please add yourself in the comments, and I will update.

The twitter handles of WAM!  Here's a first pass at who's got a twitter account and is at WAM!, please add yourself in the comments and I will update this list; feel free to repost as well.

@jaclynf
@abyss2hope
@alauraborealis
@allisonatWAM  (usually @economicwoman)
@AmandaMarcotte
@Adacalhoun
@angrybrownbutch
@briannacc
@beingbrina
@caralisapowers
@catesimpson
@cartergilson
@Cassandrawest
@courtneyyoung
@corvida
@cmc2
@cyn3matic
@donnaledbetter
@doylecanning
@Ehight
@emflo
@EvilSlutClique
@fellowette
@Feministe
@FeministPress
@Fempeace
@frausallybenz
@glenndat
@girlfriendology
@jenangel/
@JillFilipovic 
@juliacsmith
@karajesella
@kelleent
@krkring
@lisastone
@mkeagle
@mailemae 
@Melsil
@mikkipedia
@MorethanMommy
@NeelanjanaB
@Nicoleedits
@PeachPit888
@ProfessorKim
@Punditmom
@randomdeanna
@rcspicuglia
@RebeccaTraister
@samizdata
@SarahTMoon
@susanmernit
@sarah_haskins
@slamhita
@TeenVoices
@PeachPit888
@Thecurvature
@tracyvs
@Tristin Aaron
@veronicaeye

Don't forget, add yourself in the comments and I will update the list

This is my first WAM conference; I'm in Boston, at Lisa Williams' house, ready to go meet Deanna Zandt tomorrow and do a workshop on social capital and social media.

It feels like a long and exciting personal journey to be here, at a media conference that is both feminist and activist, and I am excited about the new people I am going to meet, some of them, I know, from my own little corner of the Bay.

I'm excited about the sessions, including the three I am doing, and want to try to make it to many as possible, but I also know it is the random chat in the hallway that is often the most meaningful.

• Even When We're Insiders We're Outsiders: Moving from Black Women's Invisibility to Visibility in Popular Media and Culture
  Tokumbo Bodunde, Courtney Young
• In/Out of Focus, Broadening a Feminist Lens: Gender, Non-Conformity and the Media
  Kate Bovitch, Miriam Zoila Perez, Jack Aponte, Julia Serano

Adn opposite my own session with Deanna, Rapid Response Journalism: How Social Media Tools Can Enhance Your Work I wish I could see:

• More Than Guilty Pleasures: Sexism, Racism, Consumerism & Other Hazards of Reality TV
  Jennifer L. Pozner, Andrea Isabel Quijada
• The Other Glass Ceiling: We had a woman candidate, but where are the women in the political media?
  Mikki Halpin, Rebecca Traister, Lisa Stone

And

•  New Technology, New Activism: Case studies, Loretta Ross, Sheryl-Ann Simpson, Susan Mernit

• Pulling the Plug on Rape Culture One Word at a Time: Using Accuracy to Undermine Dangerous Attitudes and Injustice
  Cara Kulwicki, Ashley Burczak, Marcella Chester, Ashwini Hardikar

• Social Media and Women of Color
  Shireen Mitchell, Keida-Ann Borgella, Corvida Raven

In other words, more than I can go to!  But I will try to twitter, or live blog, as much as makes sense.

Which are the tools used by social media strategists, and how do they fit together?

This section of a longer white paper on social media and social good  offers a look at the basic tools, URLS and descriptions for each, and a review of which tools each project used.
It is part of a longer paper, with three case studies, available for free download.
309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf

Here's the products you want to know about right now:
:
WordPress.com & WordPress.org: Blogging platforms

• Blogging platforms are the starting point for any social media strategy and two of the most popular are WordPress.com and WordPress.org.  Both are easy to use and reliable. What's the difference between the two?
•  With WordPress.com, you create a blog that is hosted at WordPress and has a URL such as myblog.WordPress.com. You can use skins to create distinct look and layouts, and you can customize the blog, but it is hosted at their service.
• Using WordPress.org, you download the software, establish your blog, and pick a service to host it on.

• Moveabletype.com, typepad,com: Blogging platforms
• Moveable type & Typepad.com are blogging platforms from Six Apart. Moveable Type, know as MT, is a downloadable application to create a blogging platform hosted at a third-party provider or on your owner servers.
•  Typepad is a $129 per year hosted, turnkey service running on Six Apart servers.

Twitter, micro-blogging platform:

• Twitter is a popular micro blogging platform that allows users to distribute their 140 character updates to their Twitter social network, aka followers, across multiple platforms (computer, PDA, phone).

Photo & Video resources

• Flickr: Flickr is the leading photo & video community and repository, with more than 1 billion photos stored. Owned by Yahoo!, Flickr offers pro accounts for easier uploading, but basic services are free.
• YouTube, YouTube is the largest video hosting site on the net. Users can both upload and view videos here. Videos can be viewed at YouTube or embedded elsewhere.
  
• Seesmic: Seesmic offers online video blogging, done through your computer's web cam. Videos can be viewed at Seesmic.com, or embedded elsewhere.
• 12seconds: This site offers online video micro blogging, done through a web cam. Videos can be played here or embedded elsewhere.
• Vimeo is  a video-centric social network site that allows you to post and display videos, much like YouTube, only smaller and with more community.
• Viddler is another video hosting service, with plug-in tools that make it efficient to display video at WordPress and other blogging sites.

Social networks

• Facebook is one of the largest and most mainstream social network sites, With 90 million active users, the site is a daily visit for many people. The integrated tool set, which includes a groups function, an invite feature,  fan pages that support messaging.
• LinkedIn is the largest online professional social network. Focused on careers and professional networking, Linked In has a groups feature that is useful for social networking, event promotion, and messaging.
•  Ning:, Ning offers a set of web-based tools that allow anyone to create a social network on a hosted platform. The templated, modular elements can be customized and modified by non-technical people; over 71,000 networks have been created to date.

Utility applications

• Upcoming: This Yahoo-owned service allows you to post & share events via online calendar; the social network aspects aids in event discovery.
• Eventbrite: A popular service for selling tickets online and keeping the funds in a centralized place.
• Amiando: A popular service for selling tickets online and keeping the funds in a centralized place.
• PayPal: An eBay-owned service that acts as a middleman for online payments, eliminating the need for the consumer to use a credit card in an online transaction.
• Slideshare:, Post, display and distribute PowerPoint presentations.
• Constant Contact: Low-cost way to create and manage email campaigns.
• Democracy in Action: Non-profit that provides infrastructure and tools for non-profits and political groups, including email management.
• TipJoy: Service supporting making donations via PayPal through a Twitter interface.

For more on using these apps, check out the white paper.
309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf

The Knight News Challenge, a signature program of the Miami-based Knight Foundation, sponsors an international competition open to anyone who has an idea that can change the future of news and discourse in a local geographic community. Every year for the past 2 years (there are 5 years for which funds are committed), Knight has awarded $5MM to approximately 16 projects from around the world, paying out over a 2-year period.

Projects funded include Placeblogger, the world's foremost local blog directory and aggregator, EveryBlock, a Django-based framework for RSS feeds that organized and presents data based on your zip code, Printcasting, a web to print application tool, and the Sochi Olympics Project, which will let the people of Sochi, the Russian resort city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics, use the latest online tools to both discuss and influence the impact of the games
.
Program Objectives
For this year, 2008-09, the team wanted to improve the diversity of the applications, bringing in more from the tech and social media communities, as well as the online news area, improve awareness and grow international submissions, particularly in Asia. Two related goals were to increase awareness of the program, and to build community among the applicants.
 
To help meet these objectives, they retained me to act as the program manager and evangelist, in conjunction with Program Director Gary Kebbel, the program' developer and owner, Knight Journalism Program Associate Jose Zamora, and Knight Community Manager Kristen Taylor, webmaster Robbie Adams and Marketing and Communications VP Marc Fest.

Working as a team, along with Heidi Miller, whom Knight hired as a social media coordinator, we crafted a strategy for raising awareness, recruiting participants, mentoring prospective applicants, and raising the quality of the applications. No one on the team worked on this 100%, but working against a well-crafted plan allowed us to maximize our time
.
Strategies for outreach
The Knight Foundation has well-established relationships with influential journalists, bloggers and educators in the online news and international online news arenas, and deep ties with journalism, new media, and communications programs at many universities. However, for this program, Knight wanted to reach beyond their core audience to connect with technologists, social media innovators, product developers and local organizers who might have innovative ideas for sharing news and information and supporting engagement and discussion in a specific geographic area.
 
To achieve this goal, we did an analysis that suggested using a suite of social media tools would not only be extremely effective for outreach, but would reinforce the message that we were innovative and cool. Our plan relied on using tools that had worked in previous years--web site, email, purchased ad words--but we put more emphasis on the new tools: blogging, video blogging, Twitter, seesmic, Flickr in particular
.
To communicate these messages, we created a three-month strategy to execute against

. Some of the tasks in the plan were to:
•    Create a means to have on-going events--digital and real-world that we could both blog about and have bloggers cover
•    Create a list of about 100 social media and Web 2.0 bloggers, entrepreneurs and technologists whose attention we could engage with these events
•    Send information about the 2008-09 Knight News Challenge to about 7,500 people on a mailing list, asking them to spread the word in their communities
•    Create a Twitter account and twit 3X a day with interesting news and updates to drive participation in the Knight News Challenge
•    Create a #hashtag--a tag that makes a phrase discoverable in a twitter search (search.twitter.com)-- for the Knight News Challenge--#knc08--and promote it, making it possible for interested parties to track our efforts.
•    Interview past winners and post to the blog; have past winners do Seesmic videos we could promote
•    Conduct a strong email campaign to our constituent base of online journalists and educators and a wider pool of tech, social media and community influencers
.
At the same time as we mapped these ideas, we explored other ideas that would allow us to create more of an applicant community to spread the word and support one another.
Inspired by incubators like ycombinator and TechStars, we decided to create a Drupal site called the News Challenge Garage (garage.newschallenge.org). This would be a destination where prospective applicants could post ideas and projects, receive peer comments and request online mentoring before they submitted their applications for judging. The budget for this site was low, and we built it within 3 weeks
.
Finally, we also decided to create and execute a series of real world meet-ups, in addition to an online webinar. Knowing how effective the BarCamps have been, we decided to see if we could create low-cost equivalents for the KNC08, focusing on cities where Knight staff was already travelling.

To deliver on our international aspirations, we built an international outreach and marketing plan that relied on the support of Jose Zamora, our Journalism Program Associate, Joyce Barnathan and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), Professor Rosental Alves of The University of Texas at Austin, Global Voices, and other connections with good international contacts. This program was heavily email based, but also included a real world meet up.

Execution
In August, 2008, we started our program by updating the web site's FAQ and call to action to broaden the appeal, then followed up with a press release and an email blast to about 7,500 influencers, friends of Knight, past applicants, journalism educations and bloggers. This was followed by the start of a Twitter campaign, the creation of the #KNC08 hashtag, and an ongoing series of blog posts on the Knight Foundation blog.

Very soon after, we launched the News Challenge Garage; we promoted its launch with an email blast to a broad target and individual outreach to the 100 influencers on our list.  The site generated great interest, and applicants began to immediately register. Bloggers also began to write about it, and about the program. We used Twitter to communicate with potential applicants and encouraged people to follow our twitstream; within a short period of time we had 300 followers on Twitter
.
To meet our goal of having fresh blog posts on the Knight blog and the Garage site, three times a week, we created an editorial schedule and assigned posts out for specific dates and themes to the team of 3 staffers. In addition, we did some podcasts with past winners, and asked some past winners to do Seesmic videos about the program.  This material generated page views, commentary and linking around the blogosphere, driving links and awareness way up (results date below).
 
At the same time that we were using the new tools, we also used the old ones. Three times during the application period we sent out email blasts; analysis showed that the email was extremely successful in driving applicants to the site, more so than advertising.

We planned the meet-ups so they could piggyback on travel and conferences already planned. We were able to do 9 meet ups--in New York, Boston, Miami, Washington, DC, Seattle, Vancouver, Austin, San Francisco, and Chicago. In many cases, we were able to also visit J-Schools and speak to students in the same trip, and to add meet-ups to other conferences, such as the Online News Association.  During a meet-up (typically 90 minutes long), we spent 20 minutes explaining the program, using a live web browser to show key URLs and examples, then used the rest of the time for discussion and Q&A. Meetings were generally well-attended, with 35-40 people as an average, but with some meetings have as any as 75 people.

To get the word out, we created Facebook groups for each meet up, listed them on Upcoming.org, and blogged them. Interestingly, many people in the social media and online journalism communities treated them as important events, exhorting friends to attend (and apply for funding).  This drove awareness.

Finally, to execute on our international outreach we not only asked numerous international organizations to reach out on our behalf, we also sent about 200 emails to personal international contacts, asking them to spread the word in their communities. Finally, during the last three weeks of the program, we worked with the Knight Foundation Webmaster, Robertson Adams, to purchase keywords that could drive awareness in China, Korea, Japan and other part of Asia
.
Evaluating results
So, what were our outcomes like? Did we meet our goals? The short version would be yes.
•    Traffic to the Knight News Challenge site increased 47% compared to the same time the previous year. The site had an average of 2,930 visitors a day, during the course of the application timeframe.
•    On the final day of the contest, 17,000 people came to the site, a record high. Both these metrics were 50% higher than the previous year.
•    2,323 projects were submitted to the Knight News Challenge. 258 were invited to submit a full proposal, 70 became finalists for the funding are going through final review this February (results not yet released). The staff considers the quality to be extremely high.

•    In 2008, there were 224 independent blog posts about the Knight News Challenge, compared to 24 the previous year. Blog posts appeared in blogs published in European countries, the UK, Korea, China, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, Canada and Latin America as well as the US
.
•    The Knight News Challenge got major press during the program-we were written up in Valleywag in October
 
•    A post in the New York Times by "Freakonomics" author Steven J. Dubner, titled "Free Money" sent 1,442 visitors to the site.

•    1,600 people registered for the News Challenge Garage site (required to comment). 800 posted projects. 466 applied for a grant. Discussion of the Garage generated 10,000 links that Google indexed, 6,000 of which did not originate from the Garage site.

•    The 8 meet ups had 400 attendees, many of whom blogged, shot video and pictures and shared about the program. Roughly 50% of the meet up attendees applied to the program. There are 700 links to mentions of the events indexed in Google, 30 photos on Flickr tagged Knight News Challenge meet up, and 4 videos).

•    Google reported over 60,000 mentions of "Knight News Challenge" on non-Knight sites in 2008; this was a 110% increase from 2007.

Conclusion
Social media tools--combined with the usage of a web site, email campaign and webinar--vastly increased both the awareness of the Knight News Challenge and the diversity of the applications, particularly in the English-speaking world.  Marketing costs were applied to supporting a part-time social media manager, rather than to agency fees, and a greater return occurred. The innovative Garage site helped to brand the program as interested in innovation and drove ongoing awareness and discussion on the net, as did the real world meet ups.
 
Overall, we were able to create an interactive, virtuous circle or open loop, where our real world community, which we successfully targeted online and off, not only got our message but then went on to publicize it on our behalf. This created a bigger impact that we might have gotten otherwise and led to a lot of success with carefully measured resources.

Note, this is an excerpt from a much longer white paper with three case studies, written on using social media for social good. The paper is available here-
309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf

"While blogs are increasing in quantity, their authority-as currently measured by Technorati-is collectively losing influence."

-- Maven Brian Solis, writing at TechCrunch about how other measurable forms of influence--like Twitter, retweeting, building community and so on, are ways to measure impact, reach and attention.

Susan sez: This is so true, and why I love the web--Mao's law of continuous revolution is always in play. Conversation and community are continually created, distributed, sifted, filtered, redistributed--we're just one big ameboa, redividing and growing.

Net-enabled social tools have enabled new models for grassroots activism and community building, and they have changed how we function in society -- how we communicate globally and locally, how we form ties and how we organize and connect.

What's tricky about deploying social media today is not access to the technology, but the knowledge of how to deploy it across multiple platforms.

This 309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf is meant to take some of the fear and confusion out of the question of whether to use these tools or not. An accompanying resource guide and detailed case studies provide a tool kit for using social media to promote, brand and organize around an idea, movement, program or campaign.

There's a brief of the paper here, from the WeMedia conference

The full white paper, 28 pages long! is here
309Social media for social causes white paper.pdf

Here's what's in it:
•    Introduction
•    What do we mean by social media?
•    Lifestreaming
•    Money and mobilization
•    How to use social media tools
•    The Case Studies
•    Knight News Challenge
•    Women Who Tech Telesummit, 2008
•    Q&A with Allyson Kapin, Women Who Tech
•    Twestival, 2009
•    Q&A with Amanda Rose, Twestival
•    COMMENTARY by Lisa Wiliams : What makes a social media campaign stand out?
•    Resources: Web 2.0 Products and what they are
•    CHART; The social media ecosystem, or the virtuous circle of multiple tools
•    What do I get started with?
•    Sources & Citations
•    About the author

I will be posting the sections of the paper individually as well. Hope you find them useful.

This could not be more true, IMHO: " ...as the US increasingly becomes a nation of the self-employed and the self-promoting, as we build our professional careers and reputations on networks likeTwitter and Linked-In, so the business of Americans will become the business of self-promotion and self-branding.

Like it or not, the wrenching restructuring is going to effect everyone. For all of us -- the unemployed and those fortunate enough to still have jobs -- it's time to get that Twitter account, time to sign up to Linked-In, time to aggressively hunt for online friends and followers. We are all Scoble now. The world, for better or worse, has been Scobleized."

--Andrew Keen, The Great Seduction, We are all Scoble now

When I started blogging back in 2003, blogging was an exotic activity practiced by a few.  There was this sense that being able to serve as a curator and link to others was extraordinary, and that those bloggers who had a coherent point of view were very special.

Fast forward to 2009, where everyone and their neighbor have a blog of some sort, over 4 million people use twitter, and we rely on crowd-sourcing to help us discover interested and relevant information.

Not only is there lots more noise, there are lots more interesting bloggers with something valuable to share. Instead of having three or fifteen blogs I might read about organic gardening or Web 2.0 or parenting, there are 3,500 or some equally stunning amount.

At the same time that the number of blogs has exploded, some bloggers have grown into mini-moguls.  Josh Marshall, Markos, Perez Hilton, Dooce, Maggie Mason, Mike Arrington come to mind, along with many others, as bloggers who've grabbed--and kept--a lion's share of the attention in their category, garnering enough traffic to expand their blogs into blog networks of one sort or another.  Not only is it hard for a new blogger to come along and break into those ranks (Pioneer Woman is the recent superstar that comes to mind), it's hard to even get close to them.

Knowing these home truths, I made the decision back in September/October to try to start blogging here more regularly, and to do what I could to build my traffic--damaged by a domain change and feed switch from susanmernit.blogspot.com to susanmernit.com), along with some spotty and less than inspired posting (or lack of)--back up.

Five months into the endeavor, let me tell you--it is damn hard.  Yeah, the traffic has gone up, but it's rough.

While I would not trade away the pleasure of sharing my views with people I care about, or exchanging ideas with others in the blogosphere--many of whom I don't personally know--I don't feel like I have actually succeeded in creating a blog people read and return to on an ongoing basis.  While I've written posts that have gotten significant attention and traffic, being a regular read of destination for a larger number of people just doesn't seem to be happening in the way I'd hoped.

Over the past few weeks, I've given some thought to why that might be, and I am pondering what changed I'd want to make to bring the traffic up (as well as making the decision to change nothing and continue just as I am)
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Factor 1: Tech blogging has become a breaking news experience for the most part
This isn't a new meme, but over the past four years, tech blogs have become ever more the trade journals of the industry, competing to break stories about new products, business deals and technologies.  As someone more interested in writing about the back story, user experience and tech in society, this is not a category I want to enter
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Factor 2: Lots of other tech blogs focus on round ups and how tos as ways to build their SEO traffic and deliver service value
Mashable is the epitome of the tech blog where one recurring feature is to cover the reader with data on a topic, and to list dozens of resources. ReadWrite Web does this as well. The 50 things about X is not my thing, but I do recognize that doing more lists, round-ups and service stories would be a way to increase traffic to this blog.

Factor 3: This blog lacks community
For whatever reason, mostly laziness and lack of time/making it a priority, I haven't worked hard to create community on this blog. Readers do comment, but I do a poor job of engaging with them. By not working hard on community, I've bypassed one of the main reasons users engage with a blog--because it's a flash point to have conversations with others that have value.  If I want to grow traffic here, building more community seems critical.
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Factor 4: Is the voice right?
There's no question that the distance between who I am and the way I write is very short; this voice is authentic and all that.  However, I'm not someone who uses her blog to share lots of personal stories, aspirations, debates and struggles.

As impassioned as I am about women and tech, feminism, creating positive social change and so on, I don't write about these things in a very personal diary-like way on this blog.  Should I? Am I missing a chance to engage more people by not writing about myself more specifically? Or is that just off topic from what most people find interesting? I have no idea.

Factor 5: You tell me--what would you like to see more of here that would make the blog more interesting to you on a daily basis?
 
Where should I be putting more effort that would improve the value?  I promise to listen to all suggestions and try those that make sense to me--and let you know what I think about all of them.

"My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I've always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism. I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee. I've been able to pay my father back, which is nice, and my mother doesn't worry about me as much since I got married a year and a half ago."

--Twitter co-founder and CEO Ev Williams, reflecting on his past in the NYTimes.

The Maynard Institute, dedicated to training journalists of color and helping the news media reflect the nation's diversity in staffing, content and business operations, is also focusing on retraining and on midcareer journalists.  This coming Friday, March 6th,  in partnership with the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, Maynard is offering  "The Future is Now," a one-day workshop focusing on surviving the current downturn and planning next steps (they say it more elegantly, but that's the bottom line, IMHO).

There's a team of smart people giving workshops at the event--Kim Moy, managing editor, Yahoo! front page (and someone who has reinvented herself a couple of times), Larry Olmstead, former head of HR for Knight-Ridder and now a career coach, among other things,exec coach Rafael Gonzalez,  and myself.

I'm doing a workshop on Building Your Brand through Social Media, a topic Twitter folk and friends in the tech bubble talk about endless, but that is relevant to everyone. I'll have a tip sheet and some handouts for the session, which we will post on the web as well.

If you have suggestions for papers, blog posts, and people to follow who are articulate about the whys and how-toos of brand building online as opposed to people who have done a great job building their brand but may not be articulate about it) please leave info in the comments; this is another way to show the power of networks to these participants.
 
Here's the deets:
Date: Friday, March 6
Location: Annenberg School, University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Tuition: $75--Includes morning refreshments and lunch.

REGISTER HERE

So my 7:30 am session at WeMedia is over (yeah!) we had a good group, but of course the challenge is always to have a useful and interesting conversation that can keep the attention of both the very experienced people in the room and the newbies and the early intermediates who come for specific tips and help.  My co-facilitator, Rebecca Weeks Watson of Divine Caroline, had a nice detailed preso on driving community and traffic to your site, and I worked with the group to outline some tools and ideas before we started. Greg Linch live blogged the session and Marllory Colliflower,@malcolli, live-tweeted it.

For those who did not make it to the session, here's my recap:
1) How and where do we see the impact of social media?  What does social media do for us? (Group made list) 

• quick news
• lazy web/crowdsourcing ideas
• community and connection
• fllter ideas
• deepen engagement and community
• personal or business branding
  

(Susan sez: What uses would you add?)_

2) What tools are part of the social media toolbox?

• facebook
• myspace
• twitter
• flickr
• seesmic
• 12seconds.tv
• upcoming
• meetup
• email CRM (constant comment, zebratracks)
• blogs
• mybloglog
• youtube

(Susan sez: What other tools would you add?)

Discussion points:

• The social media ecosystem means knowing how to use more than one social media tool; using 3 or more together creates the ecosystem. To be an effective social media user, you want to have a strategy and understand the outcomes you want.
• Possible outcomes include deepening the engagement of your current audience/community, reaching new people, building a new micro donor base, generating buzz.
• Remember that social media is "bursty" and best tied to campaigns; ie you don't have to use all the tools at the same fever pitch all the time--you can do burst of this activity and then dial it down.
• Email is a tool you don't want to ignore, don't abandon it, just add the new tools.
• Facebook has great power; understand how to create fan pages, groups, and events beyond your own page
• Associate FB events with upcoming and meetup events
• Use flickr, youtube and multmedia to create more buzz/community
• Use google docs to post invites to feedback, polls, commentary; then reflect back and recognize what you learn

We went on for a good 1 hr 15; alot of what we discussed is also in the case study document I just did, social media for social change, and in the social media toolbox paper I did for Knight.

So, we all know Twitter is booming, tons of people joining every day. So we all get a little hockey stick lift on the people who follow us, right? 

And then there are all the celebs and politics coming on--@sarah_ross has gotten half of hollywood to join, notably her bosses ashton kutcher and demi moore, and then there's Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey and Maria Shriver and...you know.

What caught my attention here, though, was as the Twitter traffic trends up, TwitterCounter shows users dropping off from the top 50 most trafficked accounts--and going elsewhere? 

Look at the down data below--and then see who is adding people-- and then note the rapid rise of neilhimself-- Neil Gaiman, Richard Branson, The WhiteHouse, sitepointdotcom.

Mr, Tweet, a service that recommends people to follow on twitter based both on who follows you and on mapping your own social network and twitter connections, launched a few months ago as a bit of a lovely one trick pony. The brainchild of Ming Yeow Ng and Yu-Shan Fung, with assist from Stanford Professor Andreas Weigend, Mr. Tweet started quickly adding features based on user response.

Now, 4 months from launch, Mr, Tweet has 76,000+ followers and a hockeystick growth curve on twittercounter, adding 800-1,000 new users a day.

I've become a big Mr. Tweet fan, so it's great to see this leap--one of the reasons I like the product and continue to use it is that they are responsive to customer feedback, so it keeps getting better, which, in turn, keeps my interest.

It's after 9 pm and I am in my hotel room in Miami. We spent today reviewing the finalists for the Knight News Challenge, and ended with a list of applicants for the program staff to work with before funding recommendations are made to the Board. It was a great day, with a smart, diverse and very engaged group of final reviewers and a nice diversity of possible projects.
Not the last step in the KNC08 process, but a major milestone.

And now I am in my hotel room, post a walk, post music in the park downtown, post dinner. I'm at my computer updating my newsreader, something I haven't done in almost a year, and something that is amazingly different now that I use friendfeed, facebook and twitter. You see, I don't need to keep the same set of social media links in my bloggers I enjoy folder; the odds are that people I know in those circles will twitter or highlight interesting posts is about 85%.

So it was a good feeling to review the feed and clean them up; if I can pare down, I can possible keep up at least 30%...otherwise, there's just too many to even consider.

2009 TOC Conference, was an interesting experience for me. When I first heard about it,I thought the focus might be CMS and platforms, topics dear to my heart, but the focus is actually next generation book publishing and business models.

That means I learned alot more about how "What is Amazon going to do?" is a critical motivator for publishers , about publishing's interest in the eBook, the PDF, the mobil interface and the Kindle, as well as the DRM divide.

Among the more mainstream speakers (ie core to the focus of this conference), are the following, all collected in a Best of TOC book on demand:

• Sara Lloyd
• Bob Stein
• Kate Eltham
• Kassia Krozser
• Peter Brantley

Presos of note were also given by Cory Doctorow, Peter Brantley, Nick Bilton and, of course, Jeff Jarvis, who did a great job discussing his new book.

Last words from Calvin Reid at Publisher's Weekly who said: "The TOC conference alternates between the confusing and the inspiring, the revelatory and the perfectly obvious, which I suppose is the best way to describe the current moment in book publishing."

Watching the book industry digest social media, ebooks, the kindle, mobile strategies, and endless discussions for and against DRM has been interesting today, but it takes on some strange resonance given that Harper Collins just closed a division and laid off a slew of people, even though they were trumpeting this same division as the best thing ever a few months ago.

It's also interesting to be back in NYC, where the proportions of navy blue blazers and dark suits is way higher than in California, even if the 80/20 ratio of male attendees to women is nothing new.

But the thing that is really getting me is what I am going to tell these book people about the future of news when I do my panel tomorrow. I mean, news organizations are collapsing like the buildings in Jurassic Park when the dinosaurs break loose and rampage. Journalists are wondering how to retrain themselves and Media Bistro's freelance marketplace is LOADED with the laid off.

But all that is today, right now--what can I tell them about the future?

• We're not going to have widespread distribution of what we today call newspapers, print entities with web sites attached.
• The need for well-research, accurate stories will remain, but it is as likely a team of people will write and contribute, Wikipedia-style, as one professional reporter will cover the story (in the case of hyper local, the wikipedia model is MUCH more likely.)
• The line between fact and opinion will continue to blur, as will the line between citizen and journalist.
• Storytelling will endure--in podcasting, videblogging, twitter and combos of the three
• New business models will arise at the edges; it is early to see what could pull into the mainstream
• Young people still dream of being journalists, still have passion to write and publish news stories; propoerly positioned, their work can have HUGE value to local communities.
• We will read news more and more on digital devices--phones, iPods, small screens.
• The business models need to be totally reinvented, but no one has it right yet.

so yesterday I flew from San Francisco to New York. Getting off the plane last night, I headed to baggage and then out into the terminal. Since it was late, I'd reserved a car; the fellow was there with a sign for me.

"Hi." I went over.
"Tim O'Reilly says hello," he replied
"Huh?" I was confused. Did this guy just drive Tim O'Reilly?
"A man got off the plane, saw my sign, came over and said "Is that Susan Mernit? Tel hr Tim O'Reilly says hi.'"

"Oh!" I started laughing, and as we walked to his car, I just thought, Hey, you don't always need twitter.

Julia Angwin's article in the WSJ about how she re-engineered her links on Google and therefore how she showed up, is interesting, but some of it was a little too vague for literal, get it done types like me. So, here's my translation, aka a how to, of what Julia did, with the idea that if you want to take similar steps, this little write up will help.

• Understand how your links are currently presented on Google.  (You find this by googling your name into, yep, Google.)
• Decide if you want to change anything. Do you like what shows up in the top 5 spots under your name? One tool to work with to show where links are coming from is the Yahoo Site Explorer, which Julia used; you can also put a link into Google and see what links to it.

If you  decide you want to make a shift, as Julia did, follow these next steps (this is a translation into plain talk of Julia's article).

• Take steps to push other content than what is there to the top of your Google SERP. These bad old links are there because many people linked to them; to push them down, push some other links up.
•  How do you do that?  Some possiblities: a) write some great stuff on your blog other people will link to, b) network your digital identities together, pushing your sites further up in page rank.
• I can't tell you how to do 4a, but here's how to do 4b: Go to your linkedin profile, In the section of your profile that says WebSites, and make sure you add links to everything you want highlighted. Like Julia (and like me after I read her piece) use the Other option in the form to be able to give your links the exact titles you want (as opposed to the generic "My Company.)  Choose items that already have credibility and Google juice, like your blog or twitter stream and add them there.
• Wait--the power of Linked In, Julia suggests, is such that interlinking there is enough.
• (Susan sez, I disagree-I'd also add a contact list and links on every section of your web site, so everything links together. See this page on my site for an example).
• Watch out for fighting and trash talk.  If you publish something that many people comment on, it will get pushed to the top of your links, This can be great--or awful, especially if it's a fight you're in the middle of.
• Manage your Google brand vigilantly, and improve the odds with some basic SEO. Critical: Put your name in the header, not just a title(assuming it's a blog).  Make sure you have enough text that actually describes what the site is, that's what Google is going to index. (Julia's site focuses on her new book about MySpace; take a look at the text to see what she wants the Big G to crawl.)
• Don't forget to ask your coder, if it's not you, to add metadata into the source code. While some people say this isn't really neccessary anymore, it's very useful. Julia's metadata is a full sentence (this is a little unusual) and it reads "Award-winning journalist Julia Angwin, author of Stealing MySpace, writes The Decoder, a Wall Street Journal technology column, and serves as editor of the Digits blog." There are thousands of posts about this on the web, but you could start here.
• Use twitter and Facebook to let people know about your site or the post you'd like at the top of your Google results; work your network patiently, and hopefully, things will change within 2 weeks.

Susan sez: This is yet another post that underscores that this is the moment to have multiple places where you maintain your identity if you want to be at all accurately reflected on the net. (And if you don't, cool). Facebook, LinkedIn and a name web site and blog seem like the social media must haves if you care about this at all.

Hey, do you think I am being obsessive as I continue to curate this meme? 25 things you didn't know about me is just so much fun to read, whether you know the people or not. So, some other posters I found (or who messaged me):

• Ryan Kuder:"I will eat anything once. Although the last time I was in Beijing, I had spicy fish that put me in the hospital. Note to self: Lay off the spicy fish."
• Happy Robot/Lisa Says: " My biggest passion in life is hating my job."
• Chez Pim: "I make butter for a Michelin-two-star restaurant, and it's the best damned butter in this country. And no, you can't buy it."
• Lisa Nowak: "I spent 13 years building and driving race cars before I wised up to the fact that it was a second full-time job and a total money suck. Now I just write YA books about stock car racing."
• Sarah Nelson:"I group my candy by colors before eating it."
• Britt Bravo: "I saw Long Day's Journey into Night with Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher and Blythe Danner in New York during high school. My class sat in the front row. I cried so hard at the end, I couldn't stand up to applaud. We waited at the side door for the actors to come out. When Jack Lemmon saw me he said, "I was so happy that you were so sad."
• Deborah Elizabeth Finn: "I love Victorian literature, and have even gone so far as to read novels by Charlotte Yonge and Mrs Humphry Ward."
• Deanna Zandt: "went from being the grrl who could sleep till 2 in the afternoon to the grrl who can't sleep past 7:30 in the morning in just under 6 years."
• Glen Gleason:"I think I would have made a good Jedi."
• devvieish: "I have a love/hate relationship with programming. I know that it ought to be possible to tell a computer do to anything you can define... so I keep trying to do exactly that, and keep being frustrated with failure at poor documentation and not-all-powerful languages.""
• Jennifer Burdette Satterwhite: "I am better at talking in front of a large crowd than I am at making small talk with one new person."
• Shmuel Moshe Yonah: "In the past three years, I have become nearly completely fluent in Hebrew. This has mostly taught me that being bilingual means being completely incoherent in two languages."
• Bernard Moon: "While learning to ride a bike, I was knocked unconscious. My father tried a short cut and placed me on an inclined road and let it ride! My brother was given the slow route on flat surfaces when his time came.:
  
• ink and vellum:"I often quote random lines of Old English poetry. And I've done it in a bar. Drunk and sober. On multiple occasions."
• Phase: Next: "For the past few weeks, I haven't gone a day without consuming something blueberry flavored or filled (or the actual berry). "
• Obsidian Bladed:"I got into the whole online furry thing by moving on from S.W.A.T. Kats communities and fanart pages to Yerf when I was in middle school."
• Many Good Things: "My husband and I went to the same grade and high schools. He was a year behind me and I knew his little brother but not him."
• jump off the bridge: "I am 100% addicted to Twitter. I'm not ashamed. In fact, I'm ashamed that you AREN'T addicted to Twitter."
• a granite sack and legs of log: "i have stumbled into nearly every job i've ever had by some combination of accident, luck and being a comparative peon in the right places at the right times. i recommend the strategy.
• life begins at thirty: "In order to go to sleep, I usually take 4 to 5 digit numbers and factorize them down as much as I can in my head. So ... 12345 = 2469 x 5 = 823 x 3 x 5 ...etc. It's comforting that it takes all my brain power to hold the numbers in my head which means that I can't fret about anything else."
• random thoughts and acts of stupidity: "Thanks to my Irish/English heritage I have to get my chin hairs zapped on a regular basis."
• Izoro Bend Blog:" I always have to hold back tears when someone sings the National Anthem (if they do a good job)."
• mysterious blisterious:"I wonder if being horny all the time is just me or if it is a guy thing."
• e-moleskining:"f I could adopt a pet monkey, I would."
  
  

Earlier this month, I participated in a Silicon Valley junto lunch(which I really enjoyed) on the topic of failure. That experience drive the desire to do this session at She's Geeky.

How did it go?

We had about 35 women in a room, in a circle, talking about failure (and we created a safe space for that talk, agreeing we would not blog or twitter identifable details or names).

Some of the themes that emerged from the group:

• Failure can be either something you feel and do, so something others feel--and that you have no control over.
• One of the hard things about failure is managing others' expectations, along with your own.
• Without being willing to fail, there is no risk, without risk, no edge and much slower growth.
• How does women's perfectionism tap into reactions about failure?
• Don' t we need to evolve to the point where for us--like little kids learning to walk--multiple failures are accepted and we move on from them?
• There is no test of whether you are good enough to do something, just do it.
• You learn from every failure, even if it hurts like hell.
• One fear of failure is being exposed and ridiculed in public, or by your family/friends.
• Another is hating yourself for what you could have done differently, or could have done better.
• Blame and shame are things to get past; you learn ALOT from not succeeding

There were a number of personal stories and lots of intense discussion; this was such a good dialogue, thank you all!

Right on the heels of the Mike Arrington spit incident and the ensuing discussion, Jason Calcanis published a great essay on his private email list, which he just published on his web log (so now I feel comfortable quoting it). The key points are:

It is easy to dehumanize people who you do not know in the real world, but see in a videostream, blog post, etc.

Online community is an illusion beyond a certain scale and it is the law of the pack to turn on people, attack them and try to destroy them. Jason says Harris's law is that " the goal becomes to inflict as much psychological suffering as possible on another person."

Jason calls this Internet Aspberger's syndrome and explains:"In this syndrome, the afflicted stops seeing the humanity in other people. They view individuals as objects, not individuals. The focus on repetitive behaviors-checking email, blogging, twittering and retiring andys-combines with an inability to feel empathy and connect with people."

And where does this lead? Link-whoring, pushing for followers and being an asshole is pretty much what J says,.

And the money point? "...otherwise normal folks will lose their empathy online, only to regain it the instant they face the "object" (aka real person) of their scorn."

Final great quote: "We're harvesting our lives and putting them online. We're addicted to gaining followers and friends (or email subscribers, as the case may be), and reading comments we get in return. As we look for validation and our daily 15 minutes of fame, we do so at the cost of our humanity."

Kevin Rose, digg co-founder who has 88,000 followers on twitter(right in line behind #1, President Obama) has a post on tech crunch about how to get more out of using twitter--
Some highlights:

• Get into suggested users (inside the find people table) with Lance Armstrong and the real Britney Spears.
• Put links to your Twitter profile everywhere--mine is twitter.com/susanmernit (hint, hint)
• Use twitter hashtags to mark your interests, location, restaurants, etc. How to  is here.
• Follow the top twitter users
• Use tools:TwitterCounter to see you how many new users you're adding per day,  Qwitter to see what tweets people leave after.

Susan sez: These are all good ideas--for more on using twitter, especially if you're a newbie, check out Chris Brogan and Nate Ritter.

Twestival: Feb 12, 2009
The ability of people on the inter-webs to organize themselves and spread the word--about causes, brands, news, issues, people--just keeps evolving. This self-organizing process is one of the reasons I am so excited a bout Twestival, a fund-raising effort that supports charity: water,  a series of projects to support clean drinking water for people--especially students--in developing countries.

Taking best practices from BarCamp, local Net2Tuesday and local Tweetups, as well as inspiration from some of the effective fundraising done by Beth Kanter and Laura Fitton (@pistachio) on twitter, Twestival will tap the energy of volunteers and twitter users in 100 cities to create decentralized events, all on the same day (Feb 12th) that will align real world meetups with online donating via TipJoy. simultaneous event streaming around the world (!!), and what will be a huge awareness-building post-event ripple of inevitable documentation on flickr, youtube and blogs

Bonus link: Beth Kanter, "Twitter As Charitable Giving Spreader: A Brief History and Meta Analysis of Fundraising With Twitter.

This morning started with pancakes, then turned into a meeting, work on the Knight News Challenge, and a BlogHer essay. In the way of the global back fence we all hang on, over 100 people wished me happy birthday on twitter, facebook and friendfeed. Thank you all!

(We may live far away from one another, but the virtual community we live in is right here in the computer.)

Back in 2004, before blogging was as mainstream as it is today, and there were perhaps 2,000 bloggerati putting up links and opining views (and many more people doing their personal community thing on xanga and live journal), the whole concept of business blogging blew up.

Suddenly, there were business blogging conferences, and 200 + bloggers who hung out shingles to tell the world--especially companies with money--about blogging and why it mattered to their business (and why they had to hire these folks to tell them this stuff.)

Fast forward 5 years and we have many more people using social media tools on the web, and many more twitterati, and now we have 10,000 people, instead of 2,000, who would classify as hard core social media users, and we have 2,000 people, not 200, telling the world--the business community in particular--to hire them so they can teach everyone--especially companies with money--how to use twitter and all the other tools to support closeness to the customer, viral marketing and the new new transparency.

One take here--which has some truth to it--is that the noise to signal ratio has gone waay up, and that 50% of the people putting out their shingle don't necessarily know what they are talking about.

But another take--which I think also has some truth to it--is that there are 2,000 people across the country who really are expert in using social media, and they all have something to teach. After all, if the premise of Web 2.0 is that users can be the center of the toolset, why would it be surprising that growing numbers of users would actually become expert?

Or that there'd be an incremental acceleration of skilled users (and free agent consultants) since the tools were getting both more intuitive and better marketed (now that we have five or seven leading tech news blogs).

Of course, there is a moral to this story(sparked both by reading this post and by a chat at the Oakland meet-up yesterday): If you ARE a social media expert type, and you are looking for clients, DON'T go hang at the social media conferences--most of the customers will be elsewhere. Go somewhere else and get away from those 2,000 peers; your client pipeline will be so much better.

As magazines crumble, online media networks gain in value, with women's networks as one of the hottest areas (reflecting the on-going, but not quick enough move of brand advertisers in CPG from print to web). 

Now Meredith Publishing, which acquired a stake in Real Girls Media Network, publishers of Divine Caroline, has re-organized the company to create the Meredith Women's Network, a roll up of their sites for Better Homes & Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Fitness, More,, The Parents Network, and a bevy of new BG spin-outs, including the soon to launch Mixing Bowl, a food and lifestyle site.

The full network reaches 15 million uniques a month, enough to stack up against the competition for advertisers--and audience--from iVillage/BlogHer/NBCi, Yahoo's Shine, the Glam and Sugar networks, and whatever Hearst is doing.

Of course, the topics and themes of this effort are nothing new--but the continually every-heating up push for eyeballs and revenue seems to continually intensify as legacy brands get pushed toward the box canyons of the web, where audiences are fickle and targeting and ROI are merciless.

Have you seen the twits asking if you're going to Blissdom? Or whether you're saving it for BlogHer, instead?

 Curious as to what this Blissdom was, I poked around and discovered that Blissdom is a blogging conference for women, to be held this February for the second time in Nashville, Tennessee.

Looking at the web page, Blissdom takes more than a little inspiration from BlogHer's conference energy--only with two significant differences--Blissdom has a strong Christian faith-based subtheme--and has Walmart as a sponsor.

Sponsored by some Nashville bloggers (would they call themselves girls? I'm not sure), February's Blissdom '09 is a repeat of  October's Blissdom '08.  This conference started life as a plans for a local party after the BlogHer business tour stop in Nashville, but turned into a day-long event after BlogHer cut back the tour, eliminating the Nashville meet-up.

Now, Allison Worthington, aka Mrs. Fussypants, and her partner Barbara Jones, aka one2onenetwork are calling in the tribe to Nashville for a lingerie and Cosmo-tinged party that Carrie Bradshaw and her gang of pals would surely enjoy (if they were moms of 5 with their own businesses, a relationship with their lord Jesus Christ, and blogs and blog-based businesses of their own, that is.)

The conference pitch is to come to Nashville for fun and fellowship  and "learn from other women about building your blog, your brand, and your business while achieving bliss in those other areas that are so important too: being a mom, a wife, and being true to yourself."

So here's the thing:

• Would I, an irreverent New York Jew transplanted to the Bay area, feel comfortable at Blissdom?
  
• Could I too be a Belle of Blissdom?
  
• Or would my life as a Bella strike me from the lists?
  
• Would the fact I don't have small kids, or a husband annoyingly but charmingly underfoot a home, deter me from feeling welcomed at this conference? 
  

And how about that Jesus thing? If God's grace comes with a cross on it, would I feel welcomed?

While it's clear the conference wants to bring into people by the boatload who aspire to Allison Worthington's ability to balance  "her magazine, her mommy blog, her photo jewelry business, five young sons and a wonderful husband with lots of coffee and God's grace,"  it might also be true that this conference isn't interested in attracting people who doesn't fit that model, including childless and single people, LGBT ers and people of color who don't fit the demo.

On the other hand, this might be the just the women's blogging audience that  Walmart is looking for. Maybe Walmart has funded Momtourage (iVillage) and Blissdom( this event) because these are their people.

(Of course if that means the more  diverse group at BlogHer just isn't, it will make me want to scream loudly for at least an hour.)

Short version: Am I the only one who gets the vibe that Blissdom is ground zero for the post-sorority, married with children version of SATC with blogging?

Or am I just being Mrs. Crankpants this morning?

(Update: I'm not angry about this at all. I think it's fine for everyone to organize into whatever affinity groups ring true for them, and I respect all beliefs and religions, At the same time, this is the first women's blogging group I've run into where many of the organizers list both having kids, being a good wife, and their Christian faith as key to their lives--and while it makes perfectly good sense--it's also, uh, surprising, especially with Walmart forking out $$ so fast and all.)

Update 2: Mom 2.0 Summit, another niche conference in a rapidly crowding category.

I'm two miles from where the Oakland protests have been happening and watching the action on twitter (via search) and friendfeed updates. Checked into KRON, but the taped footage seemed to fall short of feeling real time--while the footage the police tried to confiscate--but weren't able to--seems frighteningly real.

YouTube has the purported footage of the police handcuffing and then shooting Oscar Grant in a BART station and the Oakland blogs  are filled with news. Photog Thomas Hawk is out shooting in Oakland, with pictures to come on flickr.

Meanwhile, this photo from earlier in the day captures the "why is this happening" mood of many of the tweets I am seeing. (More photos on flickr)

For me, this horrific tragedy and the coverage of the protest underscore several things:

• There is no real media outlet for Oakland--and we need one
• Neighborhoods in Oakland lack blog voices--the voices tonight are on twitter
• Citizen Journalism has blossomed into something far beyond what it started as--these videos and photos speak truth to power

My heart goes out to the family and friends of Oscar Grant, thank you to everyone documenting what is going on.

Speeding back into old skool linking, I have to say not only is this piece by Atherton Bartelby on Mashable a delight, his own blog, Curious Affairs, looks like another find. (God, it is such a pleasure to read someone who can actually write!!)

Bartelby posits that the "follow fail" happens when someone follows you whom you would never follow back cause they're boring, or callow or NOC.  "This is the person whose follow on Twitter," he says, " you simply cannot bring yourself to return."

So what are the gaffes that make someone not want to follow you back? Read the whole thing here--but here's a prized quote (I prize it):

"For me, Twitter is not a shallow popularity contest, it is about forging interesting connections and conversations with other people. My Twitter followers are far more to me than a simple follower count: they are friends, they are colleagues, they are collaborators, they are peers, and they are sources. To follow someone in return whose only intent is clearly to acquire more followers would be to devalue the esteem with which I hold my other followers."

1.Are they animatronic robots,fleshy fembots, or real live (tech) girls? Be careful about getting too close to the girl geeks coming to ShesGeeky #3 in January 2009; your fantasies might be compromised.


2. Are you a woman who self-identifies as a geek? Do you dream in code, weld, program software/machines or plan world domination with your ear piece plugged in 24/7? Do your friends think you are a net addict? Do you think anywhere your camera, flip cam and laptop/web connection live is *home*?

3. She's Geeky is an (un)conference for women who are geeks that is going to be held in Mountain View, CA on January 30 and 31st. The last one, in October 2007, was wonderful; given that everyone on the planet is 18 months older and therefore 11.2 (net) years more web savvy, this one should be even better, so long as you show up and make it so.

Here's the deal: It's two days, starting price is $60.00 per day, scholarships and discounts for unemployed folks (even laid-off engineers!) are available, and the fee includes payment for the space at the Computer History Museum, some schwag, and all the food you can eat.

• Website: http://www.shegeeky.org
• BLOG: http://shesgeeky.org/sg/blog/
• WIKI: http://shesgeeky.org/wiki/

• Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=5010135719
• Event on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=53885344492
• LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=39189

Given how rapidly magazines are crashing around them, it's not surprising some journalists may act confused, but the recent call to the populace at large by Bizsweek writer Stephen Baker seems more designed to satisfy his boss and new Twitterer John Bryne's desire to make BW all social media-y and transparent than to actually find the best interview subjects to talk about social media with. 

The ask--"Who should we profile as a social media maven?"--came with a list o' names that seemed like linkbait central (i,e. link to lots of people and get lots of traffic), but was low in any real critera, suggesting either that Baker, a usually keen journalist, was bowing to a Digg/twitority wisdom of crowds thing (in which case, why does anyone need him?)--or this was a stunt, pure and simple.

Yeah, I'm on the list, and yes, of course I'd like to be interviewed by BizWeek again, especially since I have a new startup that is right in the zone launching in Q1 (and yeah, I am slammed working away) but without Baker telling the planet what his criteria might be, this is a pretty sloppy mess.

Or the basis for an article about the socialable web and what--when you cast your net out--you actually get back. (That piece would be amusing indeed, but isn't there a less crude way to arrive there?)

Hmmmph.(Practicing curmudgeonly skills).

So, the year our economy tanked is ending today and a new year, complete with a smarter president and a sobered American populace, is about to start. Not soon enough, folks.
 I'm all about looking ahead, but what would I call out as memorable happenings for 2008 from my little vantage point?

1. BlogHer went large
Not only did feel good and have good values women's network site BlogHer raise enough $$ in a B round to suggest a $38MM valuation might be possible, it got an investment(aka strategic partnership) from Web 1.0 women's network NCBi/iVillage, which must have made everyone on the team in general and former women.com exec editor and BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone in particular feel like a baton had been passed. Even more, BlogHer birthed a book, became THE destination for Mommybloggers, and hired slews of people, proving the scrappy underdog was now the Man (okay, I mean, the Wo-man).

2. Sex sites flopped, but new ones showed up.
Losses: Famous divorced sex blogger Jefferson of One Life, Take Two, basically took his blog offline after some heavy-duty personal issues blew up .
 
Brilliant writer/sexworker/feminist troublemaker Melissa Grant Gira went from the joy of a highly visible job sexing the Silicon Valley economy at Valleywag to freelancer and start-up queen (boffery.com)
.
Gains: Amelia McDonell-Parry and Catherine Strawn and a gang of others started the oh so appealing The Frisky, a sex & relationships site that not only features Susannah Breslin of The Reverse Cowgirl Fame, but actually has hawt and funny articles (often, both at once.)

Sarah Dopp came out from behind another name and owned up to building genderfork, a celebration of androgyny and rolling your own, and Sinclair Sexsmith, a hot boi blogger, returned the favor with Queer Eye Candy, for those of every sexual persuasion who like to look.

3. Tech incubators, bar camps, and start-up weekends became cool. As did giving the lucky start-ups large sums of cash to fund nice offices and new iPhones (but not Aeron chairs)
. Maybe it was the vantage point of a summer in Boulder at incubator ground zero (TechStars), and the fact that 60% of the folks laid off from Yahoo! with me started their own companies (or went to start-ups), but there were moments when getting funding seemed like the 00s answer to the depression's stay awake and dance contests, or more complicated versions of the 50s Queen for a Day (most for guys, and with spreadsheets, this time.)

4. Crowd-sourcing became the new quality, aka if it's high up on DIGG, it's gotta be good.
Even as Mike Arrington's TechCrunch gripped the Web 2.0 news space even more tightly than in 2007 (and with so many more sites, events, and writers), squirming digerati developed new interest in the wisdom of crowds, with Seesmic founder and LeWeb organizer Loic LeMeur proclaiming that the biggest need for twitter was to match a poster's identity and their authority so we could appraise their idea BEFORE we read it (he may live in Palo Alto, but that sounds so French!)

5. Giving is good, and social media helps you self-organize for change.
Pistachio and Beth Kanter used twitter, and facebook, to raise funds for good causes.  The Knight Foundation and The McArthur Foundation(Note: I have connections to Knight) employed transparent tools to help give $$ away. Of course, the ultimate was the Obama campaign, whose gift that keeps on giving was to never stop  selling, leading to amazing house parties AFTER the election.

6. Yahoo tanked--and we all watched--and commented, in real time.
Were you wondering if I'd get to this one? Who could omit mentioning the bipolar relationship between Yahoo, Microsoft and all the press people everyone kept leaking to as layoffs led to offers led to rejected led to layoffs, all accompanied by the steady downward creep of the stock price. Even better, Kara Swisher's commentary proved that bull(shit)-baiting was still a worthy sport.

7. The new tech kids kicked the old kids-and the old kids kicked back
This was the year some fresh new voices came into the Web 2.0 bell jar, in some cases fitting right in, in others, blowing it open.  Steve Hodson, Sarah Perez and Corvida all had smart things to say and parlayed their smarts into paying blogging gigs with bigger sites; Louis Gray emerged from the suburbs with a passion and verve that made others compare his blog to Robert Scoble's.  Mike Arrington picked up Steve Gillmor and made him an honest man (and IT blogger); Anne Zelenka moved on to teach math (sigh). New (to me) voices that made me keep reading included Oril Yakuel, Dave "digidave" Cohn, and my friend Patricia Handschiegel.

8. Macs Attacked.
Between February and September 2008, I bought 2 Apple computers and 3 iPods.  In 2007, I bought one meensy little shuffle. Multiply me by 44 million people and you can understand how Apple blew up into one of the consumer brand companies that no one could get enough of.

9. Lifestreaming became real.
First of all, the tools to put it all out there matured. Suddenly it became possible to put yourself out there on Facebook, friendfeed, seesmic, viddler, vimeo, 12 seconds, and www.ustream.tv and build a picture of your life that could turn you into a mega brand.  For some folks, this worked out really well (viz Chris Brogan, 26,639 twitter followers); for others, it led to (much) ridicule (viz Julia Allison, nonsociety).

10. A million flowers bloomed-social media, publishing, SaS tools transformed small businesses.
Blogging, lifestreaming, ecommerce and community are a trifecta plus one that is powering all sorts of successful, moderately successful and ultimately unsuccessful enterprises. From Mommybloggers selling ads, to crafters blogging about their etsy shops to would-be prophets of cool hawking the latest organic local jam to urban homesteaders selling worm-bin designs and red worms by the pound to their neighbors, there has been a rise in individual entrepreneurship the web continues to power.

What's ahead in 2009?  Lots more small businesses and entrepreneurs, increased emphasis on community and surprising new investments.

If I spent a week combing through the 1,000-odd lookback, look foward and round up lists, this might be more comprehensive--but you wouldn't be reading it on New Year's Day. So, fast, cheap, and good, here's a few lists that are on my must-read.

Rex Sorgatz: 30 most notable blogs of 2008
Nothing like a fresh and authoritative point of view to help enliven the blogroll!

TechMeme, Megan McCarthy: Top Ten Tech Stories of 2008
Don't love the list items (because I am not a fan of how TechMeme turned into CNET as the breaking news home for consumer electronics product stories, ugh), but love that Miz Megan is there to write the list(and more lists to come.)

Orli Yakuel:The Web in 2008
Israeli blogger Orli has her own take on things, one that always enhances my perspective--and this video piece is no exception.

Louis Gray,10 Things I Wish I Would Do Better On the Web Come 2009
A new king of I-centered blogging has great notes to share.

Everyday Journalism: Resolutions for journalism students: become invaluable
Isn't it true that all of us need to become invaluable and network like crazy in 2009?
Kudos to recent grad Suzannah Yada  for articulating that. (Via Ryan Sholin)

I know it's a safety thing, but I hate the fact it's going to be against the law to text while driving in California starting tomorrow. Safety rules, but my guilty pleasure during traffic jams is to read and twitter, both of which are about to become illegal.

There's a super-detailed article in the LA Times that lays out the law(and links to the PDF of VC 23123.5 (b)--but the short version is you can't text, browse the web on your phone (!), or do any email or messaging of any type.  At all times, you have to be in full control of your vehicle, which means keeping your nose out of that screen. (Susan sez: Using your GPS does not count--and there are no laws about doing any of this on your bike.)

Can you park your (still running) car and text/browse/post? Yep.
And if you're parked and the engine is off, these new laws do not apply.

Fines? Similar to making calls without a hands-free device while driving- first violation, $20; subsequent violations, $50--plus  local court costs and program fees. Not exactly pretty (I am already imagining the stake-outs on Palo Alto streets; the cops there are expert at catching and extracting fines from drivers who break the rules.

So I headed to NYC for meetings (trashed by the storm) and a family visit(that worked) and then came to Ohio to hang with the BF's family and dear friends. It's been an interesting week, calm and freezing, with enough online access to keep me from going nuts (and to remind me what a workaholic I am).

Here's some of what I learned and reflected on this week:
1) Winter is worse in NYC, especially Manhattan, than other places.  The extreme snow I plodded through most of the week was easy to handle when I wasn't navigating Manhattan streets, subways and public transport. Not really going anywhere made the snow a nice scenic benefit; even when I did travel, using a car made it easier.  Lesson 1: If I ever consider moving back east, locate work and home really close together so travelling is lessened--that's where the curses are, not the snow itself.

2) Social media--say what?  My NYC family has graduated to Linked-In, but for those over 15, Facebook is uncharted territory and twitter is who knows what. friend feed? nuthin'.  Here is in the Midwest, among people who don't associate computers with either their personal identity or a means of being cool, everyone knows what Facebook is (and most use it), but LinkedIn seems kinda new-fangled, and twitter is a ghost. Lesson: For many people, computers are still something you use to get work done more efficiently.

3) Despite #2, social media provides insight and knowledge into people that can float all boats.  My old friend Phil Boiarski and his wife Kay and I met up and we had a great time and lots to talk about! Why? We follow one another on twitter and via blogs, flickr, friendfeed, etc. Man, did that narrow the gap! Lesson: Having rapport counts for a lot, but social media can feed it.

4) E-commerce is essential for anyone not living near a big city.  We're spending the last couple of days with some friends in a college town hours from both Columbus and Cleveland--and the amount of mail order goods that flows through here is impressive. Not that there isn't a good market, and a Whole Foods 90 minutes away, but the more specific alternative for lots of things is ordering online. Books, organic ingredients, special break flours, you name it...the postman delivers.

5) There's no place like home.  Getting away is swell, but I can't wait to get back to California. Not only do I have tons of work to do, but I just want to dig in in my own space, And reconnect with the people I haven't seen since I was out here. And....

Loic said we needed search by authority and now we have it in the new twitority. Search on topic and sort the results by number of subscribers.

The wisdom of the crowds is always right? Marketers rule, correct?

I know I am a certified troublemaker because I have NO INTEREST in checking tweets again followers and popularity. For mass market concensus, I have google, yahoo! buzz and the top tech bloggers, who circle one another relentlessly with  minute variations on the same ideas (for the most part).

Folks, I want to find the edge cases. I want to read the fringe dwellers, the outliers, the folks who think different, not the same. I want the Ezra Kleins before they go big, the Corvida's before chasing fame hit. I want the bloggers who influence the influencers and the people who make the look at things afresh.

I am glad Loic got what he wants so fast, and I am sure I will visit twitority again, but I want something different--and a helluva lot more interesting.

"We are a land of idiots. Idiots care about who is following them. Idiots care more about celebrity news than science. Or technology. Or geeky stuff.

Idiots try to rank things based on who has the most followers. Idiots can't be bothered with thinking about adding value like Tim O'Reilly or Jay Rosen, all guys who teach you something in nearly every tweet and who I can't remember ever caring about how many followers they have."

--Robert Scoble, a wonderful person and amazingly hardworking blogger who is right that it all comes down to the split between conversations and sharp marketing for some people and that the most followed people do not neccessarily stand as the thought leaders.

Okay, so was it evil to ask Mr.Tweet to recommend twitters for @winstonthedog to follow?

I mean, it makes me sad that my own usage of Mr. Tweet seemed to be a one-time thing.

Given that Mr, Tweet hasn't added features yet that check in with me at future times and recommend more people to follow (and that is my #1 feature request), I decided to reviist Mr. Tweet on my American Bulldog's behalf.

So, here's what Mr,. Tweet said about Mr. Winston's recommendations:
winstonthebulldog should follow his followers steve gillmor, leolaporte, george kelly,
deannazandt, Dobromir Hadzhiev, johanthedog, susan bratton, nick starr and stellaunathecat.

(Susan sez: This is an august and witty group, but there's only one dog, what's with that, Mr Tweet?)

And as for the influencers Winstonthedog should follow, according to Mr, Tweet, the top folks on the list are @kevinmarks, @laughingsquid, @elisac, @jerrymichalski, @jdlasica and @micah. 

No dogs in that  pack, Mr, Tweet, tho some of these fellas do bark.

Susan sez: Hey, since you're a machine, can't you classify the social graph to include refers to twittering dogs? Come on, now.

Louis Gray has written a hilarious piece--here's a snippet:
JosephOfGalilee: AFK for a bit w/@MaryofNazareth. Headed to Bethlehem. #caesartax

JosephOfGalilee:@MaryofNazareth says no baby tonight. But can't be long now.

MaryofNazareth: Off to Bethlehem! Hope we find a good inn. @JosephOfGalilee waited until last minute. #caesartax

MaryofNazareth: Bethlehem is a zoo. @JosephOfGalilee says @InnKeeper1 claimed "no room". Uh-oh.

JosephOfGalilee: No room at the inn. @InnKeeper1 and @InnKeeper2 both. Kill me now. @MaryofNazareth not looking happy.

Susan sez: Of course, if you a) understand this (including the #hastags), and b) think it is funny,  you need to be spending the holidays off the computer, just like I am doing (not).

happy holidays everyone.and enjoy your time online--and off.

There's a blogosphere meme circling around this month that can be described as "do lifestreaming tools such as friendfeed and twitter ruin perfectly good blogger's traffic, authority, ideas?"

Mike Arrington says tech blogger Robert Scoble is an addict who needs an intervention so he'll return to his roots writing perceptive pieces on his blog;--"all that content is just really forgettable, compared to a good thought piece that people refer back to over time. There is no direct way to monetize any of that content, which is something that a full time blogger with a family really needs to think about."

Scoble replies that he;s happy with his time investment, both because of the greater number of followers and the richer conversation and because he's increased his information & news sources.

The always pragmatic Steve Rubel chimes in " As personal branding becomes a weapon in a down economy, look for blogging to make a return run."

Of course what's interesting here is not what an insular circle of high-tech white guys have to say about one another (we get way too much of that already). It's the questions about what place blogging has in a world where the insta-pop corn of twitterstreams and friendfeed communities can be darn near irresistible (like Scoble, I love both friendfeed and twitter.)

I'd side with my new friend Francine Hardaway and say that blogging is incomparable for the following:

• Writing longer, more reflective thought pieces (we're talking over 140 words here as long, people),
• Writing across niche communities to broader and more inclusive audiences
• Sharing personal voice and perspective in a more sustained way
• A means to establish voice and reputation

However, where I think twitter and friendfeed excel over blogging is in building the sociable web in almost real time.  There is no other medium that can give me names of restaurants in Cleveland and chances to meet virtual connections outside of lifestreaming (Facebook, twitter, etc.). The  lazyweb is unparalled  when put to use in the twitter stream, and the loud, messy joy of the twittersphere is infectionous.

But, it ain't blogging. And if you are a writer at heart, you have to blog. My guess is for Scoble, what we've talking here isn't compulsion, but goal-setting.

--After all, if your wish is to be a fundable brand, a one mand band of product,content, output--what you need are hard, targeted numbers--numbers on a scale that lifestreaming totally provides.

No slam on blogging from Robert, just a wish for community--and a way to use engagement, aka community--to justify dollars.

Oh, twitter, I love thee, how do I count the ways? In a burst of year end enthusiasm, programmers and analysts alike have done a push on state of the twittersphere data.
HubSpots's got a Technorati-inspired State of the Twittersphere PDF, and flip kromers got  interesting data extraction/spreadsheet/database material.

Some stats from Hubspot:

• Twitter is dominated by newer users - 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
• An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day
• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
• 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all

Data from a  scrape of the twitter friend graph by Phil'flip' Kromer

• about 2.7M users
• 10M tweets
• 58M edges
• 219,000 #hashtags
  
• full metadata on users and relationships
• calculated pagerank for users

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4439/State-of-the-Twittersphere-Q4-2008-Report.aspx

Is there something about hard-bitten NYTimes reporters that makes they go all gooey everytime they stumble across--and then write about--anything Web 2.0-ish?

Gushiness is the only thing I can think of-besides needing to fill column inches--that can justify the latest breathless wet kiss for @themediaisdying, a twitter stream of insider-y, media-= bistro like news about media layoffs and collapses (oh yes, and the fact media reporters are fascinated by their own industry).

My snarkiness here is because while the 3,000 followers themediaisdying has garnered in 3 weeks is commendable (as is their strategy of messaging every new person who signs up and asking them to invite all their friends as well), there are people--marketers--on twitter who have 10 times this traffic--and no Times reporters seem to be writing about them.

Why not write about Chris Brogan, who, with 26,250 followers, seems to be turning into the Jimmy Stewart of the interwebs?

Or the super clever Merlin Mann, with 32,000?

Or the  appealing Veronica Belmont (38,000)?

Of course, none of them are focusing on the crash and burn of the media industry, which @themediaisdying covers extremely well. But the size of their audience ain't the news, honey, not in this world.

The Knight Foundation, creators of the Knight News Challenge and many other innovative cool programs, is among the winners of the first We Media Game Changer awards from ifocos.org,  Competing with many cool organizations including BlogHer and Twitter, Knight won for "changing its own approach and everyone else's by shifting it's money to media innovation and the information needs of communities."

As someone who is connected to both Knight and WeMedia, I'm thrilled by this news. Congrats, Alberto, Eric, Gary & Jose--this is well-deserved.

So the latest round of big Yahoo! layoffs is done, and the people picking up the pieces at Big Purple can draw their wagons closer together and hunker down in the bunker and all that good stuff--at least until they take two weeks off over the holidays.

Before we all move on, however, it's worth noting the amazing transparency around this layoff--the flickr photos, the tweets, the friend feed posts.

I'm hoping some of the ex-Yahoos! document their next moves with equal transparency--Yahoo! let go some amazing people, including George Oates, the first flickr designer and the Brickhouse crew, including the wonderful Jeannie Yang, and a whole host of talented coders and engineers.

One of the really cool things about twitter is that it allows the community to share, While some messages are restricted to only those you follow (or who follow you), the #(hashtag) is a twitter format that can show up across messages and follow lists.  (In other words, if  #yahoo, everyone using the same has
htag or with that data in their profile will see it).

Two social venture entrepreneurs, Marnie Webb and Allison Fine, built a cool little app that takes advantage of twitter's community and #hashtag capabilities. Call The Give List, it's a sweet little app with its own wordpress blog that lets twitterers (that's alot of us now, right?) send suggestions for meaningful ways to give without spending money on presents right to the blog as a twitter stream. These lists then show up on the site, where readers can vote and rank them.

Some of the post popular ideas are:

1. Find a local domestic abuse shelter and donate clothes and toys. | by @gurnage; View Tweet
2. Have too many skymiles? Donate to injured solders' families so they can visit them. | by @gurnage; View Tweet
3. Have season tickets? Give a few away to local Youth org. | by @webb; View Tweet
4. Donate clothes | by @vanessamason; View Tweet
5. In Boston, please consider asking people to give food to the pantry at Boston Medical College instead of gifts. | by @joewaters; View Tweet
6. When people ask what you want for Christmas, ask them to give canned goods to a food pantry. | by @stoweboyd; View Tweet

The Give List just got written up in the NYTimes; for some reason, what the creators want you to really do is got there and make a comment at the end of the article.

So, wouldja?

Last February, when Yahoo! did its last big layoff, Ryan Kuder live-twittered his layoff, followed my  twittering and blogging my dismissal.  Our public transparency made the news, much to our surprise--some people felt it was a first time that let go employees didn't slink off and instead shared openly.

Today, as the world watches, Yahoo! is doing another big layoff, almost 12 months later. Only nobody is surprised by the tweets and blog posts about what's going on. What's more typical this time around is the tweet from just let go Brit @BenWard, who wrote "Totally fucking laid off. You could say that I'm not very happy about it. You would be right to say that." and had at least 20 people twitter advice and job help within an hour.

Even more pointedly, it's almost a media sport, with what feels like at least hundreds of people tracking tweets and posting stories.

Even with the poor economy and all the other companies' cuts, the reaction to the Yahoo! layoffs shows that we've clearly tipped into another universe, one where America is (finally) embracing high-touch communication and transparency and where getting laid off is something that happens, even if it sucks.

I've been an avid blogger for the past five years, but it's never been something I made money with directly. The blog was great to bring me into a larger community, help me get consulting gigs, and speak truth to power, in a small way, to my bosses at Yahoo!. But now that I am almost a year out in self-employment land, with one start-up sprint under my belt and a big push happening on the second incarnation, I'm well aware that I've got to think about what I do to cover my expenses starting in March (when a current project winds down).

That train of thought led to me wanting to understand whether my blog, which I've always written for fun, could actually make me any money. It also led me to think about how un-oriented toward increasing my traffic, growing followers or building a brand I've been in the past few years.  Sure, I'm out there,  but I don't try to build traffic the way some folks do so well--and, on reflection, I felt that made me a little too, uh, old school?

So, what did I do?
A)    Reviewed colleagues in my niche: Went back over some newer bloggers I liked and reviewed how they positioned themselves: louis gray & corvida, in particular.

Also took a more critical look at techcrunch, readwriteweb, and gigaom. Informative, but didn't see a lot I would change on my blog. Just motivated me to post more often.

B)    Revisited the twitterverse. I also took a long, hard look at how I used twitter--and how other people--with far larger followings--used it.

 Bingo! Light bulb went off in head!

After reviewing the twitter style of folks like chris brogan(21,000 + followers), Scott Beale (21,000 following) and Pistachio (11,000+), the realization suddenly hit--these folks are doing great micro-blogging, delivering ideas and links in their tweets (Uh, duh, what was it about twitter I was somehow missing?)

I then decided where to put my chips: twitter--and increased, more topical blogging.

So, first I started consciously shifting my twitter style and topics; as a long time blogger,I didn't find that too difficult.
Then I started posting blog entries(once again), 3-4X a day.
I pushed myself to do that last post at night about something relevant, and to add my two cents if I had relevant thoughts or a back story.
.
In that spirit, I wrote a post that commented on the pending Yahoo layoffs; part of that post was then picked up as John Paczkowski's Quote of the Day, which got my post out there.

At the same time, Fast Company put an article that quoted me as a Web 2.0 expert on their home page; I added my twitter links and a welcome to my site when that went live. And that put my blog out there, along with my lifestream feeds.

Results? On Nov 24, I had 949 twitter followers; today, Dec 8 , I have 1,025--the biggest jump in my history.
 
How does this fit with following social capital?

Creating information with value leads to people following you, and/or clicking on links, which in turn increases followers, unique visitors and page views. Which, for some people, leads to enough ad revenue to pay for a couple of lattes every week (right now, that would be me) and a sense that it is possible to learn something new, every day.

I am going to keep playing with making the blog and my twitter stream as useful as possible to people who read them, will continue sharing the backstory on these experiments as well.

If you're here because of Allyson Kapin's piece on Web 2.0 and 2009 predictions on the FC web site, welcome!  My current obsessions are Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 tools, social media, tech trends focused on consumers, entrepreneurship, startups and feminism. I blog about most of them here, daily. 

If you want to say hi, please leave a comment!
You can follow me on twitter at @susanmernit, or friendfeed.com at smernit.

My friend and Knight colleague, the amazingly energetic David Cohn has gotten a grant from the Full Circle Fund to hire a community organizer for Spot.us, the online marketplace for news he's just created (with a 2007 Knight News Challenge grant).

It's so thrilling to hear about a good job this month, I wanted to post it--here's the job description and how to apply:

Community Organizer, Spot Us

Hours: Full-time temporary (about six months)

Location: Off-site (telecommuting, SF Bay Area only)

Salary: Competitive

About Us

Spot.Us is pioneering nonprofit that uses microphilanthropy as a means of funding investigative journalism here in the Bay Area. You can learn more about us from recent press coverage: http://spot.us/pages/press 

Job Description:

We are looking for a community organizer to help manage and grow the network of individuals who use Spot.Us to support investigative journalism through small donations. This position will be full time for roughly six months with the potential to extend the relationship.  

Qualifications:

• Experience in fundraising through individuals and/or community organizing,
• Background in journalism, or familiarity with the issues faced by reporters, editors and news consumers, and the needs of the communities they serve.
• Excellent people skills, from phone calls to public speaking to one-on-one meetings
• Top shelf writing and proofreading skills.
• Advanced understanding and use of Facebook, Twitter, Ning, and other types of social media. "Digital natives" with innate online marketing skills welcome.
• Demonstrated commitment to the civic mission of journalism to speak truth to power, comfort the afflicted, and spur dialogue in a democracy.
• Self-motivated when it comes to research and taking initiative. Able to work remotely.
• Ability to work with the founder of Spot.Us, to think creatively and critically about the project and communicate those ideas.
• Located in Bay Area

 

To Apply: 

• Please send a resume and a cover letter describing your background and potential role with Spot.Us, including a brief outline of daily activities.
• Three links to your blog, LinkedIn pages, etc.
• One representative writing sample (appeal letter, publicity or marketing document, blog post, etc.)

 

All applications material should be e-mailed to info [At] spot [dot] us with the words "Community Manager" in the subject line.  
 

Spot.Us is an equal opportunity employer. No phone calls, faxes or snail mail.

1 million plus layoffs happened in the US in 2008. There were 181,671 corporate layoffs announced in November, and there will be at least 20,000+ in media and technology in December. In other words, if you're not the person contemplating filing for unemployment benefits, how it sucks to look for a job right now, and will I end up on the bread line?, you're living with, related to, or close to someone in this situation.

There is nothing like a holiday where covering costs in the year ahead is an open question to kill off holiday cheer. Being one of the rats on the sinking ship may be an evil joke when you work at Yahoo, but it's terrifying when it's your own little ship that may be sinking.

According to Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, November 2008 was the worst month for layoffs since January 2002, when large employers cut nearly 250,000 jobs as the nation tried to shake off the prior-year recession and the Sept. 11 attacks. For all we know, December may surpass November in job loss, and for those without steady gigs, the sheer magnitude of the numbers seems daunting.

Welcome to the patchwork economy of 2009. Given the severe nature of this recession and the sheer redundancy of so many laid-off product managers, writers, editors, marketing folks, sales people, administrative coordinators and so on, it looks like we're headed into a time when far too many of us are going to be doing a little of this and a little of that to get by.

Blogger, writer, editor, barista, cleaning lady?

So many of my friends are reeling, well aware that the bottom in their industries--and in the economy as a whole--just hasn't been hit. I'm not going to be surprised, after the holidays, when I hear about friends doing small projects together, or taking service-y part-time jobs (if there are any to be had) or, like in the last recession, packing up and heading for somewhere cheaper, or with more family to lean on.

On one hand, I find this situation incredibly depressing--we're plummeting from over-expanded go-go years into enforced austerity with almost no transitions. On the other hand, I wonder what new things will come out of it---will Americans reinvent their priorities now that we are out of cash(and credit)?

Will neighbors use social media tools like twitter to create planned--or on the fly--dinner clubs? Or swap and share tools, maybe creating a community list, rather than buying unto themselves? Will we dial Christmas down to a low murmur where we can actually consider what we are truly thankful for--rather than focus on what someone else could purchase, but we couldn't?

The good news about a patchwork economy is that is has the potential to bring people closer together, out of their President-Bush-sized palatial homes in the burbs and their apartments in the cities, to consider how they can help each other get through the downturn. The good news is that the patchwork economy can take some of the air out of America's adrenalin-driven, reality-TV show hyper-consumerism, where the important what you drive, how you look and what you buy are the values imparted.

The bad news though, is that the patch-work economy is hard. Hard-headed, hard-nosed, fragmentary, scarce. Patchwork means patching or piercing together, often the scraps and the bits left over. And as anyone who's every sewn any stray bit of doll clothes for a child quickly learns, it's tedious work.

In the patchwork economy, we'll be trading off time-that precious commodity we used to have too little of--for dollars, or for services that will keep us from having to spend the now scarcer dollars we do have. Perhaps the patchwork economy will be the impetus for more of us to grow food--crops and urban chickens and herbs--in our backyards--I know I am thinking about it (though I will probably skip the chickens).

Perhaps more people will be moved to reduce their impact on the environment as much as they can by buying recycled items, bicycling and walking, taking public transport and moving away from those insidiously evil (and enduring) plastic bags.

It would be optimistic to imagine that adversity is going to bring everyone together; my fear is that the marginal will become even more marginalized, and as the numbers of homeless and dispossessed persons rise, so do the numbers of those we see as "other."

For myself, in the midst of launching an exciting new startup and at the relative beginning of a new relationship, there is the challenge of understanding how, over the next 12 months, I am going to cover my expenses. A year ago, I might have said "Find a new job." Six months ago I would have said "Raise some angel money." But today, I'm telling myself to tighten my belt, conserve costs, and look for consulting gigs and project work, joining the patchwork economy where it lives.

(Cross posted to Huffington Post)

If you were looking for proof us blase types in web 2.0 land get jaded with technology way too fast, the recent article in the Guardian UK by Jack Schofield about the joys of techmeme, memeorandum and the other time and link-based aggregators created by Gabe Rivera might be one of the documents to consider.

Schofield says "Memeorandum is embarrassingly better than Google News," but the overall product suite doesn't cover enough topics. (Does this mean Techmeme is jumping--or has jumped--the shark?)

Contrast this with the astute nod to ycombinator's Hacker News from VC Fred Wilson: "within the services that cater specifically to the tech audience I want to reach and be part of (techmeme, hacker news, twitter, friendfeed), there has been a noticeable move up by hacker news (news.ycombinator.com) and twitter and a noticeable move down by techmeme."

What do you all think?

News today that SixApart, the blogging/CMS/publishing tools company that powers this blog, has acquired Pownce, the twitter-like microblogging service run by Leah Culver and others and launched almost a year ago.

It's always glorious to hear that a hard-working start-up has gotten enough success to be acquired, but this acquisition is especially interesting because it shows how closely real-time presence and lifestreaming tools and CMS platforms are moving together, as web publishing becomes a full lifestream of community, real-time engagement and historical archives of data (video, pictures, text).

As with Rael Dornfest, this is clearly a talent and tools acquisition, but with this acquisition comes the "advisory services" of Digg's Kevin Rose and Dan Burka. In his acquisition.welcome post, CEO Chris Alden notes his plans to marry Vox and Pownce; you can see the vox blogs of Leah and Mike Malone have been up for 5 whole seconds. Community manager Ariel Waldman also has a brand spankin new Vox blog, so I'd say that signals intent to bring some of the Pownce cool kids sass into the now snooz-ier than planned Vox brand.

Was this a "we acquired your debt and paid back your investors" acquisition, or a we paid cash on the barrel for you deal? I'd vote for the former, but only those involved know.

Guess Leah and Mike are now employees once more..but for how long?

When you are addicted to the Internet, like me, and when you go offline for three days during a holiday with family, like I just did, you notice things.  My loss was not the net (heaven forbid, I have a browser on my phone), but my social media tools and community (twitter stopped working on my phone and so on...)
Now that I am (joyously) reconnected, so observations:

• When you are offline, you miss news delivered to you personally in the bulletin-like format of personal emails (truth is, I did get email on my phone, just not the net)
• Without twitter, there is no extended community to monitor and feel connected to (true continuous partial attention)
• Without friendfeed, there are no news links & commentary to enhance and expand news. And there is no meme of the day; the "best of" post everyone piles onto with comments.
• And web surfing on a little browser isn't the same...most sites are not optimized (I know, I bought a Blackberry instead of an Apple and this is what I get...)

Anyway, there are some new tools I am playing with that I didn't miss, but now that I am re-wired, seem hella fun:

• Plinky. Jason said don't say anything, so no info yet, more to come on this one
• Zentact: Tag your friends and contacts and then better manage relationships; I'm intrigued, but I imported too many people so the product loads way too slow to really test.
• Mr tweet: Is this a one trick pony? Had a great time when I got my first report of twitter people to follow...will there be more? (hint, hint, fellas).

When I signed up for Mr. Tweet, the new app that helps you discover who you should be following among your network of followers and twittering influencers, it was with the same due diligence that has made me sign up for so many social medial apps that the abandoned detrius of those trials feels akin to asteroids floating around the moon.

But Mr. Tweet is great.  Not only did I learn that I had some highly interesting followers I needed to follow back, I got an analysis and report of the influencers Mr. Tweet recommended I follow--not only their names, web sites and locations, but info on their average daily tweets, if they responded to people they did not follow, and so on.(I am now going to try using MrTweet with my dog's twitter account and see how the algo holds up.)

Checking out the team behind Mr. Tweet led me to Yu-Shan Fung, fomer Amazon engineer,  and Steve Ming Yeow Ng, with my friend Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist at Amazon who is credited as their advisor. These folks say they are passionate about people discovery, self-organizing tools, and cutting through the mess of data claoming our attention...I'm eager to learn more about what they're up to.

What could happen over at twitter when you add Rael Dornfest--someone who's created and edited a superb book series (O'Reilly Hacks), built one of the first RSS readers (Meerkat), working on the RSS spec standards and then went on to found a cool little company values of n that built Stikkit: Little yellow notes that *think*. 

Now the man's going to join forces with Ev Williams, Biz Stone and other smart people at twitter; my product development head is bursting with speculation about the cool direction twitter could go in (and thinking multiple products people, one at a time...). And of course the dude's an engineer....

TechCrunch broke the story and the twitterverse is humming with the news.

Is it totally old school to watch when two media pundits turned new media pundits get into a blogosphere cat fight?  How do we evaluate the winners--by their stance on the side of right, their chest-thumping, their clearly superior logic, or what?

In the case of this week's Ron Rosenbaum/Jeff Jarvis smack down, I propose we use their rhetoric as the battleswords--let him with the best insults, put-downs and sound bites win.  After all, isn't that what punditry really is? Twitter meets The Quotation Dictionary?

Rosenbaum, Slate:

• "Dedicated guys who did great work at the dying dailies are being made to feel by Jarvis that they deserve to be downsized. Yet who has the most honor, the men and women who did the work or the media consultants who mock them?"
• "Firing people on the writing side because of the incompetence of the business side is a long tradition in the media business, and Jarvis gives management a New Age fig leaf with which to shift the blame from their own incompetence."

Jarvis, BuzzMachine:

• "He's mad because I'm not acting sufficiently mournful and respectful at the demise of his friends' journalistic careers (and perhaps his own). I'm "increasingly heartless" about these "beautiful losers".

• "Rosenbaum accuses me of "living the good life" as a consultant, professor, blogger, blatherer. I wish. When I worked for Advance and Conde Nast, I made many times what I do now. So why the hell did I leave? Because I wanted to be more a part of the future and believed I could best do that by working with students who will be that future, by helping companies from the outside with one other perspective, and by joining in and sometimes prodding the urgent discussion about new and sustainable models for news."

Susan sez: Is Rosenbaum hitting out in the wrong direction attacking Jeff?  Does trying to take Jeff down a peg do anything to affect positive change?

Blog by blog, quote by quote, I say Jeff wins this one--what do the rest of you think?

Update: A no name poster on Jeff's blog sex Rosenbaum is irked by Jeff's ego--and that it gets in the way--but hey, do you know many successful execs w/o big egos?
 
Jeff's deeds matter more than his desire to be recognized; without the work, there would be no chances to get flown to Dubai.

John McQauid sez:"Radical innovation is the only way forward for journalism, and is incredibly promising. Whining about the bygone days (five years ago!) of newspapers and magazines may provide a necessary emotional outlet, but it's a huge waste of energy and a distraction from the challenges at hand."

The Observer's Gillan Regan jumps in to cover the story--but adds nothing.

Rosenbaum, 1, Jarvis 10,
: