2 posts tagged “internets”

I attended:

• Becoming a Professional Blogger - Matt Haughey;
• Practical Business Blogging Panel - Byron, Haughey, Baio, Powazek;
• Push, Click, Touch: The History of the Button - Bill DeRouchey;
• The New Community: How Decentralized Conversation Empowers Individuals While Creating Community Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Pocket Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois - Derek Powazek.
  

Becoming a Professional Blogger

Somehow it escaped me that Matt had quit his day job and become a full-timer, but there it was. I just didn't know. His talk was pretty good and gave me a few ideas for inspiration, including the concept of "mining" forums for blog posts. His example was an owners' forum for the Honda Ridgeline, which he recently purchased.

He did incorporate as an LLC, which is something I discussed with Ryan on Saturday in brief. He also claimed that he got lawsuit threats "once a year" which sounded scary.

Matt also went over schwag, promotional items, and discussed a lot about ads. I was encouraged to look at AdWords again because, let's face it, money is nice. Not everything though.

Practical Business Blogging Panel

Nice superstar lineup there! This was quite insightful. Ryan and I realized that DL Byron was the guy behind Clip-n-Seal, our favorite food saving device. He also did a blog for Boeing (!) and talked about the idea of getting something out there but not to just have something out there.

Lessons learned:

• Don't have your PR department write your blog.
• You can't calculate passion. This was a big one, and Dell's crappy handling of "dell hell" was the focus here.
• TypePad and Movable Type are being used to prototype sites and designs.
• Make sites more blog-friendly (working on this).
• Find people who are already blogging and tap them. Communities might not appear where you'd like them to appear, so follow them.
• Treat bloggers like journalists. Give them respect.
• TiVo totally dropped the ball on their own blog; first they allowed comments. Then they moderated them. Then they had people email comments in (!)
• A private, internal blog is the first step to a public one.

The button is the only intersection between the web and the physical world.

Buttons progressed as such:

• Novelty: doorbells and the like. "Hello". "Come here".
• Convenience: radio presets (sidebar: I was utterly fascinated by Bill's noting that if one sees 6 square buttons in a row, one assumes it's radio presets. Why 6? That's how it was in 1939) and customization of presets - really owning one's technology. Also, the phrase "push-button" becomes synonymous with "easy".
  
• The Promise of Leisure: buttons will solve domestic problems. Push-button again.
  
• Destruction: Nuclear weapons. Noted that THE BUTTON was probably the most unusable design ever.
• Provide Leisure: Buttons integrated into furniture (Tomorrowland at Disney). "Even a woman" can use complex systems controlled by buttons. And, the remote control.
• Everywhere: More buttons = better, like on UNIVAC. Also we start seeing dexterity emerge as being important here, such as in pinball games. And on games like Simon, the button is the interface.
• Metaphor
• Anything: the web, the link, the 1-Click payment button.
• Culture
• Concept
• History

There was also talk of a new electronic wallpaper in early development that would allow one's entire wall to become a button.

Good stuff. And, good website, too.

Derek Powazek's Speech With a Long Title

It was great to see him reference George Pullman, a figure integral to Chicago history. Pullman's company town is analogous to the way some sites work, but technology is kind of spreading our atoms across many sites. And ultimately, those company town sites must open themselves up and work with the decentralized fabric of the web in order to survive.

flickr was mentioned (of course!) and given props as being a company town site that still got it, and opened itself up with APIs, portable things (post your photos on your blog, RSS feeds), etc. Boing Boing was namechecked for using Technorati for its comments section. And Derek told us that people wouldn't graffiti their own "houses" (blogs), so encouraging comments that spread over the web is a good thing.

He's a great speaker, and pretty much as I figured he would be based on his online persona.

Or at least, our office. Try out this typing test, and then tell me how well you did.

I did 108 adjusted with two errors (one was just capitalization). My all-time high is 110 adjusted.