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Ultimate Blogger Dinner @ CES09

January 8, 2009

I was lucky enough to score an invite to a party last night called the Ultimate Blogger Dinner. It was hosted by Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells, the founders of Social Media Club and sponsored by Lenovo. Even though this week is absolutely crazy as I prepare for WordCamp coming up this weekend, I knew it would be a great networking opportunity and something I shouldn’t miss. I was right.

Lenovo sprang for a very nice seafood spread. Crab claws, cocktail shrimp and a shrimp ceviche that was excellent. Aside from bringing the great food, they also had an impressive product display taking up the back half of the room. Laptops of all shapes and sizes. I even saw a dual screen laptop. If I was in the market for a new laptop, I’d strongly consider that one. Way cool.

One of the best parts of going out to events like this is being able to meet face-to-face with people you only know from their avatar on Twitter. I went up to a guy last night and said, “You look so familiar.” Sure enough, that’s where I knew him from.

Chris Heuer was doing a live webcast from the event and was interviewing a few people including the CEO from Ford and several others. He asked if I would come on the show as well. You can watch the whole webcast below. If you are only interested in seeing my pretty face, fast forward to the 13 minute point.

Live Video streaming by Ustream

It was great to meet so many people last night. I’m looking forward to seeing several of them again this weekend at WordCamp.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, WordCamp Tagged With: , , ,

Building a Las Vegas posse

December 26, 2008

There are so many great tools for social networking these days. Who isn’t on Twitter and Facebook by now, right? While both of these are great for virtual meetings, I’m looking to expand that to actual face-to-face meetings. In order to do that, I need to find people in my basic area who are also interested in building their own social web.

For the past few weeks I have been focusing on building up the number of people I’m interacting with on Twitter from the Las Vegas area. To do this, I have been using twitterlocal.net to find tweeters in and around Las Vegas. I have a fairly basic rule set that I use as a guideline when it comes to who I do or don’t follow. For example, I usually don’t follow somebody if I’m going to be one of their first 5 followers. I also don’t follow people that look like they might be less than 21. This is mainly because if we schedule a meetup at a bar, I’d hate to exclude somebody I’ve gone out of my way to try and network with.

So what’s the benefit in all of this? Unless you are independently wealthy, we all have some sort of business or service that we offer. There is no better way to advertiser yourself than by going out and meeting a bunch of people who share common interests. Your first meetup may not turn up any new clients. Your second, third and fourth might not either. But, by keeping your name and face fresh in peoples minds, when it comes time that they or somebody they know need a service that you provide, your name should be on the top of their list.

I currently organize 3 groups on meetup.com. Each group has been having meetings on a monthly basis. We have some cross pollination going on with the groups, and that’s a good thing. People are getting introduced to different views on social media, blogging, self branding and promotion. My goal now is to introduce the 200 plus people I’ve found on Twitter from Las Vegas to our meetup groups.

If you are interested, here are the 3 meetup groups to join:
- Las Vegas WordPress Meetup Group
- Vegas Tweetup
- Las Vegas Social Media Club

On Saturday, January 10th at 5:30 PM, just after the end of Day 1 of WordCamp:Las Vegas, we’ll be having a meetup with all 3 groups invited. Join any of the groups above to get all the details. We’d love to see you out there!

Filed Under: Social Media, WordCamp Tagged With: ,

How to properly pre-launch a show

December 13, 2008

Several months back NBC announced that Jimmy Fallon would be taking over hosting duties for Conan O’Brien once Conan replaces Jay Leno next year on the Tonight Show. He’s just a kid (35) compared to O’Brien (45) and Leno (58) and although I don’t watch a lot of late night talk shows, I’m definitely interested to see what Jimmy brings to the table, or desk, I guess.

Earlier tonight I saw a tweet scroll by that was a response to @jimmyfallon. Usually when I see a celeb’s name as part of a twitter account, I’ll visit the profile page to see what’s what. I like to try to figure out if it’s really the celeb doing the tweeting, or if it’s some marketing guy. Not that I mind the ‘marketing guy’ angle, I just like to see how they are using social media. Regardless, what I found on Jimmy’s profile page was a link to LateNightWithJimmyFallon.com, and this is where the fun begins.

On the site Jimmy is doing a daily video blog. The first few have been a behind the scenes look at the studio where the show will be taped, meet the announcer and the first installment of “Ask Jimmy“; a weekly segment where he’ll answer questions sent in by the community. If you record a video asking your question and send it in, there’s a chance you’re going to end up being part of the segment. I’m looking forward to more episodes of Ask Jimmy.

It’s great to see a show taking advantage of social media. And take advantage they are. Aside from Jimmy personally twittering, check out this post where they list 18 ways to connect with Jimmy online. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, etc… As I’m writing this, Jimmy has over 3500 followers on twitter, 879 friends on Facebook and 3300 friends on Myspace. By interacting with the audience before there’s even a show to watch, Jimmy’s going to build a buzz for the show that will be far greater than if they went with the usual commercial onslaught in every popular TV show on NBC during the month leading up to Jimmy’s debut on the show.

Congrats to NBC and Jimmy Fallon for realizing the benefits of social media.

Filed Under: General, Social Media Tagged With: ,

The social part of Social Networking

December 4, 2008

As I get more and more active with online social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Meetup, something very interesting has been happening. My calendar has been filling up with things to do. Tomorrow night is a monthly meetup that combines a Meetup.com group with a pre-existing monthly gathering here in Las Vegas called First Friday. In two weeks I’m giving a speech on WordPress Vs Blogger. In January I’ll be speaking to a group about using social media/networking to grow your offline business. Right after that I’m doing this little thing called WordCamp:Las Vegas. I may have mentioned that one before. ;)

I have met some amazing people through my blog, twitter and facebook over the past few years. I’ve exchanged emails, tweets, comments and IMs with literally thousands of people. Most of whom I will never meet in person. You know what, that’s a real shame. There’s no substitute for meeting somebody in person that you share common interests with, shaking their hand and introducing yourself and starting up a conversation. Obviously it’s impossible to meet everybody you are associated with online. Not everybody is down the block or even a few towns away. Online social networking is global in it’s reach. But that doesn’t mean all your social networking has to be.

Over the past few months I’ve been taking a great interest in meetup.com. I’ve joined groups related to WordPress, Twitter, Social Media, Photography, Graphic Design and even Massage Therapy. Over the past month I’ve attended meetup events for more than half of these groups and have put faces to names (and screen names) that I’ve known for months or even years. Through these meetups I’ve also met people who may never have heard of me otherwise and have become followers on Twitter, subscribers to my RSS feed and commenters on my blog.

Here’s my suggestion for you; go to meetup.com and create an account. Search for meetup groups in your area related to things you are interested in that are offline activities (i.e. photography, hiking, line-dancing, whatever). Join a few groups and RSVP for a few meetups and for Pete’s sake GO TO THE MEETUPS! When it’s over, if you had a bad time, feel free to come back and roast me in the comment box. But, if you had a good time and if you made some new contacts, well, I’ll be expecting the comments proclaiming that I’m the man.

Get Out, Get Connected, Get Social.

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

First Friday in Las Vegas

November 9, 2008
Break Dance

Yesterday was another first for our family. We headed on down to Downtown Las Vegas to check out First Friday, an art & music festival that takes place on the… wait for it… First Friday of every month.

From the First Friday website:

First Friday is produced by Whirlygig, Inc., a Nevada non-profit arts organization founded in October 2002. First Friday has grown from 300 attendees in 2002 to today’s monthly attendance of 5-10,000. The event now encompasses more than 20 city blocks with five blocks closed to vehicular traffic to create a pedestrian area for the outdoor festivities. This grassroots community festival has become “Las Vegas’ favorite community art event” with gallery hopping, free exhibition spaces for artists, live entertainment, street entertainers, shopping food, beverages, and more. More than 80 galleries, restaurants and retail businesses work together to make the First Friday experience unique to the Las Vegas downtown arts district. Volunteers currently jury the art, work the information tables, set up and tear down parts of the event, place the trolley signs, coordinate the trolley guides, and sell soda and water to benefit First Friday. As Mayor Oscar Goodman says, “First Friday is the best thing that has ever happened to Las Vegas.”

Since we had never been, we thought there was a possibility that there were many others who had never been as well. So, we scheduled a last minute meetup for our Tweetup Las Vegas group. Big thanks to Jake & Nate from Black Diamond Digital for letting us use their office as a meeting place. They are only a block and a half from the festivities, so it worked out really well.

We met at BDD around 5:15 and had a chat with a couple people who had heard of Twitter, but had never used it. I gave them a quick tutorial and they both seemed very interested in using it. A few more from our group showed up and we hung out and talked about photography, social networking and hockey until around 6:15. We then headed down to First Friday and walked around checking out the different artists. There were painters, jewelry makers, musicians and even some break dancers. I had a great time taking a bunch of photos, especially of the break dancers.

As we were heading back to BDD we stopped by the Art Factory. This place was absolutely awesome. It’s a two story building with SEVERAL room inside. Each room was taken up by a different artist showing off there work. All types, all genres, all styles and all of them cool. Even though the place looked pretty busy to us, we were told that this was one of the slower nights. Yikes, makes me wonder what it’s like when it’s busy!

The event was really cool and I’m glad we finally made it out. Hopefully I can talk Jake and Nate in to letting us use that as a starting point each month for our twitter meetups. That would be very cool.

See you there next month.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Music, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Dealing with Twitter Spam

October 16, 2008

I’m not even close to being surprised, but the amount of Twitter Spam I’ve been getting lately is on the rise. Sure, it’s nice to have your follower count go up, but when the only messages coming from them are for you to come check out their poker site and receive $50 in bonus cash, the trade off is just not worth it. Besides, letting these spammers stick around only makes the place a little worse for everybody.

So how should you deal with spammers? Easy; block them.

Ya see, Twitter has a nice set of rules that is designed to keep the spammers out. Of course that’s just not going to happen entirely since any time you have access to a large number of people, the spammers want to come piss in that pool. But, by taking the 10 seconds to go an block the spammer on twitter, you are actively being part of the solution.

Twitter’s software is getting pretty good at catching the spammers. Twice this week I have received notices that I have a new follower. An hour later when I went to check out their account, they had already been blocked. I call that efficient!

I’m one of those guys who leaves the email notifications turned on so that every time I get a new follower, I receive an email. I do this because I usually will go and follow the people who follow me. I read the incoming email, click the link to go check out the person’s twitter profile and I decide if they are a spammer.

What is considered spam?
When I view the person’s twitter account, I look at the following:
1) How many followers do they have?
2) How many people are they following?
3) How many tweets do they send out?
4) How many tweets include a link or some sort of offer?

If they have 8 or 10 (or more) times less followers than they are following, this is a good indication that they are using external software to follow mass quantities of people hoping that they will reciprocate by following them. They are getting blocked.

If they are following more than 100 people and they have less than 10 tweets, I’ll check the content of their tweets to see if they look “spammy.” I usually just give it the sniff test. If something smells funny, for example, 5 tweets and 3 of them have a link back to the same site, I’ll block them.

If somebody has sent 5000 or more tweets, I won’t block these ones, but I’m less likely to follow them, too. Typically I find that these guys are responding to EVERY tweet they see come in. That’s totally fine. I have no problem with that. I’m just not going to follow them back as I don’t need to read all their response messages.

Twitter’s software looks for all of these things as well, so it won’t be too long before your spammy follwers end up getting the proverbial boot by Twitter. But, it’s such a nice feeling to think that you’ve helped get them kicked off the site. Well, I know it works for me.

Not sure how to block somebody on twitter? Check out this post here.

Filed Under: Ranting, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: ,

Become a Twitter Rockstar

October 1, 2008

This is one of those amazing times where I set out to do something and rather than over-complicate it as I like to do so often, I applied the K.I.S.S. principal, Keep It Simple Stupid, and was able to get it done in about a week. “What’s the project?” you ask, it’s an eBook called “Become a Twitter Rockstar.”

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and I’ve gone through my fair share of Twitter apps. Twirl and TweetDeck being my two favorites, but TweetDeck takes the cake for usability and features.

A few weeks back while messing around with TweetDeck, I realized that there’s a way to build yourself a nice little business using the combination of Twitter, TweetDeck and a Blog. Total out of pocket costs are about $20 to start up and a few bucks a month for hosting your website, but other than that, there’s nothing more to spend. I messed around with my idea for a few days until I was satisfied that the process would work. And work it did.

I was thinking that I was going to write this eBook and then sell it for ten bucks a pop and earn a little beer money. But, after I wrote it, I realized that it was less than 10 pages and I would hate to get in to a spot where I either had to justify it’s value, or worse, deal with giving people refunds. Neither of those sounded like fun. So instead, I’m giving it away. If you want a copy of my eBook, it’s all yours. Use the form in the sidebar (or at the bottom of this post) of my site (sorry RSS readers, you gotta visit the site for this one) to sign up for my newsletter. When you confirm your email address, the eBook will be sent to you via email automatically.

Check it out and then come back and leave me a comment telling me what you thought of the eBook.

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Filed Under: Social Media, Technology Tagged With: , ,