Today was spotted with conversations from friends who want to save the world but just don’t know how. They’ve followed the path–good schools, grades, and jobs–but haven’t felt they could make a difference. My advice for them: new media.

I’m not going to lie–I’d long stereotyped marketing, communications, and public relations as necessary evils, at best. They’re rarely attention-grabbing, not usually great writing, and brand awareness is about as far as most of them get. But my opinion has somewhat changed in the last few years, especially since I heard Seth Godin speak (and enjoyed Purple Cow). Godin’s creative approach to marketing made it fun for me…and the internet is what made it much more accessible and effective.

I’d always seen the internet as a place to find your voice and to be heard. I’d always seen web design and web development as the tools to get online and make an impact. However, understanding and applying the connectivity of the internet–its inherent community–is what can really make a change. If someone wants to make a difference, they ought to learn how to use the web to spread their message. (more…)

Filed under: Business, Happiness, Social Media, Technology
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I keep updating my tools, profiles, and sites. Why do it–is it worth it? Is it helping my life or my business? What’s next?

Today I’ve decided to begin moving all my photos to Flickr (well, it’ll be some time). We’re launching a web application in the next few months. SET’s website redesign (with almost all new content) will be completed by year end.

In January of 2006 I moved to Wordpress (from Blogger, and before that just HTML) for dancingwithwords.com, redid the layout, and launched technotheory.com (also Wordpress). I also sorted through about five thousand photos from My Image Gallery and kept about a thousand, which were then migrated to Coppermine.

I can spare you from the discussion of how I made it to My Image Gallery from Dreamweaver’s photo pages and of my failed conversion to Greymatter and/or B2’s blogging software. And of course the moves from Friendster to Facebook, the trials and tribulations of MySpace, and the simultaneous development of relationships on LinkedIn.

This stuff takes a lot of time. Why do I do it?

My online participation is primarily for three reasons: self-expression, maintenance of relationships, and business. When I put up a website in ‘95 and a blog in ‘00, it was for self-expression (and having a technology project seemed like the thing to do). Over time it became a way of keeping in touch. In just the last year I’ve started to see business come out of it.

But is it really worth it?

(more…)

Filed under: AwayFind, Business, Social Media, Technology, Tools I Use
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Your technology is brilliant. You do exactly what I’ve longed for, and so gracefully. But your DRM and subscription model are more limiting than iTunes and more ill conceived than the Zune. Oh Amazon Kindle, why must you tantalize me so?

My book clubs and Amazon Prime addiction lead me to buying altogether too many books to find a place on the shelf. I hate having to decide which reading I can comfortably carry on the Metro or a plane. My laptop is too bulky for a lot of activities. And I’ve long complained that I’ve needed a higher resolution electronic screen than my laptop’s for reading.

But you want to charge me money for my RSS? For my Washington Post access? To read a PDF? Why can’t I just ’sync up’ like I do with all the rest of my electronics? I’d rather pay for EVDO access than get taxed to download blogs.

I’m spellbound by the ability to download books in mere seconds, to full-text search (say, the names of characters), to mark up pages and highlight. It was a caring touch to add free Wikipedia access. And the display, while perhaps not the most attractive of consumer electronics, seems easy on the eyes, light, and functional.

I’m going to wait on the Kindle experiencefor now.

I’m curious to see how people get around some of the Kindle’s difficulties synchronizing. A tool that could seamlessly export RSS feeds from into organized HTML file tree would alleviate many of the fees and take some of the sting out of the process. Or better yet, maybe hackers will find a way around the EVDO limitations and open it up for better browsing or content synchronization–after all, it’s a practical piece of hardware that could benefit from some software tweaking.

I’m curious how this will play out in the coming months. Perhaps I’ll jump on the bandwagon in due time, but in the mean time I’ll just enjoy watching Amazon get a little bad press on their DRM for a change… They’ve done such a good job for a long time, and they continue to here, but this time the price and terms are just a bit frustrating.

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Well, there’s finally some coverage. DC Startup Weekend and the web 2.0 startups were mentioned in Monday’s paper (The Washington Post)!

• DC Startup Weekend
• Web 2.0 Startups in the DC area
• Photos from Startup Weekend (hey, I made it into two!)

Thank you to Kendra Marr and Zachary Goldfarb for taking the time to talk to so many of us and offer a small glimpse into a community that’s thriving and energetic.

My only hope was that they might make it easier for people to latch onto some of the groups and join in–so here’s a quick mention of a places to look if you happen to be coming here from the Post:

• DC’s tech discussion forum–The DC Technology Network
• The main list of DC area events going on this week–DC Tech Events Weekly
• Some geeky stuff for non-profit people–NetSquared
• The group that gets and deserves credit for having the biggest events and starting the longest ago (well, at least so far as the new groups)–Refresh DC

My guess is that there’ll be some more technology press soon, given the New New Internet Conference on Thursday in Reston. But either way, hat’s off to so many fantastic organizers for really bringing vibrancy and stability to a community that was just dying to get started.

Filed under: Business, DC Tech Community, Technology
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