The Intersection of Online and Offline

I was so happy to be contacted yesterday by my once competitor, once colleague, and always friend, Cheryl Contee.  Cheryl is one of the smartest people out there in the social media space, and had worked out of the San Francisco office of a former employer.

I was overjoyed to find out that Cheryl, along with her business partner, Rosalyn “Roz” Lemieux, have founded Fission Strategy, a San Francisco-based consulting business:

“..specializing in online advocacy, marketing, and communications. Fission partners, Roz Lemieux and Cheryl Contee, have launched dozens of online campaigns, websites, and blogs. We have been using social media to help nonprofit organizations (and for-profits focused on “social good”) communicate since 2003, so we share with you tested techniques that work.”

Good things do indeed happen to good people, but more often than not, if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.   What makes me so happy is that Cheryl now has a place to literally call her own, in which she can apply her smarts, business acumen and wonderful personality.

I have told Cheryl in the past that we are parallel universe people for a variety of reasons, but I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, black, white or striped - Cheryl is one smart cookie and I am delighted that she has her own gig.

Cheryl and Roz - I would wish you luck, but something tells me that you won’t need it.

Mark

I will make this post short and sweet, because sometimes, the less said, the better.  Today is International Blog Action Day 2008 and I am happy to be a part of it with my little blog.  This year’s topic is poverty.

Here comes the disclaimer: I live in a nice neighborhood, have two great, stable jobs and my life is pretty good.  But yesterday, I was talking with a colleague at work whose nine year-old daughter asked her parents last week if they wanted to keep her allowance for a while - not give it to her.  Strange thing for a nine year-old to ask.  Why?

It turns out that two of her classmates’ fathers has recently lost their jobs. Stories like this, from the protected cocoon in which I live, bring it home a) how fortunate I am, and b) not others share the same fortune.  I may complain about my 401(k) tanking, but at least I HAVE a 401(k).

My last note is that, as a dad with two young children, I focus intently on helping them understand how fortunate we really are.  That usually includes a trip to the basement for them to forage for un-played-with toys, put them in a box and take them to a local day-laborer site, the Casa de Maryland.  Last year was the first time that we tried this, and thinking through the minds of small children, I started with just one box and a request to “think hard” about the toys they didn’t want.

We ended up with four boxes of toys, a very grateful staff at the Casa de Maryland and one very proud father. We are fortunate, but not everyone is.

Mark

I had always hoped to be in the New York Times, but perhaps under somewhat different circumstances.

I wrote about it last week “I Was Wrong - Sorry Eve,” but the New York Times’ Marci Alboher picked up on the email blogging exchange that Eve Tahmincioglu and I had, which ended up with my feeling like a lunkhead.

Marci wrote a balanced, fair piece:

All this transparency and accountability led to a happy ending. Mr. Story did a follow-up post of his own, calling his original post a “cheap shot” against Eve (as support for this, he admitted that some of his own readers agreed with Eve’s original premise) and apologized to her. Eve included his apology in her follow-up post.

In addition to learning a few lessons about taking ownership for your words online, I also discovered a possible cure for social networking overload in Mr. Story’s original post — social networking aggregators, a new type of site that has sprung up to help people keep up with multiple social networking communities at once. Clearly, I have to get acquainted with these sites.

Thank you, Marci for providing balance and a measured tone — both of which would have served me well a couple of weeks back.

Mark

Forgive me for those of you who are a bit squeamish, but below, I have posted a You Tube video clip from the Maryland-Cal football game last Saturday (which Maryland, my alma mater, won, by the way).

Quick synopsis: Kevin Barnes, a defensive back for Maryland, hit Cal’s Jahvid Best so hard that Best laid on the field and later threw up.  As further proof that social media is weaving its way into our social fabric, one chunk at a a time, this phenomenon made its way onto the front page of the Washington Post sports section.

Here are some fascinating facts:

• Before the game ended, the clip was on You Tube.
• As of yesterday afternoon, six versions of the hit garnered a total of more than 50,000 views, which surpassed the number of spectators (49,527) who watched the play live at Byrd Stadium on Saturday.
• When Barnes visited a local restaurant this weekend, at least 40 customers approached asking him about the hit. Some with iPhones replayed the hit so everyone could watch together.

Sure, some guy hit some other guy who threw up on the field.  But when you consider the speed and reach of people sharing the clip, now THAT is bone-jarring.

Clip is below;  quality is not good (and please do not watch is you do not want to see a football player throw up).

Mark

P.S. - I have gone this whole post without a joke, but I’ll remind you that Maryland’s head football coach’s first name is “Ralph.”

In a moment that was likely based on blogger hubris and too much caffeine, a few weeks ago, I blogged about an MSNBC piece on social media overload and called it “sloppy journalism.”

The point that I was attempting to make in the post is that there are enough tools and aggregators out there to eliminate social media overload.  FriendFeed and other tools can put it all in one place.  Almost as soon as I wrote it, some regular readers chimed in and politely took me to task;  the article was note written for propeller-heads such as myself, but for people for whom social media may indeed create overload.

Among the initial comments were:

• Jonathan Trenn said: You’re an online strategist, a PR pro, a social media practitioner. Being networked on all these sites is in your professional blood. In addition, you likely feel somewhat required to take part in all of these networks because it’s tied into what you do for a living.  She’s likely writing that piece for a lot of the working professionals who are getting all sorts of information on this network, on that service, etc.
• Jenn Zingsheim said: I agree that this seems to be sensationalist journalism, but Jonathan has a really great point. I find that when I’m talking about what I do to friends & family, they get quickly lost when I’m describing all the different networks. They like to package things neatly into boxes (”…ok, so Flickr does photos, LinkedIn is professional, Facebook is college…what? It’s not just college? and you have professional connections there too?…I thought that’s what LinkedIn was for…” etc.)

And then, yesterday, the author of the original article, Eve Tahmincioglu wrote a polite and measured response to my posting which was critical of her piece (which I am listing in its entirety):

• Hey Mark,

  I don’t enjoy being called sloppy but I’m open to any criticism if I can learn from it and get better at what I do. I’m not sure your criticism here really helped me out but I’d be interested in hearing more.

  It’s great to hear you’re able to keep up with so many social networking sites, but alas, not everyone can, aggregators or not.

  I have gotten tons of emails from people who believe they need to have hundreds of friends on every site out there and the thought of it is driving them crazy. The bottom line is they don’t.

  Because of what we do we have to luxury to play around with all these new great sites, but there are many professionals out there scrambling to keep their jobs or find new ones that don’t.

  If I had time, I would definitely attend the Blog Expo, being I’m a blogger myself. I would have stopped by to say hello.

  And by the way, my name is pronounced, tach-min-gio-lou.

  Best,
  Eve

Just like the old saying goes, if one man calls you a jackass, pay no attention.  If three people call you a jackass, buy a saddle.  So I am going saddle shopping later today.

I’ll say publicly what I posted in the comment thread and what I emailed:  my post was a cheap shot and Eve responded politely and without rancor.  And the fact is that Eve, Jonathan and Jenn were right:  it’s easy for me to dismiss social media overload because I live in a different world.  Given time to think about it, my response is akin to my accountant saying to me, “There’s no such thing as difficulties in doing your taxes because Microsoft Excel is so easy to use.”

I was wrong, period, and am eating a big crow sandwich.  After I researched Eve a little, I discovered that she has her own blog, has published a book, and is well-thought of enough to have column on MSNBC and is clearly somewhat of an expert in the career field.

And to top it all off, when subject of a pithy post, Eve is unfailingly polite.

So where I come from, when you’re wrong, you apologize. Sorry, Eve.

Mark