Laughing, Sharing, Connecting with the real and virtual worlds. Welcome to the ramblings of an activist and technologist vet. I've played in both the for and non profit environments - we live our lives by telling stories. It's story time!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Drawing a Facebook line - this far no further
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Google Buzz, the biz is buzzin
Pardon the pun but there has been a lot of buzz about Buzz. I know, it's not original but what do you want for nothing? :)
I see a lot of potential in this little add-on as Google makes another attempt at bringing the social networking concepts more integrated and more intertwined. They took a page right out of my very own playbook on a recent SharePoint project - people manage and live via their email client.
When I started at NWF my first project was launching an upgrade to the SharePoint platform that had been put in place but had slow adoption by the staff. I made the case that unless our organization was on Outlook and using Exchange as opposed to Groupwise we would never fully harness the integration services that the SharePoint platform has to offer. This sounds familiar, yes?
It was agreed, the application for email management was the key to bringing these tools together and hence I started an Exchange / Outlook migration because I wanted integration beyond plain email.
So no surprise at all to see the Google designed gadgets and new Buzz features which totally integrate with Gmail. But it has not been without some worry and pain.
I can't say that their claim to privacy and notification restraints are there yet, in fact when I was getting flooded with updates from total strangers tweet feeds via Buzz, my patience wore thin. To complicate matters I have my Gmail set up to notify me on my Blackberry when new mail arrives - - - that now includes Buzz whether I want it or not and I can't seem to stop it.
And another pet peeve I have is there seems to be no rhyme or reason when the updates to Buzz are delivered. I see them hitting the account in waves, not in real time.
And then of course lets not forget how Google totally forgot that eMail services has a perception of privacy - that went out the door with Buzz, oops. ZDNet goes into the legal aspects of this little flub but it says a lot about the maturity of the interface. http://government.zdnet.com/?p=7216
There are a lot of folks already jumping on the Buzz-wagon and rightfully so, it has tremendous potential and could become yet another easy tool and stomping ground for people in the Non Profit world to collaborate and share their causes.
My concern is centered around the time aspects - do I have time to scroll through yet another tool that collects and distributes observations, thoughts, comments, pictures, links . . . isn't that what Twitter is for? Is Buzz the new Twitter, the new light at the end of the tunnel? Or is the light yet another on coming train?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Facebook - aka the new Pen Pal, self expression optional
This past week I was introduced to a piece from Andrew Sullivan titled "Facebookistan" where he shared a contributors comments on what I will tag as the "evils of Facebook" Katja Grace opened the first paragraph, and I quote:
. . . while Katja Grace considers Facebook social conventions:
People who talk about themselves a lot are generally disliked. A likable person will instead subtly direct conversation to where others request the information they want to reveal. Revealing good news about yourself is a good sign, but wanting to reveal good news about yourself is a bad sign.
Best to do it without wanting to. This appears true of most human interaction, but apparently not of that on Facebook.
There is a sense of truth to this, I have in the past taken shots at how people use Facebook. My exception to this line of thinking is, I think the bigger point is being missed. Now before I state my point I want to go on record as I do have this yen to not only being likable but as factual as possible: I have no scientific proof or any case studies to make this claim, only observations, conversations and actual participation.
People can get lost in the genre if they let themselves, they tend to feel empowered by the keyboard and expectation of having an audience, they want to express themselves in an area that reaches a far greater range then their network could ever reach face to face. They connect with people they would never ever normally have reached without the platforms social networking offers.
I think Grace's comments miss the mark. People who talk about themselves are NOT disliked, some of the most outgoing, charismatic people I know break the very rule Grace seems to think is bad about Facebook which I find to be not only endearing but expected of the personalities.
We are looking at the change our next generations is in the process of - there will soon be no more "pen pal" experience. Our means of connecting is now digital and if I WANT to reveal news about myself or talk about myself and what I'm doing with myself ( in a PG family way of course ) then I will as that's what we now can do.
Get your head out of your butt Katja and tell us what you had for breakfast - I had a bowl of oatmeal topped with blueberries a sprinkling of organic cinnamon and a touch of honey . . . . mmmmm
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/facebookistan.html
http://michaelsola.posterous.com/time-drain-or-time-savings-your-call-but-face
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Daily Show takes "Unusually Large Snow" and "Global Warming" to new heights
Love this piece from Jon Stewart - I often get mocked about Global Warming every time it snows but this cracks me up. Global darkening and Dingos - how else to you make the point that "oddball winter weather" is a result of global warming.
NWF recently posted a piece called "Global Warming Bringing More Oddball Winter Weather" There's a lot of truth to this and the reality is there may not be enough snow blowers to go around - especially electric ones!
Monday, February 08, 2010
Time drain or Time savings - your call but Facebook is here to stay
It reminded me of the dinner table during a holiday meal where all members of the family are present and when conversations can get heated or combative but in this case it was with a keyboard and those pesky unemotional words.
I am as many of you know a big fan of self expression. I celebrate how easy it is for all of us to share our opinions and have a voice. It's the story telling I am most interested in and whether it's Facebook or Twitter or any of the social networking genres it's the writing, listening, reading of the stories that enriches us all. At least that's my opinion and I'm sticking with it.