The thing many people hate about twitter is the noise.  If you are just there to socialize, it may not be a big deal but twitter can be pretty useful for more serious things too.  If you want to get information about cars or software or politics its there but likely burried in a bunch of useless information.

One way to filter out the “junk” is to use one of the twitter seach tools.  Tweetdeck has one built in.  You can go to search.twitter.com for others. Its useful in the way a search engine is useful but it doesn’t always help for getting the whole conversation in real time.

Another options is to try to follow tags. I was at a conference lately where we used #PLMCONX for our tweets. This helps but I had trouble remembering to use the tag. And then there were gray areas… do I tweet that I’m getting lunch at the confererence or stick to the topic?

The traditional way is to follow the person in twitter. If they don’t talk about what you like, don’t follow them.  I’ve got a good list of CAD, industrial design, car, virtual world, sports, Huntsville, and social media experts that I follow.  You see the problem here, right?  When I reply back to one of the people in these groups, all I do is increase the noise for the rest.

So, for the people that follow me, I’m sorry I’m inserting all that noise into your twitter stream. Now, to go tell everyone I’m getting some coffee.

From plmconx

I was off to my company’s conference last week.  I’ve been doing these things for many years, usually as a participant but more recently as someone that is actually working there.  My job this time was to make a couple presentations, help out on some hands-on presentations, talk with customers and squeeze in some social media (blogs, twitter, facebook) where I can.

 

A lot of people are still thinking social media is either:

A.      The job of marketing

B.      A waste of time or yet another task that gets in the way of your real job.

 

However, if you think about it, a conference is really not that different from social media.  Marketing definitely wants to use it to sell a product but attendees have other goals.  They want to connect with others like themselves, talk with folks making the presentations or manning the booths that they might not otherwise get to talk to, and find about things you just can’t learn about on the telephone or on the web.

 

There is also a big social aspect to most conferences. You might get together for drinks or play some golf or get together for dinner.  These might be pure fun but I’m sure most of us have good examples of some key contact we made or some important bit of information we picked up.

 

As you or your company thinks about social media, think of it as a conference. No one wants to go to a conference with just marketing folks.  It’s a great place to listen in and participate in the conversations your customers are having and the companies that send people to a conference are going to have a knowledge advantage over their competitors that stay home.

Society’s feeling about engineers and scientists is as cyclical as a sine wave. Sometimes our abiity to recite PI to 30 digits is respected, sometimes the government tries to shut us up (Indina PI Bill).

In 2009, the engineer is in voque again.  I mean, is there a better show on TV right now than “Big Bang Theory”?  And what is the best movie?  Star Trek of course (I hope the pendulum doesn’t start swinging back later this year when people figure out we also created Skynet).

You see others tapping into this too. Texas Instruments has some nice videos reminding us to “Thank an Engineer”. Here is one on life without an MP3 player:

And I do the the “V-Dub in the House” comercials from Volkswagen:

I’ll even give a shout out to one of my company’s competitors:

Funny stuff.

Back in March, I noticed the Dulce Group started tweeting in Huntsville at @dghuntsville.  When I started following them, we exchanges a few DM’s about social media and tweetups.

It seems they have adapted to this twitter thing very quickly since then. The other day I got a tweet  that the Dulce Group was looking into sponsoring a tweetup and then got another tweet today  with the details (I think up-and-coming social media and PR expert @danamlewis might have some involvement too).  It will be at the Ketchup restaurant at Bridge Street in Huntsville.   It is scheduled for May 12th from 5:30pm to 8:30 pm and you will get 20% off your bill if you follow them and have the reply they send you (I’m already following them so I’ll have to ask what you do in this case). 

They are hoping to make this a social event for some interesting human networking although I did ask if they have wifi - they do.  I’ll be the guy trying not to spill his drink on his laptop while tweeting to the person next to me.  (Ok, I’m really not THAT bad )

As usual, you can follow or post any information about the tweetup by using the #HSVTweetup tag in your tweets and searching it for the latest info.

I hope to see you there!  And @dghuntsville, I’d also love to meet the person/people behind the tweets!

P.S. Here is some information on other Dulce Events:

http://app.e2ma.net/campaign/813f4a95669030854ebbc8d186fce56d

I’m surrounded by people just getting started or are thinking about twitter. These are people who really aren’t interested in the technology but more the utility or are just afraid of falling behind. Some are asking “Do I Really Have To Join Twitter”   ?  

So what is the minimum you can do to say you are on twitter?  First, get an account.  If you are doing it for work, you might put your company name it. Make it an easy name to remember.

Go find some people to follow, say 50 or so.  Don’t view twitter as instant messaging.  If you miss tweets, its not a big deal so that number of 50 is actually quite small (we’re going for minimal twitter use here).

How do you find people?  Try some of these ideas:

twitter search.  Type in some key words and see who looks interesting. 

search.twitter.com/

Go to WeFollow and pick a tag (I’m there under “CAD”, “VirtualWorlds”, and “SocialMedia”) 

http://wefollow.com/

Go to Twitter Grader Search.  This one will list tweeters by a “grade” and will also look at location. For example, you will find me if you search for “Huntsville”.

http://twitter.grader.com/search

You can run twitter from the web. You need to check it a couple times a day and you want this to be effortless, so you might put it on the toolbar.  Or, download one of the twitter clients or plugins or IM integrations.  We all use the interent differently so take a look at this URL and pick one that fits best into your environment: 

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_twitter_clients_definitive_list.php

Now, the first few weeks, you are likely to get a lot of noise.  You need to manage the twitter stream by unfollowing those that don’t tweet things interesting or useful to you.  Some people are more focused on a subject.  Some people are like me, all over the place.  Some people tweet a lot. Some are easy maintenance. BTW, I don’t recommend following me until you get a few followers or if you do, be ready to cut me. If you are an occasional tweeter following few people, I might dominate your stream (and yes, I do tweet when I’m getting coffee).

At the same time, check out the people you don’t follow that are showing up on your stream. This will help improve your quality of tweets.  If following 50 people is not too much, increase to 100 or 500 or 1000 - you are in control.

You don’t have to tweet to use twitter.  If you want to stay off the RADAR, you can make your twitter private - then only people that you allow to follow you can see your tweets.  Note that these people can still retweet your tweets.  Never assume Twitter is private.

Having said that, much of the value of twitter is the conversation and exchange of information. You will get more value from twitter when you engage those you follow.

I’ve got a lot of friends trying to get a grasp of “social media”.  Why do it? How does it work? Should I we have special training or new security rules? How do I manage work and personal life on this new platform?

The fact is these aren’t new problems, they are old problems.  For training, I recommend you go watch the Andy Griffith show– yes, the Andy Griffith show, with Sherriff Taylor, Floyd the Barber and Goober, the mechanic.

 One question I see a lot is how to manage work and personal life in social media. The folks in Mayberry dealt with this just fine.  Andy switched between the two with ease as he walked around town.  Goober would fix your car and bring it to your house.  Floyd pretty much mixed personal and business together at the same time, cutting your hair while talking about the town.  It is not what most of us do today, but it’s hardly a new idea.

Is this an efficient way to work? On the surface, Mayberry looks pretty laid back but look a bit deeper at this pretend world.  Andy always knew what was going on in his town - knowing the people certainly helps him do a better job.  Goober didn’t always present the most polished image and wasn’t too bright but you knew him and you knew you could trust him. If you were going to get your car fixed, who would you pick?

And Floyd - he is the master of social media.  He created a shop where people like to hang out.  They play checkers, talk to the other customers, and even run across the mayor and sheriff from time to time.  Do you think all the “non-business discussion” hurts Floyd’s business?  No way… he is always cutting hair!

But here is the real key… Andy, Goober and Floyd don’t do this because of some clever plan to be more social and generate more revenue.  They were simply being themselves in an open and honest way.

 

Family room during March Madness

If you know me or watch my twitter, you know I’m a big basketball fan.  My love is equal to football, maybe even more so because my wife and daughter prefer basketball.  Of course, I’m a Gator and big on Billy Donovan but my Alabama readers shouldn’t close this page just yet.  My son is at Auburn, my daughter is starting at the University of Alabama this fall and I know something about Alabama’s new coach.

When Anthony Grant left Donovan’s staff to become a head coach VCU my family and I watched him there.  Grant helped Florida get to where it is so we were eager to see what he could do on his own.  Beyond the success in his own conference, beating Duke and getting knocked out in two very close NCAA games showed he could coach the game.

In high school, my daughter hung out with me and my wife a lot during the times of the oh-fours’s.   When Florida played Auburn a couple years ago, my oldest son, a freshman at the time, helped make a 3D poster of Joakim Noah for my daughter.  At the end of the game, Noah went out of his way to sign it for her.  Today, she follows the Chicago Bulls closely thanks to that game and probably knows more about the NBA and latest trades than I do. She is very serious about basketball.

The tricky part for her was late last year where my daughter became a Nation Merit Semi-Finalist.   Many schools compete for national merit finalists (which my daughter now is). While a good basketball team is secondary in picking a school, it would certainly be a nice thing to have in her case.  Plus she was already a Gator fan thanks to her dad. However, Alabama offered her one of their top scholarships and she eventually decided to go there (despite the so-so basketball tradition).  

Now, with Anthony Grant coming to the University of Alabama, we’ve ended up in a very good situation.  Alabama seems serious about becoming a real basketball school. Secondly, they have picked a coach that has been around the process of taking a Football school and making it a dual sports school. Lastly, for my family, its a coach we know and follow and respect.

Excellent work, Alabama  athletic department!  With respect to my Gator heritage and son at Auburn,  Roll Tide!

P.S. My daughter is majoring in either journalism/PR or education.  Someone in the athletic department needs to get her involved.

Zach Burhop and Billy Donovan

We had another interesting tweetup in Huntsville this month (thanks, Chris Depew for the above photo). I’m not going to try to post names of who was there since the tweetups seems to becoming increasingly virtual. I’d recommand you start tracking the #HSVTweetup tag to see who particpated.

Frank Snyder was good enough to stream the meetup over Ustream.TV which I think added a really good dimension to the tweetup.  A lot of folks joined in virtually and were able to chat with us and bring up comments.  

Dan Saterfield joined in and tried to get some technical support for his email. I tried to tell him we are a social group, not a tech group but I don’t think he believed me  I saw he got his problem fixed before the meeting was over so he may have been right.

The diversity of the group is what I’m finding most interesting. I tend to hang out with a lot of engineers and I’m guessing the marketing folks tend to hang out with other marketing folks, the PR students and recent grads tend to hang out with other PR folks and the bloggers tend to hang out with other bloggers.  The tweetup creates a more mixed group.  We are all using twitter and social media but with different perspectives, goals, and interests. Its good to see the other views.

For the next tweetup, we are talking about a new location to make it easier for folks on the other side of town (and Athens and Decatur).  Stay tuned…

 

I just got word from @dananLewis that the next Huntsville tweetup will be March 19 at Angel Island Coffee at 6pm.  You can track any discussion about it using the #HSVTweetup tag.

If you have not been to a tweetup before, this is a good place to start.  Angels has free Wifi and good coffee, tea and other drinks.  You can see what happened at that last Angel’s tweetup here.

Heres a link and a map to find them:

View Larger Map

Anyone that follows me on twitter likely knows I’m a big coffee drinker.  I couldn’t wait until they started building Starbucks in my little corner of Alabama.  I used to have a credit card that gave money back for my kids education until Starbucks came up with the Duetto card that gave money for coffee (they say you start ignoring your family when you get addicted ).  I also visit most of the coffee houses in my area. Will this change?   Maybe.  More on that later.

The picture above is of my newest toy, a Tassimo coffee maker from Bosch. You will see a rack in the back of cartridges, mostly coffee but also tea, hot chocolate, and milk. It creates a single cup of coffee from one of these cartridges in about 60 seconds.

Each disk has a bar code that says what temperature, amount of water, and flow rate should be used for the coffee, expresso or other drink.  For the engineers and tech geeks like me, check out Hacking the Tassimo Part 1 and Part 2 for the details of the bar codes.

Here is what I’m so keen on this thing (other than it being a cool gadget):

1. It makes REALLY good coffee. It surprised me how good.
2. It is a single cup.  My house is high traffic with 3 older kids. Five of us plus friends and we all like different types of coffeee (plus, my daughter likes hot chocolate and my wife likes tea)
3. No mess. Sometimes you have to wipe it down because of a coffee splash but still much easier than a regular coffee pot.
4. There are many different coffee options.  The Starbucks tastes a lot like what I get at Starbucks.

The one thing I don’t like about Starbucks is the difficulty of using the Wifi. I overlook it for the coffee and ambience.   The way it works is this… you get a starbucks card, register it, and use it once a month. Then you get a login to the ATT Wifi. Sounds good but it isn’t.  You see I use my Duetto card which I can’t use with the Wifi.  So I have to get ANOTHER Starbucks card and buy a little bit with one card and a little bit with the other… crazy. Plus, I usually visit with others like family or friends for work and if they don’t have a card or ATT wifi, its a pain.

Now, with Tassimo, I don’t really need to go for the coffee (Starbucks, I’m still glad I can get Starbucks for my Tassimo).  The other coffee houses have free no-hassle wifi so if you do something like a tweetup, it is easier to go someplace else. Now, the economy sucks.  

Local Starbucks, I hope you have a plan.  At the very least, start selling Tassimo disks.