Huntsville Tweetup December 30th

I just got back from the tweetup in Huntsville, AL at Angel’s Island Coffee House.  This was a greet meetup with a diverse group.  We had folks from three TV stations, a number of Alabama students or grads, social media experts, PR experts, and I’m not sure who else. Some interesting topics were:

• Adoption of twittter.
• Teaching of social Media at the universities.
• Business use of social media (i.e YAMMER and ESME)
• What businesses or brands should be posting on twitter.
• Dell and Starbucks
• @rdfrench - Auburn PR guy liked by Alabama grads – go figure.

There were other topics too but I’m kind of bias toward the business side and have a short memory  If you want more info, ask one of the folks that were there! They are:

Some that ALMOST came (but at least twittered to us at the tweetup):

I like to make predictions. I also like to track my success.  So this year, I’ll put them in my blog and we will see where they go.

2009 will not be the year of Virtual Worlds 

Some might say this was 2007. Certainly it was the year of virtual world realization and hype. The problem is that while we have the technologies in this area, we are just not progressing that fast. Don’t get me wrong.  I think this is the future (OpenSim progress is exciting) its just on a longer path to becoming mainstream.

Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Microblogging will be reduced. I’ve gotten a lot out of tools like twitter, yammer, and plurk.  I also have a personality that like to do five things at once.   The grinch-like folks who detest all the who-songs and who-merry making will have a better year with micro-blogging. Oh, and watch for micro-blogging apps showing up in your favorite 3D software.

Everyone jumps on the 3D CAD “direct modeling” band wagon I’m not going to talk much about 3D CAD since this is my industry but one thing you have seen this year is a lot of talk about significantly easier ways to create and modify your designs.  The debate this year was if the new tools are hype or can really compete with the old history based tools.  The debate next year will be on who has the best new technology. Watch for more CAE focus too.

Touch Screens make a comeback – almost  The use of gestures and multi-touch has made for a nice new way to manipulate your software.  It has got to help what you can do with 3D.  Zoom by spreading your fingers?  Great!  Sliding things left or right? Brilliant!  Scratches on your screen?  Ouch.  Working after eating chicken wings? OMG.  Foggy old monitors from months of micro scratches?  Bleh!  Rubber gloves you have to wear to avoid this? Over the top. Don’t throw away your keyboard especially if you have sweaty palms.

3D Glasses  - 

Yes, another retro idea is making a comeback.  It is not the geeky stuff that does this.  Its things like watching your football game in 3D that does it.  Computers still need some CPU power and more interest to do this.  Movie theaters and other places with big screens don’t.  Watch for it but be careful because it will seem like it is jumping out at you!

Making Videos Takes Off-

 OK,it already has with things like Youtube and Vimeo and Jing.   There are just a lot of people out there that WATCH video that don’t MAKE videos. Now we will see more creators.

 Why now?  First, video creation gets easy (no more figuring out codec’s and drivers.)   Second, computers are just faster making video easier. I’m not just talking the computer on your desk, I’m talking the computer in your camera or cell phone.  Third, too many devices (including computers) are coming with video cameras built in.

Want to tell someone how to do something in CAD or Second Life or any other graphical 3D program?  It will be easier to make a video and paste a link than explain in words.

It turns out there are quite a few tweeters in Huntsville, Alabama and I saw a few of them start twittering about a tweetup a couple weeks ago.  I thought I’d post info to my blog and let you know how it goes.

Right now it looks like it will be on December 30th at 6 PM at Angels Island coffee house. They have free wifi and great coffee.  I’ll update this page as I get more information.

Feel free to reply to this blog if you are coming or want to let people know your twitter ID.

What is a tweetup?

If you don’t know what a tweetup is, you might look it up on word spy.

Updates:

Saturday, Dec 27  2:54pm - Got an email back from Angel.  No problem using her place for the tweetup. She thanked us for thinking of her.

I’m a social media guy. When there is some new technology like Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, Yammer, Brightkite, LinkedIn, whatever, I’m on it.  While I’ve gotten involved in some of this because it is fun and interesting,  it has also helped me with my job.  I’ve made some great connections with fellow employees, customers, and people with similar interest.  It has been very valuable to me.

So if Social Media is so great, we all should be using it, right? I don’t think so.  One problem when you hang out with others using social media (be it twitter, second life or really any group of people with similar interests) you often end up talking about people that just “don’t get it”.  We reinforce each others ideas.  Then you get people who’s job IS social media. It is my perception they will tell you about the advantages and downplay the negatives.

I find it very grounding to talk to people about social media that I don’t know through social media.  My wife and kids (20,18,15) are great… I can’t get them to blog for anything!  When I talk about social media with some of the folks I see by the coffee pot at work, some will just look at me as if asking, “why would I want to do this?”

So as much as I would like to see more people on Twitter or reading my blog, I certainly understand why they are not. Sure, some of them don’t “get it” but I think most of them just don’t need it.  I always try to remember that.