Blog Indiana

This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to speak to a group of the most enthusiastic members of Indiana's blogging community at Blog Indiana 2008 at IUPUI's amazing new Campus Center. My topic was "Between the Posts" (which I admittedly have plenty of experience with) and it centered on using social media to connect people around your ideas, thoughts, posts, and so on.

Between the Posts

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Twitter as a Life-Saver?

Along with thousands of others, I have recently been playing around with the "microblogging" site, Twitter. The premise is simple--answer the question "What are you doing?" using 140 characters or less and allow those who are interested to follow along with what you have to say. It's sort of like sending out text messages to anyone who cares enough to read it. The thing is, most of us are constantly doing something different, so the answer changes a lot.

Twitter also allows you to follow along as friends, celebrities, experts, and even the Mars rover, continually answer the question, as well. You may choose to follow just a select few, or thousands, it all depends who you think has something interesting to say, and you can choose to receive these updates online or even to your phone.

The obvious first question is, "why would anyone do that?" or "isn't that just more inane chatter to muck up your already overly complicated life?". Both are beyond fair questions and ones that I posed before playing around a little bit so that I might be able to answer them for folks. Personally, I've been using Twitter mostly like its an RSS reader that allows me to listen in to the up-to-the-instant insight from other experts in my field. I've also used it for quick research (by firing out a question to get some quick feedback from those who are following my posts) and to keep MediaSauce colleagues updated about what I'm working on without having to talk to a handful of people individually. As is the case with most Internet phenomenon, there isn't really a clear cut point to Twitter, just different uses for different folks.

Thinking beyond the techie geek side of things, there is also potential for the service to help with news delivery and personal safety. Recently, an American student in Egypt was unjustly arrested, but was able to send out a "tweet" before being put in a cell. The simple text message "Arrested." motivated his followers to begin calling the embassy and helping clear up the situation. He was free in less than 24 hours. Being connected can be a very good thing.

I'm yet to see too many great applications for business, but JetBlue, Comcast and others are already using Twitter for customer service, and at MediaSauce, we use it to send out quick internal announcements. I can also envision it as a great tool to seek out and motivate volunteers or canvassers come election time.

Anyway, you'll be hearing plenty more about Twitter, especially if someone really figures out what they're supposed to be doing with it! Feel free to sign up and follow my every move (at least until I get bored with it).

Taking Online Onstage

I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours speaking to a group of more than 200 central Indiana business leaders about social technologies at MediaSauce's Web 2.0 presentation earlier this morning.

The material was fantastically well received and there were plenty of great questions from the crowd that allowed our Director of Emerging Technologies, Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), and myself to dive into some general strategic discussions above and beyond just the basic educational overview. The talk was also streamed live online. Once we get that footage archived online, I'll pass the link along.

We've already received some great feedback from many of those in attendance and the next event will feature some great additions based off of those ideas. Thanks so much for all who attended!

This is Faceball

"A lot of people would ask, 'why?' "

"None of those people work here."



Thank you Flickr, for your continued focus on innovation.

Art vs Art

So, today was the culmination of the annual Art vs Art competition. This amazing event is the brainchild of Jim Clinger, good friend and fellow MediaSauce team member of mine, and his cohorts at Primary Colours. It was my first time in attendance at the event, and it was amazing.

Here's how it works. Hundreds of artists arrive. They are each given the same kit of supplies--canvas, three (primary) colors of paint, brushes, etc. They are also given up to 4 hours to create. At the end of the allotted time, the pieces are collected and the voting begins. The top pieces (based on audience votes) are entered into an NCAA-style bracket for an all-out head-to-head battle. Round after round, the pieces are presented on stage and a decibel-meter judging crowd response declares which piece will move on to the next round, and which will face the Wheel of Death. If the losing piece doesn't receive a high enough bid--it's destroyed on spot in front of a bloodthirsty crowd of arts enthusiasts by means of a chainsaw, wood chipper, vat of acid, graffiti tagger, or worse). Each round, the starting bid increases.

This year, for the first time ever, the winning piece failed to earn a high enough bid. As the judges conferred about how to handle the situation, the winning artist, Amory Abbot, (oversized novelty check in tow) walked over and spun the Wheel of Death, thus sealing the fate of his piece.

Justice was served. Read the winning artist's blog here.

If you're interested in seeing more, here's how last year looked:

Creativity Always Inspires

Over the past few years, I've developed a pretty intense crush on TED. Once a year, 1000 thought leaders, visionaries, idea merchants, and catalysts get together for 3 days in Monterey, California to take a step back from the day-to-day and share their perspectives from their respective areas of expertise (in 18 minutes or less) and show how the pursuit of big ideas is helping change the world.

Though the original scope of the conference was Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED), the interconnectedness of our 21st century has led to a world where an increasingly wide array of topics fall into at least one of these categories. So, whether you're interested in the Climate Crisis (Al Gore, John Doerr), the future of media (Charles Leadbeater, Johnathan Harris), saving the world (Nicholas Negroponte, Bono), or dozens of things in between, there is something that will inspire you.

Best of all, this wealth of knowledge is no longer reserved just for those fortunate enough to earn an invitation. Video presentations are now added to the website on a weekly basis to incite dialogue, challenge thinking, and entertain more than anything you'll find on network television. Anyway, please check it out.

I love TED, but honestly, I only told you about it so I could tell you this . . .

Today, the Indianapolis Arts Council hosted their annual kick-off luncheon, Start With Art. I had the pleasure of attending and listening to Sir Ken Robinson speak about the importance of creativity and how lousy our society does at embracing it, from cutting funding to the arts in schools to the failure of many businesses to embrace the natural talents of their teams. I was really looking forward to hearing him speak and then talking with him afterwards because his presentation at TED has been one of my absolute favorites.

Since I blathered on so much about TED, I won't get into all of the details of today's talk. Instead, I'll let you enjoy the speech that first developed my affinity for Sir Robinson.