Today I was excited to speak at BoCo, a great new conference developed by the Boulder Tech Community, especially Andrew Hyde. Rick Turoczy was there, among other awesome Portlanders, San Fransiscans, and Boulderites. It  was a sunny day and there were beautiful mountains all around. The morning sessions dealt with food and music and were very wonderful to listen to.

I spoke about Cyborg Anthropology, which is the study of human computer interactions and how technology affects the way in which we communicate with one another.

We Are All Cyborgs

When you read this, you are acting as a low-tech cyborg, because you are using a computer to view text that I have written. My writing is stored here in my website, part of my actor network of external technological devices that, when taken together, comprise my technosocial self. As cavemen, we began skipping evolution by crafting spears instead of growing teeth. We began making hammers as extensions of our fists.

My social self is part technology and part human. My technological self does a lot of networking for me through my social networking profiles and my Google search results. So do yours (if you have them). My technosocial avatar of a self networks for me when I’m not there.

Distributed Social Selves

Each piece of my distributed social identity leaves a geological trail of past self that my present self can interact with. These all comprise my future self, which your future self or selves will most undoubtedly interact with. The online optimization of self, when coupled with the analog optimization of self (i.e. real-life networking, person to person) is the creation of a stable identity that is uniformly distributed and presented all over the web.

Technology Resembles Magic

Technology is almost magical. Like the scrying pool of the past (or of fantasy novels), the iPhone or computer monitor allows us to view anything anywhere in the world through YouTube and Twitter, News sites and Facebook. We can summon up an image with a simple spell (a simple text entry into Google search or Twitter search) and we can extend our speech and ears across very large distances in seconds with the mere touch of a button.

Technology Gives Us Superpowers

Technology, when used well, gives us amazing superpowers. We are like gods, until we forget to charge our batteries. We are like gods, until we forget to upgrade our devices to the most recent operating system or device number. Our external prosthetic devices turn against us when they get old. Our old clothes go out of style. Our brick phones make us get laughed at in the streets.

From Physical Transportation to Mental Transportation

In the same way that cars transport our physical bodies, computers and cell phones transport our spiritual bodies. Don’t like the word spiritual? Use the word mind instead. We’re increasingly entering into a world of mental machines - mental transportation devices. These devices transmit our thoughts invisibly to others. They are taking up smaller amounts of space, until vehicles, who require increasingly large highways.

Mental Traffic Jams

We have traffic jams, too. Mental traffic jams. Jams on Twitter. Twitter fails. Rush hour around important events and deaths and wars and crises. We can now have multiple views of the same event.

Telephonic Schizophrenia

When telephone technology first came out, people felt it was crazy. The idea of going into a room and speaking into a machine sounded schizophrenic.

More

There is more: enough to fill up a hour and a half speech, but I’ll leave that to you to see the next time I speak. Until then, you can follow me on Twitter @caseorganic, or you can check out BoCo.

For the second year in a row, I live Tweeted and Visualized the Internet Strategy Forum Summit at the Governor Hotel in Portland, OR.

My goal was to track Twitter volume, speaker quotes, and general buzz around the event of every attending Twitterer in the audience. I had to formalize the data and take samples during many parts of the day to get a solid visual.

Instead of digging through pages of Twitter data with the search term #ISF09, the method here allows the audience as well as speakers to see how their speech ranked in comparison others at the conference. This way, one can see exactly the topics that hit the audience the hardest.

I used a Java Applet called StreamGraphs to visually track the Internet Strategy Forum Summit. The app was built by Jeff Clark. You can follow him @JeffClark on Twitter.

Standardizing the Data

StreamGraphs has some limitations. It only shows the last 1,000 tweets and thus it must be queried in real-time, during an event, to get usable results. The first thing to do was to standardize the hashtag. Some Twitter users were Tweeting with @summit, #isfsummit09, or #isf09. For the best data to be presented, users had to Tweet using one hashtag. I did a Twitter search for everyone following @summit OR #isfsummit09 OR #isf09 OR the Governor Hotel and began following them. Then I @’d them, welcoming them to the Internet Strategy Forum Summit and added an #isf09 hashtag to the end of each Tweet. I watched for people questioning as to which hashtag to use and informed them that #isf09 was shorter and better.

By 10:47, I had regular data and was able to begin tracking the Internet Strategy Forum Summit. Katherine Durham’s Tweets were not able to be recorded into the graph, but Shelia Tolle and the speakers after her were picked up. This was due to a limitation of the StreamGraph Java Applet (StreamGraph only shows the last 1,000 Tweets). So alas, we missed Durham’s excellent words: “Flat is the new up“.

And the second sample was taken from 10:08 to 2:37. The second sample did a better job at gathering the overall sentiment and buzz of the conference. It is evident from the image that Jeremiah Owyang was the speaker that captured the audience’s attention the most.

What Was Shown:

The interesting part about visualizing data in this way is that it shows that there is an inherent difference between what a speaker says and what they audience values. The conversations bursts worked just like sine waves as audience began to engage with the material of each new speaker. As memorable quotes were released into the audience, a lot of tweeting and retweeting coverage occured, melding some of the terms into like-groups. The graph shows that people tweeted about the speaker during the middle of the speech as opposed to at the beginning or end of the speech.

The First Burst: Shelia Tolle

Vice President of Marketing, Intuit Small Business Group. TOPIC: Combining eCommerce and Community: It’s a New Normal…and, There’s
No Going Back

The three words most associated with Shelia’s speech were online, Twitter, and Social.

BenZee: Fastest growing group on Twitter and facebook is people over 40.

CommunityMGR: Fastest growing group on Social Networks (ie: Facebook) are over the age of 45! Social Equillibrium from young to older. #ISF09

CommunityMGR: Channels like Twitter allow companies to help customers WHERE THEY ARE. Personalize with indiv photos, NOT logos as avatars. #Intuit #ISF09

TMMPDX: Intuit helping customers where they are - Twitter. @intuit draws the ire from professional haters online - Sheila Tolle. #isf09 #isfsummit09

cyndibrigham: Help customers where they are. This is the work I focus on through online syndication. Go to where the people shop and research #isf09

tmmBosley: turn bullhorn around, be part of the community, live your higher purpose, create amazing, embrace chaos! #isf09 Sheila Tolle

The Second Burst: Lisa Welchman

Here we can see the major takeaways from @lwelchman’s speech on change.

Top tweets: “orgs need to handle change internally. All communications need to change, and people don’t want to grasp impact, says @tom_bennett and @tmmBosley.

@smdempsey: @CommunityMGR Game has changed, but the internet was just the impetus. Time to rethink the model; biz as usual is not sustainable.

@blocheads: Effecting change is hard. I’ve asked clients to agree to a “We promise to do whatever you say clause, but no takers yet.
@tmmBosley: What to do? Systematic change: Figure out guiding principles in your organization (like Intel has done right @bryanrhoads?

Key Point: Chief Content Officer

At 11:11, @lwelchman brought up the idea of the Chief Content Officer, or the Chief Web Officer.

rahelab: Time has come for a Chief Content Office, Chief Web Officer, ect as these areas have become critical to web ops.
close2open: “Why can’t there be a Chief Content officer?
tmmSabrina: Lisa from @welchman Start a management REVOLUTION! Chief Content Officer, Chief Web Officer, ect. Amen Sister!

But I was told later that it was not about hiring a Chief Content Officer, but about becoming one.

Retweets of this comment appeared again at 11:49.

10:40: We all have a ‘wierd background’ - I’m a philosophy major w/Phorics minor and did did vocal opera. what does that make me? a Web person.

Caseorganic: RT @jeffreybunch: @lwelchman inspiring the oppressed web masses at #isf09!

imeldak: The CIO should be responsible for driving content, web and technology revolutions in the C Suite

@lwelchman was an excellent speaker.

The Third Burst: Jeremiah Owyang

The audience took away major points from Jeremiah Owyang’s speech, including ideas related to the web, context, users, eras and years, pages, and community. The social theme resonated most with the audience, as well as being a major theme of the conference.

The idea of eras was a new and interesting take on the standard ideas of business the and social web. One of the main takeaways concerned the fact that a company could actually have a 5 year media plan instead of a year to year thing. He outlined the social eras to come so that businesses might plan instead of being left behind.

Era

CommunityMGR: 5 eras of social web: Relationships, Functionality, Colonization, Context & Commerce.

Web

Webtom_bennett: Allow users to surf the web within your experience (put your wrapper on it).

msdouglass: Social web colonization is coming to your business. Will you be France? Belgium? Ivory Coast? USA? Offline lessons abound.

Context

jdenizac: People will surf in social contexts, even if your site is not social. eg, digg bar.

tom_bennett: Social Context - contextualized experience based on universal IDs is coming.

Page

agray: Registration pages are going away - the way you collect leads online with change.
@thisKat: @agray More details! Live Tweet this! So many marketers are slaves to the registration page.
NathanJWagner: Registration pages will change…lead gen and CRM reporting will change…SM sites will get more traffic than corp sites.
Caseorganic: Registration Pages Going Away. May be able to measure by # of fans, engagement you have instead of signups.

Community

Tom_bennett: Agencies will appear that represent communities, not brands.
tom_bennett: Functionality - shatter your corporate website and let it spread within the community.
CommunityMGR: Social Networks will become next generation CRM Systems. Ad agencies may flip to representing the Community.

User

caseorganic: Social networks becoming operating systems - can put apps on top like Scrabulous and interact with users where they are.
Rahelab: Social functionality: more like operating systems. Apps on top of platforms-Facebook, LinkedIn apps. “Go where users are.” Not mature yet.
BenZee: On the web: technologies evolve, users adopt then companies adapt.

Johan’s speech about Intel Corp’s Keynote spurred a lot of Tweets about Intel, and thus the Intel name is associated with it. Most of the Tweeting was done towards the first of part of Johan’s speech, as well as the discusion of a very nice Intel ad about the co-founder of the USB. Towards the end of the speech, and the subsequent panel, the electronics in the room ran out of batteries, making it impossible to cover the event via Twitter. I was told that iPhones and Blackberries were also running out of power. Although some battery life may have been restored during lunch, the life quickly ran out. I saw many audience members turn towards pen and paper to take notes for the rest of the conference.

Conclusion:

There are many graphs like this available online. Most are made by students at colleges, and a lot have to do with graphically displaying content volumes. I found this analytics visualizer to be exceptionally powerful because of its ability to track word volume over time.

The applications for this type of visual presentation of information are vast. During the ISF after party, I determined that these graphs would be an invaluable tool for examining PR statistics over time. If I sat down and pulled apart the code with someone, it would be fun to develop this graphing system into an extremely granular tool for online reputation management.

Data Dimensions:

My research depends on attending conferences because my current focus is on visualizing data with 4 main dimensions.

1. Time
2. Volume
3. Keyword
4. Event/Person

In this way, data becomes more like an audio file, and even closely resembles it. It is a friendlier way of viewing trends, and is more accurate (because of the added dimension of volume) than

Tool Limitations:

Currently, the tool I am using is Java based. It does not yet allow the user to set periods of time, and does not have the server capabilities to store server data. It is a brilliant data analytics tool, and if it were to allow a greater amount of granularity (in terms of keywords), as well as time range, it would prove to be an invaluable tool for tracking Public Relations. Currently, it is possible to do this, it just takes a longer amount of time to do so.

I approached Jeff Clark, the tool’s developer, about collaborating with him to create a more robust version that would incorporate a larger time frame, clickable data formats (I have a paper prototype of all of this), and a zoom feature. He declined, so the tool will stay where it is. If he releases a new version, I will be the first to use it.

There are so many great potentialities with a tool like this, because being able to visualize data over time with an extra dimension of volume is really exciting. Please let me know if you’d like to work on an open source version of it with me.

Now What?

Systems are optimal when the amount of time and space it takes to get pieces of relevant data from one person to another continues to decrease. Those designs/processes that exemplify this paradigm will be successful in the future economy. Systems like these that track the most important data points will be an important part of your complete data breakfast.

About:

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist, internet marketer, and speaker from Portland, Oregon. You can contact her at caseorganic at gmail.com, or on Twitter at @caseorganic.

Many thanks to Steve Gehlen for running the Internet Strategy Forum Summit and inviting me back to the conference to visualize the data streams.

On Thursday, June 4th, 2009, members of the Portland Advertising, Tech, PR and Social Media community gathered to watch a panel event called “Who Killed Social Media?”. It was moderated by Marshall Kirkpatrick @marshallk, VP of Read Write Web, and one of the most prolific and RSS-informed people in the technosocial universe. The panel was a partnership between Portland’s Nemo Design (who graciously provided beer and a nice meeting space), and Group Y Network.

Marshall started off the panel by saying that terms are strange, for instance, “social media tends to be a little bit more broadcast and marketed, vs. the social web, which is a little more a way of life”.
–

Social Media Panelists

James Todd - @jwtodd

Software Engineer - Worked at Sun for over 50 years. Involved with Twine.

Lee Crane - @leecrane

Action Sports Media Veteran (Does that mean he’s wounded?), and proud blogger.

Matt Savarino - @Ridertech

K2, worked with the XGames.

Tony Welch - @frostola

Leads the Social Media strategy at HP, does the social media strategy for the laptop division.

Dave Allen - @pampelmoose

Community Manager, Director of Insights, Nemo Design

—

Who Killed Social Media? - The Panel Begins

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Just like when you open a fortune cookie and add “in bed” to the end, we add the “how will it make money”, “how will we market it” to the end of each social media question.

First question was for Tony,

Tony Welch: The alpha geeks validate our technologies. There is someone you go to when you want to know about computers. They validate what HP is doing. From there, hopefully you can use that relationship to bridge down to the rest of the mass audience.

James Todd told everyone go to Twine.com, and said this name multiple times throughout the panel. But by the end, it was apparent that he truly believed in twine and how it is a true filter for information streams, be it social or not.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Twine is like a social bookmarking tool that automatically grabs material from the content of web pages and places in a tagged, semantically linked structure. Last month, Twine surpassed Delicious for number of unique visitors. Some people love Twine, but there’s also ample people who follow them around and criticize them.
–

The Semantic Web

James Todd: Semantics have been around for many ears. It’s pretty easy to screenscrape and provide APIs to that data, which Twitter does really well (it’s API). Down the road, consumers actualy have the ability to be in the driver’s seat.

The semantic space has really been driven by academics. While it is easy to talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk. Providing a list of distributed databases to provide access and crosslinking to those databases allows you to be able to know your customers much more.

The bar was set high; as Marshall said, he lives 5 years in the future and sometimes comes back to visit us. We hadn’t quite delivered some of the API features that we wanted to. Some of those future features. We use a lot of Open Source. A lot of it which only works on White Boards.

Let me just be really candid here — there’s been a lot of sidebar discussions. If you have a social application, you really have to have engagement. The promise has not really been delivered yet, but it is on the way. We’ve been a little bit burned by the alpha users in our experiences. We syndicate with Twitter now, and we’re getting a lot of people to use that. Really, we just want to average person to use it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick:
So, realizing that some of your critics have financial interests, realizing your shortcomings and working them out. But what James really wanted to talk about is the future and what’s coming down the night.

Not sure how many of you have heard of the new product Google Wave, but James has been following that particularly close, and if that’s one of the visions of the far-out future and how it can work…then.
–

Social Collaboration

James Todd: I have a problem with formal names, such as the Social Web. To me, I think the social web is just allowing people to communicate — bidirectional- back and forth. I think that what the Wave is going to allow collaboration. Allowing the average person to casually use applications. Google Wave allows people to do things on top of those applications naturally. It’s built on XMPP Jabber, which is the technology that instant messaging is built on. I think the consumer will be in the driver’s seat on which services will be allowed to integrate with each other.

I envision a point where pople will be able to choose which services to interoperate.

I used to work on a JUXTA project at SUN (where he worked for about 15 years), which we put XMPP on top of. This stuff can be small group oriented, which I really like better than large group orientated. I think that communication/collaboration is going to be the next bit thing.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So the future will be a bunch if little groups talking with robots coming in giving updates on the snow conditions on the slop that the small group is going to go snowboarding on later.

So lets talk with Lee on the transition that we’re going to be going through in the transition from analog to digital media. He’s been in the television industry, but he’s also a blogger as well, so I think he has an understanding of this space really well.

The Transition from Traditional Media to Social Media

Lee Crane: When the cotton gin came, it actually made people’s jobs a lot easier. But now people want to be able to communicate 24 hours a day, so the marketer has to be available at all times. Traditionally, a marketer would make segments and send out some marketing, and set back and say “cool”. Now people know when they’d not doing a good job because no one is responding to it.

The difference is today that it is no longer the marketers that are doing the communicating — It’s the customers that are doing the communicating, and they’re doing it would your consent.

The difference being that it is…more difficult.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Is it fair to say, lets not do push marketing media type stuff and instead communicate with our users, or…

Lee Crane: The media landscape is so fragmented now that people are being so bombarded with little bits of information that our job becomes bombarding them with lots of relevant information. The game becomes and instantaneous battle of having relevant information every minute of the day.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: While maintaining authenticity.

Dave Allen: Yes.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: So lets say someone was crazy enough to want to get into that, what do you think a good way to get into that would be?

Lee Crane: Well, it’s that if people are saying you have to Twitter, you HAVE to Twitter. When they say you have to Blog, you have to Blog. And the problem is that to understand it, you have to blog for a while.

There was a conference — and Ev was asked, “why is it that 50% of Twitter users don’t don’t Twitter after signup”.

When I first signed up, I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so there was no real point in updating.

That’s kind of what is happening, “there’s this Twitter thing going o, so we should have to Twitter. So can someone just say something that just happened in the Office?”.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Let’s talk to Matt Savarino next. He has a lot of experience with Extreme sports, has long been interested in geolocation, and has a substantial Facebook presence.

The big question I have for you is, are all these freaky things you’ve been interested in finally picking up speed with the general market?

Matt Savarino: Basically, the question of who you know and where you’re at is becoming commonplace. I bet most brands here don’t have a mobile website, and they should. In the future, I think it is important that sites have one to prove that they are not subpar.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We discussed youth marketing in general. Do you think that’s important now for people under the age of 25?

Youth Marketing

Matt Savarino: In my experience, kids don’t have the iPhone. They generally have ht free flip-phone, ect. Parents generally don’t invest in something that, if dropped once, will be broken (I don’t agree with this. I’ve seen 13 year olds with iPhones, the middle class market, definitely). But when I look at middle school kids now getting out from school, all of them have their heads down, texting.

–

Social Media Decision-making in a Multi-Channeled World

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We’re making decisions like that- do we do a mobile site, do we do a web app? It is difficult to have the conversations without first discussing ROI.

Matt Savarino: There is a large problem with having g the data be tracked, ROI tracked. The people who know and see and use these things, and the people who don’t. Justifying to them that if 30 people Tweet the post to their friends, that that has value, even if they didn’t buy a ticket. And with apps, I have to prove to them that I am giving them engagement, when they want me to give them traffic. But the problem is that these brands have traffic already, they just don’t have the engagement.

You can choose NOT to do it, but your competitor will. Burton snowboards doesn’t capitalize on Twitter, which is a tremendous opportunity for us to prove that we have something they don’t. Because they’re one of the biggest brands out there, and they’re not doing something important.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would you like to share your insurance analogy?
–

Social Media Insurance and the Case of Emusic.com

Dave Allen: It is difficult to convince executives to pay someone $55,000 a year to scrape the web. So I tell them, put that $55K into insurance. Because if your brand doesn’t own the message, the message owns the brand.

A company that did not share in this idea was Emusic, who was smashed this week.

833 people on Emusic’s blog said “Goodbye”, and Emusic did not respond.

One of the people who should’ve responded said, “I’m going to go on vacation for 2 weeks”, and, as you know, 2 weeks in Internet time is infinity.

What they ought to have done is completely pool their subscription base, 400,000 people, and say “hey, we’re thinking of acquiring the Sony music collection - are you interested?”. And I be you that 98% of those subscribers would’ve said, “no thank you”, and then set up a tiered system so that the 2% that is interested would pay for this additional music collection so that the rest of the subscriber base could’ve been grandfathered in and still had access to the independent music that they’d been so supportive of for the past 10 years.

They need to get the CEO onto Youtube to say, “I’m sorry, we blew it, really, really badly — and then apologize profusely to the subscriber base”.

Now that we have access 24/7 to spread our thoughts across the web, then

If you’re the manager of a brand, you have the ability to control the message - to jump in and interact with it, help shape it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: (Sarcastic) Are you sure it wouldn’t just be a good idea to just be really nice, and just tell everyone about your products?

Dave Allen: Why should we do that?

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Because that’s what’s made money for the majority of people in this industry since the industry began.

Dave Allen: Well, that’s not how I make my living.

So, is Social Media Dead?

Rod Pitman (audience): Well, I have a question. Is social media dead? Isn’t that the name of this panel? And if not, why? I think that, if you don’t have a story, you’re dead.

Dave Allen: I agree. A story is necessary. But there is the name of the panel, which I am responsible for, and the question behind that is what is behind social media, and to also start a discussion.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Would anyone else like to speak about push marketing pushed over social media tools, vs. the opposite, which is engagement?

Matt Saravino: Social media is by no means dead. I think that over time, your intent becomes obvious. So if your intent is that you’re going to constantly tell me that your products are 20% off, I’m going to realize that. To be genuine, and to realize that people can see right through you.

If you’re trying to broadcast deals, then call your Twitter account “BrandDeals” or something, so then people at least know what to expect.

Lee Crane: Social Media is not dead, it’s actually the other way around. The Social is killing the “media.”

Watch What You Predict

Tony Welch: How many of you do SEO or SEM? SEO and SEM will be dead as you know it within 6 months. Google is going to take into account now much more about what’s happening. Now, when people talk in your name, people will see social conversations about your company showing up in Google results, from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr. It’s now about brand management vs. SEO.

Dave Allen: Great, so you can take all that money you put into SEO and SEM and put it into community management. And you should not retain your assets but spread them as far and as wide as possible.

If we are moving away from SEO/SEM and into community and reputation, then it is of tremendous importance to protect and monitor communities and reputations.

Tony Welch: Anyone know what the second largest search engine is? Facebook. Twitter is coming next. People are spending a lot more on relationship analysis.

Self-Censoring and Social Media

Marcus Miller (audience): I guess that Dave has no self censoring problems. Tony you speak to - the idea that when you do any Twittering, then it is you. What degree do you find yourself self-censoring?

Tony Welch: There are some things I would love to Tweet about, but as I do work at HP, there are some constraints: for instance, I can’t just post anything because I’m also representing part of HP, and what I say can reflect on the brand.

Lee Crane: I use pseudonyms. I use fictional constructs, which also blog for me.

Dave Allen: Do you pay them well?

Lee Crane: I do. Very well.

Dave Allen: I’m not as wide-open as you think. I have a 30 second rule, and if it still reads well after that, I post it. I also don’t do anything online after 11 O’clock. Because I drink a glass a glass of wine. That’s a new rule I’ve decided to follow.

Technological Adoption and Social Class

Carri Bugbee (audience): brings up a questions about kids having flip phones, but per danah boyd’s research, social class plays a bit role in having iPhones or not. The man from New York who sent this question says, “all my kids have iPhones”.

Matt Savarino: That sounds like a very nice family to be in. But the majority of kids don’t have these technologies.

(break)

Lee Crane:Right now, it seems like there’s so much volume of information out there that we can ignore everything.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Some people who tweet as many as 5 times a day feel like they’re flooding the world with too much information. I prefer to get RSS feeds from people and companies so I can keep track of all the the updates in an organized manner.

Community Management - Tracking the Social Web. Monitoring, then Participating

Tony Welch: We use a social media tracking program called Radian6 to track what’s happening on the social web. I’m not actually participating in conversations but am watching them happen.

Dave Allen: That’s classic community manager. Monitoring the network is the first step to maintaining reputation. You should not start right away by saying ‘We’re such-and-such a shoe brand”, or we have to jump in and get a Twitter or Facebook page, ect. If you don’t have a plan for that, it’s going got be a bit of a nightmare. There’s always this expectation or practice built around it. I wish there were such a way that I could get across to these companies about the need or them to have an insurance policy.

Tony Welch: One time, when I was looking at what people were saying about the community, and this one guy said, “I hate HP so much that it hurts when I pee”.

(Laughter)

Tony Welch: And so I think, what am I supposed to do what that? Do I engage? How do I engage?

Lee Crane: Well, he’s probably not using the product correctly.

(More laughter)

Nicole (audience): It’s not going to be who killed social media, but who killed the companies, because they didn’t participate? How, if you’re in one of these companies and have them understand the insurance principle, or the stupidity of companies?

Tony Welch: You pull up Google and pull up their name, you go to Twitter and pull up their name, you go to Facebook and pull up their name — and you say, “look at all of these people having conversations about your brand without you participating.

Panel Conclusions

The battery on my laptop died just before the end of the panel, but Ed Borasky (@znmeb) came up to the mike and asked a very potent question.

“Some people got in on the ground floor of Twitter,” said Ed, “but it’s too late to do that now. My question is what is the next service to get in on the ground floor of. For instance, there’s no way to be Scoble, or Oprah, now that it’s been done”.

I’m not sure who it was that responded, but a number of the panelists did, and the response was along the lines of personal branding. “There’s always opportunity to develop a brand. And there’s never been a chance to be Oprah,” they said.

Nate DiNiro (@unclenate“) also asked if social media was going to backlash, because now “aren’t we all just looking at screens?”. He wondered if there was a point when we wouldn’t be able to take the inflow of information anymore - when we would just ’snap’.

Dave Allen: I don’t think so. I’ve had a greater ability to meet people through Tweetups and get to know them in real life more than if I didn’t have the technology. In many ways, looking at a screen has made me more social.

The panel ended on a high note, with Dave Allen saying something really awesome, and the networking continued into the night, moving from Nemo to various bars and pubs. Thanks to everyone who helped up the event on, including Nemo Design, GroupY, and the panelists, and special thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick, who did an excellent job of moderating.

Who Killed Social Media Recorded Livestream

If you missed the event, or want to make fun of the lousy job I did of trying to type way too quickly during it, then you can watch the saved livestream of Who Killed Social Media at USTREAM.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and social media consultant living and working in Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic. She has a background in qualitative and quantitative analysis and is available for short-term projects involving new media, online presence, digital branding, data aggregation and event coverage. If you’re not on Twitter, reach her at caseorganic [at] gmail [dot] com.

We’ve done a lot of things in Portland, but there is one type of event that’s been missed by many people. This camp ignores a significant chunk of the Portland Tech community. In other words…

We need a kids tech camp.

• Kids need to have a great place to meet each other and experience technology.
• Parents with kids should be able to bring their children to a networking event and get to know each other.
• The venue should be fun and educational. It should allow participation and activities for kids, so that parents can have an enjoyable time alongside them, or amongst themselves.

Twitter Responses:

• Irene_S: @caseorganic That’d be great! Having kids does cut into one’s networking time.
• harrisja: @caseorganic I completely agree! more kid friendly tech events FTW!
• smb: @caseorganic kids networking tech event would be awesome. What age ranges are you contemplating?
• petsaretalking: @caseorganic What an awesome idea!
• anitacochran: @caseorganic That sounds like fun, get any nibbles?
• LeStew: @caseorganic re: #childtech YES YES YES!!!!
• snelson: @caseorganic I’m in for planning… especially if at least some of program could be targeted at GIRLS and technology
• brampitoyo: @snelson @caseorganic I know that some robotic club are connected to DorkbotPDX, and they’re open for both girls and boys.
• neophiliac: @caseorganic sounds cool. I’ve been looking for an excuse to learn (Ruby) Shoes; it’s great for kids.
• MatthewStadler: @caseorganic Yes on all-ages tech event. Key is all-ages, not just “kids,”i.e., adults drink, swear, etc., alongside kids. Venue more Backspace than OMSI
• oleoptene: @caseorganic But kids tech event awesome idea we would totally get behind. Suggest kids take part in planning of it.
• oleoptene: @caseorganic Besides bringing older offspring to Ignite (they loved cyborg anthropology) we’ve talked kidcamp @ barcamp, facility a problem.
• kmcdade: @caseorganic I’m very interested in helping plan a kids event. Also, @kidtech seems like the name of someone’s account, so #childtech might work better.

Venue:

I agree with MatthewStadler that a venue more like Backspace than OMSI is needed. Also, Oleoptene’s dea of letting kids plan the event seems really fun. All ages seems nice — but probably not too young. The cut-off age could be 6, for instance.

Conclusion:

Seems like we have enough interest to proceeed. The question is of “how”. A date would be nice. Some time in Feburary would give us ample time to plan a half day of activities and little workshops, as well as secure a venue and funding (if needed), and to gather momentum. The only question I have is whether the event should be large or small.

Yep. So we need one of these events. Reply or contact me in some way (I’m @caseorganic on Twitter) if you’re interested in helping out. We can probably get a Wiki started and get the show on the road!

I wanted to write about this before, but I had to wait until everything was secured and verified.

In September, Steve Gehlen invited me to speak about Cyborg Anthropology at Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conference on September 5th of this year. The conference was a refreshing and entertaining look at where entertainment, art, culture, business, and social media are going. The keynote was Joshua Green of MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium.

After Inverge, Joshua and I compared theorists and research, and had a great time socializing along with all of the other conference attendees and speakers. A month later, Joshua informed me of a conference at MIT called the Futures of Entertainment, and wondered if I would be interested in being on a panel on social media. He said that my analysis and understanding of both the academic and corporate world would provide a useful bridge between two separate fields.

Convergence culture has moved swiftly from buzzword to industry logic. The creation of transmedia storyworlds, understanding how to appeal to migratory audiences, and the production of digital extensions for traditional materials are becoming the bread and butter of working in the media. Futures of Entertainment 3 once again brings together key industry leaders who are shaping these new directions in our culture and academic scholars immersed in the investigation the social, cultural, political, economic, and technological implications of these changes in our media landscape. This year’s conference will work to bring together the themes from last year - media spreadability, audiences and value, social media, distribution - with the consortium’s new projects in moving towards an increasingly global view of media convergence and flow. Topics for this year’s panels include global distribution systems and the challenges of moving content across borders, transmedia and world building, comics and commerce, social media and spreadability, and renewed discussion on how and why to measure audience value.

I very carefully prepared two forms of submission — one on Cyborg Anthropology from the academic perspective, and another from the business perspective.

However, I feel that what I am doing pales in comparison to the accomplishments of those whom I will be participating with. I am both honored and overwhelmed by this opportunity. I hope to be able to add value to some aspect of the conference.

I’ll be participating on the social media panel, which is described as follows:

“Moving lives online, creating conversations across geography, connecting with consumers - how is social media defining the current entertainment landscape? As people not only put more content online, but conduct more of their daily lives in networked spaces and via social networking sites, how are social media influencing how we think of audiences? Video-sharing platforms have changed how we think of production and distribution, and Facebook gifts point to the value of virtual properties, how are these sites enabling other processes of production or distribution practices. Spaces where commercial and community purposes intertwine, what are the implications for privacy, content management, and identity construction of social media? How have they impacted notions of civic engagement?”

Conference Attendees

Kim Moses - Executive Producer, The Ghost Whisperer, Lost, Medium, Yochai Benkler - Harvard Law School, The Wealth of Networks (Yale University Press), John Caldwell - UCLA, Production Culture (Duke University Press), Henry Jenkins - MIT, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (NYU Press), Alex McDowell - Production Designer, The Watchmen, Kevin Slavin - Area/Code, Sabrina Caluori - Director, Marketing and Promotions, HBO Online, Grant McCracken - Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (Indiana University Press), Donald K Ranvaud - Buena Onda Films, Amanda Lotz - University of Michigan, The Television Will be Revolutionized (NYU Press), Gail De Kosknik - UC Berkeley, How to Save Soap Opera: Histories and Futures of an Iconic Genre, Joe Marchese - socialvibe.com, Amber Case - Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant, Hazelnut Consulting, Mauricio Mota - New Content (Brazil), Alisa Perren - Georgia State University, The Media Industry Studies Book (Blackwell Publishing)….more.

Steve Gehlen, Paige Saez (on a grant from PNCA) and Kris Krug will be flying out to join me at the conference. In case you’re in the area too, the conference information is as follows:

MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3

Friday, Nov 21 8:30a to Saturday, Nov 22 8:30a
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): Wong Auditorium, Cambridge, MA

Thanks

A great big thank you to everyone in the Portland Tech community for being supportive and welcoming of interdisciplinary thought. Special thanks to Joshua Green and Steve Gehlen.

—–

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and New Media Consultant living in Portland, Oregon. You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic.

If you had five minutes to talk to Portland what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Launch a web site? Teach a hack? Talk about recent learnings, successes, failures? Fill out the form below to submit your talk. We are looking for talks that will inspire and teach, not recruiting or product pitches.

If you haven’t heard it yet, Ignite Portland 4 is ready for your talk submissions. However, there are only two days left to submit your speech topic!

Just check out what’s already been submitted!

-Five Things Portland Can Learn From Kentucky in Five Minutes

-Dating Rules for the Actual World

-Non-Dumb Direct Voting

-What can Hugh Hefner teach us about Community Management?

-How to Get your Dog to Stop Doing That.

-The remarkable story of an X-rated plant.

Yep - it’s going to be a great event!

Read more recent topic submissions and submit yours! We’re all excited to see it!

I can’t say it enough - Portland’s Twitter community just keeps getting better and better. With it, everyone can meet great people and pool need resources. In just four days, we were able to raise over $400 for a new bike/laptop for @brampitoyo after his bike and laptop were stolen last week.

The following is the larger story:

————–

The First E-mail

Dear Members of the Extremely Awesome Portland Tech Community,

As you all know, Bram Pitoyo is one of the most involved and valued members of our community. He’s helped organized and implement a million events and made them excellent. And this week, he’s bringing us Lunch 2.0 at the Art Institute of Portland. More impressive is the fact that he bikes everywhere and still manages to make it to almost every tech event in town (and then still has the energy to live tweet and blog).

However Bram Pitoyo lost his bike on the Max last night. It was stolen while he was composing a blog post (the really cool one he’s about to release). This morning, @Mettadore direct messaged me and challenged me to $20 for the cause.

So, I agreed. I have $20 that says we can raise enough money to get Bram Pitoyo a new bike. Interested? Lets keep this on the low-down so that we can surprise him with it.

If you’d like to donate any amount, you can do it through PayPal caseorganic@gmail.com or just bring it by to Beer and Blog this week at the Green Dragon from 4-6 Pm.

Please forward this as necessary. I know I’m missing a lot of people (like @reidab and @billder) A lot of people know Bram. Direct message if possible through Twitter to keep it low key.

Hopefully we can raise enough money by the end of this week for him to get a bike light enough to commute with for the winter. Money is generally tight these days, so if you can’t contribute, don’t antagonize.

Sincerely,
Amber Case, et al.

—————-

The Second E-mail

Hey Everyone,

A tremendous thanks to those who’ve pitched into the Bram Pitoyo Bike Fund by Paypal already. We’re about halfway there to a new bike! This funding will probably really

Tomorrow is beer and blog. If you haven’t donated already, I’ll be collecting it at Beer and Blog before Bram’s presentation. I know money is generally tight these days, so if you can’t contribute, don’t antagonize.

After Bram makes his presentation, we’re going to be giving the bike fund to Bram. This way, he won’t know what’s coming.

If you’d like to donate any amount, you can do it through PayPal caseorganic@gmail.com or just bring it by to Beer and Blog this week at the Green Dragon from 4-6 Pm.

Please forward this as necessary. I know I’m missing a lot of people (like @reidab and @billder) A lot of people know Bram. Direct message if possible through Twitter to keep it low key.

Thanks so much!

Sincerely,
Amber Case, et al.

————-

The Results

The fundraising went very quickly. When Justin Kistner, founder of @beerandblog invited Bram to give a speech (slides and description are available here) during Friday’s event, I knew it would be the perfect time to follow it up by presenting him with the fund. It’s going to help a lot. It went brilliantly!

We raised $190 via. paypal before @beerandblog

John Metta
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Kevin Chen
Barry Cadish
Steve Gehlen
Allison McKeever
Betsy Richter
Amber Case
Mark Dilley

———————————–

We raised $195 during @beerandblog by cash and paypal

Nate Angell
Doc Normal
Dawn Foster
Justin Kistner
Kathleen McDade
Mark Colman
Derrek Wayne
Steven Walling
Carri Bugbee
Alex Williams
Todd Kenefsky will be donating a U Lock bike Lock.
Pete Forsyth

———————————–

We raised $80 after @beerandblog by Paypal

Todd Kalhar
Adam Duvander
Gary Walter
MaryEllen Hockensmith
Jean-Paul Voilleque
Marie Deatherage
Raymond King

——————————-

What Next?

Donations are still open. Simply Paypal caseorganic at gmail.com to donate. Your contact information will be listed here shortly. And if I missed anyone, let me know @caseorganic.

Thanks so much to the entire Portland Tech community for helping out. It’s been fantastic watching the support that’s been given to Bram! Hooray!

Beer and Blog is held every Friday from 4-6Pm at the
Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 517-0606
And you can follow the Green Dragon on Twitter @greendragonpdx.

If you haven’t been before, please stop on by! It’ll be an awesome experience; we promise.

Portland’s group of tech and design innovators is one of the highest-ranked communities on Twitter. Those of us who’ve used the service have vastly expanded our friendships, happiness and experiences. A lot of us connect in real life on a regular basis because of Twitter. But I felt there was one very important thing missing.

You see, the majority of Portland Tech events happen in the evening.

So we had this one in the morning.

The event was arranged a few days before on Twitter, and, for fun, I made the breakfast meetup into an Upcoming event.

Initially, it was a meetup between @stevenwalling @hillerns @brampitoyo and I. Then @Kram and @lawduck joined in. Once the Upcoming event was posted more and more people began to RSVP. Then the article was “Floristed“, and this spurred additional RSVP’s.

I only expected a small party of people to be at Fuller’s, but when @brampitoyo, @neophillia and I walked in the door, we found that entire right side of the restaurant was taken up by Twitter people. In all, 11 Tweeple showed up, and we all had an amazing breakfast. It was especially exciting to meet @hillerns in Real Life for a longer amount of time than our brief encounter at Inverge.

Thanks to everyone who made it.

Want to know about more events like this one?

Portland rocks. It has excellent food, coffee, people, techies, transportation, foliage, entertainment, and bloggers! But we have suffered a tragedy: we just lost OSCON to San Jose. What!? From Jul 17-19, 2009 Lets replace it with something equally tremendous. And we can.

How?

With this handy Google Spreadsheet Form.

Yep, that’s four lines of text you have to type in. That way I can E-mail you cool stuff. Like little snippets of text to post on your blog, or a list of E-mails with some text to include in them, or ideas for posts, so that lots of people can get really excited about the conference. Like “10 reasons why Portland would be a sweet place for BLogHer”, “20 great places to eat in Portland”, and “Why Portland bloggers rock and how close the airport is” will be randomly sent to you.

The posts will be really short, and from time to time, I’ll make posts on Hazelnut Tech Talk and link them to all of your posts. This way, we’ll get this cool forcefield of blogs promoting the idea of BlogHer. That’s more visibility for your blog, and your friend’s blogs. What’s not to like?

Why am I supporting this?

For the good of the community, of course! Portland has given so much to me, and the wonderful people out there have taught me about amazing things. As a technosocial cyborg, cyberspace is pretty genderless to me, but for those who it is not yet, BlogHer might be a useful way for cool people to meet other cool people and get things done. Hooray for that!

Plus, I voted for Portland after Rick Turoczy made this post about bringing BlogHer to Portland, and we ended up being one of the top cities besides Philadelphia and St. Louis. We’re almost there. All we need to do is make everyone understand just how important this event this will be for the city/people/community.

Contact?

You can randomly connect with me if you’d like. Feel free to E-mail me or follow me on Twitter @caseorganic.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. But Portland’s own event, Ignite Portland, will be happening soon, and it is a chance for locals to make short presentations on anything they are passionate about.

When?

November 13, 2008. On the Ignite Portland Blog, Josh Bancroft urges Portlanders to Save the Date.

Ignite History

Local tech legend Raven Zachary told me that Ignite Portland was founded by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly. He was initially inspired by Japan’s rapid fire presentation method of Pecha Kucha and did an adaptation of that for technology. If you haven’t heard of Pecha Kucha before, it is Japanese for the sound of conversation. Attendees watch a speakers that have only 20 slides, with 20 seconds per slide.Portland Pecha Kucha Night was just last week.

Ignite Portland

Portland, Oregon has had some of the largest events in Ignite history. Ignite 2 packed the Bagdad Theatre with over 750 people, and many waiting in line had to be turned away.

Ignite Portland at Gnomedex

Several alumni of Ignite Portland will be presenting their five minute topics at this week’s Gnomedex 8.0, an annual social media conference organized by Chris Pirillo. Rick Turoczy has a list of the presenters on his blog, Silicon Florist, and Portland Ignites Gnomedex on TinyScreenfuls, the blog of Josh Bancroft, who points out that “The idea for Ignite Portland was hatched at last year’s Gnomedex.”

Ignite Portland Planning Begins Now

November 13th may seem like a long time away, but Ignite events take a tremendous amount of effort to pull off. Want to be part of the event and meet some really cool people in the process? The Ignite Planning Committee is always open to dedicated, passionate volunteers. Help make this Ignite Portland even better than the last three.

The Ignite Planning meeting that occurred at Cubespace tonight was there primarily to deal with a system in large demand. The first major thing discussed how the online ticket reservation system would function. Then, volunteer teams were developed. Currently, they are as follows:

The Presenter Team

Raven Zachary, Mentor iPhone developer and recently of Raven.me, an iPhone development blog. You can follow Raven on Twitter. He’s also a Legion of Tech Board Member.

Tasks

• Review and sort through all Portland Ignite 4 proposals.
• Ensure that all presenters submit 20 images, a Powerpoint, or PDF by the final deadline.
• Ensure that AV equipment does not FAIL upon deployment.

The Marketing Team

Josh Bancroft, Mentor of Intel, Kindle Evangelist, and author of the TinyScreenfuls Blog, and Legion of Tech Board Member. @Jabancroft on Twitter.

Tasks

• Spread the word about Ignite Portland 4 through writing on the Ignite Portland Blog
• Designate an Official Ignite Portland spokesperson to ensure uniform information gets out to local media connections.
• Monitor the Tweetverse for Tweets about Ignite Portland. Tweet from the official Ignite Portland blog, and answer questions as they are asked.

The Sponsor Contact/Site Team

Todd Kenefsky, Mentor CEO of Connect Interactive Media, an interactive marketing company, and Legion of Tech Board Member.

Tasks

• Convert Sponsor logos from .eps format to .gif or .jpg and place them on the Ignite Portland sponsor page.
• Help create sponsor slides

The Ignite Event Setup Team

Dawn Foster, Mentor, Consultant, FastWonder blogger, Legion of Tech Board Member, and recently, of Shizzow, an micro-geolocation released last Monday (a review of its beta release is here).

Tasks

• Help set up the venue during the day of the event.
• Organize attendees and help line flow.

Other Organizers

Adam Duvander also has a hand in organizing Ignite Portland events and has presented in past Ignites. Check out his blog, Simplicity Rules, and Adam’s Twitter profile.
~.—————–

For more information, check out the Ignite Portland Website.

Ignite Portland 4 will be on November 13, 2008

Bagdad Theater
• 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd
• Portland, OR 97214
• 7:00 - 10:00 PM
• Ticketholders get in at 5:30 PM
• General Admission at 6:15 PM
• Admission is always FREE

~.—————-

Please let me know if I missed anything in this post. Feel free to contact the Mentors via Twitter if you’d like to add to the volunteer efforts.

You can follow me on Twitter @caseorganic. I’ll be on the Marketing and Sponsor Teams.

Thanks for reading Hazelnut Tech Talk! We’re proud to bring you event coverage from a mix of creative and tech worlds.