Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

Of all the social media tool and channel options that bombard us daily, the most indispensable, cannot-live-without ones for me are my blogs….and Twitter.

An early tweet from BL Ochman that the “suits” don’t get social media. A lot of them still don’t.

My good friend (since 1978!) and tech mentor Dwight Silverman, editor at the Houston Chronicle and author of TechBlog, encouraged me to start blogging, get on Twitter and get a smartphone, all of which have been game-changers for me. Thank you for all of it, Dwight.

The blogs are the linchpin of most of my writing and publishing efforts; they would be the last URL standing for me in case of a social media neutron bomb, because I own them and control them.

Twitter is not something that I can own or control, but my passion for it is almost as strong as my love of hitting that Publish button on a blog post.

There is simply no other social media channel that works as well for business development, research, worldwide networking, professional development and good old friendships. Layer over all that the ability to easily connect with my entire network while on the move, via a mobile device….well, Facebook and the others can’t really touch it.

How social media has changed how we interact with content – a Mike Driehorst tweet

Today marks my 5th year on Twitter (I started the @SheilaS account on September 25, 2007) and while most tweets “age out” and disappear after a week or two, there is one way that you can still find them – hit that gold star and Favorite the tweet.

David Armano tweets updates and insights from 2008 SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive.) Love the Yahoo! reference, the urging to start a Facebook profile and the lack of budgets for the social media “fad.”

I’m very sporadic about Favoriting, but fortunately I did it a lot in my early Twitter days. This morning I scrolled all the way back through my Favorites, reading them with plenty of chuckles, amazement at some of the more prescient tweets and with an overwhelming feeling of affection toward all of the now-familiar people and friends I’ve followed (and eventually met in person, including my business partner of three years, Becky McCray.)

Originally I’d planned for this post to feature select Favorited tweets from across all five years, but I couldn’t get out of the stack past April 2008.  I love all of these little windows into people’s thoughts or I wouldn’t have Favorited them in the first place.

These are the earliest of my Favorited tweets that I could find. Particularly like the Knol observation from danah boyd (years later we’re looking at a moribund Google+ and Knol is long dead) and the still-accurate comments from Mack Collier about community and Twitter as an RSS replacement.

These screenshots of tweets show the diversity of discussion topics, viewpoints, useful links and occasional silliness; it’s no different than being in an online chat room or IM group, but one that is full of hand-picked interesting people (because you pick who to follow.) As the saying goes, if Twitter is boring for you, it’s because you’re following boring people.

Across 3 January days; Google search tip, insights from 08 Presidential campaign, Apple smack talk and @technosailor very accurate assessment of Twitter as communications method.

I was struck by how many of these tweeps I still follow – some of the very first ones, found mostly by following people who I recognized from their writer bylines, or from a conference or on the recommendation of people I trust: “Oh, you HAVE to follow so-and-so; they are so smart/funny/interesting/helpful.”

Podcasts, what is really King, widgets, WTF is your job and @LPT having Dell meetings in Second Life. Yes, I miss Second Life. Don’t knock it till you try it.

There IS the problem of disengaging with a group of such intriguing people….

Stop being interesting, Twitter! Tim Walker tries to resist.

And this is so true….

It’s not called the World Wide Web for nothing; many’s the time I’ve known I’m up too late as the Aussies on Twitter begin to say Good Morning.

Then there’s the random bit of unexpected humor in a tweet stream that totally brightens my day….

The original Wonkette on the 08 elections, sesame-seeded deodorant, Brogan, dissing press releases. Gawd I love Twitter.

Who knew that there would be actual, paying jobs doing this stuff? Well, there are. It’s simple relationship-building and communications by other means. Thanks to the web, a good communicator can be an asset to any company, anywhere in the world, and that person doesn’t have to even be located with the company. It’s what they call working “anywhere, anywhen” in Small Town Rules.

Corvida is smart, smart, smart. Plus, she’s always had amazing hair.

This grouping below ends with a rather plaintive tweet about how Twitter is as “freeing as blogging used to be.” I think back in the early days of social media, some felt that new platforms would by default replace others, but over time we’ve seen that there’s room for a lot of different places to gather on the web. There are plenty of people whose only social media interaction is on mobile photo-sharing sites like Instagram or Foodspotting – does that mean that “Facebook is DEAD?!”  No, of course not.

Music tech advice pre-Spotify, discovery of the power of online work to impact offline opportunities like speaking gigs and excitement over Twitter when it was new and shiny.

So, what’s the ROI for me and my livelihood of five years of tweets?

Let’s see….a successful social media training business, quicker access to the news as it happens and faster, better news analysis, travel to China on a blogger trip that laid important groundwork for me professionally, plus a diverse network all over the planet that has helped me with everything from where the transportation engineers hang out on social media (for a speaking gig that I landed through Twitter) to business connections and friendships out the wazoo.

Also, laughs when I needed them the most, from fabulous people like this who share my love of bourbon and distaste for BS….

Jason Falls back when 666 worried him; as of today he has 58,694 followers.

(Hat tip for my post title to the real internet Wayback Machine.)

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Sharing Makes You Smart

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You can’t communicate your destination or your personality to others unless you know it in your bones.  ”Fake it till you make it” works in some situations, but not this one.

Day One of the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) tech conference in Austin always starts with standing in line to check in/get badges/figure out what to do with the swag bag, then go to a few good panels and speakers before hitting the first round of parties.

What did I learn yesterday?

1. Don’t let administrative procedures suck up valuable time. Check in as early as possible at any conference (and at SXSWi you can pre-upload a headshot photo for your badge and pre-organize your schedule on their Web site.)  You aren’t there to do admin. You’re there to learn and connect.  I checked in Thursday night and was done with it.
2. Don’t be a schmuck with the “rock stars.” I saw two people grab ahold of Problogger Darren Rowse in the hallway and ask for video interviews for their own sites.  Darren is the nicest guy and he didn’t say No, but I thought it was rude and intrusive. They’re doing that so they can stick a Problogger interview on their site and look like they’re “plugged in” with the biggies. They clearly did not attend the panel on “How To Not Be A Douchebag at SXSW.”  Sure, shake hands and introduce yourself to your idol, but for heaven’s sake don’t put them to work on your personal douchebaggery projects.
3. The only panel I went to was on Web design, and a fire alarm emptied the building before the speaker Matthew Smith from Squared Eye really got going.  What a disappointment for all of us!  My big takeaway before we had to evacuate:  your site must really reflect YOU.  To me that means your destination and the people who live there, and not enough Web design processes truly go to that depth of knowledge before they put together the first page of the site.  Matthew said that good design ensures that your site “gets stuff done and makes it a pleasure to do so.”
4. No, you are not the only one who doesn’t know anybody.  At one of the evening parties, a woman I met said that “everyone here seems to know everybody.”  No, they probably don’t. They’re faking it.  Look, you’ll really only connect with about 3-5 new people in a giant human mixing bowl like SXSWi.  Glad-handing business card collectors are not the big deal that they think they are. Focus in on that one really interesting person at the party, if the conversation’s good. You do NOT have to “work the room.”

Okay, I’m off for the next set of adventures in geekdom….

Sharing Makes You Smart

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It’s been a painful few weeks for me as a relatively new online video enthusiast.

My trusty Flip Ultra pocket video camera made it pretty simple to learn how to create basic little movies for my family travel blog, the Perceptive Travel Blog and to shoot interviews for Tourism Currents.

(If you haven’t started shooting video for your organization, stop right now and read tourism marketing expert Todd Lucier’s first post in a 3-part series….How to Invest in Video: Shooting Video. Why? Because your visitors like to watch videos to learn more about your destination, and search engines return videos pretty high in results if they’re titled/tagged/described fully.)

When I began shooting for the Round Rock CVB recently, I used their FlipMino HD camera.  HD = High Definition.  It’s got to be better to go with higher quality stuff, right?

Yes, but….

First, HD video is very unforgiving of the shakes and jiggles, so I’m using my tripod a lot more and I’m very conscious of image stabilization.  HD files also take up a lot of storage room on your computer’s hard drive.  Those issues are no big deal, but I’ve run into challenges with editing.

My Dell Latitude is a few years old and runs Windows XP, thanks to my local PC Doctors service shop who advised against “upgrading” to Vista.  The Latitude has never had any difficulty handling editing using the included Windows Movie Maker software. HD, however, is a different story, as this excellent PC Magazine article will attest – Video Editing for the Masses.

If you’re thinking of shooting HD, be aware of the following issues:

1. The file extension is different and may not be recognized by your video editing software.  My installed version of Movie Maker can’t “see” the new .MP4 files from the Flip HD, and the latest version of Movie Maker (that can work with MP4) won’t work with my XP. Technology awesomeness!
2. Technology crises always happen at 9 pm on a Saturday night when you’re alone – at least, they do with me.  When I saw I had a mess, I put a call out to my video-savvy Twitter followers, who quickly gave me software suggestions.  Hurray for helpful networks.  No, I can’t “call the IT people” because that’s me.  Freelancer awesomeness!
3. Adobe Premiere Elements was recommended by several (thanks, Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle‘s TechBlog) but I found it crash-prone (corroborated in several user forums.) I never could even launch the 30 day free trial and finally had to uninstall it.  The real problem became clearer when….
4. ….I then bought (for about $100 at Best Buy) and installed Pinnacle Studio Ultimate HD (thanks for the tip, Omar Gallaga – he’s the Austin American-Statesman Digital Savant.)  Pinnacle didn’t crash and nicely corrected several problems in a few of my video files – harsh sunlight, funky audio – but playbacks kept stuttering and everything just seemed “gummy.” Turns out that when I actually read the Pinnacle system requirements (d’oh!) my laptop has insufficient RAM and the processor is too slow.
5. To handle the two videos (plus lots of B-roll) that I’ve shot in HD, I’ve now installed the Pinnacle software on my family desktop PC, which has a more powerful processor (but the same amount of RAM as the laptop, so cross your fingers for me.)  I’m copying all the HD files on my laptop onto a 500G-capacity Seagate external hard drive, then dumping them from the Seagate onto the desktop so I can try to make everything work properly on a better platform. You can’t transfer such big files by email or sticking them on a thumb drive (without losing your mind) so I went with the big digital shovel.  Tech logistics awesomeness!

Bottom line? If you want to roll with HD, it’s not enough to shoot it. That part is deceptively easy. You need a high-powered, pretty recent computer with capable software to edit it unless you’re always going to be content to upload directly online (i.e., can shoot without error and never want to change it much.)

If you’re like most tourism organizations, your budget probably doesn’t allow you to run out and buy more powerful computers – including Macs, with the excellent iMovie editing software, unless you already have them. The answer, then, is to stick with lower-resolution video until you can get the editing horsepower you need.

The trusty lower-resolution Flip Ultra and I will hit the road tomorrow to shoot the next Round Rock video, and my laptop is breathing a sigh of relief.  Something tells me its days are numbered, though….

Sharing Makes You Smart

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