dangerouslyawesome

I just had my first post go live on mashable.com, to the tune of “how to know if you should fire your social media consultant“.

I was a little nervous posting this, not because I wasn’t sure of the contents, but because I wasn’t sure who would take it personally, if anyone. So far, so good, though.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for the kind words, and the comments. And most of all, thanks to Mashable for the shot at writing for them. Hoping this becomes a regular thing!

What’s Next

Now, on to the counter-post. It’s not my style to walk into a room, punch everyone in the face, and walk out. This first post was just that: a first post. I have a lot more ideas that I’m really stoked to put out there, here on dangerouslyawesome.com as well as on Mashable.

So the counter post that people seem to be interested in is, “how do you hire a social media consultant”? I’ve got some thoughts already, and have been kicking it around with some of my friends and mentors. But I’m curious what you have to say.

So I’m turning it into a contest. That’s right.

How to get cool stuff and save companies from themselves at the same time.

You see, a few weeks back, Samsung sent me and a few of other bloggers I know this T220 22″ monitor to give away any way we like. Ill be honest, I thought it was a scam. I asked what the strings attached were, and he said “We like your blog because it’s both tech-y, business-y, and personal.  And on a personal note, I think you’re a great writer. ” You had me at “we like your blog”, Greg! Greg went on to assure me everything was cool, and low and behold, a slim box containing a very sexy-looking screen showed up behind my desk while I was on the road this month. I haven’t opened it to try it out, but that’s because I want to give it to you.

And by you, I mean the person who gives the best 5 tips for hiring a social media consultant in the comments of my blog. 5 tips, any way you want to serve them up. Text, video, whatever! I’ll sort through them with the same friends and mentors that reacted to my post, and pick what we think are the best. Not only do you then get the monitor, but I’ll credit you in a follow up post that I’ll be writing.

I’ll keep the comments open for up to 2 weeks, and then we’ll rock out.

How d’you like them apples?

One of the biggest lessons in networking is having a firm handshake. Not one that crushes your partner’s hand, but one that shows, “I’m confident and I care”.

Figuring out how a social utility could embody that kind of interaction has been one of the goals since I joined Anthillz as a consultant back in July.

We’ve gone through a number of iterations, both with the functionality and the marketing of Anthillz. I’m really happy with the latest iteration, as it feels closest to what I’ve been describing to people for a while in terms of potential.

The problem we identified is that most of the “online social networking” being done in business is weak handshakes. Even LinkedIn, while it has testimonials, puts the focus on building huge numbers of connections (hence the 500+ badge). We’re not going to take down LinkedIn, but we certainly can help focus its users on what’s really important.

Large networks are a fun competition, but anyone can enter and win. Strong networks have a higher barriar to entry. Think about it. How many of the hundreds of connections on your LinkedIn network can you really recommend? Not many. And that’s the problem we’re looking to start solving.

The new Anthillz adds a barrier to entry for networking, much like “real social networking”. You know. The offline kind that most of the business force sucks at.

Real social networking takes work, and much more than a business card exchange to be effective in the long term. Just because you gave me your card doesn’t mean I think you’re the best person for the job. In Anthillz, adding someone to your “trusted colleague” network has a barrier to entry: you have to write something about that person. And in order for the connection to be completed, they need to write something back. The system does what it can to enforce a balanced social economy. Over time, it’d be nice to pull back the reins, but I think we need to break some bad social networking habits first.

Take a look at my profile if you’re looking for an example.

Sure, people can write bullshit reviews, but that’s where we can learn from lessons of other review-powered systems and apply them here to make the good stuff bubble to the top. I’m SUPER pumped to see how that begins to evolve as more people start filling the site with testimonials for their trusted colleagues.

I’m excited to see the new Anthillz live for a number of reasons. One, I think this is the strongest the product has been in the life cycle that I’ve been around for, and I believe that the team has done a tremendous job working together towards this goal.

Second, this is a great example of how social networks don’t have to generate a ton of noise in order to appear effective. In fact, the contrary is more true in my opinion.

Finally, there’s been a great deal of discussion about openness and portability in the roadmap for future versions of Anthillz’s technology. We’ve already got XFN (rel=me and rel=colleague) baked in, and as such, are participating in the Google social graph API. Future additions will hopefully include things like hCard and hReview. OpenID? I’d love to, but we’ve already given our audience a barriar to entry in this version by design, and I don’t think they need another one quite yet. I’m confident that in time, understanding and ubiquity of OpenID concepts will get to a point where it makes sense for us to support it. Hopefully sooner than later.

I’m really interested to see how the newest version of the system begins to take hold, and how people use it. People’s actual use will be the driving factor in next iterations, so help the product grow by using it and sharing your thoughts.

there is no reason to spend time doing something you hate, because you can lose just as much money being happy as hell. – @garyvee

Recently on the coworking list, the “what is coworking” debate has flared up again, this time comparing it to an incubator. For context, the original question was posed:

I’m wondering if you all can provide some wisdom on the difference between a coworking space and an “incubator”.  Is it just semantics? If there are more substantive distinctions, how would you boil them down? -Adam Huttler

Some excerpts from responses include:

…one thing that incubators do most reliably is fail.  Largely because there’s insufficient collaborative critical mass, and because they don’t typically include the services that early stage startups need to get momentum, such as software developers, graphic designers, and tech writers, just to name a few.  Finally, most incubators get their start as real estate plays for unmarketable space. -Axon

and

As a result, you have a more diverse work environment of people who are self-sufficient, as opposed to an incubator, where that isn’t necessarily the case. Incubators and coworking spaces are not equivalent, but they share a lot of the same DNA. Like apes and humans. -Tony Bacigalupo

and

…many of our businesses have gotten stronger by being in proximity to other like-minded business people. But that’s mostly a product of the community that’s naturally created by the way the space is designed. People that like each other talk. It works. -Derek Young

and

Best option for a company is to look around at what exists and find a home where they feel welcome and can do the best work. -Nate Westheimer

All good stuff from people whose opinions I’ve come to respect. The whole discussion got my gears turning. So, after a few days of chewing, I decided to respond.

Note: I’ve been in an admittedly high-stress mode for the last week, so the rant probably comes across more intense than it needs to, but the contents are still valuable and I wanted to share here what I wrote on the google group.

So here it goes:

The simplest way to approach this is the same way we determine what operations fall under the coworking umbrella: their core values. While incubator and coworking businesses services tend to overlap, their individual purposes are very clearly defined. Incubators can encourage coworking. Coworking can incubate independents, businesses, and even products and services.

Just remember, in all cases, the core values remain in place and, more importantly, in prominence. Community, Collaboration, Openness, Sustainability, Accessability.

In the last year, I’ve seen all of the above take place.

Example: Incubation encouraging coworking - DreamIT Ventures is a Philly version of the now popular Y-Combinator model, sort of a “startup summer camp”. Startups apply, recieve a small amount of seed funding, and are placed in physical proximity with a number of other startups that share, at the very least, one thing: a reasonably common place in their startup cycle. The business services and cash aside, I was lucky enough to consult with one of the DreamIT startups and quickly realized (and I wasn’t the only one to verbalize this) that the REAL value in the program was the comradery of growing your startup together alongside other startups. Sharing in successes and failures. Giving and recieving advice. Becoming stronger as a collective of teams.

“Funding Day”, their “summer camp graduation” event, was last week, and seeing the result of 4 months of growing businesses together is something that’s amazing.

Coworking incubating independents, ideas, products, teams, and even regions – Many of you already know about the activities and results that we’ve had organically form within our community at IndyHall. Some of the larger succsses are iSepta and RipIt.app, but there are other, less visible ones: we’ve been there for more than a handful of people who left their jobs that they hated to go independent, and they credit the community of Indyhall for allowing them to be able to be comfortable taking the leap. We’ve had our fingers in dozens and dozens of events that have quite literally changed the landscape of the city.

I’m not saying this to brag, as it has nothing to do with ego. My point is, coworking has such immense gravity and influence on more than just where people are working. Even the members we’ve had that joined simply for desk space quickly realized what they were involved in, and without anyone asking or telling them to, changed their tune and became more community oriented.

In all of these instances, the core values have been at the forefront of an initiative and the results have been hugely positive. I know I have a habit of getting preachy, but it really comes down to the recipe model (or the pizza analogy, as Tony has taken it). If I order a steak and it’s got a side of greens on the plate, that’s fine. But if I order a steak and I get a salad with a couple of strips of sirloin across the top, I’m going to be pissed.

Incubation is extremely valuable, with and without coworking as part of it’s model. Coworking is extremely valuable, with and without the incubation.

Call a spade a spade. Get over your identity crisis.

Be a part of a community, and be a community leader. If you’re not doing one of those two things, you’re probably not coworking.

Encourage collaboration at every opportunity. Being open and transparent helps that.

Sustainability is just as much about eco-friendly practices as it is making sure that the things you’re doing within your community work towards it’s ability to sustain itself.

Accessibility, to me, means not being exclusive. If you asked me a year ago if I expected the diversity of IndyHall to include government-focused business strategy consultants, green home developers, video game programmers, and educators, I’d have laughed. But today, we have all of that and more. Accessibility of the resources to anyone who benefits from them is important. I’m not here to evaluate your business model. My only concern is that you’re making enough money to pay our membership dues.

</rant>

What’s up, friends of the “no-collar generation”.

Many of you know that I’ve been working with the CEO of ChoiceShirts, Matt Cohen, on a number of initiatives for quite a while. Our most recent partnership has produced something that I’ve talked about doing “right” for quite a while, making a really easy way to put the contents of tweet on a t-shirt.

Why on earth would we do that? Well, a few reasons:

• Matt and I, like many of you, really love Twitter. Like, really love Twitter. I <3 you Twitter.
• Matt and I, like many of you, really love t-shirts. Just last week, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks said to me at DreamIT’s funding day, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you NOT wearing a t-shirt”. It was an off day, what can I say.
• Twitter is a really great channel for collecting funny, inspirational, or memorable one-liners. More and more often, we heard from others or thought ourselves, “that tweet would make a great shirt”.
• We wanted to try out some new tools in the ChoiceShirts design studio toolkit, as well as make a case for how we can build out new ones. ChoiceTweets is one of what we hope are many prototypes to showcase new and fun ways to get your content onto a t-shirt. A new vehicle for your content so YOU can make money. That’s what we’re really excited about.

Neato! So how does it work?

The whole thing is powered by a bookmarklet. You can read more about how that works on our how-to page. Not sure what tweets you might want to put on a shirt? Take a look at some of the one’s we’ve done, as well as any tweets that other users are turning into tweeshirts.

Also, don’t miss the Merlin Mann collection! Merlin’s tweets are often angry, but humorous. As other prolific tweeters have large numbers of shirts generated from their tweets, we’ll add new featured collections. Maybe yours?

Developer support baked in

For the time being, the feature set is small but that won’t last long! In the mean time, if you have created a Twitter client (web or desktop) and want to include “ChoiceTweets support”, all you need to do is add an icon that links to the same URL as the Tweet’s permalink, and change the Base URL from http://twitter.com to http://choicetweets.com. More on that on our Developers page.

GO! Check it out!

This is the first iteration of the idea, and we’re excited to see how people use it and add new features and learn lessons for the next site that we build. That’s why we’re using UserVoice to collect feature requests! Be sure to add your ideas there after you’ve made your first Tweeshirt.

Big thumbs up to Erik Kastner, who took on some fun challenges with generating the images necessary to make this concept work. I always enjoy working with Erik, and look forward to having him continue to lend his development expertise and problemsolving prowess as this project matures.

And of course, I always appreciate Matt’s support and interest in taking new ideas like this for a spin.

So head over to ChoiceTweets.com, and grab the bookmarklet. And let me know what you think!

Note: my buddy Zach Inglis pointed out that some of his coworkers prototyped something similar in the past. We certainly knew that this had been done before, but thought there was LOTS of room for improvement! So thanks to those who inspired our creation, and we’re excited to continue to improve on the idea based on everyone’s feedback!

WARNING: This post contains extreme abuse of twitter lingo like “@replies and DMs”. Generally speaking, I’m opposed to this sort of language, however…the service is cool and I wanted to share it.

Back when the ‘track via SMS’ feature was still enabled on Twitter, I honestly did not use it…I didn’t find myself with a burning desire to keep an eye on any particular keywords. Since then, my use of twitter has increased, and my reliance on it for communication has changed. I won’t say it’s gone up or down, but the way I use it is certainly different.

I find myself checking Summize/Twitter Search much more often for ‘@replies’ to my username and IndyHall. The biggest reason that I rely more on replies via Search is because I don’t follow everyone who follows me. Not because I’m a hater (far from it) but because Twitter is completely USELESS to me with that many people in my timeline. But I’m increasingly disappointed when I miss replies from people who can’t direct message me since I’m not following them back, especially when I’m away from my computer.

So, with Summize being acquired and energy going into the development of the Twitter Search API, I was stoked to see a really great project announced on the Twitter developer list: TweetTrak.

Functional and still low to the ground, TweetTrak uses the Direct Message -> SMS capabilities of Twitter + the search API to return tracking-style information via SMS, with a simple toggle command to turn it on and off.

The new features that are mapped out for the next iteration are smart, too: user ignore, and a control panel to set up your tracking terms (I imagine this will act a lot like Google Alerts, which I also love and use).

So while this entire system still relies on a system that occasionally lags (Twitter’s SMS and the recently acquired Summize), this is the best stop-gap we’ve had since Summize itself, and I welcome it with open arms, especially with all of the conference going I have lined up.

Check it out, and be gentile! And this should probably go without saying: make sure you have unlimited SMS if you’re doing ANYTHING with Twitter via SMS. Don’t be an idiot.

This past weekend we celebrated the one year anniversary of IndyHall’s grand opening. I’ve been making it a point to clearly define what we were celebrating, for a reason. At our party, I added some clarity to the point.

IndyHall existed before the office at 32 Strawberry St was opened, and I firmly believe that if the office were to close down tomorrow, IndyHall would continue to exist.

IndyHall is not (just) a coworking space. IndyHall is a coworking community that shares a vision of making Philadelphia a better place to do whatever it is that they love to do.

The space at 32 Strawberry Street is the most tangible facet of IndyHall, the easiest to identify with. That’s a good thing, for our own community here in Philadelphia as well as the global coworking community and, quite frankly, the entire world. It’s good that IndyHall has a clubhouse at 32 Strawberry (so good that it was worth throwing an epic party to celebrate).

It’s important to have these clubhouses. Without some tangible touchpoint, it’s difficult to share goals, share visions, and collaborate on executions.

I’ve talked a lot about coworking over the last 2 years. I think I’ve talked about coworking more than any other single thing in my entire life, really. Over this time, I’ve realized the most common questions we get, and some of them tend to overlap and create some interesting trends.

Usually, people don’t get it. It’s getting better over time, and mainstream press is helping. But on the whole, outside of the microcosm community that we live and work in, people don’t get it. They don’t understand the purpose, other than the “having a desk in a real office” part.

I used to get frustrated when the thing that got people to understand was when I said, “Well, our business model is renting desks. But that’s really just the way we cover our overhead.” The fact that the least important part of the company (in my mind) was the most obvious, bothered me. Leaving a conversation where someone understood IndyHall on that level meant that they simply didn’t understand IndyHall.

Geoff was quoted on PSFK over a year ago saying:

“It’s not about making money, It’s like when you were a kid, and you had a clubhouse… it’s a way to feel like part of a community.”

The people who truly understand IndyHall are the one’s who’ve come to hang out at the clubhouse. And by the clubhouse, I’m still not just referring to the building in which we rent desks, host workshops, and build some of the coolest software you’ve seen this year. I’m talking about a bigger clubhouse.

People who heard me talk about IndyHall a year ago probably heard this analogy from me:

Imagine a bunch of little soap bubbles. Each one is self contained, and adjacent to a number of other soap bubbles. If you were to pop each bubble, the contents would just spill out into the open with nowhere to go. What I want to do is blow one giant soap bubble over top of the little bubbles, reach in through the wall of the big bubble, and start popping the little bubbles in creative and interesting ways, getting their contents to mix and mingle under one common “structure”.

That’s what we’ve effectively done with IndyHall. There was an extremely vibrant community here in Philadelphia, but it went undiscovered due to its fragmented and disparate nature. Think back, Philadelphians, to BlogPhiladelphia. Annie Heckenberger and I put together an event (this was the most “Hurricane” I’ve ever seen Annie, by the way. I wonder when we’re going to get that back) that was a whole lot of fun. But beyond the fun, but the number one response I got after the event was:

“I had no idea what my neighbor/coworker/blah blah blah was up to. They write for this blog/have their own startup/want to take of the world, too!”

It’s absurd that we think we need to have a conference, a meetup, or a party to find out what our neighbors/friends/peers are up to. Totally and completely absurd.

We should be able to simply hang out and go about our every day lives and have a point of contact that has the same degree of effect as a conference/meetup/party, but all the time. Tara and Chris have called coworking “Barcamp Every Day”, and I think that is a more important effect of coworking than the “save money on gas and office space” angle.

Frankly, the “efficiency” angle is an easy sell, and a real boon for the movement and it’s growth. But it says nothing about the value add and the changes that I firmly believe are much deeper rooted in not where we work, but how we work. We’re riding the crest of these changes, but I really believe this is bigger than all of us realize yet. THAT’S why I was upset about FastCompany’s shitty coverage of coworking. They have a massive, and extremely impressionable audience, and were sending the less valuable message. But I digress.

So going back to my soap bubble analogy, IndyHall is so much more than the 32 Strawberry St clubhouse. We’ve got clubhouses all over the city. Bars, restaurants, parks, apartments, offices. We’ve crashed conferences in other cities, together. As new soap bubbles find themselves within the ever-improving community clubhouse framework, they have similar experiences.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for setting goals and executing on them as a community.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for moral support when things aren’t going quite like you planned.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important when you need that last little push to get your shit done.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important for putting things into perspective.

Knowing you’ve got a clubhouse is important when you need to just close your eyes and dream for a minute.

Where’s your clubhouse?