Write Technology

The Social Media Breakfast, originally created in Boston by Bryan Person, is coming back to Cincinnati. We had our first in the spring, when Albert Maruggi was in town. But it’s time for a regular breakfast meeting and the first has been organized by Kevin Dugan. I’ll just paste in the entire announcement.

There’s only room for 40, so if you’re interested, RSVP soon!

Come to the second Cincinnati Social Media
Breakfast to listen, share, network and learn along with other area
marketing and new media professionals.

Making communications more effective with multimedia
is the theme of the free morning event as the definition of content
continues to morph and include everything from 140-character Twitter
bursts and Flickr images to Flip videos pushed to YouTube and of course
the social media news release.

It’s a FREE event thanks to Marketwire’s sponsorship, but we do need you to RSVP as space is limited! You can RSVP here: http://cincysmb2.eventbrite.com.

Our special guest is PimpMyNews
CEO John Atkinson. PimpMyNews is a free service bringing you news in
audio format. Anyone with Internet access or an MP3 player can listen
to thousands of breaking text news and blog stories. Users create
podcasts pushed to them daily based on their customized profiles.

Attendees will also be registered to win a copy of Pete Blackshaw’s new book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World.”

 

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Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2008, from 7:30 to 9:30 am
Location: Rookwood Pavilion First Watch on 2692 Madison Road, Cincinnati, OH 45208.
Cost: Free thanks to our sponsor, Marketwire.
RSVP: http://cincysmb2.eventbrite.com

I’m reposting a post from May 31 of this year. Yeah, I know it’s a bit soon, but there’s a reason. I don’t know if it’s because of my increased visibility from bub.blicio.us, from public speaking, or from GCASTD, but in the last two weeks I’ve been slammed by LinkedIn invites. I don’t know all the people who invited me but most of them just used the default invite. This tells me nothing about them – no contact information, no reference to where we met, nothing. So I thought it might be time to re-post this. I figure I’ll post it every two months if I have to.

—

Because I have started doing a lot more speaking and more public blogging, I get a lot more LinkedIn
invites.In many cases, these folks feel they have a personal connection
and don’t realize that I have a heck of a time remembering names
without a memory jog.

Would you send out an invitation to a party without thinking
through the invitation and considering the wording? Probably not. I
wish more people applied that same logic to LinkedIn invites.

Michelle:

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- John Doe

Now,
I probably do want to connect with John Doe. He’s probably a great guy
and might even have some great contacts. But because I need a memory
jog sometimes, I’m not sure who he is. I also question how seriously he
takes connecting because he didn’t bother to personalize his LinkedIn
invite and just sent the default.

Now, I admit to having done this myself once or twice. I get lazy
and send the default invite, especially when I’m connecting with good
friends. But if you’re reaching out to someone you met via Twitter, briefly at a conference, or someone who you know because of their blog, go ahead and personalize your invite. Not only
will it jog your connection’s memory, it will make you stand out a
little more as well.

–

Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

A friend of mine recently had one of her photos used in a blog. The blogger grabbed my friend’s photo off of Flickr, assuming that since it was on Flickr, it was available for use. In reality, my friend marked her photos All Rights Reserved, which prohibits unauthorized use – even on a blog. In this case, the blogger was ignorant of Creative Commons rules.

I offer a session on spicing up your training using free Web 2.0 technologies. But a large part of my presentation is the proper use and understanding of Creative Commons licensing.  I thought I’d cover a little of it here, as my friend’s situation really brought it all back to my attention. A rule of thumb: Just because someone posts a photo to Flickr doesn’t mean the photo is there for all to use.  Think of Flickr as a physical photo album for a moment. You might show your album to all of your friends, but you don’t want someone running off with one of those photos.

Using Creative Commons Licensed Images

When you’re searching Flickr for photos to use, make sure to use the Advanced Search feature. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you can choose to search only Creative Commons photos. Using this feature ensures that you don’t end up choosing items marked All Rights Reserved. An alternative to the Flickr Advanced Search is CompFight, a Flickr search engine that also lets you specify Creative Commons photos.

When you find a photo you like, check out the licensing. Go to the Download page for the photo. Under the image, you’ll see the Creative Commons license, which is circled in the screenshot shown here.

(flower photo from Flickr user noehg)

The Creative Commons license images are actually hyperlinks. If you don’t know what the images stand for, just click. In this case, we’re taken to a page where it specifies the user is fine with us using the photo, but we must provide attribution. As far as attribution goes, I always try to provide not just the Flickr user, but a link back to the original photo.

Creative Commons licensing was created to encourage the legal sharing and remixing of content. But everyone deserves credit for their work, which is why attribution is such an important part of Creative Commons.

Creative Commons licenses are controlled by four original conditions

• Attribution (by): You may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if you give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): You may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): You may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.
• ShareAlike (sa): You may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

These conditions can be combined, as shown in the chart below:

Licensing Your Own Images

Of course, all of this works for you as well as for the photographers in question. You can license your own work. People experience unauthorized use of their photos on Flickr for two reasons: the user is unaware of Creative Commons rules (or is aware and thinks they won’t get caught), and the photographer is unaware of Creative Commons rules. I’ve already covered the former – let’s talk about how to set the licensing on your own Flickr photos.

Remember that you can only copyright images that you own. This
means you can’t copyright images that you’ve taken from somewhere else.

You can set a default license for your images on Flickr. This means that all images you upload will automatically have this setting.

To add a license for a specific picture, click Edit next
to your current photo license near the bottom of your photo page. On the next page, select one
of the Creative Commons licenses. This will override your default settings for the one photo only.

Using Flickr to spice up your blog or presentations is a great tool, but always verify the license first and make sure that it’s not All Rights Reserved. Remember, it’s a fantastic thing to be able to share content and use
content from others. In most cases, whether on a web page or in your
PowerPoint presentation, all that’s required is a little attribution,
and giving credit where credit is due.

Cheers!
–
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

cross-posted from bub.blicio.us

If a Podcamp pops up in your area, I recommend you attend it. Among other reasons, Podcamps are free and you can’t argue with free networking and knowledge.

Podcamp Ohio
was a total success! I’m not sure of the numbers yet, but I believe
they may have surpassed 200 attendees. Not bad for an unconference that
ran a basically viral marketing campaign, depending on Twitter and word
of mouth.

The sessions were great. I enjoyed the first session I attended – Podcasting in Plain English by David Jackson.
It covered all the basics you need for podcasting. Sometimes I think
these podcasting experts forget that if you’re just experimenting with
the idea, you shouldn’t go out and buy expensive equipment. Jackson
made sure to mention that. Make sure it’s something you like and enjoy
before investing.

I also attended What Not to Do: Social Media Anti-Tips by Paull Young and Luke Armour.
It was probably my favorite session of the day, although I didn’t
attend too many. In this session they covered all sorts of social media
mistakes, particularly pertaining to marketing. They interspersed their
presentation with Great Moments in Twitter, which showcased some more
embarrassing tweets. Remember folks, Twitter is forever.

My session on Twitter went quite well – or so I’ve heard. I’m trying
to get a full presentation together for some upcoming conferences and
this was sort of a practice run for me. I got enough feedback that I’ve
already started "upgrading" my presentation, although many have told me
it’s fine as is. I had a complicated mix in the room of Twitter
skeptics and Twitter diehards. It’s hard to gear a presentation to
both, but hopefully I carried it off.

For me, the best part of Podcamp was the time I spent networking.
Perhaps I’m a bad camper, but I missed about two sessions because I was
getting to know people in the cafe and hallway. I particularly enjoyed
conversations with Shawn Morton of Profilactic and Doug Petch.
In fact, Podcamp drove home a point for me about social networking. In
my various speaking engagements, I always try to push the fact that
while we’re all making friends online, our real goal is face to face
networking. For a lot of people, myself included, it’s easier to
network semi-anonymously online and then meet someone in person.
Meeting so many of my Twitter friends "in real life" at Podcamp was
fantastic. Meeting Doug Dockery, Julie Niesen, and others, well, it was like meeting old friends.

There were several folks video/audio recording each of the sessions.
(I’m camera shy, so I found this unnerving). The sessions should be
online sometime soon.

And to the organizers, congratulations on a successful event!

Cheers!
–
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

If you work in eLearning at all, or you want to learn more about how to integrate new Web 2.0 technologies into your workplace, I’ve got a seminar for you. Plus, it’s amazingly inexpensive.

Dr. Tony Karrer, CEO of TechEmpower, and author of at least two learning-related blogs, is running a seminar on July 15 here in Cincinnati. The seminar is sponsored by the Greater Cincinnati ASTD chapter, but you don’t have to be a member to participate.

Attendees of the  workshop will

• Experience new tools including blogs, Wikis, social networks, social book marking, RSS readers
• Learn specific methods you can use to accelerate your own knowledge work and learning
• Define strategies for eLearning 2.0 for your organization
• Make a plan for getting an eLearning 2.0 toolset for yourself and your organization

Tony is an expert on innovative uses of technology that improves human performance. He is a sought after presenter on eLearning 2.0 and it’s implications on workplace learning. He is the author of the award winning eLearning Technology blog and recently founded Work Literacy.

The workshop will be held at the NKU METS Center in Erlanger Kentucky. Breakfast and networking will be from 8am-9am. The workshop begins at 9am.

The cost for the workshop is $129 for GCASTD Members and $179 for Non-Members. The price includes breakfast, lunch and GCASTD membership for Non-Members.

For more information or to register for the event, visit the GCASTD web site.

Cheers!
–
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

Note: This is cross-posted from bub.blicio.us, where I posted it first, and then decided to share here as well.

image by Darren Hester thru Creative Commons

There’s a lot of discussion happening right now about Nick Carr’s controversial article in The Atlantic Monthly: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In addition to Carr, there are other voices chiming in, including Maggie Jackson (Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) and Rick Shenkman (Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter). I heard these two speak, in particular about how the Information Age is really an "ignorant age" on the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday.

I take issue. I think we’re getting smarter.

I work a lot in instructional design and eLearning. The world of adult learning is changing. We learn faster and can take in more types of information – we have access to more types of information. It’s a fascinating time to work in the industry.

There’s a buzzphrase you hear now at all the eLearning conferences: informal learning. I call it watercooler learning. People have all this information about their jobs tucked away inside their heads. With Web 2.0 tools and content sharing, we can not only get people to share that information, we’ve got people willing to teach each other in an informal setting. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to tap that previously hidden knowledge.

There is a lot of reference in the article, and in other supporting articles, to a lack of picking up a book and reading. I still read. In fact, I try to devour a new work of fiction every other weekend. It’s an escape mechanism for me. I will never stop loving the feel of the traditional, paper-bound book. No Kindle for me, thanks. I want to smell musty pages and turn the crunchy paper. I love it. I can’t imagine wanting to read less. I would go so far as to say that I now have easier access to things like the NY Times Book Review, as well as Amazon.com, which I wouldn’t have without the Internet. Those two sites, in particular, often guide me to new books.

Is my attention span shorter? I don’t know if it was ever long. Growing up, Sesame Street (you know, the TV) was my babysitter. I’m of the TV generation – I don’t know life without it and it was the dominant technology of my youth. Do I now skim web pages to grab relevant information? Yes! Because I’m smart enough to be able to pull out the relevant information. If an article really grabs me, I’ll read the whole thing. Do I twitter constantly? Yes! But it has actually improved my technical writing, helping me better condense relevant information into short concise sentences. Not everything you read needs to be lovely prose, after all. Not only that, Twitter has introduced me to a whole community of people, many of whom I’ve gone out of my way to meet in person and then carry on in-person, intelligent communication.

I don’t disagree that there is now a plethora of information out there. For the last two weeks I’ve only managed about one post a day on this blog because I’m suffering from a bit of information overload – or maybe information fatigue. I’m almost bored with the idea that there is a new startup every day. You’ve got to really dazzle me now, I guess. But times like this ebb and flow. Whether my mind is a bit jaded or not does not mean that "Google" has made me stupid. It means I need to work harder at separating the signal from the noise.

I’m a big fan of Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You. I honestly believe that the strategic thinking employed in video games is a useful type of learning. I believe that honing my research skills both in a library and online is a good use of my time. And I believe that although we are learning differently now, and parsing information differently, that difference isn’t a bad thing. It’s evolution of information, and thinking. And I enjoy it.

I want to close with a quote from Stephen Downes on Stephen’s Web, in reference to the Carr article:

Sigh. My response is very simple. I read constantly. I write constantly. I also work in images and multimedia. If Google is making me stupid, then I am forced to conclude that without Google I would have been some kind of super Einstein or something.

–
Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, or on Pownce.

Later today, right here in this post, I’m going to attempt to live-blog the Apple WWDC keynote that everyone (myself included) is so excited about. One of the reasons I’m doing this is because I want to test out CoveritLive.com, a nifty live-blogging application. Now, I say I’m going to attempt the live blog. It depends on a couple of things. I need to at least HEAR the keynote, and iPhone Alley is delivering that. However, The Digital Lifestyle is videostreaming the event, and SEEING is better than just hearing. I’m not the only one tuned into this information though, which means that I could lose the connection, the streaming could be down, and all sorts of technical things could go wrong, which means the live blog won’t happen.

But I’ll try. For those of you on a feed, the liveblogging shows up as an embeddable widget. To read the liveblog transcript, at the moment, you’ll need to actually visit the blog.

–

Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

I’ve submitted to a few conferences to speak on microblogging. The Twitter scalability issues have me worried that we might lose Twitter before the conferences roll around, but at least I know things like Plurk, Jaiku, and Pownce will rise up to take its place. Microblogging is here to stay, even if Twitter might not be.

With that in mind, I’d like to talk a little about alpha-stage startup Edmodo. When I’m done with this post, you’ll know as much as I do, but believe me, I intend to find out more.

I’ve blogged before about potential uses for microblogging (Twitter or otherwise) in education. Well, Edmodo takes some of those ideas and turns them into reality in one easy-to-use software app geared at the classroom.

Some of the more interesting features, beyond the standard community and conversation, are the ability to tag a post for future reference. As you may be familiar, in Twitter, you can favorite something. This is a step above that, adding a del.icio.us-like capability to the app. You can also share media files, such as images or videos. Media sharing is one of the advantages that Pownce has over Twitter, and I’m glad to see that Edmodo incorporated this option for education.

I’m not yet sure when they’re going live. The video you see here, from early March, says "a few weeks," so I guess that didn’t happen. I hope to get in touch with the developers soon and see how things are going. I think this is a fantastic tool.

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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

Because I have started doing a lot more speaking and more public blogging, I get a lot more LinkedIn invites.In many cases, these folks feel they have a personal connection and don’t realize that I have a heck of a time remembering names without a memory jog.

Would you send out an invitation to an event without thinking through the invitation and considering the wording? Probably not. I wish more people applied that same logic to LinkedIn invites.

Michelle:

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- John Doe

Now, I probably do want to connect with John Doe. He’s probably a great guy and might even have some great contacts. But because I need a memory jog sometimes, I’m not sure who he is. I also question how seriously he takes connecting because he didn’t bother to personalize his LinkedIn invite and just sent the default.

Now, I admit to having done this myself once or twice. I get lazy and send the default invite, especially when I’m connecting with good friends. But if you’re reaching out to someone you met via Twitter, or briefly at a conference, go ahead and personalize your invite. Not only will it jog your connection’s memory, it will make you stand out a little more as well.

–

Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

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