I recently changed my main twitter ID.

I used to be known as @magitam, and now I’m known, as @farhan. I got tired of having to introduce myself as both myself, and my twitter alter ego.

It all started, back at the first ever twestival in London.  If I remember correctly, I got asked by @matthagger how my twitter ID of @magitam related to my name?

It didn’t..

Magitam was a legacy reference to something I’d come up with when creating my “yahoo” account, back somewhere around 2001, or perhaps it was before that, when I first discovered IRC in 1997.  Either way it was my “handle”.  It had been something I’d been using to identify myself, anonymously when I first started to go online.  This is long before facebook, and myspace, and twitter.  This is going back to the days before gmail, when you might have had AOL as your main email account, and yahoo and hotmail were just getting started.  Days when you would hang out in IRC, because that’s where all the cool people online would be.. and this is back in those days when you would use “newsgroups”, to find stuff out, instead of RSS feeds from blogs, and news sites ;)

Back then I wanted my identity to be pseudo anonymous.  There weren’t enough people on the internet to ever think that I would ever be meeting in real life the people I’m having conversations with.  It just wasn’t something that you ever thought would happen.

Besides, you would put people through a vetting process, of getting to know them, of engaging and interacting with them virtually, and given enough time, you would start to have a familiarity with someone, you would know them, and be able to distinguish their personalities, and respective identities, as being synonymous with these anonymous tags, or handles that everyone used.

It wasn’t an internet that was meant to be real life social, or allow you to actually meet real people, it was an internet that was a refuge for the people who felt alienated and alone, or wanted to find friends with similar thinking to their own, or with common interests, who they could turn to, knowing that these were a crowd you could trust, and say and share pretty much anything, and there would be no serious repercussions.  It was a store of information, an online library, with talking in the corridors, and disused corners.  In some ways, it was a place where people would practice being themselves, with no pretense, and no barriers to being themselves, unless they chose to have them.  The worst repercussion could be that you’d be ostracised or alienated by your community, but then you would always be able to find a new group of people to connect with online.

Fast forward to 2008, and the Internet is a very different place. Now it’s a world of greater transparency, and visibility.  We now use the internet to stay connected with people we meet whilst travelling the globe.  We manage to make friends, all around the world, and now as we all travel globally, we actually try to meet the real people we made friends with online.

This is a very different world.  This is a very different internet..

Whilst I wasn’t consciously thinking about it I had actually assumed and brought forward the traits from the old internet with me to the world of Social Media.  It was cool.. My “identity” in this online world was “MagiTam” – and as I met more people, IRL (in real life), I started to build this brand and identity of MagiTam.  It was my online twitter persona, it was how people knew me.  It was all about creating this brand, this identity, associated with this label, or term, of MagiTam.  I was creating my own international brand, just like Nike, only with a team of 1 at the helm, and my logo was my profile photo of me.

Well, it finally dawned on me, that perhaps my “identity” of MagiTam just complicates things.  Having to introduce myself as @magitam and Farhan, was just double effort.  I didn’t really care to “hide” the person that I am.. And to be fair, I have my full name on my profile on Twitter, so it wasn’t like I was trying to hide my personal identity.

Then, it just clicked that perhaps I should see if I can get hold of @farhan.. and lo and behold, I asked Farhan Mannan, if he would mind terribly if I could have the twitter name of @farhan, since it was an integral part of my work, and if he wouldn’t mind terribly I’d like to be able to brand myself with that name..  Well, he kindly agreed, and a few hours later, I had set up a new account with the twitter ID of @farhan ;)  Thanks @farhanmannan!

Once I’d secured this identity (I already had @farhanrehman, in a seperate account), I realised that I wasn’t quite sure when or how to switch the name across, and if I should just switch it, or start tweeting from the new account, and re-start my twitter life. 

I happened to read recently about how @jimconnolly had just re-set his twitter account having inadvertently become a bit of a celebrity in the twitterverse, and mistakenly found himself following many internet marketers that were all asking him to tweet their websites, and share their products, or offerings.  Eventually, out of desperation, he decided to re-start, and just follow people who were clients, or actual friends.

I was going through one of these moments of desperation myself recently, where because I’ve reached a 2k limit on twitter, I can’t follow anymore people, until more than 2k people follow me back.. Which is quite annoying.. But my solution around it right now, is that I go to Twitter Karma and just unfollow people, based on who isn’t following me back.  Some people like @amanda or @paulwalsh I stay following, regardless of whether they follow back or not.  They appear to be staples of the london tech community, and so worth keeping an ear out for.  But others, who I don’t really know or recognise too well, and generally are based some place outside of the UK/London, are people who I start to unfollow, just so that I can start to follow more people who I’ve actually connected with in person, in some way shape or form.. 

The thing is, these are “real” connections, with real people, around conversations that I would actually have in person with them, if I were in the same locality.  In fact, thanks to tools like twitter, it actually makes it ever more likely that I will be able to actually meet more of these people that I engage and interact with on Social Networking platforms such as Twitter or Facebook.

With this much transparency, and this level of real world visibility, to the point that I can sometimes tell where people are, based on their tweets, and reference to events happening in and around London, I actually am looking for ever more opportunities to connect with people in person.  Especially people who I’ve spoken with, or exchanged messages with on platforms like Twitter, and Facebook.

This means that unlike Improbulus, who consciously chooses to maintain a certain level of anonymity and privacy, with regards to her real identity, I’m actually interested in being as open, visible and transparent as I can be.  Perhaps too much so, but given that my identity online is intrinsically woven into the persona of me, even if someone wanted to steal or imitate me, it wouldn’t last very long, at least I don’t think it would be.  But I guess, I just don’t go there. 

Perhaps I believe a little too much in the innate goodness of people, but one thing that I’ve found, especially more so since using twitter, is that people want to talk with people.  They want to interact with the person.  They don’t really want to speak to an “identity” without knowing the person behind it.  Those days of virtual identities, and anonymity online are starting to be of a bygone era. Now we look at ever more increasingly effective ways of using Social Media to amplify our voices, and throw our messages out into an ether, that connects it to the right people at the right time, and brings us back, so much of what we need, when we need it.

With this current day internet, and world of Social Media, you want your name on twitter to be representative of you the person.  Some people might be happier being a brand, or a product, but I think unless you happen to embody that brand or that company, you’ll probably find it easier to just be yourself.  Think of a name that you want to be known as, in real life, when you meet with someone, who you might already know really well on twitter.  Will you have to introduce yourself as something other than your twitter ID?  Do you want to or care about that?

I guess for me, especially being a Social Media Consultant, I’m often advising people and learning myself about what works.. My name works best for me.  I’m happy to be known as Farhan in real life, and now that I’m also known as @farhan on twitter, I don’t have to worry about trying to explain who I am.  Even better, when I meet people who follow me, instead of them wondering what my name is, if they recognise me from twitter, my twitter id will be enough for them to remember who I am.

I sometimes find it a challenge, when you meet someone who doesn’t have their actual name in their twitter id, to remember or figure out who they are.. Like the girl with a one track mind (@girlonetrack).  Fortunately, I’ve seen her at events enough times, that I finally figured out her name as Zoe Margolis (though sneaking a peek at her twitter profile kinda helped ;)

I guess it’s always going to be cool to have a “label” or a “cool” twitter handle, when you’re using it amongst your friends, and people who know you, but then when joe bloggs starts using it, then it may or may not be as useful, or helpful to still have the same cool, “in” joke of a nick name.

I guess in some respects, it’s not really any different to having a nickname, versus your real name.  In my case, because I use twitter with people who I would want to do business with, as well as friends, and generally just want to be remembered, I choose to now use my actual name as my twitter identity.  At least now when people come upto me and ask me if I am my twitter ID, the answer will be a resounding yes, without having to then say “and also, my real name is…” ;)  Now I just have to sort out new Moo Cards, for the new Twitter handle…

Next I have to figure out what to use for my custom flickr url, since the magitam reference doesn’t apply anymore :(  Suggestions welcome below ;)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tuesday evening, 27th of January, 2009, at the London Geek Dinners, in Hummus Bros in Covent Garden, a bunch of techies and geeks gathered, waiting expectantly to hear some inspiring words of wisdom, and learn from Jeff Pulver, headlined as “Technology Anthropologist; Entrepreneur; Early-Stage Seed Investor; speaker, Living in Social Media”..

Arriving at Hummus Bros a little after 7pm, I was glad to find that I had arrived earlier than the guest speaker.  Digging into a warm apple juice with cinnamon, some tabouleh, and some hummus and avocado, gave me a chance to catch up with some familiar faces, and enjoy a satisfying dinner, before Jeff’s arrival.  Apparently, he was coming, straight from the airport, and arrived a short while after I finished ;) Nice timing indeed!

After Jeff got a chance to get settled, and have some dinner, he gave us a short 20 minute speech, sharing some interesting insights, and giving us some of his thoughts around Social Media.

He related some of his childhood stories, of being a Ham radio operator, as a child, and how his persona as a shy child at school was a completely different identity to the person that he could be on the radio.  The two worlds, allowed him to experience being “himself” – without people being able to go on anything more than his voice, and what he talked about.  That liberating freedom, to hide behind the technology, back when Ham Radio’s were mainstream, hasn’t really changed too much, to this day.  That ability to be yourself, with technology dealing with the job of masking the real you, has really become something of an everyday reality.  In fact, so much so, that I remember turning up to an event, where I was sat right behind someone, who I had befriended virtually, but until that moment, didn’t even know who she was ;)  It’s crazy that you can hide yourself, so well, behind the technology, and if you’re just a little afraid, you don’t have to worry about being yourself, until you’re hidden.  Then you magically discover the courage to be yourself.  Scary, yet empowering at the same time :)

Jeff related a story of his high school reunion, which he attended, and went equipped with a video camera, to ask people what they remembered of him, and the first three folks he asked couldn’t even remember who he was, and then the fourth person he asked remembered him, saying something like – ah yes, you’re the one with a cool dad!  Jeff’s take, on that, after reviewing the videotape, after the reunion, was to remember, that it’s not about how you remember yourself to be, but about how others remembered you to be.  An interesting point, I think, we can often forget about.  When creating an impression, it’s not about what you do, or say, it’s about how the other perceives what you’ve said or done..

My final take, from Jeff Pulver’s talk that evening, was about how he would never want to have, on his public facebook identity, pictures of his children.  He discussed the way in which there were clear segments of groups of people, and the ways he related, and connected to them, meant that to different groups of people he wanted to share different things, or disclose different bits of information.  That challenge alone is enough to realise the shortcomings of our current tools of communication..  This point, was, more saliently touching upon an idea that I’ve been playing with for a few years now, and been refining, and synthesizing, through my own needs.. Having the ability to segment, and selectively email groups of people has been in my list of targets to accomplish for a long time now..

Imagine that you have personal pictures that you want to share with your family, pictures of your work colleagues, you want to share with your work friends, and pictures of you out on the town, with friends, that you want to share with just that group of friends.. Right now – there’s no easy or simple solution to that dilemma.. but rest assured, I’m working on it ;) – If you want to talk more about that challenge, hear about some of the innovative solutions that have been thought of already, or help develop the next generation of information filtering and distribution, then get in touch, or comment below, and let’s get the conversation rolling ;)

Jeff, ended by sharing his take on the future… He saw the future as being even more converged, even more connected, even more interconnectedness across our world… He also talked about how technology is making the world smaller, and mentioned a bit about how the ability to stay connected, to have an ambient awareness of everything your friends have been upto.  He described how his childrens generation stayed connected with their friends, even through the school holidays, and that they each know what the others have been upto, thanks to facebook, myspace, and similar platforms..

Imagine who you might still be friends with, or connected with now, if you’d had these tools at your disposal when you were younger??  Our children are growing up in the world, where it’s normal to have travelled to another country, have friends around the world, and stay connected through technology.

Food for thought eh?? Or Fodder for your dreams!!  Night all!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So, I started 2009 taking a few days away from the computer, the internet, and taking some time for myself, to just start thinking about what the coming year has in store?  It’s not often, in our always, on, always connected world, that we can find the time to just step back, and think, and reflect, without having a hundred and one thoughts at the back of our minds, of all the things we need to do, or people we have to respond to, and so it was good to be able to just switch off, step back, and unplug, knowing that it would just be the jovial, merry partying, and festival spirit being carried by the internet across the world, at this time of year.

Traditionally, the Winter, is associated with retreating inwards and being introspective.  To people who manage to notice the seasons, and the changes in pace of life, and the change in nature, Winter is traditionally a time of hibernation, and deep slumber, a time when we look inwards, and re-focus our dreams, and aspirations.  It’s a time that naturally lends itself to staying indoors, and having some quiet time, given that it’s so cold out, and it’s nice to be snug indoors.

Personally I like to enter the New Year, with a clear purpose, and sense of what my priorities are for the coming year, as well as clearing the slate from the previous year, and letting go of what’s not been working so well, and coming to terms with those failures too.

So 2008 was a “huge” year, for me, in so many many ways.  I’ve grown tremendously in the last year – personally experiencing and living through an entire roller coaster of emotions at times.   I’ve had some incredible highs, and some unfortunate lows.  Some of those low’s unfortunately, are still on a downturn, and until I get some closure on them, they’ll possibly continue to keep going downhill..  There’s not too much I can say about the low’s just yet, not until some things become clearer, and I know exactly what’s happening.  But the highs, equally, have been a real joy and pleasure to experience, and perhaps everything in nature finds it’s way of balancing things out – making sure we never get too high, or too low, before we get to experience the opposite.  I will gladly reveal all, as they say, when the time is right, for now, suffice it to say, it’s been a very very tough time for me personally and as a consequence, professionally.

I started 2008, with a very clear aim and purpose – “to restore my health”.

I wanted to become physically fit, wanted to restore my body to a health and vitality which I posessed perhaps 10 years ago now, and I wanted to overcome a physical condition that I’ve been fighting for over 5 years now.  No, I’m not talking about my obesity, which is also a challenge, but I’m talking about my Lymphatic condition..

Since 2003, during my stay in South Korea as an English Teacher, I went and got ill, with a condition, that has meant that I’ve had to spend the last five years, experiencing a series of recurring fevers, pains in my leg, and an abnormal amount of swelling in my left leg, which has made it challenging at times, to even find a pair of trousers I could wear, without my leg becoming completely swollen, and painful.

In the past 5 years, I’ve worked with traditional allopathic doctors, I’ve worked with healers from Mexico, with shamans from Peru, with acupuncturists, with homeopaths, and ayervedic physicians – but it seems that no-one was able to concretely deal with my illness, or I was unable to follow through with any medications, and courses of action that I was prescribed, given how much I’ve been travelling over the last 5 years.

End of 2007, I made the conscious choice to stay fixed in London, to not go gallivanting round the globe, and to do everything I could to get my leg healed, and get back into shape…  I continue on this journey, to this day, having now decided to go at this, from every possible angle I can.. I’m religiously following the advice of my allopathic doctor, and will be consulting with some of the other doctors and healers I’ve worked with before, to attack this ill health on all fronts.  But perhaps, my health is going to resolve itself in it’s own time, and I need to choose something more appropriate to focus on now??  I realised that perhaps part of the challenge is in not having something to get healthy for, I wouldn’t be as motivated.  Perhaps just being healthy wasn’t enough of a motivation, or didn’t support me enough in my goals?

Of course, I have other goals too – but they all took a back seat last year, whilst I put all of my time, attention and energy into getting healthy.   Result? I’m healthier now than I was this time last year.  (I’ve definitely lost more weight, and the swelling in my leg has reduced).  But I’m not there yet.. I’ve not reached the goal or target that I aspired to hit.  And to be completely honest, heading into 2009, with the same overriding focus, or theme just doesn’t appeal to me anymore..

The mission to get healthy, and recover completely is still there – but I don’t feel like 2009 feels like a year I need to devote to my health and wellbeing in the same way.  I’ve learnt heaps, in the last year, and if I just continue applying what I’ve learnt, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I will eventually come out of this stronger, fitter, healthier, and more alive than I’ve ever been.  So if my primary focus for 2009 isn’t going to be my health anymore what is it going to be??  For the longest time, I just couldn’t understand which to choose..

I had my pick, narrowed down, to:
1) Personal Development – I could focus on learning new skills, learning new languages, studying something, etc..
2) Personal Relationships – Investing the time and attention this year, in getting closer with family, with friends, with colleagues, and with acquaintances.  Building my network deeper, and wider, and connecting with ever more people.
3) Get a career – Choose a career – and get laser focussed with it.  I’ve been drifting between projects and ideas, and volunteering, and helping people out for a number of years now, but I haven’t had that singularity of focus, on a single vision, or a single career path, that’s yielded the results I aimed for.  When I discovered recently that a friend of mine, who graduated in the same year as I did – is now a Vice President of the company he’s been working with.. I wonder where I would be today, had I just committed, and focussed on one thing already??  Conversely, if it weren’t for the variety and breadth of exposure I’ve had in life, I probably wouldn’t be the well travelled, well rounded, and lateral thinker that I am.  So there were pros and cons to my lifestyle choices.

Ironically, I’m drawn to getting a career.  I know – most people, seeing me living my life, travelling at a moments notice, the world at my fingertips, think that I have such a “great” life, and why would I ever want to give it up?? Well, I guess I’ve done all the travelling, seeing the world, and having adventures that I want to have for now.  Yes, the thought of living on a desert island, and enjoying warm weather, and a great laid back lifestyle is all good and all – but knowing that I could at any moment get myself a job as an English Teacher in Thailand, and be “living that life”, is just not appealing anymore.  I’ve been there, done that, got the T-Shirt, and bored of it already.

With that in mind, I’m making 2009, the year that I focus on my career, and my professional development, through working, and having a job.  It’s pretty easy to do the whole job thing, but for me, the real challenge is going to be in becoming the very best in my field.  I’ve often wanted the “regularity” that comes with having a nine to five, your life takes on a basic routine, and rhythm, that allows you a certain amount of freedom and flexibility that comes with the structure that a regular working day brings.  I’ve done many of those “exercises” where you imagine what you would do, if you had all the money in the world, and whilst in the past I might have dreamt of great worldly ambitions, and lofty goals, in truth, I don’t really want any of those things.  What I want is to “work”.  That kind of work that at the end of the day, you look back on it, and get a sense of satisfaction, knowing that you’ve done a days productive work.  It’s that feeling you get, after accomplishing something, knowing that you’ve completed something substantial, and completed something productive.

I haven’t yet, learnt to “monetise” my work, and my contributions, and perhaps it’s  a reflection of the fact that whilst my contributions are useful and of value, I still have some things to learn about business, and money.  My recent reading of The Richest Man in Babylon, has made me realise just how much I love and appreciate work, and how there’s some basic fundamental principles, of wealth, and abundance that I’ve been missing out on.  The most basic being – that if you don’t love your work, then you won’t be able to get really really good at something, and then be able to command a greater salary for being ever more proficient in your field, or area of expertise.

So, 2009, I’m going to focus all my energies on becoming excellent at faciliting online community.  Managing an online Community is challenging at the best of times, but comes easily and effortlessly to people who have mastered those skills, and know how to support their colleagues or constituents in generating content, and deriving value.  So with that in mind, this year, I’ll be focussing my time, attention,  and skills to both engaging more deeply online, and also to learning and developing the skillset, or toolset that’s required to be successful in facilitating online community :)  I look forward to seeing how accomplished I become in this field, by the end of 2009.  Wish me luck!!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Heading home on the tube last week, looking over someone’s shoulder, I briefly caught a glimpse of an Evening Standard article talking about Twitter, and it possibly replacing Facebook.  It then went on to describe the authors failed experience of trying to use Twitter, and his rejection of it because he couldn’t get it to work.

It reminds me of my experience of when I first heard about Twitter, and what happened, when I first decided to take a look.  My first response was, I’m not going to tell everyone about my personal life, and chose then and there not to use twitter, and that it was for other people.. Heck, I didn’t even update my Facebook Status updates, why would I use a tool where I would just be updating my status all day?? It really didn’t make any sense, and I saw no reason to even begin to engage with this foolishness..

How little did I know..

Many months later, I happened to attend one of London’s Geek Dinners, where Moo were presenting, and happened to end the night, standing in a conversation with a group of people that were all friends. They shared their experiences of meeting people they had been in conversation with, over twitter, and the whole experience of having online friends, who they started to meet in real life.  It made me reminiscence of my youth, when watching TV, I would imagine what it would be like being a “geek” and having friends who knew me by my handle (my online nickname), and here I was meeting people in real life, who lived that dual personality.

So, spurred on by the thought of being able to at last have my online persona (of magitam) come to life, and knowing that there were people who I now knew, who I could connect with through Twitter, and start to stay connected with them, I started to use Twitter.. ..

That evening I left that event, with the contact details of those few friends I’d made, inspired by the conversation, and the idea of meeting people in person, who you already knew online.

Fast forward, 6 months, and I’m a firm advocate of Twitter… Not only do I believe it to be of great use, I think it’s invaluable, in sharing thoughts, disseminating information, and also to just gain a “loose” awareness of what friends, family, colleagues, associates, and your general twitter community are upto.

Whilst it might seem trivial to fill twitter with what you ate, or what you did, it’s strangely satisfying to be able to share what you’re doing with people who know you.  Equally it starts to become the start of “conversations” that allow you to find others that share similar ideas.. It lets you reach out and connect to more people.

Most importantly, it gives you an extension of the “Office Water Cooler”.  The informal conversations that happen spontaneously in passing.. Those chance encounters where you can never foretell or predict what might be said, or what choice piece of information might be communicated!  It’s these “choice” encounters that make for really interesting, unplanned, unexpected, but potential synchronicities for me that make it all the more worthwhile.

Aside from the water cooler effect, Twitter also has become a solid bit of support, and community for me.. As much as it would be great to have a diverse, and varied group of friends, who had similar interests, and were a mixed and varied group, sometimes I just don’t have the physical time to spend with people interested in each of those different areas.  It’s now possible to have many of those interactions in my virtual world, which helps re-inforce my interests, and means that me in person conversations are already a step further along, than they would be otherwise..  It’s great to be able to know about what folks are upto, and be able to stay current, interested and engaged with many people, without having to be always calling them and asking them!

So now turning the tabkes for a second onto you the reader, I’d like to ask you to answer the following question: – Why do you use twitter?  What do you get out of it?

If you don’t yet use twitter, then why don’t you use twitter?

Do share your thoughts, and insights in the comments below, or write your own blog post about why you use twitter, and be sure to trackback to here, so I know about it :)

twitter, why twitter, community, twitterverse

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This morning, I’ve finally figured out why I so rarely get any real work done.. Because I’m always so busy trying to “fix things”!!

I guess it’s just part of the growing pains of technology, and getting your systems up and running.  Normally, whenever I start with a new computer, there’s some basics that I have to do to any machine, before I can be comfortable using it.  That includes installing some decent open source tools to be able to get my work done.  One of the reasons I prefer to use Open Source software as much as possible, is simply because I can then use it on any platform, and I don’t have to start learning a whole new interface… And with a zero cost to acquisition, the learning I put into installing and configuring the software repays itself, pretty quickly, once you’ve had to install and use the same piece of software on two or three computers… (if you’re reading this, and thinking two or three computers?? Just remember, being a techy, I’ve been using computers for ages, and as I’ve upgraded from an x386 to a 486, to Intel Pentium, to Macs, and Linux, and now am on pretty much everything (except Mac – gotta get myself a Mac again soon!!))

So anyways, Open Source software tends to be able to do the same job as closed source, but has the same interface on pretty much all the platforms, and usually, being open source, if a platform isn’t available, you can usually get the code, and make it work on your platform, if you want to.. I like having that freedom, and knowledge.. Not that I would necessarily do it, just yet – but one of these days, I’m going to get stuck in under the cover, and when I do, I want to make sure that I can contribute and give back to those who gave me so much benefit, and value early on when I started off using the tools to try to stay productive, and useful, with my work, using those tools..

So, for email, I’ve long been a firm advocate of Thunderbird.  Even on a Mac, back when I had the luxury of having one at my disposal, I used the default Mail App, and just had to get out of there, and get my dear lovely Thunderbird working on my desktop as quickly as humanly possible!!!! It’s just painful, when I think of the pain points, but not wanting to bash any software, and not remembering what the points of pain were, suffice it to say, it was something simple and easy enough for me to think, this really should be able to do this, and it couldn’t so I left behind the default Mail client.. (I’m sure Mac’s Mail app is constantly being updated and improved, but you just can’t beat open source for speed of deployment, and just getting the functionality faster, and sooner!!)

Anyways, I’ve used Thunderbird, for as long as I can remember – and the few times that I’ve “had” to use Outlook, or some MS equivalent, I just cringe, and long for the sanity that comes with the open source alternative..

Well, going back a few years, one feature that I thought would be really useful, would be to have a calendar, so enthusiastically I started using Google Calendar, excited that I could export my calendar, and publish it places – (I’m a techie who wants to know I can take my data with me and share it everywhere :)

So I figured, if I can export, and I can publish, I should be able to use it with a desktop client “somehow” – and the bane of being an early adopter is that you really don’t get to choose your apps, with just a point and click style approach – there’s usually some “coding” or integration that needs to happen, to make things work.  No problem – I’m a techie, I don’t have a problem with getting under the hood and making things work, after all that’s what I thrive on, the challenge of making systems do what they’re meant to, so that I can just get on with my life, without having to constantly tell everyone, or repeat stuff that should be easy to replicate, share or just make available.

But alas, the best Google Calendar could do, is let me import my external calendar, into my computer.  (Ok, as I’m writing this, I distinctly remember it being iCal format into iCal on a Mac – so I’m guessing this was quite a few years ago, pre-Lightning and Sunbird – the Mozilla Open Source counterparts for Calendaring).  There was no way that iCal would let me write something into this calendar that I could then sync with my online calendar.. Not that I was using multiple computers at the time (back then it was just a form of online backup in my mind)…

Eventually, with nothing really working quite right, I ended up just leaving it, and never really used calendaring at all, just because life wasn’t too complicated, or busy, and I didn’t need to see every little thing that I was working on, or keep track of, or be on time or as punctual back then…

Fast forward a few years, and a few countries later, and being back in London, and having discovered and now that I’m starting to regularly attend some interesting and cool events, conferences, networks, communities, and groups, I’m often and quite frequently asked about other events that I could suggest and recommend to others.. I guess being someone who’s quite interested in these things, I’m often discovering events through word of mouth, or just happen to know about the places to find things, like meetup.com or upcoming.org…

But I guess that’s not always the case.

So anyways, I was getting a touch annoyed, at just always finding events, or seeing events I wanted to add to my Google Calendar, and tired of Google Calendars lack of integration with Firefox, to be able to just clip an event, and tag it for my calendar, the way I can do for my bookmarks with Delicious, I thought I might be able to save some pain and hassle, by having at least a desktop based client that I can then later sync up with Google Calendar… And as I’m writing this I’m also getting an idea for something, which I’ll share in a second…

So anyways, I set up a bunch of calendars on my google account, which I’ve set up as public calendars…
If you happen to be interested in seeing them, before I’ve properly integrated them into this blog, you can check them out here for now:

For all events even vaguely Spiritual that might be of interest to me:
XML, iCal, HTML

For all Talks and Workshops in London, that might inspire, or engage people working in New Media, Technology, Social Change, Innovation, Culture, or just generally anything else that I think might be interesting to attend:
XML, iCal, HTML

For all Networking Events, Unconference Events, MiniBars, MiniCamps, basically any “unstructured” event, where there’s an opportunity to meet people, connect and network, that I’m generally interested in knowing about. These can be related to Technology, Social Media, Web 2.0, New Media, Startups, Entrepreneur Stuff, Innovative Stuff, pretty much anything that I think is cool, and suited to the general ConsciousComms Community (more about ConsciousComms in the near future):
XML, iCal, HTML

And I’ve only have set these up, because I have found a simpler way of capturing the “events” to add to the calendar, because the pain of trying to add events to Google Calendar was just too great a burden to make me even start taking the first step towards getting the events onto public calendars in the first place..

It’s at this point, that I want to say a huge, huge, thank you to Jonny Reeves, a contributor to a blog called simply bfish.xaedalus.net for taking the time to write his excellent article on Integrating Google Calendar into Thunderbird using Lightning!!  Admittedly, I figured, that I should be able to just add Google Calendar to one of the Mozilla Calendar tools myself, and found the plugin for Gcal from the Mozilla extensions repository.  But if it weren’t for his article, I might have had to experiment with Thunderbird and Lightning, to make sure things worked, and then to figure out how to make it work.. If it weren’t for this well written and properly documented entry, I wouldn’t have been able to just make these tools just work, and get on with my work, so thank you Jonny!! I love that you’ve gone and done what I would have done, had I known it so long ago, and had the time to go through and document so clearly and simply what needs to be done… (It does make me wonder though how comes I didn’t use Google Cal integration with a desktop until now?!?)

I’m pretty sure that article alone will bring down the barrier to entry for so many competent technical users who might not have adopted the hybrid solution to get their systems working otherwise..  It’s nice when you see such clearly documented stuff, and having benefitted so greatly from it, I’ll be sure to remember to share things in as clear a manner as possible, in the near future around some of the things that I’m a bit of an expert on, and feel like there might be people who could be interested in having more help with..

For now, I just had to write this, to express my gratitude, and thanks to scribefire, I just had it pop up, and it let me start writing.. now I just need to catch up with all the other articles that I’ve been working on..

And as an afterthought… I’ll just share an idea that’s occurred to me.. based on the way delicious works – how about a product that lets you “clip” events, to a calendar??  Does anyone thing such an idea has legs?? If you could be at a web page, and just want to record the event, in a calendar format that you could easily share with others.. would you want to use something like that?? Obviously modelling the style of delicious, i.e. having plenty of tagging, networks, etc.. but having a uniquely “Farhan” spin to it.. if you’re interested drop me a note in the comments, or just let me know what you think of the idea through the blog’s comments… (and don’t worry, if you happen to post me your email address in your comment, I’ll make sure I don’t publish it..)

thunderbird, lightning, google calendar, desktop, london events

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Chainreaction08 at session on scaling
technology’s with accenture’s david tomlinson

chris – salesforce.com

foundation

billion dollar business 3k employees

2-300 in uk

foundation launched when company was
launched

started, long before company was
profitable

1% model

1% of all time, money, and product,
donated, to charities non-profit charities

over 1k charities using salesforce in
their global community

2 very successful projects working with
accenture

accenture worked with kids company,
member of staff took accentures expertise and project management

adp – accenture development platform
– rolling out across many countries, sharing best practices

sales force – best of breed of
technology, accenture giving best of breed of expertise

grace, organisation partnering with
accenture

nurse from kenya, refugee

scale up number of nurses, able to
respond to community health issues. –

national council of kenya, sets
standard for nurses

accenture, looking at scaling up
capacity of nurses by scaling up, and

nurse remains working, and continues
studying.

Exposing nurses to wider areas

within 5-7 yrs, over 2k nurses who are
trained..

scaling access to technology across
africa

young foundation

50yr track record – how to eliminate
and solve social problems, and creating organisations around the
world

open university, school for
entrepreneurs, education extra,

incubator of enterpises – condusct
research into what will scale up

three key lessons – focussing on
innovative things where paying customer is usually govt.

important to focus on effective demand
of what you’re doing, ,as well as building organisation demand and
capacity – if you don’t create something that other people want to
use.

2^nd learning – scaling
impact of what you’re doing, organisation growth is only one way of
scaling impact, diffusing ideas, easy if it’s simple, easily
understandable.

organisation growth – best suited
whre there are high barriers to entry, complexity, challenges to
market,

lastly – 3^rd learning,

when scaling organisation, shift the
culture and capabilites, from explorer mode to execution mode.

Everyone’s doing a bit of everything,
being the charismatic leader, personal connections with leader,
larger scale organisation needs more equality, efficiency. Person
running it is general manager type, rather than charismatic

governance is about checks and
balances.

Be able to fire the chief executive –
finding right balance between explorer, and growth mode.

Most good ideas are developed by very
innovative, highly creative, people, who get bogged down by admin

henry, gemini heads up

project rafiki, large online project
for schools,

objectives

education – comunication skills,
teamwork skills, it skills

bridging cultural, social and religious
deviides

global interconnect – understanding
how we’re all linked.

When we started the organisation, it
wasn’t possible to collaborate and connect, now with web 2.0 we can
have huge impact, with huge numbers of kids.

Fairtrade – example – talk live
into ghana with people in coffee fields

islamophibia, kids in iran, iraq,
palestine, tower hamlets – connecting directly

long term impact, on these kids, over a
long period of time – is ayone still going to be there in a years
time, in a few yars time..

the long term impact – friends with
people in 5 countries, change in career, because of it,

software path becomes easier –
because of people like salesforce, and accenture

can’t do it alone – looking to find
other organisations, who share the same vision

medecins san frontiers – links into
darfur, to see the horror happening there..

always draws in graph – x axis –
measureable impact

y-axis number of people you can impact

some very different examples, and
interesting ideas..

extension from chair – connecting to
theme of chain reaction – gathered in this building are hundreds of
people with ideas, for local level – how do we scale that up??

using tech we have, across different
countries, and different people, how do we scale up?

Use of technology, lessons learnt,
impact on your organisation.. questions opened up to audience..

Relates to simon – shifting from
explorer to execution mode…

finished pilot – huge success, but
finding challenge about going from explorer to execution, how to grow
the organisation in order to make it sustainable…

grant funded – from wellcome trust -
very few organisations that are grant funded find it hard to scale
up, can be quite hard, and expensive. Cheapest way to do it, is to
have members on board with the expertise already on board.

Gemini foundation, was grant fudned,
and had to move into a social enterprise model – suggestion start
with a business plan, be very focussed, and single aim

Director of Just Change –
experiencing similar challenge.. over 6 years, been using volunteers
to import and distribute tea.. setting up a location in luton – to
set up an office – but can’t go from small organisation to a
financially sustainable one that grows.

Chainreaction08 – scaling from a
grant funded organisation, to one that grows.. growing challenge

unltd – cliff – pilot project..

not yet – hope it will surface on the
crowdvine, or else try the connect desk, once you get here :)

salesforce – entrepreneur development
program – vision spring, organisation in india, sell quality eye
glasses at low cost

Tricia’s point – most business
schools, have programs with mba’s who place teams with third sector
- prime time, people who’ve retired from business.

As an organisation looking for
temporary funding – can also use loans, or

thepoint.com

zopa.com

pledgeback.com

Health launch, launchpad provides
funding, and intensive support, on business building side and of
building effective demand. Commissioners, can usualy make a 15,000
grant, without referring it up.

Response to going from volunteer
sector, funding from venture capital funds

Demand side has been discussed –
what’s available on the supply side, to meet that demand

question for grace or henry – helps
out with project in south west uganda, witth e-learning, and

salesforce – have a microfinance
template, attract relationships with banks, and

Grace, iinfrastructure, electricity
isn’t there, connection to internet is on and off.. first thing,
nurses using paper based training, using cd’s. In training centres,
expanded from 37 to 105 computers.. – best options, for rural areas,
using different media, that will last regardless of the
infrastructure, nurses council of kenya

seems I’ve been typing away too much…
on the laptop – looks like I’m going to have to do more twittering
from the mobile..

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today (Monday 17th November 2008) marked the inauguration of Chain Reaction 08, a two day conference in London which “will bring together social leaders, community activists, policy makers, business leaders, young people and people like you from around the globe to share learning and to generate new ideas for social change, locally, nationally and globally.”

Today also marches the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week “the first worldwide celebration of enterprise, which aims to unleash young people’s enterprising ideas and address some of society’s biggest issues, from poverty reduction through to climate change.”

As the day ends in London, and all the delegates wind down, and finish up for the day, later, half way across the other side of the world, in San Francisco, there is another conversation about to begin, at The Global Summit where the question will be asked – “What will it take to build a sustainable future?”.  The Global Summit(TM) a world-wide partnership for a sustainable future, is laying the foundation for annual Summits across the globe. The Global Summit(TM) begins with a two-day symposium and culturally rich welcome reception. Outcomes include guiding principals for a sustainable world across six key social and economic sectors, a blue print for the world’s first global citizen voter platform and an online collaboration system that maximizes our collective impact. Learn more about this event by either reading this press release, or by visiting the website of the Empowerment works – the organisation responsible for putting on the event.

It seems like this week could truly mark the beginning of a significant changing tide in the world we live in today.. I’ll be personally attending Chain Reaction 08, where I’ll be socially reporting on the event, via twitter, and blogging, as best I can.  At the same time two dear friends, fellow facilitators of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, and former colleagues from The Pachamama Alliance where I volunteered for 9 months will be attending The Global Summit in San Francisco.  We’re planning to organise a conference call, after both events, to find out about each others experiences of what was shared, and to find out threads between the two events, that we might be able to start weaving together, between the two gatherings, half a world away from each other..

I don’t know about how much virtual engagement will occur at The Global Summit, but we’ll have plenty of resources to engage people online, coming out of the conference, so please do connect into the conversations in whatever way you feel would work best!!

Whilst clarifiying a few details for The Global Summit, I’ve discovered a few more relevant happenings this week..

This week the following related events are also happening, or did already happen:

Governor’s Global Climate Summit, Nov 18th and 19th, 2008, in Beverly Hills, California,
convened by Governor Schwarzenegger

The G-20 Global Economic Summit, on Nov 15th and 16th, 2008, in DC, organised by President Bush.
You can also read the Full G-20 Declaration.

The first pan-European Town Meeting on Climate Change, 15th Nov, 2008, simultaneously in Florence, (Italy), Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain) and Poitiers (France), in the context of the IDEAL-EU project, one of the ongoing Preparatory Actions on eParticipation funded by the European Commission.

So it’ll be interesting to see with all this flurry of activity, what long term sustainable social change could come out of these programs? and what actually ends up coming out of all these meetings…

If you’d like to engage with Chain Reaction 08 – we’re deliberately including an online social element to the community interactions, and so would like to extend the invitation to everyone to join in, participate, and collaborate.

You can start by tagging everything you generate with the official tag of chainreaction08 – so everytime you blog, tweet, post a photo on flickr, or just generally include anything that you would like to include in the conversation, be sure to include that tag (except if you’re replying to something that’s been said in twitter, in which case the fact you’re replying will mean that the earlier part of the conversation, as well as your response will appear in the results :)  This applies to all people who are at the event, and watching from their homes too :)

On twitter, to search for a keyword, you can use http://search.twitter.com and put in the keyword terms for Chain Reaction 08.

A comprehensive query, that includes all related variations can be found by visiting http://tinyurl.com/5pu375 – this will provide you with a complete list of all posts on twitter relating to the London Chain Reaction 08 event. (The RSS Feed for this query can be found here).

For photos, everyone’s been asked to post them on flickr, and to use the keyword tag of chainreaction08 to make sure that they are visible to everyone who is looking for images from the event.  If you’d like to see the latest photos that have been uploaded, just visit here.  If you happen to attend the Chain Reaction 08 event, and have pictures that you’d like to share with the other participants, then I’d like to invite you to create your very own free flickr account, and post the photos you’ve taken during the course of the two days onto flickr, making sure that you tag all your photos with “chainreaction08” (without the quotes, of course!)

You can also find relevant blog posts, that will help weave a connection between the participants of Chain Reaction 08.  Again, if you want to have your blog appear to other people, make sure that when you post your blog, you include the tag chainreaction08, so that other people can find it, when they are looking for related content..

Fortunately, Google has integrated it’s video search into a single interface, that comes from multiple sources, so you can also find all videos from the event, that are shared on youtube and google video using the chainreaction08 tag.

There is also content being video’d and streamed directly online, throughout the event courtesy of David Wilcox, and Qik…

Then, most importantly, we also have an active online community at http://chain-reaction.crowdvine.com/ so if you don’t happen to have been able to join the event, live, or want to join in from a distance, the online community will undoubtedly be a rich resource, that connects people together long after chain reaction 08 is over, and perhaps by chain reaction 09, there’ll be an international dimension occurring simultaneously at the same time.

If I happen to have missed any resources, please add them into the comments section below, and I’ll be sure to update this page, to properly reflect all the resources, and references relating to ChainReaction08, so that everyone can benefit from knowing where to find everything related and relevant to a matter dear to our hearts.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In the UK there’s a thriving group of non-profit techies, (also known as Circuit Riders) who stay connected through a mailing list, that regularly keeps everyone engaged with helping each other, and supporting each other, through those trying times when you need someone to call upon, as well as those not so trying times, when you just want to let people know what’s happening, or sound out ideas.  That’s great for the virtual contact, but I’d always felt that there was something lacking in the face to face meetings and events that could also occur, and that I’d experienced during my time as a Non Profit Volunteer Techie in San Francisco during 2006 and 2007.

Working with a model that seems to work well, of meeting on the first tuesday of each month, Amy began the first of London’s Net Tuesdays this week, and by all accounts it was a roaring success!!  You can read a nice detailed account of the event at Amy’s Blog. I don’t think it would be fair to even begin to try and give a better summary than Amy’s already done.  Clearly a seasoned blogger, with a great writing style, she’s done an excellent job of reporting the output from our Bloggers Discussion Panel, which involved Type Pad, Moveable Type, Wordpress and Community Server being represented. One of the members of the Panel, Miko who wore the slightly more technical hat for TypePad, as well as representing Community Server, has written up an excellent summary of the key blogging platforms, and a great summary of some of the differences between them.  I thoroughly recommend if you’re starting out to read her summary, and use those to help inform your decisions about which blogging platform to use.

We then ended the panel, having answered some great questions about the features and functionality of the tools, and then started to come up with a list of considerations to take into account, before getting started.  The blogging “strategies and approaches” part of the conversation was designed to verse people a little in the thinking that goes into making a successful blog, and after brainstorming from the room, we crowdsourced the following 5 key points, of :

1. Setting Goals
2. Write with Passion and Knowledge
3. Practice writing blog posts for a few months
4. Use your community to come and comment
5. Integrate your blog with everything you do

The premise behind this conversation was that in order to be successful with your blogging, there’s some key pre-requisites that are needed.  Especially if you want your blog to be engaging and participative.  With that in mind, Miko shared her own take on starting blogging, and what you should do, to prepare to succeed.

Some Of My Own Thoughts on Blogging

I’m certainly in agreement that blogging doesn’t just happen, on it’s own, in isolation from the world.  I think often people look at a blog, and think “I can do that”. They might even assume that just by installing or getting a blog set up, that they too can start to reap the engagement and conversation that occurs in the blogosphere.  Unfortunately, it really isn’t all as simple as that.

Speaking, from my own experiences, and I wrote my first blog post in 2004, I can say with all certainty, that blogging for me has been something that evolves over time. I’ve undoubtedly been learning a lot about the medium of blogging along the way too, and that journey educates and inspires me to continue to always try out new things, and then some.I first started my blog, as an experiment, using Blogger.com, and started out thinking of it as a place to capture my thoughts and interesting things that I would come across on the internet.  You can even see at Blogger.com my original blogs, as they were until I left them, and integrated them all into my current Blog, which is now a self-hosted installation of WordPress, and where you might be reading this from.

Back when I first started blogging, I decided on some key areas of interest for me in my life, and thought I would use a blog to collect interesting websites that I found and bits of information that I thought were useful.  I considered my blog to be a place to store my thoughts, and as a record of my travels through the internet. I even started a few different blogs, because I thought that other people might be interested if I started collecting enough interesting websites, relating to a specific theme, or idea, or topic, and that in time, people would start finding my blog and commenting on it, and leaving their thoughts and ideas, if I were to capture the “best of” along the way.

You must remember that this is back in those days when del.icio.us and other social bookmarking websites hadn’t yet come out, and I was itching for a way to start collecting my bookmarks online, so I wouldn’t always have to use the same computer, but would always have access to the cool links that I found along my travels.  I also wanted to be able to share with friends, and family some of the cool stuff I would find online, and thought that naturally in time, a blog would be the perfect solution.

And to an extent, it did work, for a few months, and it certainly warmed me to the idea of blogging, but it didn’t really take off, in a big way. I still didn’t quite understand, back then of what I might be able to use the blogging for, and I definitely didn’t maintain the discipline of keeping my blog updated with all the interesting and wonderful things I discovered along the way.

I think back then, part of the challenge for me was that everytime I wanted to post something I would have to log into the blogging platform, and then create the entry, and couldn’t just use a plugin, or bookmarklet script or external blogging client to write to my blog.  Now after experimenting with a number of great tools, I’ve decided that I’m in love with ScribeFire, a plugin for Firefox, and since using it I’ve also started blogging a whole lot more too.  But I digress..So after a considerably non-productive use of blogging, with little real interest in keeping it alive for the sake of keeping it alive, and with this terrible feeling that no-one in the world was interested in what I was writing about, or posting about, I laid my blogging to rest.  Not consciously, but I just didn’t feel the need, or a desire to write about stuff as much.  I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired, or excited, and I guess I was going through my own challenges in life, understanding what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to engage with the world.

Then in the summer of 2005, I ended up travelling to Peru, in South America, and all of a sudden, I had something that I wanted to share with all my friends and family back home.  After a few attempts at writing out long emails, with details of what was happening, in response to people’s emails, I realised that most of the time I was writing pretty much the same set of details in response to people, and spending quite a bit of time repeating the same stories over and over to people, on a one to one basis.  Spurred on with the knowledge and experience of using Blogger.com, quite successfully in the past, I decided I would use that wonderful medium of “blogging”, to write about my travels.  Suffice it to say, it didn’t take long before I took great pleasure in sitting in internet cafes, writing up my notes of the day.  I even became really diligent in writing in my pocket diary, a summary of the days events, so that my time in the internet cafe would be spent just writing up what I’d already thought about and reflected upon, at the end of each day.  I thought that sharing my travels, and experience in that intimate manner would be a great way to keep everyone updated on what I was upto, and how my travels were going, and it meant that I wouldn’t have to write the same email to everyone that kept asking me how things are going, and what I had been upto.

It also started to fuel my desire to write, since I knew I had a captive audience.  I’d received so much support and encouragement from people as I’d left London, that I figured most of those people would probably enjoy reading about my travels, and my adventures.  I later discovered that my cousin had also been sharing my blog out to his fellow co-workers at work, and even though I never received much email, or saw any visibility of how many people visited my blog, and hardly anyone ever commented on it, I felt like it was being read, and I kept it updated, just so if nothing else, at least my family and friends would know how I was doing, and that I was ok.

Of course, once I left Peru, and returned to London, the blogging on that trip to Peru didn’t seem like a natural thing to continue, since I was back home, and things in London just didn’t seem as noteworthy, or as interesting and different as they did out there.  My only regret with my blogging back then, was that I didn’t take a digital camera with me, and take photos… Some of my travels were just so scenic and beautiful, and some of the people I met such loving souls, that I wish I had captured them all on camera.. But instead I got the joys of having fond memories that I shall keep with me instead :)

Again, the blogging had seemed like a great idea, it had become really useful, and productive for me, when I needed it to communicate, and now that I was done with that trip, it didn’t seem like I had anything left to write, and so I just let it fizzle away.  Back then, I didn’t really have any comments on my posts, and I didn’t really understand, if I had emailed all these people that knew me, why didn’t anyone comment on anything I wrote??  And so, by not having much engagement from the audience, I ended up leaving it as a record of my travels, and nothing more.

Uncovering Your Voice

I guess all along, the biggest challenge I had, when writing for my blog, was to get clear in my mind who I was writing for, and what it was that I wanted to communicate.  I would have moments of sharp clarity, and specific things that I thought were noteworthy, and then the enthusiasm would wear off, reality would set in, and I would come to the conclusion that actually I didn’t have anything significant or noteworthy to share with the world. (At least nothing that seemed to get the whole world clamouring at my doorstep, and wanting to comment on).

I’d finally understood, that blogging is a very personal choice, and that if I chose to publicly share myself, I would always be able to do it on my terms, and didn’t have anyone to answer to but myself.  I think partly because back then I didn’t have a clear audience in mind, I used the blogging as a way of tracking my own thoughts, and adventures out into the world of the internet, but never leaving that comfort zone of writing into an empty vaccum where no-one seemed to be listening.

Now, almost four years on, a lot has changed.  My understanding of the internet, and it’s role in my life for one.  My ability to engage and connect with people for another.  And also how I’m using the internet, and what I’m seeing myself using it for are all changing too.  I think part of the online social networking phenomenon of seeing your network online, in platforms like facebook and linked in means that you slowly start to see your “community”.  Wheras in the past, the most visibility you would get is the emails you got and sent, and the IM chats.  The online social networks that have come into existence now, are slowly starting to make us all acutely aware of the fact that we now have “captive audiences”.  Be it we might use those captive audiences to chase, as werewolves, or to write on each others walls, but innately , we have people we are engaging with, and who are engaging back with us.

This is where blogging comes into play, and starts to become useful.

Whilst you can certainly send an email out to everyone you know, using bulk emailing platforms, once that email is sent, it’s gone.  There’s no permanency to that message or conversation.  It disappears into the ether, and you can only track the results, and await the response from people to know what people felt or experienced.  Whilst it makes it possible to communicate intimately, and personally, it detracts from the public presence that could be enriched by sharing the contents of those emails in public.  Especially if it’s non-sensitive information that goes towards establishing your brand, your credibility, your cause, your needs, or your experiences with others.  What people can’t see about you, people can’t know about you, and whilst email newsletters are great in principle, in practice, there needs to be something being added or updated to the blog, or the news section of your own website too, so that those people who don’t currently subscribe to the newsletter could also have the choice, based on the content.

Nowadays, I’ve come to understand a little more clearly my audiences, and my different voices when blogging.  I can’t say I understand or know them all clearly, but I do know that I have a number of different threads or streams of ideas flowing through this one blog.  I have very distinct and different communities of people that I’m communicating with through this blog.  (Albeit, those communities may only exist in my mind for now, but they are very real nonetheless).

I can see, as I re-read my own blog, and see the train of thought, and threads of conversation that I’m weaving together, that I have some very distinct and seperate groups of people that I’m talking to, or in conversation with.  And I think more importantly, I’m starting to understand how powerfully, I can start to engage in the conversation on the internet, through the blogosphere.

It never truly dawned on me, until the Net Tuesday event we had in London, but commenting on other people’s blogs has really started to make me realise and appreciate how important it is to give before you receive.  If I want people to comment on my blog posts, I have to go out there and comment on other people’s blog posts first.

If I want my blog to become successful, I have to make it more focussed, and targetted.  This is something I’ll write about properly another time, but for now, suffice it to say, that the internet is a big place, and the more targetted and focussed your writing is, the easier it will be for you to become an authority in a particular niche.  What that translates to, is that everytime someone googles something vaguely related to your topic or area of expertise, you’ll come up at the very top.  As long as you know what it is you’re passionate about, and what you genuinely know about, then chances are that you’ll eventually be able to become an established authority in that niche.  Until you get that focussed, your own thinking and writing will suffer, as well as the community engagement, and participation to your blog, your website, and your cause, or field of expertise.

Conversely, the more focussed, and targetted you are in everything that you do, the more you start to add real value for others.  You become capable of voicing the unvoiced, on clarifying assmumptions, on becoming an authoritative voice, and opinion.  You also become capable of synthesising and expanding upon the ideas and thoughts of other people, and actually further the conversation in the blogosphere.

But first, you must know who it is that you will be writing for?

Then what is it that you’re going to write that this audience is going to want to know about?

Once you can answer the above two questions, clearly, and you have people regularly asking you for, or your regularly telling people the same bits of information, then, and only then, will you be able to uncover your blogging voice, and start to contribute in a meaningful manner through your blog.  Until then, you’ll be finding your feet, through the possibilities of what you might be able to voice, and who you might be able to express your thoughts to.  That’s not a bad thing either, because until you start trying, you’ll never figure out your space, and most definitely not find the flow of your blogging voice.

Related posts:

1. Time to Focus My Diverse Interests So, it’s been a long time since I’ve written on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In that lucky grouping are Huddle, a London based startup, that leads the way, with being the first European startup to be represented in LinkedIn.  With over 30 million professionals using LinkedIn, Huddle are strategically positioning themselves well ahead of 37 Signals, with their BaseCamp offering.

In fact, when it comes to online project management, Huddle have probably beaten everyone else in the web space, given that most of the 30 million professionals on LinkedIn, probably haven’t gone deliberately looking for services that would offer such tools..

I know recently I discovered the Action Method, approach to tasking and project management, but only since I took an active interest in finding better tools to get this job done… Now it’ll be interesting to see what sort of an impact the OpenSocial integration is going to have with other services that equally integrate with OpenSocial, and will start to be offered through existing online social networks, such as LinkedIn and Plaxo..  Let’s just hope that what happens is that only the best tools rise to the top!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As an entrepreneur, with a company in London, looking for investment, if you’re innovative, and looking to grow the company with an equity investment, then g2i might be able to help.  I happened to discover it when reading the comments in an article that talked about Huddle, and how they were a part of a group who went out to Silicon Valley, called Web Mission 08.  The g2i appears to offer training, advice, support and mentoring, aimed at helping companies develop their pitches, their propositions, and their teams, in order to become “investor ready”.  They only target specific sectors, so before you go off all chirpy, make sure that you’re at least in one of the following industries:

• Design & Creative
• Life Sciences
• Emerging Technologies
• Energy & Environment
• ICT
• Food & Drink
• Value Added Manufacturing
• Retail

It actually looks like a pretty broad range, so hopefully you’ll be able to find a way to fit into one of those categories.  I guess, aside from getting you ready for investors, the real benefit with g2i, is their network of investors, VC’s and business angels, which means they’ll be able to help you brush up on your pitch, and then help you walk through the door to the folks with money most suited to what you’re offering.

Seems like a win win situation to me!  They have a great summary of the g2i journey, graphically depicting the different stages, and what’s on offer..

You can also read more about the g2i team, which is comprised of Grant Thornton UK LLP, Library House, E-Synergy, The Innovatory, Quotec, and Pembrige Partners LLP.

Altogether, g2i looks like a great outfit to go through, to help shape up the business, and get things rolling, especially if you’re during the growth phase of your company, and need the equity injection to help grow the business.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.