So let me start out by saying that I love Mixx! Great site done by some really great people. My problem is that since I don’t have a job that puts me in front of a computer, my computer time is very limited. One way I find time for sites like Plurk and Twitter is that I can interact with them through my mobile phone. There is no way to even look at Mixx on my mobile phone at all. I have heard that they have an iPhone version of the site, but iPhone is far from being the most popular mobile OS (just the most hyped).
Mixx recently also made changes that slow users down when voting for stories. Before you could pull up the list of stories submitted by all the people you follow and vote for the ones you thought worthy of your time. Now a user has to go to each specific story to vote for it. Yeah, I know this was done in an effort to make it more difficult for spammers. However, it made people like me not able to find time for the site.
Now does this mean I am pissed off? Not in the least. Does this mean I will never use the site again? Not even close! All I am saying is that it makes it more difficult to find time for the site. All I am saying is that I can find time for sites like Twitter and Plurk easier. Less time means I go to the sites that are less time intensive. I still love Mixx! Take a look at my video interviews I did at Gnomedex. Notice the Mixx logo on my shirt? I made sure to wear that shirt when I did my video interviews as a friendly nod to my fellow mixxers, because I feel bad I have neglected the site so much recently.
So what is my point? Would you believe it isn’t actually about Mixx? I just used Mixx as an example because it works so well for the point I am about to make. When creating your site, keep mind that not everyone has a ton of time to invest into a site. If the user feels they are drowning, they can get pulled away by sites that make them feel less like they are drowning. So many sites are working so hard to make you click more so they can get more ad impressions(not Mixx). Instead the result so often is that users leave and their traffic goes down. If you are a site that has enough funding to have a mobile version, make sure it’s not just for users of one type of mobile phone. Make things easy for your users and they will thank you. As for Mixx, I hear my work schedule might change in Mid-September. Until then I will try to fit it in on the weekends maybe.
Am I a shameless promotion whore or are you just being unnecessarily negative?
A few have told me that I can be a little pushy when it comes to promoting projects I am involved with. I have been called a shameless promotion whore. I have wondered if that is a good or a bad thing. When I offer to trade profile pimps on Plurk to increase my friend count I am told that I am being tacky. Why? Isn’t it all about the social? Isn’t it all about the contacts? Now some say that it is more about quality than quantity. Well that is all fine and good, but how do you know they are quality until you give them a chance to interact with you? So I just add everyone and make my decision from there. Now I may not ever get the friend count of people like Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, or even A Computer Pro, but the more people I get following me, the better chance I have of getting the reaction I want. What is it that I want? Well that depends on the post. Sometimes I might ask a tech question. So then I get the tech savvy contacts replying. Next I might ask how many people are fans of Big Bang Theory and a different group of people reply. Then maybe I make a post asking people to not forget to up vote stories on HAH and the hard rock and metal fans respond. I have several sides to myself and so I have a ton of online friends to accommodate that. Ok, sure I will end up with a majority of those people never respond at all. However, I might make a new friend that I would not have made if I was more reserved. So is it bad to be a self promotion whore? I don’t think so!
Now there is a bad side to it all. Because so many perceive it as being a negative thing, I have a hard time getting people to respond sometimes. So what is the solution? Don’t promote and watch my websites not grow or promote and be called a shameless promotion whore. I think I will pick self promotion. Why do I care so much? Because I am currently slowly killing myself with a job I hate. I need a tech job and if that tech job can be heading up a website I am passionate about that’s even better! Many of the people that slam me for being a shameless self promotion whore are either stay at home housewives, college people that don’t have to work, or people that have jobs that keep them at a computer all day. Nothing wrong with any of those, but they have more time to put into this whole social networking and social media thing. I get in trouble at work if I get caught on the computer. So I have to work harder at the self promotion thing to get anything out of it at all. Hence the reason why I get so pissy when certain people do things that make people question my motives for posting promotional messages on Twitter, Plurk, or any other networking site.
So before you look down your nose at any self promotion whore, ask if there might be some very honest and legit reason behind it. Ask if you are just kicking someone down who is just trying to get ahead.
So this is something I have recently noticed is starting to happen way more often on the internet. Remember when grandpa told you that there was a time and place for everything, but this is not that time? Well this should go for the internet as well. There is one specific internet friend of mine that can’t seem to grasp this at all. I don’t want to point this person out because I don’t want them to feel bad. I just want them to stop doing it. So maybe they will read this, think about it, and stop doing it, without ever knowing this rant was inspired by them.
So imagine you are making a post about a local daycare burning down and trying to help one of the families victimized by this tragic event. Would it be right to correct the spelling or grammar in a reply or comment? Now of course this is a drastic example, but the point is the same.
What if I want to know how many people love a tv show I recently discovered, but I don’t want to bait everyone by asking the question directly. So instead of saying “How many fans of Big Bang Theory are there?” I ask “List your top five tv shows” and see how many answer with Big Bang Theory. It would still be bad form to correct the spelling or grammar in a reply or comment. It would also be rude to accuse the person of asking the question for the sake of getting a ton of replies. You do not know why the question was asked and you just derailed the conversation. It’s called a hijack and it is very rude. If you really feel the person is doing something immoral, contact them one on one instead of posting anything off topic.
Now I am not saying you can’t debate, disagree, or discuss if the person posts something like “I am going to go buy some tomatoes from this guy across the street that just happens to be a child molester.” Or “I love Wal-Mart. They are so great for a community.” Or even “Damn that McDonald’s sure is healthy to eat everyday!” If you post something on an internet forum, blog, or chat room, you damn well better expect some discussion. If this offends you, then you are a stupid twat and just need to be bitch slapped. Just stay on topic and respect the person who started the thread.
The whole point of this post is to stay on topic. If you have something that you feel you need to say to the person who started a thread, do it outside of that post. Don’t hijack the thread. It’s rude.
So I had a few agendas for my time at Gnomedex. First off was to network with as many people as I could and establish as many relationships with as many people in the tech world as I could. Second, I wanted to learn some things I would not be able to learn otherwise. Those two goals were reached in spades! Gnomedex is something everyone that deals with the internet should attend. This means every programmer, every blogger, every online journalist (that doesn’t want to take on the term blogger for some reason), and many others whose entire industries are drowning fast because they are so afraid of technology. Yes, I am talking about everyone that is involved with the music industry from labels, press agents, musicians, and everyone else.
Now some may look at the price and freak out. Why so damn much!? $600 may seem like a good chunk of money, but here is why it is worth it. My wife (The Queen Of Cheese herself) packed all kinds of food for me to take just in case. Well, we had to bring every bit of it back home at the end. I even joked to Chris that he must be on some evil plan to make me fatter than I already am. He said yes and smiled as he walked away. The Pirillo team (many of which are his family) worked very hard to make sure no one was ever hungry. I never paid for a single meal once I was there. The food was great too!
The second reason was the set up. While we sat around to listen to the lectures, we had nice comfortable seats, had an outlet for every single persons laptop, wi-fi internet connection that somehow handled all the bandwidth us geeks were sucking up, a kick off party with free drinks, a second party the next night where they rented out one of the hottest clubs in town for just us, and tons free stuff I’m not going to bother to list here. If Chris found a way to fit in hotels we wouldn’t have a reason to spend a single dime on anything!
Now for the vibe at this conference. hat an amazing bunch of people. Now I said that there were some lectures. It was a conference after all. However, the real big deal with Gnomedex was the people. It was all about the networking. Everyone there seems very serious about making sure that no one feels like the superstar and no one feel like a no one. There is no “little guy” at Gnomedex! Within minutes of my arrival I shook the hand of Chris Pirillo himself. Then I saw him working ever so hard to make sure he was always totally available to everyone the entire weekend. Robert Scoble is about as internet famous as it gets, but the second he got there (he was a little late) he was as approachable as anyone else. I did run into one person I call “The Gnomedex asshole”, but he was the only one out of hundreds (300 – 500 I hear).
Now I am going to try to go over the speakers as quickly as possible so this article doesn’t get too boring and long. Kris Krug did a great job with his photography talk. It was a great introduction for any beginners in the audience and it really made me feel good when I knew about everything he said. I must be learning pretty fast on my own if his talk didn’t teach me anything! Then there was some talk about some site called Ma.gnolia. Most in the audience seemed to not have a clue who or what they were even after the talk, but that was one of the few weak points of the weekend. This is to be expected and I didn’t care because I had internet to keep productivity going. Then we had Ben Huh, the owner of icanhascheezburger. He not only made us all laugh until our sides hurt, but also gave up some hints on what separates his companies sites from all the other low brow humor sites. He could have called his talk, “Why you fail and I don’t”, but he didn’t. Nice guy. The next highlight was from a woman named Beth Kanter. She challenges the Gnomedex crowd to help her raise enough money to send Leng Sopharath, an orphan from Cambodia, for her junior year at college. We made %1006 of the goal before she left the stage. This was the most powerful moment of the weekend and I am proud to say I was a part of it.
There was something about some art work called Serial Cyborg, but other than the name I never was sure what it had to do with tech. Interesting art sure, but not sure why it was at a tech conference. Friday lectures ended with something called Ignite Seattle. Not really sure what Ignite is about still, but they had these great 5 minutes lectures they hit us with at rapid fire. I loved how if it sucked it was over in 5 minutes, but if it was good it was really powerful. It ended with “Matt“. This is the guy who (in his own words) danced really badly all over the world. His whole speech was done in 5 minutes? Wow, pretty amazing stuff if you were there. After that we all took over a club in Seattle called The Showbox for 4 hours of networking, chatting, eating, drinking, and just being social off the web so we can have a more powerful social experience on the web in the future.
Saturday started off with more Ignite stuff, but then went into a talk with Sarah Lacy. For those that don’t know, at this years SXSW she had an interview with the head of Facebook that went very badly because she couldn’t seem to ask an actual question. Well this time she had a few questions, but her whole thing came off about as unfocused and scatterbrained as it could be. Very messy and I almost felt sorry for her. Kudos to Chris for giving her a second chance, but I think she has failed twice. She still needs to learn how to make a point! The next highlight was something called a Vocal Joystick. The guy showed a new advancement in technology that would allow someone to control their “mouse” or “joystick using only their voice. Then he showed how this could be used for speech therapy. Now if that made people go nuts it was nothing compared to the next highlight. Chris brought on Scott Maxwell, the Mars Rover Driver Team Lead for the Mars Exploration Rover project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory! I think a few of us shat ourselves. I am sure that for some, this talk alone was worth the price of the ticket.
Well, the entire last day I started doing interviews with everyone I could. I didn’t care how big or small they were. I wanted to interview everyone I could just to have some video interviews for this article. Sad thing was that I had no microphone and the sound on 95% of them was so bad they are not even worth posting to YouTube. Two of them did turn out pretty good though. So below are my interviews with Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo. If I did an interview with you at Gnomedex please contact me so we can do it over in audio format at least. I am going to try to hunt everyone down and do this as well, but feel free to contact me as well. My most humble apologies. Next time I am renting a better camera with a microphone jack on it. Next year I am bringing a posse too. Chris hinted that he was thinking about changing to one day conferences done in a tour format instead. I hope this isn’t what happens. Three days gives us a chance to bond more and the networking done has more lasting value than it would with a one day event. So please just keep doing the great Gnomedex you have done for the past few years Chris. We all loved it! I am saving up for Gnomedex 9.0 starting yesterday!
Robert Scoble:
Chris Pirillo:
I will try to salvage some of the others, but I would rather do the interview over if people would be willing to do it over the phone. Thanks for your understanding. I’m a noob with some of this stuff.