Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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The photo below is one of the most powerful images I think I've ever captured. It's a moment between Elizabeth Edwards and Jen Lemen. Jen was sharing a personal story with Mrs. Edwards. They spoke for quite a long time and as you can see there is a tremendous amount of emotion there.
One of the best 'booths' at BlogHer this year was Scrapblog. Carlos, Alex, Cindy and the rest of the gang offered hands-on demo of their product and a great photo opp for BlogHer attendees. Bloghers had a number of props and costumes available to 'dress up' and have a Scrapblog made.
During the event I heard a number of women talking about the booth and organizing group shots.
From a social media standpoint, Scrapblog has been uploading all the images created to Flickr and will be doing some follow-up features after the event.
I'm in the closing keynote session at BlogHer '07. It's a room full of hundreds of women bloggers talking to Elizabeth Edwards.
It's interesting to watch the ongoing Twitter coverage of Elizabeth Edward's closing keynote at BlogHer '07. Almost all the tweets I see are micro-coverage of the Q&A. It's really cool to see the use of Twitter in this way.
Dave Weinberger points to some live-blogging tips from Ethan Zuckerman. Ethan has some great sugg.
Last year I wrote a rather lengthy post on my how-to's for conference blogging. One of the things I talk about is building a well-rounded team and making sure you include a photographer and some audio/video. It's been a great guide for a number of folks and we plan to use it for the upcoming FPRA conference in August.
Ethan has a few great points that I agree with.
- Conference blogging gets me invited to conferences I couldn’t otherwise afford to go to, and which I enjoy being present at. - Other bloggers link to my conference posts, which raises my Technorati profile, my google juice, etc., and makes it more likely people will read my original writing. - People expect me to. (This is a good and bad thing.)It's the expectation that also gets to me sometimes.
One of the afternoon sessions at BlogHer '07 features a teenager speaking about professional blogging. What's funny is that I know her father. Small world.
Chloe Spencer will be speaking about her Neopets web site called Neopets Fanatic. Her dad is Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts.
At BlogOrlando we also have a teenager speaking, Judson Collier. When I first put Judson on the speakers list I got an e-mail from somebody saying "He's just a teenager." My response, "Yes I know, and he probably knows more about the subject than you, so you should listen."
I have a few live-blog gigs coming up so I'm not going to burn myself out blogging, so I'm focussing on photography. However there are plenty of other folks live-blogging. You can check out:
- Amber
- Rusty (one of the men here)
- Aliza
- Marrijean
I'll be adding more as I find them.
Terri Theurer from Yahoo spoke about some of the technical things you can do to optimize your blog. Yahoo saw that almost 60% of their visitors are arriving with an empty cache. That is they are loading all elements of the page from the web server, not their local cache. There was a thought that with the increase of broadband use that the browsing experience would be faster, but it's sometimes the opposite. Designers are developing heavier pages, combine this with an empty cache and you have long load times.
The other thing to think about is mobile users, they need an extremely fast download.
(Disclosure: Yahoo is a client, I have done design and development work for them)
Annie Heckenberger, the creative force behind the recent BlogPhildadelphia un-con has posted her recap, aptly titled: I'm Ready to Talk About BlogPhiladelphia.
The success of BlogPhiladelphia should be attributed to the people who participated. I still can't believe that 270 pre-registered and we had to turn people away. Even better, I am thrilled that more than 250 people showed up. The biggest measurement of success in my mind, is the community that was forged at the event. All of these people who knew "of" each other - or didn't - had the opportunity to meet in person and collaborate, share and learn.I echo many of Annie's thoughts. I've had a BlogPhilly recap post in draft for a while now and haven't pulled the trigger yet. Overall I think the event went great and it really puts the pressure on me for BlogOrlando :-)
One of the things that these 'local' events do is bring together a number of folks that have never met in person, that's the special thing.
I'll be speaking at the ATDC in Atlanta next Wednesday. What is the ATDC? It's the Advanced Technology Development Center located at Georgia Tech.
What's interesting about this speaking engagement is how it came about. On Tuesday I was traveling to Atlanta and posted a quick update to Twitter. I mentioned that I was going to be in Atlanta next week as well. Lance Weatherby from the ATDC saw this and contacted me.
So, a booking via Twitter. I guess there is a business case :-)
BlogHer '07 is kicking off this morning in Chicago. Jory, Elisa and Lisa are on stage doing the opening announcements. My photos will be here, and there is a photo group here.
This is the third year of the conference and things have grown quite a bit. The question I have though is how many of the audience are women bloggers and how many are PR folks looking to 'reach' women blogger? Talking to a number of folks it seems the PR factor is a bit higher this year.
The date for BarCamp Orlando has been set. It's Sunday, September 23rd in Orlando (of course) at Taste.
A print ad in USAToday on Monday said that Clear - the trusted traveler program, is coming to Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport later this year. It can't come soon enough. I blogged about Clear last year. It debuted at my home airport, Orlando, and has been slowly spreading across the U.S. Airports I frequent such as SJC already have it and SFO is coming soon.
To say I've been spoiled by the Clear card would be an understatement. When I travel back home through any airport that doesn't have it I'm reminded how much of a hassle security lines can be.
Also, speaking of Atlanta airport....the voiceover they use for the security teaser, it sounds like Wes Studi to me. Frequent ATL travelers what do you think?
Just about a week into my Helio Ocean giveaway, there are a total of three entries/links:
- Can a Brotha Get That Helio Ocean
- Putting Josh Hallett's Helio Ocean to Work in Hollygrove
- Consider this Poor PR Practioner
For a quick recap, I'm giving away the Helio Ocean I used for less than a month. You can get all the details here.
Also if you didn't read it, the Ocean now has MS Exchange support.
Last year I noted that the BlogHer conference generated over 2200 photos on Flickr, I wonder how many will be taken/uploaded this year in Chicago? 3000? 4000? 5000?
As a baseline, I did this search. It shows 5,982 results as of 11:00 PM on Tuesday night before the conference. I'll do a search again on Tuesday after the conference.
Update: I did the same search at 11:00 PM this Tuesday and got 8.885. Doing that math that's 2,903 photos from the event. I think if I give it a few more days we'll easily crack 3,000.
At some point on Saturday during WordCamp my Flickr account passed over 100,000 total views. That's kinda cool. I missed the actual 100,000 but was able to take a screen-capture of 100,006.
After I sort thru my 300+ other photos from San Francisco and take quite a few at BlogHer I'll be well over 10,000 total photos online.
BlogHer starts later this week in Chicago. I head up on Thursday and am really looking forward to it. In my recent travels around the country I've met quite a few people that are heading to BlogHer as well. I'm looking forward to catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones.
Last year's event was great, but it will be interesting to see if there is a different vibe away from California. I don't think so, but we'll see.
Are you going to BlogHer? I'm organizing a dinner for either Thursday or Saturday night.
The second session today at WordCamp featured John Dvorak and Om Malik, it was the eternal blog/journalism debate:
Here are a few choice tidbits from their conversation:
- Why not link? Why waste time/space describing something when you can link?
- Many traditional journalists don't like blogs because they're so annoying, they're always sniping at traditional media.
- Papers that don't allow their reporters to link almost say, "We don't want people to go somewhere else and realize how bad we are by comparison.
- There is this assumption that countries like India and other areas that don't get blogs, Om said the majority of his Indian readers are using mobile devices.
- Om says to be a successful blogger, you need to engage the people that comment.
- People who comment are often smart people that say smart things.
I'm at WordCamp for the next two days. Not much blogging, mostly photos. My WordCamp photoset is here.
I've been debating about getting an EVDO card for some time now. A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought a modem and signed up for unlimited service with Sprint for $59.99/month. My quick review: Why didn't I do this months ago?
One of the things holding me up was form factor, specifically PC Card or Express Card. I worried that I'd buy a PC Card modem which is what my PowerBook G4 would need, then later I'd need to switch out to an Express Card if I ever upgraded to a MacBook Pro. A little while back I asked for some opinions on which EVDO service to try, Verizon or Sprint. One of the folks that commented was a Sprint EVDO engineer. He and I exchanged some e-mails and he provided me with a ton of good information. His suggestion was to go with the Sierra Wireless 595U USB modem, that way it would work with any machine.
While the modem does stick out a bit, when you think about it being one big antennae, it's better than a card that inserts in a card slot.
I've always been a Sierra Wireless fan. Way back in the day, 1999 that is, I had a HP Jornada 680 with a Sierra Wireless CDPD modem. With that little Jornada keyboard and a wireless modem I was a true nomad. I loved that device combo...but I digress. Looking over the cards offered by Sprint I was always going to go with Sierra Wireless over a Pantech or other device.
Installation on the Mac was easy, I just had to download the Watcher application from Sierra's web site. Some things never change. The watcher app had the same little card with wings like it did back in '99 when I used it on Windows CE.
So far the speed has been great and in some cases it's faster than my DSL at home...that's sad. Last week I used the card extensively at BlogPhiladelphia when the wifi was overloaded. I used EVDO to upload the majority of my photos from the event without any issue.
One of the cost justifications for EVDO is that you never have to buy internet or wifi in a hotel or airport again. In the past week I have found this to be true. I stayed at a Westin and a Raddison and in both cases I used only the EVDO (saving $20). I have also been to Houston and Atlanta airports and didn't need to pay for wifi (saving $16.95). Give me a few more days and I've paid for this month's worth of service.
Another factor is my virtual office status. I tend to work at coffee shops and other locations that offer wifi. This of course limited my choices since some of my favorite lunch spots don't offer wifi. I don't need to worry about this anymore.
Why didn't I do this months ago?
It's been a few weeks since my 8GB iPhone was activated after a bit of an issue. (I should note that AT&T contacted me regarding my activation issues and has credited my account) I've put the phone thru its paces and compared it to my two previous devices: a Blackberry Pearl and a Helio Ocean. I've been using the phone as a single-source device, i.e. it's replaced my existing Blackberry Pearl, 30 GB Video iPod and my iPod Shuffle on long trips.
Here are my thoughts arranged in a number of subcategories:
Form Factor
The phone is a bit larger than the Blackberry Pearl that I'd been using for the past 6 months. If you remember I debated about buying the Pearl since I knew that as soon as I did Apple would announce the iPhone...and they did. Previous to the Pearl I used a Blackberry 7290 so I was used to carrying a larger device. Going from the svelte Pearl to the iPhone was a change. However, even though the iPhone is larger than the Helio Ocean I used, it feels smaller. I chalk this up to Apple's industrial design. The phone just feels good in your hands. (Compare the three devices below)
My one fear is dropping the thing. After all, you are carrying around a $600 device. While my Pearl has survived a number of drops I don't look forward to testing this out with the iPhone. To offer some level of protection I purchased the snug-fitting Incase in dashing red. Some folks have said that the case is scratching their device but I have not seen this yet. Like any case though, it causes the dust and other 'stuff' to pile up. Be sure to take your case off often to clean it up.
Update We have a winner.
I have a almost brand-new Helio Ocean that I'm going to give away. I bought the Ocean to test out the device and Helio's service. I used the unit for almost 30 days and then cancelled the service. I loved the Ocean and if I didn't have a contract with Cingular/AT&T I probably would have stuck with it. The built-in GPS with Google Maps and IM clients are the real killer apps.
How can you 'win' this Ocean? Easy:
1. Write a blog post about why you deserve/want/need/covet the phone.
2. Link your post to this post.
3. I'll find your post via my Technorati watchlist.
4. I'll pick a winner
I plan to pick a winner on July 31st and ship the phone out a few days later. The 'quality' of the winning entry will be judged solely by me. Who knows what will win, a sob-story, a tale of geek-lust, we'll see.
If you want to compare the size of the Ocean to the iPhone and Blackberry Pearl you can check out this picture.
While hanging out with my son the other day:
Daddy, does IHOP have a drive-thru......why not, I'd love to get some pancakes to go.
If policemen are supposed to help us make good choices, why is that one smoking?
If that's where we recycle the aluminum, where do we recycle titanium?
I'll be speaking at the Third Thursday event in Palo Alto tomorrow night (Thursday). Here are the details on MeetUp and Upcoming.
Mike Manuel from Voce will be quizzing myself and Alex Kim from Solution Set about blog and web development. Specifically what PR folks need to know so they don't get run over by IT.
if you're in the Palo Alto area tomorrow night, come see us.
David Brain of Edelman Europe recently created a 'Social Media Index' of the top 30 blogs in the social media space. The index took into account traditional blog metrics and other 'social' metrics like Twitter, Facebook, etc. At the end of the day, this blog was ranked 12 out of 30. The list also included friends and colleagues like: Jeremiah, Jeremy, Shel, Stephen, David and Constantin.
What does this mean? Not sure, it's just another list. Maybe I can finally sell out and retire.
I'll look to receive my paper certificate that I can hang on my wall :-)
Savannah's Creative Coast Initiative have relaunched their blog. The Savannah area is an amazing place. I've been able to make a number of trips to the area for work and pleasure in the past few years. If I was single and wasn't tied to Florida I would seriously consider Savannah as a place to live.
Here is a bit about the Creative Coast Initiative:
The Creative Coast Initiative (TCCi) is a non-profit organization that attracts, nurtures, and promotes brain-based business in Savannah. Our job is to make it easy for you to get in, get setup, get connected and be successful in this cool coastal city. We’re all about relationships. We’re a public/private partnership created by city, county and technology leaders in 2003. We are chartered by the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA), the City of Savannah, the Chatham County Commission and closely allied with a whole host of other organizations.Chris, Fitz and Angel are a great group of folks and luckily they have a good product to market.
A few months ago Wired Magazine announced a special cover program with Xerox. If you were one of the first 5000 subscribers to send in your photo, it would be featured on a personalized cover. The idea was designed to show off Xerox's custom printing systems. I was one of the luck 5000.
A few weeks ago I received my personalized issue. I'm just now getting around to posting a photo of it. The cover is a standard glossy-photo stock. As you can see the 'custom' photo is included in a Google Map balloon. The standard issue featured Optimus Prime on the cover.
After a hectic work/travel schedule the past few weeks, I'm taking a few days off to spend some time with the family. If you need something in the next day or two, think if it can wait :-)
On Wednesday, I fly to San Francisco for the rest of the week. I'll be working in the Palo Alto area on Thursday and Friday. On Sat/Sun I'll be attending Wordcamp.
In a session on city blogs, Joey Sweeney of Philebrity had a great quote when asked about the relationship with other blogs in the city.
It's like being in a band and playing gigs other with bands. Sometimes you become friends with another band and other times you wonder how the other band even got the gig.It's a great way of saying it in a direct and humorous way.
At BlogPhiladelphia, Emily King, editor on the Intelligent Travel blog for National Geographic Traveler Magazine said that each post on that blog is looked at by at least two researchers and a copy editor before it goes live.
Not really an 'immediate' publishing tool. I wonder how they deal with comments?
As a contrast, I'm sitting next to Benet Wilson who blogs for Aviation Week at Towers and Tarmacs. She says that no editor reviews her posts before they go online.
Update: During the Q&A, Emily said that the posting process normally takes a week.
I'm in Philly for the next two days for BlogPhiladelphia. I just did a brief overview of the unconference format to kick things off. No tools!
My photoset is here, the photo group is here.
I'm heading to the airport in a few minutes for a quick trip to Houston, TX for a PRSA event. After that I'm off to Philly for BlogPhiladelphia. Looking forward to seeing old friends such as Annie, Dave and David.
I'm hoping to type my iPhone review while I'm traveling today.
I went to see Erasure in concert last night in Orlando. They're one of the core group of British bands I've been fans of since high school. The group includes Erasure, Depeche Mode, New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. However this was the first time I've seen Erasure live. Live footage from previous concerts shows that Andy Bell sounds as good on stage as he does on a CD. Standard cameraphone pic below. (Thiscubs4u has better shots from the Miami show)
I left the concert though with mixed emotions. It was a great experience to see them 'live' and Andy still has it vocally. To say that Andy is a bit flamboyant and plays to the gay fan-base would be a bit of an understatement. However, Andy is getting older and a little bit heavier.
I often found myself wondering what it would have been like to see them years ago, in full-form. In the early 90's I had the opportunity to go see them as part of the Wild tour. I didn't and I regret it to this day.
Related to my previous post on the Boeing 787 rollout....when I need 787 news I turn to Flightblogger. It's one of the best resources for news on the new Boeing plane.
Earlier this week Jon Ostrower posted that he had been granted media credentials to the rollout by Boeing. One problem though, getting there, as in cost. He needed to raise $900 in less than a day. Jon posted a donation link and asked his readers to help out.
As it turns out the readers of his blog did it. They raised the funds. As Jon writes:
I am sitting here with my jaw on the floor.I donated my $20 and am glad that things worked out for Jon. I look forward to his coverage.I owe you all a debt of gratitude. From those who gave a dollar or some who cleverly gave $7.87 and to those who gave larger contributions, I am eternally grateful for your support. I am awed at your generosity and your words of encouragement.
I have raised the money to be present with Boeing this weekend in Seattle to cover the roll out of the Boeing 787.
A quick reminder that the Boeing 787 aka Dreamliner will be rolled out this weekend, July 8th. If you can't be there, you can watch on DirecTV.
What's that sound you hear? It's Disney/EPCOT fans all over the world rejoicing that the 'Mickey Wand' is being removed from Spaceship Earth. While the wand is interesting to look at from a structure/engineering standpoint, it never fit with EPCOT. From the Sentinel article:
Epcot Vice President Jim MacPhee announced this morning that the time has come to remove the structure, which has served both as a colorful, lighted Epcot sign since 2000, and as a lightning rod for criticism from Epcot purists who contended the image was out of character for Epcot's architecture.Here's a shot of the wand I took during my last visit to EPCOT.
The adventure is over. After waiting close to 3 hours on hold for the 'Activation Support Line' I talked to somebody that could actually do something.
The rep said, "That should do it, your phone should activate in a minute or two....is there anything else I can do for you?" I replied, "If you don't mind I'd like you to stay on the phone till that actually happens." Sure enough the notification popped up, and it was done!
Now it's time to figure out what photos, songs and videos to fill this thing up with.
It's Monday morning and still no activation for my iPhone. I called shortly before 9 a.m. and stepped through everything again. This time the rep said it should be no more than 1-2 hours. If nothing happens I should call the Activation Support Line at 877-800-3701.
I just called the line and the current estimated wait time is 60 minutes. Good thing I have speaker phone :-)
For those doing the math it's been 64 hours since I started this process.
Over 48 hours after purchasing my iPhone I still do not have service. The most frustrating thing is the lack of clear information from AT&T. Here's a quick rundown of my situation:
- Friday 6:30 PM: Purchase iPhone and go home. Before I attempted activation I had a few errands to run. Big mistake. Many of the folks in line were talking about rushing right home and activating to avoid any of the problems that would surely overwhelm AT&T later that evening.
- Friday Evening: I plug in my iPhone and start the process via iTunes. Halfway thru I am told my account will not work, I need to call AT&T. I have been an AT&T/Cingular customer for almost 10 years. Even though we've had a family share plan for the past 4 years, one of the numbers on the account was originally a corporate number. That needs to be cleared. AT&T rep takes my number and says somebody would call me back that night. No call.
- Saturday Morning: I call AT&T and wait for over 90 minutes, eventually I hang up because it's Saturday and I have other things to do. I venture down to the AT&T store and ask them about this 'corporate' flag. The rep looks up my account and says that there is a note in the system that the flag is going to be removed, but it can take as long as 24 hours.
- Saturday Afternoon: I attempt to run the activation again on iTunes, it goes further this time. I eventually get the famous "Your Activation Requires Additional Time to Complete...." message. Things are looking up, or so they seem.
- Saturday Night: I call AT&T and check on the activation. The rep says they are running anywhere from 24-48 hours behind, everything else looks good though. Keep checking.
- Sunday Morning: I call AT&T and inquire again, the rep says everything on my account is provisioned correctly, it will still be 24-48 hours.
- Sunday Evening: Reading Rex Hammocks' note, I call the 'special' number he used. Turns out my account is not provisioned correctly, so WTF were the two previous reps looking at when they said "everything is provisioned correctly?" I spend almost 30 minutes on the phone with this rep rebuilding my order since the iPhone data plan and the SMS plan weren't on the previous order. Once again WTF?
At some point I am supposed to receive an order number, then I can call back in to check on things again. When will that be? The rep didn't want to give me a range since they didn't know. Estimate would be with 24-48 hours. (Gotta love those numbers now!)
So what will AT&T be giving me and the thousands of others to make up for this massive cluster F? Similar to what TypePad did last year, I'd like to see an e-mail from Randall Stephenson saying, "Hey we screwed up, what can we do to make it up to you? Would you like a free ( ) week, ( ) month of service?"
24 hours after my last update, I still don't have a working iPhone. I called AT&T and they said everything is provisioned correctly and that I just need to wait for the phone to activate.
However, I was told that activations are running anywhere between 24 and 48 hours behind. Great.
e-mail: josh@hyku.com
skype: jrhallett
mobile: 863-258-7338
yahoo IM: jrhallett
aol IM: jrhallett@mac.com
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