Some of my favorite shots from this morning at Future of Web Apps - Miami. First is the venue....amazing space.

Next, it's Kathy Sierra on stage. There are 300+ people in audience, but you can't see them.

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One of the questions I am now often asked is, "So how are you liking agency life?" So far, I love it. Sure, I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of being on my own, but there was one big drawback, I can't scale. Or perhaps to use the trendy term, limited personal bandwidth. You have to make a decision, do I want to continue working on small-to-medium sized projects, or go bigger?

I'm fortunate that at Voce I get to work with companies like Sony, Yahoo, eBay and another big name soon to be announced. The simple fact of the matter is a single, sole-practioner can't help a major organization run a large social media program on a day-to-day basis, we're talking 20-30 hours a week minumum. I guess you could, but it would be your only client, or would limit what else you can do on your own.

You need to have a team. We're fortunate to have a number of smart people on staff that can all work together.

A colleague that operates on their own recently asked me about a growth plan for their services. One of their goals was to work with enterprise firms on internal collaboration. I said I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but I just didn't see a firm with 10,000+ employees turning to a 1-person shop for a project of that nature.

There is plenty of room/business for internal education though. I spent plenty of time under the 'Hyku' banner conducting workshops for firms, but those engagements are often limited in time/scope.

I wanted more.

Yes it was a tough decision, but I'm glad I made it.

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At some point today, Nick and I will be heading down to Miami for Future of Web Apps. Looking forward to seeing many old friends. We're going to miss BarCamp Miami though.

Of course I'll be taking some photos :-)

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In my screencasts for Radian6 the example I used was the current Presidential election. I created a basic topic profile to monitor all 'conversation' involving the four major candidates at that time, McCain, Romney, Clinton and Obama.

It's been interesting to watch the level of conversation related to select topics within the profile. Here are two trend graphs looking at the past 30 days. Looking at the first, guess when Romney dropped out :-)

Looking at the second, it's interesting to see how conversation involving states with primaries rises and falls in somewhat perfect time. At the far left, we were just coming off of the South Carolina and then Florida primaries. It's interesting to see the dip for Texas and Ohio come before the primary next week. Perhaps people are tired of talking about it :-)

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They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I think people that say that haven't had their work ripped off. Recently my friends at cnp_studio found an agency that completely ripped off a web project they did. Sean writes about how BMW Marketing Consultants stole everything, images, HTML, CSS from a project.

They've contacted the offending party and they feel what they've done is perfectly fine. Nice. What would you do in a situation like this?

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This past Saturday I had a quick up/back trip to Atlanta. During some downtime I walked over to the Georgia Aquarium and decided to take all my shots using my fisheye lens. It seemed somewhat appropriate for an aquarium :-) Photoset is here.

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This morning after a meeting I visited the Apple Store in Orlando (Millenia) to check out the MacBook Air.....perhaps to make a nice impulse buy. I had not yet seen the machine up close, but I knew that it might be the deciding factor. The other major issue is whether my EVDO modem would work. I went to the store carrying my Sierra Wireless 595U to specifically check the fit.

Arriving in the store, all the Air's have a small USB security dongle. (Shown below) I pulled out my modem and the woman working at the front asked, "What's that?" I respond, "It's my EVDO modem, I need to see if it fits" Her response, "Sorry, you can't do that." Somewhat shocked I said, "Well, whether this fits or not determines if I buy one of these, can we temporarily remove this?" The response, "Sorry I can't do that." Somewhat amazed, I said, "Well then you just lost a sale." No response back.

No Air for me, and I was somewhat disappointed with the poor customer service and attitude of the Apple Store staffer.......it was a 180 to the typical experience.

Image by Tyler Howarth, used under CC

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Back from San Francisco...quick, hectic trip. I was in town to help out with this and this. I did manage to get outside for a little bit to take some photos though.

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Over at work we've been using Radian6 for quite a while for a variety of clients. Yesterday we sent out one of those 'announcement' releases, but more importantly we put up some information on our approach to social media monitoring and measurement.

As part of the monitoring/Radian6 content, I created a series of screencasts on Radian6. You can check them all out here. The first one is shown below:

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A number of SoCon 08 attendees have found they 'met' a new friend at the event this past weekend. It seems that Jack Scherer of The Sales Group (sorry no link for you), subscribed all the attendees to his sales newsletter. Nice.

Jack, in your e-mail to me you said we recently 'met'. I'm really sorry, I don't remember meeting you. Of course it could be my bad....I did meet a bunch of new people at SoCon08 and sometimes I forget names. So....if you could refresh my memory about when we 'met' and 'talked':

1. What did we talk about?

2. During our 'meeting' what did I say that lead you to believe that I'd be interested in receiving your sales newsletter? I mean I don't remember saying, "Hey, if you have some great spam on sleazy sales tactics, I'd love to read it."

Thanks in advance for refreshing my memory.

Of course there is another explanation. We never met, and your initial sales pitch to me is based upon a lie. Great way to get new business :-)

Update: A few minutes later and a Google search for "Jack Scherer" shows this. Um...wow.

Update 2: On April 29th I received the following e-mail from Jack:

Josh,
I am responding to your blog listed on my website (www.salestalent.com) on 2/14/08.

1) I met you after your presentation at the SoCon08 at Kennesaw. We spoke about e-marketing and its application to the recruiting industry. My wife was with me and our conversation lasted about 90 seconds.
2) I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium and was introduced by a friend and a client. After that introduction, I raised my hand to speak and I mentioned that I was interested in meeting people during the conference who had recruiting techniques that were passive in their approach. I mentioned that we were in the sales recruiting and sales training business and that we were interested in other techniques for recruiting candidates, other than using Monster and Careerbuilder. I also said that we publish a monthly newsletter, Driving Profit, which I emailed to the database from the SoCon08 list.
3) As a result of my presentation, I met some very interesting people. One was an attorney who then visited us in our office. I spent two hours with him, giving him marketing ideas to help him launch his new business. There was NO fee for my service.
4) I am not a liar. Quite to the contrary. Consider the following…
a. Elected to the parish council of my church for 3 years
b. Director of a Career Ministry for the last 7 years that helps people network through our church. This ministry has helped many people in their quest to network and refine their job-seeking skills
c. I have provided numerous sales and marketing seminars for the following colleges and associations, as well as many businesses:
- University of Georgia
- Georgia Tech
- Kennesaw State University
- Furman University
- National Association of Women Business Owners
- SHRM (Society of Human Resource Mangers)
- GAPS (Georgia Association of Personnel Services)
- Georgia Society of CPAs
- TAG (Technology Association of Georgia)
d. We have received excellent reviews from these associations and organizations. For specific comments, please visit our website at www.salestalent.com
e. The newsletter that we publish was the driver for my new book “21 Laws of Sales Success” which will be published this year.

In conclusion, I do not feel that your blog is a fair portrayal of Jack Scherer and The Sales Group. I would appreciate it if you would remove this blog by April 30th. It creates a negative image of The Sales Group which has earned a fine reputation during the last 17 years in business.

I responded to Jack that I don't remember talking to him, but what concerned me was that a number of people received similar e-mails/pitches. I also said that I don't remove blog posts, but that I would be willing to post his response, which I have.

I think overall, the larger issue at hand is that he doesn't seem to feel that e-mailing all the attendees was a bad thing. I (as well as other commenters) disagree.

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Download Zip File: Hyku-Gallery.zip (V 1.0)

Sample Gallery: Photos by Josh Hallett

While this blog runs on MovableType, I've had a few people ask if my Photography section was a blog and if the theme was available.

The photography section is run with MovableType, and the template is not that easy to export. With that I created a simple WordPress theme based upon it. It's a unique horizontal scrolling blog used to feature photos. In my case I have a Flickr account, but I wanted to draw attention to just a few of my photos, hence the sub-blog.

The theme is very basic, it doesn't offer comments or many other blog functions...it's mostly meant to use WordPress as a simple CMS to manage the display of some photos.

The easiest thing I've found to do is copy/paste the Flickr embed code for the image in the body of the post. The width of each picture element is designed for the medium size photo (usually 500 pixels wide).

Since you can't run multiple blogs off a single WordPress install you'll need to create a separate directory/install for a photo gallery. Of course you're free to hack around with this, edit the styles, etc. Enjoy!

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How about a quick usability review? I'm trying to find out how much a single business phone line costs with Verizon. Watch this screencast to see how things turn out:

Maybe I'll just head over to Vonage....they list pricing right on the home page.

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The first slide I showed in my mid-day recap at SoCon 08 was this photo. This was shortly after 8:00 am on Saturday, about 20 minutes before the event kicked off.

The point? At the beginning of the day, we're all equals. There are no special seats for different classes of people. We can all learn from each other.

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Tomorrow at SoCon08 I'll be leading a breakout on photography and Flickr. What are your favorite things/tips about Flickr? Share them in the comments so I can work them in :-)

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A colleague e-mailed me this morning asking which camera they should buy and which lenses? Over the past few weeks I have answered this question quite a bit and even more in the weeks leading up to the holiday season. I decided to just post my thoughts in lazyweb style, that way I can just forward this link in the future.

First off, it should be obvious I have a Nikon bias. It's what I use and what many of my friends use. Ok, that's out of the way.

One of the first questions I have back to anybody that asks for camera advice, "What's your budget?" The answer generally falls into one of three categories:

- Around $500-$600
- Around $1000
- Up to $1500

The second question I ask is, "How serious are you?" As in, is the camera just for fun, quick family shots, or are you looking to fulfill a photography hobby?

Typically the folks that are looking for fun/family stuff are usually in the $500-$600 price range. For this audience, the D40 and D40x are both great cameras with the basic kit lens. This past holiday season all the major box stores had great deals on both of these cameras and quite a few friends bought them and are very happy with them.

The D60 is the next evolution of this camera. With it's release the D40/40x will become even cheaper.

If you've been using a D80 or another standard DSLR, it's amazing to see how tiny the D40/40x/60 body style is. I've often toyed with the idea of getting a D40 and a simple prime lens for quick/everyday use.

While the D40/40x/60 line is great and an awesome entry point, there is one thing they're missing...an on-board focus motor. What this means is that you need to buy AF-S type lenses if you want auto-focus functionality. While this will not impact many users, if you ever want to expand your lenses you can hit some limits.

For example a few friends have bought one of the great 50mm prime lenses (either the f/1.8 or f/1.4). These lenses are not AF-S, so you need to manually focus. Sounds trite and trivial, but if you're attempting to shoot in low-light environments, auto-focus really helps.

This is the bridge to the next level of camera, budget and interest. I've seen a few friends say, "I only want to spend around $600", they buy the D40/40x and then quickly fall in love....and hit some limits. If they would have spent around $1000 they might be in a better position.

If you budget right around $1000 then you're into D80 land. You can buy the D80 with the basic kit lens for under $1000 and the body only for under $900. Sure you're stuck with the basic kit lens, but you have a platform you can expand on. Dave recently went through this. He started looking at the D40/40x but soon realized that the D80 would allow him to grow. I know he's very happy that he made the step-up.

Next up, lenses. I think many photography friends will tell you that then kit lens that comes with most camera's is usually the cheapest lens they make. There is nothing drastically wrong with the lens, but it's not the best :-)

When giving advice I ask, "How soon do you think you're going to buy lenses?" If you're going to buy soon, then get the cheapest kit lens, or the body only. If you're not going to make an investment for a while look to get the 18-135mm. It's a good versatile lens.

If you plan to expand your lenses, where to start first? For me the gateway drug was one of the 50mm prime lenses. In Nikon's lineup the 50mm f/1.8 can be bought for less that $100 and the 50mm f/1.4 is around $300. For many folks new to photography, these low-light primes lenses really get them excited, plus they're not that expensive (relatively speaking).

For future lenses, it also comes down to budget. Are you looking spend $500, $1000, $1500? In the next part (Friday), I'll be talking some more about lenses.

Comments, questions?

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Travel is a big part of my work life. With that I compiled the list of things I can't travel without:

Tumi Ducati Suiter
At the end of last year I bought myself a present for all my travel, the Tumi Ducati T3 carry-on with built-in suiter. The bag features the standard Tumi quality and breaks the mold of your standard black bag. The built-in suiter is the sweet thing though. Rather than carrying a separate suit/folding bag, you can easily include a coat and a few dress shirts. If you keep things in their original dry-cleaning bag everything comes out perfect. You're not still checking bags are you?

Ex-Officio Travel Clothing
If you travel a bunch and you're not wearing Ex-Officio you don't know what you're missing. The majority of my travel wardrobe is now Ex-Officio. The travel clothing is comfortable, resists wrinkles and is durable..plus it looks good. With a proper roll/packing job I can fit a week's worth of clothing in my 22" Tumi carry-on.

LowePro CompuRover AW
Sure it's a big backpack, but it needs to be to carry my laptop, my camera and all my lenses. Yes I take my camera and lenses everywhere. The CompuRover does the job and protects everything inside. My standard luggage haul is the CompuRover and the Tumi.

Fly Clear
I've written about this before, so has Anil Dash and Frank Gruber. If you frequent airports that have CLEAR you need to sign-up. The ability to bypass the standard line for security is well worth the yearly cost. My home(s)-away-from-home are MCO, SFO, SJC, IND, EWR..they all have CLEAR.

MacBook Pro + EVDO
Somewhat of a duh....but yes the MBP is my primary work machine. The true mobile office experience comes with EVDO. Sure just about every laptop has wifi, but so many airports still charge an absurd rate for wifi (same for hotels). With EVDO I rarely have to use the paid (and even free) wifi.

Nikon D80
Since purchasing my D80 in 2006 there is not a trip that is has not gone on. I also carry all my lense (50mm f/1.4, 17-55mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f2.8 and 10.5mm f/2.8). Yes it gets heavy sometimes, but it's worth it. It allow me to take pictures like this and this...to showcase just a few.

iPhone
The promise of the iPhone was that it condensed the features of a few devices to one form-factor. That's certainly true in my case. My iPhone is now my iPod and my video player. Before any trip to California I load up at least two movies.

Sony PSP
This is the latest edition to the travel must-haves. I recently received one of the new slim-PSP's. The current game-addiction of the moment is LEGO Star Wars II. If unchecked, the PSP can provide hours of inflight entertainment :-) Yes you can watch movies on it, but I've got that covered with my iPhone.

Hertz #1 Gold
People seem to think that you need to use Hertz frequently to apply for #1 Gold, i.e. build up points or miles to get the benefits, you don't. Sign-up online and store you credit card information and some other things online. Each time you rent, your car is auto-magically waiting for you. Each time I fly to SFO and walk past those huge lines at the rental car counter I wonder, why don't these people sign-up for #1 Gold?

There are some other items that help, i.e. Delta Crown Room, a good frequent flier program, etc.

Now to turn this into a meme :-) I have a few colleagues that travel quite a bit as well. Let's see what they have to say: Jake, Shel, Chris, Tom??

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I head out later today for a quick trip to St. Petersburg beach...yeah it's rough, but it is work related. After that stop, I'm off to Atlanta for SoCon 08.

This is the second year for the event so it will be interesting to see the changes/expansion. I'm helping out in a number of ways.

In the morning I'll be providing a quick wrap-up of the discussions so far. In the afternoon I'll be leading two sessions. The first is a general Social Media Overview and the second is on Photography and Flickr. I'm almost to 15,000 photos on Flickr, so the plan is to upload the 15,000 shot during that session :-)

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My friend Chris Gent hosted a Super Bowl party...big deal huh? Well when you construct a large screen outside your home and invite the neighbors over it's a bit different.

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Sometimes memes are good...they get you writing again. Peter Kim tagged me with the 4x4 meme. So here goes:

Four Jobs I've Had:
- Greens mower at a local golf course (first real job)
- Waiter at Backporch Restaurant (second real job)
- Olive Garden host (college job)
- Champion Chip Timer

Four TV Shows I DVR: (Sadly I don't have a DVR, but these are shows/things I seek out)
- 30 Rock
- The Office
- Formula 1 Racing
- Tour de France Coverage

Four Places I've Been (in 2007):
- Space Needle
- St. Louis Arch
- Millenium Park
- USS Alabama
- Indy Speedway
- RCA Dome
- Niagra Falls

Yes, I know more than four, but I travelled quite a bit in 2007.

Four Favorite Foods:
- A sandwich from Mama Dilo's
- Moe's burrito with tofu
- Grilled cheese from Dish D'Lish
- Just about anything from Cafe Latte

I'm going to go in a few different directions with my tags: Chuck, Barry, Rex and Sarah.

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