The Next Chapter?

So - it looks like it’s been a while since I’ve blogged here. Mostly, it’s been a lack of time while I fought like crazy to make my way in the new media freelancing space. When I last posted, I mentioned that in addition to trying my hand at the self-employment space, I’d be keeping my ears open for the chance to work with a new team doing exciting things, and while a great deal of my time this summer was spent in negotiations with a few companies, nothing panned out, and I continued to try it on my own.

When I went into the summer, I gave myself a timeline to do this on my own of three months. Beyond that, I was going to start handing out resumes, and looking for “real world” style work. Well, after a few talks with a few people, it looks like I found work with a web development company in downtown Kingston. I don’t want to dive into too much about what I’ll be doing (Or who the company is), as I haven’t discussed my “public” life too much with my likely-soon-to-be boss, but I do want to comment on the change.

Fear and Frowns

The new work will bring two substantial changes for me, one I’m scared of, and one saddens me deeply. The first, and the change I’m scared more of, is the shift in industry. I’ve been working in customer service/support, and generally with people, for 8 years. In fact, with the exception of one summer job, ALL of my work has been in customer service or user support. Even my most recent role with TalkShoe centered around making sure our users were happy. Shifting from a customer service space to a development space - and away from a space I LOVE to be in, social media - scares the crap out of me.

But in addition to being scared of the shift, the new job has me pretty sad. I’ve been working from home for just over 2 years now, and have really enjoyed it. In addition to the idea that I’m more at liberty to set my own schedule, working from home has allowed me to keep up with house work, blogs, emails and phone calls. Most importantly though, it’s allowed me to spend more time with my wife. As a nurse, her hectic schedule doesn’t leave a lot of time to spend together - working from home allows us to spend time together, at least in the same room, even if I am busy on my computer.

A Final Push?

When I last posted, I had a TREMENDOUS outcry of support, both from past colleges at TalkShoe, as well as users, friends and connections from all around the blogosphere. I was touched. I’m wondering, a little, if I can’t use that same outpouring now to help out.

While I have heard of the company it’s looking like I’ll soon be working for, and the idea of working with a bunch of geeks again is SUPER exciting, I’ve done web development work in a “corporate” environment before… and didn’t like it. I also REALLY don’t want to leave either customer service, or the work from home environment. So this is my appeal to my community: If you can help me out - and maybe find me work in the customer service space between now and Monday (So I can stop before I start), please get in touch.

Changing Shoes

I started with TalkShoe about a year and a half ago now after hearing about it though various sources and falling in love with the idea and the platform. After a marathon weekend spending every waking moment playing with the service and teaching it to others I was offered my spot as the only full-time support representative. I was thrilled. Six months in, and with a better understanding of our users, I moved to my community development role and have been active with our users on a daily basis ever since.

The whole TalkShoe experience (The platform, product, staff and users) has been incredible and there hasn’t been a day where I haven’t loved being a part of the team - or the community - that makes TalkShoe work. But like every good pair of shoes, sometimes a change is needed: So I’ve decided to leave TalkShoe at the end of the month.

The More Things Change

While my time at TalkShoe is coming to a close, it doesn’t change my connections to the people I’ve met along the way. I’ll still be on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and will still be reading the blogs and listening to podcasts. It doesn’t affect some conference plans, either. I’ll still be attending (and helping) with those, too. And hey, maybe I’ll actually start writing in the blog more.

The team at TalkShoe has invited me to remain dedicated to the community and I intend to do just that. So while I won’t be as active in the community or interacting with the staff as much as usual, it also means I’m not going to be abandoning the Ning or the Facebook stuff quite yet. My email address will still work and I’ll still be answering questions, too.

Looking Forward

I’ve always looked toward the future with a fearful anticipation - nervous of change, but excited to try something new. It’s with this attitude that this exit is being made and my next steps are being planned. I’m looking, right now, at stepping toward the consulting and public speaking worlds - helping business and individuals get a handle on what this whole new media thing is. That said, I’m always open to the opportunity to work with a new team on something exciting.

The time I had at TalkShoe has been amazing and I’ve made some incredible connections as a result. It’s been an absolute honour to work with a team as diverse and intelligent as they are. The whole team knows I hope for nothing but great success for all of them. They deserve it.

That’s it for now - until next time.

A Day Inside Facebook

Yesterday, I spent a large amount of time inside the website known as Facebook. Most of this time was spent browsing people’s profiles or managing how I was connected to people. I’ll likely do more of the same today, but I thought I’d report on what I did, and what the plans are.

Spring Cleaning

I started the day by removing the nearly 40 applications I wasn’t using. This brought me down to 22. Half of those are official, Facebook-created apps such as groups, and events, and 3 more are applications that I play a role in as a Developer. So I’m left with 8, really. Not bad.

I next went through and tweaked my Facebook privacy and limited profile settings. This was going to play a bigger role in my plans later in the day. I also moved a few things around on my profile, and tidied things up there.

Lunchtime Reading

I ate my soup and garlic bread while browsing the immense application directory. After recently removing applications, this might seem like an odd choice, but I wasn’t adding anything - yet. Facebook’s application platform (which, I promise, will be a whole post unto itself shortly) offers a lot of widely varying applications for use. I was looking for those that would help make my time insdie facebook more productive.

I’ve got a list and will be expermenting soon.

Managing People And Connections

More and more, Facebook is becoming my Rolodex. While some people use LinkedIn for this, Facebook allows me to not only connect to people, but to get a small glimpse into their lives and what they’re doing. For me, it’s really an advance marriage of LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’ve been making a big use of the friend groups within facebook to keep track of my connections, and a large amount of time (A few hours, in fact) went to re-organizing those. In all, I now have 37 of these groups. Some of these, like my “Canadian”, “American” and “International” cast wide nets, while other groups only have 3 or 4 people in them.

Every event I’ve attended (Except for one) has it’s own group, and people I met, or visited with, at an event goes into that group. This means that I can quickly pull up a group and see who was around. As I friend more people, I can then add them to their correct groups, and keep them sorted. Something I couldn’t do with my physical Rolodex. Not easily, anyway - and I tried.

When Worlds Collide

Facebook is, with the exception of email, the only place where my “work” world and my “real” world come together. It sure makes for an interesting dynamic when I sign in, too. It’s because of this that I’ve always been a heavy user of the limited profile option. People in my limited profile group, for example (Don’t check, you likely are) can’t see my friends list. Nor can they see photo galleries I post (Unless I specify they can) or my mailing addressor my home phone number.

I use the privace settings more to manage the fact that this is a place where two - very different - worlds come together and it allows me to be a complete goofball with my former room-mates, my wedding party, and my high school buddies, while being a complete goofball with new friends I’ve met through the world of social media. Sorting people took a LONG time, but it means that my Facebook world can have the balance it, apparently, needs.

Your Turn

I’m going to write more on my tricks within the Facebook walls soon (Including a full list of my privacy groups, and a look at my apps), but I want to know how you’re using the site. What does it bring to you? Who does it connect you with? What apps do you use? Why? Let me know.

Take My Money, Please

I’ll admit it, I’m not a music buff. I don’t generally attend concerts, I don’t buy a lot of music (In either the digital or physical senses) and generally my radios (Again, digital and physical) are off. I listen to podcasts when I’m near my computer or traveling solo, and I let whoever I’m with control the background when I’m not alone.

But the other day I bought some music. Specifically, I bought 2 CDs worth of it. Now, being that I don’t listen to music often, this might seem a little silly. Especially when, and my memory is bad - so I may be wrong here, I have yet to really enjoy much of anything this group has put out before.

Lost? I bought the new Nine Inch Nails albums Ghosts I-IV.

Why? To support the idea. NIN has released two distinct versions of the digital download. The first is a free download from the website containing only the first part of the collection, Ghosts I. You can go, right now, and download that from their site for free. They also released a torrent file of it to help things along. The second costs 5.00, but is all four volumes, and contains a 40-page ebook and a bunch of extras, like wallpapers and avatars. Your options when you pay for the download are MP3 (320k, LAME encoded, already properly ID3′d, for the techies) and both Apple and FLAC lossless formats (In iTunes and not).

But NIN has gone beyond that. For 10.00 you get physical copies of the CDs. For 75 you get the 2 CDs, a Blu-Ray of the albums (With slideshow) and a DVD of the multi-track parts that make up the songs. Perfect for re-mixing. There was a 300 dollar package too, containing autographed vinyls. All 2500 of them have been sold, though. You still get the downloads, too, when you buy a physical copy.

The greatest part of this release, and the reason I jumped up and down when I saw this, was the FAQ page. More specifically, the line that read Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license. Podcasters? Go nuts - you can play ALL of the new track. Or mix them. Or add to them. And if you pick up that remix package? You can then mix up all sorts of goodies.

I haven’t listened to the music yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s good… But I can tell you it was worth my 5.00 to support the idea. Well played, Trent.

Why I Stopped Reading Three Blogs

Alright - so this stirred the pot on Twitter, so I thought I’d expand on this here.

I tossed a comment onto Twitter today which read: “Pondering unsubscribing from 3 blogs who are using “retroblogging” techniques. Sorry, but I simply don’t have the time.“. A lot of people commented back to me about this, and wondered what it is and why I’m no longer going to be reading them… So I thought I’d expand.

First, I’ve been explained that “retroblogging” is creating blog posts that are past-dated, though publishing them on a later date. The people I’ve seen doing this have explained to me that this is done to put additional perspective on when the thought hit, and not when the post was written. This would mean that my handful of blog post ideas in my notebook from PodCamp toronto would all be dated … last weekend. Part of the “retroblogging” thin, though, is that posts are still published in order… So this post wouldn’t be “allowed” until ALL of my posts “from” last weekend went up.  That way everything stays in order and retains the perspective of when things are thought of.

Here’s the problem, though. If I’m a reader  of your blog, which I may have been until today, 3 posts in 10 minutes is CRAZY. I make a point of trying to keep on top of my blogs. I use my “mark as read” buttons very frequently, and try to go to bed with a clean slate. Why? Because it lets me start each day fresh and new and able to keep up. I do, occasionally, let some things drift, but that should be my call. If it’s March 2nd and you’re posting something dated February 27th,  along with 3, 5 or 8 other posts, IT’S OLD NEWS. And having to devote 10, 20 or 45 minutes to catch up on your blog, because you, for whatever reason, didn’t post it when it should have been posted, is TOO MUCH TIME - and I’m not going to put up with it any more.
If I’m no longer a subscriber to your blog, I’m sorry. I’m hoping important things you have to say reach me via others. If you think I was (And am no longer as a result of this) a reader, feel free to get in touch. Especially if you change your practices.