Dec
04

Mister Du4 Goes to Washington

Tomorrow, I’ll be accompanying my lovely wife to a holiday tweetup at the White House. While I’ve visited the White House on several occasions – some for fun, many for work – this will be my first visit where I’ll get to interact with senior members of the Obama Administration’s communications and engagement staff. I intend to livetweet the entire day, so be sure to follow me on Twitter or just search the hashtags #WHTweetup or #AtTheWH throughout the day.

I’ll monitor my Twitter and Facebook feeds all day in case you want to send me a question to ask the officials on hand. On the docket to brief and greet us are:

I’m less interested in the content of the White House’s outreach to people and more interested in how they’re doing it. I think this administration’s embrace of digital strategy has been a groundbreaking step forward in engaging and involving the public in a better, more transparent fashion. That said, I’m no stranger to throwing the occasional turd in the punch bowl, so if you’ve got something testy you want answered by these folks, holla atcha boy!
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Jul
15

Links of the Week: July 15, 2011 Edition

Decades after duty in the OSS and CIA, “spy girls” find each other in retirement

I kind of adore this story about two old ladies living in a retirement home who suddenly remember each other worked for the OSS (the precursor of the CIA) in World War II. The video is hilarious. One of WaPo’s better pieces, I think. More of this, please.

Writers in Hollywood

As I learn more about the world of writing in Hollywood, I’m comforted by the observations of old guard prose scribblers like Raymond Chandler. In this 1945 Atlantic article, Chandler describes the differences between Hollywood scriptwriters and the novelists with whom he counted himself. Chandler’s AWESOME style is on display here, maintained from his fiction writing into this piece. It’s a notable historical portrait as well, rife with comparisons to the Hollywood film scene of today.

The Black Futurists

The World Futurist Society tipped me to this description of an AWESOME looking exhibit at the Sargent Johnson Gallery in The African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco. The exhibit features works of black futurists, from science fiction writers to bass players from outer space. People call it “Afrofuturism.”

Homefront and Propaganda In Video Games – What Are They Trying To Tell You?

G4 has a fun list of video games with brief queries about their inherent propaganda value. Most take the form of “war porn” games like Call of Duty, but there are some surprises. I had no idea, for example, that Teh Mad Christians had created a Left Behind video game adaptation where you apparently combat the forces of darkness with… prayer. Kinect that shit up, preacher!

Not Giving Up

Naltorian seer Jamais Cascio delivers a sanguine third option to the debate over how transformative future technologies like AI could either enslave humanity or set us free. Cascio argues that technology is already part of who we are; that Rejectionist and Posthumanist perspectives on bio-technical evolution ignore fungible interpretations of humanity. I enjoy Cascio’s commentary not just because of his unique perspective, but also because of his engaging writing style. This is a man who once briefed a social business crowd on how the future will be made of people, so I find it compellingly AWESOME that the guy’s writing just FEELS GOOD. He’s good people, and you should get there.

Is this the roster for DC’s new Justice League?

We can now confirm that this AWESOME Jim Lee is indeed a portrait of what’s being referred to as the “DCnU” Justice League. Set for debut in just a few short weeks, rumors circulated rampantly about DC Comics‘ relaunch of its entire line of comics. People were horrified, outraged, amazed, and excited for such a crazy turn of publishing events, all circling around the consolidated relaunch of every title to appeal to new readership. DC press releases since haven’t been as encouraging (there’s some good stuff but there’s also plenty of mediocrity) but this image is still something to get excited about.

The new cast of Geoff Johns' and Jim Lee's JUSTICE LEAGUE.

Disorienting Brand Conversions

My Modern Met logo designer Graham Smith makes your brain hurt with these weird brand swaps.

Image via My Modern Met

Anti-grav self portraits reveal the everyday life of a person who can levitate

AWESOME, AWESOME photoblog discovered by io9 of Tokyo photographer Natsumi Hayashi. Hayashi’s self portraits involve a degree of photography legerdemain where she sets up the shot then jumps to capture the effect that she’s actually levitating. It’s a supercool story of someone fudging reality to create abject beauty. The photos below are some of my favorites.

Image via yowayowacamera.com

Image via yowayowacamera.com

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Jul
14

Draft These Badasses to Improve US Communication Enterprise

Pundits, researchers, textperts, and academics all love to talk about how they would fix the United States’ fragmented, crapped-out communication apparatus. The overarching web of demon seed spunked across drab refurbished halls in the Eisenhower Building on 17th Street NW barely covers the Sarlacc maw of offices, officials, and assholes manning the guns of This, Our National Communication Nightmare. All suggestions for reform mandate – nay, demand! – leadership in renovating this sad enterprise, this broken transistor, these crusted lips. Though none of these tremendous gasbags has deigned to ask the question most important to we lowly peasants of the pen: “Who shall lead us?” Submitted then, for no approval, is this list of AWESOME, kermodial badasses. Executives in 21st century organization and innovation. Preeminent princes of creativity. Visionaries of the better and the righteous.

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter.

Image via Wikipedia

Jack Dorsey – Creator & CEO, Twitter

Just interviewed The President using crowdsourced questions from Twitter. Twitter. A social media tool that has archived millions of impressions from people around the world and is on the way to becoming so ubiquitous that it’s considered a utility by some. Elegant simplicity and craftsmanship are his weapons. I think he knows a thing or two about designing a communication enterprise.

Image via The Guardian.

Andy Carvin – Senior Strategist, NPR

“The Crowdsorceror” who mounted a one-man content curation campaign in realtime around popular protests and demonstrations in the Middle East that later became known as the Arab Spring. Compelling, earnest believer in the power of people. His examples inspire legions of communicators to standing applause at his speaking engagements. To Carvin, community comes first. Imagine his style of realtime information gathering applied to intelligence or information operations problems.

Image via TVNewser

Jon Stewart - Host, The Daily Show

America’s funnyman turned mega-popular fake news host, consumed by millions of Americans as “real” news. Despite obvious satirical takes on journalism, staunchly defends That Which Is Right by attacking The Wrong, from Fox News insidiousness to Cramer’s role in puffing up the housing crisis. Genuinely loves America. Imagine his tenure leading government international broadcasting efforts.

 

 

 

 

Image via brosephstalin.com

Tim Hwang – Founder, Web Ecology Project, The Awesome Foundation, and The Institute for Higher Awesome Studies

A philosophical cog caught between the wheels of web analytics and netnography. Cultural researcher and student of human interaction offline, online, and elsewhere. Observer of society, real and imagined. Teamed with the right agencies, his timely insights about social communities could make AWESOMEthe work of thousands of government communication professionals.

Image via AV.com

Fred Wilson – Venture Capitalist and Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures

Social entrepreneur and investor in socially transformative technologies. Believes in the transcendant like Hashable, Etsy, Foursquare, GetGlue, Kickstarter, and more. Blogs regularly about the whys and wherefores, the how-to’s, and the aspirational dreams of his investments. Imagine a federal executive who apportions program funding according to the good of society versus short-term gains or even strategic objectives.

Image via Gawker.

Peter Thiel - Serial VC, Hedge Fund Manager

Avowed investor in the impossible, from artificial intelligence to social networks like Facebook to data analytics supergiants like Palantir. Believer in not just debating future technology and social innovation but making it happen. Convener of social creatives to discuss building an objective American future. Elusive yet visionary. Skates the edge of politics with controversial libertarian-esque views on economics and democracy, a modernist perspective badly required by an ever evolving communications ecosystem.

Image via bookgalaxo.com

Tony Hsieh – CEO, Zappos

The man who brought happiness to millions and made fun a core capability of his company. Committed to making the world a happier place, a mission sorely needed in the personnel departments of hundreds of government agencies.

John Lasseter - Chief Creative Officer, Pixar

The man who built an animated powerhouse out of a tiny studio no one believed would succeed. Since producing some of the most endearing animated films in the modern age, has merged his multibillion dollar studio with Disney to usher in a new era of Imagineering. Our communications enterprise, currently swarmed with ill-trained personnel that barely understand the social phenomena happening around them, requires creativity of this man’s magnitude.

Image via Screencrave.com

Image via Headshift.com

Lee Bryant – Co-founder & Director, Headshift

A social business maestro, he advocates for clients to change the way they do business instead of simply hanging shiny new social media toys on their websites. Understands the complex challenges of technology’s promises and shortcomings in solving organizational and communications problems. Also, very British.

Image via The Huffington Post

Baratunde Thurston – Vigilante Pundit, The Onion

Champion for The Right in all things Wrong. Outspoken advocate for diversity, a trait we see too rarely in government. His infectious influence could inspire legions of public diplomats, strategic communicators, and information operators at all levels. Laughter mandating shot caller of madness. Imagine his effect teaching communicators in institutions across government how to be AWESOME and not just govvies.

David Kilcullen – Counterinsurgency Guru

An early advocate of fighting ideologically against al-Qaeda versus hand-to-hand. Believer in people-focused counterinsurgency security. Sees war as competition managed by influence instead of shootouts and bombings. Widely regarded as the smartest man on the planet when it comes to strategically understanding the wars of the future. If the Defense Department continues playing in deployed communications – and it will – then it will need a shamanic leader like this man to responsibly pilot the interagency minefields such across-the-board coordination that will require.

Image via The Washingtonian

Official portrait of United States Secretary o...

Image via Wikipedia

Robert Gates – Former Secretary of Defense; Former Director, CIA 

The ultimate honest broker in all things government. From his perch as SECDEF, fought interminable battles with service cultures and DOD dinosaurs, breaking down inflated budgets and streamlining operations. Put this same right-is-right tenacity to work reforming and leading the rehabilitation and redesign of America’s communication enterprise across agencies, and we will see magic.

 

 

 

 

Mae Ferguson. Kind of a badass.

Mae Ferguson – President & CEO, Fort Worth Sister Cities International

People forget citizen and cultural diplomacy are cornerstone elements of strategic influence, and because of that, they remain ill coordinated with the rest of our national communication apparatus. Mae has the terrier-like tenacity and management expertise to round up the various bit parts of cultural programs and get them working properly in alignment with national influence goals. A long time nonprofit leader, she has achieved a lot with strangled budgets and limited personnel. Disclosure: she’s also my Mom. :)

Who am I missing?

I know you’ve got some ideas about kermodial badasses we need to draft into service of our faltering national communication enterprise. Tell me who they are in the comments.

Jul
06

IO Europe Wrap-up

Having been overtaken by events in London last week, I found it untenable to get out a daily blog post covering IQPC‘s Information Operations (or IO) Europe conference. There were also quite a few concerns from some conference-goers about how new media dorks like me attending could potentially bust up IO Europe’s tradition of “Chatham House rules” where none of the gathering’s discussions were attributable let alone reportable.

Wrestling with this personally, I’ve decided to go ahead and write up my thoughts on the conference because I believe the discussions are important to the wider global communications community. I will, however, decline to name some names to protect the guilty. ;)

That said, let’s see what’s new in another year of IO.

True Best Practices Are Usually the Most Controversial

From what conference-goers told me, this year more than ever saw more status quo-challenging presentations than ever before at IO Europe. The IO community, being as small as it is, tends to attack points of view that make these challenges. IO being a military discipline tends to rely on structure, plans, and doctrine that do not evolve. This runs counter to the promise of the Now Media Age (with apologies to MountainRunner) where we see communication innovation happening every day. And before people rail against that assertion claiming that our most popular conflict environments are in traditional media dependent regions, we also saw plenty of controversy that had nothing to do with the internet. Ed O’Connell – late of the Alternative Strategies Institute, which has now been acquired by Blue Hackle – gave a rousing talk about how he has conducted “interventions” into historically denied areas. The influence effects of Ed’s work dealt with providing forums for locals to air grievances in ways they had not considered before.

Ed’s a controversial figure in the IO world. He’s rankled quite a few feathers but his effects are undeniable. He is a fearless believer in personal, face-to-face rehabilitation of societies that have been brutalized by everything from violence and terror to poor economies. As much as we would like to put a new media solution on everything, there is still need for the de-radicalization work of someone like Ed.

Image courtesy Science 2.0

Most IO Pros Fear the Internet

Despite traditional approaches being successful and warranted in our current conflict environments, most of the IO pros I ran into at IO Europe are still massively afraid of conducting operations on the internet. While we have seen a huge ramp-up of media monitoring and analytical capabilities (i.e., programs that scour the internet for operationally relevant information and intelligence), very few organizations are actually doing anything with the information gleaned. Most arguments in favor of this fear have to do with limited policy and legislation governing influence operations on the internet but in my conversations with people, I detected a marked lack of motivation to even understand the online world. Many used excuses like “I’m too old to get it” or “My boss doesn’t care about this.” Worse, we even had a cybersecurity exercise one day lead by a facilitator who claimed to care nothing about social media and still professed to be an expert in online security operations.

IO Policy Still Stuck in the Dark Ages

Such fearmongering is exacerbated by onerous IO and strategic communication policy. There were more discussions on what simple terms mean than I could count, and when you factor in the international perspectives from the US, NATO, the UK, Canada, and many other nationalities represented, doctrinal debates became comical. Because of these debates, IO policy (and its overriding legislation) is still clawing for relevancy in an information age that has already left it behind. While professed IO policymakers and “experts” continually disagree over the meaning of “strategic communications,” citizens are moving on to the next platform, the next online game, the next social network, the next INNOVATION.

This facet of IO Europe upset me a little because this was one of the reasons I got out of the government business a while back. One of my former bosses used to say that government is about maintaining the status quo NOT innovation. Because of that, we will never see an IO or influence organization that thinks and operates ahead of the curve.

That Doesn’t Mean Innovation Isn’t Happening Though…

Quite a few private sector companies talked about communication systems monitoring platforms and methodologies. As we all know, entrepreneurial creativity occurs in the private sector. I met a number of companies who claimed to have technical solutions that provided end-to-end monitoring and sentiment analysis capabilities in multiple languages. Unfortunately, none of them were on hand to demo, something I would challenge all of them to rectify next year. IO Europe could be a great conference if IO pros could cycle from table to table to see the latest innovations in online data analysis.

Aside from tools, there were some great case studies of innovative approaches to operations. Hats off to the gents from Bell Pottinger for a supercool study of their strategic communications work in the Horn of Africa.

For Every Jerk You Meet, There Are 10 AWESOME Mofos

The IO community has its share of smarmy turd biscuits slinking through events like IO Europe, whether they’re government reps or otherwise. However, there are just as many, if not more AWESOME people hanging around with amazing stories, conversation, and things from which you can learn. I made twice as many friends at this IO Europe than I did last year, and these are folks with whom I anticipate having lasting professional friendships as well. The value of so many international perspectives in one place is hard to calculate, but may of the non-Americans at the conference gave me tons of new things to think about. I especially have to thank the gents from M&C Saatchi who recruited me to speak, offered some great conversations about music, and – in one case – hosted me at their home for my last day in country.

Final Thoughts: Be Better, Do Good

Ultimately, IO Europe was a great annual get-together for those of us in the community, but I think we can all do better. Too many of us got wrapped up in our own organizational prejudices, focusing on selling something or satisfying a government requirement. Instead, I think we all need to take a step back and remember why we’re in the influence business. For me, it’s all about experiential sharing – the process of understanding the complex global ecosystem in which we live that is made manifest by online means. At the end of the day though, all of us need to recognize a passion for communication, whether we’re a NATO PAO or a PR firm VP. There are too many people in this business who are just punching a clock, and that’s a shitty way to communicate with other cultures even if all you’re doing is approving comms plans.

See y’all next year.

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Apr
22

Links of the Week: April 22, 2011 Edition

Trying to get back into the swing of things after recovering from a trip to the Emerald Isle. Jet lag lasted way too long. Here is big dump of links from the past month or so. As always, other notable things I found cool and interesting are all captured on my Pulse Posterous feed.

Raymond Kurzweil, an American academicand author.

Image via Wikipedia

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

 

Lev Grossman writes this TIME Magazine article about futurist Ray Kurzweil and his predictions for the coming Singularity. It’s a very comprehensive and thorough look into the implications of Kurzweil’s thinking, from life extension to machine awareness. What struck me most about the piece, however, was how Kurzweil’s impetus for his work boiled down to his overriding desire to bring his deceased father back to life. Kurzweil believes wholeheartedly that humans will be able to resurrect the dead at some near point in the future, possibly from as little as preserved DNA. Thus, he has taken to extending his own life via any means necessary, like consuming a massive amount of nutrient and supplement pills per day. It really speaks to me that Kurzweil believes in such a rapid explosion of technology and why he wants to be around to see it. This is a must-read for all you futurists, singularitarians and transhumanists out there.

Trailer: Another Earth

Here’s a trailer for an intriguing film I first heard about from some friends who caught its premier at Sundance this year. The buzz around this indie sci-fi movie has been lighting up the internet in recent months, and this trailer should give you all the rationale you need to find it when it releases.

Watching People Skydive in Slow Motion Is Absolutely Mesmerizing

Seriously. This video is just magical. Click through it for a larger hi-res version… and prepare to be amazed.

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

Is a Social Currency System The Next Big Thing?

Dave Armano poses some questions about Empire Avenue, a new “social currency” system that’s part game, part stock market, part influencer metrics ecosystem. I’ve been playing around with Empire Ave for a while now, and its potential as a measurable environment for influencers – based on their social connections via networks like Facebook and Twitter – is immense. Be sure to check out the comments for good discussion on Armano’s post, and if you’re interested in trying out Empire Ave, make sure you buy several shares in yours truly, Du4. :)

Friday Five: What Gamification means for Digital Marketers

Edelman Digital gives a pretty succinct summary about the concept of “gamification” that’s been buzzing around digital circles since SXSW.

Hidden camera photos reveal the secret lives of scifi toys

Image by Thurston Roscoe

Leave it to io9 to find Thurston Roscoe’s hilariously staged photos of toys from our youth and what they do when we’re not looking. More fun photos at the links.

Many More Clips From The New Looney Tunes: Marvin The Martian, Yosemite Sam, Road Runner And More

I had no idea that Warner Brothers was working on a brand new Looney Tunes cartoon starring all our favorite WB cartoon characters from the Friz Freleng / Mel Blanc era. The animation looks SOLID too. Check out this clip of Foghorn Leghorn and Daffy Duck, which features some pretty advanced humor I was not expecting from a Cartoon Network show aimed (presumably) at kids. As an unabashed fan of classic Looney Tunes, I am SO EXCITED for this show’s premier on May 3rd. More vids at the link courtesy of Bleeding Cool.

Yakuza to the rescue?

Apparently, Yakuza gangsters in Japan are pitching in to help dig out people trapped and injured in the recent Japan earthquake. Code of honor indeed.

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Mar
25

Links of the Week: March 25, 2011 Edition

Roqbot Reinvents the Jukebox as Social Game

 

A mid-20th-century 24-disc Wurlitzer jukebox. ...

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s a more detailed article from Wired on the coolest app I discovered at SXSW 2011. Roqbot puts control of internet enabled jukeboxes in your hands via your mobile device. You become a DJ with your own list of music that follows you around to participating locations with Rocqbot enabled jukeboxes. When you check into those venues, you can then control the jukebox’s playlist with a system of credits and rewards. Pretty great solution for all those bars you go to that keep playing “Freebird.”

Norman Spinrad’s QUARANTINE

Only Warren Ellis could send a link to a sci-fi story about a bio-attack on New York that makes everyone have uncontrollable diarrhea. Spinrad’s latest novella deserves a look for that concept alone, but I’m also intrigued by Spinrad’s publishing model for this story. He’s going direct-to-reader via Amazon for a $3 mini-ebook. Worth checking out.

In The Midst Of A Massively Successful SXSW, Foursquare Tackles Venue Harmonization

TechCrunch has a good rundown of who I saw as the SXSW 2011 “winner,” Foursquare, and why. Dennis Crowley‘s plans to open up Foursquare’s checkin data to local businesses, with which they can create dashboards of customer information, is a brilliant application for the location-based service. Where this social tool was once seen as a frivolous game, I think the data built from its users is going to change the way brick and mortar business works in the future, particularly if those businesses are having a hard time staying open due to online competition. Even more importantly, as TechCrunch notes here, Foursquare is going to try and crack the nut of venue harmonization: developing a single online data set for each physical location someone could check into, regardless of what geolocation service they prefer (Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook, etc).

Question Everything: Max More on Singularity 1 on 1

One of my new favorite regular reads via Pulsememe is Socrates’ Singularity Blog. This latest post features a 50-minute long interview with “futurist and strategic philosopher” Max More. This is my first exposure to More, and I’m an instant fan. More is the CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Institute, a private sector entity dedicated to preserving one’s body past its normal lifespan. This basically involves employing cryonics technologies to freeze one’s brain (they even offer full body suspended animation!) on the hedge that in the future, humans will invent technology to resurrect the dying or dead tissue.

That’s not even the interesting part of the interview though. More – a name self-chosen based on his predilection toward transhumanism – offers tons of different insights into how one can immediately begin living a posthuman life. The most interesting piece of this interview to me was how More describes his diet and exercise regime, which are based on the “paleo” system:

The Paleo diet throwback as a model for transhuman evolution poses so many cool discussions. But the thing that’s so inspiring about this is that Max More is actually living the posthuman life NOW. More (whom I was surprised to learn is the husband of fellow transhumanist and futurist Natasha Vita-More, whose talk at SXSW sent chills down my spine) speaks with a wonderful degree of belief and authority for transhumanism, and he espouses a message that should kick even the laziest of armchair futurists out of their chairs and into action. Check out the three previous videos of his talk with Socrates at the link or listen to the podcast.

 

 

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Mar
23

The SXSW Experience

I tried to document as many of my ongoing thoughts as I could over on my Posterous feed during SXSW, but I thought I’d take some time to try and make some coherent sense of the week-long insanity I put myself through.

Location, Location, Location

There didn’t seem to be any consensus on a single new technology or app that debuted or blew up SXSW this year. However, plenty of existing ones brought immense marketing campaigns to Austin, and the majority of those seemed to be location-based services. Gowalla, in my opinion, severely dropped the ball by not preparing local Austin businesses for the influx of SXSW geeks galvanized by the Gowalla passport scavenger hunt. Foursquare, on the other hand, ruled the day by deploying 2000 virtual “Golden Tickets” into specific checkin spots in Austin that unlocked free tickets to their Big Boi headliner show. So many more location-based companies littered the landfalls in Austin as well, each with some zany promotional campaign to get people to download and use their app.

David Armano's Allhat3 at Guero's.

For my money, Foursquare was the clear popularity winner here. Their partnership with Pepsi – where they created an actual competitive foursquare court near the Austin Convention Center – culminated with an AWESOME party at the Seaholm Power Plant, where all sorts of people got to chill with Dennis Crowley and his Foursquare army to the tunes of Locksley, The Sounds, and Big Boi.

App Discovery of SXSW: Roqbot

Roqbot is an app-based service that allows you to take control of online-enabled jukeboxes in bars, clubs, restaurants, and other locations featuring these types of music services. Once you download the app, you develop a DJ profile of your favorite music and check into whatever location you happen upon that has one of these net-enabled jukeboxes. From there, you’re able to control the music playlist emanating from the box. Don’t like Lady Gaga? Spend a couple Roqbot credits to put some Oasis on higher in the music queue. You also earn free credits to play by unlocking various checkin rewards or you can just connect Roqbot to a Paypal account and buy songs directly. It’s SUCH a great a control solution for jukeboxes in places. I can’t wait till they expand their services into the DC/NOVA region.

DC Represents

I was caught off-guard by the massive DC presence at SXSW. From government rockstars like Amanda Eamich from USDA to nonprofit supercolliders like Tammy Gordon of AARP, DC’s varied social media community descended on Austin in force. I hung out with Mike Schaffer, Director for Social Media at iostudio the most, and lamented that despite having met and living near DC, we never hang out like we did at SXSW. I’m making a pledge to change that behavior on my part now that I’m home, and I want to invite any and all DC/NOVA peeps to call me on any antisocial leanings I may display from this point forward.

Margie and Dave Newman, masterminds of the DC Flacks Meetup group, created an on-the-fly “DCxSW” Twitter handle and hash for all of us while in Austin. They also organized an impromptu meetup of these DCists at the Driskill Hotel one night where I had the best networking conversations of the week. I met a lot of folks i only knew through Twitter here, and I am super-excited to build upon those relationships in the future.

So here’s a big public shout-out to all my DCxSW peeps: Margie, Dave, Schaffer, Gabe Hilado, Amandare!, Alejandra Owens, Peter Corbett, Tammy Gordon, Tammy Portnoy, Lisa Byrne, Patti Shea, and all the rest of you AWESOME DC peeps. It was also great meeting a bunch of non-DC folks like Jeff Esposito, Teresa Cantwell, and old friends Anne Weiskopf and Tonia Reis (formerly of TWTRCON fame, now The Realtime Report

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." --Davy Crockett

).

Walking in Your Footsteps

Much of the research I performed in prep for this massive undertaking panned out well. I intend to do up a fuller post on the travel hacks I came with on the fly, but the basics came down to comfortable shoes and clothing at all times. I can’t tell you how many times I just had to sit down because my feet hurt so bad from walking around so much. People recommended Converse as the go-to shoes for SXSW, but I have to put in a plug for the much comfier and supportive Merrel’s that I brought.

Panels & Speakers

For the mot part, I found SXSW panels pedantic and freshman. The only ones that piqued my interest and delivered a good conversation were a panel on The Singularity and another with John Hagel III on shaping the future. The Singularity panel brought together experts like Michael Vassar from the Singularity Institute and Natasha Vita-More from Humanity+ for a SUPER-AWESOME discussion about the ethical limits of transhumanism and posthumanity. I’m stll processing a lot of the info from this panel, but be sure to check out the convo archived on the #singularity hashtag. That conversation is still going on, so feel free to jump in and add your thoughts.

Seaholm Power Plant, site of the Foursquare/PepsiMax party.

I missed Seth Priebatsch’s keynote on the gamification of marketing and education, but I heard it was cool. I also missed Christopher Poole, aka moot of 4chan, who gave a keynote on social communities online and how their influence will continue to grow in the future. I heard good things about both of these keynotes but just couldn’y sync schedules to make them

Getting Your Groove On

I was most disappointed by the party situation. I RSVP’d for several parties specifically to hang out with or meet people that were throwing them. Unfortunately, every party is oversold, leading to massive numbers of people often crowding into small clubs, all trying to figure out who’s there that’s important or famous. What’s worse, I got the distinct impression at many of these parties that pre-existing community relationships led to a degree of “cliquey-ness” that isolated a lot of outsiders. This bothered me mainly because a lot of folks like myself stood in these long-ass lines for long periods of time to get into cool parties that only turned out to be fun for the cool kids.

 

Ogilvy Notes, a cool attempt to make visual sense out of all the information overloading SXSW's attendees.

There were literally so many people at many of these parties that you would get interrupted talking to someone of note, and they would never come back to you due to successive interruptions. It’s damned hard to connect with someone in this fashion, and you can damn sure bet I’ll be working on a SXSW Guide to Party Ethics for 2012.

Even worse, most of the Interactive parties featured some of the worst, most annoying DJs on the planet. Note to party organizers of the future: they don’t call Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World” for nothing. If you want to throw a SXSW party next time, do some fucking due diligence and get a couple of inexpensive but AWESOME live acts instead of a bunch of douchy DJ pricks.

Music vs. Interactive

SXSW should really be broken up into two conferences for Music and Interactive because virtually everyone from the Interactive festival popped smoke when the Music festival began. It was SUCH a sea change in personalities too: I joked to a buddy that all the Interactive geeks stayed inside the Convention Center for Interactive where Austin had to shut down streets to accommodate the influx of Music nerds.

What’s funny about the disparity between Music and Interactive attendees (and the lurking Film festival geeks too), is that they could all stand to spend time in each other’s sessions. So much inspiration flowed out of musical performances that I think would have benefited Interactive attendees, particularly the PR and marketing types who were hard-charging the entire time selling and jiving versus soaking up the people’s culture.

 

Emmylou Harris performing solo on the Radio Day Stage.

I’ll do up a separate post later on the musical discoveries I made. Those are stories in and of themselves.

Omni Hotels Continue to Rock

Not only did my lovely friends at Omni Hotels hook me up with a couple free drinks and grab bag of SXSW necessities, I also found that the Omni’s parking situation far outweighed any other in downtown Austin. Where other lots were jacking prices up to $10 and $20 at a time, the Omni kept a moderate $7 a day parking charge for SXSWi. What’s more, you could avoid that charge completely if you returned for your car after midnight, where they opened the garage. GREAT customer service from Omni, especially for people who weren’t even staying at their hotel for SXSW. Thanks again for the stops along the way!

(Pro-tip: The Omni also had the cleanest bathrooms in town. At about midnight when those tacos are kicking in, ain’t nothing better than a spotless and empty bathroom!)

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

The Macallan 15, proud sponsor of SXSW and drunk-asses everywhere.

SXSW was a worthy event, but I’m not sure I can do it all in one sitting again. It was a great time, and I enjoyed it, but had it not been for the people I met there, it could have been a big old bust. I brought back with me a ton of great ideas and content that I have to work with, so I hope to see some heavy return on investment soon. In that vein, keep your eyes peeled for successive posts about different SXSW aspects that I couldn’t fit into this one.

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Mar
04

Links of the Week: March 4, 2011 Edition

Not much to report this week due to a flurry of Du4licious activity in prep for this week’s Sister Cities International conference in Arlington. But a couple things did catch my eye.

Congressman Rahm Emanuel (center) with Sol Sch...

Image via Wikipedia

Revealing the Man Behind @MayorEmanuel

 

Like many across the country, I fell in love with the raucous foulness of Rahm Emanuel‘s parody Twitter account, which started broadcasting shortly after Rahm left the White House to run for mayor of Chicago. As @MayorEmanuel’s popularity grew, so too did the mystery of who was really behind it. In this Atlantic article, @MayorEmanuel’s pilot is revealed: Dan Sinker, a Chicago punk rocker and new age digital storyteller. Sinker describes @MayorEmanuel as performance art, a new sort of digital political commentary that weaves in and out of fiction, celebrity, and current events. I’m massively intrigued by the potential of using Twitter in a manner like Sinker did. Anonymity is so easily protected on this network, there are huge opportunities for persona manipulation… which makes me wonder about the future of digital identity. Great read.

On Revolutions

Pretty interesting perspective on the Middle East protests from Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity. Guillebeau has made a name for himself as a “travel hacker” by finding inexpensive means of visiting all sorts of places around the world. He is, in my opinion, a true citizen diplomat (public diplomacy peeps: take note). His experiences flying into Afghanistan, Libya, and Iran (!), give him an interesting “average joe” insight to what’s really at the forefront of people’s minds in those countries. Highly recommended read, and be sure to subscribe to Guillebeau’s blog too. It’s a must for nonconformists, proto-world dominators, and doowutchyalikes.

Announcing: Open Foresight & The Future of Facebook Project

Venessa Miemis is at it again with what sounds like an AWESOME forecasting initiative via Kickstarter. She has already interviewed several notable social media and tech influencers and has opened up her research questions to the public on Quora. I highly recommend EVERYONE go and participate in this project. I’ve blogged about Venessa before, and I think her work as a modern digital/social futurist demonstrates a LOT of required skills we as humans need to adopt to adapt to the new digital lifestyles in which we find ourselves.

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Mar
02

Conversations at American University: The Double Facepalm

I had a great time last week talking with my buddy Dr. Craig Hayden in his Public Diplomacy class at American University in DC. Craig and I are sometimes-partners-in-crime at the MountainRunner Institute (along with His AWESOMEness, Matt Armstrong, and “Georgia Peach” Shawn Powers). We have a lot of interesting discussions about public diplomacy, strategic communication, and the nature of information and influence in today’s post-digital world.

Craig asked me to bring my perspective on those discussions to his class. We managed to film parts of the conversation, so I’m going to be chopping them up into bite-sized morsels of BADASS AWESOME for you, my loving public, to digest. In the first of these videos (all of which will be hosted here on my YouTube channel as well), Craig asks why I chose the metaphor of the “double facepalm” in last week’s introductory blog post about my experiences in public diplomacy and government. (Larger, HD versions of the video are available via the YouTube link.)

I’d like to give a great big THANK YOU to all the AU students I met during this discussion. It’s really heartening to me to see so many potential citizen diplomat rockstars in this soul-sucking town. Great talking with you, and I hope we can continue the conversation outside the classroom.

Speaking of which: I know a lot of you are blogging as part of Craig’s class and on your own. Please be sure to call yourselves out in the comments section of these video posts. I’d really like to promote some of the student-led commentary I’ve seen since the in-class discussion. We build our audiences socially, so I’d love to feature some of your opinions and content on Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com.

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Feb
24

SXSW: The Adventure Begins

I finally bit the bullet this year and bought a full conference pass to South by Southwest, Austin’s long-AWESOME music, film, and tech festival. Having suffered through years of Twitter and Facebook friends broadcasting the varying degrees of AWESOMEness emanating from one of my favorite towns in Texas, I’m taking the @Du4.llc plunge.

While I do have a few specific goals for my trip, a large part of it remains unplanned. I intend to broadcast my experiences often, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to develop a publication strategy for a single event. Granted, it’s a media-heavy event, so separating out fun content from crappy stuff could be dicey. So here’s a quick breakdown of how you can find the different Du4 media that I’ll be pumping out from AWESOMEville.

Where I’m Gonna Be: Plancast

Here’s a new social stream with which I’m experimenting: Plancast. The idea is similar to a calendar except you organize your plans socially around what your friends are doing. You can also link into several existing tags for types of events, like I’m doing for SXSW. I’ve been invited to and RSVP’d to a staggering number of parties and events at SXSW, so keeping track of everything via my email inbox has just become too tedious and confusing. I’m hoping to use Plancast to organize my plans (duh) for Austin and share them with folks via my Plancast stream so if you do want to link up with me, it’ll be easier to sync schedules.

However, let us all remember the special operator’s maxim: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy…”

Twitter: @Du4

I’ll be broadcasting my hour-to-hour activities at SXSW via Twitter. The #SXSW hashtag will probably be overloaded with people tweeting on it, so follow me for direct updates. I’ll also be retweeting cool content I find on Twitter throughout SXSW. I’d also encourage anyone who’s doing remote listening of the event using tools like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, Radian6, or whatever, please hit me up with any emerging hashtags you see coming out of SXSW so I can find ‘em “on the ground.”

Twitter is also my go-to service for preferred commo. If you need to get ahold me right away, @reply or DM me and I’ll get back to you fast. Even better, if you’re attending SXSW, be sure to hit me up so I can follow you around too!

Locations: Foursquare and Gowalla

I’m a dual geolocation user: Foursquare for the badges, Gowalla for the items. There will be a TON of SXSW specific checkin rewards for 2011, so I’m going to have a ball checking in and sampling all the AWESOME places and things to do during the week. I have both accounts connected to my Twitter stream, so just follow me on Twitter to see where I am and what exclusive badges and achievements I unlock as I roll through Austin. I will probably post some pics and tips for various places too. Where Plancast is a proposed schedule of where I am planning to be, Foursquare and Gowalla will show where I actually end up.

Pro tip: you can click on the link in each checkin tweet I make to bring you to my Foursquare or Gowalla page and see everywhere I’ve been.

Photos: Posterous and Instagram

I’ve been noodling with how to use a Posterous page for a while now. For those who don’t know, Posterous is a dead simple, email-based blogging system. You have a couple simple commands that you set up via your preferred email account, and then you just publish content to your Posterous stream via email or SMS. It works best when you’re on the go and want to share something or capture something quickly form your mobile device and get it online and visible. You’ll also receive every comment on your posts via email and be able to reply back via email.

For SXSW, I’ve developed a brand new Posterous page where I can instantly upload content. I’ve found this is the simplest way to upload HD photos from my iPhone to a website where people can view them without a corresponding account. You just click on that link and BOOM: AWESOME shit direct from Du4. Because I can gin up other content and get it quickly published as well, I may use this Posterous page for snap, on-the-street blogging or “scrapbooking.”

(Aside: I got the idea for said use of Posterous from “vigilante pundit” and comedian Baratunde Thurston, who uses his Posterous as “an internet scratch pad.” I love that description of the service, and you can see from Baratunde’s updates exactly how well such usage of Posterous suits him.)

Baratunde Thurston at ROFLCon II

Baratunde Thurston (image via Wikipedia)

(Aside 2: I’ve also got a Pulsememe stream I’ve been using via Posterous to share stories and other content I view through the Pulse iPad app. Pulse is a cool reader-like app that I use now for ALL of my daily reading; Google Reader is dead to me after playing with this. Pulse connects to a separate Posterous URL where I share any interesting articles, links, and other stuff that comes across my ADD-addled eyes via the Pulse app. I also pull my Links of the Week directly from this Pulsememe stream.)

For those of you on Instagram, you can follow my feed (my username is du4) there for any photos I upload and touch up using Instagram’s color tools. Instagram does not have a web-based version of its users’ streams so you can only view it from your smartphone.

Longer-form Reporting: Must. Be. AWESOME!!! dot com

If SXSW is social media nerd heaven, then I wouldn’t be a crown prince in the nerd host of angels without a blog. So every couple of days, I’ll throw together something more thoughtful than a mere tweet or photo upload can convey here at http://mustbeawesome.com. You can also expect some video blogging, interviews with rad people I meet, and other video clownishness posted here.

Stay Mobile, Stay Flexible, Stay Alive

SXSW is going to be a good opportunity for me to really put the gas pedal down on developing and sharing content online. I may get part way through the experience and realize that I don’t need all the streams I’ve talked about above. I figure this will be a supercool learning experience though. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment here or anywhere on one of the social streams I’ve described above. If there’s something I’m missing, I wanna know about it!

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