Updated the blog. Still have some tweaks to make and there might be a few glitches here and there because I decided to just go live with it and fix things as they pop up.
Not sure what I’m going to do with the banannie.com landing page. I still like it, but really don’t need it and it might make more sense to just redirect the domain to the blog. But that’s for another day 
.
I feel like a superball bouncing around in a 2ft square box. A slightly warped superball. No control over where I’m heading, but slowly feeling the equilibrium coming back. Eventually I’ll settle into a slow wobble then sit there silently until someone picks up the box and shakes it again.
Things happen when they happen for a reason.
The right people are there at just the right time.
Life is a thrill ride. Hold on and laugh.
I don’t blog about just me as much as I used to. That’s what this blog was created as, a place for me to blog about whatever I feel like. I’m truly interested in all these other topics, but they’re just that- topics. Not necessarily the stuff that comes purposelessly flying out of my head (all that’s been verbalized to Pat and posted to Twitter I suppose, because it’s been going somewhere!)
Flying out of my head at the moment- I had lunch with a friend and he made me think. I have so much I genuinely want to do, but no plan, no focus, and ultimately not nearly enough time. What I really have to do is lay it all out, erase at least half, and add a ton of structure.
photo by kevindooley cc some rights reserved
With so many family members and old friends signing up for Facebook I thought it might be time for a post on how to use Facebook without losing hours of your life that you’d rather be doing something else with (like using Twitter…?)
Plan to spend an hour or so for the initial setup. If you set thing up well at first Facebook become much less of a time-suck later on.
…sign up for an account. Why? Because your kids are there (but don’t expect to use Facebook as a way to spy on them, they’re too smart for that, might not accept your friend request and mostly text each other anyway.) Because your family members are there. (I’m connected to siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, my dad…) Because your old friends are there. (Tons of elementary and high school classmates, and friends I thought I’d lost touch with forever!)
Use your real name, and use a photo of yourself. I suggest a recent one, but I understand that you might feel more comfortable with an old school photo or one of you from 50 feet away.
In Account Settings, start with the basics when adding personal info, and don’t feel obligated to answer every question or fill in every blank. You’ll want to include your birthdate so people can flood your wall with birthday wishes (but it’s ok to leave the year off.) Listing the schools you went to will help old friends find you. List your current employer (or at least a brief description of what you do if, like many, you’re not sure you want the boss to find you on Facebook!) Only list your politics and religion if you don’t mind being judged by either one (because it happens.)
Once you’ve got the basic profile information set up, head right over to the Privacy Settings. 
Spend a little time here. For most of the Profile settings I suggest you stick with “Friends Only.” Since you have to explicitly choose who your friends are on Facebook, you know exactly who can see your information. The only options I leave more open are Friends, which I set to Everyone, and Wall Posts, which I leave open to Friends of Friends. You also probably want to tick the box that lets Friends post to your wall. Go with what makes you most comfortable here, you can always make changes later. You can fine-tune privacy settings once you add some friends, see below.
This part is important if you want to spend the least amount of time yet get the full benefit of a Facebook account. Go through the list of notification options and choose “on” for each action you want to be sure not to miss. Facebook will send you an email for each one. Of course, your inbox will be flooded.
But not if you use filters or rules for your email. If you don’t already have rules set up in your email client to send messages directly into a folder (or a tag in the case of gmail) when they arrive, learn how (it will help you with far more than Facebook once you do!) Set up a rule that forces email from the facebookmail.com domain to skip your inbox and go right to a folder labeled Facebook (or whatever you like.) Now you can visit that folder at your leisure to see what your friends are up do. You may not even need to visit the site at all unless you want to respond.
Search by name at first. Once you find a few people you know go through their friends lists to find other people you both know. Don’t feel like you have to friend every person on Facebook that you vaguely remember. 
Likewise, you don’t have to accept every friend request that comes your way. Just press ignore and be done with it. This is your club, you get to decide who joins. Personally I have a simple Facebook rule: I only add people I’ve had a conversation with, whether in real life or online. Create your own rules, or don’t .
As you start adding more people you’ll probably want to start sorting them into lists. Choose Friends from the top menu and you’ll see the option to “Make a New List” on the left. Lists give you more granular control over what you see and who sees you.
Maybe you want to keep a closer eye on your local friends than others. Set up a list of just those friends, then easily check their updates from your home page by choosing to see that list. Maybe you want to be connected to that guy you met at the gym that one time but you don’t want him to see all your Wall posts. You can set up a list containing that guy (and others like him) then by choosing Edit Custom Settings in the Privacy section you can block them from seeing parts of your profile.
Part of the fun on Facebook is trying the different third party applications (or apps.) Poking your friends is fun, but SUPERPOKING them is better. Right? Maybe. Recently there has also been a spurt of memes. A meme is basically a note that you personalize (Fifteen Things About Me for example) then tag some friends to do their own version.
Apps and memes are fun, but they can get overwhelming. In fact I think dealing with all the notifications from well-meaning friends can be the most time-sucking thing about Facebook.
Again, the ignore button is your friend, as are comments. Don’t want that “gift” someone sent you? Ignore. Don’t feel like coming up with fifteen things about you, but feeling grateful that a friend tagged you? Post a brief comment on her note and be done with it.
You’ll probably be invited to assorted groups, asked to become a “fan” of some Pages (which are profiles for celebrities, businesses, etc) and invited to events. Ignore if you want, accept if you want. (Note: generally in Facebook events a “Yes” is a maybe and a “Maybe” is a no. Just like real life.)
Just don’t. At least not with your personal profile. Go ahead and set up a Page for your business if you like, but use your personal profile for fun.
Now you’ve taken the time to read this (thank you!) and hopefully you’ve taken the time to set up your Facebook account. Now the rest is up to you. Despite all the suggestions above, it’s far too easy to spend hours clicking through Facebook, looking at friends’ profiles or playing with applications, and you may find that half your day has disappeared. This is where self-discipline comes in, and I’m afraid I might not be the person to help you with that. But I hope at least Facebook now looks a little less overwhelming and a lot more fun!
As most of you know I finally traveled to Austin TX for the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSWi). I’ve been wanting to go since 2007 when, shortly after I joined Twitter, I started following social media types talking about the conference.
Attending this year was a pretty last minute decision. It’s expensive, for one thing. The conference ticket alone was over $400, then you add in airfare, and hotel for 5 nights… EEK! But my lovely friend Sarah, who lives in Austin graciously offered to put me up, so that took out the hotel cost (or so I thought…) We also had a scheduling conflict so both Pat & I couldn’t attend, as we’d originally hoped.
But I went and I’m glad I did, mostly because I got to spend some time with with friends, and finally hug or shake hands with people I’ve only known through Twitter or Seesmic.
Some random, non-inclusive highlights:
I just noticed that none of these highlights involve scheduled sessions. I guess that’s because of the one big problem I had- my lack of focus led me to spend more time wondering what to do or being distracted by my immediate surroundings than making sure I attended the sessions I’d planned on. That’s something I continue to work on- if someone else is relying on me to get something done, it gets done. But if it’s just for myself, well, maybe it gets done!
Another reason I seemed to miss good sessions was that there was no easy way to see who was speaking. The sessions I most regret missing were awesome due to the presenters, not the topics.
Ah well, it was a good experience and I’m glad I went. Would I go back? Definitely, but I need to have goals to hit while there, whether as a representative of someone else or for myself. In fact I want to go back next year just to apply the lessons learned from this one!
A funny thing about this online world I travel in is that when you meet in person an exchange of business cards is almost mandatory. Even though we have all kinds of electronic doohickeys into which we can input contact info for everyone we meet, we trade cards like, well, trading cards. So over the past couple years I’ve had fun designing cards for both this site and Pixel Currents.
I decided a few months back to make better use of the index page at the root of my site, which previously just had a link over to this blog. Now it has a running stream of my online life, as fed through Friendfeed. My tweets, my photos, my videos, and posts to this blog all show up there. I also added a sidebar with links to my various online hangouts.
I decided my new “business” cards would include the link to that page, and I wanted them to seem fun, friendly, and inviting. I’m happy with the look of the page, and it just made sense to adapt that look for the cards. But in creating the layout for the skinny moo cards, there was something missing. The banana logo wasn’t enough, so I played around adding some text. First just the word banannie, but it seemed repetitive since the banana has banannie stamped right on it. So I experimented with catch phrases. I long ago decided that banana- themed catch phrases are a bad idea. Go ahead, try to think up a few yourself, and tell me you don’t start making silly double entendres. See what I mean?
I’ve used the phrase “you know me” occasionally on social network profiles. During the Great Soc Net Explosion of 2008 it seemed like the same herd of sheep (myself included) just popped over from one site to the next, so explaining who I was to people who already knew who I was seemed a little silly. 
Since I would be handing the cards out in person, the receivers would “know me,” but not well. The “you know me” line felt unfinished. Adding the ellipsis and continuing the thought on the back with “… get to know me better” invites the receiver to take that next step and connect with me online.
To bring the point home I decided to add the phrase “now you know me… say hi so I can get to know you!” to the top of my landing page. I’m not interested in having a bunch of followers listening to me, I’m instead looking for new connections, new friends. So I hope that message is made even more clear to those who do follow through and check out my site after I give them cards.
In just a few days I’ll be heading to Austin, Texas for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. If you’ll be there too I hope we’ll be able to connect (and maybe I’ll even give you a card, although since you’re here you don’t really need one 
!)
It just now hit me that I rocked this day. I didn’t set out to get much done, considering the way it started…
Last night, my youngest had a 2.5 hour coughing fit just after going to bed. I sat up with him then when he finally settled down and fell asleep I stayed up for another hour just to be sure he was ok. And to watch U2 on Letterman.
Went to bed around 12:45am, got some good sleep, but I was awoken by my husband at 5:30 as he headed out the door for a business trip. Took me about a half hour to get back to sleep…
Just in time for my iPhone to ding, a text from the high school letting me know it was a “normal schedule” day. Seriously. The phone call reporting same came about 5 minutes later.
Dozed a little again but not very soundly, rolled over and daylight from Pat’s open shade shocked me awake again. Fifteen minutes later the alarm went off. I should have turned it off, since I had no intention of sending T to school after he was coughing all night.
Spent the next hour dozing on and off but really didn’t get much more sleep. Finally caved and got up. Expected to spend the day in a haze and I pretty much did till around 11am. But suddenly I had a power surge and managed to:
Not bad for a day I thought would end up wasted.
What I haven’t done is spend much time catching up with what other people are up to. Feel like I’ve been in a cave.
But I’m shutting down the macbook, and chillin in front of the dvr for a few hours. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.
Yesterday I met a bunch of local people who use Twitter. I already know a bunch of local people who use Twitter, but these were (mostly) new to me. Was fun meeting them all!
The first thing that struck me was that there was an agenda! And a scheduled speaker! Usually we just pull out our MacBooks and compare twitter apps at tweetups . We learned about how the local paper is moving on to the web and encouraging local businesses and groups to take advantage of their platform (mycentraljersey.com).
Of course, I knew there would be an agenda, because the focus of this tweetup was “how to use Twitter for business.” I have some pretty strong opinions about that myself.
Contrary to some of the “expert advice” out there, I don’t think Twitter is a good primary marketing tool. Twitter should supplement your marketing, and it won’t make you rich. I say this despite the fact that the vast majority of my business comes to me through Twitter. I’m no marketing expert. I have some marketing experience and some customer service experience, but I have a lot of online communication experience, and even more experience as the target of marketers (as we all are.) So that’s where I’m coming from.
The thing business users need to realize is that no matter how many followers you have, Twitter is an intensely personal application. People laugh about the “what I had for lunch” tweets but I see more value in those tweets than messages that promise me the secret to fast wealth, or links to the latest post from some blog. Not that I’m against linking to blog posts, I do it all the time and I’ll tweet about this one of course! But mostly, I want to get to know the person behind the Twitter id.
So post silly, micro-blog worthy stuff once in awhile. Prove to me you’re a human, because I don’t want to do business with a ‘bot.
Other bad twitter advice- “get as many followers as you can as quickly as you can!” Why? I guess it’s the same mentality that created spam empires. If you get your message to enough people, percentage-wise you’re bound to get enough bites to make it worth it. But the thing about Twitter is, it’s easy to be ignored. Blasting through and trying to gain as many followers as you can will not only turn out to be a waste of your time, it’ll probably get you flagged and possibly banned as a spammer. So. Just. Don’t.
Think quality over quantity. Let your followers list grow organically. Talk to people. Jump in to conversations where you think you can add value – even if you don’t know the others involved.
An example. Someone you don’t follow complains that their bicycle broke. Someone you do know responds and commiserates. You see that response and think “Hey! I repair broken bicycles!” You respond to the original tweeter, offering advice. Original tweeter is grateful, you likely have a new follower who is a potential customer, and that person’s followers see the conversation, and since he’s a biker maybe some of them are bikers, too, and they follow you because they see the value you could offer them someday.
Yes, it really works like that. That’s how Twitter has brought me business (as a WordPress customizer, not a bike repairer) for the past year and a half.
(late edit- this was just posted by Sarah Evans on Mashable: Social Media for Business: The Dos and Don’ts of Sharing. Great suggestions for using not only Twitter but other social networks.)
(images by jmilles & dustinj, some rights reserved)
(cross-posted at Pixel Currents)
Today my LLC paperwork arrived. I’ve been working as a sole proprietorship but now Pixel Currents LLC is an entity of its own, and I feel like a real business owner!
Today Pat officially became a partner in his company as well.
So we’re both business owners. Scary but exciting. Not sure this is a great time to be doing this, but it’s really the only time to be doing it. I know you gotta grab the opportunities when they’re there, and I think this is a better time than, say, last summer when the economy was tottering and about to fall over.
Right?
I’m in San Francisco and my friend Sukhjit invited me to join her for a tea-time cupcake!
Suddenly my life is flashing in front of me, and it’s all on Facebook.
It started slowly. I joined Facebook and mostly added people I knew from Twitter, because, well, that’s who was there! 
Aside from my kids & their friends, it was mostly the early adopter crowd (and my kids ignored my invites.) As time went on, people I knew from other parts of my life began to appear, but still, they were mostly online friends.
I’m not sure what caused it, but as 2008 drew to a close, my Facebook friends list swelled up with neighbors, family members, high school, college & even elementary school classmates. It makes for a very strange virtual community! I think the game changer, to be honest, was Facebook opening newsfeed items and status updates to commenting. It makes it easier to communicate, and much more fun.
I was playing with the Facebook app called Friend Wheel, which creates a web a visually oriented person like me can understand.
According to Friend Wheel, I have 210 nodes (friends) and 2744 links (connections among those friends.) Just looking at the above image gives you a general idea of what I’m talking about. The crowded space on the left shows the interconnected nature of my social media nodes… er, friends. Take a look at the second image, where I’ve highlighted Chris Brogan, who is connected to over 100 of my friends.
Click to see larger image
I spent a lot of years compartmentalizing my life. I had my family, I had my old friends, I had my local friends, I had my online friends, and even online there were mom friends, Disney friends, etc. In Facebook they’re all overlapping. I can completely understand how that might freak people out, especially if you start connecting with business associates. You might not feel comfortable with your workmates seeing photos from your weekend party! Luckily Facebook has pretty advanced (if non-intuitive) privacy controls so you can control who sees what to a point.
Personally I’ve chosen to use Facebook socially. I’m not there to find clients, and I don’t connect with people just because they might get me some business. I have to know (and like) them from somewhere else, whether it be town or Twitter.
So here I am with this giant web of friends. They all get to see a part of me they wouldn’t otherwise, and likewise, I see them in a way I never would have. What does it all mean? How will it change the way we connect and communicate? Is it all good? And, I have to ask (of course) what’s next?
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“A lot of the core of our songs is the American idea: What is it? What does it mean? ‘Promised Land,’ ‘Badlands,’ I’ve seen people singing those songs back to me all over the world. I’d seen that country on a grass-roots level through the ’80s, since I was a teenager. And I met people who were always working toward the country being that kind of place. But on a national level it always seemed very far away.
“And so on election night it showed its face, for maybe, probably, one of the first times in my adult life,” he said. “I sat there on the couch, and my jaw dropped, and I went, ‘Oh my God, it exists.’ Not just dreaming it. It exists, it’s there, and if this much of it is there, the rest of it’s there. Let’s go get that. Let’s go get it. Just that is enough to keep you going for the rest of your life. All the songs you wrote are a little truer today than they were a month or two ago.” – Bruce Springsteen in the New York Times
Last night I was going through my server logs
for Pixel Currents, curious to see who was visiting the site and how they found it. I noticed a few people had clicked through from a couple twitter accounts belonging to people I don’t know, so of course I headed over to Twitter to see what they had said (I’m keeping their usernames private.)
The first said
Seen this good-looking Thesis mod? http://pixelcurrents.com/ And they do WP / Thesis design work #thesiswp #thesisdesigners
Wow! Thanks!
Then a response came in:
Not to be rude, but I hope their design work is not as sloppy as their logo – it takes 5 minutes to fix bad letter conections
followed by
Look at the connections between the letters, you will see the glitches – you normally fix this issues when you design a logo
Um. Ouch.
The second tweeter was talking about this.
You can see I’ve pointed out where the cursive letters don’t line up exactly. I’ve been using this font for years and it’s never been a problem because my logo was always small enough that the lack of clean letter connections wasn’t an issue. But with my current design I’ve gone BIG and BOLD and he’s right, I should have taken the time to make it cleaner.
In fact I had noticed the problem, but it never occurred to me that anyone else would care, and I just didn’t take the time to fix it. But that one tweet made me acutely aware that my site needs to be an expression of my best work, not a lazy afterthought.
I could have been insulted (and I admit my gut reaction was “who does he think he is?”) but after a moment I realized that he was right, and I had learned something important about design. So I responded:
thanks for pointing out the flaws in my logo. I admit I got a little lazy on my own site, I’ll fix when I have time
and received this back
@banannie you’re welcome – I know like it is – I’m currently redoing my site from scratch – overdue since 2 years
Instead of getting flustered and defensive (which has been my typical reaction in the past) I chose to see this as an opportunity, and connected with someone new who appears to be quite interesting!
I will fix that logo, too, as soon as I have some free time .
(if you are viewing via RSS please click through to see video, thanks!)
Over the years I’ve volunteered here and there (not quite as much as my husband, of course.) President Obama has issued a “call to service” encouraging volunteerism, which is nice. But as my tenure as treasurer for our Cub Scout pack draws to a close (my youngest graduates to Boy Scouts in March) and I begin a new volunteer gig, I was thinking a bit about what I’ve learned about people when it comes to volunteering.
Please note, these are based on real people but not specific people, and not necessarily people I know personally. If you see yourself, well, maybe you’re in there. I figure the people I know in the more negative categories either aren’t reading my blog or won’t see themselves anyway. At least I hope not… .
These are the majority. They’re gung ho, cheering everyone else on, but don’t offer to help in any way whatsoever. Of course, in some cases cheerleaders are quite useful. And the nice ones say thank you.
photo via http://www.valevolunteers.org.uk
The Clueless don’t quite get it. They don’t understand that the people doing the work are not getting paid. They have high expectations but don’t want to devote any time or effort into finding out how things work. These are the people who yell at Little League coaches, who don’t show up on time to retrieve their children from activities, who complain about the meager snacks offered at the meeting or the lousy timing that ruins their evening.
These folks will go on ad nauseum about how much they really want to help out, but they have to work 80 hour a week and their grandma is sick and their dog needs walking… Not to be confused with those who genuinely can’t find the time, these are the ones who need to offer dramatic excuses so they don’t “look bad.”
I used to fall into this group. They want to help, but not necessarily to think. They say just give me a job, including explicit directions, and I’ll do it. You can find Warm Bodies in every level of a volunteer organization, even in well-defined leadership roles. Lots of Warm Bodies are a key to success!
Cold Bodies start off as Warm Bodies, but fail to show up when expected or otherwise follow through. And then they don’t answer their phones.
After taking on an important role, the Validation Seeker will continually ask “Did I do this right? Is this OK? Can you review this?” Depending on the circumstance, the validation seeker can create more work for the rest of the team.
Git R Done marches forward and does the job at hand, no matter what it takes. Sometimes Git R Done fails to consult with other members of the team, and sometimes Git R Done steps on toes. But you can count on Git R Done to, well, get it done.
The New Guy (or Gal) comes blazing in with amazing ideas and plans and a super high excitement level about how awesome this is going to be. The New Guy can really help motivate the rest of the group, but sometimes you just want to tell The New Guy to shut up.
Specialists look at the list of what needs to be done, and chose the job that best suits them. Often the Specialist will diversify, but only when necessary. Usually the Specialist just wants to be left alone to do the job. (This would be me lately.)
Old Faithful has always been there and always will be there, like that slightly wobbly but necessary table in the corner. Old Faithful will see a need and step in to fill it, without even being asked. Groups with an Old Faithful are very fortunate. Some Old Faithfuls are quite opinionated, saying “that’s not the way we do it” or “back in the day…” but that means they can often re-ignite old ideas that fell to the wayside for no good reason (something that plagues long-time volunteer organizations that lack continuity in leadership.)
The Failed Leader takes on a leadership role with the best of intentions, but is soon distracted by work/family/life in general, leaving the rest of the group floundering and wondering what to do next. Hopefully the group has an Old Faithful or Admiral who will step up, or a Failed Leader could lead to disaster.
The Admiral steps up to run the show. The Admiral recruits volunteers, assigns tasks to Warm Bodies, reassures Validation Seekers, keeps Git R Done in check, and calls to remind Cold Bodies to follow through with their commitments. The Admiral isn’t necessarily the official leader, but may as well be. The Admiral never sleeps.
Are your experiences similar to mine? Any other types you’d like to add? Would love to hear in the comments!
As we celebrated the Inauguration of President Obama (love typing that…) yesterday I, of course, was hanging out on Twitter. During his speech I was moved a couple times to grab a quote and post it.
“restore science to it’s rightful place” WOOO!
and
“our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.”
I quickly realized I wasn’t the only one doing it. These are from my tweet stream alone (I currently follow 430 people), there were hundreds, maybe thousands more throughout Twitter. Interesting how many of us did this, and what we chose to quote!
(you may ask where the dissenters are. I admit my followed list leans left but I do have a number of conservative Twitter friends. I didn’t see much dissent in my stream at all.)
Update Jan 22: Check out this cool twitter visualization of the inauguration!
I’m not sure what the final numbers are, but a whole mess of people got together this weekend just to hang out in a basement in Milwaukee.
photo by phil campbell
Most of them had never even heard of one another eighteen months ago. Almost all met through Seesmic. I didn’t go, and I’m kicking myself for not making it work. Nothing beats face to face. I was able to contribute to this video put together by Nicole, and as awesome as it is, it’s not quite the same as being there.
Over the last 14 years I’ve met and gotten to know hundreds (yes hundreds) of people online, and I’ve met dozens in person. But I have a lot of friends, good friends who know me better than anyone I know in person, friends I’ve had for years, who I have yet to meet in real life. I hope that changes in the near future. Human touch makes a difference.
*crickets*
Pretty much everything I thought of posting here recently was something that was better off not posted here.
I’ll have some photos and video from my visit to Vintage Vinyl for Record Store Day later. Got this and a few others while I was there!
Also came across these awesome Twitter plates while browsing catalogs. Aren’t they pretty? Want.
