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Event Details:
PodCamp + WordCamp Hawaii
When: October 24-25, 2008
Where: Hawaii Convention Center (Honolulu, Hawaii)
PodCamp + WordCamp website | Full WordCamp Schedule

And for those of you that aren’t lucky enough to be in Hawaii this weekend, you can follow along at the Official PodCamp/WordCamp Hawaii live stream.

But one conversation was somewhat encapsulated online by Britt Raybould and Chris Brogan.  In their posts, Britt and Chris touch upon the struggles that the technology community has in breaking free of the echo chamber it often finds itself in.  As a result, the impact technology has on business and other apsects of society suffers.

I’ve been thinking more and more about this tech echo chamber in recent weeks. Ever since Annie Heckenberger and I had an exchange on Twitter that started with her wondering…

Have social media unconferences/events become the new Dead Tour?

While Annie pleasantly triggered a flashback to college summers that I spent traveling from one town to another to see a concert, she also got me thinking hard about the similarities.  And if you look close enough, those similarities exist.

Following the Grateful Dead from town to town meant you were also going to see the same folks in their VW buses every night of the week.  And while the Dead’s set list was never exactly the same list twice, “Sugar Magnolia” and “Truckin” were often on that set list.  Like the great jam band they were, the songs would evolve from performance to performance, but there was still a lot similarities to that last time you head them perform “China Cat Sunflower.”

Similarly, there’s a social media conference seemingly every calendar week of the year.  In San Francisco, there’s a tweetup or mixer practically every night.  If you go to all of them, you’ll see a lot of the same people.  The agenda and topics of conversation are very similar, but there is definitely a slight element of emergence within them.

But as Britt wisely notes:

Technology, and every other industry, doesn’t have the luxury of operating in a silo, focusing only inward on the cool toys

Do we really need to be talking about technology issues with each other over and over and over?  Wouldn’t we best serve others by getting off the beaten path and spreading our knowledge elsewhere?  We need to ensure that we are looking outside our silos.  Here’s how:

Skip the next tech or social media conference

When you’re in the signup process for your next event, hit cancel.  Then go find a conference in a completely different industry and register for that.  The more removed from tech, the better.  Go to a trade show for landscape architects.  Or a conference for child daycare providers.  This will accomplish a couple of things.  Most importantly, you’ll have a chance to learn a lot about another industry by immersing yourself in it for a few days.  Secondly, you’ll have the opportunity to listen and figure out how social media and technology in general might be able to help a different industry solve  challenges or facilitate achieving their goals.  Look hard enough and you’ll probably find an audience interested in hearing more about what you know.

This doesn’t have to be scary.  Bring a buddy or two along.  If there are more tech-minded minds infiltrating a new industry, you can brainstorm new possibilities together.

Not into landscape architecture?  No problem.  Feel free to pick an industry conference that you can get excited about.  The food industry has its own conferences.  So does the travel industry.  Even the beer industry has the Craft Brewers Conference every year.  And I’m fairly certain you like beer.

It’s up to us

We all love technology.  No question about it.  Only we can ensure that every industry out there loves tech as much as we do.  But to do so, we need to break free of our existing silos and make new friends.

How did this actually happen?

It started with less than 140 characters posted to Twitter and a good cause.  A cause people could believe in and, probably most importantly, were willing to support unconditionally.   And then the groundswell formed. The Twitter backchannel took off, and before you know it, people were spreading the link, some were matching donations, and the dollar figure took off.  When you have the right cause and a listening audience willing to tell othes, you can achieve amazing things in under 140 characters.

What’s really important here is the inner willingness that people have to do good things and how technology can really facilitate making that happen.   Beth states it perfectly…

Use technology for good and it will make you feel good.

Contributing to the WordPress Community

When Holly and I formed Shiny New Toy earlier this year, we talked a lot about all the people we have learned from over the years.  Included in that discussion was the community of people involved with WordPress.  Holly and easily agree that our favorite online community are the developers, designers, hackers, and evangelists involved with the WordPress software.  That community has shared so much knowledge and has never hesitated to share their knowledge with anyone interested.  It’s a big factor (in fact it’s probably the biggest factor) in making WordPress one of the best solutions for publishing content onto the web.  Holly and I felt a desire to do more to participate in this community and so, we came up with the idea of WP Screencasts. It’s another effort in our continuing meme of  ”giving back.”

Another reason we love WordPress so much is how much thought has been put into the user interface of the WordPress dashboard.  We’ve encountered many web-based content management systems over the years and the usability of the WordPress admin screens outshines that of competing CMS packages.  However, we continue to run into challenges with teaching content managers how to use WordPress to add, edit, and manage online content.  It’s not that training users on WordPress is impossible, we’ve just found that different people learn in different ways.  Some folks require a significant amount of hands-on training and we’re happy to provide that.  Other folks do well with reading the information found in resources such as the WordPress Codex and books like WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

What we found missing for WordPress users was a comprehensive set of video based training content for learning how to use administer content in a self-hosted WordPress based websites.  WP Screencasts aims to fill that gap and complement WordPress learning resources already available on the web and in print.

A Living Resource

Our initial set of videos that we are launching with is just the beginning.  We’ll continue to expand by adding additional screencasts over time.  If there is a task that isn’t covered in a video here, let us know and we’ll do our best to include it in the future.

WP Screencasts can be found by visiting http://wpscreencasts.com

This time around, it will make an interesting case study for the state of the web in its evolved, participate state.  On November 4, if you’re not at Obama campaign headquarters, Twitter will be the place to be.  My prediction is that Twitter conversations will cross over into mainstream media and we’ll see someone like Wolf Blitzer quote a tweet or two on air.

I’m proud to be able to call the the two Social Media Club founders, Kristie Wells and Chris Heuer, my friends.  In the social media world (and in life), they are a dynamic duo.  For that matter, in any world they make a killer pair…like Sonny & Cher, Riggs & Murtaugh, or Bert & Ernie.  Even like mac & cheese. Over the past few years, Kristie and Chris poured their hearts and minds into Social Media Club.  Attending SMC events in the bay area has provided me a wealth of knowledge and a countless number of positive relationships with industry leaders and peers.  So when I received an email from Chris asking me to participate an interim board of directors to help guide the club’s strategic direction and goals, I was incredibly humbled and honored to be included in a group of 42 industry leaders asked to step forward and lend a helping hand. After all, it’s fits with my 2008 mantra of Giving Back.

And today, Social Media Club formally announced that the 42 people listed below will make up an interim Board of Directors to guide SMC into the future.

• Lee Aase – Social Media University, Global
• Rohit Bhargava – Influential Marketing Blog and Personality Not Included
• Richard Binhammer – RichardatDell
• Michael Brito – Britopian and Conversations Matter
• Chris Brogan – ChrisBrogan.com
• Mike Chapman – Austin Social Media Club and Every Dot Connects
• Megan Cole – MeganCole.org
• Alex de Carvalho – alexdc.org and Social Object
• Todd Defren – SHIFT Communications and www.pr-squared.com
• Serena Ehrlich – Business Wire
• Jason Falls – Social Media Explorer
• Maggie Fox – Social Media Group
• Jon Gatrell – spatiallyrelevant.org
• Howard Greenstein – HowardGreenstein.com
• Francine Hardaway – Stealthmode
• Josh Hallett – Hyku
• Annie Heckenberger – pikpr.blogspot.com and redspurs.com
• Chuck Hester – Intellicontact
• Chris Heuer – ChrisHeuer.com
• Sherry Heyl – Mind Blogging
• Tara Hunt – HorsePigCow
• Bill Johnston – Forum One
• Jennifer McClure – Society for New Communications Research
• Mike McGrath – Dogpatch Dispatch
• Jake McKee – CommunityGuy.com and Ant’s Eye View
• Gregory Narain – SocialTwister
• Lee Odden – Online Marketing Blog and TopRank
• Erica OGrady – ReinventingErica.com and Peanut Butter Media
• Jeremiah Owyang – Web Strategist
• David Parmet – Marketing Begins At Home, LLC and PerkettPR
• Jackie Peters – heavyBlog
• Doug Pollei – pollei.com
• Pierre-Yves Platini – Yoono
• Douglas Pollei – Pollei.com
• Connie Reece – Every Dot Connects and Austin Social Media Club
• Chris Saad – ChrisSaad.com
• Andy Sernovitz – Word of Mouth Marketing and GasPedal
• Brian Solis – PR2.0
• J.J. Toothman – jjtoothman.net and Red Pill
• Todd Van Hoosear – Tech PR Gems
• Des Walsh – Des Walsh dot Com
• Kristie Wells – KristieWells.com

It’s an impressive list.  I’m not the only who has said, "It’s an honor simply to be included in that group." I’m eager to work side-by-side with these colleagues.  I’m excited to learn from them.  And I can’t wait to see what these unique and brilliant minds come up with collectively.

Holly and I are also taking a more active role in leading the local San Francisco/Silicon Valley Chapter of the Social Media Club.  We’ll share more about that in coming weeks.  To our friends around the Bay Area, join us on Monday, July 28 for a SMC meetup in Menlo Park.  And to our friends around the world, find a Social Media Club chapter near you or even start one.

Why we did it

In the simplest sense, we were interested in having a good time.  One of our fundamental principles is "If it’s not fun, don’t bother." We are constantly reminding of ourselves of that, even basing decisions upon it.  We’ve made many friends in the web industry and those friends have done some exceptional things to ensure that good times are to be had.  And there’s no doubt that Holly and I have been known to partake in our share of free beer and impromptu happy hours. 

So with a 2008 mantra of "Giving Back", we wanted to throw our cards on the table and put together our kind of party.  Not surprisingly, it involved being at the beach.  What else would you expect from a guy who lives a 1/2 mile from the ocean and a gal who grew up in Hawaii?

But also…

The first day of summer should be treated like a holiday

Seriously, when you were a little kid, the first day of summer meant school was out, there’s a night of fireworks coming up, and you could play kickball every single day for about 3 months.  And as I got older, summer meant getting together with your friends to go on roadtrips and follow my favorite band from one city to the next.  It means wearing little more than a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. It means the sun shines bright well into the evening, there’s a baseball game every single day, and a movie you want to see is released almost every weekend.

And you shouldn’t spend holidays connected to your computer

You should spend them with your friends and family, engaging in spirited debates and thought-provoking conversations. And when the sun is out until 8 pm, you should definitely be spending more time in said sun. 

Which is another reason Holly and I organized Solstice Unplugged.  We’ve been seeing some bad trends.  And are as guilty as the next person in being involved in trends of being too jacked into the interweb.  As the days got longer and the temperatus climbed during April and May I began to notice more and more people posting to Twitter along the lines of "Wow, its really nice outside. I should get out there." Solstice Unplugged was intended to facilitate that.  We purposely picked a spot where we knew there wouldn’t be any laptops and that cell phone coverage would be spotty at best.  While we wanted to encourage discussion and chatting we wanted to do it without Twitter and text messages.  Our point was, and continues to be: Being connected via technology is pretty cool, but it’s not everything.

So what’s next for Solstice Unplugged?

I’m fairly certain we’ll be organizing something on the beach for June 21, 2009.  There seems to be some level of interest for a winter solstice celebration this December 21.  That probably won’t be on the beach, but maybe unjacking will be needed as we get caught up in the craziness that seems to come with the holiday season. 

And there has been some brainstorming about a larger movement taking place. Perhaps we should spread the word on this and encourage more people to unplug just for a little bit. With that in mind, I spent a lunch hour one day cranking out The Solstice Unplugged Manifesto.  It’s a fun attempt at setting some guidelines for unplugging a couple days every year.

So far, my favorite guideline is #8 – "You can use power to make food.  And to play music.  That’s pretty much it"

In fact, plenty (if not all) of our success can be traced back to the knowledge we have gained from the communities we inhabit online and offline.  The blogs we read, the software we use, and the though leaders we have come to know in recent years have all played a critical part in shaping how Shiny New Toy plays with others.

However, you can only be a good citizen and be part of community if you are contributing to it.  At the beginning of 2008, I personally felt like I was doing too much sponging without giving back.  Thus, I made a conscious decision to do what I could to do more.  My mantra for 2008, one that I have on instilled upon Shiny New Toy, is to give back. 

Return the favors.  Share the knowledge.  Contribute.  Give back to gain more. 

So how exactly is Shiny New Toy giving back?  Our recent Solstice Unplugged party at Gray Whale Cove was one example.  We’re also working with the Society of New Communications Research and Social Media Club – two wonderful non-profit organizations full of incredible thought leaders.  Though leaders that have provided us so much.  And we’re actively working on a project for the WordPress community.  More on all of this in due time.

It’s always exciting to be part of something.  But it becomes even more rewarding when you try to put as much into it as you are getting out of it.

Go to http://unplugged.shinynewtoy.com to RSVP and find out more details about the event.

Solstice Unplugged is being sponsored by drop.io and eno wines.