Holly and I started Shiny New Toy in early 2008.  At the time, we had both moved on from working together at NASA.  Holly found a great opportunity working with Hot Studio in downtown San Francisco.  I left NASA when Stanford University came calling.  And I was preparing for life with a second child.  There were a number of reasons we created Shiny New Toy.  First (and most importantly), Holly and I missed working on things together.  Our skills, cultural sensitivities, and work habits complement each other perfectly.  Second, we are often approached with opportunities outside of our day jobs.  Shiny New Toy became a mechanism by which would could easily assess those opportunities and chose the ones that we wanted work on.  Third, we’re always coming up with new (often silly) ideas that we quickly wanted to execute.  Shiny New Toy could be a banner for various skunkworks that we wanted to crank out.

We’ve had ups and downs in momentum over the last couple of years.  Over the past year, we’ve been pretty quiet about what we’re up to.  Last summer, I started working full time at a startup.  That was pretty much all consuming.  Doing that with a one year old and three year old at home was practically suicidal.  Meanwhile, Holly continued to crank out work for high visibility clients over at Hot Studio.  And a few months, the circle completed for me as I returned to a role at NASA.

Concurrent to all that activity, the WordPress niche which were pretty invested in began to change.  Simply put, the landscape of WordPress resources out there is pretty saturated now and forced us to reassess our focus.  In response to that we tried some different things including attempting to work on projects for pure company equity.  Not so great results with that on first attempt.

Essentially, we realized that Shiny New Toy was meant to complement our existing professional lives (for now) not be the centerpiece of it.  We’ve become self aware and comfortable with what Shiny New Toy (see previous paragraph).  Ideally, we’d pick three projects a year to work on and going forward that will be the metric we will seek to achieve. 

No, we don’t have anything big to announce today.  So stop holding your breath and exhale.  But something needed to break the silence here.  For a couple months, I started wondering what would be the tipping point to break the ice.  And last week, I think the spark that we needed was lit with the Thesis/WordPress cage match.  It got Holly and I riffing again.  Stay tuned for more thoughts on that. 

I like how he thinks.

Have to admit, I never thought I would be linking to a web page at whitehouse.gov from one of my blogs.

Federal government fees are crippling music recommendation and streaming service Pandora to the point that it may have to shut down.  This would be a major loss to the Internet as well anyone who likes music – basically everybody. Justin Dorfman offers some ideas on what we can do to save it.  Please give his post a read and take action.

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

To play a little six degrees of WordPress separation…

1. The WordPress Charity Scavenger Hunt benefits 826 Valencia
2. 826 Valencia was founded by Dave Eggers
3. Dave Eggers won the 2008 TED Prize and had his wish granted as part of winning the prize
4. Dave Eggers wishes that everyone get involved with a public school and to chronicle the involvements, the web site Once Upon A School was created
5. Once Upon A School was designed and developed built by Holly (while working for Hot Studio)
6. Holly used WordPress to get it done

Robert points out how he lost sight of what he really enjoyed about Tech blogging (in short: being a geek) and slowly, but surely gravitated to the business side of Tech.  And to some degree, tech blogging is now controlled by PR agents.  The conversations ends as quickly as it starts as the PR machine moves onto the next big thing.

Here’s why the ensuing conversation is so important

Blogging continues to be adopted.  Related social media and online communications tools are popping in places other than technology niches.  People like Holly and I; all the great people involved with Social Media Club; and even Scoble himself are helping to  lead this charge into new industries and verticals by sharing our knowledge of the strategies, techniques, practices, and toolkits involved.

So as we move forward, we should not forget what happened when Tech blogging matured.  Or is it regressed?  Scoble has pointed them out. Bookmark the discussion and return to it often so it is not forgotten.

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.

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.