My Phone Rang
Yesterday my phone rang and it was Grace.
“Hi, Dad. Can you give me Peter’s cell phone number?”
Peter is at the beach with his friend and their family. I gave Grace the number and said goodbye.
My phone rang again.
“Hi, Dad. Can you give me Peter’s number again.”
I asked her why I needed to give it to her again.
“I was in the garage and didn’t have anything to write it down on.”
I decided to ask her why she needed Peter’s number.
“Well, we were playing with Peter’s water balloons and I can’t turn the hose off.”
I asked her if she tried to get someone else to help her. The kids of one of her mom’s friends are staying with her this summer.
“Yes, they tried and they can’t turn it off either.”
I asked why she wanted to call Peter.
“He has more experience with the hose.”
At that point, I asked her if she wanted me to come try to turn the hose off.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
As I was on my way, my phone rang.
“Hi, Dad. We got the water to stop. We put a clamp on the hose.”
Classic Arcade Games in Lego
Relive some classic video games from the 1980′s with created in stop motion animation using Legos. This was created by Michael Hickox. See if you can identify all the games. Click through to YouTube to check your answers. Hat tip to Laughing Squid.
Peter’s Summer So Far
Peter has had a busy summer so far. As soon as school ended he left for UNC Basketball Camp. This is the third summer he has attended this camp in Chapel Hill. He stayed with his best friend in an off campus dorm and played basketball all day, every day. This is a perfect camp for gym rats. There are no filler activities like swimming or crafts.
The kids are divided by age into gyms for the length of camp, so Peter was with a group of nearly 50 kids who had just finished 5th grade. The boys are divided into teams, who play against each other for week. Peter’s team did not do very well in the championship games, but that’s because, according to Peter, players on his team were ball hogs and didn’t pass enough. Although in the end, it did not bother him that his team came in last in his division.
There was a free throw competition each day, and Peter won for his gym the first day. At the end of camp there was a a competition of each day’s winners. It came down to Peter and a kid whose dad played basketball for UNC. The kid was wearing his dad’s actual Carolina jersey. This was not intimidating to Peter because he didn’t realize it was real jersey. Anyway, Peter won the competition, so he was the free throw champion for his age group.
These are the kids from Chapel Hill who attended basketball camp with Peter.
He was home for a few days before heading off to Boy Scout camp at Camp Bonner on the Pamlico Sound. He had an okay time, but he needed to participate in the new Scout program to check off lots of the Boy Scout achievements. This meant he did lots of boring things (his words), rather than the fun stuff that the older boys were doing. He also came home with lots of mosquito bites. We were told it was 69, but no one really counted. And yes, he did have bug spray and use it. The bugs were just that bad. So he had a good time, not a great time, and it made him look forward to Scout camp even more next summer. And yes, they will be going to a different camp.
Thanks to Glyn Tomkins for the Scout Camp photo.
And today Peter left for the beach with his friend Blake. He was home long enough to unpack, wash clothes and pack for the beach. But when he gets home next weekend, he’s around for the rest of the summer.
Are B2B Companies Ready for the Real Time Web?
Many B2B marketers and pr professionals have heard about the real time web, and are looking to learn more about how to incorporate it into the communications mix. It continues to be one of the hottest topics of discussion around the social web water cooler, but has little meaning outside of this community. Real time web is what Twitter does well. It is what Facebook is trying to do. And it is what Google does not do well at all, and it is why rumors constantly surface about Google buying Twitter. For now, Twitter is standing firm as an independent platform that owns the real time web, but what does it mean for B2B companies.
Continue reading on SocialMediaB2B.com
Best of the Triangle at Golden Belt
Last night was Third Friday, an arts celebration in downtown Durham, and the biggest party of the night was at Golden Belt, a renovated mill east of downtown. The Independent Weekly, our local arts and alternative weekly paper, celebrated their “Best of the Triangle” results with a party in the Cotton Room, where samples were served from the Triangle’s best restaurants, as chosen by The Independent’s readers.
I went with some friends and ran into several others that I knew. We tried food from restaurants like Chubby’s Tacos, Lilly’s Pizza, Revolution, Tyler’s and The Mint. There was beer from Big Boss and Carolina Brewery and desserts from Sugarland and Gugglehopf. I met one of the guys from Wine Authorities and talked to him about North Carolina Wine TV. He knew who I was (those 2 guys who talk about wine) and I found out that the store does not carry NC wine, but has something called an endomatic, a self serve wine machine. I definitely need to check that out.
There was music inside The Cotton Room, ambient weirdness by Brad Cook, from the folk band Megafaun. There was also a stage outside where Thad Cockrell and Hobex performed. Since this was a notable Durham event, my friends from Onlyburger were there too.
Here’s a link to a few more pictures I took.
Google Asks Common Man “What is a Browser?” Common Man Has No Clue [Video]
Do you know what a browser is? Less than 8% of the people interviewed in Times Square knew.
Weird Al Sings about Craigslist
Weird Al has managed to stay relevant for nearly 30 years. The above song is a classic example of his talent. He captures both the essence of Craigslist and all its silliness with the over the top performance style of Jim Morrison of the Doors. The song features original Doors member Ray Manzarek on keyboards, adding that distinct organ sound to the song.
Fullsteam Signs a Lease
The guys behind the Fullsteam Brewery signed their lease on their new space in Downtown Durham, North Carolina. They are bringing local ingredients and the North Carolina agricultural tradition to craft brewing beer. Read more
North Carolina Wine TV
I recently launched a new venture with one of my business partners, Kipp. We are tasting and reviewing wine from North Carolina on NorthCarolinaWine.TV. Our state has a growing wine industry, over 80 wineries, and neither of us had tasted much of it. We decided to create an online video show, with two episodes a week, to taste every wine produced in North Carolina. As we learn about North Carolina wine, so will our viewers.
Response has been great so far, after only two weeks and five episodes. We have gotten lots of comments, including one from one of the wineries who’s wine we tasted. We have been invited to a winery to do a show in front of a live audience. We have even been interviewed by a local Raleigh blog about the show.
If you like the show, and you want to learn about North Carolina, subscribe via RSS or email so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on Twitter for the latest info and fan us on Facebook for exclusive, behind-the-scenes content.
Triangle Social Media Club: Listening and Engaging with Social Media
Last week’s Social Media Club featured a discussion about using tools to monitor conversations about yourself, your company or your brand on the social web. Listening is the first step of any social media campaign. It is also known as conversation tracking or reputation management.
Every day your customers prospects are using online forums, social networks, blogs, chat rooms and leaving comments across various platforms. While using these services people are having thousands of conversations online daily. By listening to these conversations and engaging, you can build valuable relationships which lead to new business and sales. We heard several examples of listening to competitors online to gain inside information about website updates, potential product releases and out of town sales calls.
Thanks to Nathan Gilliatt who jumped in and led the discussion on the benefits of using paid monitoring tools, rather than the free tools. It is mainly an issue of scale, and the amount of web chatter surrounding your company or brand. He suggested using a free tool like Blogpulse or getting a free trial on paid tool like Techrigy to determine the level of monitoring required. Rather than post a long list of links as promised, here’s a link to Nathan’s post about monitoring tools and here’s a post from Social Media Today with an even longer list of tools.
Whether you’re a startup or Fortune 500 company, as you begin to explore or implement a social media strategy for your company, you should include an engagement policy. By having an engagement policy in place, you’ll establish how you will communicate with customers and prospects online. We shared good and bad examples of customer service using social media. Companies’ use ranges from active customer service like Dell to active listeners like @OmniHotels (ask @JeffTippett about his new robe), all the way to non-responsive companies like now Cisco-owned Pure Digital, makers of Kipp’s faulty Flip Camera.
We talked about finding thought leaders in your industry using LinkedIn, blogs, and human connections. Twitter is a noisy channel to follow the thoughts of thought leaders, but may be an easy way to find them.
It is also important to have an overall social media policy, and many cited IBM as a good example that many people use as a starting point for their own policies. It should be noted that this is a living, online document that is updated as changes happen in the social web space, and not a printed document sitting in a binder on someone’s shelf.
Thanks again to everyone who came out and participated in our discussion. Triangle Social Media Club meetings are all about sharing your thoughts and ideas about Social Media with others, whether you are a veteran or just starting out.