FullSteam Backyard Beer Fest

Recently, the under-construction FullSteam Brewery in Durham, NC hosted a Backyard Beer Festival featuring local homebrewers. Read more

Fallen Princesses

Photographer Dina Goldstein has created a series of photographs called Fallen Princesses where she looks at the next chapter in the lives of fairy tale princesses, but set in the modern world.

Weird Al Helps Explain Auto-Tune

Rocketboom continues their series of Know Your Meme with special guest Weird Al, explaining the tired musical trend using a software treatment called auto-tune, which corrects a singer’s pitch and makes them sound like a robot. From Wired.

Dilbert Doesn’t Shake Hands Anymore

There is recent trend going around where people don’t shake hands for sanitary reasons. Dilbert follows this trend.

Social Media in the Classroom

I recently had the opportunity to speak to a Social Media class for MBA students at NC State. The 2nd year class is taught by Claudia Kimbrough and she worked with Chris Moody to arrange an awesome lineup of guest lecturers. I was excited to be included on a syllabus that included Joseph Jaffe, Andy Beal, Wayne Sutton, Katie Morse and Camden Watts.

I arrived at the class on a particularly busy day, between final preparations for our business conference the next day and heading to the State Fair for a Tweetup. I was asked about slides or presentation, and I replied that I didn’t have any. Some people call this “going rogue,” but I just call it speaking. All I needed was an internet browser to show examples.

My general topic was using social media to build community around a business or organization. I talked about various projects that I am working on, as well as answering questions along the way. Claudia took great notes and posted them on the class blog. The high level takeaways are listed below. Read the blog for the detail under these points.

• Figure out who and WHERE your customers and prospects are
• Content is still King
• Use Google Analytics and some other cool tools
• RSS feeds are inherent to blogs
• Start a blog for Personal Branding

It was fun to speak to a class about social media, because these are the next group of business leaders. Everyone assumes that the digital generation knows all about social media, but that’s really not true. They understand it as a personal communication tool, but there’s a big leap transfering that knowledge to business applications.

Guy Kawasaki On Twitter Strategies For Building A Huge Following

From Marketing Voices:

The legendary Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and Twitter aficionado talks about the strategies he uses for gaining incredible numbers of people following him on twitter. More than 180,000 people are reading his tweets as of October 2009. He talks about how there is no correct or incorrect way to use Twitter despite the challenging criticisms he gets from his followers on his strategy. He uses Twitter mostly promotionally just to build Alltop, a company he co-founded and loves dearly. Guy talks about how he is a broadcast network—more like PBS– as he educates his readers with his content-rich tweets. He uses ghost writers and discusses his transparency and tricks-of-the-trade.

Twitter Lists and What Others Think of Me

If you are part of the social media world, and especially the Twitterverse, you know that Twitter recently added a list feature so Twitter users can now organize the people they follow into smaller, more manageable groups and view their timelines together. While this makes Twitter more usable for users who are following a lot of people, it also provides a bit of insight into what people think of you, or in this case me.

As of this moment, I am on 58 lists. That seems like a large number, but not really when it is compared to the 2128 people who follow me. Does that mean that 2070 who follow me and didn’t put me on a list don’t care about my tweets? I wouldn’t go that far, but I am sure some of them don’t. I am more interested in what the people who took the time to put me on a list think of me. I’ve divided the lists into categories below and have examples of the list names.

Professional Lists (34%)
These people are interested in viewing my Twitter stream along with others tweeting about B2B, marketing or social media.
b2b-marketers
b2b-thinkers
social-media
social-media-b2b
marketing-tweeps
marcomm-advertising
industry-professionals

Local Area (34%)
The next category is of people who have grouped me with others in the Triangle region of central North Carolina
nc-neighbors
triangle-nc
raleigh
raleigh-durham
triangle-tweeple

Event Speakers (12%)
I have spoken at several recent events and a few people have categorized me related to those events.
speakers
socialfresh
smbf

A Lonely Category
Only one person has categorized me as a photographer. This is not surprising as I don’t tweet about photography or share my real photos that much. Mobile phones have made everyone an online photographer.
photographers

Huh?
These three people created lists that I don’t understand. I do know all of them, but am a bit boggled by the names. Teneighty? Information? What else are you getting on Twitter? And blinkers? All of this person’s lists rhyme, but I don’t know what it means.
teneighty
information
blinkers

It Could Go to My Head
I am both humbled and jazzed to be on the following lists. They show that I have made a real impact on people and they value my thoughts, opinions, and even friendship. Thanks. You guys are very cool.
smart-people
rockstars
thoughtleaders
smartncooltweeps
top-b2b-influentials
a-list
friends
worlddomination

What is the best list that you are on?

Help Me Celebrate Movember

About 3 months ago I shaved off my goatee that I had for about two years. It was getting pretty grey and Grace, who never liked it, encouraged me to shave it. Before that I had full beards on and off for many years. Primarily I have either been clean-shaven, as I am now, or bearded. I will count a goatee as a beard. One of the few times in my life that I just had a moustache, besides the early peach fuzz that I first shaved for my Bar Mitzvah at 13, was at the request of the McDonald’s Corporation. I worked at McDonald’s for 6 weeks after graduating from high school and beards were not allowed. And yes, I had a full beard my senior year of high school. I shaved my beard, leaving my moustache that summer. I arrived at college as a freshman with a cheesy moustache as evidenced by the college ID photo at the left. While it is not what I remember, but apparently I spent most of college with a moustache, as the picture on the right is my grad school ID photo. Still moustachioed, but not as cheesy. It was a much more serious time, so I had more serious picture.

So why all this talk about moustaches and what is Movember anyway. This is a global movement that is bringing much needed attention to cancers that affect men. I’m growing a Moustache this month to support this cause. My commitment is to grow a moustache all November and I am hoping that you will support my efforts by making a donation. The funds raised go to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LIVESTRONG).

What many people don’t know is that 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime and testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 18-35. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved.

Click this link to go to my personal donation page and donate online using your credit card.

All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund research to find better treatments and a cure for prostate cancer.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation will use the money raised by Movember to fund:

• The LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance program which has the goal of improving survival rates and quality of life for young adults with cancer between the ages of 15 and 40.
• Research initiatives to further understand the biology of adolescent and young adult cancers.