The Wayward Celt

You all know I am active in the social media world, both personally and professionally. You also know I have opinions and I am not shy about them. I’d like to take some time here to discuss a few missteps I often see in the various social networks which may cause you more harm than good if you are trying to build or maintain relationships in these spaces:

1. Don’t shout… converse! Social networks are not your personal advertising stream, they are ways to connect with others of similar interest and build relationships which you may not have otherwise had the opportunity for. This means engaging in conversations with your network; listening AND speaking. Twitter is not a bullhorn, Facebook is not a one way street. If you are looking to use these sites to their advantage, you MUST stop shouting your message and take the time to listen to your audience; begin engaging in conversations around your space, and soon you will find that perfect cadence which your audience is looking for.

What does this mean in more concrete terms?
For Twitter, it means you need to watch your follow list and absorb what is being talked about. It means putting out your opinion and ideas about other’s updates. It means taking a look at your own feed and not seeing one way posts just pushing out your message, but rather seeing @replies and discussions occurring.

For Facebook, it means replying to comments left on your updates. It means commenting on other’s updates. I am sure you can extrapolate this all for other networks as well… the key is to engage in dialog; after all, networking is a two way street.

2. Provide context to your updates! Without any context, many updates lose all their value. Imagine an update that only says “Wow, what a busy day!”, where’s the value there? Ok, I can surmise that you are having a busy day and may not have time to talk to me about something trivial. But imagine how much more value that update would have carried had some context been applied like “BUSY DAY! Working on new social media strategies”. Now I can see that you are indeed busy, but more importantly your project may be something I can help with or would be interested in seeing the results from, even reusing it if appropriate; so I may tweet back “@you Hey! I’d love to help or see what you come up with, let’s collaborate!”… and bingo, now we’ve got a conversation and possibly even lightened our collective workloads by collaborating.

Too many times have I seen Facebook status updates similar to: “worst day EVER!” or “Not sure I can handle this”, with no further context. Not surprisingly, there are often somewhere between 5 and 20 comments on that status, all effectually asking the same question back: “What’s going on?”. Rarely, however, do I see the original poster reply back with any explanation of the context surrounding the first update. This leaves all their friends in the lurch, so to speak, reaching out to try and help, but without context there is no way to know what anyone could do. Now imagine that same update as”Not sure I can handle changing my tire on the freeway”. Immediately friends can identify something tangible to assist with, and the poster may even see a comment come back like “tell us where you are and we’ll pick you up” or “I have AAA, and will call a truck for you”.

Context, my friends, is important. It can mean the difference between radio silence from your followers, and an overwhelming flow of support helping you do things you never knew you could accomplish. Really, the line between the two is so small, it may just be the difference of a single word in your update that opens the floodgates of conversation or assistance.

3. When someone asks a question; reply. I hit on this in number two, but it bears repeating and being called out on its own. If someone comments on your update or @replies to one of your tweets, do the courtesy of replying. Even if the reply is “I don’t know”, at least you will be engaging in conversation and showing that you are listening to your friends and followers. This also goes back to number one as well, where if you aren’t replying, you are in that paradigm of shouting your message and telling your followers that you’re not listening to them. By not replying, your followers will begin to think that you aren’t interested in conversation, that you’re only interested in pushing out your message. If your followers get to that point, you’ve just lost any benefit you may see from playing in the social media spaces, and even worse, will likely begin losing followers to the point where the audience for your message has dwindled to completely ineffectual levels.
The net result of this: if you ignore your followers, they’ll ignore you.

How about neither?

This week has been fairly busy in the Social Media world when it comes to shakeups. First it was the news that Forrester (an independent market research firm) began telling its analyst employees to either take down or redirect their personal blogs to the Forrester main site (as referenced in the article here: http://thesocialcustomer.com/Home/15561). The idea Forrester was going with here is that market analysis is intellectual property owned by Forrester and that should be under the control of the company. We’ve seen this corporate behaviour before when ESPN cracked down on its employees in the same fashion, stating that “Personal websites and blogs that contain sports content are not permitted” (reference the BrandBuilder blog for more details).

What we are seeing here are corporations overly worried about governance, and looking for the easy way to control perceived property. Rather than embracing the employees who are displaying a passion for the industries they represent, allowing them to flourish, and drive forward as thought leaders in their space, these employees are now being constrained and stifled by corporate mandates; driven through the funnel of their governance into a single space where the company has its security blanket of control in full force.

It won’t take a genius to figure out how I feel about that. But that doesn’t mean I want the pendulum swinging to the other end either.

Take today’s news of the new BBC Director -mandating- that all journalists employed by the BBC begin using social media. See Mashable’s coverage here for the story and links to sources: http://mashable.com/2010/02/10/bbc-social-media/

While I appreciate that Mr. Horrocks believes in at least using the content with attribution, I can’t imagine how his staff feel about being mandated to use social media now. Yes, I believe there IS a place for social media in the newsroom. Yes, I think journalists should be paying attention here and not ignoring the information trending through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etcetera. But I don’t believe that should warrant a mandate either.

Any policies which demand action on any side of the spectrum here are destined for failure; either you will fail at controlling your employees with a tight enough reign, or you will fail to ensure they are engaged in the spaces you want them to be paying attention.

I have said this before about other things (like tattoos, TV shows, or even working from home), but Social Media isn’t for everyone. That doesn’t mean Social Media is the devil either. People all learn differently, work differently, and consume information differently. When corporations adopt policies allowing their employees the freedom to engage in the venues and areas in which they as individuals find passion, THAT is when you will see great successes. Not everyone will be excited by social media outlets, just like others are not excited by more traditional avenues of content consumption. But when you allow those people with the passion to find their niche, your company will grow as the thought leaders in your industry, and as the communities grow and each individual you employ becomes those respected subject matter experts in their related fields… soon, your clients will see your brand as the knowledge experts.

THAT is something you can not force through policy or mandates. That is only something that can come from the social communities in a purely organic fashion, and only with proper care and cultivation over time. Stifling your employees on EITHER end of the spectrum will not empower them to excel in your controlled space or adopt new methods of working. Empowering your employees happens when you allow them to follow their passions and work in their own ways.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t call out my own company’s brilliant policies surrounding social media involvement. Yes, I work for IBM Rational Client Support as a knowledge manager with a focal role in social media/web2.0 initiatives, and yes IBM has what I consider to be one of the best social media guidelines around: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

And others seem to share my respect for IBM’s progressive policies, like Olivier Blanchard from his BrandBuilder blog article referenced above, and Casey Hibbard in her article on the SocialMedia Examiner here.

I figure, if a company as large and diverse as IBM can successfully implement such open policies surrounding social media, why can’t yours?

And lastly, a disclaimer as is appropriate: The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions. The words I write are mine and mine alone, please don’t attribute them to any person or company other than me.

It is true what they say; tattoos are addictive. Ever since my first ink back in February 1996, I’ve been constantly planning the next pieces I’ll get, always looking at least 3 designs in the future. Each design has shifted and changed as I have, up to the point where it is the perfect piece at the perfect time to have it set in ink. All my tattoos have been years in the making from concept to execution. And last night’s session at Adorn Body Art was no different.

For the past two year, I’d been contemplating a few concepts for more tattoos loosely based around how my life has changed since we left California and moved to Oregon. Part of that concept was realized in my Craftsman/Mission style number 13 house plague in black and gray on my upper inner forearm. For me, this was a great realization of the work Jean and I have done on our new home, as well as a celebration of 13 years of marriage (anniversary date is July 13th). But something about it left me wanting… it felt somehow incomplete, as if it needed more balance. So, I opted to add in another design I had been thinking about for the past two years: an Arts & Crafts stained glass design called the “Pasadena Rose”.

Both Jean and I fell in love with the design immediately after installing the two wall sconces which incorporate it in our living room. For me, the design connects the dots of our move from Southern California, to the “Rose City” of Portland. It also displays my love for the Arts&Crafts / Mission / Craftsman design movements which are popular in both  SoCal and Portland.

Like all my tattoos, this one has a deeper connection and meaning for me than I can adequately convey in plain words. The best way I can describe it is this: tattoos for me are stamps on the steamer trunk of my body; they tell the tale of my life in iconic form.

In this latest case, it is the stained glass “Pasadena Rose” on my forearm:

Click the picture for the larger view

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Lastly, here is my Picasa gallery showing some of the tattoo work I’ve had done: http://picasaweb.google.com/acdntlpoet/Tattoos?feat=directlink

More work can be seen on the WaywardCelt gallery here: http://waywardcelt.com/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=16

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Some call it vanity, but  a little self promotion can’t hurt, right?

Today, I was honoured to have been the first in what will become a regular series of interviews with various people involved with my employer, IBM Rational Client Support. You can read the full text of my interview here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/nfrsblog/entry/meet_jason_o_donnell4?lang=en

On a purely selfish note, I would love to hear your feedback about this interview:

• Did you like the questions asked? The answers?
• Is there something you thought may have been missing?
• Do you see any value in learning more about people within a company which you may be a client of?
• Does this help de-mystify the company and bring in a more personal feel to the face of an organization?
• Are there ways you think this could have been done better?

I’ll explain further why answer to these questions are important to me….

In the interest of full disclosure and transparency: I am a content contributor as well as directly involved with the just-launched interviews initiative on the Notes from Rational Support Blog. Additionally, I will likely be taking over driving these interviews and posting to the blog, hence my interest in your feedback about the structure, etc. My interview being the first to run was kind of a bit of a cheat since Kelly Smith (@kellypuffs) and I are collaborating on the initiative. In my defense, I tried to get someone else first, but work cycles just weren’t available to do so, as such Kelly fell back on me as an easy standby so we could start the weekly cadence of interviews sooner rather than later. That said, I am still proud to have been spotlighted!

What REALLY gets me excited about this series though? Not the fact that I was spotlighted, but rather the anticipation of how all the future respondents will answer the interview questions (we have about twice as many questions than what I answered, none being ‘required’). I am absolutely looking forward to the variety of insights into both the organization as well as the individuals presented. Being so new to the organization myself, I find amazing value in the stories presented by the old-hats as well as the new ones. Seeing the organization and experiences from so many different points of view has always helped me shape my own understanding of the business and learn from both past mistakes and successes. I see this series as another way to learn even more personally, while also helping our clients see the more personal side to what can often be a faceless organization.

Of course, being one who likes instant gratification, this is going to be a hard one for me to keep to only a weekly cadence, and I am hoping the demand from the readership tells me the same thing. But that is the key to good blogging: keep a steady cadence with content your readership wants, and will keep coming back looking for more!

Yes, I know it has been a while since my last post. Real life happened. I am now, however, finally getting to a point where I am not so emotionally exhausted that I can’t string together more than 140 characters at a time.

Speaking of which, I made an odd discovery about myself yesterday: apparently I obtain a small sense of validation from being re-tweeted. And it actually makes perfect sense to me. After all, a re-tweet is essentially someone else saying: “see what this person posted, yes I agree with it and think it is valuable enough to pass on”. And that makes me feel like my ideas, or even just my words, carry some minor value in the social media spaces in which I have begun playing. It is nice to get that sense that I am doing something right.

Positive feedback is a wonderful motivator.

As many of you know, my dad has been painting watercolours for a number of years now as his passion. He’d been drawing professionally all his life, but only in retirement did he seriously tackle watercolours as his focal media. After showing quite well in a few juried competitions and art shows, and being asked numerous times if he was in a gallery or on the web, he came to me to discuss building a website. So, a few years back, I built out a site and surprised him for his birthday; since then, I’ve rebuilt and maintained his site as a birthday present since it isn’t a necessity for him, and being retired I figured it is an expense he didn’t need to shell out.

While I know the value of a website, it seems dad just figured out exactly what it can do for him. About two months ago he was contacted by a gentleman who had found dad on his website and indicated he was interested in purchasing one of his paintings. They communicated a few times, and finally met up yesterday for a private viewing of a few of dad’s paintings. Dad walked away from that viewing having sold three of his largest paintings for a few thousand dollars each. He called to tell me the news within minutes of arriving home. Rarely have I heard dad so giddy, but I guess a bit of a financial windfall like that will perk anyone’s spirits, especially right before the holiday.

You want to make a retired painter happy? I think I finally found the formula… it involves patience, talent, and a whole lot of luck.  Merry Christmas, dad.

Lastly, for those of you who haven’t seen his work before, go ahead and click on over to www.ODonnellMarineArt.com
I think you’ll enjoy what you see there… though I am indeed biased of course; not only because he raised me, but because I also own four of his originals. And no, mine aren’t for sale 

At my day job, I am a knowledge manager for IBM Rational Support. In this position I am helping to drive a concept known as “KCS”, or Knowledge Centered Support.  I like KCS, because it allows me to do what I have been doing all my life when it comes to information: reuse.

I’ve always found my patience tried when pushed to repeat myself, so I would fall back into a pattern of reusing information I previously provided. Oddly enough, however, it took me YEARS before I began actually reusing content for one of the questions I am most commonly asked: “What whiskies do you recommend?”

So, two years ago, I answered that question in the form of a blog post on my whiskies tasting group site: www.3DrunkenCelts.com

Since it was around the Christmas holiday, I framed the original post in the context of gifting whiskies to someone else, but the concepts and recommendations are still solid if you are just buying for yourself.

This year, I am going to fall back on the best practices I’ve learned over the years and simply reuse my old content, as it still holds up today:

• 3DC: Need help buying a whisky lover a Christmas gift?

So, jump on over to my tasting group’s site at the link above and read through my post on buying whiskies as gifts… and maybe even take a look at Raz’ recommendations for non-whiskey whiskey gifts too. Who knows, you may just find that perfect something for the perfect someone, or just for yourself

A sad day hit the household this weekend; our drip coffee maker developed a leak.

While this was not entirely catastrophic, it did give us the excuse to finally replace our little Mr. Coffee with a proper drip machine that would bring our Stumptown roasts to full flavour. After some solid refreshers on my previous research (I spent a full year researching my purchase of the Rancilio Sivlia and Rocky combination for my espresso setup), I had narrowed our choices down to 2 within hours: a Capresso MT-500 or a Technivorm Moccamaster .

Further discussion and a final trip to a local kitchen store, Kitchen Kaboodle, resulted in us coming home with a Technivorm Moccamaster Thermal carafe drip machine:

Such a beautifully simple drip machine. It has only one switch with two settings: on and off. No timer, no clock, no bells and whistles. The brilliance of the machine is the power it wields, as it is one of the only machines on the market which will actually heat the water to the perfect extraction temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also one of the very few machines (possibly still the only home drip machine) which can boast an SCAA certification/approval for meeting its standards.

Now, with the old coffee maker in the garage, I have disassembled it in preparations and attempts to see if I can rebuild/mod it into a steampunk style Mr. Coffee at the suggestion of a good friend. If I am successful, you can expect a full process write up on this blog.

Of course, while we were at Kitchen Kaboodle, we also ended up replacing our 13 year old Hamilton Beech 7-cup food processor with a new, larger Cuisinart Custom 14 cup food processor:

I think that should pretty much settle any future kitchen appliance purchases for another 10+ years. If we had kids, these two appliances would be handed down to them when we pass; they are built that well!

With that, I’ll go have another cup of Stumptown, perfectly brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Ah coffee, how I love you!

Ok, so this is how my ‘vacation’ went:

Right off the bat, let me say that the time spent at war with friends was well worth the effort…. I had not been looking forward to this war as I had others. No sense of excitement for the tasting was washing over me, nor was I looking towards the 1700+mile roundtrip to get there and back. It wasn’t until the Sunday before when I figured I was committed to it, since that was when I had packed my bike in preparation. And it wasn’t until Tuesday before that I was 100% sure I was going…

Click the link below for the full story… Be warned, this post is as long as the 1700 miles I rode to make it.

The Gospels According to Seamus: The Exiled years

(Whiskies of the World, 2009)

(To follow along the timeline of events, use Twitter search to locate all our Tweets posted with the #3DC tag: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%233dc )

A panoply of emotion washed over me before my departure for this year’s event. My excitement was still present, yet not as palpable as in years past; I was muted by an underlying exhaustion from a looming deadline, one which I was determined to ignore once I locked the door to my house….. click the link below for more!

2.5 days of whisky fueled mayhem… with tasting notes!