RonAmok!

Paul Gillin and David Strom have a podcast called MediaBlather. One of their recent guests was Social Media maven Chris Brogan, who I still owe a beer to, BTW, but that’s another story.

The conversation turned to Twitter, a microblogging service that I’ve used, yet never really grasped fully– until Chris offered his always down-to-earth insight. Instead of answering the Twitter-recommended question: “What are you doing?” he suggested answering a different one: “What are you thinking?” Instantaneously I saw the value of Twitter — not only to my followers, but also to me.

My followers wanna know what this New Media Evangelist is thinking about, the problems I’m trying to solve, and the solutions I’m practicing. And for me? I’ve been searching for a note-taking, service — a place to document thoughts for future reference. Through Chris’s advice, I found a way to kill two birds with one New Media stone.

Which brings me to this post. By combining Chris’s question with my post on Brevity, I thought that it might be interesting to document the process I went through to post a tweet:

Question: What am I thinking?:

Answer Number 1: “Throughout the course of human history, corporations have perfected the art of creating content. Unfortunately for them, according to Google, they are good at creating bad content.”

Analysis: Cool, but 40 characters over the limit

Question: What am I thinking?

Answer #2: “Throughout history, corporations have perfected the art of creating content. Unfortunately, according to Google, they’re good at creating bad content.”

Analysis: Better, but still 10 characters over the 140 character limit.

Question: What am I thinking?

Answer #3: Throughout history, corporations have perfected content creation. Unfortunately, according to Google, they’re good at creating bad content.

Analysis: Finished with one (1) character to spare! But can I pare it down even more?

Question: What am I thinking?:

Answer #4: “Over time, companies have perfected content creation. Unfortunately, according to Google, they create bad content.”

Analysis: Now we’re cooking. Completed the thought with 26 characters to spare — a 36% character savings since the original. But did I cut too close to the bone? I think some of the nuances were lost.

Question: What am I thinking?:

Answer #5: “Over time, companies have perfected content creation. Unfortunately, according to Google, they’ve perfected the creation of bad content.

Analysis: Captured the thought with four (4) characters to spare. Time is money, so I hit “send.”

Thanks to Chris, Paul, and David!

Tags: New Media Evangelist Ron Ploof Chris Brogan Paul Gillin David Strom Mediablather brevity twitter What are you thinking?

I spend so much time with content creators who use New Media on a day-to-day basis, that my views on the technology are distorted. And therefore, since last April, I’ve made it a point to step outside of the fishbowl to speak with “normal people.”

On Monday, I had another opportunity to do so at the Tustin Chamber of Commerce. I was invited by Tony Ventimiglio to be a guest speaker during his talk: “Sales and Marketing: Back to Basics.” The room held about twenty people, whose occupations ranged from insurance sales to a local print shop owner.

After my fifteen minute session, enthusiastic hands shot up to ask great questions. One woman said that she shared a name with a famous country singer, and therefore, “Googling” her name revealed music albums as opposed to her financial services business. I suggested that she take a play out of the David Meerman Scott handbook, by adding her middle name to all correspondence.

But the best question/comment of the morning came from a smartly dressed gentleman with white hair and a white mustache. “I’ve never used Google,” he said, matter-of-factly. “What I hear about blogs isn’t good. And podcasts,” he chuckled, “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You’ve never searched for anything using Google?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

Truly blown away I blurted, “Wow! I’ve never met one of you before!”

There’s a lesson in here. Although this New/Social/Web2.0 thingy is gaining steam, millions of people still need introductions to the basics. A quick poll revealed that only one of the twenty subscribed to RSS feeds, nobody listened to podcasts, and only three used Google Alerts.

So, while the fishbowlers are pushing really cool stuff such as Friendfeed, Seesmic, UstreamTV and Twitter, we all need a reality check. There’s a huge audience out there who can benefit from using New Media technologies in their businesses. They just need a basic introduction. To the high-rollers in the fishbowl, teaching the basics may not be sexy, but I’m telling you that this crowd is thirsty for learning about this stuff.

Want proof? Yesterday the Chamber called asking if I’d be the Keynote Speaker at their next “Power Lunch.”

Tags: Ron Ploof New Media Evangelist fishbowl Tustin Chamber of Commerce David Meerman Scott Web Ink Now Google Tony Ventimiglio

I love basketball.

Unfortunately, basketball doesn’t like my pinky:-)

Here’s my “problem.”

Tags: broken finger x-ray x ray basketball New Media Evangelist