Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Is Twitter devouring itself?
Twitter lists have been around for all of one week and already there is a site that exists to make a list of lists. So I am hereby inaugurating my new Twitter destination site, consisting of this one page, on which I will offer a definitive list of the lists of Twitter lists.
How a bad haircut created the risk tolerance to go open-source
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When I was a kid I had the shortest hair of any girl in my class because my mum couldn’t face the hassle of hair maintenance. As soon as I got old enough to take care of it myself, I grew my hair as long as possible, and by the time I graduated from university it reached halfway down my back. Then I got my first real job and needed a grown-up look, so I gritted my teeth and asked for a modest trim. Instead, my stylist sheared me back to my ear-baring elementary school years, and I left the salon in an emotional state usually reserved for breakups and natural disasters.
That trauma led to an important discovery: hair grows back.
How to create a great report summarizing your workshop’s results, with an example from Vancity’s Change Everything
We love the Concept Jam workshop for what happens in the room, as people get excited about the possibilities for social media in their organizations and their own work. And we love taking what happens in the room and teasing out the ideas and mashing them up with what we know ourselves until we can deliver a really varied, exciting set of options.
But in between the room and the
Ask social media experts to share their secrets at SXSW
Our decision to open source Social Signal’s intellectual property has made me rethink my proposed panel for SXSW. This week, I’ve heard from folks who (like us) are eager to share their social media “secrets”. So why not use that to see whether social media experts to live up to their own hype?<
A recent graduate finds hope in Social Signal’s social media career advice
More advice for recent grads who want to get started in social media.
Canadian Press article points to Social Signal for social media tips and open-source resources
Today’s Canadian Press article by Tamsyn Burgmann, Companies seek social media experts to keep online conversation rolling, shared our tips on starting a career in social media.
Agenda and script for the Concept Jam social media strategy workshop
The Concept Jam workshop agenda (doc) is the document we share with all the participants in a workshop. We create a custom agenda for each workshop, depending on client, participants and the time available (while we prefer a full day, we’ve done half-day versions by developing the list of audiences, goals and strengths ahead of time, in consultation with our client).
How to deliver a social media strategy workshop that builds capacity and finds opportunities
The Concept Jam is a workshop-based methodology for identifying an organization’s most promising social media opportunities. It’s the part of our work that we love the most, and that we think gives the greatest value to our clients. It’s also the one part of our current service line-up that we hope to do even more of in the months and years to come. So we figured we’d put our money where our mouth is by giving that away first.
How to enable sleep on your HP Mini hackintosh netbook
Because your hackintosh won’t bring you much joy if closing the lid makes your computer freeze.
12 things you don’t know about Rob Cottingham
In a few hours I’ll be thankful for a plate of turkey, stuffing and gravy. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like jamming chunks of bread into the cavity of a formerly living creature to make you appreciate what really matters in life. As I stood elbow-deep in turkey, I found myself reflecting on the person who is at the heart of most of what I have to be thankful for this year
The Harvard Business Review
Is Twitter devouring itself?
Twitter lists have been around for all of one week and already there is a site that exists to make a list of lists. So I am hereby inaugurating my new Twitter destination site, consisting of this one page, on which I will offer a definitive list of the lists of Twitter lists.
How a bad haircut created the risk tolerance to go open-source
<
When I was a kid I had the shortest hair of any girl in my class because my mum couldn’t face the hassle of hair maintenance. As soon as I got old enough to take care of it myself, I grew my hair as long as possible, and by the time I graduated from university it reached halfway down my back. Then I got my first real job and needed a grown-up look, so I gritted my teeth and asked for a modest trim. Instead, my stylist sheared me back to my ear-baring elementary school years, and I left the salon in an emotional state usually reserved for breakups and natural disasters.
That trauma led to an important discovery: hair grows back.
How to create a great report summarizing your workshop’s results, with an example from Vancity’s Change Everything
We love the Concept Jam workshop for what happens in the room, as people get excited about the possibilities for social media in their organizations and their own work. And we love taking what happens in the room and teasing out the ideas and mashing them up with what we know ourselves until we can deliver a really varied, exciting set of options.
But in between the room and the
Ask social media experts to share their secrets at SXSW
Our decision to open source Social Signal’s intellectual property has made me rethink my proposed panel for SXSW. This week, I’ve heard from folks who (like us) are eager to share their social media “secrets”. So why not use that to see whether social media experts to live up to their own hype?<
A recent graduate finds hope in Social Signal’s social media career advice
More advice for recent grads who want to get started in social media.
Canadian Press article points to Social Signal for social media tips and open-source resources
Today’s Canadian Press article by Tamsyn Burgmann, Companies seek social media experts to keep online conversation rolling, shared our tips on starting a career in social media.
Agenda and script for the Concept Jam social media strategy workshop
The Concept Jam workshop agenda (doc) is the document we share with all the participants in a workshop. We create a custom agenda for each workshop, depending on client, participants and the time available (while we prefer a full day, we’ve done half-day versions by developing the list of audiences, goals and strengths ahead of time, in consultation with our client).
How to deliver a social media strategy workshop that builds capacity and finds opportunities
The Concept Jam is a workshop-based methodology for identifying an organization’s most promising social media opportunities. It’s the part of our work that we love the most, and that we think gives the greatest value to our clients. It’s also the one part of our current service line-up that we hope to do even more of in the months and years to come. So we figured we’d put our money where our mouth is by giving that away first.
How to enable sleep on your HP Mini hackintosh netbook
Because your hackintosh won’t bring you much joy if closing the lid makes your computer freeze.
12 things you don’t know about Rob Cottingham
In a few hours I’ll be thankful for a plate of turkey, stuffing and gravy. Meanwhile, there’s nothing like jamming chunks of bread into the cavity of a formerly living creature to make you appreciate what really matters in life. As I stood elbow-deep in turkey, I found myself reflecting on the person who is at the heart of most of what I have to be thankful for this year
OneZero
3 ways short links can help you drive traffic to your blog or web site
This week I showed a colleague a few of my favorite tricks with link shorteners -- you know, the services that replace http://www.YourVeryLongURL.com/then-the-directory-name/plus-the-long-name-of-that-specific-page with http://bit.ly/sh0rtl1nks. After sharing some...
Strengthening weak ties online: A first response to Gladwell’s take on social media activism
Malcolm Gladwell has a new piece on Twitter, Facebook and social activism that is a must-read for people working at the intersection of politics and technology, and which feels especially timely after spending the past five days at Web of Change. He argues that the...
Students use the internet to keep in touch with parents | Easier
A UK insurance firm has released the results of a study that looks at how students use the internet to keep in touch with parents: According to the study, parents rely heavily on social media platforms like Facebook to keep tabs on their children once they've left...
Addicted to Internet addiction
Thanks to Tonic for pointing me towards Mark Malkoff's unusual retreat from supposed Internet addiction: by spending 5 days offline, in the bathroom. Malkoff's stunt was clearly more relevant as fodder for his online videos that as an insightful investigation into...
The accidental online society
Anil Dash's blog post last week on The Facebook Reckoning includes this terrific summary of what's at stake for us in inventing our new, social media-ted society: But what if I weren't my own boss? What if my family couldn't accept parts of my identity? What if I...
Keep your Facebook friends from revealing your secrets
The T-List has a very readable, useful and detailed post, Are Your Facebook Friends Revealing Secrets? The post points out that when you leave a post on a friend's Facebook wall, their privacy settings (whether they allow their wall posts to be viewed only by friends,...
Another voice for your real life online
Suzanne Moore at the Mail Online has written my favorite recent social media polemic, Why my friends on Facebook and Twitter matter as much as those in the real world. As a journalist, I am a fan of both Facebook and Twitter and am rather bored of people telling me...
Bathroom graffiti, meet social media
The back-to-school rhythm of September has stayed with me in the years since I graduated myself, but it has fresh resonance this September as I'm back in an academic environment. Here at Emily Carr the pace has quickened, the cafeteria is jammed and the anxious faces...
JSTOR DAILY
3 ways short links can help you drive traffic to your blog or web site
This week I showed a colleague a few of my favorite tricks with link shorteners -- you know, the services that replace http://www.YourVeryLongURL.com/then-the-directory-name/plus-the-long-name-of-that-specific-page with http://bit.ly/sh0rtl1nks. After sharing some...
Strengthening weak ties online: A first response to Gladwell’s take on social media activism
Malcolm Gladwell has a new piece on Twitter, Facebook and social activism that is a must-read for people working at the intersection of politics and technology, and which feels especially timely after spending the past five days at Web of Change. He argues that the...
Students use the internet to keep in touch with parents | Easier
A UK insurance firm has released the results of a study that looks at how students use the internet to keep in touch with parents: According to the study, parents rely heavily on social media platforms like Facebook to keep tabs on their children once they've left...
Addicted to Internet addiction
Thanks to Tonic for pointing me towards Mark Malkoff's unusual retreat from supposed Internet addiction: by spending 5 days offline, in the bathroom. Malkoff's stunt was clearly more relevant as fodder for his online videos that as an insightful investigation into...
The accidental online society
Anil Dash's blog post last week on The Facebook Reckoning includes this terrific summary of what's at stake for us in inventing our new, social media-ted society: But what if I weren't my own boss? What if my family couldn't accept parts of my identity? What if I...
Keep your Facebook friends from revealing your secrets
The T-List has a very readable, useful and detailed post, Are Your Facebook Friends Revealing Secrets? The post points out that when you leave a post on a friend's Facebook wall, their privacy settings (whether they allow their wall posts to be viewed only by friends,...
Another voice for your real life online
Suzanne Moore at the Mail Online has written my favorite recent social media polemic, Why my friends on Facebook and Twitter matter as much as those in the real world. As a journalist, I am a fan of both Facebook and Twitter and am rather bored of people telling me...
Bathroom graffiti, meet social media
The back-to-school rhythm of September has stayed with me in the years since I graduated myself, but it has fresh resonance this September as I'm back in an academic environment. Here at Emily Carr the pace has quickened, the cafeteria is jammed and the anxious faces...
THE VERGE
What the Internet did for you in 2011
My year-end post for the Harvard Business Review asked the question, What did the Internet do for you this year? In that post, I wrote: Appreciating the moments when our online work and lives just click tells us that all this time we spend online is not a compulsion,...
My 11 most popular blog posts of 2011
29 free or cheap online collaboration software tools for you and your team
Under "fire, pants on", please file my blog post of not two weeks ago, claiming to have seen the light on how to choose online collaboration tools so that you accommodate the least-geeky member of your team. As a philosophy, that lasted for 10 whole days, but as a...
Writing about Motherhood Online
[O]n the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, which liberates you to be a bitch. Not a bitch to others -- ...online mothers' groups are quick to sanction hostility -- but the impatient, imperfect bitch of a mom uses jarred babyfood, disposable diapers and a TV-as...