Hanging with some cool people.

Oh yeah, presenting about social networks, too.

I was asked to send in a few questions that I’d most like to be asked during the presentation. Here are 4.

Q: At what point does the social actuality of what you’ve built consume your original vision? In other words, at what point do you have to adapt, as a business owner or CEO, and change your direction based on what the community wants? or do you?

Q: What do you think of the whole “the customer is always right” thing and how does that work in these vast, open, social networks that we see these days?

Q: When you’ve got a new product or service, how do you figure out who the first 50 people to use it are going to be? the first 1,000 people? how does that number become 1,000,000?

Q: Hey, isn’t ’social network’ kind of a tired term by now anyway? What would you replace it with?

Should be fun timez.

Go go BizTechDay.

Why do you Twitter? Could be a networking thing, a promotional thing, an idea thing, a keep-in-touch thing, a “i want to hang with Scoble!” thing. Who knows.

Why do I Twitter? I do it for myself. I don’t do it as Editor in Chief of Squidoo. I don’t do it as a new way to connect with and befriend lensmasters (though that can be a happy side effect). I don’t do it to get a lot of followers. I don’t have an axe to grind or a mission on Twitter. I don’t do it to get famous or even, really, to change minds or spread an idea. Twitter is too… Twitter for that.

Instead, I Twitter (and I only started back up about a month ago) because I have a lot of comments and interjections and expletives and notions in my head throughout the day that I enjoy writing down. For me. I enjoy that freedom. So much else in my life has a vision and guidelines and purpose and burning goal or agenda, I like the… purposelessness… (?) of Twitter.

I Twitter as a kind of personal scrapooking or timeline of stuff I am interested in. It will be fascinating, a year from now, to look back at Twitter as a Time Capsule and see what people, and I, was thinking and saying about the election.

I Twitter because I like to follow smart people I either know in person or have “met” or admired on the web, and hear what they’re up to, what ideas they’re cooking, what crashed and burned, what’s on their plates right now. Told in an entirely, disarmingly candid and different tone than in email and blog posts and videos.

Last, I Twitter because I enjoy the creative destruction. You think of something, then you edit it down to its core essentials: a few dozen words.  Restrictions really bring out the most basic truths. And it’s never bad to practice working within restrictions… restricted resources, money, access, time, emotions… and words.

One more note about Twitter:  Don’t follow me. Really. Like I said above, I’m not looking for reach or exposure, not there. And my updates are probably waaay more boring than you’d ever know. :) But if you insist and want to follow me, sure, I’m human, I’m flattered by the interest.  If you’re a lensmaster (first, if you’re here reading this, please remember it’s my personal blog, not a Squidoo blog), I’m even more flattered if you want to follow me. If I’m paying attention I might follow you back. If I don’t, it’s not personal. If you @ all your lenses at me, I’ll probably be even more inclined NOT to follow. And if you send me bugs on Twitter, I promise you you’re really wasting your time. ;)

So, here’s me on Twitter. No promises. No agenda. No guarantees. No official Squidness. Just me.

I was having a good night until I saw this.

I’m lacking any eloquence or smart response.

My jaw is on the floor.

Ignorance is not forgivable. Hatred either. I’m literally speechless.

The worst part? I feel the anger, the hate, rising in me when I watch this. I want to say “You stupid fucks, use your brains.” That’s the terrifying part. That ignorance and hatred begets…well… more hatred. On both sides of the aisle argument vote sword. Yoda was right.

Instead I choose to transcend, and say instead: please, please, please… think. I don’t care who you vote for. (I do, but right now, I don’t). Just don’t be like this. Or we’re all in for it. Yours and mine both.

There’s a lot I like about Animoto.

I just created another account with them to do some testing. Their signup screen asks for your birthday. Always a little annoying, but I love the candid, real way that Animoto explains why they ask for your beeday in their tooltip.

WHY WE ASK FOR BIRTHDAYS

We hear ya–it’s annoying to enter birthdates, and it feels like an invasion of privacy. But now we know there are at least two reasons they’re needed.

First, there are laws prohibiting users under the age of 13 from giving out personal information on websites. So basically we need to make sure you’re old enough to be a legal, registered user.

Secondly, it allows us to target advertising to the (potentially) most interested group of users. For instance, some advertiser we’re talking to might say, “I’d like our movie trailer to be shown to 18-24 year old males”. We think this probably benefits both users and advertisers–because if there’s gotta be advertising, it might as well be something you might like, right?

We used to totally abhor the entire process of entering user-identifying information but have since realized that many companies, a) aren’t as evil as we made them out to be (after all, they could potentially be programmers and startup guys just like we!), and b) use them to target advertising to their users in a way that actually benefits them.

Thanks for understanding.

The backlash against advertising can be helped with clarity, relevance, a higher standard from the advertisers to deliver interesting (not just attention-getting) useful content, and friendly tones like this.  It’s pretty passe to hate ads these days, and it will be until there’s a new monetizable model to take their place.

Here’s a tip.

If you run a business, or care about an issue, or have something to say, you’re a marketer. We all are.

But do yourself a favor and stop reading blogs about marketing and customer service. Customer service! Ugh.

Instead, spend an hour on Yelp.

Pick your city, and start reading reviews about restaurants and hair salons.

Look at this. It’s not about the quality of the hair cut. It’s about the fact that they offered their customers wine, comfortable conversation, and ease of mind. That they didn’t try to sell them, and that they listened to what people wanted.

Is that so hard?

90% experience. 10% result. Anyone who tells you differently has never stood in a 6 hour line waiting for an iPhone. Of course you’re happy with the result. What you hate, what you talk about, is the experience.

Weezer has a new album on the way. It’s their 6th, but of those, their 3rd self-titled album (in other words, untitled). Instead of giving it a name, they gave it a color.

That’s just fine, I can never remember album titles anyway, and back in the day when CD cover art meant something, I always remembered the disc simply by its design.

I know that Weezer blue reminds me of driving the Sunset Cliffs coastline in my tinfoil Acura Integra during high school, and that Weezer green was a “wow, NYC bars actually *can* play non-shitty music” album.

Weezer is as Weezer does. They don’t need no stinking titles.

There’s Gaspode the mangy mutt.

Thunder and Lightning the pair of golden retrievers.

Ugsome the boxer.

BearAwesome the huge portuguese waterdog.

Zeus the German Shepherd.

And Cheery Littlebottom, the pissy don’t-mess-with-me cat that lives among them all.

Happy Easterz.

Jack: clicky
Jack: i want to grab his face
Jack: and rumple his floppy skin
Megan: ready for this?
Megan: clicky and…

Megan: AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Giving a speech or presentation or pitch is hard. Defending your thesis, pitching your boss on why you deserve a raise, dumping a boyfriend, talking to a room of 1,000 people, or just sharing a theory with a small group over dinner. Hard.

Not because you’re dumb. Not because you don’t know, inside and out, every inch of what you’re presenting. Not because you lack the confidence.

But because, if you’re in the position of sharing your ideas or products or strategies with others, you’re probably really invested in them. (In the ideas, as well as in the people).  You probably care immensely for the thing you’re discussing. In fact, it could even be called your life’s work.  And so it’s only natural that you’re concerned (read: terrified, titillated, nervous, excited) about what people think and feel about what you’re saying. And, by extension, you.

I just watched a bunch of talks from TED, and was amazed, and heartened, and relieved, to see so many of my heroes–respected, brilliant leaders–get nervous on stage. And I mean quaveringly, ramblingly, fidgetingly nervous.  It’s not that obvious unless you’ve felt the same way before, and then you notice it, and commiserate with it. The slightly breathless quality of your voice, when your chest feels tight and your pitch sounds high. The nervous giggling at weird places. The way the microphone shakes in your hand. For women, the constant, unconscious tucking of your hair behind your ears. The over and over nudging of your glasses back onto your nose. The stories that go off topic and don’t know when to quit.

When I was 22 I was fearless. I loved what I did, and when I had occasion to talk to someone about it, in any venue big or small, I was brazen and steady.  Why should I be nervous? I didn’t have anything at stake. I wasn’t running my own company. I wasn’t in charge. I didn’t have a hell of a lot to lose. I wasn’t successful. I hadn’t had any real hits. I had a lot of big ambitions, but I wasn’t going to be very surprised if people said no–because it happened a lot in my industry.  Most of all, people underestimated the young blonde girl who walked into the room–and God did I relish that underdog role.  So I agitated a little, talked a big game, made a name for myself… but never got anything done. Never made change. Never said, satisfied, at the end of the day: I made a difference.

Seven years later, a lot has changed. I have more at stake now. At work and at home (though there is barely a divide) I am surrounded by people I admire and respect, smart people who push me every day. Many of whom are looking to me for a vision,  for leadership, to get things done, and to make things work.  I’m not just an arrogant brat with a big idea now, knowing and expecting that the status quo will stop me in my tracks. Now people say yes, I trust you, I believe in you, go do it. And that is some seriously scary shit.

Because not only do they expect things from me now…I expect it from myself. Every single day. Moreover, ideas aren’t the biggest currency anymore. Results are. Leadership that says: I’m going to do this, and that’s going to make something happen.

So when I walk out on stage, or get on that conference call, or promote a strategy, yeah, I get nervous. I don’t want to let anyone down, I don’t want to let myself down, and more importantly, I don’t want to squander someone’s attention–and the potential I have in that moment to change their mind, or making a believer out of my idea, or at the very least get them to smile.

I think, next time, I’m going to remember the TED talks, take a breath, go a little easier on myself, and have some fun.

So, ownership. Accountability. Collaboration. Results. Getting everyone on your team to give a cupcake about your vision, and dedicate themselves to it.

Good luck.

Pigs and chickens to the rescue!

In the Scrum theory of project management, these are the 2 main roles for people on your team.

The pigs are (so says Wikipedia): “committed to building software regularly and frequently… the ones committed to the project and the Scrum process; they are the ones with ‘their bacon on the line.’”

Everyone else, supposedly, is a chicken, “interested in the project but really irrelevant because if it fails they’re not a pig, that is they weren’t the ones that committed to doing it. The needs, desires, ideas and influences of the chicken roles are taken into account, but not in any way letting it affect or distort or get in the way of the actual Scrum project.”

I’d redefine the chickens with a little more grace and thought than annoyance, and call them the agitators, the mavericks, the heretics, the throwers, and visionaries. And I’d suggest that pigs are better when they don’t just have their bacon on the line (read: “get in trouble when something goes wrong”), and rather when they are treated a little more like chickens, like people with influence and ideas.

But yes, at the end of the day you need someone with an idea and strategy, and someone to help carry it out. If we were all chickens we’d talk a lot of talk and get nothing done. If we were all pigs, we’d crank away without direction or goals.

Passion and responsibility are the real keys here, not just ownership and accountability. That’s what pigs and chickens alike need to keep the… barnyard…a productive place.