Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

C.C. Chapman: Welcome everybody. Back to Managing the Gray #31, and because I always seem to forget to give it out at the top of the show and everybody always asks, the call-in number is 206-309-4729. You can always just call in, say, “What’s up?” and managingthegray@gmail.com also works for audio comments, but the call-in number everybody says I bury so I am putting it up front for you so you cannot miss it. I will put it in the show notes. It will be on managingthegray.com. I will make it so impossible for you not to call in, that is the goal right?

So, I am fresh back from PodCamp NYC or PodCamp New York. PodCamp NYC is what is known by the cool kids, I do not know, listen. PodCamp was a lot of fun and I wanted to give some reactions to it because I had a really good time. The first ever PodCamp I have ever been to is PodCamp Boston, which was the first one, where it all kicked off. One of the things I loved about it was the community vibe of it and PodCamp New York lost a little bit of that because it was just — just the sheer volume of it, when 1300 people register for an event, the community is going to be a little bit tougher because it is going to be spread way out. I think, what I mean is, at PodCamp Boston there were four or five speeches going on at any given time and only for or five so you were seeing the same bunch of people over and over again. We kept coming back to the main room to see each other. Here in New York, there were 10 to 12 talks going on at any point so people were spread out all over the place. You did not see everybody all the time.

There was a lot of things like, “Oh, I didn’t know they were there,” or “I didn’t see them.” That just tells you that things were spread out, but it was a great event. The organizers did an amazing job. What was very cool about it was there were so many fresh faces. One of the things I loved about the unconference vibe is the fact that they are happening in locations all over the country and all over the world and that excites me because what is neat about it is the fact that local people who may not be able — the college students, that is the perfect example, someone could not afford to fly out across the country to another event — because it is free — can just stumble at an event, come down to an event, a PodCamp or another unconference type of vibe in their local market and I think that is very powerful. I saw a lot of college students there and a lot of people who were just kind of there figuring out what was going on. I asked lots of people, “What are you doing here?” “I don’t know. I’m just here to find out what’s going on.” Exactly. That is the vibe and I think it is very cool.

One of the neat things is I got to do a presentation, sort of brand new presentation of mine, called the New Media Playground. It is sort of like a working title for the book right now, but I have not been able to focus on the book because it is the thing that gets pushed to the backburner, but it was a fun presentation and people seem to really react. What was neat was I was in the big room and there were a lot of people in there and a lot of people I did not know which made me even more excited. I was really excited to see fresh faces. There is nothing better than being up and speaking and people nodding and agreeing, going “Yeah!” The video of it is up. I think there is going to be another video because I know there were at least two video cameras going. What I mean is this video camera, the one I have seen, is at an angle right in the other one’s video camera. It is up. I will link to it on the show notes.

I really felt good about the presentation. It was kind of laid back because of the way it was set up. I got down on the floor and just walked around with a microphone. It felt much more relaxed. If you went to PodCamp, I gave a homework assignment and listeners of Managing the Gray, see I almost did it, Managing the Gray can do this homework too. What I told everybody was I said, “Meet everybody you can, talk to strangers, just walk up to people and say, ‘Hey, I’m so and so, who are you?’” That is what is cool about it. I also said try something new, go out, try Second Life, try Twitter, try blogging or podcasting if you have not done that. My speech focused on all new media not just podcasting because I do not think — any one of these mediums is so niche.

I want people to play on all the toys. If you go into the playground and you only played on the Jungle Gym everyday and only the Jungle Gym and never anything else, that would be kind of boring. I want people to play with the other toys and so I told them to try something new and then I asked them to email me and tell me how they did. I am very much looking forward to — I have gotten one email so far that said, “Homework assignment.” It made me smile so big. I am very much looking forward to that. If you are subscribed to the Managing the Gray feed, you would have gotten my PowerPoint presentation yesterday as a PDF file. It came down the pipe so you can look at it. What is cool is all the people in the photos are people that listen to the show or know me or something because I put out a call on Twitter and the blogging and what-not saying, “Send me pictures of you playing on the playground,” and I put them in the presentation and added a really nice flavor mix to the presentation I thought. I was very excited. If you are in there, I am glad. Thank you very much for sending it in.

Oh, I keep talking about Twitter. If you have not used Twitter, twitter.com/cc_chapman is my Twitter. Feel free to follow me. That was something else I wanted to talk about really briefly was Twitter and the concept of social networks and where they are going. Some people treat them differently than others and what it boils down to is I had a moment this weekend at PodCamp New York where I walked out, I met new people, I saw someone talking to someone I knew so I walked up and said, “Hey, what’s going on?” and this woman says hi and then yells at me. She said, “C.C., I’ve been following you in Twitter but you don’t follow me.” I said, “Well, sorry, but I don’t know you.” It is interesting. Certain social networks I am on and I think you should be on more for the fact of just being there.

One of the things I always tell people is make it impossible for people not to find you. What I mean by that is it takes a whopping three to five minutes to set up any social network account. Take your pick, LinkedIn, MySpace. LinkedIn probably takes a little bit longer because you want to put in more professional information, but it only takes a little bit of time to set up an account and even if you never, ever, ever, ever log back into to that account, you want it so that if someone goes, “Hey, I wonder if they are on LinkedIn?” and they search for you that they find you and that there are links to where you do want, where you do maintain, to your website or your blog or your podcast. Send it with MySpace and Facebook and all these other things where you do not have to have an active case.

Someone the other day said, “C.C., you are on Facebook? Really?” I have had a Facebook account from since the days I worked at Babson. Of course, I have a Facebook account, but they just did an API that would suck in my contacts so I said, “Let me see who’s on Facebook,” and it sucked in my Gmail contacts and said, “Here’s the people on your list who are also on Facebook. Would you like to invite them to be your friend?” I said, “Sure.” It took me two seconds to click a button that said select all of these people on Facebook. Why would I not do that? So, now we have got connections going. Do I think Facebook is going to save my life? No, but it is another connection. Things like Facebook, I have let kind of just free form pretty much. Unless it is someone I really do not like, which I cannot think of anybody, I want to add them. LinkedIn, it has to be people I have met and interacted with. MySpace, I will link to anybody. I will take friend requests from anybody. I barely check unless it is blatant spam, but then there are things like Twitter where I am actually treating Twitter — same thing with Flicker. Those are two networks where I only follow the people I really, really, really want to follow because otherwise it is information overload. It is a tough call, but when someone adds me on Twitter, I go and look at them and I am like, “Do I know this person?” and I try to find — because Twitter allows you to link to a blog. I go out to the blog and if I do not know who they are I will not start following them, but I will pay attention. I will watch for them and if they come on my radar, I will ad them. I just wanted to stress to some people out there that social networks are used differently by different people and different social networks are used differently.

Same thing with Second Life, I have a ton of friends in Second Life and I will add you as a friend a lot quicker than I will on something like LinkedIn or Twitter. It is a decision for each person to make, but it is something you should think about and make a decision for your own because, yes, there is now a button that I could click one button and it would add everybody who is following me on Twitter to add it to me following them, but that would kind of make Twitter un-useful for me. Right now, I am following people that I definitely want to know updates from, whom I definitely got a connection with. Please do not take offense if I am not following you. It is nothing personal. I will keep an eye on you. Do not worry, I am always watching. It is a social network thing. I know I have gotten a pile of requests from Twitter since coming back from PodCamp New York and I have not approved or disapproved them yet because I have not had a chance to check you out, so give me a chance, all right?

Now we have got some call-ins, 206-309-4729, some very different topics. Which one do I want to do first? We will do this one first because it is a long-time listener.

Francis Wooby: Hi CC, this is Francis Wooby talking to you from inspirational [unintelligible] Nunavut up in Canada. This is my first comment to Managing the Gray, but I am a long-time lurker and like all of your listeners I really appreciate the fantastic work that you do for us. In your latest episode, you featured a great interview with Chris Penn, one of the drivers behind the recent Bum Rush the Charts campaign. It was a good discussion covering their successes, their lessons learned, and I really appreciated his candor about falling short of their number one position mark as well as his appreciation for the real impact that they had, nonetheless. Now, in a weird way, I am glad that Bum Rush the Charts did not reach its objective of conquering the number one position. I am speaking strictly as a layman here in respect to the music industry and I only have a limited knowledge of how things work there, but with that in mind, I cannot help but wonder if a complete victory for the campaign would have generated more suspicion of the charts and doubting their legitimacy than would have created a positive buzz for the band and social media in general. In other words, I guess I am just wondering if it could have wound up looking like iTunes was simply manipulated by a few techno savvy individuals, which would have reflected poorly on the band and on social media. Now, to my mind, the more moderate results that they did end up with are more plausible for the general public, yet still very impressive in what they imply about the potential power of social media. Anyway, that is just sort of half-thought, half-question. C.C., again, thanks for all the wonderful work that you do here on Managing the Gray and in all of the other reaches of social media that you energize. Take care and talk to you later.

C.C. Chapman: Thanks. He was talking about Bum Rush the Charts and it is funny because I do not know if I want to go back and look at Bum Rush the Charts too hard to be honest, but I think you are right. If it had hit number one all across the things, it probably would have been — there definitely would have been more attention. Would some of that been more negative attention? Of course, it would. Success always generates haters, I guess, would be the easiest simple way to put it. Personally, I think Bum Rush the Charts was most successful because of the fact that it broke so much new ground all over the place, different markets around the world; that excited me.

One thing that did not get as much fanfare, I do not think — I mean I should not say as much, but it seems like only certain people knew about it, but it was as successful was Scott Sigler’s “”Ancestor”" book thing where “Ancestor” Attacks Amazon, which was kind of the same thing, but attacking Amazon instead of iTunes. This was planned long in advance. Scott is an amazingly smart guy, scottsigler.net, if you are not familiar with him. What it is, is Amazon updates their book charts every hour and so he had everybody buy his book “Ancestor”. He does podcast novels. If you are not familiar who Scott Sigler is, he does podcast novels or podiobooks — take your pick of your term, I do not think one has been coined “the” term yet — and they are amazing. “Ancestor” was something — it probably was a year ago. It must have been at least a year ago that it was out as a podcast novel and every week he put out a new chapter and it came out in print on April 1st and he asked everybody, “Do not buy it until April 1st. Wait to buy it.” So, he had this rabid fan base. It is like the horse in the gate of the Kentucky Derby just waiting to pump out and then on April 1st at noon he opened the gate and said, “Everybody buy it,” and everybody went and bought it. What was a beautiful sight was seeing “Ancestor” and “EarthCore,” another book he wrote, being number one and two on the horror charts. It got as high as number seven on the overall Amazon charts. Now, that is pretty impressive because there were two Oprah Book Club choices in there above him and Harry Potter was above him, so take those three out. The “Ancestor” did amazing. I am very proud of Scott. Scott is a personal friend of mine so I am very excited about him.

Somebody asked me, “Will this work with any book?” Maybe, it depends. It cannot be a book that is already out there. I am firm believer in the fact that it cannot be and why? Because one of the things was this was a need. Nobody had this book in print yet. Thus, he already had a fan base waiting to buy it. He just said, “Wait and buy it on this specific day,” and that is why it worked. If he already had the book out there for six months and then he said, “Hey everybody, go buy another copy!” it would never have worked because his whole hardcore fan base that would be the tip of the spear to this attack would already have bought it and it would not have worked as well. There is a supply and demand, basic economics, and it worked out in this case. Is it going to work for other books? Of course, it will. If you already have a fan base and you have got a book and you want make a little ripple, go for it. Did that make a huge ripple? I do not know, but I know it helped Scott. I know it brought more attention to Scott and his writing, which I think is great. Mark my words, Scott Sigler, if he does not, some publishers are clueless, I really hope, I firmly can say Scott Sigler, if he was writing full time, would be right up there with the Koontzes and the Kings without a doubt. “Infection” was just an amazing — “EarthCore” is still my favorite, but “Infection” is a close second. His “Rookie” right now is doing as amazing. Let us play another audio comment.

Rich White: Hello C.C. This is Rich White with the Greenbush Education Service Center. We are an education service center in Kansas. We serve schools, teachers and students, our main customers. We are huge fans of Managing the Gray and frequent visitors of Crayonville in Second Life. A few comments and then a quick question. We have a core group of us about five or six on an organization of about 500 working on new media and encouraging the use of it in schools, web 2.0 in schools and such, but we have been conducting blog training to teachers over the past year. We have been at it for about a year and a half. We are getting ready to start a little mashup university type series of trainings for students that teach them how to use iMovie and things of that nature to generate media for Google and YouTube to tell stories about their experiences.

We have been really pushing the tech integration classroom both with formal trainings and with the Take Two podcast that we operate, which is taketwopodcast.us where we share our technology and new media type experiences, suggestions to the school community, teachers and administrators. We recently entered the world of Second Life actually. By listening to Managing the Gray, your experiences in Second Life really encouraged us to get in there. We bought some land. We have about 4000 square feet now and we are just about a week into that and so we are anxious to see what we can do there. In the way of kind of building relationships of like-minded educators, I would assume that those types of educators are in Second Life that we are trying to meet up and share ideas with. One of our big questions is basically to kind of get your thoughts and opinions, some suggestions regarding additional resources we could use to further push the ideas to the school sector. I know they lag a little bit behind the public sector. How do you deal with the generation differences or some of the things you would suggest, the 50-cent reactions to some of these things? We had recently suggested adding RSS feed to a master calendar of events of trainings that we are offering. We kind of looked at that like we had two heads sometimes with some of the stuff we suggest. How do we get past that in terms of the message? I am sure you see the older generation has real issues sometimes with embracing in the way of communication and idea sharing. How do we kind of encourage that and get them past maybe some of their fears about that?

C.C. Chapman: I do not think it is a generational thing. I do not. I think it is either get it or you do not. I know college kids who do not get it either that is why I say I do not think it is a generational thing. How do you sell new media? I think the root of your question is how do you get people jazzed about new media and all the things you can do? Real easy. Do not talk about the technology. You asked, “Can we add an RSS feed to the calendar?” Nine out of ten people are going to go, “Huh?” They are going to roll their eyes and be confused, “RS what?” Get the technology out of there. When you are trying to sell people on a new idea, new media, forget the technology. People do not care about that. The way to pitch a calendar is, “Hey, what if we made it so somebody could click once and every time we add something new to the calendar that fit what they wanted, they would automatically be notified or it would automatically be added to their calendar and they could decide whether or not they want to keep it or not?” That will get people excited. They will go, “Oh, yeah that’s cool.” Yeah, you and I know under the covers it is RSS and an iCal, but they do not need to know that. Same thing when you talk to a CEO or an executive, someone who controls the pocketbook, controls the checkbook, talk to them about — one of the biggest things I know when I was in college, you always wanted more people on your newsletter or to engage more, your open rate, and those types of things. Start saying, “Hey, what if I can get X number more people signed up or I could get more people engaging on this website?” What you were talking about really was using RSS feeds to get more people to view a page or something.

Again, avoid talking about the technology. Get into the technology later and get them to the right thing. Sell them on the benefits. Tell them what the benefits are of using whatever medium it is. This goes true for whether you are talking about a YouTube campaign, maybe — I almost said viral marketing, I hate that. Whether you are doing influence or outreach, whatever you are doing, tell them how it is going to help them. Put it in terms of things that they currently do. How is it going to save them time, money, how is it going to bring more people into the door, more eyeballs to them, put it that way and avoid the technology. I think that is the way to do it. It is the biggest way to do it. The minute you start talking about technology, you have already put a barrier up between you and them if they do not understand it and you are going to spend more time discussing the technology and what it means and how to do it rather than what you are really trying to get there, which is how it is going to help them. That is the important thing and that goes for no matter what you are doing. It really, really does. Talk to them on the level of them, not you, not the cool gadget, them. This is true even outside of new media. When you are talking to someone, never forget if you are trying to sell them on something, always focus in on them. The conversation is never about you, it is never about your company, it is never about your product, it is about them, how they are going to be helped by your solution whatever it is.

Congrats and welcome to Second Life, very cool, 4000 square. You have got a lot of land. Educational institutions, I cannot stress this enough. If you are going to be buying that much land, honestly think about buying an island. Here is the reason — and I am talking to educations and non-profits for a second — the cost of buying land is expensive, especially if you buy it on the open market in Second Life and 4000 square, you paid a pretty penny for that I am sure. What I am getting at is, Linden Lab gives discounts, severe discounts to educations and non-profits. I know this has changed a little bit because it was over a year ago and prices have gone up a little bit, but I know at Babson we bought an island, a full blown island, and paid for a year of maintenance up front and it was like just over $3000 for 12 months and that is not much. Think about that. If you are an education, you get really big discounts. When you go to the land store, it is kind of buried at the bottom of the page, but it is there.

Islands give you the ultimate level of control and even if you do not need that much space, if you are buying 4000 meters, that is going to add up rather quick and you do not have full control and you do not know who your neighbors are going to be. It is definitely something to consider. Take that to heart if you are an education or non-profit. Companies think about it, too. It is not as cheap, but that is the main argument I give people when they are debating. They are going to buy a huge plot. If you are just going to buy a little plot of land to play, that is fine, but if you are doing a serious investment and you are thinking long term, buying an island is the way to go most times, mainly for two reasons, you completely control it so you can do whatever you want to it and the biggest thing is you control your neighbors. You do not know what is going to pop up next. Those are the two biggest reasons when people ask, “Should I buy an island or should I buy a big chunk of land?” and cost sometimes plays in that.

Well, that is going to wrap up Managing the Gray today. I want to say hello to everybody that I met at PodCamp New York. If this is your first time listening to Managing the Gray, welcome. It is very cool to have you here. Managingthegray.com is where you can find out more. Very, very excited about everything going on in the world. It is just a good time. I met a lot of great people. I have not even done my own first rule of conferences is send an email to everyone you got a business card from. I have them right here, the promise. I refuse to do a massive BCC, that is why it takes me a little longer and my first priority was uploading all my photos. If you do not know, I am a photo junkie and now that I have a digital SLR, Canon Rebel XTi for those of you geeking out in the crowd. See, I try to avoid technology. I uploaded them all to Flickr and I had so much fun taking photos. I am still learning my camera so it was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of new faces. Always remember, ask if you can take your photo. I had one person all weekend say no and that is cool, but I respect your decision.

So, you guys take care. Please call up the comment line anytime you want. The comment line is always open. It is 206-309-4729 and that sends an MP3 right to me. You might hear yourself on an upcoming episode of the show. When I get the audio from my presentation, I am going to push it down the feed to you guys so you can hear it. I have already been asked by several listeners. Yes, I will do that when I get the audio, all right? So, you guys take care. Keep embracing new media. Seriously, get out on the new media playground, play on the swings, the Jungle Gym, try that thing that scares you. I always hated that spider web thing you have to climb up, you get too high and it starts swinging, I always hated that thing. Try it. Have fun. Enjoy this time. It is a very exciting time out there. All this talk about Bubble 3.0, I just want to smack somebody. Just have fun. Figure out what works for you. Play with it, if it does not work, move on. Do not slam whatever it is. Just play with it. You do not like it? Try something else. There is room for everybody. There are enough toys to go around. I will talk to you next time. See you soon.

Posted in Transcript | View Comments