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

Transcript for Managing the Gray #60
“PodCamp Montreal Reflections”
Originally posted on September 23, 2008

C.C.: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Managing the Gray #60. It is a crisp, cool, beautiful morning here in Metro West Boston. I’m fresh back from PodCamp Montreal and I said, “You know what? I’ve got to do a Managing the Gray while the thoughts are fresh in my mind, the vibe is still there and before the workday really gets underway,” but does the workday ever really end nowadays?

Have you really thought about that? It’s always on society especially if you run your own company or if you work in something other than, I don’t know, I’m sure there are certain jobs where you shut off, but certain jobs, the ones I work with, the world I live in, it’s always on society. We talked a lot about that at PodCamp Montreal and what was going on and differences between the generations, the demographics, everything surfing the web, how they interact with things. I’ve had some amazing conversations.

If you go to podcampmontreal.org, you’re going to find that there’s tons of stuff out there. Go to Flickr, search for the tag for the weekend. If you’re into tagging, it’s pcmtl. So, if you search for that on Flickr, Technorati, Twitter, or whatever you want, it’s out there, lots of stuff.

I still have to write my wrap-up post, but I want to do a podcast first. Of course, one of the highlights for me was sitting down and presenting with my good friend, mentor, and all-around great guy Mitch Joel from Twist Image. What’s really neat is we did something about podcasting with no nets, just kind of the way we both record, fire up CastBlaster, hit go.

We kind of talked about how to make that possible if you want to do it. I’m not saying it’s the right or the wrong way to do podcasting, but just talking about the ways we prep to do it and how we can handle doing something like that and why we do it. We also recorded live. After we kind of did the overview and talking about things, we recorded Six Pixels of Separation for Mitch. Of course, we’ll link to it in the show notes so you can go over there and listen to it. It’s the entire audio, uncut.

Basically, we spoke for about 20 minutes talking about how we prep and things and then we actually recorded the podcast. What’s a lot of fun is it’s just right there. You hear the reaction, you hear the crowds. It’s just a little micro track that he loves. So, I will definitely link to that in the show notes, but if you’re listening now and you want to jump over there, it’s www.twistimage.com/blog. It’s probably a couple of days — well, it depends when you’re listening to this. He put it up on September 21st I believe, so if that helps you when you’re searching for it if you’re listening to this years down the road. Who knows? That’s what’s great about this audio we’re creating is that it goes out and lives forever, but it was a lot of fun. People seemed to be into the session, which was great.

So, what did I think about PodCamp Montreal? I thought it was very well organized. It flowed very nicely, the sessions. There was a variety of speakers. There was both French and English. The only bad part for me was the first session I went to was supposed to be in English. The way they had the little pocket schedules, which is a great idea, a pocket-sized one, if it was in English, if the description of the session was in English, the session was going to be English; if it was in French, French was the basic thing, but I went into this morning session I thought was going to be extremely well and people liked the session I guess, but it was all in French so I couldn’t understand.

Yes, I know the law of two feet, but I would have had to literally walk through the U stream to do it and I was just, “All right.” It was very taxing on the brain, but it sounded like people were into it and passionate about it, so that’s what matters the most and the presenter was certainly into it and I talked to him about it later, but it was a great, great PodCamp, lots of different people.

One of the interesting things, we were sitting there, some of us who had been to other PodCamps were observing and thinking how is this different and one of the noticeable differences and I don’t know why it was so noticeable, there was a large number of women there, a large number. I don’t know what the percentage was, but it almost felt like 50:50, if not more, and that’s not the norm for a PodCamp. It was enough of a difference that it was noticeable and it was refreshing and it was nice. It was just different. It was one of those weird little things that we notice.

The location was great. I don’t know how related location in Montreal. I thought it was fine, lots of little lunch places to go around it. There was a neat design school, so there were neat things to look at if you kind of walk around outside of just the classrooms, which was exciting.

I think it was the first times I actually saw Julien Smith speak, which was interesting. He gives an amazing presentation with Mario Bros. and Pacman talking about life is a game and trust agents. It was very, very well done and I know it was the first time he gave it. I’m looking forward to him actually fine-tuning it and making it richer. I think it’s going to be a very powerful keynote sometime. I think Julien giving a keynote to a big room of CMOs and CEOs is going to be a very exciting thing because they’re going to judge him the minute they see him and then he’s going to get on stage and he’s going to rock their brains out and I love that.

I also got to meet David Usher. David Usher and Mitch Joel gave a great presentation on the future of music. No, I didn’t see it, but I know it because the day before, we went out to lunch and I was there when they were brainstorming and going over it. I know it was going to be a great presentation. The reason I didn’t go to it was because I was meeting the famous Cat from the CatFish Show, an old friend that I had never met.

So, that’s what PodCamps are about for me. They’re about connecting with people. They’re about meeting people that you’ve only known online. It’s about establishing new connections. It’s about giving a hug to someone. That’s what any conference should be about. Yes, they’re about business development. Yes, they’re about getting your name, your brand out there. Yes, they’re about making business connections and personal kind of connections, but I prefer the personal connections first because the business connections come with those personal connections.

Something I said that seemed to be people resonated with, there was a panel on blogger outreach and PR companies and it was an interesting panel, but one of the things, I thought they were being a little, little preachy about things, about how always establish a relationship. Now, I am all for that. I am 100% for relationships, but I’m also a realist. I run a business.

We do blogger outreach a lot at The Advance Guard and we believe in doing it right, but the thing is, you can’t always have a relationship with someone that you want to outreach about a product. They may be the perfect person for it and you don’t know them. I said something. There was a girl who was asking questions. I talked to her after wards and I said, “Every relationship begins as a stranger,” and I mean that because yes, I would love to have personal relationships with blogger out there or podcast or influencer or individual that I want to talk to about a client, but the fact of the matter is you can’t. You can’t have it and you’re going to have varying degrees of relationships. You get one of those really close friends, you get one of those acquaintances, maybe someone you bump into at a conference, the fact of the matter is yes, establish those relationships, but they have to begin somewhere. Every friendship begins somewhere so just don’t be afraid to reach out and talk to people.

One of the other highlights of it is this company Akoha. Now, Akoha won TechCrunch50. No, they didn’t. Whoops. They didn’t win. They were AT. See? Early morning, no holds barred. “C.C. says…” No, Yammer actually won TechCrunch50, but Akoha was at TechCrunch50 and they presented and I’m very excited about it and I want to tell you about it and I’ve got a contest about it.

What Akoha is, is the very thing — you know Pokemon, Magic, all those playing deck cards you do stuff, well, it’s nothing like that except for the cards. It’s based around the concept of Play It Forward and I’m very, very excited about it.

If you don’t know, I’m a huge, huge fan of charities and volunteer work and giving back. I think you need to give back. Trust me, it’s the whole karma thing. It comes back to you. Some people would say, “Oh, that’s really sweet of you, C.C.,” but I just believe in it. I really, really, really do believe in it. It’s just the way I was brought up.

What Akoha is, it’s based on the whole concept of Pay It Forward. So, you get a deck of cards — you can hear them, I’m playing with them. They’re missions. Each card is a mission. Give somebody flowers. Thank somebody. Make somebody smile. Send drinks to a couple in love. Give someone a surprise gift. Give someone a book. My favorite one? Read a blog or feed a blogger. A wildcard. Give someone chocolate. Donate an hour of your time. Invite someone for drinks. Give a fluorescent light bulb. Invite somebody for coffee. These are mission cards. You can get them — they’re hard to get actually.

So, I take this “give somebody flowers” let’s imagine and say I was go to buy, or yesterday, let’s use real world example. Make somebody smile was one of my missions. So, I stopped by and had a coffee break with my wife Laura at work yesterday. I just finished a meeting. I was in the area so I stopped by. I knew she was only going to have 20 minutes, but I wanted to surprise her. So, I bought her coffee, actually she bought me coffee now that I think about it and I gave her the card. I said, “This is the thing I’ve been raving about,” and I gave her this thing that said make somebody smile.

Now, what happens is on akoha.com, I had that as a mission. When you get a deck of cards, you type in a number and it assigns all these missions to the cards for you, but in this case I gave her a card, right? So, she goes out to the website, she says, “Yes, I got this card from someone,” and types in this number because it’s a unique identified per card and it says, “This is the make somebody smile mission from C.C. Chapman,” because I’ve tagged it in the system as well. She puts it into the system now and now she is expected to pay it forward and give it to somebody else and that person will register it and this card will travel around the world hopefully and doing good. It just pays it forward.

Take it from a business side, you wonder, “Well, what’s the business model? What is it? Why are they doing this?” Well, I had the distinct pleasure of spending a lot of time talking with the Akoha team, I mean a lot of them, just Simon, Sean and Austin Hill. I had a great chat with Austin Hill. Me, Julien and him had a chat on the street corner. He was waiting for his girlfriend and we just started talking about things. They’ve got some amazing plans. I don’t know what is secret and what’s not, so I’m not going to talk about their future plans, but they’ve got it. They’ve it figured out and even if they didn’t, I still wouldn’t care. Even if this was some rich philanthropist who just wanted to make the world a better place and funded a startup like this, which isn’t how it was funded I don’t believe, I think it would be in a great story and I love it.

I’ve got five Akoha decks I’m going to give away. I want to do something a little different. These are getting spread all over the US. There’s a big concentration in Boston and starting to happen in San Francisco and of course Montreal where it started, but I want to get them out in the international waters. I want this to start spreading around the world. So, I what I want you to do is the first listener from five different countries who emails me at cc.chapman@gmail.com, I’m going to send you a deck of Akoha cards. I’m very, very excited to get these out in the stream, but I want to spread them out because what’s amazing is you start this, you give it to one person and then you give it to the next person and the next person, they’re going to spread all over the place. I want to get them out into different areas of the world so we can start spreading it.

So, just drop me an email and say, “Hey, C.C. I want an Akoha deck.” Give me your mailing address. Literally, just five different countries around the world and I hope they spread all over the world. I would love to give a deck into Africa and one into Asia and in Europe, just everywhere, Australia. I’m starting to name continents, but you know what I mean. I just wanted to get them out there and I’m very, very excited about Akoha. Again, check it out at akoha.com.

A web 2.0 company doing going, something that’s just all touchy-feely, it hits every spot that I love, well, not all of them, but you know what I mean. It’s a great thing. I’m very excited about it. Getting my hands on a deck was my goal at PodCamp and to actually get some extra ones because I asked. I said, “Hey, could I get some more?” I want to give these out to my podcast listeners. It’s something I really, really, really believe in. I should talk to Austin about doing their marketing because I’d love them to be a client, but, no, I just love them. I just think it’s such a neat idea. It’s funny because when you open the pack, you don’t know what you’re going to have for missions. There’s going to be new missions coming and people can create their own missions and localized missions. There’s so much going on. I think it’s just a very neat thing. Plus, it gets you out to do some good.

One other person I need to thank before I forget is Rob Cotter, as Mitch likes to say it, from Fixion Media. He put me up when I was in Montreal. He has a corporate apartment and he let me stay there and I really want to thank him and his girlfriend for all their hospitality because they went above and beyond what they needed to do and I really, really appreciate that. I will link to him in the show notes so you can check it out.

If you’re ever going to do advertising to reach the heavy metal and the rock and roll vertical, he’s the guy to contact. He’s the guy where you should buy your media buy through. He’s also just an all-around great guy. He’s a long-time Home Fry listener of Accident Hash and we’d never actually met. That’s what I’m talking about. You never know something.

Speaking of something, side note here that I’m very, very excited about and yes, this is a for a client. It’s not for a client the reason I’m talking about it. If you get the new issue of Rolling Stone, page 30, there’s a full page ad for American Eagle and the contest they’re running right now for a Rolling Stone live concert. The photo on that page that takes up the entire page is my photo. I took that photo. I’m very, very excited. It’s of the band The Black Fortys who won their college — as someone who’s getting into photography and someone who’s just getting I think just starting to get my feet wet in photography, it’s pretty cool to say I have a photo in Rolling Stone. I had to share that. I hadn’t talked about it on Accident Hash, yet, but I’m very, very excited that I have a photo.

It’s a very good time. It was very neat to me. I also met Marko from Photography.ca at PodCamp Montreal and it was a lot of fun.

In the back of my head, I keep wondering. It feels like the first time at the beginning of the show, I said PodCamp Boston. I don’t know if I did, but every time I say PodCamp Montreal, it’s the back of my head going, “You idiot. You said it wrong at the beginning.” I’m not sure if I did or not. So, if you’re laughing at me or maybe I’m just making no sense, I don’t know, but that’s the way we roll around here.

Oh, the comment line, because I always forget to give you the comment line. It’s 1-866-384-4522. Again, 866-384-4522. It’s toll-free in the States. You can call up and leave a question or comment, whatever you want. For those people in the US who are complaining about I didn’t give Akoha cards because I can already tell because I’m giving them out to international listeners this time, I might have something for you very soon. We’ll see what happens.

So, I think we’re going to wrap it up today. If you have a second, swing by iTunes. Leave a review of Managing the Gray there. It never hurts to get a review. Of course, go to www.managingthegray.com and leave comments because I love to hear from all your listeners. All your listeners? My listeners, whatever. Again, if you get a second, I’ll link over to Six Pixels of Separation that features the session from PodCamp Montreal.

To everybody that I met at PodCamp Montreal, to the listeners of the show who came up to me and thanked me for doing the show, I don’t think I could accurately express how touching that is to me, how important that is to me to have listeners come up that I’ve never met and say, “C.C., that homework assignment you gave a year ago changed my life,” or “I’ve been listening for a long time and you really helped me get going. You keep me motivated.” That motivates me to keep going and I absolutely love hearing it. So, please, anytime you want to tell me that, I ain’t going to mind. I love hearing from listeners and meeting them, especially when I give them a hug or shake their hand, that’s always a plus. Yeah, I’m a hugger. It’s the way it goes. So, lots of links, lots of love. PodCamp Montreal was a lot of fun. I hope they do it again. It’s a very cool city, one that I hope to see more of. I have some very close friends there that it was good to see.

Until next time, I am C.C. Chapman. This is Managing the Gray. You guys take care.

Posted in Transcript | Comments(4)

I knew that when I got back from PodCamp Montreal that I’d want to record a Managing the Gray to talk about my thoughts on the weekend. Today I did just that while it was fresh in the old gray matter.

It was a great weekend for sure. Lots of new people. Lots of old friends.

Topics on today’s show:

• Live Six Pixels of Separation recorded on site
• My love of Akoha
• Want an Akoha deck and live outside of the US? Listen to the show to get a pack.
• Fixion Media and their amazing hospitality
• David Usher knows music, new media and is an all around great guy

I still haven’t gone through my photos from the weekend, but they will be added to my PodCamp Montreal Flickr Set when I do. There are a few there and I will be adding more.

Posted in Podcast | Comments(4)

I was psyched to be able to sit down with the creative team behind Ask a Ninja to talk about their brand new book The Ninja Handbook here on Managing the Gray.

We talk about video podcasts, the future of this space and why they decided to write a book.

As a big fan of their show and of the guys, it was a blast to do. Hope to see a bunch of you this weekend at PodCamp Montreal.

Posted in Books, Podcast | Comments(1)

Transcript for Managing the Gray #58
“Passions, Photography and Face to Face”
Originally posted on September 2, 2008

CC: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Managing the Gray. I am CC Chapman coming to you from a beautiful, beautiful Metro West Boston today.

It’s funny. On my mind today is passions, photography, getting out of your comfort zone, all those types of things. I realized it has been way too long since I did a Managing the Gray. Summer, you know, summer happens and if you’re a father or a mother or have kids, I guess you’d be one or the other, wouldn’t you, summer takes a lot of time and when you’re running your own business like I am here at The Advance Guard, summer is one of those times where things just get away from you and one of those things that happened was podcasting kind of took a backburner, not a priority or anything, just timing, just didn’t have a lot of time, but I want to make sure I got a Managing the Gray out because I know I have at least a few new listeners from a photography workshop I took this past weekend in Portland, Maine. What I wanted to focus on — it got me thinking.

So, what it is, is a good friend of mine, Chris, does a podcast called Tips from the Top Floor. If you’re into photography at all, even just point-and-shoot of your kids, Tips from the Top Floor is a great podcast. It covers all sorts of photography, all sorts of questions, answers, and Christ is just an all around great guy. He’s from Germany and he did these workshops. He did four of them last year and I couldn’t make any of them and this year I got to go to one in Portland, Maine, that focused on studio photography.

What was amazing is just sitting around with these different individuals from around the country because they came from all sorts of directions who were all there around a collective passion for photography. No one was a professional. Everybody had different jobs they did, everything from a truck driver to people who work for a large computer company to an Air Force, I forget his rank, but it was just interesting.

What hit me was it was one of those things where I was there for passion for photography. It’s nothing I ever want to make a living in doing. It might be fun, but it’s truly a passion of mine, something I enjoy doing, something I love doing. What was fun is sitting around with these people who I wouldn’t have met through the podcasting circles or through going at marketing seminars. I wouldn’t have crossed paths with these people and just sitting around and talking about life and then it was funny because things like podcasting did come up because most of the people there had listened to Chris’ podcast so they knew what a podcast was.

It was interesting hearing what other people listen to for podcast. None of them had heard of either of my podcast, which was cool so I got to talk about that. Most of them are listening to photography or tech podcasts or things that they were passionate about. It’s one of those things that you really need to step up away from your comfort zone every so often, just to be reminded that the stuff that we’re doing in new media and on the web, if you think about it, go look at your — pick a social network, Facebook, MySpace, pick either one of them then go to Twitter or go to LinkedIn and I bet you’re going to see that the same people are in those networks over and over again in your circles, in your friends or whatever you want to call them, your connections. It’s going to be the same people over and over again. One of those things is, you know, call it the fishbowl, call it the echo chamber, call it whatever you want, the problem is that you got to get away from those.

I’m not saying disown them. What I’m saying is you’ve got to spend time away from all the same people. This was the problem before social networks, your dear cliques in high school, your dear cliques in college, even cliques in society, it’s just the way it is, but I think more people if you break out of this and hang out with people that you normally wouldn’t cross paths with, it opens your eyes and remind you that there’s more out there than what you’re seeing in the daily basis, something you take for granted, twittering and talking to people and getting news split second to your Blackberry or your device of choice. It’s something that not everybody does.

Just go into the bus stop in the morning, which is a new thing for me by the way, taking the kids to the bus stop is something new and just talking to those people every morning and the things they are talking about, the other parents, are very different than things I would be talking about. Politics come up and life comes up and sports and who knows what and it really hit home that I think too many people have gotten comfort in this bubble that we’re playing in and just don’t get outside enough.

I know I’m not the only person who talks about this, but this just really hit home that I think more people need to get out. I wasn’t totally unplugged when I was in Maine, but I was up there for four days and I checked email at night and I was twittering once in a while. I wasn’t reading any twitters. I sent them out once in a while and it was just kind of nice to hang with these new people. Sunday before I left the class, I got down a little early and I stopped by the Portland Lobster Company to sit and watch my friend Mitch from Now is Now play a little bit and just kicked back and did nothing and people-watched. I didn’t even bring my camera which was funny. I’ve been shooting photos all weekend, but just sitting and watching people and interacting with new people, people need to try that whether it’s your business, whether it’s you online. Find new people. Interact with them. Unplug and interact with people. Talk face to face. Really, really, really get to know people. It’s funny because what this all ties back around is I got a listener comment that kind of talked about the same things and I really want to just stream of consciousness brain dump out to the Managing the Gray listeners today. Let’s get an audio comment here.

Ian: Good day, CC. My my name is Ian. How right you are. We mess around with all sorts of people on the Internet. We have all these social interactions with people, but do we actually know them very well? It’s interesting. I’ve met quite a few people on the social networks and I don’t think I actually really get to know a great deal about them until I meet them in the flesh, when you get to look in their eyes, when you get to ask them what their passions are and they stop to talk to you and their hands stop waving and their eyebrows go up and then you start to get that real connection.

That’s what I thought was fascinating about the points you were making. Yes, we do mess about on the inter-webs and talk to people, but it’s getting to know people in the flesh that we still do. I often refer to the [unintelligible] walking around the planes of Africa how it used to do all sorts of things in a very basic way and one of those things was to basically sit around the campfire or sit around, you know, eating and just all the nonverbal that were going on.

We forget that we do these things. We can put so much across in language whether it be written or spoken, but there are all these nonverbal that we use all the time. We all know this. When you’re with your partner and they do something, you pick up on all sorts of attitudes, don’t you? We often forget this and when I want to make a relationship richer that I’ve met somebody online, I always like to try and hook up with them. That’s why when I started my podcast last year, I made the conscious decision that I was not going to do Skype conversations with people.

I decided that everybody, it’s not an absolute because I might come across somebody that I’ve just got no other choice, but at this point in time I have not had to have a telephone or a Skype conversation to somebody from a podcast. That’s why when I went to Europe recently, I made a point of actually tracking people down and meeting them, sometimes just socially, sometimes to actually record a show with them and I was able to get I think a lot more out of them because I could get excited by what they were saying and I can draw out of them what they want to express a bit better. It was a more human conversation and those people who listen to my show have actually said that it feels like they’re sitting in on a conversation, which is exactly what I want. So, I absolutely agree with what you’re saying. Thanks for your show. If you want to check out what I’m doing, it’s over at yourstorypodcast.com. That’s what I’m up to. Thanks for your program. I love catching up whenever you put it out. It doesn’t matter if you don’t put it out for a few months. Just keep putting it out from time to time. I love it always. See you, bye.

CC: I agree fully. I hate doing Skype interviews. It’s why you don’t hear me do interviews very often because I much prefer to do them face to face, to sit down to talk. I love that and he’s totally right. It was funny because I had this in my head of stuff I wanted to talk about and then I heard that audio comment and I’m like that’s perfect to put in right there what I’m talking about, getting out and meeting people and talking to people and interacting and get out the bubble and all that. It’s really on my mind and I think people need to start thinking about it more and companies as well.

I had this conversation recently where if you think about it, if brand X, it doesn’t matter what brand it is or what they’re selling, they’re going to go out, they want to hit the blogging community, hit the inter-webs, they’re going to look at the same people day in and day out for the most part. Granted if you’re tech, you’re going to go one direction; if you’re music, you’re going to go another direction, but there’s definitely, as much as I hate the A-lister term, there are certainly A-listers, there are certainly a core group of people that you know if you can get them to write about your product or get attention for your service. It’s going to help, it’s not going to hurt, but at the same time I’m like look beyond them. Don’t always focus on the numbers. I’ve always been a big fan of it’s not always about the numbers. If you have 100 listeners who are highly interested, highly concentrated as opposed to 1000 who are kind of cashable, I’d rather have that 100 everyday.

Chris Marquardt and I from Tips from the Top Floor, we’re talking about this weekend and how vital it is for us as podcasters to have connections with our audience, how much of level of trust that is. We both have the same philosophy. You can’t break that. It’s a two-way street. If either one of us was to either pimp something or shill something and we didn’t really believe in it, our audience would see right through us and would leave us. It’s definitely a relationship and it was fun meeting these people this weekend who are in his community, who came because they listen to his podcast and they traveled across the country and paid a significant amount of money to attend a photography workshop. It was neat and it was really fun.

I got another listener comment I want to play. This is going back a little way to when I was talking about the cost of a social media expert.

Andrea: Hi, CC. This is Andrea Vascellari from Finland. I just finished to listen to one of the latest episodes of Managing the Gray and I was thinking about the comment that Shel Holtz from FIR left, talking about experts. The funny thing is that the blog post you mentioned after Shel’s comment is the post I wrote. The title of that blog post was Experts – Yes, No, Maybe.

I got the inspiration, you know, I thought to write that post after I read this tweet by Kathy Sierra in which she was asking how do we decide when someone is an expert or when should be taken seriously as an expert. Shel made a very good point in his comment and I think it assimilated to stop by and record my thoughts on this audio file. So, what I think is that they key isn’t points of view. So, one side, we have people, common people, and on the other side we have so-called experts. I mean people see you as an expert because of your expertise, because of your special knowledge and abilities, but on the other side when we look at those knowledge and skills, well, I guess we take a distance from calling ourselves experts because we know really well the space and we know how fast it can change and evolve and in a way how difficult it is to be always up to date and always one step ahead.

Like Chris said, like Chris Brogan wrote on his comment on that post I wrote, he says, “Experts in this space are tricky to quantify.” That’s why I think we prefer the role of advisors. On the other hand, I agree with Shel when he says, “Why would anybody hire us if we weren’t experts?” Here’s how I live my relationship with the term expert. I feel more like living like an advisor and then I let people tag me as an expert if they want. I don’t know if this is humility like what Shel said, but I don’t know.

I’ve noticed that when somebody starts to call you an expert, well, you know the power of word of mouth. So, I will attach to this audio comment also a link to that post I wrote, so if you fancy you can include it in the show notes and it will be interesting to hear also the thoughts of the other Managing the Gray listeners. You’ll find me on my website at andreavascellari.com. There, you have access to my blog and podcast. I will spell my surname, it’s V-A-S-C-E-L-L-A-R-I. So, again, CC, thank you very much. I love the show. Keep up the great work. Bye.

CC: I love that the two listener comments today have great accents. I love listening to people with accents whether it’s a different dialect from America or somewhere else in the world and it’s funny you mentioned Finland. I’m very disappointed I couldn’t go to — I got this unique opportunity from Nokia to go to Helsinki for a conference.

The problem is, honestly, I’ve been on the road so much and being a family guy I just don’t like traveling a whole lot. I really, really don’t. the excitement of going to a new town, the excitement of meeting new people, the exciting thing about taking photos in a new place is great, but I hate being away from my family. Plain and simple, I love spending time with my family. I thought about it long and hard. It was not easy to turn down a free trip to Helsinki where I wasn’t even going to have to speak. I was just going to participate, but thank you very much Nokia for the opportunity.

I hope I get another chance, but I am going to be traveling in a little bit and this is one of the reasons why I didn’t go to Helsinki was because the weekend after that, I’m headed to PodCamp Montreal. If you’re thinking about going, it’s the weekend of September 20th and 21st in Montreal, beautiful Montreal as my good friend Mitch Joel says. I’m really looking forward to it. What’s going to be interesting talking about breaking outside of your shell and going to a new area is this is going to be a bilingual PodCamp. There’s actually going to be sessions in French and sessions in English. Every post they do on the website is in French and English. It’s very interesting. I’m extremely curious how this is going to go.

As someone who only speaks English, once I get past “Bonjour! Je’Mapelle CC Chapman,” that’s about the extent of my French and some Canadian swear words that I learned on the Bob and AJ Show back in the day, but I’m extremely interested in this and extremely excited. If you’re going, Mitch Joel and I are doing a presentation together talking about passionate podcasting and why we both subscribe to the live podcasting methodology, if you can call it a methodology, the sit down, hit record, and when you’re done, you’re done. I’m really looking forward to it. I cannot wait.

Montreal is one of those cities I’ve been trying to get back to for so long and I haven’t been up there since podcasting began, which is scary, but there’s people up there that I love and respect and I’m really looking forward to PodCamp Montreal. So, if you’re thinking of going, please consider coming over, going up, whichever direction. I look to the speaker list, there are some really interesting speeches going on. It’s a different conversation than the standard ones, so I’m very much looking forward to that and I can’t wait.

Then in October, I’m actually headed out to the Marketing Profs Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. There goes the phone, talking about live podcasting. You got to love it, speaking of live podcasting. Hopefully, the answering machine won’t turn on and we’ll just ignore the phone, right? This is why podcasting is real. Yes, Scottsdale, Arizona, I’m going to be going out there for a conference speaking on video and branded entertainment. So, I’m looking forward to that as well. There are some other conferences mixed and match here and there. I have to do a blog post more for my sake than anything, but also to let people know where I’m headed.

So, that’s going to wrap up Managing the Gray for today. If you want to call in, the call-in line is always open. It’s toll free here in the States. It’s 1-866-384-4522. That’s 866-384-4522. We’d love to have you calling on the show. I know school is starting out for a lot of people. My kids started up last week. If your kids are starting school, I hope it’s a great year and I hope to hear from you really, really soon. You know where to find me on the inter-webs, managingthegray.com or drop me an email at cc.chapman@gmail.com. Until next time, I am CC Chapman. You guys, stay safe, have lots and lots of fun. I’ll talk to you soon.

Posted in Transcript | Comments(0)

Transcript for Managing the Gray #57
On the Eve of Podcamp
Originally Posted on July 18, 2008

CC: Hey everybody. Do you even remember who I am? This is C.C. Chapman, host of Managing the Gray, co-founder and partner of The Advance Guard and all around just web freak.

It’s really exciting. It’s an exciting time for me right now because in a couple of hours, Steve Coulson, my business partner, will be here in town. It’s going to be the first time he’s been to the house, first time he’s met the family. I’m just kind of excited about it. It’s one of those things that’s been on my mind a lot lately and if you read my blog over at cc-chapman.com or on managingthegray.com, you’ll know I’ve been thinking a lot more about the face to face, the social, the interactions. I’ve been thinking a lot about the marketplace, both work and play now these days and just thinking about how it’s changing, it’s evolving. I mean it’s different and there things that people seem to forget and that I don’t want to forget.

One of those is the personal connection. I mean here I am, I’ve been working with Steve for a long time now even before The Advance Guard, I talk about him every day, I work with him and my family haven’t met him yet and that feels very strange. I’ve hung out with his family. I know his kids very, I know his wife very well and it’s not to have the favor returned, not favor, but, you know, have it flipped. The kids are really excited to see him. It’s that whole personal connection.

Working virtually, it’s difficult. It’s not a walk in the park and anybody who tells you it is, is full of crap because it requires a different type of person, a different type of connection because you’re not having this face to face connection. It’s different. It’s very, very different and that’s something that people need to think more about in this social media space. If you can’t tell today, this is one of those stream of consciousness. I’ve got a blank Moleskine in front of me where I was going to make notes. I just really wanted to do a show. I miss talking to you guys, so just stream of consciousness you guys seem to like. I got one comment to play.

People need to realize that you’ve got to still connect with people. You’ve got to still meet them face to face, shake their hand, have a drink, sit down and have a conversation, a real conversation. What we have online is conversation, but it’s not the same as talking, seeing facial expressions, just hanging out. I had dinner this week with a great group of individuals, most of whom I didn’t know and it was great to talk about all kinds of weird, I mean creative storytelling through game play and photographic representation of poetry, topics I would never ever talk about and I’d probably never go seek out online.

I saw Chris Penn talking about this the other day. He talks about it quite a bit actually. One of the things with social media and the web in general is you get to choose what you see. If you sit down and you watch the nightly news, pick any of the networks because each network is different, but if you watch the network, you consume what they give you. They choose what to show you in that half-hour of news. You don’t have a choice, but online when you open up your RSS Reader, whatever one it is, you’re choosing what you’re reading there. It’s not like something generic and magical is going to pop up randomly and be in your face. You’re going to pick what you want to read and that sort of isolates you.

One of the things this week I’m trying to experiment is I’m trying Google Reader. It’s weird. I use Google for everything except for the Reader. I’m a lifelong Bloglines guy for some reason and I really like it, but one of the features I’ve already fallen in love with, with the Google Reader is the Friends Shared Items. Now, whenever I’m reading something in Google Reader, if I just want to share it, I just click Share. All that means is if somebody has decided to look, they can at any point go, “Oh, what is CC sharing?” and look, so every morning whenever I go in, it shows me on my Friends what they’re sharing and I click and read and I’m getting exposed to things that I would not usually read. Some of it is the same old stuff, but some of it is stuff that — I read something last night, it was some fish or something, it was weird. This is what I mean is it’s starting to broaden my horizons and we all got to think about that a little bit more, that we are isolated.

You hang out on Twitter, you’re talking to the same people everybody. You hang out on Facebook, it’s the same people. There’s nothing wrong with those people. What I’m just saying is remember there’s a whole world out there of people that you’re not interacting with, the stories you’re not hearing. There is cool programs, cool happenings that you’re not aware of.

Music, I found this new band I got introduced to, Girls, Guns and Glory, thank you Sooz. I hadn’t heard them before. Why? Because they’re on the radio and I don’t listen to the radio that often and they’re not on podcast either. So, they’re in this weird world where I don’t usually get exposed to, but over dinner, talking about new bands we like, they came up. I went and checked them out and I dig them. See? It’s really, really simple. Let me play a comment. I got this comment and it’s funny because, you know, I was talking about the whole social media expert and the expert thing and how I don’t like to call myself an expert and Shel Holtz, a good friend and a great guy, chimed in and said, “Well, CC, no.” So, let me play his comment.

Shel: Hey, CC. This is Shel Holtz from For Immediate Release at www.forimmediaterelease.biz. That’s my podcast. I co-host with Neville Hobson and I blog at A Shel of My Former Self at blog.holtz.com. I’ve been catching up on podcast including Managing the Gray. I had a couple of really long flights getting back to the west coast from Montreal earlier this week. I should have said beautiful Montreal, shouldn’t I?

In any case, I heard the episode where you proclaimed that you’re not a social media expert and while I sympathize with what probably led you to say that, which is humility, I would argue that you are in fact a social media expert. An expert isn’t necessarily somebody who knows everything. In fact, even in professions that have been around for decades or even hundreds of years, the best experts are constantly learning. I understand that social media is new and evolving and nobody knows everything, but what distinguishes you and a lot of the other folks that we know in this space is that you concentrate on it. You focus on it to the exclusion of other possible things that you could do to generate and income and as a result you developed expertise. Note expertise and expert derived from the same root.

Over at Princeton on WordNet, they define an expert as a person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully and I don’t think you would argue that that absolutely defines you. So, I think you need to fly your expert flags very proudly. I don’t think that there is anything arrogant about calling yourself an expert. When you get right down to it, why would anybody hire you if you weren’t an expert? Why not just go to somebody who has a blog if we’re all still learning and we’re all at the same level, all in the same boat? You’re most definitely an expert and you work hard to develop that expertise. I think you should be proud of it and I think you should proclaim it. My two cents and of course thanks for everything that you continue to do and I’ll keep listening.

CC: Man, you know, there are certain people in this world that when you get a compliment from, at least I do, I get very humble. I don’t blush, but you know. Shel Holtz is one of those guys. I’ll never forget Shel actually called me a mentch one time and that really hit home and meant a lot coming from him. He’s a great guy and thank you, Shel.

Yeah, it’s funny. There was a blog post this week talking about the whole expert term. It’s a weird term because some people take it wrong and some people take it right. Yeah, I know a lot of stuff in this space, I do. I admit it I do. I have worked hard to understand this stuff. I continually work hard. The expert term is always something that just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know what it is. I just like to think of it, you know, one of the things I was seeing the other day on this blog post I read was talking about the fact that I think the best people in any area are always in a role of advisor and student, always. You’re always learning. You can always teach and the best always are teaching. I understand the term about those who can’t do, teach, but at the same time I mean I think those who do, do it make the best teachers. I love teaching people.

I’m really looking forward to PodCamp Boston this weekend. I had a presentation set to go talking about building your brand with passion and I’m going to kind of change it completely. I had the slides and I went, “You know what? No. I want to get back to the roots. I want to teach. I want to work with people.” It will be interesting. I’m hoping people come to the session.

It should be interesting time. I know one of the things I was really excited about directly involved with that too is I asked Chris Penn this year, right at the beginning I said, “I want to give my usual sponsorship that I give to PodCamp Boston — this year instead of doing, you know, I don’t need a table, I don’t need any of that stuff. Can I just give the money, but do it as scholarships, whereas, there was this, you know, it cost to get in.” He’s like, “Yeah.” So, it was really cool and what was interesting is the scholarships I gave, I know a couple of them were to Emerson students. I got an email from a professor saying, “Hey, I listen to your show. I would love to give these out to my students.” I said to him, “Well, ask your students if they’re interested and have them contact me.” They proactively did.

I gave one to a girl in New York. I cannot wait to meet her. I don’t know and that’s what I am excited about because I am empowering them to get into something where they may not have, but I hope they get something out of it and I’m going to try to follow up with them, especially the Boston too, I’d love to follow up and get them on Managing the Gray maybe and just talk about what they got out of it and get an honest opinion from complete newbies, what they thought about it. I think it could be really intriguing.

Speaking of PodCamp Boston, it’s funny. I’ve taken a kind of a break from speaking. I got kind or burnt out this spring. We were doing a lot of speaking and travel with launching the company, I said, “You know what? I’m going to take the summer off from speaking.” So, this is the first time I’m going to be speaking in months and I cannot wait for it. I’m very, very excited about it. I’m energized about it. I get a kick out of public speaking. I enjoy speaking to a crowd, especially in an environment where people are excited to be there. They want to learn, they want to find out more. I can’t wait. People have been approaching me about speaking this fall and I’ve been talking to them. Yeah, I would love to get back into speaking just because I’ve missed it even just a couple of months away. Mentally, it was the right thing to do.

Some people have been asking how The Advance Guard is going. The Advance Guard is going really good. I don’t ever want this podcast to turn into a pimping exercise, but business is good. Steve and I are pushing forward, doing the right things. It’s one of those interesting things where, you know, here we are several months into the company and you start thinking about, okay, so where do we want to go in the next 12 months and what clients do we want to work with, what clients don’t we want to work with, what do we want to be when we grow up.

It’s one of those things where we had kind of a broad — we had a very broad definition of what our company was when we started it because it was one of those things we weren’t planning on starting. This is advice. I hope this helps somebody. We kind of came in with a broad scope of, you know, we do this, but then as we started doing things and contracts started coming in and clients, we started narrowing our focus and not so much narrowing, but saying, “We don’t want to do these types of things. Here’s that broad bucket. Well, let’s take out these rocks that we don’t like. Get rid of them.” If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, why do it? Yeah, it’s the money. It’s one of those things, you know, early on you take the work you get and like, “We don’t like this type of work. Let’s kind of focus away from that. Let’s do this,” talking about what do we want to do. It’s been really, really exciting.

We just sent out a Facebook update the other day. If you’re on Facebook, search for The Advance Guard. We’re using that as kind of our newsletter now, it makes easier for people to opt in and out, and just talking about the things we’re doing, how we’re helping with the HBO True Blood campaign and the Verizon My Home 2.0 campaign. We just finished up a project for Coca-Cola and it’s just been a lot of fun and some things in the horizon. It’s a really exciting time, a challenging time. If anybody thinks that starting your own business is an easy thing, let me tell you, it ain’t. It’s a lot of fun. I’m having a blast. I’m learning a ton. I got a good business partner. It’s kind of interesting the fact that, you know, connected virtually, met virtually, and pretty much run our business virtually. We have a real office in New York now, but I don’t get there as often as I’d like, but it’s a cool thing.

I just want to kind of connect with everybody and let everybody know I’m still alive and kicking out here and doing pretty well. The comment line is always open and I’ve got a new one. It’s toll free in the US. It’s 1-866-384-4522 and you can call that with anything and I promise — I have a bunch of calls I got to go through. It’s just one of these things where I’ve just been so busy and taking the time to do a podcast has been difficult, but it’s something I need to do more because I miss you guys and I like to share my thoughts and brain dumping like this for 13 minutes and you let me do it.

So, if you’re coming to PodCamp Boston this weekend, I hope you swing by and say hello. I know Steven and I both will be there, so will Christina from The Advance Guard. We’ll be in and around. I’d be ashamed not to say swing by and say hi to mDialog, they’re our client as well. I’m really proud of this Unicef program we did, the What Would You Say to World Leaders? I’m really personally proud of it. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Check it out. I just like the message of — you know me. I’m a little touchy feely, I like doing those types of projects, it was a lot of fun, but mDialog will be at PodCamp Boston. I know they’re going to have a table. They’ll be around. You’ll see them. Come say hi and learn about what they’ve got going on.

Until next time, guys, I am CC Chapman. You know, you can find out more about me at cc-chapman.com or go to theadvanceguard.com. I promise that site’s coming, just we don’t need it at the moment. Anyways, until next time. If you got to call, 866-384-4522 or swing by managingthegray.com and leave a comment and I’ll talk to you very, very soon. Have a good one guys. Get out there. Be creative. Be smart. Have fun. It’s what it’s all about.

Posted in Transcript | Comments(0)

Fresh back from a weekend at a Tips From The Top Floor photography workshop in Portland, Maine and it got me thinking a lot about meeting people and getting outside of the bubble many social media people seem to not realize they are inside of.

Managing the Gray is back and I couldn’t be happier.

Posted in Podcast | Comments(3)