I was very psyched when the opportunity to interview Chris Anderson here on Managing the Gray came up. Special thanks to my friend Kevin Smokler for making the introduction.

Photo by Joi Ito

Chris and I got on the phone to chat as we were both getting ready for Father’s Day weekend and I had a fun chatting with him about all the different things he has going on. Sure, he has the new book Free coming out on July 7th, but I wanted to talk about everything else he does as well. We got to talk about robots, the future of magazines and the publishing industry.

Links mentioned on today’s show include:

• BookTour.com
• The Long Tail
• Wired Magazine
• GeekDad
• DIY Drones

If you liked what you heard, please subscribe in iTunes or leave a review for the show.

The hot assignment that everyone seems to be getting or looking for is to develop a social media strategy. Every day I hear about someone having to figure this out for their company and they don’t know where to start. So, today on Managing the Gray I thought I’d give my advice on how to approach this and succeed at it as well.

Links that I mentioned during the show include:

• Robert Scoble discussing the need for humans on web sites
• Using Social Media to Listen to Consumers article in Ad Age
• The 2009 Digital Issue of Ad Age (not all online so find a print copy if you can)
• Steve Coulson’s Mashable post on 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

At the end of the day I think every company from the smallest of corner shops, all the way up to the biggest global companies have got to figure out where social media enters into their mix. It should not be tacked on to each program, but integrated from the start into all your programs. There is so much to gain if you do this right.

I hope this show helps you and if you need further help please contact me.

I first met David Meerman Scott when he interviewed me for his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Since then we have stayed in touch and crossed paths more then once at conferences we were both speaking at. He’s a very smart and laid back guy and I think that is why we hit it off so well.

When I got a chance to read his newest book World Wide Rave, I couldn’t wait to sit down and discuss it with him and that is today’s Managing the Gray. The book doesn’t come out for another month, but until then you can visit the World Wide Rave web site and get the latest information. He’s got some fun stuff planned for the book release and I’m looking forward to seeing how people react to it. You might want to think about following David on Twitter for the latest information.

As I talk about on the show, I recorded this with the Griffin iTalk application and I’m in love with this iPhone application. I can’t recommend it enough.

If you like what you hear today why not consider subscribing through the feed or directly in iTunes.

You can find out more about me the host C.C. Chapman or my company The Advance Guard as well.

The winners are:

Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

Winner: Netlog
Runner-up: Platinum Lounge

Embeddable Widgets

Winner: Qoof
Runner-up: Sprout

Blog Plugins

Winner: ShareThis
Runner-up: AddThis

Social News

Winner: Help a Reporter Out
Runner-up: Hubdub

Social Networking Applications

Winner: Aritition
Runner-up: Digsby

Social Bookmarking

Winner: Diigo
Runner-up: ShareThis

Search & Social Search

Winner: Scour
Runner-up: Artiklz

Sports & Fitness

Winner: Gyminee
Runner-up: FitFiend

Photo Sharing

Winner: ipernity
Runner-up: TinyPic

Video Sharing

Winner: ffwd
Runner-up: YouTube

Start Pages

Winner: Google
Runner-up: iGoogle

Places & Events

Winner: Doodle
Runner-up: Muchmor

Travel

Winner: SpottedByLocals
Runner-up: GeckoGo

Music

Winner: Noisetrade
Runner-up: Last.fm

Social Shopping

Winner: Pikaba
Runner-up: A Full Cup

Fashion

Winner: Coolspotters
Runner-up: Polyvore

Celebrity & Gossip

Winner: Oh No They Didn’t
Runner-up: BollyScoops

Mobile Applications

Winner: Evernote
Runner-up: MocoSpace

Dating & Romance

Winner: Zoosk
Runner-up: DateHookup

Wiki

Winner: Encyclopedia Dramatica
Runner-up: WikiHow

Politics

Winner: Politics4All
Runner-up: CreateDebate

How-to

Winner: A Full Cup
Runner-up: College Cram

Environmental

Winner: Ecomii
Runner-up: Gazelle

Non-Profit Causes

Winner: Stop Political Calls
Runner-up: SocialVibe

Online Games

Winner: Playfish
Runner-up: Power Pets

Niche Social Networks

Winner: The Star Tracker
Runner-up: Wadja

Voting begins now and goes until Sunday, November 30th at 11:59 pm PST. So be sure to take a moment and vote for your favorites in each category. When the winners are announced I’ll be sure to list them here as well

I put that in quotes because I didn’t have a clue why this was important to me. Sure, I know enough to know that WiMax can mean faster service, but since I’m already a customer would this mean I’d have to pay more money? Did I need to buy a new modem for something that I would only be able to get in certain areas?

I asked this of the person who reached out to me and instead of writing back the answers they asked Scott Martin from XOHM to answer the questions for me on video. It was a little strange that they sent me a video file that I had to upload somewhere in order to blog post about it, but still they took the extra step to make it a bit more personal which I liked.

I presented at the New Marketing Summit yesterday and was given a ten minute slot to talk just before lunch. I wanted to make it an information filled ten minutes, so I decided to make a list of ten social media tools that everyone should try in order to get a quick introduction to the space.

My goal was to have ten things that anyone could sign up for and try out over the course of a week during their lunch break. I didn’t want anything that cost money or was a complete waste of time.

As soon as I got home I realized that I wanted to record a Managing the Gray going through the ten items because I had to fly through it yesterday. I love Chris Brogan, but only having 10 minutes was hard! *grin*

In case you don’t have time to listen to the show, the 10 things were:

1. Google yourself, your brand, your competitors. See what is being said and where you rank.
2. Set up multiple Google Alerts based around anything you want to be automatically notified about when a post appears online.
3. Begin using Twitter. Even if you use it more to read what others are saying then saying much yourself. Use Twitter Search to see what you might have missed on a topic such as your brand.
4. Join a social network. The two I recommend getting started with are LinkedIn and Facebook
5. Sign up for newsletters. The three I showed are MarketingVox, WOMMA and MarketingProfs as great starters to keep you informed.
6. Get a Flickr account even if you don’t plan on sharing photos. Search for events that you know are going on to start getting to know the people and faces.
7. Read constantly. Shelfari and Goodreads can both help you see what other people are reading and get your new marketing bookshelf started.
8. Attend events because nothing beats face-to-face. I love using Upcoming to see what is going on and what my friends are attending.
9. Evernote is what I use to capture everything that gets my attention. I like to think of it as my virtual Moleskine.
10. Yelp allows you to review and discover vendors of all sorts anywhere in the world.

You can view the slides that go along with this on SlideShare, where I put all my presentations.

What would you add to this list?

I spent some time putting words into it and seeing what it did. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but go ahead and give it a try. When you give it a word that the box likes it reacts positively to it. I’m still haven’t figured out if there are any key words that will make it go really nuts or not and what the end goal of the site is, but it is a fun for a nice break. One warning though is that the site loads with sounds so don’t have your speakers to loud. You can turn it off in the upper right hand corner.

What I have determined is that it is tied to a Facebook application as well where you can win prizes by holding the box. I had the box for a while, but didn’t win anything. As you can see below, you can go in every day and “touch” boxes that other people are holding in the hopes that when the box changes holders you’ll get it next. Sort of like an inverted, twisted game of duck duck goose if you ask me.

Word on the street is that this is tied to a television company, but I’m not getting any real answers from anyone I ask so I’m not sure. I did see a TV in one of the promo shots as a prize so who knows.

If you try it out and find anything cool that makes the box do things let me know. If you win a prize I REALLY want to know because I am curious to see what sorts of things it gives out.

Not sure this is “life changing” but it is certainly fun to play with.

According to a recent study by BlogHer and Compass Partners, more than one-third (35%) of all women in the U.S. aged 18 to 75 participate in the blogosphere at least once a week

I’m very glad that BlogHer did this survey because I think it proves what I’ve said in the past about not ignoring the female population on the web. If you win over the Mother in a household, then you win over the pocket book. Sure, I’m the gadget freak of the house, but my wife and I discuss all purchases before they are made. I know we are not unique in this situation. It is how good relationships work.

It also drives home the fact that brands need to continue (or start) to think beyond only Moms and rather focus on all women on the web. Every day women are finding information, shopping and engaging with each other online rather then the more traditional ways.

Of course, I was also happy to see a rising number in female content creators. The survey focuses specifically in on writing blog content, but I’d argue that I’ve been seeing a rise in all forms of media on the web. More and more are starting small. Maybe just a Facebook account or a Twitter stream to express themselves and connect with friends. While others are branching out beyond that and starting to try out video and audio.

It doesn’t matter what they are doing, but rather that they are doing it. This number is going to continue to grow.

Yesterday I upgraded my main desktop computer from a PC that has served me well (bought off the shelf from a Best Buy), but that has been acting flaky lately. Just like a car it is not uncommon that after three years of heavy use a computer can start to bog down, act funny and just not get you where you want to go as nicely as it could. Sure, it still runs, but not like a shiny new one.

My rule when buying a new computer is simple. Buy the highest level of everything that your budget can afford. Spending that extra bit of money now to have more RAM installed will save you time and aggravation down the road. Also, you need to accept that no matter when you buy a computer (or other gadget) that the price and capabilities will be old and outdated faster then you want it to be. Just accept it and move on. It is not worth dwelling on.

If you are thinking of buying a Mac of any sort then I highly recommend checking out the Mac Buyer’s Guide that based on previous release schedules tells you the optimal time to purchase. I listened to them on my iMac and waiting a couple of weeks was the right move. Bookmark that site now!

Last week there was all this commotion around some photos that were taken for an issue of Vanity Fair magazine. I love Annie Lebowitz and thought the photos were fine. I actually didn’t think that the one that really got the most attention was that good if I’m being honest. Parents were mad that a young girl would take suggestive photos. Even when in my opinion they was only minimal suggestion in them. But, that is a whole other discussion.

The point in all of this is that it is obvious that we are watching a transition from Hannah Montana (a fake character created by Disney) to Miley Cyrus, pop superstar. This is a planned, calculated first move in a campaign to change her image. People won’t like it all, but it is just like when a product or company renames itself. You’ve got to get people talking about you and guess what? Here we all are talking about it.

My daughter loves both. Isn’t it obvious by this picture? For the longest time she thought of them as separate people. When she bought the CD there were separate ones for each of them. The music was similar but different. I’ve watched as slowly she talks more about Miley and Hannah is forgotten. It has been happening for weeks and she is unaware of all this craziness going on right now.

There is no quicker way to kill off a young innocent girl then to have her grow up. It happens to the best of them and that is what we are seeing.

Soon Miley will be 16. Her fans are growing up as well. Sure, she has the choice of if she stays a “good girl” or she ends up becoming the new poster child for abuse and stupidity (i.e. Britney).

I’m just sick of reading and hearing about people “taking advantage of her” or Miley “not know what is going on” because nothing could be further from the truth. This is all just part of the big brand game and there is sure to be more soon. Sometimes you’ve got to take the good and the bad or as Hannah would sing “the best of both worlds.”

Kristin and Erin from Manic Mommies swung by on a Sunday morning for conversation and coffee. We talk about a lot of topics including the General Motors sponsorship of their Mommy Escape (the picture here is my wife AT the Escape), their recent trip to the BlogHer Business Conference and the growing of their brand. Not only are they friends of mine, but I’ve really loved watching them grow over the three years since they first started podcasting.

The best part about having them over is that it reminds me how much fun it is to have conversations on podcasts. I don’t do that as often as I should. I think it is a new goal for me

If your curious about a whole other side of mine, we recorded an episode of their show where we only talked about parenting. When it is up I’ll put a link here.

Update: The episode of Manic Mommies is now available here.

I only had a couple of minutes to play around with it, but it let me build a little house from a template and populate it with a couple of things that I bought from the store. It looks like you can also create your own, sell items and move things around. With the border around my house I’m not sure if I’ll get neighbors someday or how that happens. It all seems to be tied into a bigger site and functionality. I wonder how it all connects?

I’m sure this is just the first of many invites I’m going to get on MySpace. I’m curious how different it is from developing applications in Facebook and if it is more powerful or limiting. Only time will tell. If you know, let me know would you? Thanks in advance

Yesterday while cruising around Facebook I saw an ad for a cabin rental in the Adirondacks. I clicked onto something else before I realized that the ad was of interest to me and then couldn’t find it again. I clicked on the little “more ads” under the space, but it wasn’t there.

I’ve set up these ads before and know that they allow you to target people based on a variety of demographic and key word data. So I obviously fit someone’s profile for who they wanted to target and they got it right because I wanted to find out more. But, now I can’t!

The only thing I can guess is that this particular ad hit a spending limit and that is why it is not visible any more. But, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to look for ads if you wanted to? Sure, the frequency of this happening would be low, but who is going to turn away someone that WANTS to see their ad?

Ok, my mini rant is done. Guess I’ll have to just use good old Google to look for a cabin to rent.

What makes Overlay.TV different is that anyone can tag any video. It does not touch the original uploaded file. It can pull a video from most of the major video services (Brightcove is one I asked about which is coming) or from an uploaded movie file on your own server and then people can place overlays on the video highlighting products and services.

In the demo we pulled in a video of a trumpet player from YouTube and tagged his t-shirt to go to Amazon to buy a similar one. Anyone can take any video and place overlays on it. The process is quick, easy and powerful. The options on if the overlay is just a simple hot sport or actually a mini pop up is up to the user. Adding product information is done via a bookmarklet that allows for one click copy and past of descriptions, prices and other needed information from any web site.

I can see some big potential for this from lots of different angles. Brands (especially retail ones) will be adding overlays to their viral videos. Bands can link out to their CDs and equipment sponsors. Fans can take anything they are in love with and create their own overlays and then embed it all on their blogs and Facebook profiles.

Some people might freak since this could be viewed as changing a video, but it is not. It is just putting a screen over the video and allowing for people to link items in it. I’m interested to see the community nature of this and also how companies can leverage it on their own sites. I’m also interested to see if this gets popular if performance will degrade and if items won’t seamlessly sync up.

Take a moment and check it out when you have a moment. To get a feel for what I’m talking about they’ve made this throw back infomercial as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATtnwdXzEQ

On February 11th if you’d like I’ll be online for two hours to chat with anyone about anything. It would be great to connect and you can sign up here.

I’ve played with ooVoo for a while now. It is good to see that they are finally out with a Mac friendly client because I think the ability to do live video chat with five other people is a very powerful thing and something that a lot of people can benefit from.

What makes me most happy about this day is that I was told that I’d have $1500 to donate towards charity. I am a HUGE supporter of giving back in any way possible so this made my day. I’m splitting my donation between the Frozen Pea Fund for breast cancer and the Ma Chen- Autism School in China that my good friend Whitney is championing.

The screen shot is from the sign up page and includes a few of the other great participants. I’m personally looking forward to signing up and chatting with others such as Mitch Joel and Scott Sigler as well.

Hope to see you there.

I love creative commercials as much as the next guy and the idea of having a site where I can go and view them if I wish is an interesting one, but long term I don’t get how a site like this can survive. It is fun for a few minutes and advertisers might pay to have their ads featured, but after that what? What brings back an audience on an ongoing basis?

Then last week I read about their campaign around the Super Bowl which we all know is as much about the pimping as it is the pigskin. The Road to Firebrand Monday is a campaign across multiple channels featuring some of the best characters and commercials from over the years. Here you can see one of their advertisements for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEXhigptdM8

They are also doing a series of special episodes gearing up for this and on the day after the game will feature a special episode hosted by Carmen Electra and Reebok’s “Office Linebacker” Terry Tate. I’m actually looking forward to watching this one episode because it should make for good TV and I always like seeing what other have to say about the commercials I loved and hated. The shows run on ION TV which I didn’t even know I had until I was flipping through the channels one night and discovered it.

I watch the Super Bowl for the game first and the ads second. Especially this year when the Patriots are rolling into town to crush the Giants.

I’m still not sold on Firebrand, but I am sold on this specific campaign. It is a natural and perfect fit for their brand. It is going to be interesting to see what they do with all this buzz they are getting and if it can take them anywhere in the months ahead.

He talks a lot about his grandfather and how close they were. I can relate to this as my Grandfather Chapman and I were extremely close. When he died it was not a good time in my life and I felt like I had lost a best friend. My Dad and I often discuss how much he would have loved everything that I’m doing and the tools that we get to play with these days. If your curious I know I get my photography genes from him. I have fond memories of being in his home made dark room as a kid watching photos come to life.

But, what Abrams was also talking about is the concept of mystery boxes and how they can be found everywhere. Seems he has had a box that he bought years ago at a magic shop and has never opened because he loves the mystery of not knowing what is inside.

This got me thinking that to a lot of people and companies new media must seem like a mystery box full of wonder. They read the articles, hear the ranting and raving, but they still don’t fully understand what is inside. What happens when someone opens that box without a guide or a firmer understanding? Should you open up the box or preserve some of the mystery.

I’m not sure of the answer, but as I ride along on the train this is where my mind goes. Pondering the fact that if I asked every person in this cabin of the train about various technologies we take for granted if they would have heard of them or not. I think too often we assume everyone knows what podcasting, micro-blogging and search engine optimization. But, the truth is to most all of the fun things we find on the new media playground are still nothing more then a mystery box.

Part of my goals for 2008 is to speak to more people who don’t know this space. I guess I’m hoping to open the box for more people. I like the sound of that.

What topic of interest to you do you wish there was a blog, podcast or community out there for you to consume and interact with?

I was thinking about this the other day as I had breakfast with my family at a diner and it is one of those places that still puts down the paper place mat with all the ads for local companies on it. Got me thinking that I wish there was a site on the web where I could easily pull up hyper local details about companies around me. Lots of people trying to do this, but no one has got it as simple as that place mat.

What are you looking for? What do you wish you able to learn from new media that you are not getting?

I’m just curious?

This should be an interesting strike to watch. The writers realize that more and more money is being made on their work that they are not seeing a dime of. The days of hoping that a show gets syndicated and that is as good as it gets are over. Now a show can live on via online downloads and DVDs. I have friends that skip whole shows because they’d rather wait and watch it on DVD.

The longer this strike goes on the sooner I hope that executives will start looking to the web to find fresh talent. It is ridiculous to me that someone like Cali Lewis is not the tech correspondent on CNN or that Ask a Ninja isn’t doing a weekly sketch for Saturday Night Live. Those are just two examples out of the hundreds of talented people producing solid content. Who couldn’t picture the team from Epic-Fu bringing a little in you face commentary to a show like Entertainment Tonight?

Same goes for the movie studios. Granted they’ve got enough scripts tied up to keep them busy for a while, but wouldn’t it be a great time to buy a script from a Scott Sigler, a J.C. Hutchins or a Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff to breath new life into the stagnant Hollywood system?

I just hope that as this strike drags on and people start to leave television to look for new content that they discover this little world we live in on the new media playground. That they take some time to discover all the great content being produced every day outside of the traditional media machine.

Chris Anderson just posted on his blog the e-mail addresses of a bunch of people who have reached out to him with PR related inquiries.

I get no where even remotely close to how many he does and even I get a little sick of them if they are anonymous and random without any thought at all. So I completley understand him blocking them and junking them on his end.

Where I am conflicted is on sharing these in the open like this. I’m not sure what positive outcome this generates except to open up people to more spam and to potentially create a black list of e-mails that isn’t appropriate for everyone.

I’ve really got to noodle on this some more, but I wanted to get your opinions on it.

Hat tip to Jeremy Pepper for tweeting this.

Some of the discussions have been around if you can still call these events a “camp” or if they must be turned into a “conference.” I know some people get into very heated debates about this, but at the end of the day if it is a few people gathering for spontaneous coffee on the corner, a thousand people gathering on the expo floor of a huge convention center or a group of twenty like minded individuals having drinks and dinner together it is all about one word and that is community.

I don’t go to any event for the sessions or the exhibitors. Sure, I love both of those and get a lot out of them, but I like to go to meet people. To have a random encounter with someone in a hallway and then sit down with them over lunch and work through ideas that are in their head. Buying someone a drink and talking about what their goals in life are and where they come from makes me smile.

New Media to me is about connecting with people. It is about having a good old fashion conversation, building up a trust and then helping that person out in any way you can. I guess this is how I look at life in general and new media is playground I get to put it into practice on.

If we met at PodCamp Boston 2 this weekend I hope we hugged, exchanged cards and will continue to connect as the days pass from the event. If we didn’t see each other then drop me an e-mail, find me on Facebook or lets get together and have some coffee.

A special episode today focusing in On The Luck of Seven. If you haven’t heard about this I was instantly hooked the moment I first heard about it over the summer. I don’t know Noel. I’ve never met him. But, I’ve been watching and reading of his travels since he set our this summer on 7-7-07.

I asked him seven questions and he answered them. Instead of inter cutting my questions I decided to just let his answers roll with the background noise and sounds. Feels much more real that way.

Please consider donating to the On The Luck of Seven and definitely subscribe to his video podcast and check out his photos. The one shown here he took the day after he recorded his questions. You never know where he is going to be checking in from.

The comment line is still 206-309-4729 and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this show. Especially if you step up and donate as well.

And, if your curious here is the original goodbye video I mentioned on the show.

He doesn’t pull punches in life and writes some mean fiction, but he also truly understands this playground we are having so much fun in. Recently he was talking about a campaign from BigFix. Specifically their Ray Hopewood Campaign.

Instead of just hype, Scott details out the views, leads and sales generated by this campaign. Very rarely do you get to see this sort of data and it was refreshing to be able to look at them. I wish more companies were not afraid to share this sort of data. In the end it helps all of us out. Sure looks like it is helping them get the word out there based on the press they are getting.

I’m still hoping Scott gets to busy with his writing to focus on this site all that much, but for now I’ll be reading!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEoWndXBrgw

Really looking forward to today because of a room full of new people. That always excites me. Plus, “New Media” Jim will be there and I’ve wanted to meet him for quite some time.

Adobe and Macromedia merged a while ago. So think of the tools that Adobe has. Flash, Illustrator, PhotoShop, ColdFusion and Flex. They’ve got the perfect mix of tools for scripters and designers. Imagine what you could do with that tool set if completely integrated into Second Life. Just thinking about it makes me smile and grin. It would be quite impressive.

Now, I don’t think that Second Life fits into the Adobe business plan, but then again I don’t know what their plan is. I could make arguments that having a virtual world would be an amazing place for creatives to unleash their brains because lets face it, that is what Second Life is for a lot of people. It is about a lot of other things too. *grin*

The code side is where the real power could be. I worked with ColdFusion for a number of years and know that it can do some pretty cool stuff. Finally having web integration in both directions would be a huge plus. Being able to query data from other sources and have that data come into Second Life would shift everything. I’m still hoping they do simple things such as tying the weather to a zip code. That way I could build a sim and tell it to pull the weather from Boston or Hawaii to add a certain new level of “real” to it.

I’m not making any predictions here, but I had to share since it gave me something to noodle on today and perhaps it will give you something to as well.

Biggest difference though is that Zoho has an off line feature. I can sync everything to my desktop (using Google Gears of all things *grin*) and work completely off line and then sync up the next time I connect. THAT is the key thing.

Then this morning I find out about Zoho Business and my grin got even bigger!

It is going to come in two flavors – Free & Pro. Some features will include:

• Company level Admin Console
• Domain Management (for pointing your domains to Zoho Apps)
• Centralized User and Group Management
• Single Sign-on across several Zoho Apps
• Zoho Apps include Writer, Sheet, Show, Wiki, Notebook, Email, Cal, Tasks, Planner, Viewer, Chat etc.
• Customization Options
• Multiple levels of Security including SSL
• Remote Backup
• Telephone Support and more.

I love all of this and think it is a huge step forward. I’m wondering how long until Yahoo or Microsoft try to buy them so that they can directly compete with Google. Heck, if Apple made a play at them things would get REALLY interesting, but I don’t think it’s the market they are in right now.

But, she got me thinking. Thinking about how far to many people in this word don’t listen. Sure, their ears are working and they hear the words that are coming out of other people’s mouths but they don’t actually listen to those words and figure out what is being said.

This is more important then ever when the listening has to translate to written words as well. But, how can someone “listen” to written words? I know I’m breaking every rule that we learned in elementary school, but I’m just trying to make a point.

It is critical that every time you chat with someone, read a blog post or see a tweet, that you stop and listen to what they are really saying. Don’t jump to conclusions. Not every “negative” comment or post may be what it seems. Perhaps they are pushing the conversation. Maybe they are biting their tongue a bit. Could be that they are just being negative. Who knows.

The point is that it is up to YOU to take the time and energy to listen.

I had to think about this. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. It would have to be something that I personally wanted and desired. Something that I’d use and not just play with. Something that I already believe in rather then just trying it out.

The only thing that came to mind was either a higher end Canon camera then the one I have or one of the new 24″ iMacs. Different price points, but honestly that didn’t come to mind. I was just trying to think of what I wanted and what might be interesting. I tried a long time ago to get a guitar company to give me two guitars in return for sponsoring Accident Hash. I wanted to keep one and was going to give the other away to a listener. It never happened.

I just wanted to clarify that I think the idea of bartering and trading for exposure on a podcast, blog or other form of media is ok in my book. I don’t think it’s the only model moving forward, but it’s certainly one of them that has been around forever and will continue to be successful.

Anyway, today he has a post talking about some of the top viral videos. He even went so far as to embed them in the post so I got entertained as well as informed. Although it was interesting that I had only seen three of the ten posted. Makes me wonder who was watching them and where I was that I totally missed them. *grin*

But, the point that he made that I wanted to back up and second is that no one should ever set out to “make a viral video” as that is doomed for failure or more importantly shouldn’t be the outset. Creating quality content that connects with a viewer as well as causes them to share that content is what I wish more people would focus on.

Sure, we can all hope that a video will go viral. Who wouldn’t want that type of success? We’d all want it and so would our clients. But, it shouldn’t ever be the measure of success in my mind. Focus on the content, the story, the message you are trying to get out. If people connect with it then it’ll spread and remember it that is important as well.

An example for me is that I had never heard about Agent Provocateur lingerie until I saw a post months ago on Shake Well Before Use (another blog that I highly recommend although it is quite different as you’ll see). I hadn’t thought much about it till today when Jeremiah shared a video from them with Kylie Minogue in it that for obvious reasons went viral. The minute I watched the video I remembered the blog post and thought, “Hmm…I’ve got to check out this company” and proceeded to go to their website. That is SO much more powerful then someone just saying “oh cute video” and sharing it. Does, the video make a connection with the viewer? Does it have the ability to turn them into potential customers that are now aware of your brand?

Think about it and let me know your thoughts.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. A LOT of thinking.

In conversations with people and in watching what is going on I’m starting to wonder about the roles of podcasting networks, the roles of advertisers and if content producers are selling themselves short across the board. I’m not going to say I’ve got the answers because I don’t, but I had to record this show to get some of the ideas out of my head to start the conversation.

Earlier this week there was a Boston Tweetup and Clarence Smith Jr. really got me marinating on some pretty deep topics. Then going to the StartCooking.com hosted movie screening for No Reservations. Those two things really hit home and more in common in my mind then most people would have thought.

Then when I got a call in from Jay Moonah about the recent Jaffe iPhone news it all came together and I had to record this episode.

Are we all selling ourselves short? Are new groups such as the Association for Downloadable Media going to help solve the problems? What do you think? I want to hear from you! Leave a comment here or call me at 206-309-4729 and leave your thoughts.

Really looking forward to the conversation that follows.

C.C. Chapman: Sure, I’ll try to help you. Hey, it’s C.C. Chapman here at Managing the Gray, episode #38. Getting it right out of the way, if you ever want to call in questions, comments, concerns, any of that stuff, the number is 206-309-4729. I’ll say it again later. I’ll put it in the show notes, but I just want to get that out of the way because everyone’s always saying, “C.C., you forget to say the number.” I apologize.

So, how are you guys doing? I’m really jazzed this morning. Show notes work good for Managing the Gray, but sometimes it’s just better just to have topics. I’ve got all these papers, just a couple of topics today I want to talk about. I’ve got a great call in from Whitney Hoffman, lots of things going on. So, what was really exciting, what I want to talk about today is something I’m watching happen quite a bit. There are new tools coming out everyday. I swear everyday or at least once a week, I’m getting a new invite to some new tool. Last week seem to be a really crazy week. I mean it was insanity. It seems like there was a bunch — I mean MrWong, 8apps, Pownce, Demonoid, Skitch, Stitch? No, Skitch. I’m trying to think what else. It was a crazy week and things are blowing up and people are getting very, very busy trying to stay on top of all these new tools. Now, it’s exciting to try these new tools, but I think what’s key is you’ve got to figure out what works for you and what’s important to you. I mean what are you going to do with these? It ties into the whole social media burnout thing I was talking about and it’s funny because I’ve started changing my opinion a little bit.

One of the things I always talk about is the fact that I think you need to be on every one of these, to at least have a presence so people can find you. Now, I think that’s still true with the social networks, things like the Facebook and the MySpace and whatnot where it’s setting up an account, but now things like Twitter and Pownce and all the copycats that are going to come for those, I’m not so sure that you need to be on all of those. Granted, try them out, figure out what works for you, especially if you’re a company. You need to at least check them out so you understand what you would recommend to a client. “Hey, this is why I think this one is the right one for you.”

I have a Pownce account. I don’t use it very often. I use it every so often. I go out there to look at it, but it’s not what’s being used right now. Twitter seems to be the microblogging tool of choice for me personally and the people that I want to follow and pay attention to. Pownce is out there. It’s still being used and I go in there every so often, but I find I go in there once a day, maybe twice a week. Twitter, I’m in there all the time. I tried them both and I figured out which one I like. Same thing goes with all these other sites. I trashed Facebook left and right, trashed it, just totally trashed it, but what’s interesting is after the initially wave of everybody just having to do stuff, now I’m seeing it started to take shape. I see people leaving groups or people who are joining these massive groups and now everyday I see people who have left groups or they have created groups, very fine tuning what they’re using Facebook for and I think that’s very interesting because I’m watching it and I’m seeing it become a little bit useful. I like the homepage that shows you what your friends are doing. It’s very interesting to see photos and what people are doing. Still, it tells me a little more information I need on things. I’m seeing it for event promotion working very well. We’re doing a Missing Pages movie premiere on Crayonville on Thursday. I know Mark Forman posted something there. So, it takes this Second Life event and makes it way outside of Second Life. It’s pitched as a movie premier. The Second Life location is a secondary aspect of it, which I thought was great, so people who may not even have ever seen Second Life are excited because it’s a movie premier and they get to come to it. The fact that it’s in Second Life is just — it will be a barrier for some, but it will just be a quick barrier for most hopefully and they’ll come in and they’ll take part in it. So, Facebook is working with that.

This 8apps thing, the thing that excites me about 8apps — it’s the number 8, 8apps.com. What excites me about that is I like the collaboration part of it. It’s not really there yet. Somebody called it it’s like part Facebook, part Basecamp, but doesn’t have the project management pieces in it that Basecamp does. What I do like about it is the instant collaboration idea in it. It’s got kind of a neat brainstorming tool like virtual sticky notes page I thought was pretty cool, but guys, it’s brand new. I’m already seeing people trash it, but I’m more of those let’s-wait-and-see, let’s-let-it-evolve-a-little-bit. I don’t even know if it’s officially beta or alpha, whatever it is, but that excites me, a social network where people are working together. 8apps is one of those things where I haven’t given in yet to just let anybody be my friend. I’m only kind of acting with people that I actually want to work on projects with. It’s only got — what is it? Three apps in there now and the fourth one is coming. I’m curious what the other four apps are going to be. It’s an interesting concept and I’m going to keep watch of that space because I think it’s going to be interesting and I’m excited by it.

Now, one of the things I wanted to talk about is I’ve got some giveaways for you today. Thoughtout.biz is a very cool company. They’re mainly known for the PED stands, the PED2, the FlexPEd. What these are, they’re iPod stands, but they’re not just for iPods. What’s cool about them is they are these heavy metal stands. I have one for my iPod, but it expands. I’ve seen people put their Treos in it. Does an iPhone fit in it? I bet you it does. I haven’t tried it because I don’t have an iPhone. Anybody want to give me one? No, I don’t want an iPhone because I don’t want to pay — what I hate about — I won’t rant on the iPhone right now. Thoughtout.biz does a lot of very cool things and one of the neat things they make is a MagStay Pro and when I got the MacBook Pro, Mike sent me over some of them. He said, “Dude, you’re gonna want one of these and I’ll give you a few for your Managing the Gray listeners.” I’ve heard people slam these. What it is, you know how you’ve got the magnetic thing for your MacBook Pro? If you have one of the new Macs, it’s a magnetic power cable. It just pops out. It’s a magnet. So, that way, if someone trips over the cable, it doesn’t pull the whole laptop off the desk, but what I found and it’s funny what this is. It’s just a little plastic contraption that works with your MacBook Pro and what it does is it keeps it in there and in the tagline is “Sometimes, a magnet is not enough,” and I asked myself, “Doesn’t that kind of go against the reason of why the magnet’s there?” He’s like, “Yeah,” but they’ve seen these to be very popular for people who have to leave their laptop on like when it’s rendering. If it’s rendering video or something, the last thing you wanted to do is get unplugged if you leave it overnight or leave it for a few hours. I’ve had that happen where it’s come unplugged and I didn’t know it and the battery started draining on me, so I can understand what these are and I’ve got a few of them, so if you want them.. You can go to Thoughtout.biz and check it out and see what they’re all about, but drop me an email at managingthegray@gmail.com and I’ll give away a few of these. I think I’ve got three or four of them I can give away for you and I’m more than happy to give those away because I love Thoughtout.biz. They do a lot for the community I know for the longest time. They may still be running this. When you bought a PED2 iPod stand, you get to pick a free podsafe CD that they actually bought from the artist. I think that’s great. They’re doing great stuff for the community. I’m more than happy to give these away.

So, hey, one of my favorite women in the world called in and left me an audio comment, so let’s get right over to Whitney Hoffman.

Whitney Hoffman: Hey, C.C. It’s Whitney Hoffman from the LD Podcast. I just read your recent blog post on what it’s like to start working remotely and how it can be difficult sometimes. One of the things that is really interesting, Alex Hillman from We Know HTML around here in Philadelphia has this thing called Independence Hall and he has a bunch of different people even working on different projects sit together at a coffee shop or some other place that they can kind of do this co-working thing where everybody who is doing independent projects can kind of work in one atmosphere and keep themselves on track because sometimes the distractions of home can really lead to a lot of procrastination or just it’s hard to put yourself in that same sort of see-I-am-at-work mode sometimes. So, sometimes going to a different place and sitting down and doing concentrated work for a fixed period of time really works, but maybe some of that kind of co-working environment stuff might be good, get together and try doing things remotely now that you have that new fancy laptop and see how it goes. If you want to learn more, you could look up Alex’s Cream Cheese Sessions after the Jelly Sessions, which I think are very similar in New York City where people get together and do this co-working thing together. It might help everybody out, so just an idea. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

C.C. Chapman: So, I think it’s a really neat idea. I’ll find the link and put it in the show notes over at managingthegray.com, but I understand what she’s talking about. Working at home is difficult. You’re by yourself. You don’t have that human interaction. I mean I’m using video tools to talk to my coworkers everyday, but it’s not the same and I think it would be kind of cool to get — I like the concept of all these people who happen to be working on independent projects just happen to get together so they’re in a work environment and they can socialize a little bit. I would love to do one of these out in the MetroWest area. I think it would be very cool, get together in a coffee shop. It would be great to meet some other people. In a cross spectrum, get out of just the podcasting and blogging community, just people working on independent projects, whatever they may be. If anybody’s interested, email me. I’d love to chat about it because I think it would be pretty cool and I would love to get out of the house. God, would I love to get out of the house because it does get to you. One of the neat things is I’m moving in a month and I cannot wait because my office right now is — it is an office, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not cut off from the rest of the house, so it’s got foot traffic and it’s my wife’s office too, so when we move, I actually have my own office with doors on it that shut so I can actually sort of separate that office-home time. Shut the door and just cut off the rest of the world and I’m looking forward to that because I think it will help separate things.

Now, one of the things I want to do here, I like doing book reviews so I do it. I’ve been reading a lot lately. I’ve been trying to unwind and one of the things I think is very important for people is to learn how to unplug and unwind or like I call it, idle well. My dad and I last summer when we went camping, we said, “We idle very well.” What I mean is we would just be lying around the campfire or lying around on the hillside for hours on end, not even reading. We’d read a little bit, we’d write in our journal, but then we’d just lay and your mind just wanders and the creative juices, which are just the nothingness juices, are great and I think one of the things that new media is doing right now is it’s making it so people don’t do that. They’re afraid to do it. “I can’t get offline. I’m gonna miss something.” Yeah. Yeah, you are going to miss something, but guess what? It’s the web. It will still be there. This past weekend, I unplugged for the whole weekend. I unplugged all technology on Friday morning and I didn’t turn it back on until Monday morning and you know what? It was okay. It was all right. There was no emergencies, no fires, nothing blew up. It was okay and you need to do that and I cannot stress how much that reinvigorates you and get you excited. Trust me. As I always talk about, it’s rebalancing. I have to get back out in nature quite often to rebalance myself because if I don’t get out there, I go insane. Trust me. I came back Monday morning yesterday. I was all excited and I said, “You know what? No one’s gonna suck this energy out of me. I refuse to let it happen,” and I didn’t let it happen. That kind of translates — book review, C.C., idling, where did you go with that?

It transitions into the book that I think a lot of people are reading right now called The 4 Hour Workweek. It’s funny when a book gets hot and gets trendy and where it teaches you life lessons and teaches you different strategies. It’s funny. You can start telling who — like there’s a philosophy in there about checking your email twice a day and setting an out of office message, an automated response, that says, “Hey, I only check my email at noon and 4:00,” blah, blah, blah. I’ve seen this from two of my friends already. I got the response, I’m like, “They reading the book.” I know they’re reading the book because it teaches you that philosophy. What I think is interesting about The 4 Hour Workweek, and this is my personal opinion on it, I think it’s a great book, but what I will tell you is like just like every other book out there — it’s the same advice I give new parents. Anytime a buddy of mine is going to be a parent for the first time and they’re freaking out about what book should they read, da-da-da, I give the same advice and I will do the same in new media, read everything you can, read it all, consume it all because everyday’s got different tactics, then figure out what works for you. Take little bits from getting things done. Take little bits from The 4 Hour Workweek, take the bits that work for you and leverage them fully, use them all the way for you. Don’t think you have to take a whole philosophy and use it totally.

That’s one of the reasons that I haven’t found the right religion for me because I take bits and pieces from all sorts of different religions and mush them together and that’s sort of my spirituality. I haven’t found one religion that contains everything for me. Everybody’s got something good in their religion and I like that and I pull it together and I make it mine. Same thing with The 4 Hour Workweek, I love the concept of it. I think he’s totally right. He talks about the new rich. I don’t necessarily know that term, but the fact that you can work from anywhere, you can get it done. You don’t have to always be connected. Things will survive with you no matter who you are. If you surround yourself with great people to do the great work, things will get done. You do not have to be there watching and hovering over every little thing. He hasn’t really said this, but it’s something I believe. You hire the very best people and then you let them run with stuff. It’s a painful lesson. It hurts to let go and delegate, but if you’ve hired the best possible team or in The 4 Hour Workweek he talked about outsourcing it, as long as you’ve got people who are capable of doing the task, step the hell back and let it happen. Let it happen. Do your thing. Let these other people do the things and then it will all work out. Trust me. I like a lot of things of it. I started reading his blog. I like his philosophy. He’s a little cocky, but that’s all right. He can be cocky. He’s earned it I guess. But The 4 Hour Workweek I definitely suggest reading. It’s a very interesting book. It’s worth consuming. It’s worth going through. Warning, it could be dangerous to some people out there. It’s one of those books I honestly think you could sit down and read and go, “Oh. Uh, honey? I need to make some changes.” Warning. I’m warning you now. If me telling you to read this book causes you to get divorced or scare your spouse, not my fault, not my fault! All right? It’s definitely worth checking out. I will link to it in the show notes, of course. You can buy it anywhere. It’s all over the place. It’s a very interesting book, a good read, and definitely a different way of life.

The other book I read recently is called “Rule the Web” by Mark — I’m not even going to try his last name, not going to do it. Fr — no, I’m not. I’ll put it in the show notes. He’s one of the founders of Boing Boing. I got sent a copy of this book because I thought it’s something pretty cool. It’s called “Rule the Web: How to do anything and everything on the internet – better, faster, easier.” It’s a really good book. It’s more basic than I was imagining to be honest with you because it’s really bare — I’m going to give this to either my dad or my mother-in-law because it explains — it’s very well organized, tips and tricks. It’s like “how do I find an address on the web?” A lot of people don’t know that. How do you find the address of someone you’re really looking for? Lots of tips like that, tips on maintaining your computer, tips on web pages, email, all the basic stuff or questions that — the way I would answer is — it’s all of the questions that a lot of people are afraid to ask because they know they’re going to be giggled at for asking it. There are some new +1 level stuff. What I like is there’s one section where he went out and asked a bunch of other people for their one best — Ask Cory Doctorow His One Best Tip, and I thought that was very cool. It’s a neat book. It’s paperback. It’s trade paperback I guess what you call it. I really enjoyed the book. I read it really fast. I’m more skimmed it more than anything because I knew a lot of the answers already, but I wanted to see what he had to say about things. Definitely one of those things for if you’re trying to get somebody involved in the web, maybe you need to buy it for your executive, I don’t know. I shouldn’t say that. I’m generalizing. That’s kind of mean. For someone who thinks they know the web and they’re getting into the web and they’re getting excited by it, this could be a great book to get them to the next step because I guarantee you — warning though, they’re going to read the book and go, “Dude, did you know?” “Yeah, I knew that.” “Oh, wow!” You’re going to get a lot of those moments and that’s okay. Just embrace it. Roll with it. It’s definitely a book to get people excited about the web. I think it’s another one of those books that could change people. They’ve read it and just get all giddy and excited and try to do more things.

So, those are the things I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to get in touch with you. I hadn’t talked to you a little while. I’ve been doing some interviews lately. I’ve got a great one coming. I’ve got some more interviews coming up. I’m doing more of them. I tell you. Thank you again to all Managing the Gray listeners and readers who helped me figure out getting a MacBook Pro. The Mac has definitely been a great investment. I haven’t gone totally Mac yet. I mean I’m recording this right now in CastBlaster on my PC. PC is still my main computer, but the laptop is rocking, really getting used to it, really excited. Audio Hijack Pro, that alone, if you’re into any sort of audio production makes the Mac almost worth it because it makes the Internet — I don’t know if it’s worth spending a couple of grand for this $30 program, but it’s very cool. A program that simple and that cheap does such an effective job of recording audio. It’s very exciting to me on that.

Hey, if you haven’t seen yet, one of the things I’m going to start doing is — I’ve been doing One Guy’s Thoughts, which is my video podcast. It’s sort of my personal podcast that kind of catches all things, but one of the things I’m going to start doing on that is making sure I record — now that I’ve got my workflow going and I’ve got the camera and I got everything going the way I want to, I’m going to start doing interviews with people at these conferences I’ve got upcoming. I’ve got the Second Life Community Conference coming up and a PodCamp Philly is coming up, PodCamp Boston, PodCruise Miami, lots of things coming up, Virtual Worlds 2007 Fall, lots of things coming up and I want to start videotaping the interviews and doing more than just me speaking head stuff. So, I’m going to be looking for that so if I stick a video camera in your face next time we meet, warning. Hey, if anybody knows where I can find a Zoom H2. I want to put this out to the listeners. I’m seeing all these reviews about it. My Edirol is pissing me off and so I’m thinking about getting one of these Zoom H2 recorders. I don’t know if they’re necessarily for sale yet because I can’t seem to find them anywhere, but hey, if anyone’s got a tip on where I can find them, let me know because I want to buy one. They seem very cool and I want to use one. I want to definitely try them. I like the fact that they’re made to record 360 degrees, so I want to try it with a table discussion or some other things.

So, that’s going to wrap up Managing the Gray. Again, you can email me at managingthegray@gmail.com or you can call in the comment line, 206-309-4729. Of course, managingthegray.com, it’s got more than just a podcast going on. I’m writing content up there, linking the stuff, transcripts go up there. Hey, thank you guys for listening. Thank you for telling your friends. I’ve been getting some really nice emails from new folks who are just discovering Managing the Gray and discovering me and I’m having a great time meeting you and getting to know you. Please, you can find me in all the networks. My About page links to almost all of them and cc-chapman.com is my regular blog if you want to swing on over there. You never know what you’re going to get there. So, take care. Have a great day and get out there and play on the new media playground. All right? I will talk to you very, very soon.

- Originally posted on ManagingTheGray.com in case you see this scrapped onto another site -

So when I read about what Noel A Hidalgo is doing via his “On the Luck of Seven” adventure I was instantly excited. Best part was that I had not heard about this at all until I saw a post on another friends blog about his kick off party this weekend and curiosity got the best of me.

In his words:

for seven months, i will stand on the seven continents, dive into the seven oceans, and contemplate seven topics of freedom. while on the way, i will document the journey. this is not my story, this is our story. though your hospitably, donations, projects, connections and friends, our stories will merge into one.

I instantly subscribed to his blog , added his Flickr feed to my favorites and also donated towards the cause via his ChipIn set up.  He’s hoping to get 700 donations of $11.11 to pay for the trip and is going to be giving a book to everyone who donates documenting the travels. That alone is worth the donation, but I chipped in more because I think this is such an amazing use of the space we all play in right now.

I wish I was in a place where I could do this myself. I’m sure I could if I really wanted to, but there are other goals at the moment. I’m going to be tracking noneck the whole way and I wish him nothing but success and great memories because I know he is going to have some amazing tales along the way.

THIS is what new media is all about. Safe travels and I look forward to hopefully crossing paths with him one of these days!

I am very excited as today you get to hear me and podiobook author J.C. Hutchins sit down for a great conversation about his new book coming out and about new media in general. I’ve been a huge fan and listener of the 7th Son book series and thus I’m excited for the 7-7-07 release of the third and final book.

This interview is part of a 50 podcast interviews in 50 states initiative that J.C. Hutchins thought up and I’m proud and honored to be the Massachusetts representative!

Links from the show

• Subscribe to 7th Son podcast
• J.C. Hutchins Official Web Site
• Ministry of Propaganda
  

As I upload it I am about to celebrate Independence Day here in Metro West Boston and I hope that if you are celebration that you have a happy and safe holiday. To any military reading this in any corner of the globe, thank you for what you do and stay safe and keep doing what you do.

Audio from the presentation here.
PDF & Video here.

C.C. Chapman: Hey folks. I am back again really quick from Managing the Gray #33. Now, I will tell you something a little different, just a little quick intro, then we are going to jump right into the content because what today is, this is my PodCamp NYC presentation I did. PodCamp New York happened a few weeks back and I gave a presentation that I call the New Media Playground. It was a lot of fun. I had a good time. It was a big packed room, lots of fresh faces, which I love to see. I love to see all these people I did not know in the crowd. It very much excited me and I have to give a huge props because I got hooked up with this audio because I did not get a chance to record it myself, Chris Cavallari go out to filmosity.com. Chris Cavallari recorded it all, videotaped it, and that is coming soon. He will be sharing that. He heard me talk about the other day that I wish I had an audio recording and he said, “Dude, I’ve got it on the computer. I can spit it out for you,” so he spit it out.

Let me tell you, Chris is a great guy. We have finally got to meet at PodCamp NYC, but we have been talking for a long time. If you are looking for someone, a videographer, someone to film your commercial or maybe to film an interview with you or anything where you need a camera and some great video and story telling, please contact Chris. Christ is a great guy, he does amazing work, has great equipment, has a super attitude, and he gets new media. Let us face it. Video is a very, very powerful medium right now across the board and it always has been. So, I will put the links in the show notes to his site, but it is filmosity.com. There goes my cell phone beeping. It must mean I have email. So, anyways, please check him out. Chris, thank you very much. Listen to the presentation. It is a big room so the acoustics here are a little strange. It is 45 minutes because I am so happy I wanted to keep it 45 minutes. It is how long it was supposed to last and I hit it, which is good, because usually I am way under or way over. So, here we go.

When I am in presentations, there are a couple of things. I talk really fast because I am excited about what I am talking about and I really hate saving questions until the end, so please just spit them, “C.C., shut up. I got a question for you.” Please ask them. I was not even going to have slides because I really want to just kind of have a conversation about what is going on in the world, but then they said — this was a couple of weeks ago, they said, “C.C., you’re the only one that has a projector. You better have slides.” What is cool, you will see them in a minute, I put out a call on Twitter and — yeah, nothing has to be said, but please feel free to record and do whatever you want. I do not care. Some people get touchy about that.

Audience Member: [Unintelligible].

C.C. Chapman: No, feel free to Twitter whatever you want. I will read it later because I cannot Twitter right now. I did just Twitter a minute ago so I am all good for the hour. I lost what I was going to say. Oh, I put a call out on my blog, on my podcast, on Twitter, saying, “Guys, I got to do slides at PodCamp New York and my whole topic is this new media playground. Take pictures of yourself on the playground and send them to me. I’ll stick them in the slideshow.” So, everybody you are going to see in this is, they are podcasters, they are bloggers, they might be a listener, they might be just a reader, but they took a time and take a quick snapshot and send it in. That is kind of proof of what I am talking about is the fact that it is not about the monetization. It is not about the ads. It is not about the number of listeners, viewers, users, or whatever you have got. It is about the community around it and the fact that we are all here. “Yeah, right.” That is my thing. It is going to be fun because this is a new presentation that I have not done. It is actually kind of a prototype for the book I am writing. I kind of get it out there and see if it works. So, this is me. I am C.C. Chapman. I am the vice-president of new marketing for a company called Crayon. We are a new marketing agency here in New York, in Boston, London, San Francisco, Second Life and we have nine employees. We work wherever we want. I am also the host of several podcasts, Accident Hash, the music podcast, Managing the Gray…

Audience Member: Woohoo!

C.C. Chapman: I love it. Do we have home fries?

Audience Member: Yeah!

C.C. Chapman: There are home fries? All right, my listeners are called home fries. I saw some strange looks. “What? What’s he talking about?” Managing the Gray is a new marketing podcast. It talks about new media, everything I talk about here. U-Turn Café happens once in a while. It is an acoustic coffeehouse podcast. One Guy’s Thoughts is something new. It is a video podcast that I have threatened to do a lot more of, so I am looking forward to doing that. I am also the owner of the Dirty U-Turn Café on Second Life. If you are ever looking for music, there is a concert tonight. If you are not here like you should be, partying tonight, hanging out, meeting more people, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, dirtyuturn.com. There are three great artists from around the world playing at the U-Turn Café tonight, live music, lots of fun. Please go. Oh, and speaking of that, before I forget, tonight the party is at 7:00 at Slate. They asked me to make this announcement. They have got some really cool raffles they are giving away. I have seen copies of audio programs, wine, autographed Scott Sigler books, copies of Ancestor autographed by Scott Sigler. They are not out yet. You cannot get them. I want one, but I will not be there. They are going to be giving you raffle tickets at the door. If you are interested, show up at Slate, raffle tickets. It will be a good time. Slate is a good time. Just do not stand at the top of the stairs or they will yell at you. They are kind of mean about that. We learned that last time.

One of the things I do on my presentations is I am a firm believer that if you cannot put your whole presentation in one slide, you do not know what you are talking about. It is pointless. You are going to be rambling about stuff. So, when I tried to sum up what I want to get to you guys is new media is open to everyone, so have as much fun as possible, always help others, and if you make money doing it that is okay too and that is cool. There is my under 140-character Twitter version. I had to count. The guy sitting next to me on the train was going, “Dude…” He was looking at me, “One, two, three…” PowerPoint does not have a word count function, Word does. If you are not familiar with what Twitter is, it is a little SMS or micro-blogging community that has kind of taken way too many of us to a level of addiction. If I say a technology or anything, please stop me and ask me what I am talking about. I had to get down off the stage, too. I hate being behind the podium.

So, what the heck is the new media playground? It is the concept of this community that I think. Remember when we were all kids, we go to playground. We play. We make best friends within five minutes. That little kid next to you like, “Oh, he’s my best friend, mommy.” You go home and you play and you just met him. That is the world as we live in right now. Hopefully, you have done this today. You have met somebody completely brand new and you have talked things like, “Oh, we got to follow up,” or exchanging business cards, your emails, maybe online. I am meeting people today that I have never met face to face. Mark Wallace and I email and Second Life for months and I feel like I know them. It was not until today that I met them face to face. It is all about the community.

I love this picture. This is John Wall from The M Show. He is around. He is not here so I can ridicule him. He was the first guy — [unintelligible] giving him a call out because he was the first guy who sent me one of his photos. Everybody had sent me pictures of their kids and I was like, “No, no. I want you playing on the playground.” John hooked me up. This is about the community and it is your community. Are people in this room here who have never blogged or podcasted ever? Oh, wow. I thought there would be more. This is your community too. Do not think because you have not done these things yet that you are not part of the community. The fact that you are here in an event like this, you are part of the community. You are officially now. You are members. You are stuck. It is addictive. I will warn you, so be careful. Your time is gone. The most expensive thing about any of these technologies is time. Forget how much money audio equipment cost with community podcasting or Second Life, all that stuff, uh-uh. It is time. You have none of it. It is gone because you are going to get so passionate about whatever it is you are doing, you are screwed, but it is great.

Also, please keep in mind. This weekend is a perfect example. There are a lot of big company people here. This is exposure. Every time you go out, you are representing the community, that whole thing about one bad apple ruins the cart, it is so true. Someone interviews you, someone talks to you in the street, “Oh, you’re a podcaster,” and you do something wrong or you are in Second Life or you are twittering, I love saying that, you can ruin it for everybody. Just keep that in mind. It is a big thing, but it is true. You can go from being nobody to being interviewed by a major publication just overnight. Just keep that in mind. It is kind of weird sometimes for people.

This, I love saying, this is my new tagline, Burn the Suit & Buy a Laptop. People always ask, “How can I get in this community? How can I start doing this stuff?” You do not have to burn the suit. I hate suits, so go for it, but the fact is it is a mentality. If you are going to play in new media, you have got to get out of your “this is the way it has always been done so I have to do it this way.” You cannot. There are no rules right now. People think there are. Things are changing so fast. Two months ago, nobody was using Twitter. Right now, I guarantee you there is some new tool out there that we are all going to be raving about in a couple of weeks. I saw stuff out there that made me excited. It happens so fast. I have not figured it out. You have not figured it out. Nobody has. It is evolving so rapidly so you got to get out of that mentality that big corporations know the right way and I know the right way, no, no. The laptop mentality is just a fact that if you are really going to be in new media, you can work from anywhere, anything, wherever you are in the world. That is a powerful thing and dangerous thing because then unplugging is difficult. I work from home. My commute is walking from my coffeepot to my office, 100 yards. When do I ever unplug? That is a hard thing.

Audience Member: That is a big house.

Audience Member: There is a football.

Audience Member: 100 yards.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, shit. New media [unintelligible].

Audience Member: [Unintelligible]?

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. Mike works with me at Crayon. He is like, “Dude, you’re getting paid way too much.” Speaking of that, I did not think about it, but you are here. Sorry, Mike. I am going to call you out. One of the things that is really important about new media is your passion, your drive is what drives everything. Mike here works with us at Crayon. He has zero experience, real world experience, but he came up to Joseph Jaffe at a conference and said, “Dude, I want to do this. I got no experience, but I want to do this.” He was passionate, he was persistent, and he works for us now. He is learning as he goes. I will take street smart over book smart any day. I used to get in trouble with my HR department because I would say, “Anybody who has a GPA on their resume, I don’t want it,” and I meant it because I never got good GPA and I did not care about it and I do not.

So, what are some of the toys? Because new media — this may be called PodCamp. It is kind of a misleading thing. This is not about podcasting. It is about new media in general. It is about crazy people playing — Whitney is not in here. Where is she? There she goes. Whitney is in the back hanging off the — I love this picture. Some of the tools, podcasting, blogging, virtual worlds. It is not just Second Life. There are other ones out there. There will be more tomorrow. IM’ing, Twitter, ARGs, which are alternative reality games. Nine Inch Nails is doing one right now where you do not know the lines between reality like I might give a clue right now for one of those games and you would actually go find that website that would take you to something else. They are kind of cool, they are kind of weird, but they are very exciting. Mobile of course is huge. All you guys have PDAs and phones. They do everything. It is going to get more and more. You can create content. What I am trying to get out here is whatever content you can create, then go across all these platforms. You can create a blog. You can create a podcast. You can put it through every one of these. Just think about that when you are creating your content, whatever it is. The fact that there is more out there than just probably whatever you are creating. I make a video. It has to only go on my video podcast. No. you can play in virtual worlds. I mean I have a moving theater on my island.

We have had one video podcaster. I know, I am opening up the door. We had one video podcaster ever asked if they could play their stuff in our theater. Why has not anybody else approached us? It is kind of weird.

Audience Member: On our island?

C.C. Chapman: On our island?

Audience Member: Over at Crayon?

C.C. Chapman: Yeah.

Audience Member: It is not on Dirty?

C.C. Chapman: It is not on Dirty. In Second Life, our company Crayon has an island, Crayonville. I am also part-owner with Mark Wallace, John Swords, Mark Barrett, and Jeremy Vaught. We own this thing called Dirty. Come by. It is fun. It is not what it sounds like most days. What?

Audience Member: [Unintelligible]?

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. No dropping vowels. I hate that. Yeah, Dirty. Go to poddirty.com. It will bounce over to a SLurl. It will take you to our landing area. We have all kinds of random people. That is great.

Be yourself. This, I cannot stress enough. I had this conversation with somebody the other day. She said, “Listen. I want to do a podcast about Second Life.” I said, “All right, cool.” She goes, “Yeah, but there is already SecondCast and there is already Second Life Podcast.” Who cares? I said, “Have you seen how many music podcasters are on lately? I still do one.” That is important. The fact that you each have a unique voice no matter what content you are producing. It is really, really important to just be yourself. If you are going to do a fake self — so many comes in mind who is doing a lot of things under a different personality, but they are consistent like that. Good or bad, I do not know. Be yourself, be passionate, and be honest out there. Figure out to yourself what is your level of okay. People always ask me, “How are you okay giving away so much information about yourself, your family?” There are boundaries that I do not share and I keep those in my head, but I also think it is fun when I get comments from people saying, “C.C., I’m watching your kids grow up on Flickr.” I love that. Do I worry about them? Yeah. I mean, I do, but you also are never going to hear me talk about what town I live in. I am kind of vague about certain things. There is room for every voice. Nobody should ever, ever say, “I can’t do this because someone else is already doing it.” It is ridiculous.

There is another whole problem — there is. I mean, how many music podcasters are there. There has got to be, I do not know, 10,000? 5000? There is a lot.

Audience Member: More than 21.

C.C. Chapman: Is it 21? Okay. So, it is 21,000+ music podcasts. People are saying, “How do I get through the clutter? How do I get noticed?” You just answered the question. You get noticed. Not the music, you. You are the host. You are the person running that content. This whole term A-lister, I frigging hate. I hate it. I read people because I connect to them. I listen to their podcast because I connect to them and what they are saying and what they are doing. Whatever it is that you are passionate about, just do it. Do not get caught up in the fact there is other people doing it because let us face it, there is always going to be somebody else doing it. Whenever I talk to you about podcast, they are like, “I have nothing to say. What would I ever talk about?” I always ask, “What are you passionate about?” On a weekend, if you could anything, what do you do? What is your hobby? Everybody has got something. I say, “All right. Do that because either no one else has done it or there are other people out there who are going to like your spin on what this is, your model airplanes or cooking.”

I just heard a great new podcast and I cannot wait to watch it. She is not here, but she asks people to send in dishes to make and she cooks them. They always think she does not how to cook. People are always trying to give her something she will burn. It is a video podcast. Fearless Cooking I think it was called. I cannot wait to watch that. There are a million cooking shows, but she has got a different slant on it. Plus, she was too nice. I got to watch. This is fun. You are unique. Everybody in this room is unique. Yeah?

Audience Member: [Inaudible] if you have multiple interests and wants to do a podcast [inaudible], how do you broadcast that? Do you use the same ones just because it is you and they are all [inaudible]?

C.C. Chapman: Wow. No. I was talking about [unintelligible] building yourselves brand is something that is really big to me. It depends. I hate saying that as an answer because it is a cop out, but what I am getting at is you need to decide. I have four podcasts, right? Do I publicize them individually or do I publicize them under me, is that what you are saying?

Audience Member: Right.

C.C. Chapman: I personally recommend, most of the time, I like the fact of building around you. If you go to my website, I have a blog, it is kind of my personal blog. I have had it for six years, but right there are buttons for everything I do. I try not to add too many of them, but they are right there so everybody knows. You will also see, look at my album art, it always says “hosted by C.C. Chapman” or “brought to you by” or whatever. It is always built around my name. If I blew my reputation, those shows are dead. That is the way I think about it. I like it because I am building myself and I am myself and I am comfortable with that. I think companies can do the same thing. You see this a lot with production companies like movies. Sony does it all the time. They never have a separate website. Everything always redirects to sony.com/whatever and that is a conscious decision they have made. There is good and there is bad and I could talk for hours about this self-branding. I personally like watching a brand be built around a person. People get kind of freaked out about brand. I am not a brand. Well, you are. There is a great — I do not know if it has happened already yet — the social economy speech. I know it is one of the panels. If it is this afternoon, I highly suggest seeing it or go out to PodCamp Toronto’s website. Julien Smith and Chris Brogan did an amazing speech on social economy and the fact of how you and who you link to, what you write about, the content you create, how that is the new economy. It has nothing to do with money. I highly suggest checking out…

Audience Member: Sunday, 10:30, PodCamp Toronto. We have got archives.

C.C. Chapman: There you go. They videotaped and audiotaped everything at PodCamp Toronto. It is such a good speech because it is kind of changes the way you think about things, the fact that everybody you are making — it is an economy just by what you are doing and what you are talking about and what you are creating. I do not know if I answered that totally.

Audience Member: You did good.

C.C. Chapman: Okay. So, something else. For people who — because I was not sure if it is going to be a room of newbies or not, one of the things I always tell people, they are like, “How do I get noticed? How do I get it outside of the clutter?” The easiest thing I say is make it easy for you to be found. Do not be invisible. Part of that is the web stuff. Be on every search engine imaginable. Put yourself in a social network. Is MySpace going to bring you a lot of viewers or listeners? Probably not, but you should be there. What I always tell people is social networks take — how long does it take to sign up for a MySpace account? Nothing. It takes you a few minutes, but what if that one person goes to MySpace and goes looking for you and cannot find you and you are not there, you did not take the two minutes to set up a webpage. I mean, come on. It does not take that long.

Do I use MySpace a lot? No, but do I have an account out there? Yeah. Actually, I have one for myself and one for every one of my shows. I do not care about how many friends — I do not care about that stuff. I just care that if someone goes looking for me, they can find me. Also, it protects your brand whether it is your personal brand, your company brand. Try this some time. Go out to Twitter. Twitter is a perfect example because people have not touched it yet. Start putting in some brand names. See how many of them are actually the brand or if there is somebody else or if they do not exist yet. I know I have registered what I wanted to protect because I did not want somebody else to take it on them. You need to do that wherever you are because everyday something new is happening. Christopher Penn, he is speaking five times today. Go see anything he talks about because if Chris is paying attention to it, you have to pay attention. That is my rule. If Chris says, “Dude, check this out. It’s where I go.” It is usually a new social network.

Get yourself out there. Make yourself easy to be found. There is someone else in the audience who is in this picture, comedy4cast.com, great comedy podcast, one of the guys hiding in the barrel. It is good to see somebody else here. So, walk the talk. I knew I would get at least one [unintelligible] in here. It is Britney Mason, by the way, if anybody does not know who she is. She will appreciate that.

So, walk the talk. The community, we are a fickle bunch. We will you call you out in a heartbeat. If you are just talking about, “Oh, I’m doing this,” or “I’m doing that,” or “I’m working with the community,” I love that phrase, “We’re working with the community to do it right and not screw people over,” you have got to really do it no matter what you are doing. Get in there. Be active. Be vocal. This is the biggest thing when people ask “how can I break out,” it is going to an event like this or going out to a discussion forum, being active. You cannot just come out and say, “Here I am, listen to me.” That does not work. You got to connect with people. That is why I love getting business cards at these things because it takes up my train ride home listening to new stuff. I cannot wait to see all these new people. It is events like these where you go out and you meet the people in the community. I look out in this room. I love the fact that I am looking out in this room and I will not recognize a whole lot of people. That excites me because if you are only seeing the same people all the time, you are not getting more exposure, you are not getting more listeners, people are not knowing who you are. You are not expanding on community. Go out, play, meet. I was going to say play with people, that was not going to sound right. Socialize.

Last night, I was ready to go to bed, but I was like, “Nah, I got to go over to Brooklyn and see this amazing indie singer play.” I am sucker for music and I knew there is going to be at least one other person there who I will want to meet. That was a long cab ride, but it was worth it. She is out here now. Natalie Gelman, she is walking around. Oh! Natalie Gelman! I did not know she was back there. If you want hear great music, Natalie Gelman was amazing. I had never heard her play before last night, but somebody recommended her. He said, “C.C., you would love her. You would love to hear her music.” I went, “Okay,” because it was somebody I trusted in the community. That is all it takes. You get that personal recommendation and that will happen. You will blog about something. You will create video content about something and people are going to trust you. On the flip side of that, I did not put this on my presentation, you have to really be responsible about that. I have learned that where I had a guy recently come up to me when I was in Nashville and he said, “C.C., I have to thank you. You made me quit my job.” This guy is probably 45 and I said, “Okay. What were you doing?” He said, “I was a VP of a big company making a lot of money and they just didn’t get new media. I kept listening to you every week and I decided screw this. I’m quitting and doing my own thing. I’m gonna start consulting. I’m going to school.” I just stopped. My wife nudges me afterwards and says, “That blow your mind?” Yeah, it did blow my mind. If you do not think you have that power, too, you do. People are going to connect to you. Here, you talk about a product. Here, you talk about a band or a venue. All of you are hopefully going to leave and share your thoughts about PodCamp New York. One thing you say or do a post could effect if someone else comes to another PodCamp ever or checks out podcasting. Some advertiser could read your blog. Just think about that. If you are saying you do not have a voice, you do. You all have a voice. Do not ever think, “I only have 100 readers. I only have 50 subscribers.” It does not matter.

I give props to my buddy, Eric Rice. I am paraphrasing. I still do not know who said it first, but he is where I hear it from. He says, “Learn everything you can and then share it with everybody who asks for help. Don’t ever say no.” It is funny. I do this a lot. If someone emails me and says, “C.C., how do I do this?” I will stop and help because you have to. You have to help people because let us face it. We all were new at something and it took somebody helping us to do it. Second Life is the perfect example. You go in there and you are lost. You have someone show you around, it makes a world of different. Same thing with anything else in new media. You have got to help the other people. Please, please do it. I always give Eric props. He loves that.

It is. It is all about the people. It is about everybody in this room. You never know when a simple conversation is going to lead to something bigger and better. The guy in the coffee shop, the girl in a coffee shop could be a client, could be a sponsor, could be an advertiser. You do not know. I got my job in my new company for meeting one person, meeting a person once at a conference. He liked my music podcast. I liked his marketing podcast. Six months later, I am working for him. That is all it took.

Audience Member: [Unintelligible].

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. What he said is share your information about yourself. You do not know who you are going to meet. It is very true. We were at the Podcasting Expo in California, which happens in end of September. Great, great conference, podcastexpo.com or newmediaexpo.com. We did this experiment. We walked into everybody we saw with ear buds and asked, “Hey, have you heard of podcasting?” This was away from the conference area obviously. We talked only to random strangers about podcasting. We were shocked, too. We met one person and probably at 20 we stopped. It was two years ago. If I did that now, I would be really sad if that happens. Talk to people and say, “Hey, I do this.” If you are a cooking show and you see someone shopping in the grocery store buying something you are buying, talk to them. Do not be afraid to talk to people. I know people always take podcasters and bloggers as introverts, scared of the world, you guys are all out here. Talk to people. Do not just go to sessions and then scurry away. I mean you see someone you do not know, talk to them. Does everyone know who is sitting near them right now? Probably not.

Audience Member: Is it for the name game?

C.C. Chapman: You play the name game, exactly. I have homework for you all later. Do not worry. There is a homework slide. We will get to that. Get out and meet people. Do not just stay in your comfort zone. If you only go to podcasting conferences, no. Go outside. Talk to people. Interact with people. I love talking about this stuff when I go to my kids’ school and I get all these blank stares, “What are you talking about? You work at your house in pajamas? What?” and I do. I mean they do not get it. Talk to people. Get outside and talk to people. I do. If I am in line at a Starbucks, I talk to the person next to me always. It freaks them out. Except if I am on a plane, I hate talking to people on the plane. I do not know, that is just me, or on the train. That is a great way, too. Watch Ask a Ninja on a train, you get the best looks. I scared this little old lady last time. I was watching Ask a Ninja and I was laughing out loud. She looked over and I turned it and — is there anyone not know what Ask a Ninja is about? Do you ever watch Ask a Ninja, askaninja.com? Hysterical video podcast. Just crazy stuff.

All right. Monetization happens. We have all seen the other shirts of Shit Happens. That is what some people feel about monetization. There is nothing wrong with getting money for what you love to do. What I always tell people and I am adamant about this, think of something that you are really passionate about, an organization that you support, a charity you support, or a product you really, really love genuinely. If they came to you and said, “I want to pay you to talk about us and you do it your way,” there is not a single person who would say no. If you say no, I think you are lying. If they say, “You can say it how you want, be honest about it.” There are advertisers doing that, who says, “Hey, can I send you this product and you review it?” or “Here, make a commercial for me. Do it the way you want.” I have an advertiser right now and I have no rules except that I have to say I am sponsored by them once a show. That is the only rule. I have turned down sponsorships that I do not believe in. I had a really nice opportunity from a car manufacturer who is SUV and I said, “No, thanks. I don’t want to promote SUVs.” It was a personal choice, but maybe if it was like a hybrid or something I would have done. I would have probably talked about it for free, but they are going to give me money to do it, I mean… I love podcasting. I love talking about music. Will I get paid to play music? Hell, no. That is another whole conversation we will not get into.

I am not opposed to making money doing something I love doing and you should not either. I know it is a really, really touchy topic and the money will come maybe, if not there yet. I am not going to lie to you. All these people talking about these big, big deals, it is a little exclusive right now. It is not working to the level that it should be working I do not think. I do not think the advertisers, we will get to them, I do not think they get it yet. There are companies out there — I mean I am sponsored so I know they are out there, but am I sponsored to the level that I think it should be? No, and I think that goes for a lot of stuff the key being, you choose. If you are not comfortable with it and you are doing it just for the money, I would not do that, but that is part about being real honest. I hope the advertisers wake the f*** up. Why would not an advertiser want to do that? Unfortunately, they do not realize that yet. They also seem to realize when they do want to sponsor something, they seem to way too often go, “Oh, I’ll give them a couple hundred bucks because they are just a podcaster,” or “It’s just a blog ad.” I really hope that if you ever get the position where someone wants to advertise on you, really stop them and figure out what your worth is. Is it worth a couple hundred bucks? It depends. It depends who you are. Each of us have to make that own decision, but really think about it. If a huge brand comes to you, you do not want to know how much it costs. I thin it is about, what, $2.5 million this year for Super Bowl ads to get aired? Let alone how much it costs to actually produce it. We talk to people about Second Life sometimes and they are like, “Oh, I got $1000. I want an island built.” They think because it is virtual that it costs less. It does not. The same goes for everything else.

Audience Member: C.C., what are the advertising success stories besides you? Do you think MommyCast is a success story?

C.C. Chapman: MommyCast was a huge success story. MommyCast are these two — Paige and Gretchen, they are down in Virginia. They have got sponsorship from Dixie Paper Products for $100 grand for a year. The thing I love about Dixie, I actually met the guy who did the media buy so I got to ask him. They told him, they said, “We don’t want you to ever do 30-second spots. We don’t want you to go ‘and I’ll use Dixie.’” They did not want that. They branded their website. So, it said “brought to you by Dixie” and then Dixie kept sending them products nonstop, papers and cups and what-not. Some shows, you will hear them talk about something. “We tried out this new cup or this new plate,” and they honestly talk about it whether they like it or not. Dixie knows that it is their demographic. The major people who listen to MommyCast are mothers, paper plates, cups for birthday parties. They did a cross commercial where they did a birthday pack. They were doing a contest. I think it is great. I think they are a success story. I think when Rocketboom did the auction I think that was a huge success story. Rocketboom is a video podcast and they auctioned off their first ever advertising. They had not taken advertising yet. They put an auction up on eBay and I forget how much. Is it $80,000? $40,000? All right. For a week of advertising. I thought that was a great first step. I know they have done more since that. They are an interesting one to watch because they have gotten so much exposure and mainstream knows and everybody is watching them. They have been really good at it. They could just plaster their thing. I am sure they can take advertising with the snap of their fingers, but they are being good and they are only taking ones they want and people who value their brand. I think that is very good of them to do that. Yeah?

Audience Member: Plus, you have to add the residual nature of podcasting, which advertisers do not seem to get at all.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah, if you fit the — she is talking about the residual data, not data, it is the wrong word.

Audience Member: Yeah, it is the residual data. I can pick up a podcast from MommyCast that was done three months ago.

C.C. Chapman: Yeah. My most downloaded podcast of Managing the Gray is six months old because people keep finding it and discovering it and downloading it. I did not have an ad in that, but if I did, it keeps being told about and people keep hearing it. Advertisers do not get that. They think print magazine it is gone, 30-second spot on television, it is gone. It is much bigger than that, podcasting specifically is very different. Same with blog posts. They do not seem to get the fact that if I wrote about a product or you wrote about a product that Google picks that up. It is funny. Full disclosure. Coca-Cola is a client of mine. I love Cherry Coke. I have loved Cherry Coke forever and Cherry Coke Zero came out and I was like a kid in the candy store, “This stuff is great,” and I blogged about it. Just out of excitement, I took a picture and a couple of weeks ago somebody twittered it that if you search on Cherry Coke Zero, my blog post came out number four in Google. I love it because I sent it to Coke. I am like, “Guys, you are not doing very good search engine optimization. Come on. I’m number four.” It is funny because they passed it on to the brand manager. The guy I sent it to was [unintelligible]. I would love to get an email from Cherry… If they sent me free Cherry Coke, I would talk about it all the time, but it is a perfect example of the fact that I just blog posted and took a Flickr picture because they finally had it in Boston. They did not have it yet. It is out there when people search on Cherry Coke, they find it. That is a really simple example that a simple blog post can help a brand. I am not saying it is pay-per-post. God, do not think that is what I am talking about.

If you do not know what pay-per-post is, there are companies out there who will pay you to talk about their product. You want to make some real easy money? They will say, “Here, write about my product and I will give you X number of dollars.” I hate it. I think it is wrong. Do not do it. I am just saying it is out there. There are other companies who say full disclosure. BzzAgent is a big one where they are all about word of mouth. I actually really like their company because they bring you in for campaigns to promote a product. They want you to buzz it on. They do not care. Starbucks is one of them. They would say, “Talk about it in your speech or whatever you do.” They will also say, “Make sure you say it right up front you are doing this as part of a campaign,” full disclosure. I think there is a big difference between saying, “I am talking about this because they sent me free product,” as opposed to just going “I love this stuff,” and it is just not genuine. Part about being honest, it is your reputation and it is your brand, so keep it in mind. Yeah?

Audience Member: C.C., in my day job I work in a heavily regulated industry. I work in pharmaceuticals.

C.C. Chapman: Drug dealing.

Audience Member: There is a heavy resistance to go into this because there is that disclosure that usually happens at the end of the ad that is not willing to be taken by all podcasters. They do not pre-roll, they do not post-role. Have you found that at Crayon? Is that something that you guys are up against?

C.C. Chapman: Oh yeah. We are against their all regime of being strict. It is funny you mentioned that because I had not thought of this. I just saw a drug company doing a podcast. Tylenol PM is sponsoring, oh crap, what is it? It is Anji Bee.

Audience Member: Chillcast.

C.C. Chapman: What?

Audience Member: Chillcast.

C.C. Chapman: No, it is not the Chillcast. It is her other one. Unwind? Is that what it is?

Audience Member: Yes.

C.C. Chapman: I never thought about it. She is talking about Tylenol PM in her own voice and there is no “Tylenol’s danger.” There is none of that.

Audience Member: It is over the counter.

C.C. Chapman: Oh, that is true. It is over the counter. Okay. Still, when you run into this no matter what company you are in, the fact that they are scared to do this, they are scared to let go of their brands, they are scared to, “What do you mean you want to actually ask people how they feel about our product? We’re gonna tell them how they feel about our product.” That is the way the world has worked for so long. It is not just pharmaceuticals. It is everybody. People are starting to wake up. Let us face it. What I am finding a lot in my day job is — what is happening in a lot of companies you see is you see a champion like yourself. You know darn well that if you sniff even a little bit what someone was thinking about, “Oh, advertising in new media?” you jump all over. You would go, “Yes!” There are those people in every company. That is how a lot of people we interact with from our company, someone who is really passionate about this and wants to do it. They are like, “How can I do this?”

You are starting to see those little cracks. The more senior the person, the better because they can make stuff happen, they control budgets, but companies are coming around. They are seeing this. I do not think I am turning a blind eye to it, but at the same I do not think they totally get it and that is kind of what I am talking about. Go back to your company, wherever you work and talk about new media. That [unintelligible] blogging and podcasting and all that, I guarantee you, one of those can help your company, whatever you are doing. There are lots of creative ways to do it. I worked for a college before I did this and they could not understand why having students — it is a college where your first year is one class, one big class. It is really kind of cool. It is a business school. You start your own company. You learn finance and marketing through having a real company. I was thinking, “Oh, you should have students blog their experience through that.” They would not do it because they were worried about the honest voice. What if they said this part sucked? That is honesty. It is okay.

Audience Member: C.C., I probably saw some of this, but what are your feelings about political campaigns and there are sections with sort of more grassroots media that is made about their campaign? They are thinking about the Obama appearance in Second Life where someone connected to the real campaign. There was also a grassroots effort to bring together Second Life where you just support Obama with no association with the official campaign. I think we are going to see more of that as you get closer to the elections where they are going to want to use new media to put out the brand of their candidate. Meanwhile, there are going to be a lot of grassroots efforts that are going to be creating media around the messaging of John Edwards or Hilary or whatever and at a certain point, the campaigners are going to be wanting to control or lock down how your messaging, once getting out and about, Hilary’s package on foreign assistance or something.

C.C. Chapman: I think it is a really good question. We saw at the last big campaign, blogging was like the hot thing, Howard Dean with his blog and what-not. I think you are going to see a lot more candidates embrace new media like Obama when the whole 1984 parody. I never saw Obama say anything about it. He let it happen, which I liked. The fact that Senator Edwards or his staff, I do not care which it is, twittered back to me a response to a question I asked in under a minute blew my mind. I had to go blog about it. I think they are going to start being more hands off and let it happen. I hope they are. I think the smart ones are going to realize that they are not going to be able to control it no matter what they do. I think it is what you saw this year. I will pull Jeff Pulver who said it is the year of the YouTube president. They did not have a press conference. They did it on the web first. It is going to be really interesting to see if candidates figure out how to leverage Second Life and virtual worlds in general besides having a box with posters and stuff. I really want to see someone who can really do it like a true town hall I would love to see and do it around it. I do not know if they do it. I hope some of them are thinking enough to do it. I like to think they are. I am sure they are. The same thing with podcasting, I mean Obama and Edwards have been podcasting for long, long times. I do not know if any other candidates are podcasting or not. I know those two are.

Audience Member: The Governor of Massachusetts has a podcast.

Audience Member: In UK, David Cameron who is the leader of the opposition has a video blog and his followers basically vote questions that he answers every week and he answers the top five questions every week through a video blog.

C.C. Chapman: I do not know if everyone heard. She is talking about in the UK, there is this — I forget it, sorry.

Audience Member: David Cameron.

C.C. Chapman: David Cameron does a video podcast and he has people basically via something like Digg or Pop, “What are the top five questions you want answered this week?” and he answers them. That is awesome. That would be great. That is something that needs to happen more. The Obama thing that just happened, it was a disappointment. The grassroots thing was better. People just talk about the candidate. It is funny when you see like they all have MySpace pages now, but I think part of that is the same thing. Why would not they? I have said this earlier. Why would not they sign up for a MySpace page? Have it every way they can. I think you are going to see also lots of things like Meetup. I am in this area, let us get together. I would love to see things like Twitter, when Twitter starts getting proximity like Dodgeball. “I am in this area and I am a support of candidate X.” What Dodgeball is, is you can actually get profiles and it knows based on where I am right now with my phone and what-not, you can connect with people around you or similar tastes or profiles. So, why not do it around a candidate?

Am I getting close to [unintelligible]? I feel like — ah, yeah. 1:45. Thank you for all the paid questions. No, your homework. All right? Talk to strangers. No matter what your mother told you, go talk to strangers. Follow up with every one you meet today. Every single person you get a card from, a minimum, drop them an email. This is true of anybody you meet outside of the conference, too. Follow up with whoever it is. Just send a quick note and do not do a BCC to everybody. Do not do that. Worse yet, do not put them in the To: line, that is even worse. Follow them up and say, “Hey, it was cool.” I always recommend writing notes on the business card where if you talked about something specific, you can reference it. Write back to everybody. Try something new. It does not have to be a full-blown podcast. Try just videotaping yourself and talking to a microphone. It does not have to cost you a lot of money either. Do not ever think that. I forgot to put that in here. Everyone is always going to go, “C.C., what do you use for your podcast, man?” I am like, “I picked a microphone that looked cool and the mixer that everybody else was buying and it cost me $200 and I use my desktop PC.” That is what I still use.

I did not know if I was going to be doing podcasting for a long time and I still use that. So, try something new, maybe something just reading a blog or commenting on a blog. You can comment on a blog. A lot of people do not. Go out to YouTube and watch some random stuff. Go to Blip.TV or Network2 or any of the service, watch something new. They all have recommendations and see what people are checking out and check it out and then email me and let me know what you did. “C.C., I tried to podcast,” or “I have an avatar on Second Life and I lost one of my clothes and I have a box on my head. What do I do?” Seriously, I would love to hear back from you. I am on the web. I make it really easy to find me. I am everywhere. I will post this. If you want a copy of this presentation, give me a card, I will follow up with you. This will also be on my website. I always put up presentations afterwards in case people want them for whatever reason. Please, do not ever, ever, ever, ever, and this goes true for anybody, do not ever say, “Man, I wished I had talked to that person. I saw them and I didn’t.” Go talk to the person especially on an event like this. Just walk up and say, “Hey, what’s up?” Just start the conversation, get talking, have fun, and get playing. Enjoy the playground. It is a playground on purpose, at least on my mind, so have fun. All right. That is my presentation.

Originally posted on Managing the Gray in case you are reading this somewhere else.

Today we are talking about social network burn out. I got a call on the comment line (206-309-4729) about this topic and it felt like a good one since so many people have been asking about it. Yes, I use MySpace, LinkedIn and FaceBook. I use them all and I use them all differently and that is what I talked about today.

Links from the show

• Ron’s New Media: Jump In Video
• Neil Gorman’s Presentation from Podcasters Across Borders

Also, as you will hear on this episode, PodShow listened to your comments and the SuckLess promo at the opening has been updated. Thank you for all the concerned e-mails and comments. They did not go unheard. If you want to help more, take the SuckLess Survey and give your honest feedback directly to them.

Here is a picture of the people I follow that I took the other day.

Now, I have more people following me then I follow. I’ve talked about this before and the reason is that I only follow people who:

1. I know personally
2. I have some sort of connection with
3. That post continual good links, content and other pieces of information that I want to know about
4. Is someone that I want to see what they are using Twitter for

But, when I look at this picture of little avatars faces pop out at me. I recognize them. I know them. It makes me wonder what they are up to and the great thing is that I can find out.

Twitter can be time consuming. Many times I won’t leave it up while I do other things because it distracts me. I will pop in every so often and see what is up. I don’t worry about missing things. If it is truly important then someone will either direct message me, use the @cc_chapman prefix so I see it in my replies tab (a huge thanks for that one twitter!) or drop me an e-mail. The fire hose of information that I miss I don’t worry about. If I miss a link that is really cool you can bet I’ll see it somewhere else later in the day from another Twitter or on someone’s blog.

Between Bloglines and Twitter I get all the information I need in one day.It’s a constant stream of information that I can consume and react to when I need to. I like the passive approach very much.

I also love that I can throw out a question like I did the other night of “what is the best desktop cooling stand option for my MacBook Pro” and within minutes get tons of answers to the question. Sure, I was out using Google looking for the same answer, but I like real world recommendations better when I can get them. I also love that I can passively “watch” the Red Sox game through their Twitter as well.

The concept behind Twitter, Jaiku and all the other applications like this is a powerful one and I’m looking forward

I first met Marc Girolimetti at a Second Life event in Boston and we instantly clicked. We are certainly kindred spirits and are developing a great friendship. So many months ago when we had lunch at China Sky in Wellesley and he told me the secret about bringing Playboy into Second Life I couldn’t wait to tell everyone. But, as a good friend I kept the news to myself. Even when I saw the teaser banners recently I didn’t say anything.

At our last lunch he mentioned how he’d LOVE to be on a podcast sometime and of course I’m not going to miss an opportunity like that!

So last week we got on the phone to talk about the changes his company Green Grotto Studios is going through, how they got Playboy , New England sports, Curt Schilling’s Blog, Babson and new media in general. It’s about an hour long, but a great conversation about a variety of topics.

The island opens today at 4 pm SLT and there will be some fun events to kick it all off. Enjoy!

Call anytime into the comment line at 206-309-4729 and leave a message or e-mailing me an MP3 works as well.

More goodness at Managing the Gray if this gets scraped or you find it somewhere else.

The information is sketchy on what can and can’t be done on it. But, the hype is there. Heck, my good buddy Rob Walch even has a Today in iPhone Podcast going but doesn’t have the scoop on all the features yet. Even gadget spy Cali Lewis didn’t get the scoop yet.

I won’t be buying one when they first come out. Main reason is I’m on Verizon and not in the mood to switch. I certainly want to get my hands on one to try out. As a usability guy the interface intrigues me and I’m curious if the “keyboard” is going to be any good or not. I’m the type of guy that likes tactile feedback when I’m typing and without this I’m wondering how good it will be.

But, what kind of doors does this open from a new media perspective? Will we finally be able to subscribe and download content on the fly? Can I instantly get the latest episode of JetSet or Ask a Ninja anywhere I am right to my phone? Will it have the ability to surf the iTunes Store and make purchases?

We are all just waiting and seeing. How long do you think it will be before the next generation of iPods? I can’t imagine it will be too long since they already have the interface built and everyone would love to have all the features shown minus the phone if they could get it. I know I’ll be the first in line for one of those! Perhaps we’ll even see them this week? I doubt it because it would distract from the iPhone hype but by the holidays I’m sure.

I have to agree with her. I’d much rather see companies, campaigns and individuals try out new media and fail then not try at all. That was the point of talking about what happened yesterday with me and the Edwards campaign. I could have been angry and pissy about it, but instead I wanted to share some constructive criticism with them so that they could continue trying out this space, but also get better at utilizing it.

I was happy to see that the campaign understood the reason for my post and joined right into the conversation. We are continuing it off line as well and they are eager to hear input from everyone who has some! That’s great. More companies should be so open to feedback.

Something I will say over and over is that none of us are experts on new media. Sure, lots of us are very familiar with the space and can offer great advice and guidance, but we are ALL figuring it out every day. When we all first learned to ride a bike we fell down and crashed over and over. If we gave up we would never had learned. If we never fell down we wouldn’t have had a reason to figure out how to balance. It’s all important.

Don’t think I’m going after anyone. I’m just trying to help everyone take it to the next level. To work together to figure out this fun filled new media space.