After reading this conversation thread on Friendfeed, I started to comment, but did a quick cut and paste into this here blog post. What follows was my original comment (not posted) that I would like to expand upon here. Then I'd like to get your feedback on Friendfeed, Twitter, or whatever stream you like to post your comments to. I really could care less where you reply, just make it findable!
Regarding my use of Linked In -
"I must admit that I have a LI account, but I have not updated it in probably 6 years. I've been working with the same team for 8+ years, having weathered 4 M&A events and countless reorgs. I've come to ignore Linked In because after having gone through the first M&A event, the only time I would get Linked In email would be when friends are riffed and forced to move on to other new positions in the industry."
*Expanding on comment here*
This became a recurring pattern after a while, where the only times I'd ever get email updates From Linked In were from people who were let go or less often just quit for other opportunities. I found myself trying to avoid accepting any of the "friend requests" or whatever their term is for adding people to your network, and I just stopped using it altogether.
I haven't logged into my account in years and if you check out my profile, you'll see that the last position I posted was "Senior Product Manager", which was 2 companies and three job title's ago.
I'm tempted to login to Linked In and update my profile, just so my stuff is accurate, but I have this recurring fear that all those people who tried to "friend" me and all of my CURRENT colleagues are going to come out of the woodwork and start picking my profile apart.
Many of my professional colleagues are not on Twitter, Friendfeed, or most of the other social networking sites I use regularly, and I'm not sure that I want them to "invade" the communities that I participate in outside of my dayjob.
I'm all for transparency, but I'm having a very hard time figuring out the right balance between personal vs my professional uses of these socnets.
What do you think? I'm very curious to hear what other people think and where I'll find the most valuealbe advice.
I'm in countdown to vacation mode, which requires hyper-productivity on my part. Tying up loose ends with Eastlake Associates LLC, digesting major org changes at my dayjob, and moving rather quickly with startup activity around Infinitely Meta.
I've finally got some talent working on my personal & corporate brand. Mad props going out to Sean Blake (aka @bluefox) who has graciously agreed to help with this effort. Here's what he sent me after I briefed him on the idea / concepts behind Infinitely Meta. What do you think of the new logo/brand?
The possibilities are endless
Just a quick post to bump my last one, as it's been a while. Just got back from San Francisco after an amazing week of fun, work, and great conversation. Met a TON of GREAT new people and made a lot of new friends. Here's a quick list of amazing things I got to do while visiting friends and meeting new ones over the past week:
- Streaming the iPhone launch from Apple Store on Stockton St.
- Buying new iPod Touch, upgrading to 2.0, loading Pandora and other apps from the AppStore
- Discovering my new addiction at the Blue Bottle Cafe. Siphon Pot coffee is unbelievable. Check out my Flickr pics.
- Super secret meetings with some very big names that I can't really talk about.
- Rocked the Mechanicrawl, met Terry Lindell (uber-master of the Mark IV TDC).
- Attended Gary Vaynerchuk's party for taping of the WLTV 500th Episode (insane energy and good vibes at that event). Ran into old friends like Scott Beale (@laughingsquid) and an old college buddy - Brad Murphy - who is VP at Revision 3. Got to meet/talk to Kevin Rose and many other notables in the local tech scene.
- Attended the Freshbooks Tweetup at 21st Amendment. Geeked out with fellow iPhone/Touch enthusiasts. Drank 9.2% IPA that was out of this world.
- Attended Social Media Camp San Francisco. Met some AMAZING people at this event. Met Erica O'Grady. Hung out with @danielbru and the Qik guys. Got to meet @Corvida and a lot of other awesome people.
- Attended Mashable SummerMash San Francisco. Met Pete Cashmore, ran into lots of friends & met new ones. Met Steven Fruchter, CEO of Stickam. Discussed some ideas / opps for collaboration.
- Dinner with Yeshi Govindas Friedland and drinks with Brad Murphy. What happens when you get together with 2 college buddies who haven't seen each other together since around 1996? A late night that ended at 2:45am this morning.
- Upgraded to First Class on Virgin America flight from SFO -> SEA and had the absolute pleasure of meeting and talking with Actor Peter Coyote (wikipedia him). Overhead voicemail on ride from SEATAC (he offered to share his driver) from Matthew Modine.
That about sums it up. Tomorrow I attend a day long course by one of my true idols, Mr. Edward Tufte.
I have a crapload of stuff to do between now and next Weds, when I fly to Albany, NY and head up into the Adirondack Mountains to a little area where there is still no mobile phone coverage. There I will continue work on one of my engines. This is a VERY exciting time for me right now.
Thanks to all my new friends, followers, and supporters!
Onward & Upward.
--Brian
- ∞ +
A couple hours ago Marshall Kirkpatrick over at RWW posted about Identi.ca, a new open source Twitter clone. Check it out here: http://identi.ca.
My profile is here: http://identi.ca/infinitelymeta
A few first impressions:
- Logged in for first time using OpenID. Worked great. Then had to create "local" account to get new profile/handle, etc setup.
- Adding friends is pretty easy. Basic search and follow.
- Timeline - posts up to 140 characters. View Personal timeline and Everyone timeline.
- RSS - Dave Winer says it sucks. Add /rss to any url and you supposedly get RSS.
- XMPP - I'm just setting this up now. Will see how well it works.
- UPDATED: URLs - No auto-tiny URL (yet). I sent @evan a feature request.
I also downloaded the source code here and am actively picking through it to see how well written it is. Would be great if this were the start to a framework for a microblogging socnet platform that can scale. I could really use such a framework right now for one of my "engines".
That is all.
UPDATE: There is a "Coming Soon" FAQ here: http://identi.ca/doc/faq
UPDATE #2: Some now thinking it can't scale due to sql table / schema design. http://identi.ca/notice/4085
The territorial battles in my reef tank continue today. Lots more Icky white specks on the Achilles Tang and Foxface. I see a new puncture wound on the Achilles as well. But all fish are alive and moving. My friend Thom the Ichthyogenius (more on that later) stopped by yesterday to pick up some fresh RO/DI mixed Salt Water (to 1.023 specific gravity) for a couple of his clients so I got to get his take on the situation.
My other buddy Jon also stopped by to check out my new Jade Green Elephant Ear Mushroom and the new Crocea Clam I introduced yesterday (see below).
After watching these fish go at it constantly pretty much non stop for the past week, its starting to become clear what is happening. Patterns are emerging and I'm hoping that I can get rid of the Ick and let this battle come to a eventual conclusion with a new pecking order in place.
Right now the Achilles tang is vying for top spot on the fish food chain in my tank. He has clearly marked his territory by pecking at a very specific area of live rock in my tank. This area happens to have been the Foxface's old home. So the Achilles is basically trying to move in and claim the best cave/spot in my reef tank and the Foxface wants nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately both fish are pretty aggressive, and the battle is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I will continue to monitor the tank, feed a bit more (to distract them), and go out and get some cleaner shrimp to help with the Ick. Aside from that 40 gallon water changes every couple days is about as best I can do.
Day 5? 6? 7? I lost track. I think my Achilles Tang has been in my tank for a little over a week now and WOW what a week it's been. Day after day of fighting for dominance over my Magnificant Foxface, Purple Tank, Clarkii Clownfish, Coral Beauty, and assorted Damsel fish.
The Achilles has been punctured no fewer than 10 times by the Foxface, whose dorsal spines contain a deadly neurotoxin, which, while clearly effective, does not deliver a fatal blow to the Achilles Tang. Sure it's pretty beat up in its belly, fin, eye, and other areas of its body, but it has been steadfast and held its ground. It may emerge as the new dominant fish in my tank - IF - it can survive a bout of the Ick. There are lots of parasites on the body of the Achilles and I've only got one cleaner shrimp, so tomorrow, I'm off to the fish store to get a few more cleaner shrimp to help control the Ick.
I've got some video footage of the action that I need to edit, and you can always check out the action on my Reef Tank Live page here.
Today happens to be the nicest day of the summer thus far here in Seattle. It's roughly 80 and sunny with a light breeze blowing in from the Puget Sound. Pretty much woke up did some light work, cleaned up my place a bit (it's still bordering on out of control) and then headed down to Elliott Bay Books for the Gary Vaynerchuk book signing event @ 2:00 pacific.
Got there a bit early so had nice iced american and half turkey sandwich in the Espresso and sandwich bar. They set up a nice room for Gary with about 50 or so seats. I went and grabbed my seat in the back right corner and setup my gear - Ultra Mobile PC with Logitech Quickcam Fusion as I was planning to stream the event live (and record it) on UStream. Elliott Bay Book actually has free wifi, so initially I was psyched to be able to stream it over wifi as its a bit better than using my Cradlepoint 802.11 > Verizon 3G EVDO USB card. Unfortunately the room the signing was in was pretty much in the basement of a brick building and I lost conection to their wifi and was unable to get a signal with my Verizon card.
No worries. I setup both my Logitech and my Panasonic AVCHD HDC-SD1 video camera to record the event *offline*. I was able to get about an hour of HD content that I need to import and also the recording from my logitech, which was at much lower quality.
I'll do my best to get it posted soon. I'll let you watch the whole thing as soon as I can get the videos posted, but let's just say that Gary killed it yet again. He is so much fun to watch/interact with. I'm looking forward to tonight, where I'll be heading to Gary's drink up event at Purple, a wine bar in downtown Seattle. I've never been there so will see what its all about. Looking forward to a great evening.
Oh I almost forgot - Debbie (tenant) stopped by to drop off her check. Her boyfriend works at Hales Ales in Fremont. They offered to "sponsor" a free keg of tasty Hales Ales for our 2nd Annual Eastlake Associates Tenant Appreciation BBQ! I LOVE MY TENANTS!
If you're in Seattle and you want to come watch the fireworks over Lake Union from our prime Eastlake, stay tuned. I'll be sending out more details in the coming days and will post the event to Upcoming. Parking sucks, but all are invited. The whole neighborhood basically turns into a 6+ block neighborhood party. It's really quite fun. 
Awesome day, trending on awesomer.
As I tweeted here, "I love it when a plan comes together!"
- ∞ +
I've been waiting a long time to come up with a good logo / concept for my personal brand. Thanks to some creative thinking I've done over the past year, and with a little creative help from @kibmcz, I'd like to introduce you to my new personal brand: Infinitely Meta. - ∞ +
Here's what it looks like:
Welcome to the next phase in the exploration of some ideas that I and several others had just over a year ago. This is one of many new sites we will be bringing online in the coming weeks, and hopefully months. Hold on tight, things could get a little crazy again. We're going to try and build a couple of the engines I've so desperately wanted to code up and deploy to the cloud.
Please do keep in mind that I am only able to devote a very limited amount of my precious time to exploring these ideas for now, as I have a full time job in the enterprise software industry where I work as a Senior Systems Engineer for Software AG Inc., and also own/manage Eastlake Associates LLC, a commercial property management business in Seattle, WA.
Major props to @kibmcz, my stealth coding ninja from parts way up north for helping pull this stuff all together so quickly. Be sure to check out KComputer Zone for all the meta. Special thanks to Chris Pirillo for a truly stellar WordPress theme. Well done! Bravo.
Now that I've got this nifty new WordPress blog, I will be retiring (not deleting) my old blog which I recently changed from http://bdeseattle.blogspot.com to infinitelymeta.blogspot.com. Please also be sure to follow me on Friendfeed and Twitter, as they are where you can figure out all the other socnets I frequent.
And now the fun continues.
- ∞ +
OK. Today, I'm deploying my new personal brand and retrofitting my online presence across socnets to reflect these changes. In 2007, I was pplpwrd, now here in 2008, I'm Infinitely Meta. So please come find me on the backchannels on socnets. Here are the ones that matter most:
http://friendfeed.com/infinitelymeta (same account as before, just renamed)
http://twitter.com/infinitelymeta (same account as before, just renamed)
That is all.
