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Send Phoenix to South by Southwest! (SXSW)

Please take a moment to support some of our local (Phoenix, AZ) tech heroes and heroine in their effort to become SXSW presenters/panelists. To help out, click the links below and rate them five stars. Registration is required, but it’s quick and painless. Also, if you have a second, leave a comment about any of them you find particularly interesting.

Biray Alsac
Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/877
When NY Times covered blogger Om Malik’s heart attack, it was a wake-up call to Web 2.0 community about our lifestyle. Is being ‘plugged in’ destroying our health? We beg to differ. Consider using the internet for fitness! This panel will debate which next generation technologies are helpful in ‘exercising the web.’

James Archer
Brand Tribes: The Art of Creating a Community
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/887
Learn how to promote your product or service using the concept of “brand tribes,” which smashes the old “Us vs. Theme” marketing mentality and replaces it with a consumer-driven branding framework. Learn how to create a cult following with specific, real-world examples and hands-on exercises.

James Archer
Out of the Bedroom and Into the Boardroom
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1342
You’ve enjoyed the home office life, but it’s time for your web design business to grow up and get serious. Discover the top ten truths that successful businesses have learned the hard way, including ideas on office space, employees, business partners, cash flow, and staying sane.

Francine Hardaway
Fire Your PR Firm: Brand it Yourself
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1259
Social Media Club interim board members will give advice and anecdotes about how PR and branding have changed because of social media and how, as an entrepreneur, you sre empowered. You can now market your own product or company better than any PR firm. And you should. This is for technical people, to teach them the DIY of social media as a branding tool. You would be surprised how many engineers don’t know this.

Derek Neighbors
Collaborative Development Environments
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/885
The interactive industry has been exploring online/virutal social networks over the past few years, but are just now starting to delve into physical collaborative development environments. We will look at social group dynamics in a number of arenas including open studio space for architects, collaborative class room models, green dev houses, collaboration based musical acts and co-working interactive facilities. We will be inspecting how existing collaboration models can be used to help improve the interactive industry.

Brian Shaler
Distributed Computing: Let the Client do the Work
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1068
Traffic surges on the Internet can topple newly popular web services; it’s a common side-effect of success called “Growing Pains.” Web services can provide more functionality while consuming fewer server resources by distributing the workload to end-users’ computers using desktop applications and browser plug-ins.

Brian Shaler
Future of Video on the Internet: Interactive Experiences
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1065
Networks are getting faster, servers are getting more powerful, software is getting more advanced, digital video production hardware is getting more affordable. In 5-10 years, how will end-users be experiencing video content? The key is interactivity.

Pamela Slim
From Blog to Book Deal: How-To
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/913
Is traditional publishing dead? Apparently not, as many bloggers are landing book deals that extend and enhance their online work. Learn the ins and outs from bloggers who have done it including how to shape a coherent book from tons of posts and involve your readers in your writing.

Joshua Strebel
FAIL As If Your Life Depends On It
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1754
It does. Last year we bankrupted your company on the whim of a Unicorn, this year we show you why failing in your startup/life/project is the first step in truly succeeding. FAIL early- FAIL often. Your success is measured as the sum of recoveries from near disaster.

Joshua Strebel
Fake It ‘Til You Make It
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/950
You are a nobody – Become a somebody. A strong personal brand can create business opportunities, boost your income, and even make you interweb pseudo-famous. But where do you start? Learn how to cultivate a powerful personal brand online and offline and leverage it for your professional success.

Sally Strebel
5 Common Misperceptions of Technological Creativity
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1000
Drinking the creation koolaid can sometimes be deceiving. It’s like trying to acclimate your taste buds to dog crap. 5 successful panelists share with you the ways to get results rather than reaching into a risky over populated grab bag.

Sally Strebel
Climbing the Corporate Ladder in a Mini Skirt
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/999
Powerful tech women share their secrets regarding kicking ass, moving up the ladder, dealing with jerks, and helping other girls reach the top.

Steve Swedler
How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1557
Social networking sites today do as much for real world action as paint on the walls does for the structural integrity of your home. Come discuss how we are creating a false majority-view mentality and how to overcome this to achieve large scale change in the world.

Sean Tierney
Miracle Grow for Communities: What Makes Them Thrive?
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1161
Why do some groups thrive while others sputter and die? We’ll explore the preconditions and ingredients that contribute to an engaged community, whether online or in person. You’ll learn core strategies and guerilla tactics to turn your anemic group into a flourishing community.

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Impromptu, Unsanctioned “Social Media Breakfast” in San Francisco

It is Friday, and I am half-way through my March trip to San Francisco. I made sure my return flight is Saturday night so I have all day Saturday to hang out with people I know in the area and meet some new people.

I missed the first Social Media Breakfast in Phoenix, AZ, and noticed that San Francisco was not listed as a SMB city. I figured Saturday morning would be a great time to try it out!

8:30am-10:30am Saturday, March 22nd, 2008
Town’s End Restaurant & Bakery
2 Townsend St, San Francisco, CA

To RSVP, go to the Upcoming event: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/460948 (You can still show up if you don’t RSVP, but if we can’t get a bigger table at the last minute…. Oh well..)

Here is a map: Town’s End Restaurant & Bakery

Bonus!
Breakfast is on me (within reason, like $20 each) for the top 3 most-followed Twitter users who show up. Ideally, we’ll verify by sending a text message from your phone to 40404 (Twitter) with “stats” and see what number it returns. It’s a good way to verify that you own the account and that we are comparing the latest stats on your account.

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XID: Live Web Demo 2/2/08 1:00pm MST

You are cordially invited to watch and participate in a LIVE web demo of XID at http://ustream.tv/channel/brianshaler, starting at (about) 1:00pm MST/Arizona Saturday 2/2/2008.

Update: For time conversion and the current MST time, check out timeanddate.com

What is XID?

The XID project is intended to provide a free, open, and decentralized method of sharing your online presence with your friends.

The most important thing about social networks is being connected with your friends. By storing and filtering your friends’ XID information, you will easily be able to see which of your friends already have accounts on any given social network. No email address book importing. No searching for each of your friends’ names. You don’t need to rely on the web site’s friend-finding mechanisms if you have XID.

What will be Demo’d?
XID is a platform, and when the platform is launched, so will a set of complementary applications. The applications involved are not yet complete. I will be showing and explaining what has been completed so far. Currently, there is an optional web application that is intended to allow new users to quickly and easily set up an XID card without looking at any code. There is also a Firefox extension that allows users to import and manage their friends’ XID cards.

Web Application
The web application consists of these key features:

  • Registration/Login: Create a card and come back to edit it
  • 3-step process of creating an XID card: Save basic personal information (Name, Location, etc), contact information, and profile URLs (all optional)
  • Profile URLs: People who use the same screen name on multiple sites can add them to their XID card with one click
  • Public URL for XID card: Give this URL to their friends

Those features have been at least partially implemented and they can be previewed right now. There will be more features in the near future.

Firefox Extension
The Firefox sidebar extension consists of these key features:

  • Add: Paste a friend’s URL and the extension will retrieve the friend’s XID card and add it to a local/client-side database
  • Friends List: Display all friends and show how many social networks they are on
  • Networks List: Display all networks friends are on, in order of popularity
  • Friend Detail View: Display all social networks a specific friend is on and provide links to the user’s profiles
  • Network Detail View: Display all friends on a given social network
  • Recent Activity: Shows if friends have added or removed any social networks

Again, those are features that are at least partially implemented and there will be more to come.

NOT Just a Tour
There is no scheduled end time for this Live web demo. After an initial tour is complete, I will discuss current and future features with anyone in the UStream chat room (UStream account NOT required to participate!). I will also work on writing code to implement features while discussing them. Live.

At the expense of a little productivity, I will attempt to multi-task.

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Social Media Club – December 13, 2007

I finally made it to Social Media Club. It was my first time and overall, it was a worthwhile evening.

The topic was a presentation by Arizona-based white label video site, V:social. I have heard about the site, but it was great to see a more detailed view of their platform. It was also great to see some of the implementations of their product. As a white label video player, you can be watching V:social video without even knowing it (and I have!). Great company. Great product. Great presentation. Glad to hear about companies like this thriving in Phoenix.

There were two other highlights of the night. As I introduced myself, Francine Hardaway, an “uber” networking maven if I’ve ever seen one, interrupted me immediately after I said my name. “Oh HEY!” she said. “I (@hardaway) follow you (@brianshaler) on Twitter.” That happens from time to time with people I’ve never met, and it’s always awkward. But because this was Francine, it was awkward + awesome.

The other highlight was the guy that introduced himself by saying “I invented Web 2.0 in 1991.” Yes, an Al Gore joke inevitably followed (it wasn’t me, I promise…. but it was definitely on the tip of my tongue).

Social Media Club meetings are on the second Thursday of every month. Check out SMCphoenix.com for more information.