NETWORKING FUN FOR THE INTROVERTED: By Their Tweets Ye Shall Know Them

Networking Fun For The Introverted
with Wendy Kovitz, Cyberian of Networking*

I've spent the past few weeks enjoying the fast and often furious world of Twitter, engaging in banter with hardly more words than a fortune cookie with mostly complete and total strangers. Why?

Some mother's helper article once touted how much can be accomplished in only 15 minutes around the home if you just put your mind to it. Make small and achievable goals and just "GET IT DONE!" Fifteen minutes may get some socks folded or vanquish a sink of dirty dishes, but try to do Access programming with only 15 minutes of "alone brain time" and see what happens in a house with three young boys.


KISS (keep it simple, stupid)

Talk about an uphill struggle for a creative writer of soap opera epics who has never been able to come up with a title or one sentence synopsis for anything to save my life. But I persevere, because I seem to be in very good cyber company. How annoying is it to try to read the most recent Update and work down the list to where the sentence or thought started in the first place? I'm 40 years old and so frugal that I've had the messaging service turned off on my cell phone, perhaps that's why I'm perplexed by abbreviations of words, thoughts and even, dare I say it, logic.

For a really great article (written in Tweet style, no less), please see Paul Constant Reviews Twitter. Just one of his points:

"And the arguments are delightfully public, for anyone to see. Twitterfighting isn't a verb yet, but I hope it soon will be."

"Doctor Facebook and Mrs. Twitter"

I was not entirely happy with the Chairman's appraisal of my online networking escapades thus far, but it does smack of truth. Though I love Facebook for re-connecting me with long-lost friends and relatives, there is much to be said for the freedom of expression one can find among strangers on Twitter. Twitter is so deceptively duplicitous in its intent - you only have 14o characters to make a point! Surely even the busiest person can whip out a few keystrokes and be connected in Twittertopia! The other difference I discovered was that while networking with roughly the same amount of people on each site Facebook is completely filled with people I know (at least fairly well) and Twitter is almost completely the opposite. The irony here is that my Twitter strangers probably know me better than most face-to-face friends and acquaintances.

There is something to be said for face-to-face networking, and most of it good. What is it about its absence that allows us to so quickly disintegrate into virtual chaos? I read a great article in this month's Scientific American by Michael Tennesen called "Avatar Acts". In it he talks about the virtual evils such as rape, theft and murder perpetrated by predators on the unsuspecting and discusses what if anything should be done to protect the estimated $1 billion annual in virtual commerce along with our virtual health and well-being.


Liberal Libra at Large

How then can a serene, open-minded soccer mom manage to provoke the wrath of not one but two gay, gun-toting, Republican neo-cons? Perhaps if I had gotten the recommendation to read some very sound advice regarding what to share and with whom from a college friend of mine I wouldn't have entered the realm of politics, religion and other such taboo items so quickly.

From the Ultimate Facebook Guide by Kevin Eklund:

Reconsider Sharing Controversial Content

"Just remember however, that not everyone is interested in discussing such controversial issues in an attempt to find solutions."

Take my seemingly innocuous statement regarding the President's address a couple of weeks ago:

"Good to hear #Obama talking about #relationshipCapital and fostering partnerships with other countries instead of forcing US agenda."

Yes, I tagged him with #relationshipcapital even though he didn't say it, because he meant it. Obama gets it.

It later was re-tweeted by a man I shall refer to as Angry2:

"tlking is for weenie commie symps".

In all fairness, I had accused the Republican party of defecating on the equality agenda, a point to which my Twitter pals vehemently objected. But in equal fairness to accuracy, I had been reacting to Angry1 when he said (in reference to the President):

"BHO sez he is 95% cured of smoking. Was Ted Bundy 95% cured of murder if he took a day off? Just askin."

So, they blocked me because Angry2 decided that I was trying to "bait them into a rant. " Is a healthy discussion of differing beliefs really such a bad thing? Of all people, I wasn't expecting this from members of a community that I've defended over Thanksgiving meals and other such intimate social forums since college. Perhaps I may not be as savvy as the next person when it comes to politics, but is there no common ground in the world or in our own backyards?

Lest anyone think I'm using this for a purely pro-Democratic agenda, I must say that I do respond to eye-catching Tweets about the socialist (i.e. Democratic) plot to take over the world, as long as I don't feel that my intelligence or my beliefs are being personally attacked. It's Twitter, for goodness sake, not exasperated kitchen table politics with family members of differing persuasions. There's the sense that we can "speak" our mind and someone, somewhere is "listening".

I'm determined to keep on looking with rose colored glasses, not of the world as it is, but the world as it could be. Anyone with me?


Next Month...

I'll be interviewing Wyatt from Pan Historia "a community for collaborative fiction and role play writing. "


Wendy Kovitz
Cyberian of Networking
http://EpicInABottle.blogspot.com

*Views expressed are solely those of the writer and in no way reflect the overall mission of The National Networker.


For more information, please visit Wendy's TNNW Blog or connect on Twitter.




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NETWORKING FUN FOR THE INTROVERTED: By Their Tweets Ye Shall Know Them

An Industry Analyst, A Purple-haired Goth, A Griffin and I - Oh My!

By Chris Kauza
Technology Editor

If you have any involvement in Virtual Worlds, you may recognize that I am referring to a not-so-unusual attendance list for a business meeting in Second Life. The meeting I recently attended was a great opportunity to experience a presentation slide show in an entirely new way.

Video games aren't entirely about stealing cars, shooting aliens, going on quests or eating dots on a screen. There is a segment of the industry known as Serious Games, which refers to uses such as training classes, business simulations, etc. And it is in this segment where we find a game you may have heard of, called Second Life from Linden Labs. (Here is a video giving a non-technical explanation of what Second Life is, using a gardening analogy...)

Erica Driver is an Immersive Internet industry analyst, formerly with Forrester Research, now in her own firm (ThinkBalm). She (quite literally) walked about a dozen of us through a presentation on the business applications of Second Life. Indeed, the slides were arranged in a circle formation, in a field, and I was able to focus on, zoom-in / zoom-out, etc., on those points that most interested me

Personally, I first went "in world" and viewed Second Life about three years ago, and found it to be painfully slow, very buggy, and limited in its functionality and feature set. Last night was my first time back and I found the whole experience to very exciting - everything seemed to have really moved forward quite a bit.

Second Life hosts more than 15.5 Million residents, and you will find more than 350,000 of them "in-world", during a typical 7-day period. For the month ending September, 2008, there was roughly $7.3 Million dollars (USD) of in-world transactions.

Did I get your attention?

Erica went on to point out that approximately 16% of Second Life residents use the environment for work, and about half of these (approximately 1.24 Million people) intend to increase their usage of Second Life in the coming year. Further, 90% of surveyed Second Life residents stated that they would like to interact with "real life" brands while in Second Life. What are some of the ways they anticipate using this technology?

• training and collaboration (Michelin IT for Enterprise Architecture training; The George Washington University Medical Center using "Virtual Heroes" video game designed to increase proficiency of medical professionals (see a video demo here))
• remote monitoring & management of data centers / remote facilities management (ex - Implenia and IBM's Virtual Data Center))
• data visualization and analysis
• augmenting (or supplementing) trade show presence (ex - Aldrich Chemistry)
• product launches and training (ex - Microsoft)
• sales / sales demonstrations (ex - VoxVue & Aldrich Chemistry)
• brand awareness and building (ex. - Accenture Careers Island)
• concept prototyping

What does this have to do with "networking"?

Everything!

Two key aspects of networking are:
1. how you represent your company's / organization's brand
2. how non-company people interact with, or react to, your brand

8 years ago, blogging was dismissed as a communication medium. Now many companies and executives blog on behalf of their companies (this article is itself being written and published through a blog).

Should you create a presence in Second Life right now? It depends.

In my personal opinion, Second Life still has some technical issues to contend with (their back-end infrastructure, mostly), and it can be a "bit buggy" or slow to the uninitiated. However, the day is fast approaching where your customers / partners / suppliers may expect you to have a Virtual World presence, so getting involved and starting to "figure it out" now may not be a bad idea. And don't forget - what you do here should be in alignment with what you do "off line". Use these technologies to develop and enhance your brand.

We have been discussing this exact idea here at the Soltus Group. For now, we have placed it "on hold" but developing a Virtual World presence is part of our 3-year business plan. We are observing and doing some limited participation, but we have no avatar with which to speak to the aforementioned Industry Analyst, Purple-haired Goth and Griffin.

Not yet, anyway...but, if you allow yourself, you may begin to see art, relationships - your world - in a whole new way.

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An Industry Analyst, A Purple-haired Goth, A Griffin and I - Oh My!