I’ve also spent most of my career working virtually, so I’ve got increasingly good at communicating. In some ways, my policy has become to over communicate.

If you’ve worked in any sort of communication role, either as a freelancer or within another business structure, you know the old game, “hurry up and wait”. When you’re juggling more than one project, this becomes increasingly problematic.

The key to any successful project is communication, that’s nothing groundbreaking new. Being able to communicate is one side of the coin. The other?

Regularity of communication.

This is often resolved by setting up regular meetings and/or calls. Anyone who’s worked with me in the past knows how much I hate meetings, and that’s only worse when it’s a meeting about another meeting. In every effort possible, I’ve implemented stand-up meeting policies. Part of the success of IndyHall has been our ability to move quickly. Our quick decision making came down to Geoff and I communicating regularly, but never for the sake of communicating.

This is tricky to describe: Geoff and committed to regular communication, in a less formal agreement to one another. The other part of the less formal agreement was to never bring something to the table that couldn’t be quickly discussed and decided upon, most of the time in under 10 minutes. Informally, we’d designed a stand-up meeting that we didn’t even need to come face to face for.

Communication happened often, and in short bursts of valuable, actionable information.

In between actionable item discussions was the other part of the overcommunication that’s often overlooked: status updates.

When working virtually it’s crucial to let your team mates know what’s going on, even in the briefest format. My friends at Wildbit have written some of the best stuff about this, from using twitter for the team to using commit messages correctly. No matter what tool or technique you use, there’s one core concept that I think is the most important:

being on the communication offensive.

Photo by siobhansilke on Flickr

That is, if you’ve got information that’s valuable to the team, don’t wait to bundle it with a larger update or, worse yet, to be asked for it to give it up.

If someone doesn’t need the information now, they may need it later and rather than have to bother for it later, they can simply check past updates.

Also, a “small piece of information” may be critical to someone else’s to-do list and you may not realize it.

I’d make a sports metaphor here but I never claimed to understand sports.

Okay. I’ll try anyway. A core value of teamwork when it comes to sports: even if you’re all star, don’t hog the ball.

Get the ball across the court faster with efficient, regular “overcommunication”.

I can’t believe I wrote a blog post with a sports metaphor. I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again.

Redux, or the A.D.D. version of this post:

1. Scheduled communication is good, but communication for the sake of communicating is a waste of time.
2. Communicate early, communicate often
3. Don’t assume information isn’t important for someone else to know
4. Alex is allergic to sports and still can’t believe there was a sports metaphor in this post.

Some would say, “Tomato, Tomato, Potato, Potato, Let’s call the whole thing off”. But the coworking “brand” is undeniably powerful at this point in time. International press, global community growth, and an extremely devoted collection of leaders helping continue to drive things forward.

UPDATE: Stef Lewandowski found a Wordie entry from coworking’s coiner, Brad Neuberg. So there you have it.

So from that “brand recognition” perspective, I don’t think I’m out of line for desiring consistency. The problem? “Coworking” is not in the dictionary, nor is it in most spell check. So when reporters - who tend to be the guiltiest of adding the hyphen - go through their editorial process I’m not surprised when “coworking” gets corrected to “co-working”.

That still doesn’t excuse it. Think of it as a proper name - just because my name isn’t in the dictionary doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be upset if you misspelled it!

I’ve ranted and raved about this on twitter, the coworking google group, and mostly in person (those rants are the most animated, I assure you). This weekend I decided to do something.

Step one: launch a website addressing the issue.
Enter http://doescoworkinghaveahyphen.com/

Sure, it’s a tounge in cheek and shameless ripoff of the now infamous IsTwitterDown.com made by Ryan King. Thanks for the inspiration (and XHTML/CSS), Ryan.

Step two: make it easy to add coworking to dictionaries

I’m admittedly a technologist, and see the hurdle of “contact Merriam Webster” as a pain in the ass. Instead, I’m proposing (based on a suggestion from Jesse) that we make available a “dictionary patch” to popular dictionary files: Microsoft Word, OSX’s native dictionary, and Firefox seem like good places to start. Major blogging platforms that have spellcheck (ahemWORDPRESSahem) I’d like to make these as close to “one click” patches, if possible.

Better yet, I’d love for someone to write a non-malicious virus that adds the word “coworking” to any native system dictionaries. Just kidding. Maybe.

Step three: spread the word

If you spot “coworking” with that dreadful hyphen anywhere, drop a link to the website [http://doescoworkinghaveahyphen.com/] in the comments. Maybe a badge campaign? Who knows.

Ultimately, I hope that this activity catches the eye of Merriam Webster and they take it as a cue to make the change on their own…I consider that the ultimate metric of success.

Care to join in on the fun? Help contribute to any of the goals I’ve set above.

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/119514

It’s no secret that, like a sizable population of the internet community, I like using Twitter as a point of reference.

This past weekend was the first Barcamp in Philadelphia, which was a phenomenal experience. I was extremely proud of the volunteer team who put it together, led by JP Toto and Roz Duffy. Brilliant work. Absolutely brilliant. When’s the next one? :)

I’ve been to Barcamps before, and plenty of other conference settings. For a lot of attendees of BarCamp Philly, this was their first BarCamp (I surveyed the room during the kickoff announcements and it was a 90%+ “Barcamp Virgin” attendance). I’m sure for many, it was also an early foray into conferences/unconferences. At the same time, there were a good number of seasoned veterans.

This diversity and ratio of first timers got me thinking about the social graces of these types of events, and how they’ve changed. Historically, it’s been a ripe opportunity for meeting people, either randomly or more systematically. But introductions still played a crucial part in the interaction: you had better odds of having a positive engagement with another attendee with a foot in the door introduction.

But things have changed. We read each others’ blogs, we follow each other on twitter. We know an unusual amount about each other (that’s not to say we know everything about one another), and that’s not a bad thing; it lowers the barrier to entry to get to know someone better face to face. I like that.

So make up your mind, Alex. Are you bitching or not?

I want to go back to a metaphor that I’ve written about a couple of times, most recently on a Mashable post about coworking. I talk about coworking as an offline manifestation of the types of interactions that go on in an online forum. The broader explanation is that as geeks, we’re inherently incompetent in social engagement </broad generalizations>. The other thing is that geeks tend to be really good at reverse engineering things.

So we’ve reverse engineered our social deficiencies into a set of tools we’re more comfortable working within: software, social networking tools, etc. We get a chance to practice social engagement in these safe online constructs, and over time, shed the chrysalis and emerge into the real world again in coworking spaces, barcamps, conferences, etc.

Here’s where I’m gonna start bitching:

I don’t think every-one’s doing a great job of handling the transition from online social graces to offline social graces. The translations are taking place too literally rather than people taking lessons and actually applying them.

Here’s a couple of concrete examples of oddball experiences that I was involved in and illustrate both sides of the point that I want to make.

I’m thinking back to two specific examples from SXSW, two from ‘07 and one from ‘08.

Anecdote #1: I was pretty green in my career in interactive, and was attending SXSW for the first time. I’d come to a lot of realizations about how level the playing field was, and how low the barrier to entry was to brush shoulders with those who’d inspired me. I think it was at a Yahoo! party that I met Jeremy Keith. While I thought I’d been doing a good job of keeping my cool while meeting various notable people from the internet community, I flubbed in front of Jeremy. I was introduced to him and promptly made the situation extremely uncomfortable by saying, “Hey Jeremy, I know way more about you than you know about me”. I can confidently say that it was MEANT as a compliment, but regardless of the intentions, I sounded like a psychopathic stalker. I excused myself and got a drink, found some friends, and sulked in a corner. I THINK at this point Jeremy knows I’m not a nutjob stalker, but at the moment, he had to have been mortified.

Anecdote #2: I was attending SXSW for the second time, and after a particularly successful year between the first year and the second. My work with IndyHall had given me a taste of what it’s like to work in the public eye, and I was certainly comfortable with it. Ask anyone who’s known me since I was a kid, I’m not afraid of people, a microphone, or a stage. But I don’t think anyone could have prepared me for this choice encounter: I was walking through the Austin Convention Center and a guy walked up to me. He pointed and said, “you’re alexknowshtml on twitter, right?”. I cautiously responded “yes”, to which he enthusiastically replied, “DUDE! I TOTALLY FOLLOW YOU ON TWITTER!!!” and gestured for a high five. Clearly he meant it as a compliment, but in my head, it rang with a similar tone to my mishap with Jeremy the year before. I shook it off and took it as the compliment it was intended to be, but it’s still something I think about when meeting people I admire.

I try not to make relationship assumptions based on the “relationships” that are established online.

So yesterday at Barcamp I paid attention to how Twitter, and general online identity, play into real world engagements. Many people do a great job of engaging and use their knowledge of the people in the atmosphere as an opportunity to get what they seek out of a room or a situation. I think that’s the most effective thing to do with the knowledge you can gain from following some-one’s online persona.

But thinking hard, maybe too hard, about the common utterance of “I follow you” and “Are you following me?”, it just sounds weird.

I know to some degree we’re just talking about a new vernacular, but to an outsider, this HAS TO APPEAR LOONY!!

My overarching point is this: consider your choice of words in these interactions, because these are the sorts of activities that will ultimately hurt the adoption of the things that we’ve learned to love (obsess over) by the masses. These interactions are absolutely critical and I firmly believe they are the future of how we’ll interact, both socially and in business.

Think about the lessons that you can learn from online interactions and apply them to your “IRL” interactions, rather than direct translations that ultimately end up making you look, well, pretty friggin’ creepy.

There’s no specific, single point of failure here, but ultimately there IS a massive mismatch problem.

Companies pursuing this venue to augment your existing market strategy: consider carefully who you are hiring.
Do they carry enough whuffie to be worth your dollar? Do they even understand how whuffie works?

Individuals interested in product evangelism: being a paid megaphone is different from being an evangelist. And asking questions of the users isn’t quite enough, either. Processing feedback is hard. Be prepared for that. And assuming you are worth your weight in whuffie: don’t spend it all in one place.

At one point, J.P Toto (one of our illustrious BarCampPhilly organizers) told a story about how he’d recently had his car break down in an area he wasn’t familiar with. Rather than panic, or even run for the phone book, he knew exactly what to do: he pulled out his iPhone and fired up the Yelp app. It automatically discovered where he was, and typing in “towing service”, the search became instantly relevant to his location. In just a couple of taps, he was on the phone with a reputable, nearby towing service was on it’s way.

After telling this story, one of the other session attendees pointed out that this was an example of success in location-based apps: when they behave as “Big Mother” (a guiding force) rather than “Big Brother” (an imposing, controlling force). I’d like to give credit to the session attendee who came up with this phraseology as I really love it - but I don’t know who it was. If anyone knows, speak up!!

“Big Brother” is a common concern when it comes to privacy, but I think that privacy is just one layer of intrusion. People don’t like feeling like their lives or experiences are being intruded into, especially with the purpose of being sold.

They DO, however, like it when their quality of life is improved and made easier.

Consider this when you’re working on your social marketing initiatives.

Having a clear value proposition is helpful, though it’s not always possible. In these cases, you can to create a related tangential value proposition - something that guides them rather than controls them - to gain their attention.

Once you have that attention, be mindful of intrusive actions.

In social marketing, it’s critical be a guiding force rather than an imposing force. Be Big Mother instead of Big Brother.

Not only did I watch this historic moment on television, I shared it with close friends in a living room.

Not only did I share this historic moment with them, I got to share it with thousands and thousands of other people on Twitter.

We are obsessed with Twitter. It’s a website. It’s a messaging tool. It’s become a development platform, and it’s arguably a protocol. It’s a point of reference. It’s an expression of ego.

But I don’t think that’s why we’re obsessed. I think we’re obsessed because Twitter does something that we long for: it facilitates shared experiences. Twitter, and many other pieces of social technology encourage shared experiences.

Social Media has been purported as a key to the shift in bi-directional communication in PR. That’s great and all, but I’m not sure how long the interest in being able to “talk back to the television” will remain meaningful. I mean how many times have we yelled at the screen and had it do nothing? Just because a human is on the other end of a commercial doesn’t complete the engagement cycle.

So currently, a lot of PR and marketing peeps are trying to get their heads wrapped around the best way to use the tools to engage with their communities. Here’s the kicker: I think they’re working too hard at the wrong thing.

Buzz monitoring has become one of the more common metrics being used right now, and I do believe there is value there. Quite a bit. The adoption of the metrics that can be gleaned from buzz tracking is important, but in this case, I don’t think it’s the point. In my mind, the need for buzz tracking identifies one very, very important metric that seems to be getting overlooked. Buzz tracking identifies that people are talking to each other.

That’s the most important thing.

Once your potential users, users, or ex-users are talking about you, you’ve won. You’ve got their attention, and they’ll broadcast every single thing you do. And, they’ll do it without you having to ask.

Take note: I’ve yet to say that anything about creating a community of users.

Why? It’s not that much work. Once you’ve got more than one user, you’ve got the makings of a community. A great community. A community that you didn’t have to create, it exists simply by being.

I know what you’re thinking…two people standing on either side of an dance floor make for a pretty boring party. Just because you put people in a room doesn’t make it a party, and just because you have more than 2 users doesn’t mean you’ve got a community.

But the game changes once you get them talking to one another. And that’s the role, the unsung metric of buzz tracking. Knowing that the conversations are going on at all, and being able to scan the proverbial room to make sure everyone’s got a full glass, is your most valuable asset.

So let’s move on.

Hear me now, marketing and PR people: people talking about you does not open the door for you to talk about you. Showing up in a conversation about you (or heck, your competition) to talk about yourself is not going to help your cause. It’s like walking up to two people at the cocktail party who are already conversing conversation and blurting out

“HAI, MAI NAYME IZ ALEX AND I LIKE TWEETER TOO!”

It’s not accepted at cocktail parties, and it’s not OK online, either.

What is ok? Be a good cocktail host. If you are listening in on the other guests at the party, be a facilitator. Make sure that their drinks are full, that they are enjoying themselves, and that they get a chance to meet as many guests as possible.

Chris Lehmann gave a presentation about technology in education at IgnitePhilly2 during which he described the technology’s presence akin to oxygen: ubiquitous, transparent, and necessary.

Your role as the social marketeer, the business, or the brand should be the same.

It’s counter intuitive, I know.

You’re used to talking about you. Cut that shit out. Please.

There’s an exception: customer service. The downside to that? Customer service through buzz tracking (be it blogs and twitter) still only service the “elite” technophiles who’ve adopted those tools. Sure, I like that as a blogger/twitter user, I can mention a company and they show up with VIP service. But, as Dave Troy pointed out at Social Dev Camp East, if they aren’t putting energy into improving the customer service measures they already have in place, they are effectively ignoring the majority of the current problems. I like that I’m benefiting from being ahead of the curve, and getting that VIP treatment. But when my mom’s cable goes out, she’s not going to bitch about it on twitter, and she’ll end up frustrated sitting on the phone.

Back to my point about being involved in the consumer’s experience. That experience needs to be like oxygen: it needs to be everywhere (ubiquity), it needs to not feel like work (transparency), and it needs to be something that they feel like they can’t live without (necessary).

You need to make this conversation about them if you’re going to play along.

Be a good cocktail host.

Throw a great cocktail party.

Throw such a great party that everyone talks about how great the party was. And then you can watch the buzz take a life of its own

As a brand, business, or marketer, it’s your job to make the shared experience worth sharing.

Many of the people I speak to are surprised that I’m not making money from IndyHall. IndyHall was never designed to pay me, it was designed to sustain itself and the community it helps provide a home to. It’s doing a great job of that, in my opinion, and not many people would argue that point.

I’m actually kinda glad that IndyHall, as it exists today, doesn’t pay me. My interests would be conflicted. The fact that, like everyone else that works here, I’m responsible for finding my own work. Everyone here looks out for one another, that’s just part of the dynamic.

Why. The answer to the question of “why?” isn’t as complicated as it might seem. If my interests in creating IndyHall weren’t purely fiscal, what were they?

Because as Tara points out, my long tail self interest is key to this operation. By the entire community succeeding, together or individually, we’re each able to succeed. IndyHall breathes due to organic collaboration.

In each project we that collaboration takes place around, everybody needs to be able to win. One of my core goals for IndyHall Labs is trying to make that process even clearer.

Sharon Feder, Adam Ostrow, and myself have been corresponding about ongoing posts for Mashable, and they’ve extended an opportunity my way that I’m pretty excited about.

When Sharon came to me after my presentation at BlogWorldExpo in Vegas (co-led by my buddy Jake “CommunityGuy” McKee), her initial concept for me writing at Mashable was something that had me hooked pretty quickly. She liked how I had answered questions during our Q&A/discussion portion of the session, and wanted to harness that.

I’m stoked to announce that Mashable is giving me the opportunity to do a weekly Q&A column on their site, related specifically to social technology and community development (relevant topics for their audience, and my interests).

I’m even MORE excited that the structure of this model gives me an opportunity to mix my own answers/thoughts/opinions with interviews with other industry thought leaders. I’m personally looking forward to regularly connecting with the people who are really making great things happen, online and off, related to the topics we’re interested in.

So why am I announcing this here…not on Mashable. And why am I announcing it before I’ve got my first piece written?

Well it’s tough to do the “A” portion of the “Q&A” spot when I don’t have a backlog of “Q’s”. So we’re going to be taking submitted questions from each week’s comments section, via twitter (just @alexknowshtml in the message, I’ll get it), as well as things coming in through my comment form. Each week or so, we’ll pick one question to focus on.

I truely believe this is a great opportunity for sustainable contributions rather than me running my mouth about what I think is important. Even I get bored of that stuff. So send in your questions and let’s get this party started!

Social Dev Camp East II

I unfortunately missed the first Social Dev Camp East, though I DID finally get to meet Dave when I was in Vienna for Amy and Thomas Fuchs’ wedding back in September. Dave’s a great east coast entrepreneur and social technology developer, and I’m excited that he’s got Social Dev Camp East II coming up in just a couple of weeks.

On November 1st, a few hundred of the east coast’s finest social technologists will gather at the University of Baltimore to for a day of exchange and creation, relationship and application building alike.

There’s WAY more info on the Facebook event, and even more on the wiki. The event is fast approaching capacity, so sign up soon. If you’re in Philly and planning on going, reach out and we’ll try to carpool.

New Work City Kickoff Party

One of these days, I’m going to figure out how to be in two places at once. In the mean time, I’m planning on driving really, really fast between Baltimore and Manhattan because later in the evening on November 1st, Tony Bacigalupo and the team behind New Work City will be having a launch party to celebrate their opening of their Manhattan community-powered coworking space. I’m so excited for this because it’s such a long time coming. Just a few weeks ago Tony remained uncertain as to whether or not it could happen. Now they’ve secured desks at an office at 200 Varick St, sharing space with consulting firm element^n.

The party goes down at 8pm until “2am”, but I know what it’s like to party with Tony and doubt we’ll call it at 2. The Facebook is the place to RSVP, and you can be certain that it’s not to be missed. If you heard about the insanity that went down at the IndyHall anniversary party, a good number of the same people will be making the trip from afar. I’m quite excited. You should be too.

I wanted to further clarifiy that point, in that I was most fulfilled when I was doing something that makes life better. Makes the world better. Makes something better.

In the continuing effort to get off my soapbox, I wanted to highlight someone that I met recently that continues to impress the daylights out of me and inspires something unique, I would hope, in all of us.

I was walking back from the lunch break at BlogOrlando along side a guy named Erik. Erik and I were exchanging small talk, he asked me if I was from nearby, and when I said I’d come from Philadelphia, he first remarked how far I’d hiked…then asked, “oh…are you the guy from IndyHall”?

We chatted about coworking, why I was in Orlando (fact is, I really dig the scene there and am continually impressed by their potential). The walk back didn’t really afford much time beyond the ability for me to find out that Erik lived in the general area and was also involved in the local social tech community.

I was ashamed at the end of the day to find out that the closing speaker was the same Erik, Erik Hersman. Moments prior to him taking the stage, my buddy Alex started talking up this guy and how rad he was. He didn’t even get close.

Uploaded on September 30, 2008 by seanosh

As it turns out, Erik is a long time techie. Furthermore, while his family is in Orlando, he grew up in and continues to spend a great deal of time in Africa. He’s a notable technology leader in regions like Kenya and Sudan, where he grew up. I’ve since subscribed to his personal blog, WhiteAfrican, as it gives some insight into the very cool stuff Erik is up to: most recently, some great breakdowns from during and after BarcampJozi (that’s Johannasburg, as I learned). I also now check AfriGadget, which highlights gadgetry and handmade innovation in Africa. Read the first page of this blog. You will have a whole new outlook on technology.

On WhiteAfrican, Erik recently posted follow up from MobileActive08 (also in Johannasburg) which was attend by Blaine Cook, formerly of Twitter, and Rabble (who created Yahoo’s FireEagle platform). What do these three guys have in common, and what does that have to do with Africa?

Well, that’s where my admiration for Erik comes in. In the beginning of this year, he helped create a tool called “Uashahidi“. Erik’s knowledge of technology in a place where not many of us understand it’s importance (or availability) allowed him to leverage technology, specifically mobile technology, to make something better.

There was some serious political turmoil leading to violence in Kenya towards the beginning of 2008. Erik knew that mobile technology was reasonably ubiquitous, even if it only was the simplest forms available. He took that as a prompt to prototype a system that took citizen updates from mobile, email, and web, and map them: both for journalistic intentions, as well as for relief purposes. From the website:

The core [Ushahidi] engine is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time.

Think about that for a second.

This was not building something to cut jobs, improve project turnaround, or increase profits.

This was not something built to chat, discuss, banter, whine, or kvetch.

This was not something built to gather friends.

This was not something built with a “market” in mind.

Ushahidi leveraged two of the most important technology concepts of our present: mobile and socially contributed content for the purpose of making something that really sucked - a violent nation - and gave it simple tools to make it better.

As you might imagine, this project caught the eye of the news and Erik and the team (all of whom I now desperately want to meet) and got some much deserved press. Since, they’ve secured funding and grown the team, and will be launching a new version of Ushahidi this fall. Open Source.

<applause></applause>

We’re talking about an application that can be applied to real life problems domestically and abroad because it uses a least common denominator and takes into account some basic human interaction.

How is Ushahidi different from most other (not all, just most) “social software”?

I’d venture to say the same way “coworking” stands out from “desk sharing”.

Ushahidi was created because someone cared.

This is the kind of doing that I like to see. This is the kind of doing that I hope to accomplish.