An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

Twitter, my current microblogging application of choice, alternates between being available and unavailable of late. Ev and the rest of the Twitter team are working hard to resolve user issues. In the meantime, have you thought about giving Pownce a try?

Pownce - What is it?

Pownce is a social networking and micro-blogging site started by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen. Pownce allows you to access your existing social networks, including:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• AIM
• MSN
• GTalk
• Your blog

all from a single user interface! 

Share links, files, pictures, events, and micro-blog posts with the public, your friends, or in private messages. Pownce became publicly available January 22, 2008, and people are still learning about its existence.

I’m still developing my Pownce network - unsurprisingly, the social network with the most crossover is Twitter. Some have said it’s like Twitter on Steroids but I’m hoping it’s more like Twitter on coffee, my personal obsession. Since my Pownce network is so limited, I’m encouraging you to take this opportunity to try Pownce with me.

Get Pownce. Add me as a friend. Let’s figure out Pownce together.

After spending all weekend with an amazing group of people building skillbit(tm), livetwittering, and otherwise concentrating on the experience, I got back to an interesting proposition from Chris Abraham, of Abraham and Harrison:

“…I have a client, Firebrand, that has an “all commercials all the time” product online and on cable every week night. They’re prepping for Super Bowl with something called “Road to Firebrand Monday” and I was hoping you might be someone or know someone who would like to have some blogger exclusives and/or cover the “Road” campaign….”

Sweet. Facebook is no longer a social media networking site - it hasn’t been since the ninjas, and werewolves, and vampires, oh my! It’s evolved into a social media platform with third party development of applications for Facebook. The above Facebook message in my inbox signals another phase in its evolution for my use - media conduit.

I checked out the videos and read the press release, parts of which are reproduced below. If you like commercials, it’s worth your time. Note the online video placements - the consumer generated media platforms and mainstream media content creators are getting it together! Social Media, meet Viral Marketing. Continuing to push the envelope will facilitate an ever-evolving advertising-slash-marketing-slash-public relations-slash media industry.

…

All-Star Campaign includes the Caveman, the St. Pauli Girl, the Crash Test Dummy,
Mr. Peanut, Bob’s Big Boy and Mr. Clean, among others.

New York (January 21, 2008) – Firebrand, the hottest spots from the coolest brands, on TV, web and mobile, will celebrate “the Holiest Day in Advertising,” with the launch of its first national holiday campaign, “The Road to Firebrand Monday.” The multi-million dollar media buy will include … online video placements on TVGuide.com, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, among others.

The Road to Firebrand Monday campaign begins today with at least three new commercials– PreGame, KickOff and HalfTime – on-air and online over the next two weeks, driving viewers to tune into Firebrand, starting January 28th on ION TV (weeknights 11PM/10C). And all that week on TV, web and mobile, Firebrand will begin showcasing playlists related to the Super Bowl.

…All content is downloadable on mobile devices, iTunes and Firebrand.com. And that morning, Firebrand.com will have only the best of the previous day’s commercials ready for download, allowing viewers to share and rate them all, and to decide for themselves which spot wins the coveted “Firebrand Water Cooler” trophy.

“The Super Bowl has always been the holy grail of advertising and Firebrand celebrates that,” says Shari F. Leventhal, Chief Marketing Officer. “Most people watch the Super Bowl with hopes of seeing the best, most creative commercials the ad industry can serve up. The greatest commercials get to play every day at Firebrand. So the Firebrand Monday campaign is our way of saluting the best of these commercials, past and present, as well as the famous icons that make commercials so memorable, and in many cases, a part of pop culture.”

Viewers watching the Firebrand Monday commercials will be treated to a series of spots featuring a parody of some of the most popular commercial icons including Mr. Clean, Mr. Peanut and the Cavemen, among others. The icons are placed on a football backdrop, either behind the scenes getting psyched up for the game, in the locker room, or huddling conspiratorially on the field. No matter how you slice it, Firebrand delivers an entertaining tribute to what has become advertising’s greatest sporting event.

The fun continues for a week starting Firebrand Monday to the following Monday where every spot that is viewed, downloaded, emailed or embedded earns the viewer a chance to enter to win cash….

Making skillbit™

Wow. If I had to sum up Seattle Startup Weekend and skillbit in one word, that would be “wow.”

In his opening remarks, Andrew likened startup creation to a roller coaster. I hear what he’s saying, understand it intellectually, but I’m still waiting for the drop down. This morning I woke up to an email box full of next steps for skillbit, must test for bugs, wtf messages from friends wondering what I did with my weekend. Business as usual. It’s great to see enthusiasm and engagement, even though the weekend’s officially over.

There were parts of this weekend that were less than ideal – watching our numbers decrease as the weekend wore on, having a fellow founder (and copy team member) discover his car was stolen (again), and eating emotionally weren’t part of the skillbit creation experience that I’d care to experience again.

That said, those experiences contributed additional richness and texture to creating skillbit. I wouldn’t have changed anything for that very reason.

My earlier post listed what I did for skillbit, and Sunday ended up revealing more to me. Sunday, I became a leader. You don’t need a title, a salary, or a VIP parking space to be a leader. A leader just needs to be. I had this epiphany when other members of the marketing team looked to me for direction, and I coordinated efforts with others to ensure the successful execution of all copy.

skillbit Leadership

At the time, I simply saw the need and filled it. Having full information about skillbit and how it fills market needs went a long way to achieving success. Working with incredibly talented people like Nathan Kaiser of nPost, Matt Cassarino of TourVista, Chuck Erickson of 462 Studios, and Cassie Wallender of iLike enabled me to be personally successful in this weekend’s endeavors. I only hope I provided as much value to their experience as they provided to mine.

Of course, many others were instrumental to the skillbit creation process, including but not limited to: Our lawyer, Adam Philipp, the development team, the UX team, the design team, the business development team, and the public relations team… our sponsors: Adobe, Jott, nPost, Lockergnome, Madrona Venture Group, O’Reilly Radar, SEOMoz, Shoestring Ventures, Sun Microsystems, WSA, and UW’s Foster School of Business. Speaking only for myself, there’s something about being fed, happy, caffeinated (of course, by coffee), and hydrated that leads to productivity.

My big takeaway from this weekend, in terms of a lesson learned? Leadership is more than knowing when to lead and when to follow. Leadership is empowering others to get things accomplished and doing what needs to be done. Great leadership is empowering others in their accomplishments and creating an overall positive experience/interaction. I’ve met so many others I would love to help, serve, work with in the future. The wonderful parts of the weekend? Too numerous for this post to enumerate fully. This weekend ended with a lollipop for me, from Andrew Hyde.

PS – Too Good not to Post

For those of us obsessed with startup jobs, nPost provides a valuable online resource for startup jobs.

For those of us obsessed with productivity/life hacking, RescueTime provides great analytics about what applications suck our time.

*update* @albertmaruggi tweeted regarding my comment about RescueTime - check out both tweets: @albertmaruggi in response to @anwith1n

For those of us obsessed with discovering the skills/talents/knowledge of others, skillbit should be your skills management tool of choice.*

pps - extra special thanks to:
Adam, Clint, TJ, Rob, Nika, Zach, and everyone else involved in the copy creation process - I *heart* you guys so hard!

*full disclosure, An Bui is a founder of skillbit, and wants everyone to try it and let her know what you think!

120+ people. 56 hours. 1 conference room at Adobe, and countless cans of Mountain Dew, Diet Coke, coffee, and other beverages, caffeinated or otherwise. Theoretically, we’ll launch a product at 9 pm Sunday night.

This product, skillbit(tm) enables users to discover “[Their] Team’s Potential, Now” Leveraging the power of the internet, skillbit enables business leaders to learn what skills, talents, and knowledge their teams have that may not be readily apparent.

19 working hours in, and I’ve met some really incredible people, about whom I will blog about in short at the conclusion of the weekend. I’ve also had the opportunity to execute skillbit’s web site, from start to finish. This process included:

• Coordination with the UX and design teams;
• Keyword research;
• Web site architecture;
• Writing content for the web pages and splash pages;
• Writing tag lines;
• Working with incredible people who share my passion for Web 2.0

Everyone at Startup Weekend has been very positive, encouraging, and open to others’ ideas and feedback, from what I’ve observed. In some ways, Startup Weekend and this experience thus far is like kindergarten - everyone is playing nice, everyone is trying different things, and everyone is learning a lot about community building.

Check out my livetwitter from Seattle Startup Weekend: @anwith1n 

Conversation déjà vu – In the past 10 days or so, I’ve discussed the same topic with multiple people – time, or more accurately, lack thereof. The reality of my life and the others with whom I’ve discussed this topic is that we don’t have the time to do everything we want to do. We can’t have it all. The question is: how does one take a resource of a known, fixed quantity and use it more effectively or efficiently?

I most recently discussed this with Eytan Seidman, who is in the midst of a transition from his role as Principal Lead Program Manager on the Live Search team to a role in an entrepreneurial venture back on the East Coast. I met the charming Mr. Seidman at the SEOmoz party where I met Natala Menezes of adCenter. Highly intelligent, engaging, and thought-provoking, Eytan (and his time) is in high demand. His availability and my availability have yet to overlap.

Jeremiah Owyang blogged today about time management – “Manage Your Time Like You Manage Money,” and yesterday I recommended Marc Andreessen’s blog post, “The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity,” to a friend. Both Jeremiah and Marc provide interesting insights to increasing effectiveness with one’s time.

Other productivity resources online include:

1. Lifehacker, one of Gawker Media’s blogs. Title should be self explanatory.
2. 43 Folders, Merlin Mann’s websites about personal productivity, life hacks, and life improvement.
3. Listible’s online life hack community.

Essentially, prioritization and decision making serve as the key components to productivity, personal or professional. Take the idea of touching each piece of paper once to 2008 – read each email once. Make a decision on it, then delete it.

Finally, less sleep + more coffee = more time to do.

A member of one of the Seattle area email lists I subscribe to asked an interesting question: “Best coffee shops for networking and just general working?”

Since coffee is a subject near and dear to my heart, I a) have an opinion; b)have a reasonable basis of comparison for my opinion. I’m partial to quite a few coffee shops here in Seattle. Some of the coffee shops I like have to do with the location of my apartment of the month and others have to do with where I work. Without further ado…

In Lower Queen Anne:
Caffe Ladro, at Queen Anne Avenue N & Roy, has friendly staff and a great ambiance in the summer. It’s a great place to work if work entails people watching.
Caffe Vita at 5th Avenue North provided me with a quiet place to sit and work when I worked remotely for Access to Justice Institute at Seattle University during my first summer in Seattle.
Caffe Zingaro on Mercer has plenty of outlets to plug your laptop into when the battery dies. I’ve worked there, met cute guys there (Call me, Shawn!), and conducted alumni admissions interviews there for Swarthmore College.

In Pioneer Square:
Zeitgeist Coffee at 2nd Avenue South and Jackson keeps me functional. The startup I work for is strategically located mere feet away from Zeitgeist. The coffee is a solid part of my routine, and the tomato gorgonzola soup gets me going through the busy days. We often have impromptu meetings while waiting for our lattes, but Zeitgeist can get crowded and loud when the line gets long as it often does.
Grand Central Bakery on First Avenue South has fantastic coffee and oversized, flaky pastries, unlimited refills, friendly and personable staff, unlimited refills… did I mention unlimited refills? I’ve never used them for wi-fi access, just as a meeting location. The blazing fire in the mornings goes well with that first cup of morning coffee.
Trabant Coffee & Chai at 2nd and James makes a soy latte to die for. They don’t take credit cards which makes it less convenient for those of us (like me) who rarely carry cash, but the creamy sweet goodness of the latte more than makes up for the inconvenience.

In Belltown:
Uptown Espresso in Belltown has lots of space and big tables for spreading out and hacking away. It’s good for groups as well as individuals. The Lower Queen Anne location isn’t as open as the Belltown location, but the lattes are just as good.

In Capitol Hill:
B&O Espresso in Capitol Hill has very accommodating staff, free Wi-Fi, and I always get a lot done when I’m there.

Others that make the list of Top Coffee Shops to Work and Network - Seattle:

• Top Pot on 5th Ave
• Zoka in the U District
• Café Vita on Pike in Capitol Hill
• Victrola Coffee on 15th between Harrison and Republican
• Tougo Coffee on 18th between Union and Pike
• Caffe Umbria in Pioneer Square
• Cherry Street Coffee House, on Cherry Street in Downtown
• Essential Bakery at Madison/MLK in Madison Valley
• Fuel in Montlake
• Caffe Verite in either location: Madrona or Ballard
• Louisa’s on Eastlake

Thanks to Sam Tingleff for a Google Map of the above mentioned Coffee Shops: Top Coffee Shops to Work and Network – Seattle

Yesterday I asked those on Twitter: “anyone else use jott? thoughts on its +/-?”

George Dearing replied: @anwith1n | i like Jott..i’ve found that adding it as a google gadget on your iGoogle tends to drive mny [sic] adoption

Seth Meranda replied: @anwith1n : I use jott. The hard part is remembering to use it. I just need to get in the routine…

Enter Godin & Jott.

Jott is a service that I discovered through Seth Godin. The night before Godin’s podcast, I mentioned to a friend that I wish I had thought to record some of my thoughts to blog about later.

What exactly is Jott? Jott is a service that enables me to call into a number (1-866-JOTT-123) where a voice prompts me: “Who would you like to Jott?” and from there, you can create to do lists, reminders, send emails and texts, or blog. Jott enables me to phone in ideas for blog posts when I’m “unplugged” ie, not near my computer. I have Jott send me email transcriptions of my Jotts, which enables me to copy and paste my thoughts into my blog later.

Can’t you use Twitter via SMS to note your thoughts?

I’ve chosen not to tweet via SMS in part because I don’t like the predictive text functionality of my razr – I’m a T9 kind of girl. 140 characters should not be more than a moment’s thought. In front of my computer, twittering takes minimal effort. Via phone, it can take me awhile, and ultimately, I’d rather be engaged in person.

Soooo Jott?

Yes. Jott. I chose Jott in part because it meets a need I have. I often have ideas for blog posts that at the very least will be fun for me to write – ideas I would like to expound on further. I hope readers find them interesting or even useful/thought provoking. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary, yet. With Jott, I’m not awkwardly fumbling with my phone’s texting system. I just take a minute to call in and enunciate my thoughts.

Part of the fun of Jott is that it reminds me of my college’s phone system with voice recognition. That’s another story for another time.

rel·e·vance (rěl’ə-vəns)

n.

1. Pertinence to the matter at hand.
2. Applicability to social issues: a governmental policy lacking relevance.
3. Computer Science The capability of a search engine or function to retrieve data appropriate to a user’s needs.

The American Heritage Dictionary provides the above three definitions for the word “relevance.” Notice that the primary definition is the broadest, and the tertiary definition is the most specific.

I recently went to LA (and flew Alaskan Airlines), and while there, I unplugged – traveled to a place where I had dial up or random wi-fi access only.

I didn’t blog, I tweeted less often than I generally do, and I didn’t post to my blog. I got back online when I got back to Seattle, and noticed my number of twitter followers dropped off, and that my last blog post was five days ago.

What does this mean?

I’m no longer relevant - my content got stale. In this day and age, users like and want fresh content, from 140 characters to a few hundred words. Readers want it. Fellow Twitter users want it. Search engines want it. And frankly, those interested in social change, social justice, and making the world a better place want it.

My message? Be relevant. At the very least, be relevant.

Relevance matters.

A colleague of mine sent me a link to the New York Times article, “Putting Your Best Cyberface Forward”, which Jeremiah Owyang also linked to.

Impression management on the internet attempts to address the constant shift of involvement shields, behind which individuals can act in a manner which would ordinarily result in negative social sanctions. Because individuals have different back stages dependent on the nature of the interaction and the social relationship between the actors, different social networking profiles serve different purposes.

My use of TwitterSync is ineffective because ultimately, I am trying to satisfy two different audiences with whom I have different involvement shields, with the same message.

A few weeks ago, I grabbed the TwitterSync application. This application synchronizes your Facebook account status message with your Twitter account. Essentially:

[account name]+[Facebook status] = The answer to “What are you doing?”

Theoretically, TwitterSync serves a useful purpose – To simplify the management of social networking tools by automatic information population of two fields that address the same or similar question.

Sample Facebook status messages:

• An is happy to be at work!
• An is packing for vacation!
• An is getting coffee for her boss!
• An is meeting wonderful new people!

Take off the “An is” and voila – length appropriate copy bites, appropriate for tweets. Since Facebook recently removed the “is” from the user interface, you have:

• An resents being cold, wet, and hungry
• An enjoys blogging her face off
• An goes for an early morning run – happy New Year’s!

And so on and so forth.

This doesn’t necessarily answer the question posed by Twitter, nor do my Tweets make sense with my name in front of them. I use Twitter to communicate with others in the social networking/Web 2.0/social media space, find out what’s happening in the industry, see what others are writing, thinking and yes, doing.

For Twitter, I’ll drop tinyurls to things I think my followers might be interested in. I’ll tweet (microcomment) directly @ someone, in response to a question tweeted or comment made by someone else.

In actuality, TwitterSync doesn’t really work for me, because my Facebook and my Twitter serve different purposes for my followers and my social network. My Facebook is much more social in nature – I’m more informal. My Twitter, while informal, is much more oriented to providing value to others in the industry.

Do my Facebook Friends care about what my Twitter Followers care about? I think not. Let me know what you think in the comments, post to my Facebook Wall, or tweet@me (@anwith1n).