Ever since Veronica Belmont announced that she’s leaving Mahalo Daily, competition for her spot has been raging. There are a host of nominees, and it looks like Calacanis is taking his queues from the fans while out scouting new talent.
Who’d make the best new Mahalo Daily host? There is no question, Christina Warren (@film_girl), my co-host from The Squadcast. We don’t want to lose her, far from it, and we’d fight hard to keep her at Download Squad where she beongs if an offer were made. That being said, Mahalo Daily would be a huge opportunity for Christina, and if it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. So, in an effort to help rally her 1000 plus Twitter followers and fans of The Squadcast, I’ve created http://jasonstealmycohost.com/
The picture above is from SXSW, and I think it speaks volumes. Who needs to rank amongst the biggest and brightest in web video? film_girl, plain and simple. Really, it’s a no brainer.
It’s on, baby. The quest to make Atlanta the most Twitter connected town on the map is in full swing after last night’s impressive two-Tweetup duel.
The Tweetup I organized, at Taco Mac Lindbergh, had a respectable 14 people in attendance. Not bad, considering I had no idea how many interested parties there would be when I started planning and, didn’t pick a venue until Monday. By complete and total coincidence, there was a second Tweetup/beer and pool bash going on at the same time, organized by @rustytanton and @shelbinator. The fact that Atlanta can support similtaneous Tweetups without exploding or leaving one Tweetup without any attendees is really impressive. In the end, I think the rivalry helped promote both events. It also led to some fun trash talking between the two groups.
We talked, we laughed, we did what the social web is meant to facilitate; socialize. Then the rivalry hit top gear. I was checking Twitter on my blackberry when I saw this tweet from @shelbinator. The gauntlet had been tossed down, the game was on, the Tweetups would be judged not on the quality of attendees, of conversation, of interconnection. Nay, the real Tweetup battle would play out in the most base rating of human attributes, boobs.
Rate, rank and evaluate in the comments. I think we clearly win but, you make the call. Public commentary, FTW!
Splinter Tweetup Boobs:
Our Tweetup Boobs:
Thanks to everyone who showed up, and to everyone who contacted me to say they’d make it to the next one. We’re definitely doing this again. Also, big thanks to Paul Stamatiou for taking pictures, since I was too lame to bring a decent camera.
Promoting yourself at conferences is hard. SXSW is an especially tough field to compete within, as it’s crowded and full of the best and brightest among the blogosphere.
I nearly blew it. I forgot to order slick cards in time for the show, and I went into panic mode. Sometimes, panic brings the best inspiration to the table. Laying in bed two days before I left, I realized I had a perfect opportunity to stand out. Everyone — and I do mean everyone — would have amazing cards with pretty graphics, slick logos and clean cut edges. So, why not go the other way?
This passage from William Gibson’s short story Johnny Mnemonic was the inspiration I needed:
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. I’d had to turn both those twelve-gauge shells from brass stock, on the lathe, and then load then myself; I’d had to dig up an old microfiche with instructions for hand- loading cartidges; I’d had to build a lever-action press to seat the primers -all very tricky. But I knew they’d work.
So what did I load my shotgun with? Humor. I decided to tell the story of how I’d fucked up, forgotten to print cards, and beg for forgiveness; all in one paragraph. And hey, it couldn’t hurt to take a shot at Robert Scoble while I was at it, right?
This is my, “Oh, crap! I forgot to print cards for SXSW!” card. Laid out in romantic old-school fashion using tape and a Xerox machine, this card was forged on paper crafted from only the finest pelts of the most adorable baby seals and printed with ink containing the blood of Robert Scoble, god of first person pronouns. It may or may not possess magic powers. Please hold this card dear as a souvenir of my absentmindedness and an invitation to stay in touch with Download Squad”
It was pithy, reasonably short, and gave a bit of insight to my personality. I had no idea how it would be received, but I love to experiment.
The verdict? It worked. In a sea of slick business cards, my crudely crafted calling card stood out, stopped people in their tracks, and made them pay attention. I got more compliments on my card over the week than I ever could have hoped for.
Yesterday I found that Darren Rowse of Problogger had even given my card a shout out in his “How to Promote Yourself (and Your Blog) at a Conference” video, which was a huge honor. Weeks after the SXSW glory has faded, my cheap and easy business card still has legs.
The moral, “If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.” I can’t wait till next year. I won’t do it exactly the same way, but I’ll certainly take a lesson from this victory pulled from the steely jaws of defeat.
Tonight I fixed the comment system on my blog, which has been broken for a shameful period of time. I also updated my aging (and antiquated) blogroll, and re-wrote my about page. Even my press one-sheet has been updated, thanks to my faithful personal assistant Michelle Wolverton.
Holy crap, I almost appear organized. How did that happen?
Update: Turned off that yuckie login to comment requirement. Ah, that feels better.
Twitter Packs were supposed to be a helpful guide for new Twitter users. Organizing Twitter people by all manner of things you can organize people by (interests, companies, locations) the Twitterpacks Wiki was supposed to be a grand, self organizing list of people you might want to check out if you’re new to Twitter. And, it was; for all of 5 hours during the middle of the day on January 28th, 2008.
In a sign of how quickly things can turn in this fast moving social web, the Twitter Packs went from revered to reviled faster than you can say “zeitgeist.”
People who had added their own listing, and entries for their own Twitter tribes of friends and contacts removed their listings only hours, or minutes after self-adding them. Claiming that Twitter Packs encouraged cliques, or were organized in ways with which they didn’t agree, during a time in the late afternoon it seemed some of the more easily offended Twitter-holics couldn’t remove their info from the Wiki fast enough.
For my part, I’d really like to thank Chris Brogan for coming up with the idea and giving it a shot. Twitter Packs had a shorter shelf life than that Pope who got poisoned, but Chris is at least owed a thank you for having the guts to try and fail.
Update: Thanks for pinging me about fixing my broken comment system Chris Brogan and Amber Rhea
Given this weeks theme, social networking, I went a little wacko with clips from the Prelinger collection of epehemeral films. Check out a pre-Bewitched Darren as “The Shy Guy”.
Christina and I talk to Jason Evangelho, and take a look at the Download Squad team’s top five and bottom five Facebook applications.
I’ve released a first version of my diggstats project. Diggstats reports on the health of digg.com using the digg API, and some interesting logic I wrote which makes an educated guess at which stories are buried, thus allowing me to report the number of buried stories within a given time period.
The graph shown above is live data, but there’s much more to look at within the diggstats pages.
I’ve got other neat plans for what to do with the data I collect to generate these stats (trust me, the underlying framework is doing a lot more than the two fourteen current graphs would have you believe), but those pages aren’t ready just yet.
The graphs in diggstats are generated with XML/SWF Charts, a really slick graphing tool which can be used with nearly anything that can generate custom xml.
Sweet, I’m headed to the 
