these boots were made for walking all over your blog

It's like I fell asleep and the internet went on without me. Blogger grew up. Blog advertising came of age. There's even a widget to add google affiliate ads to posts. did i grow a beard while i was asleep? maybe so. menopause. you know the drill.

for now, though, I'll be kickin it old school with some new school just for kicks.

Losing our sense of urgency

We used to be more urgent than the Internet.

A dozen years ago, you would find many a netizen rushing home from work to get online so they could connect with friends, read the latest posts and comments, check their personal email for ezines, or jump on a discussion list. A few of us could sneak a peek at work, but not many. Corporate firewalls were sealed tight, and applications were sturdy and strict pieces of software, not fun three-letter words you can run on a phone.

That lacking begot urgency.

We were faster than the flow of information.

We rode data; data didn't ride us.

Because the enterprise and the personprise were still individuated -- no BYOD, rare instances of telecommuting, and certainly no blogging from work -- we had to expend a great deal of effort just to connect. We sought content; content didn't seek us.

And here we are now, streams and feeds 24/7, an enmeshment of who we are wherever we are, with information following us. Worries of Big Brother replaced by Big Data - what do we do with all of the digital stuff assaulting us, and how do we keep up with our friends.

What is the ratio between interesting things that would be cool to know more about vs. how my friends are feeling--are they hurting? Getting married? Have a new job?  Should I have to go to three different social networks to find out? Times how many friends? And what is the likelihood I'll give up before I find out, distracted instead with the guy who feel 24 miles from space.

We are fat with content now; we are lean with empathy.

But we can't turn back. I'm not sure anyone would really want to. And I don't have the answer yet. George Girton says I should try App.net - something you pay a little bit for so you don't have to deal with ads and have control of your feed. Maybe. But gosh I don't need another place to go, or barrage of information to dodge.

The great enablers of technology are the ones who solve problems like this.  When we had all of the information and no way to find it, Google came. Now that we have all of this information and no way to parse it, I don't know what will come. But something will. Analytics is taking care of the dilemma for the enterprise.

But can analytics scale down? Can it draw meaning from micro-personal information as well as it handles big data?

Now that everything we need to know is out there, how do we visualize toward empathy? How do we make meaning?

when she turned 5, the blogosphere sent presents. now she's 15 and the blogosphere should send me some redbull.

down and up

a guy free-fell 24 miles from space today. More than 127,000 feet. He broke the speed of sound. michael o'connor clarke would have dug this. I hope he got a view of it. :-)

digital breadcrumbs for michael o'connor clarke

I've been thinking about you all day, Michael all day.

I even went to mass because I felt, well, if it could add in any tiny way to the comfort being sent to Leona from all parts of the globe, then I should do it.

Michael, I went for you too. You see, you would be one of the few who could get me in the doors. Can you see me? Standing outside, wondering, having never been to this church, hardly to any church in recent memory, would the side doors lead me awkwardly into the midst of communion lines? Then what would I do? Stick out my hand and say "Amen"? Michael sent me?

It took me a minute to make my way in. Would I remember the responses? Did you know some of them have CHANGED? Yes, for real. They don't say "It is right to give Him thanks and praise" anymore - at least not at this church; they say something else, I think, "It is right and just"?

Today I didn't feel like it was right or just. I felt like nothing made sense.

But in that not-making-sense-ness, I felt you poking my shoulder, poke poke, as I stood in the back. You  tried to get me to laugh. I couldn't help it. I did smile.

I didn't make it to the end, but I did stay through the part where all 200 of us prayed for those family and friends who had died. And so I prayed for you. And I stayed for the "peace be with you" part, and shook some people's hands for you and Leona.

If only you would have stopped nudging me so I could have stopped giggling.

me and my blog brother:

• guess who came to lunch
• billability
• global boiling
• in case you're wondering
• michael starts blogsprogs
• more on blogsprogs
• lilting kersplosions
• rauri's breakfast lol (in comments)
• Google is the new CNN

remembering michael o'connor clarke

• goodbye for now, from me
• trafcom news
• missing michael - AKMA
• aerin guy
• connie crosby
• joey devilla
• david weinberger
• unsweetened
• Suw Charman-Anderson
• Doc Searls

some of my favs from michael...

• Flackster on corante
• five things you don't know about me
• peaks of cluelessness
• professional testimonials 
• social media WTF? 
• more online media reflections
• first posts - 2001
• poem - on the walk home
• Ruairi turns 1

I hope that Michael's  blogs are preserved - so many great ideas, so much he contributed.

SUPPORT MICHAEL O'CONNOR CLARKE.

 In that, goodness is like love. Not an exchange of market value for a fungible resource; not a path for earning something desired, and certainly not a way to avoid being punished by an icy-hearted magistrate. Goodness earns nothing. Goodness gives good. --AKMA

Goodbye blog brother, for now.

I am thinking of my blog brother, Michael O'Connor Clarke, a best friend I only met once, but a friend I talked to by phone, flew in Second Life with, worked with on client accounts, celebrated the birth of a child with, and wrote with online for the last 11 years. I hugged his children and amazing wife Leona when they came to visit in 2006.

Our friendship, interwoven lives painted in pixels and over wires. Every conversation was  ocean deep and jarringly funny. We snorted, guffawed, and plotted revenge against arch enemies together. We brain-jammed ideas together that could change our craft forever. We were PR superheroes, digital nobility, and tip-jar street musicians all at once, because blogging was like that.

How is today any different? I see him - he's right there. He's on facebook, the same page, there in the photo, from just some months ago, or the other one, him in the crisp, white, button-down shirt, hand in hand with the kids, telling them some large tale or small instruction--we'll never know. We just know how much he loved them. So how, really, can he be gone? But he is.

Can we stop Twitter, just for a moment of silence? Can the Internet slow down to grieve? The constant roll of newsfeeds and hashtags fail to notice. In the end, we have to mean more to one another than a final post, a last tweet. This is the place I came to heal from loss, not to compound it. But we surface into one another's lives within this digital world inevitably to be pulled apart in the real one.

When Michael and I first met online, we told each other we were brother and sister separated at birth and given to different parents. Maybe not far off, born into an online family, to fight, tease, help, and sit with one another almost for real.

All along, we were tapping out SOSes one post at a time.

This much I know: We are in and out of each others lives here -- more out than in physically; more in than out in every other way.

I miss him. Already. I don't want him to be gone.

And I want his children to know that we are loosely-joined family. As Michael would do for me, I want to tell his children this. If ever Charlie, Lily, Ruairi, you want to know what I loved about your dad, you want a place to stay when you're older and decide to visit Atlanta, you want help with a term paper, you want a ride, you want me to beat up a bully, you want something I can offer, know that your father was my brother, and I am here for you.

Leona, for you I weep today, and tomorrow I will smile remembering how he talked about you, how very much he loved you; you were and are and always will be his joy.

And I will remember his wit, his humor, his rough voice over the phone walking through cold Toronto  mornings as we talked about clients, kids, and the next great idea.

Good bye my brother. Too soon.

photos: Some rights reserved by AKMA

#supportmichaelocc

Back to the Future - Things Old School Blogging Did Better Than New School Social Media

Back in 2003, my blog had a Google page rank of 9. I burst into the Technorati Top 1000 on a couple of occasions. Considering there were about 1000 of us blogging at that time, this accomplishment was not as "whoa!" as it sounds.

Before I started blogging in 2001, a Google search on my name delivered just 3 search results. Four years after, that number would climb to 300,000 and more. That was before businesses barged in, before smartphones and BYOD meant everyone really was "always on," before becoming a 'social media' expert was a lucrative career option.

The act of blogging was quite different then. But the idea that there was value in talking to each other across the web has stood the test of time

There are things that early "social media" did right -- practices that have been lost amid the growing cacophony of participants. The following are some old school blogging tactics that can be revamped to make conversations more meaningful today

THEN:
We had "blogrolls," which we took great care to maintain, groom, and grow. These were sidebar lists of people we read, lists and links to friends, enemies, whoever we thought our friends should be reading. These were our pre-app apps for finding and sharing. We didn't do SEO. We did I LOVE YOU.

NOW:
Blogrolls have fallen out of favor. Most of us find what we read by following links tweeted by our Twitter folowees, or Facebook links to what family and friends are reading. Blogs tend to link more to mainstream articles today, hoping to glean credibility and SEO juice in return. The problem with that is, Google's analytics are smarter than any of us. And Google did, does, and always will reward authentic conversation. That is what has kept its search results useful over these many years. So don't try to out-SEO Google. Try instead to read, care, and talk about what matters to you, then tell other people why you care about it, and why they should care.

THEN:
Most of us were blogging to get AWAY from our jobs, not as part of our jobs. Some of us were getting fired for blogging, and some others of us even made blogging careers out of getting fired for blogging.

NOW:
Blogging pays. Whether you are blogging about your personal hobby or about your professional passion, everyone loves a blogger. You are more likely to get laid off for not blogging than for blogging. In the process, however, bloggers have lost their authenticity of voice. How excited can you be about PR, really? Or technology? Or social media? It's great that so many pundits have emerged from the ranks of blogging, and that so many have made careers out of it. But we really liked you best when you threw in the personal stuff, the parts about your kid's visit to the principal, you dad's final days in the hospital, the breakup with your longtime love. Don't forget that stuff. It's what makes this space special, me to you, the closest we get to flesh in pixels.

THEN:
Good conversations were the ones you couldn't even trace the genesis of. So many people had blogged and linked to so many others, that the discussion became a web, a mini network of intellect or fart jokes within the larger network of nodes.We read other bloggers voraciously. We would seldom post without reading what other bloggers were saying. Links within a post were the only context we had. Links were organic to discussion. Links were a social grace. Links were etiquette. Linking to someone drew them into a discussion by virtue of the fact that you thought they were important enough to be there. That the conversation needed them. As readers we were concerned with the wattage of conversations, not the volume.

NOW:
The blogopshere is oversaturated with pundits and underserved by conversation. Bloggers think they deserve to be read. Instead of starting a discussion, they stake a claim. Just because you have a thought, however, doesn't mean you're a thought leader. Every idea doesn't have to be yours. Everything you write doesn't have to stand on its own. There are others in the blogosphere. You should invite them into your conversation by linking to something they've said about that same topic. Use links for context, talk with others, not at them.

Pondering the Thumbnail Web

Did some thinking on how brands are best displayed in an integrated social media world at jeneane.net. I know, I know, you can't believe I'm over HERE let alone over THERE! Yes yes yes, I'm here. Don't start frothing at the mouth. It's unbecoming.

We'll just see how this goes.

white black and beige - ideas on cyberrace from 2006

"One day I won't have to ask 'How white is your blogroll?' and have folks pretend that they don't know."
are we there yet?

Happy 10th Birthday, Allied.

Dayum. It was a decade ago.

Dog years. Cat years. Blog years.

Still, the more things change the more they stay the same. ;-)

Tidings to my brothers and sisters in the blog class of 2001. And thank you RageBoy!!

DEAR MY DAUGHTER'S MIDDLE SCHOOL

How can a school and its teachers fail so miserably at engaging children who come through the doors enthused and filled with wonder on the first day of school? I drove them there. I know they were open and vulnerable and joyous. But you closed that door by treating them like they are three grades younger than they are; by assuming the worst of their capabilities, their motives, and their behavoir; by asking for information from them that can be used against them later; by reciting rules and promising punishment; by aiming to control instead of to TEACH; by assigning drone-like assignments and busy work ALREADY to tie up their activity time outside of school; by destroying their spirts and stomping on their passions. How did you achieve ALL OF THAT in one day? ANY teacher who did any one of these things today (I have the names of 2 of you), please retire or find another job. Jobs are hard to come by and parents are tired of paying for you to squelch what is beautiful in our children. So change your attitudes TONIGHT. Or it's on. Got it?

To The Man I Said I Did and Still Do - 25 years

25 years ago, thousands of days ago, blue jeans with heels and t-shirts ago, streets ago, bars ago, a volvo and a pacer ago, books ago and records ago, beers and bottles ago, layers and layers ago, keys and strings ago, cigarettes and wings ago, snow and rain ago, sun and sea ago, mothers and fathers ago, so many friends ago, rings ago, locs ago, pounds ago, and prayers ago, trips and hips ago, malls and halls ago, jobs ago, miles ago, our baby ago and toddler ago, strollers and boppies ago, a girl now a young woman ago, hellos and goodbyes ago, homes ago, cities ago, dogs and cats ago, hamsters ago and fish ago, snow and sweat ago, billboards ago, so much music ago, stages ago, pages ago, blogs ago and bands ago, here ago, there ago, pains ago and joy ago, the truth ago and healing ago, love and smiles ago, thousands of days ago, just 25 years ago.



I love you, George.
Thank you for a lifetime of love,
a lovetime of laughter,
and a forever of remembering.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, BABY!

August 9, 1986 - 20011

Buy Low?

I'm just sayin'.

HA!

I'm back in! I was locked out of this blog for a while by I don't know what google-blogger phenomenon. I could write, but the "publish" button was just dead. I said yes to something or other and here we are!

Seven years ago on these hallowed pages when I quit smoking I kept accountable to my dear blog friends by posting regularly. You'll be glad to know I'm still smoke free. So when someone asks me how I quit, I always mention blogging.

Who else is around doing this stuff these days? And how do I get rid of years worth of comment spam? Or don't I?

germinting memories - social media marketing done right in hindsight

I have an interesting view of mommy blogging because I started blogging in 2001 as a mommy before there were 'mommy bloggers.' While early blogging was therapeutic, the best thing I got from the experience were a gaggle of great friends I still have today. And what I will always have from the experience are great memories.

REMEMBERING THE CAR-VAN

Back in 2007, Dodge ran a campaign to get mom bloggers into their new 2008 Dodge Grand Caravans, and I was lucky enough to be one of the few moms to plop my then-9-year-old and her friends into the coolest van on the planet for a week (she remembers it as a month) for free courtesy of Dodge and Matchstick Marketing, which named me one of Atlanta's 50 most influential women bloggers. [shut up and stop giggling; I clean up nice.]

No I am not kidding, someone actually brought me a luxury vehicle and put it in my driveway free of charge AND the next day the car started by itself (back in the day when I didn't know anyone who had a car that started by itself or who had satellite radio).

We LOVED having that van. I blogged the experience not because they told me to or required it, but because it was so much fun taking preteen girls around town as they sat at the table in the back and squeeled with delight that I had to write about it.

I am laughing out loud just now remembering how Jenna kept pronouncing it as "car-van" instead of Carivan.

SO WHAT DID DODGE GET OUT OF IT?

In using our experience for their early social media marketing efforts, Dodge didn't convert a sale; they didn't gain a spokesperson. Nor did they make me famous or give me money.

They did something way smarter - they gave my family a memory.

They gave an ordinary mom a cape and made her a super hero and she didn't forget.

They gave an ordinary kid a ride through time she never forgot.

And they made that 9-year-old a fan before she even knew enough about cars to care.

CUT TO 2011...

Even though the video is still on YouTube, it was four years ago. Next year she-who-loved-the-car-van-most-of-all will be driving.

This passage of time is most interesting of all because:

1) I am still driving my same old car I was then. It's turning 10 years old.

2) I am looking to buy a car next week.

3) After scouring car lot after car lot, sitting in Infinities and Flexes and Sequoias and Explorers and Elements and more, I still hadn't found "the" car as of yesterday.

4) Jenna came car shopping with me yesterday, saw the Grand Caravan from a distance among hundreds of other cars, and ran to it like an old lost favorite blankie -- she peered in the tinted windows and yelled: THIS IS IT! THIS IS THE 2008 DODGE CARAVAN WE DROVE FOR A MONTH!

5) I said, no, a week, not a month. She said, YES it was a MONTH, and according to her imaginary wish clock it was. And she was sure it might even be the same van, even though I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

7) I am going to test-drive it (re-test-drive-it?). I half expect to see old McDonalds fries she left under the seat.

8) I am really considering buying it.

DECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL MEDIA PROMOTION

I have learned several things:

It felt great to be valued.

It felt even better to be shown value.

Mommy bloggers, they never really wanted you - they came for your babies.

If you want a customer later, make a memory with them now.

We really did win.

Dear Spaminators, I think not.

No I didn't stop blogging.

I'm just on a sabbatical.

So don't think you're going to get my login by clicking 'forgot my password.'

you wrong for that.

ON TO OTHER THINGS:

We lost a good friend this week: Danny, I can hear your laugh now - the one that came from your gut, you leaning back slightly. And I'm so sorry for all the pain this world dished out to you. I am grateful - so grateful - you came into our lives, and that you saw the glimmer of hope before you left.

.

So, Yeah...

Happy 9th Birthday to my blog and to the Class of 2001. You know who you are. ;-)

In other news, I passed two people on my mall walk today. That's a record!!!

Jenna said: "Mom, I think I see a muscle in one of your legs!"

Run and tell THAT.

You will not fricking believe what I'm into now...

mall walking.

ftw? yes, mall walking. Who knew that an entire counter culture existed within your suburban mall from before 8 a.m. until the "real" shoppers arrive at 10:00? I know!

Here's how it happened:

felt like death
decided to try one more time for life
started walking
decided to walk a 5K in the fall
got cold in Atlanta
looked for inside, closeby place to walk
went to mall
found 50 other people walking there
askd how long a lap around was
started walking
still walking.

That's pretty much it.

I passed my first elder mall walker today. I have been left in the dust by ladies who have to be approaching 100 and men with walkers. But not today; today was a mighy day. I passed one of them.

I'm comin' for them and they know it.

just wait.

It Takes an iVillage to Raise a Child

I once had a little baby girl. When she was just a few months old, some of you held her. On her 5th birthday, a boatload of you, my blog friends, filled our living room with boxes from this cool online store called amazon-dot-com. We still have the scooter, Denise Howell. When she got her tonsills out, you sent her get well emails. Frank Paynter you bought this-n-that from her fund raisers. Elaine Frankonis you made her a hat. Margaret B. Adam you took on the task of hunting for Nessie for her in Glasscow. When we took her to SXSW, you built lego houses with her, Halley Suitt -- and Auntie Kat Herding, you know all about the phone talks ending with, "Tell Jenna Uncle RageBoy says Hey." On Sept 30 she turns 13. And my Web of friends, you are the village it takes.

ze frank is always worth it.

I come back here because Ze Frank is always worth coming back for.

He has created yet another cool thing among the many cool things he has created (cool things at a loss these days among the blogs), young me now me reuniting people's past and present selves within a given instant.

My favorite.

And some of Ze's favs.

As I just visited home, flashes of scenes from my childhood are just settling down. And school starts tomorrow for our middle-schooler. So many reminders of time's fleeting ways.