General comments/experiences at Social Media Bootcamp 2009, Rockford, IL USA

#rockford #socialmediabc

First off, a HUGE thank you to the staffers, volunteers, and presenters of (and at) this event.I got to meet many great people while learning about various social media. Although a few parts could have been better organized, the event generally went off appearing to be fairly flawlessly executed.  The theme was “my kung fu is stronger than yours.”

Finding a free ticket for both me (@WeberJon) and a non-tweeting friend via the organizers’ scavenger hunt, I was able to attend this otherwise $200/$250 event this weekend. A great tweetup/kickoff was held on Thursday evening at Kryptonite, allowing those in attendance to mingle with some of the attendees and network over a great brew (and while attempting to sing popular music).

I had to work on Friday, therefore I did not attend the conference on that day-that said, many of the session topics on Friday seemed aimed more toward the beginner (so I do not feel I missed too much by skipping on Friday).  A Friday evening tweetup at Irish Rose was not heavily attended (as I was told–I was a non-attendee due to family commitments), which was my (and many others’) loss–Mike’s spread was immense and I personally can vouch for great food at his establishment (so I am saddened I had to miss it).

Saturday morning had me getting to the venue bright and early, strong coffee in hand. A few microphone issues and a heavily (via a huge can of Red Bull) energized Ray Smith gave us the “lay of the land” for the day and D.D. Griffith (@Griffsays) went over the list of presenters’ background. I attended two engaging presentations by Avery Cohen (@AveryCohen) on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google Analytics, a presentation by Heidi Sullivan (@hkskully) on free ways to monitor a social media campaign, and an open discussion session with Sarah Evans (@PRSarahEvans) on differing ways to make social networking more personal. I was hoping to catch Jen Knodel (@JenChicago) to ask her a few questions, but only saw her (briefly) in passing. I also missed getting a complimentry “head shot” taken at the event, which could have been useful for me (assuming my beautiful appearance did not break his camera—grin). The organizers reminded everyone about the tweetup at Carlyle Brewery-I did not hear much about this event, but I hope it went well (I had a family commitment to attend Saturday evening).

Sunday morning, with plenty of strong coffee in hand (my coffee is stronger than yours–LOL), we had a “demo project” to put the information into action. Tinker Swiss Cottage, Clinkenbeard, and Books By Terri were the three “clients” for this event. The organizers split us into three groups “playground style” (per my friend Laura Schade)  and I was fortunate to get to work on the Clinkenbeard project with some great people. Although I think parts of my presenting of our group’s ideas went over like a lead balloon, our group’s conversation and questions with Reg Gustafson hopefully gave him and others in the session a few ways to improve their efforts.

A few improvements in tracking the event into abilities/themes, the ability to have “open spaces”/break-out discussions outside of the scheduled sessions, and corporate sponsorship would take future similar events up to the next level in my opinion. I hope this event is part of a continuing conversation in the area on improving the skills and use of social networking.  For more information and comments, search on the hashtags used in this blog posting and also visit www.social-media-bootcamp.com

Am I the only person who thinks…

…Windows 7 is Vista with a new name? Granted, I have yet to see/try Windows 7, but the minimum I have seen/read makes me think “Mohave,” but for real; I’m waiting for someone to tell me that it’s really Folgers Crystals, or that I’m soaking in it, etc.

Cool Updates

A few really cool things of note:

BFlex/BFusion 2008 – This was a GREAT conference. The second year for this conference, held again at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, was a HUGE success from my point-of-view. Matt Boles, THE original trainer for ColdFusion, was the main instructor for courses I attended at the conference, but he was not the only one doing courses. Bob Flynn, and his band of incredible volunteers, was again able to get a bunch of us together for (this time) two-days of FREE training by industry experts. If not for my car breaking down on the way home (just south of Lafayette, IN on I-65), it would have been a perfect weekend of training and networking. If they decide to do this a third time, do not hesitate to sign up-last year had 80 people for one day of training and this year had 200 people each day for two days of training! Lunch was provided for both days, as was a bunch of swag and, of course, VALUABLE TRAINING FOR FREE! HUGE KUDOS TO BOB AND THE GANG AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY FOR THIS EVENT!!! (Was that noticeable enough? If not, reread those words in all caps a few more times).

Adobe gets Kudos from me for CS4 finally getting a formal release-if you have not played with this yet, give it a look. My students will be learning on CS3 still for the specific course I am teaching, but I expect that CS4 will now get merged into the course (as it just “released” this last week). I hope that we will also be able to use Flexbuilder in the course, but the progress of the students will determine whether or not this will be possible to do.

Microsoft has finally released version 2 of SilverLight after it being in beta for what seemed like forever. I hope that they soon add more WPF elements into the “SilverLight Realm,” as I am beginning to enjoy working with WPF. Did I really just type “enjoy working with WPF?????!?!?!?”

I am liking Twhirl as a desktop-based tweeting tool. Twitterberry seems to be decent for the CrackBerry, but it is not as “nice” to use as Twhirl. (If the term “tweet” is one with which you are unfamiliar, google twitter.com. Live it. Love it. Learn it.)

Why are RIM (Research In Motion) and Apple both not allowing Flash and SilverLight onto their devices? Get into the 1990’s, guys (esp. since it is now 2008). Heck, even Sony has it on the PS3 these days…

Some neato things

I meandered into the local WalMart yesterday for a quickie ice cream fix and found one of the neatest new ways to enjoy Hagen Daaz and Ben & Jerry’s Ice creams-single serve containers. Before you say “but wait, Jon, they have _always_ been single-serve containers,” these are about the size of one scoop of ice cream instead of an entire pint, otherwise known to me as “just enough to hit my need for an ice cream fix” when one has neither of these brands available on cones locally. Just the right size to consume, and not too big to require me to finish the ice cream before ice crystals start to form inside of the container. Both brands include a “spoon” of sorts in the package as well, but the Ben & Jerry’s one was made better between the two spoons (but, of course, the Hagen Daaz had better mouth feel and flavor when comparing the remainder of the package contents). Bravo & kudos for hitting on this idea!!

I survived the iPhone hype with my Crackberry intact-I’m still not sold on the iPhone, which seems to have little to add to my life feature-wise that my crackberry has not already given to me, all without the pain of having to use AT&T for the phone service–heck, VZW FINALLY got their “VCast” coverage to reach out into these parts after years of selling it to the local yocals–I wonder how long it will be before AT&T gets 3G out here… My Crackberry has decent Edge coverage here, so all could be worse (I travel to areas at times where Edge still has yet to arrive-the Crackberry shows GSM –in caps– when there).

Speaking of Crackberry, the Opera browser about which I previously wrote sucks; in particular, the UI is awkward for me still. I will play with it a bit more before I decide to get rid of it or not, but it is presently not looking too good for keeping it installed. I’ll keep you posted if this changes.

Also on crack, a decent app for rss is called Viigo-I make decent use of this almost daily to catch up on headlines, etc. And for those of you (like me) who enjoy Twitter, Twitterberry is a neat application. I wish that it kept up more with live links to my Twitter account so that Tweets appear automagically though (maybe for the next revision??? Please?).

And for those of you who like to know where police are taking radar, I recommend Trapster. It is a mash-up of Google Maps and a database of user-reported police radar locations. This is a neato idea, esp. for those who are into knowing this sort of information.

Kudos to AT&T, though, for their great coverage of the Lollapaloozer fest (I’m not a Perry Farrel, er douchebag, fan-sorry, but admittedly Janes Addiction was good at one time), which allowed me to “be there” while sitting on my couch in air conditioning while working on a few projects last weekend. Big letdown for me was Love & Rockets, who seemed at times to have not picked-up their instruments since recording the songs they performed. Big cheer for me was Jamie Lidell-damn cool!!! I could have watched this entertainer play for another hour easily. Another big cheer for Flogging Molly-impressive! I missed Gogol Bordello on the coverage, though (bummer), as I’d like to see them play a whole show sometime (I’ve only seen them play on Letterman).

I also just received a free training session from AppDev. It was the most difficult thing for me to install, which was finally (and frustratingly) found to be due to some weird conflict in Windows Media Player’s DRM settings. It was a bummer to have to go through all of the trouble to make it work, but the App Dev tech Zachary walked through a number of things to get this working. I’ll let you know soon what I think of the training DVD, as soon as I have time to go through it. Here’s a hint to anyone who is making one of these types of products–DRM is awful, and did not allow this licensed user access to the product for at least two days while troubleshooting why: if you’ve already verified a user’s credentials/license, please do not also make the content also go through a DRM-credentials-needing step.

Let me know what YOU think of these, and also what YOU think is neato…

Want some Opera with your Crack? Trying to get “the BIG ‘O’…”

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Henry Ford

After overhearing a number of people discussing smartphones and browsers over the past year or so (both online and off-line, and also due to the iPhone, whose “hype cycle” is about to go into overdrive due to the forthcoming device release, bragging about being able to “surf the web”), plus the recommendation of the geekier (in a “positive” way) sales rep at my phone provider’s kiosk (not to also mention my OWN sometimes geeky leanings, of which I will not say whether these are positives or negatives at this time), I recently decided to load a different browser onto my trusty(?) dusty Crackberry.

Round 1-DING!
Just point your browser at the Opera website. AAAAAAAAH! Is there not a script (or something) here that allows a phone browser to degrade to a better experience? After finding the link for “Opera Mini” (eventually), I had to go through several menu options to figure _where_ to download, after which it looked like an easy enough task to perform; my, oh my, how mistaken I was. POW-I am down on the mat.

Round 2-DING!
“Send a link to your phone via SMS to download” sounds easy enough; I regularly have decent experiences doing this sort of activity on other telephones to get games, sounds, and other miscellaneous crap onto telephones that are not made to be user-friendly for this sort of activity. In other words, if you use Verizon Wireless or US Cellular for your mobile service in the US, and/or if you own a telephone that has no memory card or USB-ish type of synch cable, you can probably relate to this, regardless of phone provider. Selecting this SMS option, I selected my country (United States of America) and keyed in my telephone number without a “country code” (which is a “1″ for those of you who never dial international calls via telephone systems); so far, so good. The SMS message arrived right away with a working link; I selected the link using the Crackberry’s Trackball (which was a WONDERFUL addition, might I add, to this device, and helped to “seal the deal” for me to buy one of these) and clicked the link. Said link seemed to take me back to the SAME page I have recently visited, which again wanted me to select a phone model, a country, and to give my telephone number to receive a SMS message with a download link. JAB-I am again on the mat.

Round 3-DING!
“There HAS to be a better way to do this,” I am thinking as I fumble through the plethora of links and crap to relocate the original link to download this browser via the Crackberry-included’s software web browser. OOOOOOOOH! I can download directly to my phone!! (“Now _why_ didn’t I just do this in the _first_ place, no?” I ask myself.) Seems easy enough. Click the link, download to the device. Or so I thought; the link is to a zipped archive, which my Crackberry cannot un-archive. THWACK-I’m on the mat yet again.

Rounds 4-15 (or maybe 21, or 33, or more: after several weeks and occasional attempts to do this as time permitted, I tried this again)-Repeated DINGS!

I repeated Rounds 1-3 just in case I had forgotten something/overlooked something over the next few weeks, as time permitted, resulting i my continual disappointment as I am again dropped to the mat by a somewhat formidable foe. UGH–am I this close to being knocked-out? Yet, I again stagger back to my feet for more pummeling.

Round “(((Some positive integer evenly dividable by 3) > 33 and not <33) +1)”-DING!

Oh wait-maybe my foe has a weakness I have yet to exploit. Hmmmmmmmmmm. A-HA! “Download to PC” BINGO! How stupid of me to not have tried this earlier after my repeated face-plants to the mat. Hop onto the somewhat trusty lappy, launch browser of choice (Mozilla Firefox v2.somethingoranother instead of the current v3.somethingoranother). Go to Opera.com, get assaulted by a splash screen for some version of Opera 9.somethingoranother that made me think “Windows 95″ for some reason. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. Stupid. (Had to say that again). Oh, whew-a “click to continue to website” button; must be my “left-hook?” Refreshing-an easy to navigate website (so far). Information is easy to find (so far) via headings with “disappearing” menus under them. Clicking on one of the menu headings (for download) takes me to a place to get their current PC browser-oops, when “hooking” the opponent slipped in a jab to my left. Clicking on “Download other versions” takes me to a page with links for Linux, MacOS, etc. and no link for mobile of mini; a second jab from the opponent and I again return to the mat for yet another taste (serves me right to think that someone might desire to get a different platform or browser than the “Big 3″ by clicking “Download other versions”–go figure).

Round “(((Some positive integer evenly dividable by 3) > 33 and not <33) +2)”-DING!
Wait Wait Wait–there is a menu that appears when hovering over “Download” which allows me to select “Opera Mini” or “Opera Mobile” if I do not want plain-old Opera (I will take my Opera with subtitles, please, to enhance my presently-limited comprehension of the Italian language. Cue the laugh track. Now then, laugh with me; you _know_ that I _had_ to “go there” sometime in this review, right? Or better yet, cry, as many Operas seem to end sadly, this one included). After clicking the “Mini” link and downloading fairly painlessly to my desktop, unzipping the archive, and adding this application to my now-tethered Crackberry (which is an experience — grrrrrrrrrrr, scowl, grimace, turn-red-with-anger, , etc. — I will critique at some later date, in the interest of brevity here). Time to Surf! Or not. Launching by selecting the big “O” (and not a reference to a famous TV performer, nor to an online store, nor to the other “big ‘O’” to which women frequently refer) brings up a long list of Terms, Conditions, and miscellaneous crap to read before continuing; thankfully the programmers added a tutorial before the “load of crap and leagalese” on how to use the browser, yet they did NOT add a “click to continue” button, which I was seeking due to their instructions to “Read this page and select ‘Continue’ at the end of the license agreement” (or something to that effect). With a bit of frustration, and a “gee, I wonder what happens when I push _this_ button” curiosity, I clicked on the Crackberry’s Menu button and was _then_ given the opportunity to “Accept” and/or “continue”; sigh. Done. Finally, but badly bruised, beaten, and lacking a desire to do this ever again. TKO by knockout goes to Opera. This sucks.

Fight Recap

After many rounds (the number of which are mostly evenly divisible by the integer “3″) of pummeling the opponent, the winner by TKO is Opera. The loser is the end user.

Color Commentary Conclusions/Observations

With this installation experience, I am _guessing_ that this browser must be the buggiest piece of software one can use. If I were Opera, I would not expect to get many users after this sort of experience; I would consider _my_ experience to be tolerant, and of significantly higher patience-level than that of a typical “end user.” If this were 1988, I would expect this level of frustration in trying to get and install software, but seeing that this is 2008, this sort of experience is _inexcusable_ for an end user in this day and age except for “waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay-pre-alpha development release” software, of which this supposedly is not. Shame on you, Opera.

(Before I decide to delete this “big ‘O’” from my Crackberry, I will try to surf and use it for a while. Maybe. Check back and see.)

Edited on 11July2008 11:30 a.m. Chicago time to fix my equations-I forgot one open parenthesis in it.-jw

RIAPalooza Recap

Warning: I am keying this in LATE on Tuesday/early on Wednesday while trying to get to sleep and without my written notes nearby, so I will need to ninja edit this to add links and last names/details soon. My apologies to all who are not mentioned yet or whose last names are omitted/misspelled-I will update this later today when I am not laying in bed typing.

First off, kudos to the organizers! I hope that this is not the last time an event like this is held (Madison, WI is rumoured as a future location-now __that__ could be fun!!). The location had plenty of comfy chairs and decent sightlines for the overhead projector, which are both VERY important for tech conferences.

I missed a good deal of Friday night’s activities due to work and traffic. By the time I found parking and the venue, I was able to get a few bites of pizza while networking after hearing part of a panel discussion about Ruby on Rails and the business side of RIA’s.

I opted to crash at a Doubletree in Arlington Heights (gotta love Hilton HHonors) instead of driving to Rockford, only to drive back into the city after a few hours (literally) of sleep. Although the hotel had a really comfy bed and clean room, my morning wake-up calls (plural) came 15 minutes late (arrrrrgh!!!). Also, Wolfgang Puck makes an awful cup of coffee-the room had a Wolfgang Puck coffee maker with coffee pods, which should be renamed “tea pods” due to the weakness of the coffee; after taking the “coffee,” dumping it back into the machine, and rerunning it through the “coffee pod” I was finally able to get something resembling coffee. Thank goodness for the organizers having coffee at the event!

The first session was almost the same as what I’ve been doing professionally since February. Corrina Barber and Tim used Expression Studio and Visual Studio 2008 in a “work” environment. Corrina’s part seemed to go a bit slow, but only because she was doing a lot of “little” things instead of showing the bigger picture as I was expecting to instead see (in her defense, she thought that the presentation was a 2 hour time block and not the one hour they were given. Also in her defense, her approach-and workflow- was spot on to what I’ve been doing). She mentioned that they were open to feedback, so I asked if I could take about 15 minutes of her time (which turned into a few hours, which caused me to miss the next two sessions. I saw the “official” Twitter from the conference state that she was “holding court” in the networking room… yikes!). Corrina gets an extra “Thank You” from me for the code and for hearing me out-I had a bunch of feedback to give (and would have a LOT more hair today if it were not for Expression Blend).

Zach Stephek slipped over and mentioned to us that it was about to be lunchtime and that there would be another panel discussion over lunch, so the speakers needed to grab food to actually get a chance to eat. I caught the very end of the presentation (basically the contact slide was showing on their PowerPoint). A guy I met the evening before (Joe Wanka) had brought in a neat Abelton Live project to show me that had a sort of randomness to the musical phrasing that I did not know was possible to do in Abelton. I will need to reinstall my copy of Live to try this idea “on for size” in the next few days; he had a few great ideas regarding data visualization that he showed to me as well (I LOVE Sparklines!).

I won a copy of “Ajax Hacks” because I knew the names of three sponsors. I did not have this book yet and will have to give it more attention. I missed the veggie sandwiches (as did Larry Clarkin, a fellow veggie to whom I still owe a beer), so I got to munch on potato chips for lunch. I heard part of Anthony’s presentation re: Blend and did not realize that he and I wear similar hats and have similar work histories.

I was also exposed to the idea of Agile coding and development-an idea with which I am intrigued-in one (or maybe two??) presentation(s). I like the idea of write once, run everywhere, and reuse of code/items/workflow when and as necessary and will be researching this as time permits. I also got to see workflow ideas from a company doing a project for the country of Quatar (which also hit close-to-home for me) and an interesting blog creation tool whose complete use I have yet to completely comprehend-I am a bit confused as to why the coding was being done in Flexbuilder when I was under the impression that all of the needed information had been previously entered in the tool and exported (and downloaded as a zipfile). I did like the styling of his PowerPoint slide set though. Actually, since this conference was supposed to be a “PowerPoint-free Zone,” I suspect that his presentation (and the others’) did not use PowerPoint?

The crowd makeup seemed to be a lot of web designers and a few coders. The speakers I got to see seemed to be heavily-biased towards using Expression Blend. Towards the end, the coders seemed to outnumber the web designers. I even saw a few non-web’ish designers in the mix. There were also a LOT of Macintoshes present (more than I’d expect to see at such an event), even by some of those employed by Microsoft.
There was surprisingly also a lot of MS Vista being used on people’s laptops (more than I’ve _ever_ seen being used, except in a store selling computers).

Overall, RIAPalooza was a great experience; running a conference is a lot of work and the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and venue were all wonderful! If you were not there, then you missed out on a great time! (and it was also FREE!)