A Tale of Two Pregnancies

On Friday I got some delightful news from my oldest daughter, Rachel. My previously unknown grandchild now has both an identified gender and a name, thanks to the medical advances of ultrasound. Meet Evelyn Grace Borg, who is scheduled to make her appearance on the seventh anniversary of 9/11. (Her aunts, whose birthdays are 8/31 and 9/14 are hoping she’s a birthday present for them instead.)

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The news from Rachel and Kyle made this story from yesterday’s Star Tribune all the more poignant for me personally. It’s an example of how a blog begun in advance of a tragedy has helped to bring comfort and support to Matt, Madeline and their family. After reading their story, I’m praying for them, and a little bit harder for Rachel, Kyle and Evelyn, too.

Blogging 109: Experimenting with WordPress.com

I’ve said previously that WordPress.com is an excellent free blogging platform, and have encouraged SMUG students to start their own blogs on WordPress.com. But some people might not feel ready to start a blog of their own, so I’ve set up a blog to create a safe place for experimentation.

I call it the Training Wheels blog and it’s at http://trainingwheels.wordpress.com/.

So if you would like to write some blog posts without it being your own blog, and don’t want to feel like you have to keep a blog going, you can just sign up for a wordpress.com account, taking the “just a username, please” option. Then send me an e-mail message (see the sidebar at right for my address) to let me know what e-mail address you used to sign up for your account, and I will add you as an author for the Training Wheels blog.

Then you can write some posts and experiment with the formatting options, learn how to create links and how to insert photos and videos, and otherwise practice using WordPress.com. Write a post or two, and then you’ll have more confidence to start your own blog.

So in essence, the Training Wheels blog is like scratch paper where you can doodle, and get hands-on experience.

With a diverse set of authors and no common theme, it’s the Seinfeld blog: about everything, and about nothing.

ALI Social Media Summit Discounts

I will be presenting at the “Social Media Summit: How To Use Blogging, Podcasting & the Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand,” June 9-12, 2008 in Chicago, IL. My session topic will be: “Integrating New Media With Traditional Media To Multiply Results.”

This looks like it will be another strong event. I’m part of Day 1, just after Michael Rudnick’s address. Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal will deliver the afternoon keynote, and Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks will keynote Day 2 (here are some highlights of a presentation I heard him give earlier this month.) I know you’ll enjoy Chris Heuer from the Social Media Club, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and the Best Buy guys. The other case studies should be interesting, too.

Here are two ways you can save on registration:

  1. If you register by May 1, you save $400.
  2. Since I am one of the speakers, you can save another $200 by using the code “SPK” when registering.

Advanced Learning Institute is sponsoring the event. I’ve attended and presented (and blogged) at several of their previous conferences. Knowing or having heard several of the speakers, I’m confident you will find it worthwhile. I hope to see you there!

Top 3 Facebook Chat Feature Requests

Facebook‘s Chat functionality is really great. My youngest daughter, a big IM user, thinks it’s the best and easiest one she’s seen, and she loves how it is integrated into Facebook. I’ve had several conversations with it in just its first day of general availability.

That said, it still needs some features that would make it exceptionally powerful and valuable for business networking. Here are my top three:

  1. Move from only 1-1 chat to allowing chat among multiple Facebook friends. This would enable work teams to have brief virtual ad hoc meetings on a particular tactical topic without the overhead of scheduling, walking to the conference room, waiting for everyone to assemble, and returning to their desks. This could enable more nimble reactions to business opportunities. In the PR world, it could be a great brainstorming tool for story ideas. It also would make it easier to get input from the people who are typically more reserved and quiet in face-to-face meetings.
  2. Enable chat to take place in connection with Facebook groups. So, for example, if I have a secret Facebook group and would like to have a chat in which all of the members can participate, whether they are Friends with each other or not, that would be a valuable function, particularly in the work setting. This could be great for customer focus groups, for instance.
  3. Enable users to filter their list of on-line friends according to their friend lists. This may not be a big deal unless you get lots of friends and they are all on-line a lot. But I can imagine that Scoble with his 5,000 friends would have something of a cluttered window. But still, since you can search by friend name to find whether someone is on-line, the clutter may not be a problem if you are purposefully seeking out a particular individual. If you’re browsing your on-line friends looking for small-talk, though, being able to filter (say, for instance, by limiting to your list of professional friends) would be cleaner.

How about you? What do you think of Facebook’s Chat function? What additional features are most important to you? Share your thoughts below…and maybe we can form a Facebook group to petition for our top priorities.

Facebook Chat Will Enhance Business Utility

Now that Facebook‘s Chat function seems to be officially out of Beta and is deployed everywhere (if it’s on my network, it must be everywhere), I got a chance to try it today.

I haven’t been a big user of IM (Check that: at all.) This is completely new to me.

But I can see how Chat will be a strong addition that will make Facebook even more valuable for business networking, as Adam indicates. I think of it particularly in a PR/Journalist relationship. If you can see whether your journalist friends are on-line and can send them a quick message, that will be less interruptive than a phone call. If you continually send them worthwhile news tips or ideas, you can solidify the relationship. If you start abusing them with off-target pitches, they can un-friend you…or block you. It’s one more way Facebook can put the “relations” back in media relations.

I think this also has obvious applications for workplace collaborations…the ability to have conversations that are much more informal, back and forth, without the ponderous formality of e-mail.

“Can’t you just pick up the phone instead?” Of course. But just as my middle daughter (in particular) uses SMS text messaging to connect with her friends (and don’t get me started on how far she went over her monthly allotment of 300 in March) instead of getting into a long conversation, sometimes a more terse interaction is appropriate in the business world, too. And Facebook Chat could be a great way to do this.

In fact, I had a nice conversation with my son-in-law, Kyle, via Facebook Chat this morning (see above); I saw he was on Facebook and had the pleasure of introducing him to this new feature. Would I have thought to pick up my cell phone and call him? Highly unlikely. But when I saw he was on-line, we were able to have a chat that didn’t take a lot of time, but let us touch base.

I think Chat will likely cause me to keep my Facebook status more regularly updated, too. And I like how well Chat and Messaging are integrated. I was called from my desk during my chat with Kyle, and by the time I returned he had signed off. So instead of continuing the chat, I was given an option to send him a message in Facebook. This is a great way of blending the rapid interactivity of Chat with the asynchronous tools already built into Facebook.

Here’s a good Facebook Chat FAQ that outlines some of the current features for those of you who, like me, haven’t been IMers.

I hope you’ll try out Facebook Chat, and if you see I’m on-line, start a conversation. If you’re not my friend yet, you can add me here, and I’ll make you part of my Blog Friends list.

Which leads me to a set of feature requests and enhancements that would make Facebook Chat a really strong business networking tool. That will be the subject of my next post.