Mayhem & Chaos Productions » Social Media

Accessibility and Social Media

Sal Baldovinos — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:11:16 +0000

My first [official] speaking gig! I’ve been invited by Knowbilty to speaker at this year’s AccessU Accessibility Training Conference in Austin, TX May 10-12th. I say it’s my first official gig since I’ve actually spoken at a few gathers here and there and of course for internal company purposes…if that counts…but this is my first conference speaking event. This post is a little late, but hey, it’s out there now!

I’ve been involved with the Knowbility organization since 2007; participating in their annual Accessibility Internet Rallies (AIR) on-and-off. When they invited me to speak, I asked the same question I always get when I ask for someone to speak at an event I’m organizing; what do you want me to talk about. I was very happy learn they wanted me to present on Social Media & Accessibility. I would never classify myself as a “social media guru” due to the negative picture it paints in my self-conscious mind of a social media “douche bag”, but I guess it just comes with the territory, right?

I’ll post my presentation after Tuesday for all to check out. Wish me luck!

Social Media and Accessibility

View more presentations from Sal Baldovinos.

Update: Back from the conference and just a wee-bit tired now. It was a physically and mentally draining few days. That said, I had a really great time in Austin with my family and at the conference. Austin, you kinda grew on me. I’m looking forward to doing more of these type of events. The initial feedback I received from the organizers is that the attendees that came to my session really liked what I did. I tend to be overly critical of myself, so that sets my mind at ease Thanks to the Knowbility folks and my class attendees; it was a great experience.

Interactive Strategies 2010

Sal Baldovinos — Thu, 06 May 2010 21:59:24 +0000

Ready to get your hands dirty? Well, maybe not dirty with nasty stuff but dirty with awesome knowledge to come you way via Interactive Strategies 2010 (IS2010). I’ve had the privilege of being involved with this conference for the last 3 years and this year I am the conference Chair!

This year’s theme is DiY: Create __________. We want our attendees to take what they learn and apply it to their company, themselves and Create (something) – branding strategy, social networking campaigns, tasty cupcakes (subliminal message).

We hope you all have the opportunity to join your fellow marketers, web professionals, social networking evangelists and designers on September 16, 2010 at the Angelika Theater! IS2010 is a full-day, intimate conference geared toward those who seek to be in-the-know on SEO, Strategy, Social Media, Design That Sticks and our newest area, Fundamentals.

Check out the new site at www.is-conference.com

We still have sponsorships available should your company or brand be interested in helping put on the best IS Conference to date.

What do you want to create?

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Jeffrey Hayzlett: Creating Emotional Technology

Sal Baldovinos — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:00:23 +0000

I had the privilege of attending the Houston Interactive Marketing Association’s (HiMA) luncheon yesterday with Kodak Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Jeffrey Hayzlett. Forbes Magazine calls him the Celebrity CMO. Advertising Age says “A new style of CMO has arrived.” He’s been described as a chief marketing officer on steroids.

What a refreshing, inspiring and motivating speaker he is. Straight-forward would be an understatement. I’ve yet to experience a speaker who was that ‘transparent’ and open about their success. I thoroughly enjoyed – not only the great food at the Intercontinental Hotel – Jeff’s presentation and style.

In true celebrity form, his introduction was followed up by another introduction; in video format. The 3ish minute video talked about the transformation of the Kodak brand and company itself. It was hilarious. Very well done and entertaining. Kudos Kodak!

After the into(s) Jeff started right into his presentation. What made this even better for me is that Jeff presents in a way the Kelsey Ruger is currently posting about. He presented a story, with emotions and humor and a feeling of really connecting with what he was sharing.

I jotted down some key points I took away from his storytelling/presentation. One thing that really stood out was the Kodak, a company built on capturing our memories, uses the phrase: Kodak creates emotional technology. Wow – that’s deep and so true!

Recap:

40% of commercial printing is touched by Kodak.
Kodak’s online photo-hosting service has more high-resolution pictures than anyone. Anyone. He noted that if you’re using services like Flickr or some such – you might be loosing out in the end.
Every Best Picture winner and nominee for the Academy Awards® was shot on Kodak film.
70% of their digital business is B2B.
Kodak’s transformation is the largest turn-around in business history.
Kodak has 13 products with account for 80% of their revenue. Half of which didn’t exist a year ago.
Being trustworthy and reliable is their main focus. As should it be for other businesses.
Quote: “A brand is a promised delivery”
Kodak’s social media practice uses the 4 E’s: Engage • Educate • Excite • Evangelize
When Kodak started using social media, they encountered 43% complaint traffic. It’s now down to about 7%
Business owners/Executives need to understand social media ROI isn’t Return on Investment, rather Return on Ignoring.
Email Tom@Kodak.com for a free copy of Kodak’s Social Media Tips. I’ll save Tom’s inbox and give you the link.
What Kodak tries to do – and does well so far is – link the science to the soul (creating emotional technology)

Jeff, if you ever come across my humble blog. Thank you! You get it!

If you get the chance to hear Jeff speak, take it! You won’t be disappointed. Have you been to a Jeff Hayzlett presentation? What did you think?

Note: Banner image is from the Kodak website featuring screenshots of this years Oscar nominees hand-picked by the movies cinematographer’s.

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Dear Girl Scouts & App Developers

Sal Baldovinos — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:36:31 +0000

It’s that time of year again. The Girl Scouts are at your local grocery store learning the fine art of salesmanship. As you enter and as you leave, you’re greeted by the eager young ladies pushing the good stuff – cookies.

Over the last few weeks, my (very pregnant) wife has been telling me to get her some of her favorite girl scout cookies; Samoas – or Carmel Delights, as they were once known. Since I don’t make it point to go to the grocery store every day, we waited till the weekend to do a little shopping with the ulterior motive being; find us some Samoas!

I took to Twitter and Facebook before venturing out to 10 different places that had some girl scouts posted in the front. No luck there, unfortunately. Luckily, Dreyer’s also makes limited edition flavor of, you guessed it – Samoa!

This brings me to my plea to both Girl Scouts of America and all you awesome Application Developers – I’m a Mac, so iPhone in this case.

I would love an App that allows Girl Scout Troops to ‘check-in’ – much like FourSquare – and then the app itself plots their location and you, as the user can search based on your location. This would be a great tool during this time of year to help frustrated husbands, fearing for their lives, find girl scout cookies on-the-fly.

What do you think? Can this magic I speak of become reality? I sure hope so. And, if it happens..I sure hope I get a little credit

Photo by: Rex Roof

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There’s a Game On! Let me tell you every detail!

Sal Baldovinos — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 19:15:21 +0000

Let me preface this by saying I was not raised in a sports-loving house. Outside of the the years I spent in martial arts, the Friday night football games in high school*, and singing the national anthem at high school basketball games*, I have no experience or love of sports. Don’t get me wrong, if given the opportunity to attend a game here or there, I’d take it. I enjoy being a spectator and cheering on a team. And who doesn’t love stadium hot dogs?

I follow a good amount of people on Twitter and when that timeline gets bombarded with play-by-play tweets, it gets a little annoying. “Stop following them!”, you say. Not really necessary in my opinion. I’m not going to stop following someone because of it; it’s just an annoyance. Most of the time these tweets are verbal outbursts that are then reiterated on Twitter or Facebook for all the world to see. Great! You’re watching a game, now I know. Is it necessary update everyone that XYZ player made a great pass or Team A should have done this? I understand the potential to strike up a conversation is there and that people may comment on your post/wall. I get that. Again, it’s just an annoyance. Same thing could be said about ‘live tweeting’ at a conference. Put it in a post!

Am I innocent of tweeting non-important, mundane rants? No way! Who is? I simply feel that a simple “I’m watching Team A vs. Team B right now” will suffice. Maybe even a follow up like “That was a great game! My team did great/sucks” so we all know your team rocks/sucks.

Telling people how and when to use the Twitter is a touchy subject. I am, by no means, telling people what they should/should not do on their social platform of choice. Just sharing one man’s opinion. As one person put it to me: “Half those people didn’t even go to [name of school]. The bandwagon fans are what piss me off”.

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way, right?

*Required since I was in marching band(football)/Choir(basketball).

Photo credit: kerryvaughan

2010: The Year We Make Contact…or Connections

Sal Baldovinos — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:10:30 +0000

Photo credit: AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

I stayed away from doing the fall-back top [fill in the blank] list of the year that past blog post. Mainly because this year has gone by so quick I couldn’t tell you my top anything list of 2009.

So you’ll be happy to read that this isn’t a top anything list of last year or even my 2010 resolutions. I’m not really a fan “New Years Resolutions” because it’s a set up for failure. Most people do the “I’ll lose weight” or “I’ll do this or that” and then they fall off the wagon, gain 20 pounds, smoke even more and say “I’ll make it my resolution for next year”. Why wait? Just do it already. I digress.

So what does “The year we make contact…or connections” mean for me? It means I want to do more personal brand development. Speak at more events (on social media, leadership, religion ) and share more ideas. I want to make more contacts and connections to better not only myself but to help our community grow.

Here’s to 2010, where’s my flying Delorean?!

Review: Flavors.me

Sal Baldovinos — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:55:53 +0000

What’s Your Flavor?

I recently came across a new service, Flavors.me. The service is still in beta but you can sign up for invite codes. Mine was ‘heat’, maybe it’ll work for you. If I’m not suppose to give that out, oops – enjoy.

Flavors.me allows users to create a very simple and elegant personal website. It aggregates different social media platforms like: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr and even allows you to pull an RSS feed. I set my Flavors site up in less then five minutes.

When you first login, you create your basic profile page with short bio. Then you can choose up to three layouts for your site: Widescreen, Accordion and Simple. You can customize the background and fonts for the layout.

Check out the demo for more details.

Click here to view the embedded video.

All-in-all I think it’s really cool service with a lot of potential to be a sort-of online business card. As a suggestion, I’ve told our Project Coordinators at work to use it as a means of introducing themselves to our Clients. Rather then being a voice over the phone, they now have a personality and image of who you are.

Flavor.me can also serve as another (free) way for businesses to promote themselves. Some upcoming features of Flavors.me will be custom URLs. Currently, the URL structure is as follow: flavors.me/username. From the welcome email I received, then new structure will allow subdomain URLs like: username.flavors.me which will be sweet for SEO purposes.

I see this being a really cool, fast, clean tool for businesses, social media mavens, celebrities and anyone else wanting to set up a quick spot for themselves on the Web.

So, what’s your Flavor?

Social Transparency: Mixing Business & Pleasure Online

Sal Baldovinos — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:15:36 +0000

The dictionary defines transparency or transparent as

–adjective

having the property of transmitting rays of light through its substance so that bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen.
admitting the passage of light through interstices.
so sheer as to permit light to pass through; diaphanous.
easily seen through, recognized, or detected: transparent excuses.
manifest; obvious: a story with a transparent plot.
open; frank; candid: the man’s transparent earnestness.
Computers. (of a process or software) operating in such a way as to not be perceived by users.
Obsolete. shining through, as light.

For the purposes of this post, lets look at numbers 4 – 7, though most-all apply. If you’re reading this you’re probably not the person who needs this defined for you. You already know what being transparent means. We heard it countless times in the past few years, though we haven’t seen much of it from a certain someone – later blog post.

Anyway, while I was discussing this with my wife, she commented on how she removed her Twitter feed from her Facebook status update and why. I’ve also spoken to others about it and their reason(s). How they keep one set of friends in the dark while the others get to see another side of you.

Granted you may not want great-aunt Edna to see you were out Friday night singing Karaoke after your fourth shot of “courage” juice, but it’s who you are. If you’re ashamed of the things you do with one set of people, then why do them at all?

Family & friends aside, I’ve seen people do this with professional relationships too. They stick to a set of rules and tone of voice online that differs from who they really are. Even Chip Conely had a dilemma of taking his burning man pictures off Facebook.

While I see the dilemma in those situations; do I post my drunken pictures from Saturday? Will my boss see them? Will my mom comment on it and embarrass me? Yes. Yes and duh, she’s your mom. It’s who you are! If you’re a hard-working person, a super-star at work, stay out of trouble (professionally), have a communication with your family, who cares what you do on your own time. That’s why it’s called personal time.

That said, will doing so cause issues in your personal and/or professional situations? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Employers know that their staff has lives and those lives now-a-days get played out online via Twitter and/or Facebook, YouTube, 4Sqaure, etc. But again, it’s who you are. Does that mean have a free-for-all and post every deed you do online? I would say no, with a caveat.

Facebook has privacy settings, use them. Set up groups and give them permission to see certain things or NOT see certain things. Bottom line: be smart about it. You are who are. If you’re still unsure, then don’t post it. When in doubt, snuff it out!

Personally I link my Twitter to my Facebook. Those not following me on Twitter but are friends on Facebook will also have the opportunity to join the conversation. Isn’t that what Social Media is all about? Having a conversation? Provoking thoughts and feelings. Has it bitten me in the butt? Several times. Did I loose a job over it, not yet. But since those times my rear has been victim to a biting, I’ve chosen my words wisely. I still want to engage people but you do it with tact.

Social Transparency is very much a double-edged sword. You want to allure people and be recognized while at the same time you have to keep yourself sheltered from unwanted eyes. How’s your social transparency working?

Photo credit: webtreats

Web Developer embraces the world of IT

Joshua Jimenez — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:34:48 +0000

As a web developer, we are often required to ‘wear many hats’ in the industry. Over the years, my jobs have been mostly consisting of website coding and design duties. Recently, I have rejoined the company G-Tel Enterprises (payphone.com) – to train to become the webmaster and IT person for the company.

Having worked here before on their site and on various projects, the web part is pretty straight forward for me. However, having to jump into the IT/Networking field can be a little frightening at first. It creates a sense of technological responsibility that I have yet to experience. Anytime something goes wrong in an office with someones computer, fax, internet-etc, everyone likes to shout out for the IT guy to come and fix the issues.

Luckily, my web experience should help me understand and take in the IT knowledge I require. I am excited about the opportunity to be able to learn new things and increase my value in the world of networking and web development. In this field, its not always what you know but who you know.

So to all you tech and web junkies out there, if you know any good online sites to brush up on IT and networking or you are a guru, let me know!

Photo credit: Jamison_Judd

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Out With The Old, In With The New…

Sal Baldovinos — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:28:46 +0000

I started this blog back in 2007 with little expectations of it being the next big hit on the web. I mean, c’mon, there’s over 2 million blogs out there. I would blog every so often and not about anything in particular.

Then came Twitter. The knife in my blog’s back. Not only could I just send out a quick thought in under 140 characters, I didn’t have to go through the hassle of logging in to the blog, starting a new post, write a magnetic headline, etc. I could just knock it out, bam! There’s my thought/tweet, enjoy, move on. Basically Twitter, like the house-hold calculator, made me lazy. Quick, what’s 123+98! Uh….

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot since 2007. I’ve been more active in the web community, attended various social events and conferences, and most importantly picked up this thing called, “reading”. The more I read other people’s blogs, the more it got me motivated to write. Then I started picking up these things called, “books”. You know, those rectangular-shaped things with a bunch of pages glued together. No, not your Teen Cosmo with the latest dish on New Moon, the good stuff like Jeffery Fox’s “How to Become a Great Boss” (recommend by my own boss Gene McCubbin) or my latest grab, Trust Agents by one of my favorite bloggers Chris Brogan.

So, I’m back. Never really left, just took a hiatus I guess. Some things to look forward to: my takes on social media, the future of the web, coding and some taboo stuff like politics & religion (gasp!).

Update: I decided to bring in some older posts that really liked and got good feedback on.

Join me for the ride, stick around and subscribe (once I have stuff worth coming back for — of course), follow me on Twitter; all that jazz!