Twittering more, blogging less

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/08/28

Just wanted to note that I have been twittering more and blogging less this year. Microblogging is more casual and offers the least resistance for jotting my thoughts as I go.

You can follow my flow at — http://twitter.com/bryanzug



Participatory Narcissism and why Counting Crows has sucked since back in the day

Posted by bryanzug - 2008/03/22

So I finally got Mars Edit working again with my wordpress install (upgrading wp did the trick) and am getting back in the flow of posting as I come across interesting things.

One of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Atwood at Coding Horror quotes Maciej Cegłowski’s notion of Participatory Narcissism concerning a recent post by Paul Graham.

After a while, you begin to notice that all the essays are an elaborate set of mirrors set up to reflect different facets of the author, in a big distributed act of participatory narcissism.

Which is exactly why just about “everything” Counting Crows has done “after” their first album has sucked so bad.



Installing WordPress via Dreamhost (Screencast)

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/10/09

Here’s the flash video version of my screencast on installing WordPress via Dreamhost. Enjoy!



Blog or Project Log: Selling disruptive tools on the inside

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/08/24

Jay Cross has a great post this AM about the need to find compelling language that can drive experimentation and adoption of blog, podcast, and wiki types of tools inside of organizations ––

It’s time for us to come up with a vocabulary that’s not an obstacle to installing learning technology. Take the word blog. For some people, the word sets off alarm bells. They envision amateurs, threatening hackers, neo-nazis, the Drudge Report, people obsessed with kittens, semi-literates, unverifiable nonsense, spammers, porno freaks, political extremists, teen age confessionals, MySpace flirts, people who are out of control and lawsuits waiting to happen.

It’s enough to give disruptive technology a bad name.

So let’s not speak of blogs or slimeheads. Let’s talk about Project Logs. Or Collaborative Project Documentation. Or Knowledge Logs. Or professional journals.

<bagoftricks>Project log –– hmm, that could work.</bagoftricks>

 



Chris Pirillo says TechMeme has been hacked

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/06/30

Chris Pirillo says TechMeme has been hacked.

Who knew?



Interviewed on blogs and podcasting in the corporate environment

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/06/14

Caught up with Stuart Maxwell of the Seattle Podcasting Network (SPN) a few weeks ago at the Seattle TechCrunch party.

We talked about the challenges of using blogs, podcasting and new media tools in the corporate environment — great chat.

I cover some of the ins and outs of spreading the vision for these types of projects in healthcare (and other non-tech-industry) organizations (like the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford where I currently work).

Stuart recorded our conversation and has posted it to the as ‘SPN Podcast – TechCrunch Party Interviews: Part Two’.

Part 1 is also available from the SPN site.



Leak 2.0: Origami Was Staged

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/02/28

Microsoft’s Origami leak last weekend was staged. What – you think its dominating the tech blogosphere a few days before a mysterious Steve Jobs announcement is coincidence?

Guess again, newbie.

And the ‘old’ demo video that just ‘happened’ to be out there a marketing agency web portfolio and has since ‘disappeared’ but is all over YouTube – this is happenstance?

Fraid not, Gulliber.

And to tell you the truth, I’m glad — sure I’ve been manipulated in a way that leaves me skeptical and used when I think about it, but who has time to think when there’s a meme tracker to be refreshed?

The whole thing is like watching that Rain Man friend of yours who you’ve completely written off come back with a knack for the numbers and a way with the ladies.

Sure, Boo Radly stuck his customers with scissors but that was a long time ago — now he’s showing up in the quiet jazz shadows of the buzz channel baby.

This is a new Microsoft — drunk on Scoble’s kool-aid they’ve come to terms with the fact that no statement is the new uber statement.

I got to say that watching el borgo come back to life in a way that actually ‘gets it’ makes me almost want to go down to the lake with them again and throw flowers in the water – now that’s disruption.

Welcome to Leak 2.0 — yeah, I do it to myself.



Naked and a Ditch

Posted by bryanzug - 2006/01/24

Had a great time on Saturday night at the Seattle release party for ‘Naked Conversations’, the new book on business blogging by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.

Does buying four copies to give away to friends make me a fanboy? When just about everyone else is carrying one copy around, probably so — but I don’t mind.

It’s exciting to see their work toward pervasively honest human communication (currently highlighted via the blog phenom) continue to get traction within tech, business, and the culture at large.

I’m happy to play fanboy if that’s what it takes to spread the mind virus on stuff like this.

My wife Jen has a great summary of the evening over at This Pile (thispile.com) — great location, great people, great conversation, great connecting.

It was her first foray into a truly geek event and it was awesome to see her ditch me 10 minutes into the evening to hang out with the many world changing women she had a chance to meet.

I’ve never been nakedly ditched with such a smile on my face.



One Hand Raised in Favor of Openness

Posted by bryanzug - 2005/09/29

Met Scoble in this webinar on tech blogging for business the other day. Big takeaway for me was ‘The Corporate Weblog Manifesto’ he pointed to that he posted back in February 2003.

It really serves as a definitive scope document for the revolution he has helped lead – the one that’s changing the very nature of corporate communication, product evangelism, and software development.

It’s my current blog policy until something better (read — more corporate and sanitized) comes along.

Here’s some highlights (more to follow on more of his 21 points as time allows) —

1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that’s better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We’ll find it anyway.

Wow — tell the truth even if it doesn’t flatter you because people will find out anyway.

2) Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it — before the second or third site does — and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It’s all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don’t answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?

Warts and all honesty actually has a huge, often undocumented ROI, and it’s called customer trust.

Anyone familiar with Microsoft’s corporate history (especially from a technical or business perspective) knows full well the huge level of mistrust they have earned during their recent lifespan.

Whoever hired Scoble to do what he’s doing where he’s doing it should really be considered for a Nobel Peace Prize – from a cultural change perspective, the work is extremely significant, and will ultimately make the world a much better place.



Default Chic

Posted by bryanzug - 2005/09/27

Obviously haven’t gotten around to changing the default template in WordPress for this blog – which got me to thinking about how many tech blogs I see around that just have one of the default blog templates installed.

I’m calling it “default chic”.

It really is a cooler than you fashion statement (ha ha ha) – my content is so compelling that you really should just get over my default out of the box HTML & CSS.

Truth is, within about 15 minutes, most of us could find a decent and free template to upload and replace Mr. Blue OSX Pill Top here.

Worse yet are those of us with design skills. We really could customize something original and aesthetically pleasing within 2-3 hours, but, alas, we just can’t be bothered – as they say, the cobblers children have no shoes.

One of my favorite tech blogs is that of technical project management wunderkind Scott Berkun. He’s got me completely smitten – his conversational, humorous and pragmatic approach to project management continuously helps me navigate all those areas of life where I have to work with other people (e.g. work, home, yada, yada, yada…)

I’m such a goner — I would stalk Berkun if I had the time.

And, yep, you guessed it – though he’s trying to get a custom look and feel together – he’s still strutting default chic.

This AM googling for “default chic” returned 886 results.