CEO Blog

Thanks to WebProNews and Abby Johnson, who shot this interview at Blog World Expo 2008 following my “Microjournalism” panel with Doc Searls and Robert Scoble.

A picture tells… oh I’m a little too under the weather today to count up just how many words. We soft-launched the new website this weekend because of the New York Times Magazine article. When BusinessWeek, CNET and Web Worker Daily all included me today, the writing was on the wall to just announce the new venture…

We’ll be growing it all together right out here in public. I hope you’ll join us, and I hope you will find lots of value in what we have been building behind the scenes.

Warmly,
Pistachio

PS — Logo contest, anyone?

There’s a lot about Google’s overall UI/UX that bugs us, but this “comic” explaining the rollout of their new browser is really nicely done.

Mind you, it’s long. But even just sampling the first few pages I got a pretty convincing sense of what pains they’re solving and what Chrome does differently.

Play with storyboarding as a tool to flesh out your messages. Really great presentation decks have a lot in common with a storyboard. It’s a model and development tool to seriously consider.

There’s a WHOLE lot going on behind this here green curtain, and multiple announcements on the way in the next few weeks and months.

Sorry I’m not being very transparent about it at the moment. I promise all will be revealed, including this here blog in a whole new form that lets you choose whether you want to follow along on presentations stuff or on social media stuff as my work continues to shift going forward.

In the meanwhile, lavish thanks for your continued interest, and a promise to get back to more, and more consistent, content output in the near future…

Much love,
Pistachio

Fascinated by the complexity captured in this map:

PresidentialWatch08 » Map

The circles represent political sites and blogs, color coded by category (political lean) and sized by authority (# of inbound links) or the magnitude of unrelated sites linking to it. This Map Key explains the methodology in detail.

The PresidentialWatch08 map is composed of the 533 most visible and influential websites and blogs - out of a complete dataset of over 4000 sites - using Linkfluence™’s proprietary crawl technology.

The map includes both social media and mainstream media outlets. The sites are divided into four different categories, or communities (manually labelled):

* Conservative
* Independent
* Infopit
* Progressive

Infopit are conversation starters, they can set the agenda. Most of them are mainstream media but a growing part is composed by social media.

Good information design should immediately give you an overall impression — in this case the balance, alignment and complexity of the political blogosphere — at first glance. Otherwise, the mass of data with no organizing principles or trends emerging obscures the information you’re trying to display.

In this case the model is not wholly self-explanatory, but once you dig in and see what they’re representing, I think it’s worth the energy it takes to parse it. If you’re still scratching your head after reading the Map Key, try this “notice” as well.

Unfortunately, I lost track of whose blog I found this on. Sorry!

As I jot this post my Gmail has outright coded (it’s unresponsive and throwing DNS errors. let’s call it “GFail,” shall we?), Twitter has been staggering for days, and today is the first day my “Remember the Milk” (task management) application has correctly integrated with my Gmail inbox all week. I’m re-starting Firefox to see if the Gmail problem is originating with me or going on outside of my system “in the cloud.”

Nothing to do with my MacBook and browser, but 15 hours worth of SMS Tweets sent last night have disappeared from my Twitter stream altogether (or never made it in), while at least one tweet posted at least 160 times in a friend’s stream.

So at the moment I’m frustrated by the downtime downside of all this “computing in the cloud” (conducting your daily work with online files, applications and services that you access through your browser). It’s a false frustration in some ways, because local applications and file storage go down too. And for a small business owner, it’s worse when they do because you’re the only one who can rally resources to fix them. But my experience this week reminds me how totally dependent my business is on a working browser. At least with the many glitches I’m experiencing I’m secure in the knowledge that 1) I am not alone and 2) someone is trying to fix them.

Tho come to think of it, I still don’t know whether this is a local connectivity problem with my new Time Capsule rig. Connectivity seems fine with certain applications, and falls to its knees with others. So, I am excited I can work from anywhere, but that also means that sometimes I can work from nowhere. Ipe.

How to Change the World: Slideshare Announces “World’s Best Presentation Contest”

Calling a slide deck “a presentation” is a big pet peeve, but I REALLY enjoyed the results of this contest last year. It brought the excellent work of Scott Schwertly and Ethos3 to my attention.

Seen (or have) a deck you think absolutely rocks? Enter it before July 31st.

Current and upcoming subcontracting opportunities/requests for proposal:

Virtual Assistant
Wordpress Blog Maintenance
Graphic Designer

Description: Virtual Assistant

• extremely well organized
• good attention to detail
• prompt and accountable on managing their own projects and reporting back when complete or when something comes up
• extremely experienced and comfortable handling social networking sites, managing my accounts and logins, doing light blog maintenance on Wordpress (I will have someone else run the site, but VA will at times pitch in)
• good at managing upwards (i can be highly disorganized, so i can’t invest a lot of time in organizing the admin projects)

Responsibilities

• travel planning
• manage calendar (gcal)
• maintain & update contacts database (plaxo & others)
• help track/record expenses
• complete administrative tasks and projects
• assist with marketing tasks (opportunity to earn frequent large bonuses by securing paid speaking gigs)
• assist with maintaining social media presence (researching, organizing, streamlining and suggesting features to use on various sites and content streams)
• revamp and maintain filing system (help with move from paper to electronic)
• bookkeeping

Software: MUST have experience with

• some kind of financial reporting/tracking software
• google suite: gmail, gtalk, gcal, greader, etc.
• office apps: excel, word and powerpoint
• using an RSS reader & keeping up with blogs
• productivity/time management/product management software
• fluent in web search
• social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, others

Should be willing to learn:

• Twitter
• specific finance apps like Mint, geezeo, freshbooks, xpensr, others
• WordPress blogging software
• specific project management software like Basecamp or other

If you have a recommendation or are interested, please contact Maria Thurrell via her site or via @mathurrell on Twitter.

These have been rumbling around my head all morning:

1. Present your ideas, NOT your slides.
‘Nuff said.

2. Speak. To people.
Of presenting or speaking, always choose (in your own mind) to speak. Engage humans in your “audience” almost precisely the way you would engage them at a wonderful dinner party. Tell them your best stories. With love, and with interest in their interests.

3. “Which Means That.”
Live by this. Explain your concept/idea/plan/business/offering, and then append the words “which means that ___________,” and fill in the blank. Apply this repeatedly until you get to the core significance of the message and the reason that your ____ needs to exist. There is something meaningful and universally relevant at the core of anything worth doing. Tease it out and then lead with it.

(Though I forward this as a technique to make presentations better, it’s really a way to make whole organizations better. Find the significance. Share it. Always.)

Adele McAlear (@adelemcalear) of McAlear Marketing contacted a friend with strong ties to and knowledge of the Myanmar/Burma situation, and he produced this guidance on where to direct aid donations. Another good place is the Nargis Action Group Myanmar.

Dear Adele,

Here is also some other information that might provide helpful for your friend:

For those wishing to respond to the terrible devastation in Myanmar/Burma caused by the recent cyclone, it is recommended that you contribute to organizations that already have staff in place inside the country and so are not dependent on foreign aid workers. Some of these organizations are:

ADRA International
Myanmar Cyclone Fund
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(800) 424-ADRA ext. 2372

CARE
151 Ellis Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
(800) 521-2273

INTERNATIONAL BURMESE MONKS ORGANIZATION (in cooperation with Avaaz.org) Avaaz is raising funds for
the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups, which will transmit funds directly to
monasteries in affected areas.The monasteries are the only source of shelter and food for Burma’s poorest people. They have been on the front lines of the aid effort since the storm struck. Go here for more information.

Project HOPE
255 Carter Hall Lane
Millwood, VA 22646
(800) 544-4673

Save the Children
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
(800) 728-3843

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
125 Maiden Lane, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10038
(800) 4UNICEF

World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. North
Seattle, WA 98133
(800) 755-5022, ext.7706

World Vision
P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063
(888) 56-CHILD

(Compiled by M.L.)