James Shelley:
If you check your twitter feed and are confronted by a news item, a trivia fact, a magazine update, commentary on your friend’s tooth-brushing experience, and a blog update, this stream is not even remotely helpful for anything but developing an addiction to distraction.
You must curtail Twitter with purpose. To use Twitter without any intentionality is to spray yourself in the face with a high pressure blast of contextless, random information. This can serve little greater good other than sending you down countless rabbit trails.
It goes well with the previous post I just wrote. I don’t agree fully with James Shelley’s advice of making lists out of everything (especially seeing that Tweetie doesn’t support them that well — or rather, at all), but I do agree that following should be more about quality in every single tweet.
I will get better at this.
— Inventing a Planet » Blog Archive » Real Friends Follow Less: Intentionality on Twitter.
Richard Ziade:
Everyone applauds the hyper-connectedness we’re experiencing today. The truth is we can’t really leverage it in a very meaningful way. There are a chosen few that get proper attention, the rest just end up in a sort of long tail of human connections. They’re relegated to an almost trivial status – only acknowledged as a scored point on your “friends” or “followers” tally.
I’m constantly thinking about this, and following 620 people/services on Twitter is beginning to feel a bit too much (I read as much as I can get my hands on through Twitter). I already took the deep cleanse in Google Reader, and I might do the same with Twitter. Erase everything. Start over. Treasure every time I follow someone a bit more than I do now.
— Basement.org: Growing Old Friends.
My parents had the moon. Before that, there was the west. And before that, America. Do we have any frontiers left? Frontiers exist for one reason: promise. Where do we go now to find promise? What direction?
On March 25, 2010, we were able to have more than 250 people come together for a single cause: Supporting Concern Worldwide. All of these people have one thing in common: They are Danish Twitter users.
Getting Marie Fisker and Rune Kjeldsen to play on stage, and Thomas Madsen-Mygdal to interview Morten Lund about his entrepreneurial endeavors, created a unique experience for those involved. Tom Collins even played for us after being called early in the evening on a cancellation, and it just goes to show the efforts everybody are willing to put into this crazy project.
Lots and lots and lots of sponsors provided us with gifts for the lottery and money for the cause. All the money from the ticket sales, lottery tickets, sponsorships and donations have finally been tallied and we can give the final score:
94,000.- kroner.
It has taken a long time to end at this amount because of some problems here and there, but this is what we’ve sent off to Concern Worldwide on behalf of Copenhagen Twestival.
The videos are still (!) on their way, but hopefully we can show you what happened in glorious technicolor sometime in 2010.
Kristoffer and I started this project with the intent of meeting a couple of interesting people, and the fact that 250 people agreed with that on a cold March night is still beyond my wildest imagination.
We started out with the goal of reaching more than last time in every way. That meant more than 30,000 DKK in profits from more than 150 people. We met that target and exceeded it significantly.
However, what amazes me the most is the level of support we get from sponsors, participants, performers and partners. Especially those who helped plan and execute the whole thing: Morten, Benjamin, Jacob, Ronni and Laura. They deserve all the love they can get for agreeing to help with this.
We have a lot of things to improve for next time, but we’re doing our best and hope you have a great experience the next time as well.
If you have any questions or comments, do get in touch.
(Cross-posted on the Copenhagen Twestival blog).
A guest lecture on communication and leadership based on a list of Reality Construction Rules spewed this quote:
It’s the uncertainty, confusion, and undecidability of the “situation here and now” that opens it up for interpretation and provides an opportunity for the more verbally skilled among us to emerge as leaders.
I’m ready to get out of educational institutions any moment now – especially when they base lectures like the one today on political spin techniques, framing it as valuable communication skills for today’s leaders.
Tomorrow, at 3:40pm I’m leaving Copenhagen for Austin, TX. I’ll be there at 10:46pm. Not CET, but CST – a seven hour difference. Which means that I’ll be traveling for 14 hours and 34 minutes. Make that an even 17 hours and it’s from door to door.
Why am I still happy then? I’ll be attending the magnificent South By South West conference. A few years ago one of my dreams were to visit the music part of SXSW since it’s about 10 times bigger than the Danish Spot festival in Århus. Now, however, I’ll be attending the Interactive part of the conference, and that is even better.
I’ve been in the US a couple of times – even studied there for four months – and it’s always been good fun. It’s been focused on the northeast part of the country, though (Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Boston), so I can’t wait to see what it’s like down south. Mostly because it’s +20° C and not 0° C this time of year.
Seeing that I’m a first-time SXSW attendee, I have no idea what to expect. Sure, I’ve read a lot about the panels and keynotes, but you never really understand something like Reboot before you’ve been there. I imagine it’s the same for SXSW. Why else would people argue that it’s good for them not to go as they won’t be hungover for two weeks then?
If you’re interested, you can have a look at my schedule here: My SXSW schedule. It’s overbooked, overflowing and overly exciting.
I’ll bring a video cam along with me, and hopefully I’ll be able to upload a few videos during the conference to give you a feel for what it’s like. Otherwise, it’ll be when I get home and maybe even with a bit of editing.
If you’re going as well, get in touch and I’ll tell you lots and lots and lots about online video and why 23 Video is the right choice for you and your organization: mark@marks.dk.
You should follow me on Twitter if you want to follow along during the escapades over the next week or so: @marks.
Ever since the Christmas holiday I’ve wanted to make a post on what a crazy year 2009 was, as well as what I expect of 2010. Now I finally have the time to do so, and it’s personal so feel free to skip it.
2009:
On New Years Eve 2008/2009, I had just arrived back in Copenhagen from a semester abroad in Boston that was far from perfect. I had a nice time now and then, but I felt that the daily life on a campus 12 miles from Boston is too unlike my way of living that it became unbearable as the months went by.
I missed Copenhagen, I missed my girlfriend, friends and family and I just wanted it to be over.
I came back, and I got a new job at zyb/Vodafone that I was very happy about. I enjoyed working there until this fall when budget-related issues popped up, and I was relieved from my consultancy contract. Now I work at 23 which is something completely different, yet somehow very related. I don’t get these jobs because I apply for them, but because I spend crazy amounts of time on Twitter and at events around Copenhagen, talking to people that share my interests. This is something I want to continue doing, and especially Copenhagen Twestival has established some relationships that I value a lot, and hope to nurture more in the future.
It seems that 2009 was all about breaking down and establishing. In the summer I became a bachelor in more than one way, and I like the diploma I got from CBS, but not the feeling of being all alone that the breakup created. It’s over now and I learned a lot from it. “Taking less for granted” is sure as hell one of the lessons I took with me on that account.
2010:
I normally don’t do New Year’s resolutions, and I don’t plan on starting now, but there are still some things I’d like to focus more on in the coming year.
Listen:
Listening isn’t always my best skill, but I need to listen a lot more than I speak. I want to read more, and have removed a bunch of the shitty feeds clogging up my feed reader (Mashable, TechCrunch, TUAW etc. are all gone – it’s too much fast noise). I’m looking for good writers (hopefully making me a better one as well) that don’t publish often, but publish something worthwhile. I’ll share what I’ve found soon.
Act slow:
Again, this relates to the fast news being thrown out from Google Reader. More slow, less fast. Hopefully that affects how I work and think as well – it’s been too much fast stuff blazing past and too little of the meaty blogging/article-writing that really matters, and gives a worthwhile perspective on things.
Build more and learn new stuff:
I really really want to learn how to write better html(5) and css(3), as well as starting from scratch on how to do jQuery. I don’t know shit about programming in Python, Ruby on Rails, Javascript and what else is there, but jQuery seems like a nice place to start doing a bit of web app-stuff. This will in turn, hopefully, do wonders to what I can share and ship, and I already have a couple of ideas laid out that I would love to work on (a local version of Internet Garage Sale is one of them).
Be happier:
I’ll stop bitching about shit on Twitter. No more tweeting from the queue in the supermarket, no more whining about this and that, and hopefully I’ll start noticing the good stuff more.
For instance, I bought two lovely sweaters today. It’s really cold in Copenhagen these days and I’m cold all the time. What to do? Buy nice sweaters. So I did. And now I’m warm. I like that.
Consume less but better:
I already have too much shit, and I really don’t need anymore. Everything I buy in 2010 will be thought through, and either replace something of lesser value, or fill a gap that is justified in making me do my work, or everyday chores, better. This means getting rid of my CD and DVD-collection (I don’t listen to music or watch movies one physical media anymore), and a bunch of electronics that lie around but are never used (thus making the Internet Garage Sale-clone).
This a bunch of introvert self-praising, but it helps me write what I want to do in the coming year, if I want to complete it. Last year I wrote I wanted to take a photo and blog every day. That didn’t happen. Hopefully I can write one blog post every week; if I stop bitching about shit on Twitter, I should save right about the same amount of time every week it takes for me to write a blog post.