You see, they call it “social” networking for a reason. It’s not just a place to upload your contacts (although, believe me, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all covet your Outlook and GMail folders) and then wait for hordes of admirers to start nudging, poking and friending you. If you’re new to social networking, you can ask for help from other social networkers. How do we know? That’s what we did.

We met Jim Storer from Mzinga (@JimStorer) at a conference and got to talking about Twitter. He offered to help us learn. Since his company helps corporations connect the social networking dots, what were we to do?! Say no?!!

And, Jim was not the only one who helped us. We kind of had a Board of Learning Directors. You should do the same. That way you don’t put just one person on the spot. They have a life, you know!

Our Board of Learning Directors consisted semi-officially of five main people – Claire Wadlington @wadlington; Jim Storer @jimstorer; Mike Keliher @mjkeliher; Ellen Mrja @ellenm53; and Rob Johnson @robjohnson.

Two of them we knew already, the other three we met on Twitter.

Most of the help they gave us happened right there on Twitter. Yes, go ahead, ask your questions in front of Twitter and everyone. People won’t mind. They may even volunteer to help.

Or, take the conversation off of Twitter and go back to one of those archaic forms of communication like email or the telephone. Everyone on our Board helped us that way, too.

People like to help – as long as you aren’t a pest.

Get Your Own Board

But, this is important. If you’re going to use this approach, you can’t have Jim – or Claire, or Mike, or Ellen or Rob. They’re ours.

And, stop paying hundreds of bucks to learn the basics of free stuff. Paying for “social” networking is downright “anti-social.”

Now, get out there and find your own social learning guys.

Dan Powers is the Community Affairs Manager for the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, but he also has enough other irons in the fire to be called a Colorado Renaissance Man.

We’ve written about Dan before in “Who Killed East Boulder’s Blog?” It’s a frightening and cautionary tale. And the experience temporarily drove him away from a leadership position in the discussion about citizen involvement in East Boulder county politics.

So, to make sure he connects with people in his area who are talking about the issues he cares about we wanted to make sure he “Advanced” on Search.Twitter.com. We just wrote about this site in “Going Next Door for a Drink.”

And, yes, just like any good search engine, the brilliant minds over at Search.Twitter.com once again named their “Beginner” button the “Advanced” tab. Nuts, isn’t it? – because all you have to do is fill in the little boxes.

Anyway, Dan can look to see who’s just written the word “politics” in Twitter – and limit that search to only those within 15 miles of his own home. Cool, frightening, weird, but entirely useful if he wants to find like-minded people right away.

Why are we so happy to see Dan Powers back in the Web 2.0 saddle? Because he’s the perfect “Patriot 2.O.”

You’ll get a better idea of what we mean by that term if you read Andrea Baker’s blog post from yesterday over at ZDNet – “The (Government 2.0) revolution should be televised.”

I agree with Andrea that we need more Citizen 2.0’s and Patriot 2.0’s, but in order to do that we need more folks like Dan Powers – writing blogs, sharing important topics on Twitter and bringing another slug of people along with him in the process.

And, believe me, we need as many citizens and patriots as we can get these days.

We wrote on here recently that we couldn’t find a way to search Twitter – on Twitter (Whenever Twitter Closes a Door, Google Opens a Window). Turns out we were right. You have to go next door for your Twitter search. Dumb, but….

And, it turns out, tons of the Twitterers (Tweeters? Tweety Birds? Fritterers?) we’ve talked to don’t know this.

Go to Search.Twitter.com

Nice thing about Twitter’s next door bar – you can get as drunk as you want, and you don’t even have to pay for the restaurant meal. You can drink searches to your hearts content (see who’s talking about you – or her – or him).

Let’s try it. Today we’re attending the Colorado chapter of the National Speakers Association. There are two keynote speakers at the event – David Nour and Ron Karr.

There are lots of results for online social gadabout, David Nour. One would hope, David! There is only one – thank you, Gina Schreck – for Mr. Karr. But, there will be more. He tells us he has a book coming out next year, and you can bet he’ll do his best to get you to Tweet about it.

How ’bout you? How famous are you? And, are you Twittering on about yourself, or are others Tweeting your wonders to the world? It makes a difference.

As a local sports news anchor says, “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”

So, there you have it. Whether you use it or not, people searching for you on Twitter is the next online phenomenon you’re going to have to feel insecure and worried about. Is this a great Internet, or what?!

What is Twitter? Well, it’s instant and text messaging gone berserk on a global scale. You can Twitter from your computer, cell phone, Blackberry (TwitterBerry), and heck, even from your Xbox.

Now that I have your attention, here’s one more definition of Twitter from Wikipedia:

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”

We hesitate to declare new technologies loathsome before we use them, but I have to say that Twitter is a huge challenge to our objectivity.

Most Tweets (remember, those are Twitter messages) are inane, self-absorbed, nasty or juvenile. It appears to us to be navel starring on a colossal scale.

And, yet, if you try it, the thing you may notice the most is Twitter’s ability to distract you.

Twittered to Distraction

The most disturbing article we’ve seen about this phenomenon was in this summer’s Atlantic Monthly. It’s Nicolas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” What the Internet is doing to our brains.”

The villain of the article is not really Google, but it is scarier than a Stephen King story:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading… 

Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

Read the full article – if you still have the attention span.

It scared us. We just attended a technology convention where nearly everyone in the room was Tweeting the convention away. The true believers would tell you that they were smoothly multi-tasking. We tried it – and couldn’t follow what the panelists were saying, lost the thread of questions and conversations and began to feel that insidious creep of nervous inattention.

And yet, we’re also intrigued. We’ve already found a myriad of ways that businesses, especially small businesses, are using Twitter to build their sales. And, as a social connection tool, we’re surprised. Twitter just connected us with another National Speakers Association member – this time from Australia.

The question, really, may come down to the one that was asked near the end of that convention – the sense of it was – just because we can, does that mean we should?

Thomas Friedman has covered the world of online connectedness in many award winning books and articles. Listen to what Mr. Friedman wrote in an article called Foreign Affairs; Cyber Serfdom – and when you read this remember that he wrote it in January of 2001:

My favorite, though, was that we now live in an age of what a Microsoft researcher, Linda Stone, called continuous partial attention. I love that phrase. It means that while you are answering your e-mail and talking to your kid, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation. You are now involved in a continuous flow of interactions in which you can only partially concentrate on each.

”If being fulfilled is about committing yourself to someone else, or some experience, that requires a level of sustained attention,” said Ms. Stone. And that is what we are losing the skills for, because we are constantly scanning the world for opportunities and we are constantly in fear of missing something better. That has become incredibly spiritually depleting.

…. The assumption now is that you’re always in. Out is over. Now you are always in. And when you are always in you are always on. And when you are always on, what are you most like? A computer server.

What about you? Are you comfortable with Twitter? Are you comfortable with “continuous partial attention?” How do you see the future – and what is technology and the Internet doing to you?

Reason #1 – Everyone in One Place

All the conference attendees are listed in one place (with mercifully short bios) and, most importantly, photos. Better yet, for each person, you get their web site, blog, LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Twitter page and their NFL game day predictions. Well, maybe not that last one.

Reason #2 – You Have the Right to Remain Private

We would have listed this above, but it’s too important. In addition to all the links in Reason #1, you can send any person a message, without having to know their email address. Or, you can just say “keep away from me.”

Reason #3 – Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Standardize, Sustain

If you haven’t heard of 5S, don’t worry. But, it’s remarkable how much Eventvue helps you “5S” your convention. The list of attendees, for instance, is sortable by company, last name, first name, last updated and latte preference.

Reason #4 – Bye, Bye Homepages, RSS and Bookmarks

I don’t know about you, but 90% of the relationships we make at conventions are, well, fleeting. After all, many of these bozos look good in the first flush of the meeting light, but after you take them home to meet your parents,…

Still, I appreciate being able to get a feel for folks by reading some of their blog posts, checking their Twitter page, even YouTubing a video. Eventvue puts all this stuff in one place, easily scanned. That way only the bozos that survive the first bright blush of the convention go into bookmarks or RSS feeds.

Reason #5 – Automatic for the People

I almost forgot to mention that much of this is done without you having to fill anything out. Eventvue works with convention organizers to upload their registration lists and basic information. Yes, you do get to fill in your own bio and interests, but – and this is cool – it fills in your blog, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter info automatically.

And, yes, since we are attending the Defrag convention, their magic carpet software will shoot this blog post automatically to the blog page of Eventvue.

Reason #6 – Reach Out and Touch Someone

Just don’t get any ideas! I’ve only sent out maybe 7 or 8 messages, but by serendipity, fate or the hand of the creator – I found what I call the Minnesota Mafia of Steve Kickert, Graeme Thickins, Rich Hoeg and Connie Benson. It works – give fate a chance.

Reason #7 – So Good for the Ego

I gotta’ admit that I like it when people say, “I think we should know each other.” Happens very occasionally at conferences to us – maybe it happens all the time to you.

Think about it – with your name, face, blog and other online shenanigans out in front of all the attendees – it increases the chance that someone you don’t know from Adam will say “hi.”

Reason #8 – Bonus Reason

And you know what? The search tool on Eventvue actually works! We thought we better say that after taking Twitter to task for having a broken down search mechanism.

One Stop

These and any number of other things make Eventvue the one-stop shopping, holding, yakking, and hanging out place to manage your next convention experience.

If you read this blog very much, you know that we rarely flip over much of the over-hyped and over-sold social web. We’re flipping now, and we’re printing out our favorite people page so we can identify them at the conference. Gotta’ go!

Editors Note: We do not accept referral fees or payments for any sites mentioned in our blogs, speeches or workshops. We call them exactly like we see them. We do accept “review copies” and “press passes” in order to be able to demonstrate various softwares and sites.

Joining the Twitter Army

Sheryl and I are heading to the Defrag conference in Denver this week. A high percentage of conference attendees have Twitter accounts – and they “tweet” regularly (often incessantly).

So, to get in step with the convention faithful, we are both signing on the dotted line and have already started Twittering away.

We think there’s a disconnect, though. When we attend a normal business conference – like the Florida Healthcare Association, the Washington State Department of Community, Trade & Economic Development or any of the conferences we’ve been to recently – almost no one has a Twitter account.

It sometimes seems that technology folks think normal people are just like them. But really, the difference between a business convention and a technology convention these days is vast.

Now, don’t get your undies in a bundle! We know that many of you think Twitter is going to take over the world and that soon we’ll all be checking our cell phones to find out that @DopeyDan is “tired and now going to bed,” and that @CrazyMomma is “wondering what Twitter users think about the election.”

And, perhaps, that’s true. But, more likely, in our opinion, many of these cool technologies will never make it beyond their early adopters. And, too often it’s because they’re just not that easy to use.

Google Opens Twitter’s Window

As we said in the opening paragraph, we think we ought to be able to plunk in the name of our friends – and get the scoop on whether we can follow them on Twitter.

It appears to us that the Twitter search function is currently dysfunctional – at least it has been for the past 24 hours. When we look for our friends to see if they have accounts – we get the result you see above.

As Snoopy would say, “Arrrrrgggghhhhh!”

Not to worry, though, we could still find some of our friends by using Google to nose its way into the Twitter site.

Are You There, Gina?

I knew right away that if I was going to play the Twitter game, I needed Mike Keliher and Gina Schreck by my side. Mike we already wrote about – but Gina, from Synapse3Di, is something else again.

For one thing, she’s way more optimistic about new technologies than I am. For another, she’s the antithesis of someone who is stuck in a rut.

Gina is always learning and trying something new. One of our favorite sayings comes from Steve Lishansky:

“The hardest people to work with are those who have been reasonably successful doing unsustainable things.”

That’s something you could never say that about Gina.

So to find Gina, type in the Google search box (or Yahoo, Live, Ask) exactly this (or the photo above):

GinaSchreck site:twitter.com

And, like so many things on computers, here’s another way. Click on the advanced tab – and then fill in the site you want to search – instead of searching the whole freaking universe. Either way, you’ll often get what you’re looking for:

Even though Twitter was on the fritzer, we were able to add a few more folks to follow.

By the way, the number one way Twitter suggests you find your friends is to surrender your entire email database to them. Doesn’t anyone care about online privacy anymore?! Have the folks in your email address book signed a release?!

Facebook recently… well, let’s not even go there…… Online privacy is a different article.

Bottom line is we’re Twittering now – and we’ll follow you – and you can follow us. Unless, that is, you have something better to do.

You don’t get that kind of smart writing in most blogs about Twitter. But, ours is not an article about Harvey Mackay – or maybe even about Mike Keliher. It’s an article about networking – at your next conference.

This weekend, we’re getting ready to go to the Defrag Conference here in Denver.

Yes, early this coming week, when we should be voting (we’ll get up early on Tuesday and vote, OK!), we’ll be hanging out with technology types at a two-day conference about “discovering, assembling, organizing, acting on and gathering feedback from online data.” Hey, it’s what we do.

And, in order to prompt all Defrag attendees to hook-up with each other (for serious business purposes, mind you), they are using Eventvue software – which creates an online community of the conference attendees.

Eventvue makes it simpler and more likely that Sheryl and I will actually connect and engage with other folks at Defrag who have similar interests to our own.

And, a rather important component of our Eventvue profiles is our Twitter connection. Now, we’ve written about Eventvue before – in “The Wall Street Journal Weighs in on our Blog.”

But, this isn’t an article about Eventvue, either. It’s actually about the fact that Sheryl and I still don’t have Twitter accounts. Notice how I buried the lead?

Which is where Mike Keliher comes in. If we trust anyone to help us start frittering our time away on instant message sites, it’s Mike.

By the way, Mike Keliher would be the first to acknowledge that he owes a lot to his sidekick, Albert Maruggi. We’ve written about Albert (and Twitter) in “The Search Power of a 4-Letter Word.”

For that matter, Keliher also makes an appearance via screen shot and comment in “Target to Blogger: You Don’t Count.”

(Note to uninitiated readers of blogs: This is how blogs work. If you want to get the most out of this article – and make sense of our view of the online world – you have to “click and read.”)

Just one final comment. Notice that I wrote that Mr. Maruggi was Mike Keliher’s “sidekick” – not boss. After all, it’s all about relationships. Didn’t that chocolate chip cookie guy, Harvey, teach us that?!!

Today, we tip our hats to an entrepreneur of staggering inventiveness. And, his solution is so clever, and so obvious, that we just had to ask ourselves, “Why didn’t we think of this?!!”

Yes, we just got an email that is sure to change your business – and your lives – forever. I know it will change ours.

The Foolproof Answer to Email Overload

This email is so inventive, that we’ve broken it into parts to better show you just how smart it really is. We’ve only slightly edited it – the names have been changed to protect, well… us.

Here’s how the email begins:

“Hello from Jason Fuzzi and the Fuzzi Corporation. At some point, you emailed me or the main mailbox at my company. Thanks for reaching out!”

Yeah, “at some point.” Actually, I emailed Jason exactly three months and one day ago. But, it’s ok, I do understand. He’d probably just read that new book about the four-hour work week and now has very little time to respond.

His email went on:

I hope your interest means you might like to be learn more about our company. We can give you access  to our valuable… yadda, yadda…  Join us here!

Actually, I had written him a pretty clear email about a mutual friend. I wondered how we might get some buzz going for our friend’s new book (although after 3 months the book is not so new anymore).

So, how did Jason respond? Well, he said nothing about my questions – but he did make this additional offer:

If you’re not interested at this time but want to stay in touch,  please sign up for my weekly Tip of the Week.

We checked his web site. Wanna’ know what his expertise is? Relationship building.

Yes, Jason Fuzzi’s email says that success is “powered by relationships.” Who needs Dave Barry when your own email is this entertaining?

Never Write Back Again

Just think of the time you’d save if you took Jason’s approach to your inbox!!

So, next time you write to us, look for our response (after an appropriate delay of, say, a half year or so):

Hello from Michael & Sheryl – somewhere in the Netherlands Antilles,

At some point you emailed us with a question, said hello or let us know of the sad passing of a favorite aunt or uncle. Thanks for connecting!

We’re hoping that your email means that you’d like to hire us, buy some of our products or join our exclusive members-only network.

If you’re not interested in any of the above, but would simply like to stay in touch, please sign up here for our automated auto-response responder, right here. That’s right here.

If you do happen to be bringing us news of friends or family (happy or sad), please realize that we are with you in spirit and encourage you to always put family first.

Warmest island breezes,

Michael & Sheryl

“The number of us attending business conferences continues to rise, even though information can be shared at low cost in real time digitally, and despite the costs and hassles of travel.”

He says he got his statistics from American Business Media, but it looked like one of those pay to play sites, so you’ll have to trust him (but hey, he’s a Wall Street Journal columnist, after all).

In our blog article, we asked:

Do we look to technology to replace our meetings and gatherings?

Or, do we look to technology to make in-person meetings so crucial, special, entertaining and worthwhile that they will never be a threatened species?

It’s All in How You View the Event

Last Friday we sat down with someone who is definitely trying to keep those real live meetings at the top of their form. Rob Johnson of Eventvue.com talked to us about his company’s community building tools for conferences and conventions.

You have to notice that we met with him in person. We’re not bragging – it’s just that he kept insisting that a phone interview wasn’t as good as a real interview. Walks his talk.

And, he didn’t have much time. He and his partner, Josh Fraser, had just won won the Rookie of The Year Award from the Colorado Software and Internet Association the night before.

And, he had the Rocky Mountain News in line for a flattering article that ran yesterday, called “Looking for the Next Tech Star.”

What does Eventvue do for conference attendees? Well, it automatically gives them a networking profile for that particular conference – without having to fill out all those online forms. If you’ve ever registered for LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace, you’ll know how huge that is.

How does Eventvue do that?! They piggy-back on the information you already provide when you register for a conference – simple as that.

Then, they have some sort of collection of magic, voodoo and hocus pocus (not Rob’s explanation, mind you) to scour the Internet for your LinkedIn profile, your blog, your web site and your Nordstrom’s credit card information (well, maybe not that last one).

Then, you tweak your profile, put in some keywords and tags, a short bio – and all of that is accessible ONLY to other conference attendees. Now, you’re ready to meet up.

Imagine being able to connect to other attendees, speakers and exhibitors BEFORE the whole thing starts! Imagine getting to know a few people before you even step up to get your name badge.

We’ve attended meetings and conferences for years now, and our biggest challenge is to connect with other people – instead of being focused on breakout maps, hidden rest rooms and whether we’ll get there before the break desserts run out.

To Meet One Another

It’s about people, not bits and bytes. You’ve got to stand up and cheer for technology experts like Rob Johnson who get that.

We’re continually bombarded with the idea (as we have written before in The Speaking Industry is Not Dead),

“that a tele-seminar is as effective as a gathering, that sitting in front of a screen is as good as mingling with others, that podcasts can touch people’s hearts the way a speaker can touch a congregation.”

They aren’t, it isn’t and they can’t. Or, as Mr. Crovitz wrote in his Wall Street Journal article:

Perhaps the more digital we become, the greater our desire to spend at least part of our time in the very analog activity of meeting with one another. Human beings may not after all have evolved that far from those first caveman gatherings around the fire – the original social networking sites.

“…to meet one another.” We’ll keep doing that no matter how many webinar software gizmos are invented and no matter how strong the pitch is for online learning (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

And, we’ll keep giving Rob Johnson and others like him the tip of our hats – for making stuff that helps to grow human interactions, instead of trying to replace them.

I’m being told (yet again) that my business will prosper if I only decide to join SecondLife and hang out. I’m sure that selling stuff (or buying other people’s stuff) is really what it’s all about, but that’s not part of the original pitch.

Here’s the rub. I have to create a mythical person, which is not a problem for me. My little brother and I have created whole universes of fantasy baseball players and I can still name them and the positions they play. Van Wafer on the mound, Bludgeon Hametsock behind the plate, DL Balboa over at first,…

Which is why I’m stymied before I even get started on SecondLife because I can’t choose my own name. To be precise, I can choose my first name, but my last name has to be chosen from a short list that includes such gems as Barski, Frak, Gligacz and Untermann.

Now, I ask you, do I look like a Gligacz? Ubermensch, perhaps, but it was not on the list. I mean, what’s so unacceptable about Benidt? I’ve grown to like that name, thank you very much.

I did decide to try Frik Frak, but someone already had nabbed it. Likewise, Frak Frak and Fricken Frak were also unavailable. At which point SecondLife froze up and decided that I must be “funning” with them.

It was the second time the site had overloaded on a couple of name possibilities and I was not even logged in to their virtual world yet. This did not inspire confidence for my future virtual flight lessons, Iron Chef classes or Harvard Law School lectures.

In each case, I got a message that in SecondLife’s continuing attempts to make it an even better place to visit they were undergoing considerable construction.

They suggested I try back later.

Instead, I’ve written to one of the big-wigs at Second Life. Response from big-wigs is always a good indication of whether a company truly cares about its customers.

We’ll let you know what they have to say. In fact, we encourage them and others who have experiences with Second Life, to comment on this blog article.

After all, I’ve heard that people do business and make money on Second Life. If that’s the case, I’m kind of thinking I’d like to be Michael Benidt, owner of Golden Compass, Inc., not Michael FrickenFrak.

Am I being unreasonable?