We can be pretty cynical about the kinds of technical arrogance we see in the computer world. But, in this case, Microsoft got it right in a big way at their Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington D. C.

So, let me ask you – when was the last time the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft went ape about your company? And, when did it happen in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center? Yeah, happens every day, huh?

What was Kevin Turner so excited about that he closed his keynote speech with a video and salute to this particular company?

It’s Never 2 Late – Never!

He was excited enough about the potential of a Microsoft partner company called It’s Never 2 Late. He was excited about Jack York’s vision of changing the lives of older adults.

You see, as long as Sheryl and I have known Jack (gosh, over 10 years now) he’s had a single-minded drive to help senior citizens connect, enhance and empower their lives by connecting to the computer world.

Jack would never say it’s been easy. In fact, if most of us went up against the odds he’s encountered, we’d have thrown in the towel long ago.

Not Jack.

“I just know this is a good thing to do. It really does change lives and you can just see it when it works. We just need a little more technology juice behind us to make it work.”

Um, so, do you think Microsoft might just have the juice?!

Take a look at the video above. If you want to skip right to the place where Mr. Turner introduces the video about It’s Never 2 Late, just skip to the 1 hour and 39 minute mark.

With Your Head In the Cloud

The Microsoft Partner Conference was often about something called “Cloud Computing.” But, Kevin Turner ended his speech, in front of over ten thousand of their most important partners, reminding all of us that technology just has its head in the clouds if it’s not about truly serving people.

As one of the seniors, Milton Greidinger, says in the video:

“It’s like a godsend. That’s a good word, godsend.”

And, that’s a good job, Kevin. And that’s a godsend, Jack.

Want to find out how to keep up with what’s being said about you? Head straight to a cool new Internet resource called Filtrbox.com. But first, we’d like to tell you the story behind the Filtrbox story, and why you should care.

Broadcast News

The Internet has brought vast change at lightning speed to the business world. But, perhaps the biggest and least understood is the change from “broadcast” to “conversation.”

Without going all philosophical on you, whether you like it or not, you and your business are now part of an ongoing conversation. This conversation is multifaceted and it’s happening in a multitude of online locations.

The conversation is about the changes in your industry and the latest developments in the kinds of products you sell. But, it’s more than that. Now, folks are “conversing” about you, your brand and even your own (and your employees’) performance.

This new conversation also has a dark side. Whether you are famous for your inventions, ideas, products or services more and more people want to steal them from you – or just “borrow” them for a while without your knowledge. People want your trademark, your newest product release and even your turn of phrase. Increasingly, they don’t even think of it as stealing.

Location, Location, Location

Where is all of this going on? They’re writing web articles and blogs that use your own thoughts, ideas and exact words. They’re selling rip-offs of your stuff on their web sites and copying your good ideas on their blogs. And, they’re often slamming and damning your customer service on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

How can you keep track of all this? And do you even need to? For an answer to that, just ask any company who has ignored the bloggers and Twitterers. As they can testify, conversations can grow, get out of hand and turn into firestorms.

Are the Solutions Worse than the Problem?

But, how can you keep up? How can you tune in to the first whispers of discontent? How can you know that someone is using your trademarked phrase? How can you track your competitor so closely you’ll know when they burp? Will you see them hawking your products on their web site?

Well, let’s see, you could cobble together some Google News alerts,  a sprinkling of RSS feeds, dozens of blog subscriptions, a few web site change alarms, and top it off with a smattering of newsletters. If you do this, however, you’ll have a control panel about as complex as a fighter jet. And, you’ll spend more time manning the controls than you will evaluating the information you gather.

But, what if there was one solution? And, what if the controls for all of this were simple and accessible?

1 if by Air, 2 if by Land, 3 if by Sea

The place to try out that “one-stop Internet information shop” is at Filtrbox.com. What these guys can do with their Internet listening devices should make the FBI and the CIA a little green with envy.

Unlike a lot of other forms of web and news alerts, Filtrbox covers virtually all the bases AND acts as both a search resource and an alert tool.

You can receive Filtrbox alerts in your favorite RSS reader or in your email. Or, you can ignore these types of constant notifications, go on vacation for a month, and then fiddle with the Filtrbox controls so that you quickly catch up on only the most important stuff you missed.

Tracking your company name and intellectual property? You’ll probably want to monitor all sources – mainstream news, the blog world and Twitter. Tracking a topic in your industry? You may just want to keep up with the mainstream news sources.

At the Controls

So, why is Filtrbox different? Because in one place, you can view and adjust your different topics, time frames, sources and the relative importance of those conversations in one place.

Here’s what I mean. When it comes to your company name, your own name and your trademarked phrases, I’m sure you’d like to know whenever someone says anything – both good and bad.

When it comes to keeping up on your industry’s hot topics and issues, you likely might want to know only when more important or trusted sources have something to say. In the screen shot below we’re only picking up mainstream press articles for a very, very popular term, “information overload“:

And, for all of your terms and phrases you can adjust the amount of time you’re looking at – longer for obscure topics and shorter for popular ones:

Here’s the thing, though. You’ve got to try this. There’s a free version and a free trial – giving you a chance to kick the tires and look under the hood of this remarkable tool.

Why do you even need to try? Because, as the Rolling Stones sang way back in 1965, people really are “talkin’ about you.”

Editors Note: We do not accept referral fees or payments for any sites mentioned in our blogs, speeches or workshops. We do accept “review copies” and “press passes” in order to be able to demonstrate resources and sites.

Who is Dominic? Is he one of your LinkedIn connections? Nope. In fact, Dominic has the sum total of four (yes, count them, 1, 2, 3, 4) connections. Poor souls.

But, even though he has few friends (no wonder), he has joined something like 40 LinkedIn Groups. And, yes, he happened to join one of the groups you belong to – which is how he got entrée to your inbox.

So, you say, no problem. There must be a privacy setting on LinkedIn that would keep Dominic out of your life. You know “privacy settings.” Those are the adjustments social networking sites don’t publicize at all and that you never have time to fiddle with even if you do discover them.

But, this is a problem. The only privacy setting that would keep Mr. Spam out of your inbox would also keep the legitimate members of that group from communicating with you.

There Goes the Neighborhood

And, that’s the problem. I do want to “Allow members of this group to send me messages via LinkedIn.” I just don’t want zeroes like this guy to have access to me.

In fact, I want LinkedIn to throw his sorry behind out the door – now. If they don’t, their once verdant social networking neighborhood will turn into a slum of social nitwits. And, that’s when we’ll all leave. I’m just leading the way, leaving now unless LinkedIn begins to eject Dominic Spam and his ilk swiftly and summarily.

Tell LinkedIn you feel the same way, or Dominic and his friends will soon be cramming your inbox with a ton of this kind of garbage, too.

Here’s a little exercise you can do for yourself in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s “Discussions” accompany each LinkedIn “Group.” They are the equivalent of the general “Answers” section in LinkedIn, but you must be a member of that group to participate in those discussions. (We wrote more about the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of group “exclusivity” in “Run, Charlotte, Run.”)

A Real LinkedIn Discussion

Ready for the exercise? If you belong to any LinkedIn “Group,” simply go to the “Discussions” tab for that group.

Next, compare the number of comments that real questions get vs. the zeros that are racked up by the sales pitchers.

In the picture above, Nanette Littlestone asked a real question to get a real discussion going in the Book Publishing Professionals group. She asked, “What are the most important things writers look for in an editor?”

Right away, in no time at all, the comments started to roll in. Soon there were 36. These were real people responding to her question and trying to help her make the right decision.

By the way, if you go to this discussion (if you belong to the group), you’ll notice that Nanette also publicly thanked and commented back to every single one of the folks who took the time to answer. That’s what networking is about – it’s about the conversation, and conversations build relationships.

A Fake LinkedIn Discussion

Compare that with the picture below, where someone blared, “Check out my profile.” Here’s the thing, though. NO ONE responded. It didn’t work. Even after a month, no one responded.

Why? Because it’s not the place. It’s no more appropriate here than it would have been at a real-life networking event. At such an event, this guy wouldn’t have just handed you his card and said, “Buy my stuff.” But, he does exactly that here!

Why didn’t he get any comments? Everyone knew that he was simply promoting himself – or his seminar, or his life-enhancing elixir. They moved away from him, just as they would from that kind of bad behavior in real life.

The Internet is no different from real life, but we’re being sold on the idea that it is. We’re being sold that online social networks can help us sell, and we’re being told we can do it in an anti-social way.

Go for Brooke

The great thing about this exercise is that you can replicate it over and over, and you’ll always get the same results. Selling and self promotion do not work here.

In fact, selling and spamming have become so common and so unacceptable that some savvy groups, like Brian Carroll’s B2B Lead Generation Roundtable, have decided to try and stop it.

Brooke Bower moderates Carroll’s B2B group and she recently posted this warning to its members:

Blatant self promotion, job postings, spam or topics not related to B2B lead generation will be removed. If you post off topic again, you will be removed from the group.

Good for you, Brooke. Let’s keep the discussions in “Discussions” and move the anti-social behavior somewhere else.

How big a hit? Well in just one year Bishop,the Director of the Ellensburg Downtown Association, tells us that the Ellensburg MySpace page has grown to over 1,500 followers. Many of those are students from nearby Central Washington University who were not “finding” the downtown merchants before. (They also host an Ellensburg Facebook page). Now, student welcome bags at CWU include a key chain with EDA’s MySpace address. Bishop told us:

In the past the students would finally discover downtown in their junior or senior year. Now we build relationships with them from Day One.

And, those relationships work both ways. Tallee.com, a software developer, had just re-located to downtown Ellensburg. They advertised for employees in student newspapers and talked their jobs up to professors, but they didn’t get enough applicants. However, after posting their jobs on Ellensburg’s MySpace page they got an instantaneous response – and hired 5 new employees from the college!

Timothy also noted EDA’s new partnership with the nearby university’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) “and for the next 8 months they’ll be working with us to help tell Downtown Ellensburg’s success stories.”

Bishop has been described as an arsonist of ideas. Now he’s reaching out getting students and many other folks to start publicity and networking fires for him.

“Timothy Bishop doesn’t go out and rebuild downtowns. He is an arson who lights fires in the hearts and minds of downtown citizens.” – Pug Ostling

How else are downtowns revitalizing their communities by working the social media side of the street? Well, look for the Asheville Downtown Association on Facebook – or better yet, check out @SpudBros on Twitter. Spud Brothers sells “just maybe the world’s greatest fries” – no easy task in health conscious downtown Boulder, Colorado. How are they doing it? Well, one way is by giving discounts to their nearby University of Colorado Twitter followers.

Downtown associations and businesses all over the country are revitalizing by using social networks. Yes, there are a million stories in the “Networked City.” These have been just a few of them. Just ask Timothy. Our money’s still on The Bishop.

Editor’s Note: We’ve written several other articles about the Ellensburg Downtown Association on this blog. Do a search for “Ellensburg” or click here and read the next most recent, “My Money’s on the Bishop.”

Everyone has been publishing their “Best Of” lists for 2008. We’d like to suggest a “Blog of the Year for 2009.” Yes, this year, in a tailspin economy you’re going to need more than a voice about how to make bucks. You’ll need a voice about how to act.

The Trust Matters blog would tell you that Charles Green is:

…founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. The author of Trust-based Selling and co-author of The Trusted Advisor, he has spoken to, consulted for or done seminars about trusted relationships in business for a wide and global range of industries and functions.

Actually Mr. Green is a moral compass in worlds gone mad – the world of selling, the online world and the world of business ethics (which is not, in his world, an oxymoron).

Want a few examples? Here he is on social networking:

Just as email is getting overwhelmed by spam, there is a surfeit of those who collect Linked-In contacts; who enjoy applying the still-latent meaning in the word “friend” to 700 such people on FaceBook; and generally those who wish to find a shortcut to relationships and to sales.

If you think he’s just standing on the sidelines barking at the future – not so. He’s as involved in the online world and the need for change as anyone. Here he is on the concept of “Built to Last“:

The point is not to last. The point is to do great things for all your constituents. Where continued existence helps, great. Otherwise, standing water stagnates. The visionary thing works; but these days, the vision had better be to change, morph, grow, evolve, turnover, shift.

He asks a lot of his readers, insisting they bring their brains along with them. In taking on the bestselling book and movie “The Secret” he even uses words like “logic” and “syllogism” and “necessary condition“:

If dreaming big were a sufficient condition, every dreamer would win the lottery. If mere willpower were enough to win American Idol, the parade of early season misfits would be in the finals. Simon Cowell’s role is to remind us all that talent and hard work matter too. We love to hate him because we want to believe those self help books are enough—if you just dream hard enough!

The online world is full of pop-up ads, pretenders and even Christmas Eve sales offers. In a world where Twitter spammers masquerade as your friend, LinkedIn hosts too many PitchedIn’s and Facebook is a “Beacon” to privacy invasion – this blog is fresh Web 2.0 air.

Last year we ended the year telling you about a wonderfully readable blog from Sarah Moffett. This year it’s Trust Matters.

In Trust Matters, Charles Green says he tries to “do my best to offer you a consistent diet of thoughtful, provocative ideas from my own work and from that of others.” He does much more than that. He keeps track of our better instincts – in a world that continues to tempt us to our worst.

Last week Mark Sanborn took on that topic as he thanked and challenged philanthropists, volunteers and students who make Leader’s Challenge a reality.

(Leader’s Challenge is a variety of participatory learning programs for high school students called Ignite, Global Challenge and Colorado Close Up. They’re all designed to get students more involved in their community, government and world).

To be fair, Mr. Sanborn, whose speech was called “High Impact Leadership,” may not have completely been focusing on the topic of “text messaging.”

But, he did ask everyone in the audience a related question, “How many of us are trying something new.”

You see, today, years after it came into vogue with young people, still only a tiny fraction of adults know how to “text” their daughters, sons, nieces and grandchildren from their phones.

Try something new?! Certainly, that’s what Erin Riska and the staff at Ignite program at Leader’s Challenge had to do. She told us:

Students don’t really check their email that much anymore. Instead, they text each and check their Facebook accounts. So, if we in the Leader’s Challenge office were going to be able to reach them, we had to change our own behavior.”

In 2007, Leader’s Challenge raised $440,000 to support their new and inventive programs for young people. This year, they’re on their way to another successful fundraising campaign.

Mark Sanborn was thanking the audience last week for a job well done. A job that invests in the power and promise of the next generation.

John Maxwell has said that “Leadership is influence.” Mark suggested that we need to add one crucial word to that definition – “Leadership is positive influence,” he told us.

Sanborn’s best example of “Positive Influence?” Irwin McManus, the pastor of the Mosaic Church in Los Angeles, who has said:

We spend so much time worrying about our kids being good – not breaking the rules, getting into trouble, and basically behaving  – that we often forget to invite them to be great.

At Leader’s Challenge, they’re doing exactly that. And if you know of ways to help them raise more money, just suggest something new. I’m sure they’ll be willing to give it a whirl.

I asked him last week for one piece of advice to folks new to the Twitter world. “Be interesting,” he told me, without missing a beat.

What’s interesting about Dave Taylor is that he doesn’t really think about how he “uses” Twitter. He’s just using it – genuinely and without much guile.

Humble Self-Promotion

Sure, Taylor does use Twitter for what you’d call “business purposes.”

Even so, you’d almost never know from his Twitter messages that he is the author of tons of books and a myriad of blogs. You also might miss that he’s a sought-after keynote speaker.

Aw’ C’mon Dad, Can’t We Get Another Puppy?

Taylor also writes a parenting blog. And yes, on Twitter he does write about his own and his family’s life – in 140 characters or less. He does so in a poignant, fluid way that almost seems stream of consciousness. He told me it’s not:

Well, actually,  I suggest that I am very conscious of how I do this. I write about my kids in the abstract. I never name them. If they are in a pissy mood, I don’t explain why. I often do this because I’m a single dad with 3 kids and I get tired, stressed or frustrated. On Twitter other parents will see this and they may reassure me, tell me ‘it will pass’ or give me suggestions.

The Pied Piper of Boulder

By far the most interesting thing Taylor does on Twitter is to get real people together for real events. You heard me right. Follow him on Twitter and you’re more likely to get invited to coffee or a movie than you are to hear about how great he is.

Sometimes he invites people on the spur of the moment:

“Considering 2:20pm matinée of Max Payne at Westminister 24 theater today. Anyone want to join me?“

Sometimes he organizes larger, more planned get-togethers:

“Hey local Coloradoans: I’m thinking of hosting a dinner & movie in Denver next week to see “Slumdog Millionaire”. Who’s in??”

You have only to scan a few Twitter entries to realize how rare that is. Instead of holing up in his basement, he’s connecting people – not just virtually, but also in real life.

For all of this, Dave Taylor is fairly uninterested in the technology and the hubbub surrounding Twitter – calling it “just the tool of the moment.” And, he’s fairly grounded when it comes to the personal lines he draws:

I have always approached social networks as “social” networks. But, I keep the Company Christmas Party in mind. Sure, I have fun, but I never go beyond a certain point. You don’t want to have something that will embarrass you in the morning.

So, Dave Taylor’s advice if you’re going to your company Christmas party this year? “Be interesting.”

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?!