Joe Budde Jr.

So, i stumbled upon an older post from Tom, talking about how amazing it is that machines can speak to humans using regular old English on a human conversation platform like twitter.

He says the coolest part is that:

“We’re no longer necessarily anthropomorphising machines into people, but treating their digital incarnations as readily-understood metaphors.”

Amazing, machines aren’t people, but they are digital ‘beings’ that have information to pass along. Oh, the potential uses!.  Earlier, I wrote a post about how London’s Tower Bridge updates twitter to tell us what it is doing. 

But if we take the concept a bit farther in terms of implementation, our machines could be set up to communicate with us in so many productive ways:

• Hydraulic systems can notify us when they need more fluid
• Cars could send tweets for broken belts, hoses and other items
• Inventory systems could notify managers of high/low levels of inventory
• Ovens or stove tops could let us know that they have been on too long
• My personal favorite: If it is Friday night and its past midnight and your alarm is still set, i want a twitter message coming my way that says “HEY! Turn your alarm off, you will be happier tomorrow morning!”  Or for a more in depth conversation with your alarm clock check out Chris’ post on “things that IM.”

I only start these lists so that I can hear from you. I want to know what you would want machines to tell you.  Leave a comment about your future conversation with a machine and lets grow this list together!

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Two months ago, I laid out my goals and objectives with the intent to revisit them occasionally and measure my progress. I will measure myself against each goal in a Achieved, Partially Achieved, and Not Achieved scale.  Have I hit my goals over the past two months? Lets take a look together.

Analysis of My Goals:

Meet one new contact each week

I met several folks over the past eight weeks. From going to Nigeria and meeting a dozen new contacts to going to several parties at work I was able to meet enough new contacts to achieve my goal:  Goal Status - Achieved!

Write a post at least once a week

So over the past 8 weeks I wrote 5 posts.  Sure I have more drafts in wordpress than I can edit fast enough, but hey, its all about that publish button!  Seems like an area to improve in for me. Since I got over half way to hitting this goal, ill be generous and give this goal an in-between status:  Goal Status - Partially Achieved

Be involved in the local online community

I worked with Daniel Johnson Jr. in August to come up with a new location for the quickly growing New Media Cincinnati meet-up group. Wifi was a must so that narrows the search quite a bit.  But we came to consensus on Buffalo Wild Wings in Hyde Park!  Free wifi, great food and a wonderful group to get educated about new media.  The next meeting is on September 20th from 2-4p. Come check it out! Goal Status - Achieved!

Teach at least 2 people the ins and outs of social media at work

Well, I must say that I did teach social media to two Nigerians. I also spent some time teaching my mentee at work about how to use an RSS reader to create a customized newspaper. However, this is a goal that needs reworked. I didn’t set a time frame for accomplishing this goal. So in the coming months, I wish to teach at least two people per month.  Goal Status - Achieved!

Conclusion

After two months, I have achieved three of the four goals I set!  Also, I reworked my last goal to include a time frame. It has been great the past two months thinking constantly about my goals especially knowing that I would revisit them in a public forum and be held accountable to YOU!  I wont let you down the next time I revisit my goals.  Next time I measure vs. my baseline, I will take a look at my objectives.  

What do you do to set goals? How do you measure and then action them?

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The first 11 days of August in Jos, Nigeria on a missions trip. I figured some folks would have questions about the trip so I hope I can answer some here.  On twitter I asked if anyone had any questions about my trip and a few folks responded with questions like: 

Viscape @joebuddejr: What are the must-see/must-do things there? Anything that surprised you?

Another friend asked me: What was best part about visiting Nigeria? 

So withour further adieu, here are my responses:

What are the must-see/must-do things there?

We spent our time in Jos, Nigeria which is 3 hours north east of Abuja. The area is beautiful, you must go on a hike up some of the volcanic rocks for spectacular views.  You must also experience the traffic. Cars are bumper to bumper during rush hours, and the spaces between cars is filled with Nigerian taxis.  What is a Nigerian Taxi?  Well, lets just say a taxi in nigeria is a small motorcycle with several people on it.  One taxi we saw was driving a man with a queen sized mattress on his head. 

Anything that surprised you about Nigeria?

Yes. The people were amazing. Loving, caring, gracious.  They listened so intently when you conversed and were able to translate what they were learning into action.  I think that it was such a lesson for people who are looking to connect to others using social media. Don’t read things, listen while reading.  Digest the content and then engage with the person behind the content!

What was best part about visiting Nigeria?

There were three great things. 

1. Hanging out with the kids who called you auntie and uncle (its like Mr. or Mrs. in the USA) was wonderful developing such close relationships in just under 4 days.  I miss the kids, especially my good friend Kure. Who helped me shovel and move a huge pile of Nigerian dirt.
2. Teaching social media to a pair of Nigerians starting their own IT business. 
3. The beauty of the Nigerian Plateau State.  The views, the rocks, the sky. Everything had such different color tones than anything I had ever seen in the USA, Germany, France, Ireland or Scotland. 

Answering these questions in a small form like this was difficult for such a long, amazing and experience filled trip.  So, if anyone has other questions just ask and I am happy to respond!

Other Posts From My Trip To Nigeria: 

• My Trip to Nigeria: How to Teach Social Media to a Nigerian
• More to come… 

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I am back! Boy is it nice to be back in the US! I really enjoy brushing my teeth with running water!  I spent the first week and a half of August in Nigeria with a group from my church helping missionaries interact and engage the community.  They tailored everyone’s trip to revolve around their skills so I was asked to teach two nigerians programmers about social media. (We also got to hang out with some awesome kids, ala picture to the left) 

The goal: Teach them to find answers quickly and by accessing the existing network of support on the web.

My main skills are on the business/marketing end of how to manage a project, obtain users, listen to the market, and obtain feedback. All of these points make up Web-Strategy and are implemented through social media tools on the Internet. (Wikis, collaboration technologies, social networking, blogs and blogging platforms, RSS, feed readers, and twitter.)

So, with this knowledge I taught my new friends Victor and Daniel how to utilize the resources on the web to educate themselves on the web marketplace, programing trends, standards, and how to find the best and brightest on the web to assist them. 

It was great to see a couple of guys understand how Delicious (a social bookmarking site) was going to be a great place to answer all their questions about CSS, Graphic Design, or find a neat photo shop tutorial.  But even better than that was the capabilty to search offline with Google Gears.

The most awesome thing for them though was Google Gears attached to Google Reader.  They could run into a internet cafe with their PC, download 200 articles, and then head back to their non-wired homes to read and learn how to do everything from use photoshop, learn about taking pictures, or even how to code better. Easy, fast, low cost, high value - the best possible scenario for a developing community.

The ability to take the online offline with you may not seem like a big deal in the USA - where wireless access seems to be almost as easy as clean water, but for developing nations, Gears is the technology that will drive internet adoption for the next 30 years. 

How and where do you see google gears-esque technology making an impact in the developing world?

Other Posts From My Trip To Nigeria: 

• My Trip to Nigeria: How to Teach Social Media to a Nigerian
• My Trip to Nigeria: Experiences In Another Culture

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After my post about how content is not an means to generate revenue, Andrew Chen wrote a fantastic piece about the crisis in traditional media. In it he provides an excellent detailed view into the dying industry and speaks to what central issues are broken by saying the following:

The core competencies needed to succeed in digital media
If content becomes increasingly commoditized, and fragmented among many distribution vehicles, then what happens next? I’d argue that the new skills required to succeed in this era are NOT:

• Understanding how to best own/operate pipes, like cable systems, satellites, radio towers, etc
• Strong-arming partners and distribution to lock content into place
• Finding media synergies to cross-promote content and “make” hits

Although Andrew’s items may seem like the strategy is not focusing on driving revenue from the content, they are still strategies that focus on controlling the content. Media companies need to realize its about setting the content free and getting residual and higher margin revenue off of associated products. 

Do you think they will ever learn?  What frustrates you about media companies?

Photo: Suck in Customs

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