“To achieve success in the United States a man must be able to do two things well. First, he must be able to think and speak on his feet with conviction, and secondly, he must be able to write a good letter.” – Charles Willeford (1958)

via quote of the day – danger smells like clean socks.

Last week when I took a long bike to work I stumbled upon an amazing garden on the East end of Balboa Park. I had to stop snap some photos:

This garden is quintessentially San Diego. You can find the garden here:

I’ve always stopped at the fountain in front of the Rueben Fleet Science Center, but the bridge over Park Blvd takes you to the above park.

9 months pregnant. Roe is due in just a few weeks.Tara is uncomfortable and she is “R E A D Y”.

We’re all excited. Ashby attended a “Big Sister Class” yesterday. It makes her feel special and was nice for her to hear from others what to expect.  Tara is still running a couple miles a few days a week. As you might imagine, she gets a lot of looks.

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• 19 Miles Run 3 Miles Biked (oblogn.com)

Kind of a slow running week. I over did my runs early on in the week and I‘ve had problems with my left calf and achilles tendon for most of this week. So, I took it easy on my feet and used my bike more than usual.

I ran 7 miles today. My pace time was 9:36 minute miles. Euh, not exactly what I had hoped for, but given my lack of running this week I’m ok with the performance. It was a nice run that circumvented Coranado. It rained off and on the entire time, which felt great.  My training this week:

^ Click it. Click it. ^ Thaaank you Cornify. There is also a browser bookmarklet for adding Unicorns and Rainbows to any site you visit.

@cshirky: http://www.cornify.com/ Teh awesome. The internet is done, we can all go home and congratulate ourselves on a job well done.

Awesome! Learn how to leverage the word of mouth passionate grass roots landscape of 2.0. I’ve registered. Have you!? This is from DamienH. Titter titter…. 🙂 Obviously this extends my previous Social Media Expert post.

Last week I miscounted my miles. I ran 14 miles and biked 9, not 19 run. This week I did run 19 miles and also biked 3. I know, I’ve got to get my bike out more.

The longest run I’ve done to date, in my life I believe, was this last Saturday when I ran 6 miles with West Coast Roadrunners along San Diego harbor. My pace was 9:28/miles. My last 5 miles were all right around 9:10. Basically, I’ve shaved 2 minutes off my pace in the last 4 weeks.

My training schedule this week:

I’ve been using Tara’s Garmin Forerunner 405 for tracking my pace, distance, splits, etc….  The hardware is excellent. The software is crap. I spent an hour and half trying to get the damn thing to sync my runs and maps to my computer before I gave up. 😦

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• 19 Miles Run, 9 Miles Biked (oblogn.com)
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Damien Howley created this image in jest:

The proliferation of social media “experts” amuses me too. Evidently if a person has registered accounts at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress, etc…, and records videos of oneself this makes them an expert in social media. Yay! Well, no. Actually, this makes you a software user. Gold star!

Are you really an expert in social media? How does one know? Here are some indicators:

1. You have successfully launched, at least, one product employing primarily, or entirely, Internet tools.
2. You created global appeal for this product.
3. You did this with little to no budget for advertising, marketing and PR.
4. You’ve launched and nurtured, at least, a few online communities to success. Success can come in a couple forms. Success doesn’t necessarily mean the community has upwards of thousand or tens of thousands in daily unique visits; although, this is a pretty clear indication you did well. An alternative indicator of success to the aforementioned site traffic metric is that the community captured a significant percentage of the overall population of given interest group. Basically, you’ve got to be in the top couple, which for some interest groups could be small.
5. If the previous metric you selected for success was traffic then it is the case the traffic is 75%+ organic. Store bought stumbles or huge ad budgets don’t count.

Bonus:

1. Traditional media and publishers consult you on product and site launches.
2. You know the meaning of hyperlocal and understand what’s meant by “faces and names”.
3. You are a regular listener of “On The Media” (I love plugging OTM 🙂

Factors that do not indicate you are an “expert” in social media:

1. Saying you are a social media expert.
2. Again, using social software tools doesn’t make you an expert any more than driving a car makes you an automotive expert.
3. Having hundreds or thousands of followers on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites. This likely means you’re, at least,  a mildly attractive female or that you are someone others  want something from and it’s a near certainty it is not your wisdom of monetizing online social and media tools.

If you’re still wondering if you or someone you know is a social media expert watch this video:

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I authored a substantive article on the evolution of consumer social media tools into new enterprise software tools at the MindTouch blog. I put some sweat into this one. Give it a read.

There can be no doubt that one of the hottest spaces in enterprise software today is collaboration. It’s no surprise collaboration is getting a lot of interest. The old metaphors for capturing, authoring and sharing information are stale and inefficient. As such, there is a lot of room for achieving productivity improvements through improved user experience. This has been true for all software, but especially so in the enterprise software space where collaboration is essential to daily operation and where every ounce of productivity translates into big dollars.

In the last several years a software renaissance has been taking place in the consumer space that has begun seeping into, and benefiting, business and enterprise systems. The innovation in software during this renaissance, more commonly referred to as Web 2.0, has been almost entirely about improving user experience metaphors. AJAX, new social metaphors, lessening of the file/file system metaphor, making structure implicit rather than explicit and just generally simplifying user interfaces are all trends evidenced in this new wave of software. While most pundits think “Web 2.0” has been about making the Web participatory, enabling social connectedness and conversations these are but side effects of the improved ease of use and increased stickiness (fun of use) software has experienced.

via MindTouch, Inc Blog: Full Article.