Rivers of Thought
Life, Leadership, Business & Technology
I could have just as easily titled this post “An Old Dog Learns ANOTHER New Trick” (“An Old Dog Goes Back to High School“), but I really have quit taking notes at conferences. Instead I have crowdsourced this task. How, you ask, did I do that? With Twitter, of course (right now everyone reading this who is under 30 something is saying “Duh”)! Hey, keep in mind, I am a former COBOL programmer that once declared, “Real programmers don’t need mice!”, these lessons are a big deal!
In the past, I would dutifully scribble notes, sometimes pages and pages of notes. Later, I would go back and transcribe them (assuming I could actually read
them!). About a year ago, I got really technologically advanced and used my iPad to type notes, thus saving the transcription step. I still found that I would miss things because I was busy typing the previous nugget. (on this subject, don’t those people that use laptops with noisy keyboards to take notes incessantly throughout a conference just drive you nuts?).
Several weeks ago, I attend MIT’s CIO conference (#MITCIO) and decided I was going to try to use Twitter to take my notes. I set up a stream on Hootsuite to monitor the hashtag (jeez, three years ago I didn’t even know what a hashtag was, now I am using it in a sentence!). When one of the speakers or panelist said something that struck a chord with me, I tweeted it. Of course, there was a room of several hundred other people also tweeting. By monitoring the stream, I could see what others thought were important points, or see what comments someone might disagree with, or what thoughts were amplified through additional ideas. Since there were multiple tracks, I was even able to follow the comments from sessions I could not attend. Weeks later attendees are still adding thoughts to the dialogue. When I returned from the conference, I merely archived the stream and have my notes (and hundreds of others’ notes) to review for as long as I like.
As I write this, I am attending the Connected World Conference (#CWConf13) in Santa Clara. I have used the same crowdsourcing techniques to take notes at this conference. Talk about being connected! This morning I attended my first Tweet Chat. Peggy Smedley (@ConneectedWMag) of Connected World Magazine and the Peggy Smedley Show (www.PeggySmedleyShow.com) interviewed Mike Tinskey from Ford (@Ford) about their connected and electric cars. People could join live at the conference, on the web, or by following the conversation and posting questions on Twitter (#FordCW) or on the Tweetwall hosted on Tweetwally (http://fordtweetchatcw.tweetwally.com/) and presented to the live audience. It sure beat the old way of Q&A…of writing down your question to be handed to the speaker, or stepping up to the microphone to ask questions. Again, by archiving the stream, I have a permanent record to review later.
So what of the random thoughts, ideas, or actions that I didn’t want to share with the Twitter universe? Since I live in my in-box anyway, I just jumped over to Gmail and shot myself a quick email. All the follow up items are now sitting safely in my in-box and I don’t have to remember to go back and read my scribbles.
I think over time as more and more event planners adopt these strategies the process will improve even more. For example, I would love to see separate hashtags for each session. This would enable you to further organize your “notes”. Also, it would be great if events included the speaker’s Twitter handle and LinkedIn link in their bios to facilitate learning more of their thoughts and potentially continuing the dialogue. I would also like to see more events put their guides online, in e-book format or even in app format, that would enable clickable links.
Will I ever take notes again? Sure, most meetings aren’t appropriate to Tweet publicly and some conferences or events may not support the technology to make it possible or some sessions may not have the critical mass of attendees that tweet, but you can bet, when I can…I will.
If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.
Recently Seth Godin posted his 5000th blog post. Well, I am no Seth Godin, not nearly as prolific and far from as talented, but my blog just passed a milestone as well! Rivers of Thought just surpassed 5,000 views! 5,000 views – those can’t all be from my mom, either!
I started blogging over four and a half years ago (from People, Planet, Profit through One bourbon, One shot, One beer). I have learned a lot, not only about blogging (thanks Rachel!) but also about the various topics I’ve covered. Its been fun, its been challenging and its been rewarding.
The two posts that have drawn the most readers were Mow Your Lawn with a Lizard, describing my excitement over my new Neuton lawnmower and Living in a Virtual World, providing a recap of my experiences in an MIT Executive Learning Course. Both of these prove the value of having others link to your blog to drive traffic. While I am at it, you should know the posts that received the fewest views were It’s All Related , a post about how interconnected things are in the environment and The Lesser of Two Evils, about the dumping of gold mine waste (I don’t even think my mother read that one, it shows only one view, thanks honey!).
The theory that provocative titles drawn in readers can be seen in the hits on Do This in Remembrance of Me, Shades of Grey, and Jim Morrison – Environmentalist, all showing up in the most often read posts.
Trying to promote my eBook “Everything I Learned About Leadership, I Learned from Lewis and Clark” using my blog only showed mild success as it stands at the middle of the pack of readership.
Over the four and half years, I have written about my passions, including Information Technology (T Minus 12 Hours, 5 Things that Keep Me Up at Night), music (The Soundtrack of Our Lives, The World of Hip Hop), and the environment (Black Liquor, Put Your Hands Behind Your Head).
To all of you who have commented, thank you so much for your thoughts! To all of you who have read, thank you, I hope you found some useful tidbits. I am looking forward to continuing to share thoughts, ideas, and diatribes! As always…
If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.
If that were all it were, I would probably be OK with it. However, I do have a problem with it, not with bourbons, scotches or beers, mind you, but with trash, pounds and pounds of trash. 
A couple of times a week, we have to walk our 800 feet of road frontage and pick up trash. A couple of times a year, our neighbors have to join together to do a much larger clean up. Seriously, in this day and age, littering is still a problem?
The trash we pick up ranges from the Big Gulp Styrofoam cups, McDonald’s sacks, every imaginable brand of soft drink cans, to an unfathomable number of beer cans, beer bottles, vodka bottles, whiskey bottles, etc. etc. etc. For the record, these alcohol bottles are empty and thrown from cars…and we have an open container law? There is even one guy that must have a serious problem because we find an empty pint bottle of Jim Beam every Monday. I even sat behind a red pickup the other day, when the driver opened the window of his cab, stuffed a bag of McDonald’s trash out of it and threw it, not into the bed of his truck, but right on the side of the road. My honk, only drew a one fingered salute. Seriously?
We live in one of the most picturesque parts of our city. A few minutes east of one the largest shopping malls and one of the busiest intersections in the state, you descend into beautiful wooded valley. Trees overhang the road on both sides, a creek meanders through meadows and yards. It is quiet (except for the speeders who think it is a drag race, but that is ANOTHER post), it feels as if you are out in the country, not a part of a major metropolitan area.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ozVMxzNAA&w=420&h=315]
There are only a few houses in this area, so most of the cars are “passing through” on their way to one of the most affluent suburbs in the region. When I drive through those areas, I do not see roadside trash scattered on their manicured lawns, it seems as if, they have decided to literally trash our road instead of their own. Where do they think that trash goes? Who do they think cleans it up? (btw, some ends up in our rivers and streams see my previous post A Dishwasher, two hot water heaters, and a hide-a-bed ) Do they not care what it looks like to drive by miles of soft drink cups? Seriously?
I fantasize about tracking some of the litterers down and dumping their trash onto their lawn, but that would make me no better then them. I have thought about collecting the trash and building a monument for all to see, but then I would just have to look at it (and people would probably litter more). Seriously?
I really can’t think of a solution for ignorance. I can’t think of a way to make people care. Until then, we will continue to pick up after them and pray they don’t wrap their car around one of our trees. Seriously!
If anything you read here or in other posts strikes a chord, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter (@jtongici), find me on LinkedIn, or Google +.
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Insights is the weekly, thought-provoking newsletter from Jeffrey S. Ton.
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A different focus each week:
Leadership Thought – A lesson-learned, an insight shared
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Rivers of Thought – A more personal thought, observation or musing
