Mike Hollywood and I really like what we do, we work hard, bust ass all week and if I may say so myself, do some pretty innovative work in New Media at our communications agency. So when the week ends we congratulate ourselves with a cold frosty and shoot the shit about what is going on in our industry in regards to social and new media.  One week at a college’s farewell party we decided that we should start taping our Friday afternoons and share it with you, and thus #beerfridays was born. We are now 8 episodes in and don’t plan on stopping, we have no agenda other then to entertain (ourselves) and share some ideas, but the main reason we podcast is …. well… because we are the dorks on the New Media team!

Without further ado #BeerFridays!

The thoughts and opinions in #BeerFridays are our own and do not necessarily represent our employer.

Share on Facebook

That was easy!

Can’t wait to see what talented developers can do.

For details instructions on how to add to your blog check out this post by Diana Freedman:

http://ustandout.com/facebook/add-facebook-button-blog

Share on Facebook

It’s a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling “No”
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she’s hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
‘Cause she’s lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

It’s on America’s tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
‘Cause Lennon’s on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
‘Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It’s about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Thanks to @Boomshiddang for inviting me to Honk! and supplying the great pictures.

Thanks to everyone who helped put on Honk!

Thanks to David Bowie for your truly Absurd words.

-MA

Share on Facebook

I’m addicted to my Google Reader. It brings everything I could ever need right to my doorstep and helps me stay informed and up to date. I take pride in the amplitude of my reader and how well stocked I keep it. From time to time I’d like to tell you about the latest subscriptions that have made the grade and the people behind them.

This week’s RSS All-stars.

http://www.schneidermike.com/
Mike Schneider the man behind @schneidermike is a funny guy with lots of rich content on his blog.
I had the pleasure of meeting him for a quick second at the infamous #burritup and have been following him for a while on Twitter. It wasn’t until this week however that I checked out his blog. (Sorry Mike not sure what I was thinking!)
What I got was two great video’s that kept my attention, were funny and valuable to me as a new media marketer.
If you’re in Boston he is definitely a dude you should meet and wherever you are you should subscribe to his blog.

Mike is a strategic technology consultant focused on web content management, social media measurement and dual shore delivery models.

http://www.sparkminute.com/
I found sparkminute while doing a search for creative contests on Google. What I found was one of most interesting Mashable articles I’ve ever read. It was written by David Spark who happens to run a hilarious twitter handle and publish some great content on his blog.
His latest blog post was an excellently well done interview with Adam Curry of Mevio.com. I guess I’ve just got a thing right now for blogs with video.

David Spark is a journalist, consultant, producer, and owner of Spark Media Solutions, a firm that helps companies build voice through storytelling.

http://tomokeefe.com/
You most likely know TOK (Tom OKeefe) by his real name @BostonTweet. But if you think this knowledgeable local only knows burritos and beer you’re very wrong. Mr. OKeefe is an epic content producer yes but he also knows his social media. There are some great insights on his blog and interesting information on his many projects.

Tom O’Keefe is based in Boston, MA and is the Twitterer behind BostonTweet, VP of Business Development for Sayagle, founder of Bizak and c0-founder of infoMedMD.

http://www.yifeizhang.com/
Yifei (Pronounced E-Fay) is a young guy with a killer attitude. Already a serial entrepreneur in his early 20’s Yifei is producing some content to take notice of on his blog. Yifei most recently started hosting DartBoston family dinners. The next one will be this Friday at Tupelo.

Have you heard of these guys? Do you think they are relevant like me or are they all hogwash? Please comment and feel free to add you own great RSS feeds.

-MA

Share on Facebook

The team at DartBoston.com is Absurdly Digital.

DartBoston’s Pokin’ Holes is a live Boston based video podcast spotlighting young entrepreneurs. You can come join the shows studio audience at a unique Boston venue each Thursday night or watch the show live on Ustream.com (provided they finagle internet access).

The hour or so show picks one lucky entrepreneur to pitch his idea/company to a panel of three specialists. After the pitch the panelist take questions from Dart’s ring leader Cort Johnson. The panel then takes turns dissecting the entrepreneurs idea piece by piece while the subjects sits silent in the audience.

Jake Cacciapaglia handles the technical aspects of the live show, which is done with great quality lighting, video, and sound depending on the venue. Outside of the aspects of the actual show the real magic happens by their ability to organize, promote, and recruit through new media. Using their website as a hub Dart has built a vibrant community through their team’s word-of-mouth and Twitter networks.

This community is becoming an important piece of the Boston social media scene. Each week the show brings together and builds relationships between some the best and brightest Bostonians. The show is able to bring in lots of people to the production and provide value to all. The entrepreneurs get real, valuable consulting, the panelists get great recognition, and the studio audience gets to have a blast.

DartBoston and Pokin holes are an excellent example of the power of community and new media tools. They are special because of their youth and welcoming attitudes. I can’t wait to watch their network expand and be part of the fun.

Is there any other organization bringing together young professionals and new media like this in Boston or anywhere else?

-Marcus

Share on Facebook

My mom is an excellent cook! I wanted to share her (not so secret anymore) squash soup recipe.  Its an adventure in a pan. If you need help mention @rutabegus on Twitter and she will fill in the details.

Thanks mama

Mom’s Squash Soup

Start a couple hours before you want to serve.

Roast a butternut squash in the oven for about 45 – 60 minutes at 375 degrees. Stab it with a knife (to allow the steam to escape or just for fun) before you put it in.

Coarsely chop an onion, a small thumb of ginger and 3 cloves garlic. I like to add half a jalapeno for some kick. An apple (optional) adds sweetness and flavor.

After the squash comes out and is cool enough, remove the skin and seeds, and chop it up. Blend it together with the other ingredients you have chopped. You’ll need to add enough liquid – milk or water – I prefer milk because it is richest, so that it blends easily. After blending, pour the mixture into a sauce pan and heat it to the temperature you want to serve. You may need to add more milk or water to get the consistency right. Optional ingredients include diced red pepper or chopped walnuts. You can serve it with a garnish of sour cream/cilantro.

Enjoy!

Mom

Share on Facebook

I love my Subaru Outback, mainly because I can take it anywhere, put anything in it or on it and it runs like a charm. Something else I love about it is the digital dashboard display. This display tells me things like, how long my drive time is, my avg. MPG’s and how hot it is outside. Each day on my commute home I try and shave minutes off my drive time or I take different ways home to see if that changes the avg. MPG and the display lets me measure all of this. It’s really entertaining and adds big value to my driving experience. The cool thing is, that this idea can be applied anywhere. For instance the Nike+ product is a great way to combine product and statistics. When applied to a website, especially one that has members who are working towards a goal the idea gets very interesting. Even if the task isn’t epic in nature, the more statistics you can give to a user relating to the task, the more enjoyment the user will get. What I’m saying is why not share all those metrics you capture for your clients with your members? You all ready have the information, so why not give your users some bonus value? They will appreciate this. This also means the user will spend more time on the site, talk to more people about it, tell their friends to join, tweet/blog about it… and well you get the point.

Share on Facebook

img_0759
Originally uploaded by mandrews33

I pass this site the street artists Shepard Fairey “bombed” on my way home from work everyday. I finally stopped to take a better look. That is my lovely mother in front of the anti-war image. She came to visit last month.
-Marcus

Share on Facebook

If you Twitter search WOM and Social Media together, you find a plethora of bad information, with the occasional buried nugget. So why is there so much confusion around what WOM is and what social media is? Because the two are often synonymous, they are however fundamentally different.

WOM is the viral spread of communication, whether it be online or off, when a person tells someone else about something its word-of-mouth. Social Media is a reference to the new set of tools that communicators (everyone) are using to transfer information, the poster child of which is the social network.

When we learned that info spreads like butter in a social network, we deemed it the social media, many-to-may revolution. The many-to-many concept is really good ol’ fashioned word-of-mouth. The tools of social media just act to excite the process because it is so easy and fun to transfer information in social networks. That’s why social media is such an attractive lil ditty to the WOM marketer. It is only one peice of the puzzle for the WOM marketer however. Studies show that offline recommendations and WOM generate more leads for business then online WOM. If done right though online WOM generates offline WOM. This is the WOM marketers holy grail and why it social media is so so attractive. But not unlike chasing that dream girl it is hard to accomplish this feat.

Hope this subtracts from the WOM vs Social Media ideas, what do you think?

Thanks dragonhawk for the picture

Share on Facebook

Dave fleet wrote a blog post recently about how he doesn’t care how long you have been on Twitter. In the post he talks about how people who have been on Twitter a long time don’t appreciate those who are new to Twitter and that these newbs are soiling the sanctity of Twitter (paraphrasing). A comment on his post rationalized the situation to when people love a new band so much they tell all there friends but when the band gets big they call them “sellouts”.

For the record I agree with Dave’s ideals about how Twitter should be used: to start conversations and post relevant content. However I will never get into how Twitter should or shouldn’t be used in this blog. I will though attempt to tackle the cultural aspects of Twitter.

So this commentary from the earlier Twits is a direct testament to the competitive nature of Twitter. There is a large portion of Twitterati that enjoy stroking their ego with the fact that they have more followers then you and have joined before Oprah or whoever. Many of these people consider themselves heavy weights in the social media sphere. Social Media “experts” if you will. Most of these experts have blogs and many are over 25. These people have been on Twitter since 2007, so they obviously aren’t riding the wave they know a great new social media platform when they see it right? S o they are experts right?

The problem is that anyone over 25 has the distinct social media disadvantage of going though college in the pre-Facebook days. That’s right your average 22/23 year-old has been on Facebook the largest and most influential social network for FIVE years. During those five years they sat shotgun while Facebook grew up. This is Gen Y’s claim to fame and why they are so important.

So let me play Devils advocate for a second. You’re a small business looking to hire a social media consultant, associate or expert. Who do you hire?

A: The “seasoned” social media consultant who has been on Facebook for 3 years Twitter for one and had a blog for 3 years. Who can write well, talk business, has a lot of connections and requires a hefty hourly rate.
Or
B: The recent college graduate who has been on Facebook for 5 years had a blog for one and been on Twitter for 8 months. Who may be a little rough around the edges, not very business savvy but brings original creative ideas to the table.

??????

There is probably no right answer. But what is a great bet is whichever one claims to be a social media expert, has already lied to you 5 or 6 times since meeting you. I know who the social media experts are: they have names like Mark, Biz, Kevin, Tom and Guy. Everyone else is just trying to figure it out.
If you’re a small business go with the personal that you trust. Experience is absolutely irrelevant when it comes to hiring a social media person.
-MA

Can you disagree? Can a 33 year old be more experienced in social media than a 23 year old?

Thanks Jgarber for the pic
And Whiteafrican

Share on Facebook