Geek & Mild by Sean Sperte

People of the Internet

The internet is awesome. Actually, no. The people of the internet are awesome. The reason I know this is because last week I attended two conferences where I got to be with a lot of them. Some I’d just met, but some I’d been following for years – even a decade or more.

That term: following. I used it a lot over the last six days. “I’ve been following you for a long time.”

I said it to Shaun Inman, Dave Shea, Cameron Moll, Tom Watson (well, his wife, actually), Drew Warkentin, Jeff Sheldon, Sean Ferrell, Paul Armstrong, and many others. What I realized is that I’d been “following” these people long before Twitter, so the statement sounded trite and didn’t communicate the level of respect I have them. What I wanted to tell them, actually, was that their work had inspired and mentored me from afar.

Circles Conference was held in Dallas and organized by Ismael Burciaga. Its emphasis was on creativity, design, and art – and, ultimately, the inspiration of all those things. The talks themselves were great, and I enjoyed hearing from every speaker. But I was more inspired by meeting and speaking with the people who made up the conference. For instance:

• Tiffany Duening
• Andy Rossi
• Maigan Sawyer
• Ryan Hartsock
• Chris David G
• Alex Grigas
• Megan Gray
• Evie Shaffer
• Dave Onkels

Just click through some of those profiles, Dribbble accounts, blogs, etc. You can’t help but be inspired.

The same was true of XOXO – which I sort of see as a gathering of artists and inventors (a gross over generalization, I know). The “d-word” (disruption) was used sparingly, but the idea permeated almost every talk and discussion. To what end? Not surprisingly, almost every talk touched on the idea of community – people coming together.

Some of the wonderful people I met at XOXO:

• Matthew Anderson
• Nathan de Vries and Ros Hodgekiss
• Chris Messina and Brynn Evans
• Thor and Amy Muller
• Sonaar Luthra
• Mike Rugnetta (why this guy doesn’t have more followers is crazy to me)
• and many others…

So, for me, if I had any takeaways from the two conferences, they almost certainly all collide in the intersection between community, creativity, disruption, and people – particularly the people who make the internet.

People are awesome. That’s my big revelation from this past week. No duh, right?

25-Sep 2013

On #hashtags

Every time I read a geek opine about social trends it reminds me of Maciej Ceglowski’s post from a few years ago entitled The Social Graph is Neither. His main assertion was that we are a bunch of admittedly non-social engineers designing and building software – social networks – for a system that is so wildly complex that it cannot be graphed. What’s so entertaining to me, is not only do we attempt to design, build, and graph it, we also love to criticize it.

A couple of years ago, when hashtags first started appearing in my Twitter timeline, I just sort of shrugged them off. I couldn’t see their value through the visual damage they imposed. Even today, I have a hard time #taking #anyone #seriously when they use more than one or two #hashtags for a #single #tweet – mostly because they just look bad.

Daniel Victor recently wrote about this, saying he believes “a tweet free of hashtags is more pleasing to the eye, more easily consumed, and thus more likely to be retweeted (which is a proven way of growing your audience)”.

Now here’s where I have to admit I have come to realize three important facts about hashtags:

1. Hashtags are used by both users and marketers. Like it or not, you cannot deny usage of hashtags is on the rise. The most compelling thing about this is that hashtags weren’t created as a marketing tactic, yet their use has demanded marketer adoption.

2. Hashtags do have great potential. Even in their most basic form – for taxonomy – hashtags can trump inferral through machines. No one knows better what they’re saying than the person saying it.

3. Hashtags actually do increase engagement. It may be tough to recognize through subjectivity, but the reality is, hashtags provide a mechanism for easier discovery, encourage brevity, promote a single key binding for disparate data, and even help inject tone/personality.

Those three factors are so strong, in fact, that I co-founded a company that basically attempts to reconcile them with my inherent distain for the way hashtags look. At Tagboard, we’re building tools that help both users and marketers use hashtags in a way that benefits both parties.

My opinion of hashtags is admitted bias, and equally manic. The thrust of my argument against hashtags is rooted in my design sense, while the engineer in me sees the yet-unrealized potential they have. Meanwhile, Sensible Sean sees hashtags as just harmless and fun.

28-Mar 2013

Marketers are liars, not makers

When Seth Godin talks, I usually listen. I’ve read his books and follow (albeit loosely) his blog. So when a bunch of my peers began linking to a post of his yesterday, along with negative commentary, I was immediately interested.

His post is titled “How to make a website: a tactical guide for marketers”, and if ever there was a list of bad starts of blogs posts, that one has to rank up there. I’ll explain why in a bit.

The post outlines various techniques Godin uses to make a website – including copy/pasting elements from other sites in Keynote. Obviously, this isn’t a website, so the last step in Godin’s tactical guide is “Hand the Keynote doc to your developers and go away…”

His expertise in marketing notwithstanding, this advice for how to ‘make a website’ is terrible. I appreciate Godin’s attempt at demystifying the process, and I recognize that giving practical advice for how marketers can work with their teams has great potential benefit. However, he would have done better to avoid the use of the words ‘make’ or ‘build’ altogether, and instead outlined how marketers can learn to make purposeful, high-level design decisions.

Godin argues that most of the web is built by amateurs. And in what could be considered a followup post, goes on to say the “best professionals love it when a passionate amateur shows up” – and, of course, uses a couple of comparisons, like farmers and automotive mechanics.

The problem with Godin’s perspective (and comparisons) is he thinks marketers are builders. He says “professional farmers don’t begrudge the backyard gardener his tomato harvest. That’s silly.” And, he’s right, because the backyard gardener is just that: a gardener. If, however, that gardener was a marketer who didn’t know anything about the science of growing vegetables, but who was growing them (in spite of himself) and selling them on the open market, and competing for market- and mind-share with reputable farmers…

Well, let’s just say I disagree that marketers ‘make websites’. They may be part of the process, but to suggest they can just throw together a slide deck and hand it off to a developer, and say they’re ‘building the web’ … that is silly. Marketers are liars, not makers.

24-Dec 2012

Ichiro

After watching Ichiro play against the Mariners for the first time last night, I sat on my couch reading the reaction of Seattle sports fans on the web. I came across this piece on Tumblr: There Was No Joy In The Emerald City. The author says:

I feel shorted as a baseball fan today. The game was better when Ichiro was ominously roaming the right field region at Safeco Field. It was a welcome dose of predictability in an unpredictable game.

I think this expresses well the overall sentiment in Seattle. We’re all just sort of reeling. Happy for Ichiro? Sure. He has a much better shot at getting a championship ring now. But he was a part of Seattle culture – as much as an athlete can up here. We had Ichiro bobble-head nights at Safeco Field, local commercials with every day workers mimicking his at-bat stance, and the “ICH-EE-RO” chant. Not to mention his face and name plastered all over the city – especially at the stadium.

It was by Ichiro’s request, I understand. That the Mariners received a couple of minor leaguer pitchers in trade underscores this: the Mariners made the decision in order to honor Ichiro. That part of the story is great, and I wish Ichiro well. I really do. I’ll be rooting for him and his new team – hopefully all the way through the World Series.

There were also business and internal culture reasons the Mariners made the trade. Ichiro’s salary and veteran overhead are now cleared, making way for the youngsters to step up. That part I can understand, too. That’s baseball. That’s the game.

The part that stings, and the part I’m so frustrated by, is that Seattle continues to be burned by our sports organizations, who, in their attempt at trying to produce winning teams, keep messing with established culture; always looking to the future. They fail to understand the external, brand impact. They’re trying to make Yankee-like decisions in a non-Yankee city.

Here’s a news flash for Northwest sports teams: your fans aren’t really fans. We’re more like casual spectators, at best. If you want to win us over – have our money – you have to appeal to our emotions.

This is why, when we’re winning, Seattle gets really into it. Winning feels good. But after the winning season(s) ends, what’s left to get emotional about? I’ll tell you what: the brand – which is best represented by the players.

There might be a small segment of true fans, season ticket holders, and die-hards who were born here and have no choice but to take pride in their local professional teams. But those segments only make up an average attendance – for the Mariners – that equals the fifth-worst in the league. Not enough.

Seattle sports culture extends beyond the small amount of actual fans. It goes to the living room, coffee house, and neighborhood community, where the majority of people now can’t name a Mariners player on the roster.

24-Jul 2012