Twitter experiment results are coming soon- the summary is taking longer than I expected. It worked very well. Better than expected…The Renaissance is happening.

While I have an audience gathering I wanted to make a point of citing this really neat hacking post…it really shows how wonderful and how dangerous a position we all occupy and will also greatly improve your chances at winning online games. Seriously.

So, there you sit behind your terminal. Monitoring all traffic in and out, upgrading your latest snort IDS rules, patching your BSD box and drinking exotic beers. Not knowing that you are insecure due to the fact that you’ve installed WordPress, PHPBB or some other software package which can be abused to own your network. All this software had holes, others still do. Code vulnerabilities pop up like mushrooms and there is no way to patch all systems that run it. Everyday a dozen new exploits are released for open source or commercial software packages.

Master of Collisions

Most “social media” types, or even “normal people” will never interface with the old or new school hacking forces. I mean the really brilliant types that really don’t care if you do not know that hash is something other than a drug or a checksum has nothing to do with your checkbook or that Firefox is no longer secure and private as once thought…

Collider Class Ten

You have to have social collisions in order to grow and that is one of my rare talents. I am going to teach you how to be a master super collider. You will become more irritating, yet more humerous and magnetic…and like me you will get to know lots of important, famous, smart and wealthy people. Mistakes are valued and risk is appreciated and your life will be different.

Yes, for those that know me on a personal level, that is how I do it. I collide.

Diversity Trainer

I have worked in film, security, games, e-commerce and long ago I even worked in medicine. I have done some pretty neat stuff with brilliant people. I am good at many things because I can make connections most cannot. It can be a gift and it can be a curse.

Colliders Caused Brain Surgery

Do you want a carpenter doing your brain surgery? No. However, brain surgery started out with people holding saws and playing with drills. If the first guy hadn’t started drilling holes in someone’s head to relieve the pressure we wouldn’t be doing the incredible things we do now- like brain surgery.

Niche is Sweet but Generalists Are Humble

We now live in a world of niche and speciality. I am a generalist, so it is more of a curse by conventional measurement. My goal is to help you collide with others and increase your unique thought by virtue of being curious. Most people just aren’t curious.

What I am offering hasn’t been invented yet, or I am not educated enough to realize what it is. This is what makes it work. Education is powerful, but too much education means you forget how to “try” and remember it is more a long-term process.

Naturally there is something in it for me, several things actually. I want to see if I can replicate some of these traits and create a legion of colliders. This is different than an influencer.

A social collider would ask… Can we do this?

Most people would say no. A collider will do it anyway.

It is Like Candy

When chocolate and peanut butter came together the world got a Reese’s Cup. Who in the hell would have thought of putting them together would kick? I don’t know who did, but in the commercials it was usually some crazy collision and happened by accident as people fell down and required brain surgery.

I will increase your rate of having accidents and mistakes…and show you the wisdom in this. I am like you, very human and prone to error, but how I process errors is probably different.

Good Examples are Great

I will help you find great examples to weld into your thinking and conversations. For example, my new found communications’ wizard Ike Pigott writes the best damn quotes ever. I know I will not get close, but I will try and to show him how grateful I am. I might teach him monetization skills. Things might happen.

More Good but Not Great Quotes

“I want to invert social network theory and get the wrong people talking together!”

That is what I would say. Ike would say, and it is on his blog which you should read….

“Those who fail to re-examine the rules of the game get beaten before they know it. Don’t re-create the wheel, when what you should re-create is your perspective.” -Ike Pigott

Re-Create Your Perspective…that should be on a damn coffee mug and Ike should never have to put forth any money to get his messages into the stream.

Some Attempts at Precision

I will never be like Ike, but I can be unique and I am happy with that. In fact after reading the fragment on social networks I would say something gloomy like…

“The entire social network can be gamed, hacked, defaced, erased or spoofed at anytime at anyplace and you cannot defend against it all. It is software and peopleware vulnerable.”

Now my security friends are showing up all over Twitter.

Did I mention I know all kinds of important security people? I really do. It is a good thing too, because security is hard work and I prefer to spend my time just thinking. Imagine colliding with a mental giants who can solve all kinds of mathematical problems, but mostly like to sit around and read weird comics? I know many of these people and they are wicked smart, that is why they read comics.

You Get to Measure Yourself

Remember that motivations are many. There IS more too life than money, fame or power. Monetary gain is one form of measurement. You get to decide how you measure things. It is all relative and a matter of perspective.

Don’t let anyone tell you different. This is a natural side effect of unique thinking…in fact, one of the smartest colliders I know chooses to live in a house without running water in rural Appalachia.

I really appreciate every glass of water I get at his house! I have to get it from the well myself. He was talking about the stuff you read today ten years ago.

Brownian Motion Rocks

Think about that…All you need to do is spread the thought around and break your patterns. Once you do you can make remarkable and unusual observations like I do all the time. I am not a genius I simply know where to accidentally “fall” and my life is more interesting because of it. It appears to be brilliant.

You will get to meet rich, famous, and brilliant people if you wish…if it were anyone other than myself (who grew up poor, obscure, etc) I would be very skeptical. Skeptics are good. Skepticism is the foundation stone of a collider. This is your opportunity just listen and then act over the next weeks. I will tell you what to do.

Why Collide?

Because I am feeling lucky and I have to do things like this when that happens…I am even growing a new beard to celebrate my luckiness factor.

Steampunk style. It is a trend I have known about for some time. This is the kind of stuff you might be the first to discover.

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The TwitterCycle…as Cog Dog notes joining in April of 2007.

It was very cool being a part of “Fleep”, Chris Collin’s, “first epiphany” and doubly ironic since she has been such a positive force for me and I dedicated a Second Life Satellite Convention to her and other teachers and people who have had a positive influence on my life.

I have cited a sample below, but there are many, many more at the Twitter Cycle list and I urge you to take the time to read it.

• Heather Dowd - heza - Started tweeting (twittering?) in February 2008 after reading about Twitter before going to the IL-TCE conference (ICE - Illinois Computing Educators). I was thinking of giving it up, but maybe I will just stay on this curve. I think I am currently in the “who are all these contacts?” phase.
• Fleep Tuque http://twitter.com/fleep - First Tweet: March 11, 2007 First Epiphany: Crossing paths with Wayne Porter First Evangelizing to Educators: Posting on the SLED list Now closing in on 700 followers, have gotten much more selective about what I tweet. What felt like a conversation among friends or friends of friends now feels like a shouted conversation in a really crowded party where I know some of the people but not sure who all might be able to hear me. Still find it incredibly valuable, but not sure what I should be adding to the network.

 

• Antoine http://twitter.com/japonophile - First Tweet: October 16, 2007, I’m only starting to grasp the value of Twitter: Twitter: gazouillements du Web 2.0.
• Joel Zehring - http://twitter.com/joelz - Started April 27, 2007. With very limited time, should I blog it or to twitter it?
• Phillip Long - http://twitter.com/RadHertz - First Tweet April 24, 2007. Had to look back to find my first Tweet (424 of them). That’s 50,880 characters of Tweeting (if ea were 140 chrs. long). Wow!
• Colleen Carmean- http://twitter.com/carmean - First Tweet May 15, 007. Stopped in now and then. Got sucked in more and more, especially via distant connection to friends at a conference. Got scared cuz I’m a wimp (see Jim Groom’s thread), now sneaking back in slowly to get my dose of tweets. Still murky. Going to use it to connect to my online students next few weeks and see if ‘learn by doing’ will wipe away fuzzy understanding.

Chris’ Basic Adoption Pattern:

- Joins and answers the standard question- What are you doing right now?

- Has an epiphany, among many I am sure, looking at the chain of collisions, when we “cross paths”.

- Begins to evangelize to other educators about the power of Twitter

- Now has over “700″ followers, which is quite a few people, making her an influential educator.

- She notes that it now feels like a crowded conversation.

- She is now much more selective about what she “tweets”.

- Not sure what or who she should be adding to the network…

So-Called Social Media Fatigue

This seems to be a frequent cycle people go through and I think it is a misnomer to call it “social media fatigue”- it is more about going in without strategies and good tools. It is all also dependent on what and how you plan to use Twitter, or any nano-blogging or micro-communication platform. Tactical formation of your network and even how often you use the tool is predicated on your strategic goals.

As an educator Fleep can certainly gain insight by following expert marketers, administrators, analysts, futurists or people OUTSIDE of her core competency. That is one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter. Whether you get it or not, it is an important shift.

Fleep may not use it like Gary Vaynerchuk a master marketer, or a technology futurist and author like Sam Harrelson, a video maven like Steve Rosenbaum, a famous virtual worlds designer and pioneer, an academic administrator and Hebrew scholar like Chris Brady, a reknowned security ace like Chris Boyd, a technologist and publisher like Steven Hodson, a seasoned programmer and developer like Ruud Hein or someone like myself. (I am a bit hard to define.) The great thing about Twitter, or the nano-sized communication format, is the ability to get a little bit closer to some amazing and diverse people!

“Twitter allows you to form bridges into new social networks and the chance to build diverse and rich relationships.”

Wayne’s Top Tactical Twitter Tips

1. Try to avoid over-use of the @symbol, although it is o.k. for “micro-conversations” to break out- they will happen. You can also use brackets like [@wporter] or send a direct message.
2. Don’t tweet every single blog post or photo upload, etc. unless you know your audience really well.
3. Avidly look for interesting people outside of your normal network so you are exposed to new ideas.
4. It is o.k. to emit some “noise”, after all part of the medium is to be fun, but avoid sending so much noise that people stop following you. You will develop your own “style” as you go along. Be human.
5. Look at your blog posts and tweets and see if you can correlate jumps in your “follower” growth or a trend in the “types” of followers to other activity in media.
6. You do not have to follow every single person on your list. You should frequently review new followers and see if you can find interesting people, and even if you don’t follow them, you can certainly stop by their blog or page.
7. Ensure your Twitter URL points to a site or page where potential people evaluating whether to follow or reciprocate with you. This way they can get more information about you and make a better decision. They are about to make an investment in their time so help them make it.
8. Occasionally reach out and spend some social capital by helping or simply a “thank you”. For example, thank someone who inspires you with their writing, or someone who helps you out, that you admire, or you find contributing to the commons. Sometimes they will respond in surprising ways.
9. Find technically advanced users or resources that will teach you how to effectively handle all of these emerging technologies like a pro.
10. Be genuine, be polite and have fun.

Summary

I hate the term “social media”, but it has stuck so we are forced to use it… I think the final take aways are to get your hands dirty, explore people and thoughts out of your normal haunts, and make contributions when and where you can.

“If you are always in your comfort zone, you are not getting real value out of services like Twitter.”

For Fun

This post’s random Twitter person… I don’t know them and I have never read them, I went to the public timeline and pulled out a name… mayobrains. Patricia Mayo “My Brain is Random Access - New Media Publishing smarty, Social Media Strategist @nowsourcing, Wordpress podcast co-host, Serial Entrepreneur, & workaholic, etc”.

Another cycle begins…

ADDENDUM 6.13.2008: Thanks to  Grace Midyette for expounding on the various tips and tricks.

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From Qual.ms

sometimes i hate blogging. scoble nailed it this morning

thinking about rolling it all up into one crispy paper ball and throwing it into the fire.

whatever it is… i guess i’m referring to the blogging aesthetic. so completely f**ked up and unnecessary.

didn’t we invent this blog s**t to counter the stogedy crap that was flowing from the pro’s?

what happened to punk blogging?

we sold out.

for shame.

fix it?

Let us recall the roots of blogging.. Blogs originated from Zines, Chip Rowe, Book of Zines might be our key text…Fix it? Merely return to the roots, return to the muse…perhaps return to the “creative fringe”?

Quality is relative…

Amazon.com on Book of Zines
When asked why 90 percent of science fiction was crap, Theodore Sturgeon replied that 90 percent of everything was crap. With zines that figure probably rises to about 99.9 percent. Luckily, we have editor Chip Rowe to sift through the detritus of the zine world and distill this entertaining volume. Included are selections from such well-known zines as Beer Frame (wherein the author discovers the horrors of canned pork brains in milk gravy)…

Card catalog description

Just below the surface of the mainstream lies the eccentric world of zines - homemade magazines created for fun rather than profit. Distributed largely through word of mouth, zines touch on everything you’d expect from a copier counterculture - sex, music, politics, dating, TV, movies, work, food, drugs. The Book of Zines collects, for the first time, the best writing on pop culture from more than 60 choice zines, including Beer Frame, Ben Is Dead, Bust, Cometbus, Crank, Crap Hound, Farm Pulp, Murder Can Be Fun, Pathetic Life, and Rollerderby.

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Kwisatz Haderach, Jay Cross on social networks, semantic web and learning as a process..

You can be instructed, but you cannot be “learned”.

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Once again Sam Harrelson talks me into a late night look at Next-Gen Marketing with a few practical examples over at Revenews. Long one- so good time to change the oil on the car (time shift) and listen…some might find it very relevant- no matter what reality you exist in, or think you do.

Sam says: “The podcast runs about 90 minutes and we discuss Wayne’s conception of Next Gen marketing and possible futures of online and affiliate marketing.”

Wayne says: “As usual, this podcast runs about 90 minutes and we discuss science fiction books, Next-Gen, games, my experience with ARGs, multi-verses, engagement from twitter to Second Life, Sam finds value in an OPML file, engagement metrics, incubation of fan bases, engaging smart people, Twitter, personalities, a bunch of books like: The Book of Zines, The Adventures of the The Stainless Steel Rat, Media Virus, etc. Not that many would care, but for the observant we also plod into Assyriology, cuneiform, ancient civilizations and why that crap is important to us. As usual I interrupt too often (why does he always catch me tired?), but we move along and didn’t even touch Mobile Marketing or iPhone stuff or blending it with RSS. At any rate this is sort of what “industry insiders” talk about…sort of.”

Stainless Steel Rats MP3 File

Another good cast, and Pinnacle Best Blog Award Winner- Sam Harrelson, speaks (what are you cloned or what?) at AffiliateFortuneCookies.com giving more clarity as Next-Gen, Virtual, Affiliate, and A Whole Bunch of Stuff Most Can’t Even See are heading for a whacked out, giant ajax-style real-world mashup collision thing. Maybe.

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Rick van der Wal, aka Digado, a blogger I have great respect for, recaps Ren Reynolds lively taxonomy discussion at Terra Nova:

* Game world
* Lucid World
* Metaverse
* MMORPG
* MMO
* MOO
* MUSH
* MUD
* WoW
* RPG
* HUD
* RCE
* RMT
* Synthetic World
* Social World
* Thick Virtual World
* Thin Virtual World
* Virtual World

If you can get past the emergent nomenclature I suggest you read his entire take-away on immersionism and augmentation and the comments.

The Views

He notes and adds, as I believe, they are NOT mutually exclusive…

Immersionist’s point of view

Virtuality is… a new reality, a new world (or as Philip Linden/Rosedale once said - “A country”), a new frontier.

Most common issues: The Avatar as a person, new builds and ‘In-world’ developments, in-world authority, the community and underlying relations, the future (a long-term time frame of 10-25 years from now).

Key elements: Freedom, vision, escapism, trust, recognition, community, immersion.

Augmentionist’s point of view

Virtuality is… a tool - a medium, a game and an extension/evolution/continuation of the internet and communication.
Most common issues: Perception of mainstream media, elevating the platform of Virtual worlds as a tool/medium, how virtual worlds influence the real world - economic, education, entertainment for ‘real people’, the timeframe of now until 3 years from now.

Key elements: Adoption of Technology, opportunity, verification, research, return on investments, benefits of virtuality, cross ‘realm’ communication.

Boiling It Down

1. Immersion and augmentism are not mutually exclusive.
2. Immersionists are a movement based on escapism.
3. Augmentists are opportunists.

Rick I think they are blog worthy issues and thank you…as I have been trying to find a good blend of “not mutually exclusive.” None of these schools of thought are “black and white”. That is why I think VR communities should pay attention to the thought leaders struggling with revenue generation and Web 2.0- and pollution- not to mention concentration risk. See my latest on Revenews.

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“Reality is fundamentally broken, and we have a responsibility as game designers to fix it. We have a responsibility as the smartest people in the world, the people who understand how to make systems that make people feel engaged, successful, happy, and completely alive, and we have the knowledge and the power to invent systems that make reality work better.”

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Reality is Broken: GDC08 Rant by Jane McGonigal.

1. Satisfying work to do
2. The experience of being good at something
3. Time spent with people we like
4. The chance to be a part of something bigger

My favorite takeaway was- Why care about games? Because life is crap. Life is crap, and the ONLY thing that makes it worth living is art – and play.

and

“Games are the ultimate happiness engine”

and

and this lively slide : “Reality is broken. • Can we fix it? YES. • Should we fix it? HELL YES. • Will we fix it? I HAVE NO F’ING IDEA”.

Gaming Video Games virtual reality virtual worlds

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