Check it out!

• Blog about your research. This is the single best thing you can do to get the word out and to find people who are interested in this kind of thing. I can't begin to describe how helpful people were. And if you end up falling in with the way the company does social networking (like I did!), people will help you find a great job too!
• Build relationships. Again, the internal blog's a terrific place to do that, particularly for this area of research. Invest time in scanning the blogs and commenting on things you find interesting.
• Don't worry about disappearing off the dashboard. Plenty of people use feed readers and subscribe to specific people or tags, so once you get on their radars, you'll stay there.
• Use a feed reader that lets you create keyword searches. That way, you never miss discussions that you are interested in. Feedreader, Omea, and FeedDemon all have this feature.
• Get to know people. I recommended a whole bunch of people who are interested in social computing. =)
• Read these books: Crossing the Chasm, The Diffusion of Innovations, The Tipping Point, and Influencer.
• Check the blogs for news about interesting tools. Our internal early adopter program is good, but the internal blogs catches the coolest hacks from all over.
• … and other tips! =)

I tried to squeeze as much as I could in half an hour, but I'm sure I'll think of other tips! I loved just passing on everything I could think of. It was the best way to give back to all the people who helped me with my research, and I was happy to have stumbled across someone else who could learn from what I did. Besides, it was the Right Thing to Do.

Thank you, blogs, for this opportunity to help!

Take today, for example. I was working on a wiki guide to social media on a client site when I heard a cheery voice introduce himself and say that he found me on a social network. A few minutes later, I was deep in conversation with someone I'd never met or even talked to before. He had noticed that my client contact had added me on LinkedIn, and that I was from IBM. Intrigued, he checked out my profile and read my blog. He was baffled by the Emacs posts, but he noticed my passion for social computing, and that was something that he was very interested in. We talked about knowledge management, technology adoption, influencing behavior, the different initiatives going on at the company. I recommended two books:

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al SwitzlerRead more about this book…

The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative by Stephen DenningRead more about this book…

… and I'm definitely looking forward to more conversations.

Wouldn't it be amazing if people in his company—and in other companies—could meet and talk to other people as easily as he found and talked to me? Wouldn't it be great if people could skip past all the small talk and build rapport by talking about the things people are passionate about?

Actually, just go and read the whole thing.

Darcy Rezac's "Work The Pond: Use the Power of Positive Networking to Leap Forward in Work and Life". ISBN 0-7352-0402-0.

(Someday I'm going to have Amazon links...)

On Technorati: networking, book, social

Such an app would have a floating list of non-time-specific activities, with people indicating interest or even availability. People should be able to take events from that list and schedule it onto a group calendar.

There should be *some* way I can easily manage having multiple overlapping circles of friends. See, there's a reason why I'd rather blend groups!

And all of this, of course, should be available from a mobile interface so that I can go from one event to another.

But that's too much interface complexity, so it has to stay inside my head. ARGH!

On Technorati: calendar, social

Dave Forde's networking get-together was a very informal one, just a bunch of people standing around in a pub sipping beverages while chatting. I was the only one with a nametag - a printed nametag, at that! - and that garnered me quite a number of compliments for my foresight. Despite the lack of nametags, I was generally good at keeping everyone's names sorted in my head. Having a printed nametag on made it easier for people to remember my name in conversation, though. Having felt the embarrassment of forgetting someone's name right after an introduction too many times, I'm glad I could make things smoother for other people by wearing a nametag.

The nametag was also handy at the second networking event I went to on the invitation of someone I'd just met at Dave Forde's get-together. At that event, people wore nametags of masking tape. Again, my large printed nametag stood out, and the keywords on it prompted conversations.

I think that bringing a prepared nametag to events is a terrific idea. Even at events with proper nametags, preparing a nametag allows you to pay more attention to design and to stand out from the crowd.

Clip-on nametags may be even more effective because then I don't have to worry about what material I'm wearing. They also allow other tricks. I remember Richard Boardman's nifty lifehack for nametags. The CHI 2006 nametag holders were top-loading plastic, so he put business cards behind his nametag. He also put business cards he received into the nametag case. Very accessible location - no shuffling around for a business card case.

Note to self: I should always carry masking tape and a marker to these events. To help even more, perhaps I should always carry self-adhesive nametags. Hmm...

Preparing a nametag was definitely a good idea. You should try it at your next networking event!

On Technorati: networking, social

1. Find out what people want. Ask people, "What can I do to help you succeed?" Keep asking until you get a good sense of what they're looking for. The practice is good for them, too!
2. Get out there and meet people. Too shy to talk to people at a networking event? Ask on behalf of a friend and you may find yourself more comfortable. Find conversation difficult? Think of it as an opportunity to discover ways to connect people to other people. You'll find that good conversation isn't really about you having something in common with others. It's easier than that! All you need is at least one of your friends having at least one thing in common with others.
3. Look for the connections. With every conversation and with every person you meet, think of connections you can make. Introduce people to other people and you'll create lots of opportunities - and learn about people, too!

Make things happen. Find out what people around you want or need, and look for ways you can help them grow. Life is a lot more fun that way!

For backstory, check out The power of proactively networking

On Technorati: networking, social

You see, I used to shy away from networking because I couldn't think of how I could add value to the conversation or what I could take away. I went to a few networking events before I got tired of being given the once-over by schmoozers who moved on when they realized that I couldn't give them any deals or opportunities. As a student, what could I offer? And what could I ask them for? I didn't want to waste their time, didn't want to prevent them from meeting other people they could deal with.

I was insecure. That was exactly how I felt when I moved to Canada from the Philippines, torn away from *my* network and suddenly back at the bottom of the totem pole. I didn't believe I could offer any value, and so I couldn't.

Over the past year and after so many conversations and books, though, I think I've finally found myself—and I can't believe that I hadn't realized this earlier.

How did I go about it? I credit two books with sparking a particularly large number of aha! moments: Keith Ferrazzi's "Never Eat Alone" and Tim Sanders' "Love is the Killer App." Both books taught me that my love of reading and learning could be valuable to other people, so I had something to start with. My interest in other people helps them discover more about life and themselves—another reason why people enjoy sharing their insights with me. I give people an opportunity to help, and in so doing, they grow as well. All I need to do is ask.

As I practiced the suggestions in these books, I found it easier and easier - and more and more fun. I discovered that by consciously reaching out, I could enrich my life and the lives of people around me.

I don't think of it as my "network", not in the cold and calculating sense of just wanting to add more nodes to a graph. No, these are people whom I want to help grow and who care about my growth.

And last night, I realized something amazing: the power of proactivity, of making things happen instead of waiting for things to occur.

After a wonderful conversation about all sorts of topics including the meaning of life, the challenges of entrepreneurship, and the joy of networking, I asked my seven guests point-blank what they wanted and how I could help them succeed. They told me—and my mind kicked into high gear, thinking of whom I could introduce to them and what I could help them with.

*This* is one of the things I'm not only good at, but I love doing. Perhaps this is one of the things that I am meant to do. I've jokingly described how I enjoy stuffing large amounts of information into my brain in order to bring out one or two relevant items when people need them. I've applied it in geeky contexts before: familiarizing myself with a list of open source packages (all of Debian, at one point) helped me recommend just the right package for Jijo Sevilla when he was working on a point-of-sale system, while my background in computer science helped me tell Simon exactly which keywords he should use to find a good algorithm for a feature he wants to include in his product.

I want to do it with people, too. I want to keep people's wants and haves in mind. I *love* making those connections.

This was one of Sam Watkins' brilliant ideas, some years ago: write down your wants and haves on your card, and exchange this with others. OpenBC is a social networking site that's playing around with the idea, too, which is why I like OpenBC a lot. The key point is: proactively find out what people want / have, and make those connections happen!

One of the difficulties I had was figuring out how to keep in touch with people, how to do followup. Followup is incredibly important. Proactively choosing to make things happen makes it really easy to follow up and exercise those networking muscles. Every person I meet and every conversation I have has the potential to reactivate old connections, and I want to review old connections to find out what I can help them with now. If they're in my network, it's because I think they're cool and I want them to succeed - and we'll keep growing together!

That gives me even more confidence when it comes to meeting other people. I now bring *lots* of value to the conversation. Sure, I'm not a CEO or even someone with decision-making power. Even as a student, though, I can help people succeed. I've been told I have interesting ideas and that I'm a good listener. I love asking questions and having conversations. And I know lots of really cool people. I want to know more peopl because the more people I know, the more interconnections I can make and the more stories I can tell.

"Your network is your net worth," said Tim Sanders - and mine is growing. I care about the people in it. I want them to succeed. I want to learn from all these interesting people - strangers, acquaintances, friends. That gives me the chutzpah I need to walk up to someone I've never met - the power of proactive networking.

On Technorati: networking, social

• Wants / Haves. *Totally* cool. I do this in real life, and the connections you can bring out are amazing. Just last night, for example - seven people, and I can think of good connections for every single one of them. You know what would be the killerest? A summary view of people's wants/haves, optionally sortable by update date. I want an RSS feed of people's updates so that I can keep all those things in mind all the time. Any service that makes it easier for me to proactively create value for other people totally rocks, and it would be good to make it easier for people to browse through my contacts and make those connections themselves. 'cause face it - job descriptions don't say much, and they don't talk about what we want.
• Pictures. Great for reminding other people what I look like. ;) If I could just convince everyone else...
• Private memos. I can easily do that with my personal contact management database, but OpenBC makes it convenient for other people to keep private datestamped notes.
• Tagging. Again, something I can do with my personal contact management database, but not everyone can be so lucky - and OpenBC's tagging + events = cool.
• Groups. I got into OpenBC because of the Greater IBM Initiative. They rock.
• Events. I wonder if I can use this for my parties. You can use tags to invite people to events! Whee. =)
• And they blog. Plus points.

I might even consider paying for the service, which again is quite a vote considering my grad-student budget. =) It's not that expensive, though. I just have to figure out how to create enough value.

Sign up and connect. OpenBC has free basic memberships, and you have a month of premium membership to try it out. I like it a lot. You should definitely try OpenBC, particularly if you're a Connector in the Tipping Point sense of the word.

Sign up for OpenBC, then add me as a contact!

On Technorati: networking, connecting, connector, social

On Technorati: social, web2.0

Random Japanese sentence: ある日、彼女はペットの猫がほしいと私に知らせました。 One day, she told me that she wanted a pet cat. Aru hi, kanojo wa petto no neko ga hoshii to watashi ni shirasemashita.

That's a very broad goal. What does it mean?

I want to help people make the most of blogs, wikis, podcasts, vidcasts, social bookmarking, social networking, community content management systems, whatever. I want to help them figure out how to use version control systems and request trackers and mailing lists. I want to make it easier to use phone and e-mail and little stickies on the fridge...

What should I learn more about? I need to figure out how to set up a blog farm, a wiki farm, a social bookmarking site, Drupal, etc. Bryght does hosted community sites with Drupal, so they'd be good mentors and models. I'm also interested in the social aspects of it. My research into innovation diffusion and technology adoption _totally_ makes sense in that context.

Mmkay. That sounds like a plan. I'm going to need some help figuring out how to make it happen, but that resonates with me.

I don't mind working on mind-numbing web stuff if I'm working with fun people. I don't mind explaining for the nth time what a blog is and how people can use blogs for fun and profit, because I learn something new every time I talk about that. And of course there are so many things that aren't even on most people's radars...

Right. That sounds like what I want to do. Now, how do I go about doing it?

On Technorati: purpose, social

Random Japanese sentence: 私は犬の方が猫より好きだが、それは前者が後者より忠実だからだ。 I like a dog better than a cat, for the former is more faithful than the latter.

Anyway, it was such a nice chat that I didn't mind being late to the clothing show held at Exhibition Place. Quinn and I eventually made it there at around 12, and we browsed for an hour or so. I bought a bracelet and two necklaces, all made of shell. I thought they might go nicely with my ethnic stuff. I didn't really find anything else that particularly struck my fancy, as tiered skirts are getting a _little_ too popular for my tastes. I might shift back to nicely colored skirts, and of course I like wearing stuff from home. I wore the red malong as a skirt today, matching it with a colorful abaniko fan. (Thanks, Mom!)

That's why I was late to the Ruby meeting. =) That was cool, too! As soon as he saw me, Austin said, "You know Steve Perelgut!" (He's one of my mentors from IBM, and a totally totally cool person. The fact that he reads me blog (Hi Stephen!) has nothing to do with the gushiness of the previous statement. =) ) Austin shared what he'd learned from the Ruby code jam (lesson 1: be better prepared!), particularly the effectiveness and _fun_ of pair programming. It worked out really well because Ruby novices were paired up with Ruby veterans, but the Ruby novices were also good at other aspects that the Ruby geeks might not have learned about. In this case, they were porting an archiving library to Ruby. =) Good stuff.

We also had a fun chat about how people can learn to read and write code. Apparently, I _am_ really weird in that I rather enjoy reading code... =)

Jed and Quinn were there too, although they dropped in and out of the conversation, as I fangirled a bit about Ruby and got some interesting tips. Should check out the Water framework for testing web applications, although that might need Windows. Also, Austin suggested SVG + PDF for my graph outputs. Whee!

Jed mentioned a samba jam at an art gallery on Queen Street West. In keeping with my plan to get to know a wide variety of people and experience more than what I'd ordinarily get just hanging out with computer geeks and talking about computers, I decided to go. It was tons and tons of fun! I told them I had no sense of rhythm and that I'd be perfectly happy just listening and taking pictures, but Jed wouldn't take no for an answer. Heck, he didn't even ask if I wanted to join. Instead, he held up two instruments and asked which one I'd like to play. <laugh> I opted for a small drum, and I found myself picking up the rhythm thanks to the coaching of people around me.

A photographer wandered in, too, so I adopted her. Marie had just joined a camera club and was thrilled to stumble across such a cool event. I gave her the tips my dad shared with me about using long exposures and lower ISO speeds to capture dramatic action, and she had a lot of fun exploring that, too. =)

I made it back for coffee time at Graduate House. I had so much fun catching up with Sam. She wants to do really cool things with accessibility, and she's in a terrific position to do so! I'm also really excited about her application to be an RA for the dorm. I think she'd be a terrific one. I told her about what's cool in my life: the Delta Kappa Gamma fellowship, my research up at IBM, the thrill of introducing people to other people... She nodded and told me how much she enjoyed that too. When I learned that she hadn't yet read Tipping Point, I ran upstairs to grab my copy. I lent it to her, pointing out the section on Connectors and adding a note about context. I'm also going to have to get myself a hardcover (if I can find it!) of Love is the Killer App, which is another thing that she will _so_ be able to identify with. (Thank you, Maoi, for introducing me to that book!)

Afterwards, I had a wonderfully geeky chat about computer science and assorted things with Mike and Joe. In particular, Joe's overlapping clustering algorithms _might_ be fun to run against tag clouds, social networks, and other cool things. I need to show Mark a sample and see how we can ask for suitably anonymized data...

Happy girl. Full day. Great fun. =) Lots of interesting people!

On Technorati: friends, social, ruby, samba

Random Japanese sentence: ペルシャ猫に関連した古いお話があります。 There is a classic story related about a Persian cat.

Emily was impressed with my outfit. "You have legs today," she said. I had decided to wear The Miniskirt today because I just find it _so_ much fun to shop for computer stuff all dressed up. It confuses salespeople, particularly when I ask for Linux-supported wireless cards. ;)

Anyway, Emily told me that she almost always saw me in very pretty skirts, but this was the first time she saw me with a skirt that short. (Yes, yes, thank you Kathy for getting me a skirt I'd never have dared get myself. Come to think of it, where _are_ those barkada pics? Hmm...)

After most people finished dinner and left, I played billiards with Stairos (sp?) and Tarun. I'm still not very consistent in billiards, but I managed to sink a few good shots. After Tarun left, Stairos and I played table tennis. He likes smashing, and whenever he does that I tease him about being such a bully. I'm happy to report that I managed to make contact with the ball a couple of times - probably more by accident than reflex. Lusine joined us and we practiced for a while.

I'm not very good at table tennis yet, but I find it a lot of fun. My coordination used to be absolutely terrible, but after a while I realized that I didn't have to be able to think about how to intercept the ball, I just had to actually do it. For some strange reason, playing table tennis makes me feel like a character in a Japanese animation.

And yes, I did manage to get some writing done. Not much, though. I'll have to wake up early tomorrow to do some more work on it before the cooking workshop...

On Technorati: gradhouse, gh, social

Random Japanese sentence: テーブルに猫の足跡が付いている。 There are footprints of a cat on the table. Teiboru ni neko no sokuseki ga tsuite iru.

Another remarkable thing about social bookmarking is that people into it _love_ sharing information. They share bookmarks, bibliographies - heck, even blogs. I can browse around a social bookmarking site and get a sense not only of what I need to know about the system itself but also the other hobbies and interests of the early adopters.

It's an amazing field to get into, and very very exciting.

On Technorati: social, bookmarking, socialbookmarking

On Technorati: social

On Technorati: research, tagging, social, search

On Technorati: philippines, social, bookmarking

And I've figured out a little bit more about how my project with Mark Chignell fits into the grand scheme of things!

You see, I'd like to make it easy for people to collect and share Internet resources that they've found useful. For example, consultants in large software companies should be able to find out which documents other consultants in their group found useful. They should be able to find experts on a given topic, and they should be able to explore other people's interests too.

Although several web-based services allow social search and discovery, they haven't yet been widely adopted. My thesis will give me time to think about what we can to do make these systems easier to use. My human-computer interaction coursework will teach me how to measure the effects of the changes we make to the interface. My background in programming and computer science will allow me to quickly prototype new interface designs.

And the grand scheme of things?

I think it would be fantastic if teachers could have that kind of network. Imagine if I could filter my search for programming exercise ideas according to what other introductory computer science teachers found useful, or if I could explore what other people found useful.

Imagine if teachers could choose a set of useful webpages and make it easy for students to prioritize those pages when searching. Imagine if students could contribute their own hyperlinks. I think that would be really cool.

But the interface needs to be much simpler, and it needs to be robust and accessible. We can't rely on constant high-speed Internet connections. Consultants use laptops and teachers in the provinces might connect only once in a while. Both sets of people are Really Busy and don't have the time or patience to muck about with complicated interfaces. It needs to be simple and distributed, and it needs to pack a lot of value.

Right.

That sounds like a great challenge. That's what I want to do, and I can see how it might be useful. If only because I would _love_ to know what other teachers bookmark, and I want to have a quick and easy way to tell people about interesting websites without flooding their mailbox...

Mmkay. I'll formalize this after I wake up, but I think I'm onto something here.

On Technorati: research, social computing, social bookmarking, social