I Tweet in my Sleep

March 12, 2009 — 2 Comments

Hi, my name's Ross, and I'm a Twitter neophyte. [You: "Hi Ross."]

I was dreaming about Twitter all night. [It's important to acknowledge you have a problem.]

What's more, the dream had a soundtrack… "Rockin Robin." You know the old song: "all the little birds on J-Bird street / love to hear the robin goin Tweet Tweet Tweet." Really. For crying out loud, I'm trying to sleep over here. [It appears I've finally hit bottom and am ready to change.]

What am I going to do about this?

I'm clearly required to blog about it and then Tweet the blog. [Relapse. Damn.]

The dream was my unconscious working overtime. I've been active on Twitter for only a short time now, which means that some of the concepts of how it works, the conventions of how to use it, protocols and terminology are new to me.

It takes a little time to really understand this Twitter thing and to put any new-found understanding into some functional context. And, apparently my mind has been working on it more than I knew because Twitter hijacked my dreams last night.

Loosing sleep is not something I appreciate, and hearing the incessant bubble-gum pop tune "Rockin' Robin" all night is cruel and unusual punishment.

But, the dreams cleared some things up for me.

Hash tags are easy enough to grasp as a concept, but I didn't see some of the deeper utilities of them until I was sound asleep. Some parts of my dream were connecting with similar parts of other people's dreams through the proper use of a good hash tag…

This way those kindred components of the dream world could support each other and maybe even agree on a place to meet in order to develop further. Aha! Hash tags are not just about tagging text so it's more searchable later. Hash tags are the linchpin for self-organizing ideas.

(BTW, if I've got that wrong, it's only my unconscious self… please straighten the conscious me out by posting your comments below.)

Oh, and since these dream fragments wanted to meet up with other similar dream fragments, I'm guessing this is the idea behind a "TweetUp," too?

Tweet. Tweet. Rockin' Robin. Last.fm press play.

sweat equity

March 10, 2009

There was a workshop discussion today on affordable housing issues in Southern Orange County, which germinated the seed of an idea that now needs the nourishing hands of many minds (to mix metaphors)…

Is there a way to create spendable sweat equity to keep at-risk homeowners afloat?

As so many people find themselves out of work, or "under-employed," and facing foreclosure, could we create some new mechanism for people to work for the mortgage companies or banks (temporarily even) and apply some form of "sweat equity" toward the mortgage payments they can't currently afford?

Mortgage holders need regular payments. Homeowners need work to create income in order to make regular payments. Can mortgage holders put homeowners to work, and just shorten that value-transfer chain for a win-win solution?

Please comment… (or as the Mike Meyers Coffee-Klatch character says "talk amongst yourselves")

my personal brand

March 8, 2009

Okay, the overload light just came on. Reached the saturation point. The overuse alarm is now blasting in my head.

"Personal Brand." That's the trigger.

• "Build your personal brand" 
• "Where is YOUR personal brand's hub?" 
• "Be your own best brand ambassador"
• and so on

Personally, I don't want to build a personal brand; to protect it; to evolve it; to burnish it; to support it; to nourish it; to work it… seems so divisive. Like it's a by-product of me — separate. The root to future schizophrenia.

[WARNING: questionable self-revelation ahead about TV watching] During the show Celebrity Apprentice last night, Andrew Dice Clay trotted out his success at building his own brand in a desperate attempt to prove he's a good business man. Performers, actors, and entertainers develop "characters" as an essential part of their art. (i.e. Ziggy Stardust) But we're not all in that field… and those characters are separate from the artist.

I certainly want to acknowledge that the concept of a "personal brand" strikes me as useful to focus one's attention on actively managing one's career, and useful to support the independent worker's sense of empowerment. But, I'm feeling like the concept is being diluted and misdirected.

• What do you think?
• Is this concept of "personal branding" being overused?
• What are the real benefits and costs?

you listening, so-called ‘world’?

March 6, 2009

I don’t know about you, but on the internet (web, chat, 2.0, social media, whatever), the “world”  doesn’t seem round. It’s just THERE. Out there. In there. On there. The following terms don’t fit well into internet conversation: around the world, around the globe, the whole world around… you get the idea.

My mind has a tendency to conjure images with every sentence fragment or subordinate phrase; so whenever the word “world” comes up I tend to see either the cool, metal globe from Mrs. Gardner’s third-grade classroom, or the huge canvas screen that hung in Mr. Overweight-with-a-mustache-and-overalls’ eight-grade civics class, printed with the globe stretched out and sliced like a lotus flower. In conversations about on-line life, “world” shows up in my mind as a this infinitely deep bowl of spaghetti, each strand connected to every other one, somehow.

So, on the internet, the world IS different. At least in my little world.

[ image credit: www.studio22sc.com ]

hello world, if that is your name

March 6, 2009

It's a crystal-clear March day in Dana Point, on the cusp of this year's annual Festival of Whales which blasts off tomorrow with a parade and street fair. Facebook & Twitter.