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Technology I’d Like to See: Google’s Self-Driving Car Using Google Maps and Mobile Pay-Per-Click

October 16, 2010 By

I’m at Barcamp Nashvile right now with Keith Gilchrist of Johnson City, TN and Andre Natta of Birmingham, AL. We were discussing the new Google Car, and the fact that it can drive for you.Will Google's new driverless car outperform Herbie the Love Bug?

While we’re not sure what the Google Car will do for you yet (they’re not even sure if or when it will be available for retail sales), there are a few ways we can see Google integrating its search engine features into its car:

  • Use Google Maps to plot your most commonly visited sites — home, office, favorite coffee shop — and the routes you take to get there.
  • Monitor traffic on Google Maps, and not only help you avoid traffic jams, but even relieve congestion by redirecting traffic from heavily congest areas.
  • Keep track of where your friends and family live, thanks to Google’s social media efforts, and plot out the best routes to get there.
  • Let you search for a new restaurant while you’re on the road — voice activated, of course — listen to the user reviews, call them on your Google Voice phone, and then make a reservation.
  • Check you in on Foursquare or Gowalla when you arrive at the restaurant.
  • And the really cool thing, personalize your billboards. Think of all those video billboards you can see right now, the ones that work like giant TVs. What if they could replace the old-school static billboards with green screen, like they use in TV studios. Whenever your Google Car drives past a billboard, it pops up a personal ad that only you can see from your car, thanks to the new transparent TV screen that functions as a high-impact windshield too. It’s pay-per-click at 70 miles-per-hour.

Special thanks to Andre and Keith for helping me work out some of these ideas (the commonly visited locations and friends and family maps are Andre’s idea).

——
My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, who I also helped write Twitter Marketing For Dummies (another affiliate link).

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    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Technology I'd Like to See: Google's Self-Driving Car Using Google Maps and Mobile Pay-Per-Click  •  Keywords : geo-location, Google, Google car, Google maps  • 
    Filed Under: Geo-Location, Opinion, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , ,

    Why Designers Should Avoid Contests and Crowdsourcing

    May 17, 2010 By

    Chris Brogan got a bunch of people’s panties in a twist last week.

    He blogged about a logo design project he created on a site called 99Designs to crowd source a new logo design.

    99Designs is a godsend to businesspeople on a budget, but it’s an evil abomination to designers trying to make a fair wage for their skill and years of experience. Let’s say I need a logo. I create a project on the site (it’s called a “contest”), set my budget (the “prize”), and designers will submit their design concepts. Anyone who wants to submit a concept can do so. The project owner will then select the winning concept, and award the prize to the winner.

    I saw a $795 for a learning portal redesign, an $888 contest for an eBay template design, and the highest project of $2,225 for a web redesign. But most of the prizes rolled in around $295 – $350.

    $350 for a professionally made logo design.

    Tell a real graphic designer about this, and she’s going to work herself up into a good frothing rant about the cheapness of business people and how hack designers cheapen the entire industry by shortchanging themselves.

    “Any twit with Photoshop Elements and a weekend seminar under their belt thinks suddenly they’re a graphic designer,” she’ll shout, followed by the obligatory “you get what you pay for,” and rolling her eyes so far back in her head, she can see her entire third grade year.

    Brogan’s post unearthed lovers and haters of 99Designs. The designers all hated it, except for the ones who were still learning the keyboard shortcuts for their copy of Elements. The businesspeople all loved it, because, hey, $350 logo.

    Their argument falls along the lines of “if someone’s willing to accept a low bid, then I’m stupid for not taking it. No one is forcing them to accept these projects.”

    I think 99Designs is dangerous, and urge any decent graphic designer to avoid it. (The sucky ones should stay with it though.) But since the businesspeople seem to think it’s an acceptable model, I wonder if they’re willing to try it out for themselves.

    Using the Crowdsourcing Model For Business

    • My company needs a social media campaign. I would like you to write up a strategy, set up some social media accounts, build each of them out to about 5,000 people, and then let me see your work. If I like your strategy, and if I like the people you added to the accounts, I’ll pay you $500.You’ll be competing against other social media strategists, like Jason Falls, Tara Strong, and Scott Stratten. The winning bid will get $500, while the losing bids will go away empty handed, with nothing to show except some social networks they spent 7 – 10 hours to create and grow.
    • I want to hire a landscaping company to mow my lawn every week. I need each interested company to cut my lawn once, and whoever does the best job will get the winning contract for the rest of the summer, at $15 per week. I’m offering that much, because that’s how much the kid down the street offered.
    • I’d also like my house redecorated, but I need to do it on spec. Any interested designer should be willing to redecorate one room of my house. If I pick your design, you’ll get $1,000 to do the entire house. I figure, I’ve seen the home redecorating shows on HGTV, and it doesn’t seem that hard, I just don’t have the time to do it.

    I get both sides of this argument. I really do. But my heart lies firmly in one camp: the creative side.

    I’m a business owner, but I’m also a creative type. When I write something, I get paid for it. I don’t have the time to do anything on spec, because I’ve grown beyond the need for possibilities of payment and “exposure.” The time I spend writing on spec is the same time I could be using to write for pay.

    I think asking designers to submit themselves to this kind of creative minimum wage is heinous, because we would never ask a businessperson to do it. You would never write a full-blown social media campaign and start executing it for the possibility of $500. You would never cut a lawn, decorate a room, or fix my car for free, just in the hopes that I might hire you. I would never ask a business owner to do this because they’re in business to make money.

    Just like graphic designers.

    If you don’t have a budget, that’s fine. Go hire a college student who’s still finishing his or her graphic design degree. Barter your product or services, or do it yourself for free. But don’t ask for spec work. It cheapens the industry, but it makes you look cheaper.

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      Filed Under: Communication, Networking, Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

      The Era of Calling Things “Dead” Is Dead. Or Should Be.

      March 22, 2010 By

      Oh God, I am sick to death of this “sky is falling” mentality that I keep seeing more and more. Everyone thinks they’re either cool or a 21st century Nostradamus by saying something is dead. “Twitter killed blogging.” “Google Buzz killed Twitter.” Blah blah blah.

      Here are just a tiny few articles I found declaring something to be dead (something that is still widely in use):

      Sorry, my crystal ball must be broken, because all I see are more and more customers using Twitter, email, Facebook, blogging. I don’t like Buzz and have never tried the Wave, but I see plenty of people telling me they’re still using it, so they’re not dead.

      Basically, until someone like Google, Twitter, or Facebook declares they’re shutting down, everyone else should just shut up about things being “dead.”

      After Newsweek pundit Clifford Stoll famously declared that the Internet would not replace newspapers, that Nicholas Negroponte was an idiot for saying we would buy books and newspapers straight from the Internet, and that you couldn’t “tote that laptop to the beach,” I would think that most people would hesitate before putting themselves out like that without any evidence to back it up. (In fact, Stoll’s piece has been generating such big laughs these past few weeks, that Newsweek’s own blog said, “Decca Records didn’t get this much heat for passing on the Beatles.”)

      There are very few people whose predictions I absolutely trust. If one of them says, “this technology is dead,” I’ll check it out for myself to make sure. Anyone else who says it just looks like a poseur (that’s the real spelling of “poser.” It rhymes with “hoser.”) Everyone else seems to be killing technology because they don’t use it anymore (if they ever did), or they read a story somewhere that said overall use was down, or it had peaked, or some shiny new thing came along.

      If you’re declaring something to be dead as a way to generate buzz and bring in some readers, start writing things with substance. Scott Scheper just did it with his blog post, Twitter, As We Knew It, is Dead. And while his qualifying phrase, “as we knew it,” keeps him from flying too close to my whole nose-wrinkling disdain of “is dead,” I do have to say his article is filled with enough actual useful information that he gets a free pass this time.

      Basically, if all you can do is declare something to be dead because you can’t think of a catchy headline, then just don’t say anything until you can. Talk about how the thing has changed, talk about how you think it can be saved, or talk about its replacement. Just stop killing things for everyone else just because you quit using them.

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        Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Networking, Opinion, Twitter, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

        Stop Saying “Drink the Kool-Aid.” It’s Offensive.

        February 25, 2010 By

        The funny thing about language is that we accept the language of violence, and are shocked by the language of love, sex, and passion.

        Last night, I watched Stephen Fry (@StephenFry) on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (@CraigyFerg), in an audience-free show where the two chatted for almost an hour about some intelligent stuff. That’s when Fry said something that — to me, the wordsmith — just floored me.

        If an alien was looking down on us, and inspecting our language, they would see that the worst thing we do on this planet is we torture, we kill, we abuse, we harm people. We’re cruel. And those are the things at which we should be ashamed. Amongst the best things we do is we breed children, we raise them, we make love to each other, we adore each other, we’re affectionate and fond of each other. Those are the good things we do.

        They would say that how odd that the language for the awful things we use casually. ‘Oh the traffic was agony, it was hell, it was cruel, it was torture waiting in line.’ We use words like ‘torture.’ That’s the worst word.

        And yet, if we use the F-word, which is the word for generating our species, for showing physical affection one to another, then we’re taken off air and accused of being wicked and irresponsible and a bad influence to children.

        Words have power. They have impact. If I call you a rotten f—er (see, I can’t even use the word, because I might offend someone), that has real power. It’s a verbal slap to the face, soon to be followed by a real one.

        But if you’re giving me hard time and I say, “you’re killing me,” we laugh at that, like it’s somehow funny that your minor inconveniences are going to result in my eventual death.

        We can’t talk about the creation of life, or the affirmation of life, without howls of outrage, but it’s all right, even funny, to talk about the harm and destruction of it.

        Don’t get me wrong, I love dark comedy and morbid humor. There’s something liberating to be able to laugh at the things that scare us. But there’s a line I don’t like to cross, and I’ve been thinking for a few months about where that line is.

        It’s somewhere around the phrase, “drink the Kool-Aid.” We use that phrase in business without a thought. It means undying loyalty. If you “drink the company Kool-Aid,” you’re a company man through and through. You’ve bought into management’s vision, and you’ll follow it to The Bitter End. We throw this phrase around without a thought.

        It comes from one of the largest mass suicides in all history, where more than 900 people died in Jonestown, Guyana. It was the day Jim Jones persuaded all 909 members of his cult to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid).

        I was 11 years old when Jonestown happened. I remember the footage and photos of the bodies. I remember grownups talking about it. In some ways, it’s all the more shameful for us Hoosiers, because Jim Jones got his start right here in Indianapolis. (Click the link above if you’ve never heard the story.)

        So I don’t say “drink the Kool-Aid” at all. It’s a horrible phrase about a horrible event created by a horrible man. And to toss it around like a punchline, a throwaway phrase to use in a motivational speech, is repugnant.

        And this one phrase illustrates Fry’s point so well: we casually throw around the language of violence like it’s no big deal.

        But we get embarrassed and throw a royal fit when a woman’s nipple is shown on national TV for a fraction of a second. We’re upset by a brief glimpse of a small segment of a woman’s body, yet we think nothing of talking about torture — the “worst word,” Fry called it — and suicide bombings and war and beheadings on the evening news while our kids are in the room. That’s somehow okay, but we fine TV stations millions of dollars because Janet Jackson got a little extra publicity.

        (Now, I understand your initial reaction might be to talk about the rampant over-sexuality of our culture, and how our kids shouldn’t be exposed to that sort of thing. And I won’t disagree with you a single bit. Frankly, I don’t want my kids seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple during the Super Bowl either. But that’s not my point. So, if that’s your response, then you’ve completely missed the boat. Go back to the beginning and start over.)

        My point is that language is powerful. One of the most powerful weapons we have. It cannot be used casually. We shouldn’t toss words around without thinking about the meaning behind them.

        In social media circles, we talk about the creation and exchanging of ideas. Yet language is the biggest, most important idea — ideal? — of all. To treat it so thoughtlessly harms it. It reduces our values and ideals to afterthoughts and punchlines.

        Here’s the segment of Fry and Ferguson’s conversation. The quote above comes at around the 8:00 mark, but it’s worth watching the entire thing.

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          I’m Underwhelmed by Google Buzz

          February 12, 2010 By
          Screen shot 2010-02-12 at 11.15.03 AM

          Google released their new “social network,” Buzz, to much fanfare this week.

          People watched the live broadcast and tweeted about it excitedly. The unfortunate few who hadn’t received their Buzz account were asking, “what is it? What is it?” The Silicon Alley Insider giggled that Buzz was going to be a Twitter killer. Jason McCabe Calcanis breathlessly declared that Facebook’s traffic would drop by half because of the buzz.

          The best I can give it is a “meh.”

          I’m sorry, I really am. I like Google. I like their products. I use Blogspot for my personal blog. I use Gmail for my email interface, including Pro Blog Service emails. We use Google Docs for work flow and client document sharing. So I really wanted this to work.

          But I haven’t been impressed by Google Buzz. It has become one more thing in my Inbox to nag at me. At least with Facebook and Twitter, I can ignore the feed for a while, and I don’t have to worry about whether I missed anything.

          Screen shot 2010-02-12 at 11.15.03 AMBuzz, on the other hand, has a spot in my Google inbox, where I get to see how many different posts, articles, and statement about “I’m just trying to figure out Buzz,” along with every “me too. What does it do?” comment. The count just sits there, staring at me plaintively, until I clear out the Buzz inbox. And since there’s no “Mark all as read” button, I have to scroll down just to “read” them to get rid of them.

          (Note: I’ve found that if I hit CMD-Down and go to the end of the page and then CMD-Up, it clears everything out.)

          I’ve got accounts on FriendFeed, Plaxo, and other life streaming social networks, and I haven’t looked at any of them in months. I haven’t touched FriendFeed since the week I opened the account. Why? Because I don’t need to have all of the Twitter and Facebook information of all my friends aggregated into one place. If I want to see what someone is doing on Twitter and Facebook, I just go to those networks. I don’t need to go to a 3rd place to do it.

          That’s what Google Buzz is, a life streamer. It aggregates every short question, Buzz post, tweet, status update, LinkedIn comment, Flickr and Picasa photo, and YouTube video any of my contacts have posted.

          In short, Buzz isn’t going to kill Twitter or Facebook. It’s going to kill my productivity if I keep using it. And so rather than try to keep up with the firehose that it has become (and I’ve only got 70 people in my stream), I’m going to ignore it until someone shows me what I can do with Buzz that I can’t do with Tweetdeck and its ability to create lists and columns.

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            What Tom Waits Can Teach You About Powerful Writing

            February 2, 2010 By

            Tom Waits isn’t just a musician, he’s a lifestyle choice. The growly-voiced singer-songwriter has created some of the most powerful, haunting music I’ve ever poured into my ears. Waits does it with simple, sad music, but more importantly, with a mastery of poetic language that would make Lord Byron pull his hair out with envy.

            Especially the metaphor. Waits’ music is filled with metaphors, which gives it the emotional impact and depth you just don’t get with the Single Ladies and Poker Faces of the world. (Most of today’s music has all the emotional complexity of a high school prom, but Waits is an in-depth, all-night discussion about the meaning of life.)

            A couple months ago, I wrote about why metaphors make for more powerful writing than similes. I said:

            I don’t like similes. They’re weak. They’re the pencil-necked milksop of literary devices. They say things are similar, but not quite that item. Life is like a box of chocolates, but not really.

            Take a look at (this) example: “Men’s words are bullets.” That’s a powerful phrase. It doesn’t say they’re like bullets, that they remind people of bullets, or “words can hurt people sort of like bullets can hurt people.” That’s just smarmy, wishy-washy pap.

            “Men’s words are bullets,” on the other hand, makes you feel the the emotional damage that can be done by words, feeling the piercing, crashing power of a bullet fired from a large gun.

            I’ve been listening to Waits’ Nighthawks at the Diner album a lot lately. It’s my favorite Waits album, and carries my favorite Waits song, Putnam County.

            Any writer who wants to learn about the power and grip of language should give this a listen, and pay careful attention to Waits’ use of language. A quick check showed only one simile in the entire piece, and the rest were metaphors.

            If you want to master writing and create language that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shakes you to pay attention, study these lyrics, listen to the song, and see if you can introduce this style into your own writing.

            Putnam County, Tom Waits

            I guess things were always kinda quiet around Putnam County
            Kinda shy and sleepy as it clung to the skirts of the 2-lane
            That was stretched out just like an asphalt dance floor
            Where all the old-timers in bib jeans and store bought boots
            Were hunkerin’ down in the dirt
            To lie about their lives and the places that they’d been

            And they’d suck on Coca Colas, yeah, and be spittin’ Day’s Work
            Until the moon was a stray dog on the ridge and
            And the taverns would be swollen until the naked eye of 2 a.m.
            And the Stratocasters slung over the Burgermeister beer guts

            And swizzle stick legs jackknifed over naugahyde stools
            And the witch hazel spread out over the linoleum floors
            And pedal pushers stretched out over a midriff bulge
            And the coiffed brunette curls over Maybelline eyes
            Wearing Prince Matchabelli*, or something
            Estee Lauder, smells so sweet

            And I elbowed up at the counter with mixed feelings over mixed drinks
            As Bubba and the Roadmasters moaned in pool hall concentration
            And knit their brows to cover the entire Hank Williams songbook
            Whether you like it or not

            And the old National register was singin’ to the tune of $57.57
            And then it’s last call, one more game of eightball
            Berniece’d be puttin’ the chairs on the tables
            And someone come in and say, ‘Hey man, anyone got any jumper cables?’
            ‘Is that a 6 or a 12 volt, man? I don’t know…’

            Yeah, and all the studs in town would toss ‘em down
            And claim to fame as they stomped their feet
            Yeah, boastin’ about bein’ able to get more ass than a toilet seat

            And the GMCs) and the Straight-8 Fords were coughin’ and wheezin’
            And they percolated) as they tossed the gravel underneath the fenders
            To weave home a wet slick anaconda of a 2-lane

            With tire irons and crowbars a-rattlin’
            With a tool box and a pony saddle
            You’re grindin’ gears and you’re shiftin’ into first
            Yeah, and that goddam Tranny’s just gettin’ worse, man

            With the melody of see-ya-laters and screwdrivers on carburetors
            Talkin’ shop about money to loan
            And Palominos and strawberry roans

            See ya tomorrow, hello to the Missus!
            With money to borrow and goodnight kisses
            As the radio spit out Charlie Rich, man,
            and he sure can sing that son of a bitch

            And you weave home, yeah, weavin’ home
            Leavin’ the little joint winkin’ in the dark warm narcotic American night
            Beneath a pin cushion sky
            And it’s home to toast and honey, gotta start up the Ford, man

            Yeah, and your lunch money’s right over there on the drainin’ board
            And the toilet’s runnin’! Christ, shake the handle!
            And the telephone’s ringin’, it’s Mrs. Randall
            And where the hell are my goddamn sandals?
            What you mean, the dog chewed up my left foot?

            With the porcelain poodles and the glass swans
            Staring down from the knickknack shelf
            And the parent permission slips for the kids’ field trips
            Yeah, and a pair of Muckalucks) scraping across the shag carpet

            And the impending squint of first light
            And it lurked behind a weepin’ marquee in downtown Putnam
            Yeah, and it’d be pullin’ up any minute now
            Just like a bastard amber Velveta yellow cab on a rainy corner
            And be blowin’ its horn in every window in town

            (Here’s a YouTube video of a different version of Putnam Conty than the one you’ll hear on Nighthawks at the Diner, but the lyrics are the same. Listen to it and read the lyrics again. You’ll get a sense of what Waits can do with language, and the power it can have to move people.

            * Update: I have to thank Allison (see the comments below) for the correction on Prince Matchabelli. I originally had Prince Machiavelli in the lyrics, which I got from the original lyrics source, but apparently Matchabelli is an old dimestore makeup. I had always heard the name, but never paid much attention to it. And in the song, I always thought Waits was purposely butchering “Machiavelli,” (not to be confused with the Machiavelli (mock-ee-uh-velli) who wrote “The Prince”).

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              Why Are There So Few Trend Setters in Social Media?

              January 19, 2010 By

              I noticed an interesting trend, and I’m ashamed to say I’m part of it.

              There are very few trend setters in social media. Very few pioneers. We’re mostly settlers.

              We all try to be as cutting edge as we can, but we’re sometimes at the mercy of what everyone else is talking about. We pay close attention to luminaries like Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Jeremiah Owyang, and Gary Vaynerchuk. We wait to see what they’re talking about, and we talk about that. And we all hold up their discarded sandals, like that great scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

              I do it too. I see an interesting article on Jason’s blog, and decide I’ll comment on that. Or I’ll see something Doug Karr wrote in the Marketing Technology blog, and piggyback off that. But it’s rare that I write about issues that those guys didn’t write about first.

              I’ve done it a few times — crisis communication, entre-commuting, or getting spanked by the Canadian Council of PR Firms — but I’ve also jumped solidly on the bandwagon, pushing women and children out of the way so I could get a comfy seat.

              Unfortunately, this is a rather centralized industry. We only have a few tools we use with any regularity — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google — and so we all talk about how we use them, and the great things we’ve learned, or the trends coming our way.

              I want to stop doing that. I want to be that one guy in the crowd who says, “Hold up the sandal!”

              I can’t say I won’t keep doing following the pioneers, but I’m going to make a conscious effort to do it less. That’s one reason I didn’t post anything on the blog for a couple of weeks. (Yeah, yeah, that’s the reason.)

              So it may mean I post fewer times per week on the blog. It may mean shorter posts, and fewer how-to posts. But we’re going to try to make our own path as much as possible, even if it runs adjacent to someone else’s. We’re just going to quit following the well-worn path that some people have meandered down.

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                My new HTC Droid

                December 21, 2009 By
                Me and my Droid

                Me and my DroidI’m loving my new HTC Droid on Verizon right now, although I’m worried about my motivation for buying it. I finally decided to get it because Chris Brogran got one.

                Now, I’m not the kind of guy who buys stuff because some celebrity says so. In fact, I will often go out of my way to not buy something because a celebrity did. Ashton Kutcher is schlepping some new camera? I won’t buy it. Peyton Manning has a new MasterCard commercial? He’s one of my favorite players, but I’ll stick with my own credit card.

                I realize Chris is not actually a celebrity (he’s what we call a “cewebrity”). But after reading Chris’ book Trust Agents, especially his chapter on “One of Us,” I decided I could trust him. Chris uses a cell phone all the time. If he decided he couldn’t live with AT&T’s crappy network anymore, and that the Droid was a pretty good deal, then maybe it was time I joined the 21st century and got rid of my old flip phone. (It wasn’t that old.)

                Basically, I was torn in three directions: do I get the Droid and stay with Verizon (I’ve been with them for 8 years)? Do I wait to see if the iPhone becomes available to Verizon in Q3 2010? Or do I leave Verizon and go to AT&T just to get an iPhone and have to deal with a network that most of my Indianapolis friends detest?

                Once I saw that Chris Brogan — One of Us — had made the switch, I knew which one to get.

                So my wife and I took advantage of Verizon’s Buy One Get One offer on the Droid ERIS (which I think should be called the ERIK, but they didn’t ask me), as well as our upgrade credits and rebates, and got two of them for $24. Not a bad deal.

                I’m still learning how to use it, but I’m starting to see all the cool stuff the Droid can do: Twidroid for Twitter, Evernote, Google Latitude with turn-by-turn directions, and — God help me! — Foursquare. (I am seriously digging FourSquare. It makes me want to get out more.)

                I’m still fiercely clinging to my celebrity independence, and refuse to be swayed by someone’s popularity when I know they’re nothing more than a shill-for-hire, pimping out their name and reputation to the highest bidder.

                But I’m also wondering if Chris will autograph my Droid the next time I see him.

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                  Entrepreneurs, Support Your Local Coffee Shops So We’ll Support You

                  October 28, 2009 By
                  Karla & Ashley at Hubbard & Cravens

                  I was at a Rainmakers meeting last night, when my friend Lorraine Ball was the guest speaker. She spoke about the local business economy and the importance of supporting local businesses, especially if you’re in a small business yourself.

                  Karla & Ashley at Hubbard & CravensLorraine talked about when Rainmakers first started, they had their favorite local special coffee shop at the corner of 86th & Keystone. The owner, Malcolm, was even a Rainmaker, so it made sense that they would all meet there. Since they didn’t have offices, that became their de facto office. If you wanted to find Tony Scelzo, Lorraine, or any of the other Rainmakers, you didn’t call them, you drove there. Until one day, Lorraine showed up at the shop, and found that it was closed down.

                  Although there are a lot of reasons and suppositions about why it happened, the simple fact is that Malcolm just wasn’t getting enough local support from local customers. The Rainmakers made up about 40% of his business, but at the time, they only numbered about 100. You can’t run a successful coffee shop on 250 people.

                  Now, Rainmakers has reached 1600 members. They’re having one-on-ones and entrepreneur meetings galore, at a variety of coffee shops all over the city. Unfortunately, most of these places tend to be at a nearby Starbucks, and not a local coffee shop like Malcolm’s.

                  Our local economy is built on local business, not on national business. Local coffee shops, local supermarkets, local hardware stores bring in money to our city and state; Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Lowe’s don’t.

                  In fact, out of every dollar you spend at a local business, 40 cents of it stays in the community. When you spend a dollar at the big chain stores, 13 cents stays in the local economy. And that’s usually in the form of salaries, which are then spent on coffee, food, and home items. . . from Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Lowes.

                  In other words, if you want to grow your local economy, patronize local restaurants, coffee shops, and stores whenever possible.

                  As a small business owner and networking fiend, I have had more than my share of one-on-ones in coffee shops. I’ve personally drunk enough copy to float a battleship and put Juan Valdez’s kids through Harvard Business School. And I’ve tried to do it whenever possible at any of my favorite local shops. I avoid Starbucks whenever possible (although there are times it’s just unavoidable).

                  I have my favorites, and I often tell people about “the two best coffees in the city,” both of which roast their beans locally, rather than buying them from somewhere else. I visit Hubbard & Cravens in Broad Ripple several times a week, and can often count on bumping into people I know, including several Rainmakers, fellow writers, and other social media luminaries. It’s sort of like Cheers for the networking set.

                  Now, one of my own favorites (and Doug Karr’s home away from home), the Bean Cup, is closing down. It’s the fourth or fifth closing that I can think of since I moved here three-and-a-half years ago. Why? Because more people are concerned about buying coffee with an image, not supporting their local shops.

                  Here’s the bottom line: if you’re a local business owner or entrepreneur, and you expect people to support your business, it’s important that you support your local community. If you’re a local entrepreneur, and hold most of your meetings in a Starbucks, then does that mean I don’t have to support you? It seems rather odd that people who depend on a local customer base do their business in a national chain that only gives $.13 back to our community.

                  “Until Starbucks starts sending me checks from Seattle,” said Lorraine, “I’m not going to patronize them.”

                  Here’s my challenge: if you meet with clients, partners, and vendors at coffee shops, forgo Big Corporate Coffee and visit a local shop instead. Be brave, be bold, be daring. Try something new for once, try something that’s not bitter and over-roasted, and see if you can find a new favorite coffee shop. And if you’re in the leadership of a networking organization geared toward local businesses, I think it’s especially important that you be a role model in this. Stop visiting coffee shops that don’t support our mission of “Be more, serve more” and “SHARE” and hold your meetings in the ones that do.

                  If you’re not sure where to find one, check out the Indy Indie Coffee shop map Doug Karr and I created. It’s an up-to-date Google map of all the local coffee shops in Central Indiana. Visit the map, zoom in to your neighborhood, and pick a shop in your area. Start holding your meetings at these locations and become a regular. Take advantage of their free wifi, better tasting coffee, and strong sense of community.

                  If we’re going to rebuild our local economy, it’s not going to happen by eating at big chain restaurants, drinking big chain coffee, or buying big chain groceries. It’s going to happen by visiting local coffee shops, buying from a local hardware store, and even going to local supermarkets and farmers markets.

                  And if you want to know what the two best coffees in Indianapolis are, send me an email and I’ll share my favorites with you. I’ll also tell you where to find the best brownies, best atmosphere, and best owners.

                  Photo: Me. That’s Karla & Ashley, two of the fine baristas at one of my favorite coffee shops.

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                    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Entrepreneurs, Support Your Local Coffee Shops So We'll Support You  •  Keywords : coffee, Indianapolis, local economy, networking, Rainmakers  • 
                    Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , ,

                    Rich Harris is All About Social Media Experts, Ninjas, and Grasshoppers

                    September 16, 2009 By

                    Blogger Rich Harris over at 47 Project is the latest to proclaim ain’t no party like a Scranton party there’s no such thing as a social media experts, with his post “Social Media Expert? You Have Lots to Learn, Grasshopper.”

                    Now that title may at first glance appear somewhat pretentious but even being someone who manages social media for a large company like myself, I have a hard time proclaiming guru or expert status.

                    Here’s the thing. You can’t be an expert at something that first of all has really only started culminating the last couple years, and second, changes almost every week. You can call yourself a social media ninja, bad ass, maestro, whatever the hell you wanna call it….but there’s a 96.87% chance you are no guru or expert.

                    … said the guy who calls himself Musician, Artist, Photographer, Web Ninja, Sarcastic Jerk.

                    (Personally, I don’t think anyone should call themselves a ninja unless they can hide in the darkness and kill people with their thumb, but that’s just me.)

                    I don’t take issue with Harris’ idea that “just because you have a Twitter account and you know how to use it, doesn’t make you a social media marketer.”

                    We see that a lot in our business. We’re ghost bloggers. We write blogs, and that’s all we do. We’re professional writers and communicators who understand how to a) turn a phrase, b) do it so the search engines find us, and c) it’s still pleasing to readers.

                    But there are plenty of people who barely passed high school English schlepping themselves on GetAFreelancer.com (I won’t even link to that place), calling themselves blog writers, offering to write blog posts for $2 apiece. That’s not writing, that’s typing.

                    So I’m with Rich on this one: just because you can do it, doesn’t mean your good at it.

                    But as I said a few weeks ago, I’ve rejected this whole notion of “No Social Media Experts” as utter bullshit.

                    The NSME argument usually goes something like this:

                    1. Malcolm Gladwell says you have to do something for 10,000 hours to be an expert.
                    2. Social media tools like Twitter are not 10,000 hours old.
                    3. You can’t have used Twitter for 10,000 hours.
                    4. Therefore, there are no social media experts.

                    However, the tools don’t make the expert. Sure, your job is easier if you have a more-than-passing understanding of the tools (and no, playing Oregon Trail or Pirate Clan on Facebook doesn’t count), but it doesn’t mean you can’t be an expert just because you’re on a brand new social network.

                    Social media experts do things like get paid a lot of money to speak at conferences (Chris Brogan), write widgets, plug-ins and blogging software-as-a-service (Doug Karr), or write books like Twitter Marketing for Dummies (Kyle Lacy). Experts are basically doing this for a living, making money with it, and can make bigger claims that 20,000 artificial followers on Twitter.

                    Harris actually agrees with me, which sort of makes me feel bad for the ninja crack, although he stops short of proclaiming himself a social media expert, even though he does social media for a large unnamed corporation.

                    To be a social media expert or guru, you need to understand all the tools, how they all work together and you need to have a passion for human beings and their behavior, good, bad and ugly. If you understand that stuff, have a vision, and are fascinated with human beings, you will be a social media jedi one day. I hope I get to be one too. :-)

                    Expertise in social media doesn’t rely on knowledge of the tools. Rather, it relies on two other things, communication and social psychology. In other words, the ability to create an effective message, and the understanding of how that message will affect/appeal to your chosen audience. If you can synthesize those two things, and use tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or the Nails For Males Yahoo discussion group to have your intended effect, you’re probably more of a social media expert than the guy who keeps sending DM after DM to tell you how to make money while you sleep.

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                      Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Rich Harris is All About Social Media Experts, Ninjas, and Grasshoppers  •  Keywords : ninjas, Social Media, social media experts  • 
                      Filed Under: Opinion, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
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