Atlas Matters

From what I understand Sarah Milstein had a great presentation at the SLA San Andreas Chapter.

*The Business Case for Twitter*
Presented by Sarah Milstein to SLA, 11 March 2009
<http://radar.oreilly.com/research/twitter-report.html>

Questions to ask before you dive in

- Who are we hoping to connect with?
- What kind of information is interesting to them?

Research tools

- Advanced search on http://search.twitter.com. Run a handful of queries
and then grab the RSS feed for each one you find useful.
- Monitor multiple queries at once: www.tweetgrid.com
- Compare trends: http://twist.flaptor.com

Custom backgrounds

- Create a Twitter Background Using PowerPoint or Keynote:

http://theclosetentrepreneur.com/create-a-twitter-background-using-powerpoint
- Free Twitter backgrounds (as .PSD files): http://twitterbacks.com/
- Guidelines on creating your own:

http://www.croncast.com/blog/1320/Twitter-background-guidelines-template-size.php

Third-party clients

- Twhirl: www.twhirl.org
- TweetDeck: www.tweetdeck.com
- Peoplebrowsr: www.peoplebrowsr.com
- HootSuite: http://hootsuite.com/

Finding followers

- Directories of Twitterers: www.twellow.com, www.twitdir.com
- Twitter groups by category: http://twittgroups.com
- Follower recommendations : http://mrtweet.net

Archive messages

- Tweetake: http://tweetake.com/

Internal micromessaging

- Present.ly: http://presentlyapp.com
- Yammer: www.yammer.com

Contact Sarah Milstein

- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SarahM (personal)
http://twitter.com/TweetReport (Twitter-related goodies)

- Email: sarah.milstein@gmail.com
- Online workshops from Sarah: www.20slides.com
- "Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution" at:
http://radar.oreilly.com/research/twitter-report.html

I would like to thanks Patricia Parsons, San Andreas Program Director for sharing this with me and my network!

CG

Waiting for the Mountain to Move: Reflections on Work and Life

I found this really amazing book a few years ago at a little used book shop. I was in Montery, CA speaking at Internet Librarian. It seems to have some timeless subjects covered in a very inspiring way… Here is an excerpt that I’ve been sharing it with a number of friends in person to kick off the year. Based on their response I wanted to share it with others!

“Negative Capability

Uncertainty, they say, is part of the human condition. I sometimes wonder, however, just how much uncertainty our human condition can stand.

I don’t remember a time when the news has been so compelling, everywhere. Change is in the air, like spring – heady, and frightening. The neatest bit of news that I saw, in December 1989, when walls were falling all over Europe, was an item in the International Herald Tribune. “5000 Alsatian guard-dogs surplus in East Germany,” the headline said. “Too violent to be used as household pets.” It was, I felt, an apt symbol of the end of the Cold War. But then I spared a thought or two for the person who had what he or she thought was a secure business breeding and training Alsatian dogs to prowl the wall. A nice little niche market, you might say, destroyed overnight. Change is not heady when it happens to you – just frightening.

Most of us therefore hope and pray that it won’t happen to us. “why cannot the status quo be the way forward?” someone once wistfully asked. The Old Testament psalmist was more realistic. “It is the fool and the brutish person,” he wrote, “who in their inward thoughts think that their houses will continue forever, their dwelling places for all generations, who call their lands after their own names.” We should be so lucky.

Product life cycles are down to six months in some businesses. Models are out of date before you’ve read the ads. What was a meadow in January is a motorway in November. You had best assume that next year is an unsolved problem for which last year’s solutions provide no help. Uncertainty, as I have said, is part of the human condition.

Another poet, Keats this time, had an answer. Negative capability, that’s what’s needed he said; negative capability, which he defined as when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts. Negative capability – the strength to keep going when all about you is in flux, when the future is a blank sheet of paper waiting for you to write on it. Let us hope that President Clinton has his cup flowing over with it.

Negative capability – it’s an ugly phrase for a poet to use. I prefer the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that was God’s sign of reassurance to the Israelites in the wilderness. That’s what religion has always been about, not certainty, but the strength to live with uncertainty, in the wilderness, in the face of death. Negative capability – I guess it’s a jargon word for faith.”

There is a lot more  to the book, so if you liked this you might want the whole thing. Waiting for the Mountain to Move: Reflections on Work and Life