Wanted – Climb to the Stars

Eliminatoires suisses du WIF: sponsoring et Suisse allemande [fr]

Avez-vous entendu parler du WIF? Si vous êtes dans le monde de webdesign, vous devriez. En bref, il s’agit d’un concours international de webdesign par équipes qui a lieu tous les deux ans à Limoges, en France.

Les concurrents reçoivent le thème du concours le samedi à midi et travaillent d’arrache-pied durant 24 heures pour rendre leur participation avant le dimanche midi. Une ambiance incroyable et des projets dingues!

Vu le succès du concours-festival, les concurrents doivent se qualifier lors d’éliminatoires pour pouvoir se rendre à Limoges.

Julien Henzelin et Yann Lugrin de Liquid Concept, Yannik Messerli de la Junior Entreprise de l’EPFL et moi-même sommes en train de mettre sur pied les éliminatoires suisses pour 2010.

La préparation va bon train, mais il manque encore à notre fine équipe:

un ou des partenaires suisse-allemands, pour que les éliminatoires suisses ne se cassent pas la figure sur le Röstigraben
un responsable sponsoring (préparer avec nous les offres et les dossiers, et surtout, approcher les sponsors potentiels et conclure les contrats! — rémunéré, of course)

Si vous êtes intéressé ou que vous connaissez quelqu’un qui pourrait l’être, ou si vous désirez des précisions, n’attendez pas pour nous contacter!

Cherche blogueurs branchés voyages (pour blog ebookers) [en]

[fr] As the editor of the upcoming ebookers blog in French, I'm looking for a few motivated French-speaking bloggers to write about travel-related topics (paid blogging).

Ceux qui me suivent sur Twitter ont peut-être déjà vu passer un appel ou deux. Voici les détails.

Vous connaissez certainement ebookers, la première agence de voyages en ligne suisse. Ils ont depuis un moment déjà un blog en allemand, et désirent à présent en lancer un en français.

La rédactrice en chef de ce nouveau blog couvrant toutes sortes de sujets touchant au voyage, c’est bibi. Nous publierons une vingtaine de billets par mois. Les auteurs seront rémunérés (quelques dizaines de francs par article; ce ne sont donc pas des sommes folles, mais un contributeur régulier peut espérer faire quelques centaines de francs par mois suivant la quantité de publications) et on commence en janvier. De plus, participer ainsi à un projet de blog collectif permet d’augmenter sa visibilité en tant que blogueur, et d’acquérir une expérience professionnelle originale.

Donc, opération recrutement: je recherche trois-quatre blogueurs motivés et passionnés par les voyages, intéressés à contribuer régulièrement à ce “blog de voyages” (mélange de sujets libres et de sujets “sur commande”). Plusieurs personnes m’ont déjà signifiée leur intérêt. Histoire de formuler tout ça (et aussi parce que tout ce qui est “sous” passera par Blogwerk, l’entreprise qui gère ce projet pour ebookers), j’ai préparé un petit formulaire de candidature que vous trouverez ci-dessous. On vous demande 5 idées d’articles et un exemple d’article. N’hésitez pas à étudier un peu le blog en allemand pour vous faire une idée des sujets possibles (destinations, tuyaux pratiques, voyage en général, actualités, récits de voyage&)

J’attends avec impatience vos candidatures, et je me réjouis du démarrage de ce blog! Si vous avez des questions, les commentaires sont là pour ça.

Going Solo is Hiring! [en]

[fr] Going Solo cherche un vendeur (sponsoring). Ça se passe en anglais, donc voyez directement les détails de l'annonce ci-dessous.

Wanted: sponsorship salesperson for Going Solo conference

Going Solo is looking for an enthusiastic salesperson to negotiate and finalise sponsorship deals. After a very successful first event in Lausanne, Switzerland, the conference is taking place again in Leeds, UK, on September 12th. There are plans to produce the event elsewhere in Europe and in the US.

Availability: as soon as possible
Remuneration: 20% commission on cash sponsorships
Profile: skilled in negotiating and closing sponsorship deals, knowledge of the tech/freelancing world a plus.

What we provide:

– leads (past sponsors and fresh contacts)
– sponsorship materials

What we expect:

– discuss and amend existing sponsorship offerings
– follow through to closure on provided leads
– other leads can also be explored freely.

If you’re interested or would like more information, get in touch with
Stephanie Booth ([email protected], @stephtara, or steph-booth on
skype).

Becoming a Professional Networker: Tags in Address Book OSX Needed! [en]

[fr] Besoin, de toute urgence: plugin Address Book.app permettant de taguer ses contacts.

For some time now, I’ve been aware that I’m becoming a professional networker. Almost all I do to promote Going Solo, for example, relies on my reputation and the connections I have to other people.

Now, I’ve never been somebody to collect contacts just for the sake of collecting contacts, but until LeWeb3 last year, I had just been content with butterflying around and stacking business cards somewhere near by desk. At LeWeb3, when I started telling people about Going Solo, I also started realising that the people I met and contacts I made were going to have more importance for my business than before.

And if I’ve learnt something during these last two months, it’s the importance of getting back to people. I’ve figured out how iGTD and GMail can play nice together to help me with that, but it’s not sufficient. I need to keep track of who I’ve asked what, of who can help me with what, who has this or that connection. And yes, I have too many people in my business network to keep everything in my head.

As I explain in the video above, the lovely Cathy Brooks put me on the right track: use Address Book.app. I don’t really need to keep all the contact details related to a person close at hand (ie, phone number, e-mail, etc.) because I have that in LinkedIn, Facebook, GMail address book, or on business cards. I’m not interested in keeping an exhaustive repository of all the contact details of all the people I’ve met. What I’m interested in, however, is keeping the names of these people somewhere I can attach meaningful information to them.

Where we met. What we talked about. Stuff that’ll help me remember who people are.

So, I started simply adding names (Firstname Lastname) into my OSX address book, along with a few words in the Notes field. The nice thing about the Notes field is that you don’t have to toggle edit mode on to add stuff in the Notes. So, of course, I started using the notes field to tag people. Not too bad (smart folders allow me to “pull out” people with a certain tag) but not great either, because tags get mixed up with notes, and it’s a bit clunky.

Somebody suggested I create a custom “Tags” field (a “Names” type field is fine). Unfortunately, though this looks like a good idea at first, it fails because you have to edit a contact each time you want to add tags. Also, you can’t create a smart folder based on the contents of that field — you need to search through the whole card. Clunky too.

I don’t know how to write Address Book plugins, but I know they exist, and I have an idea for a plugin that would save my life (and probably countless others) and which doesn’t seem very complex to build. If there’s anybody out there listening… here’s a chance to be a hero.

I want a “tag your contacts” plugin for Address Book.app. What would it do? Simple, add a “Tags” field that behaves similarly to the “Notes” field. That would allow me to separate notes and tags — they aren’t quite the same thing, don’t you agree?

In addition to that, the plugin could display a list of all contacts tagged “thisorthat” when you double-clicked the tag. That would be nice.

Does anybody else want this? Does it already exist? Would anybody be willing to build it? (If other people are interested, I’d be willing to suggest we pool some cash to donate to the kind person building this life-saving plugin.)

Going Solo Venues, Open Stage, and Link Love [en]

[fr] Sur le site de Going Solo, vous trouverez le récit de mon après-midi passée à visiter des salles de conférences à Lausanne. Ma proposition d'Open Stage pour LIFT'08 semble avoir du succès mais a encore besoin de vos votes.

Je me pose ensuite des tas de question sur les raisons pour lesquelles Going Solo ne semble pas attirer plus l'attention des blogueurs. Est-ce trop tôt? Pas assez d'informations? Ai-je épuisé mon capital social? Est-ce que tout le monde pense que les autres s'en chargent?

Pour que des personnes en-dehors de mon réseau direct puissent entendre parler de Going Solo et s'y intéresser, j'ai besoin de votre aide. Voici la (modeste) collection de liens couvrant Going Solo. Julien a parlé plusieurs fois de Going Solo en français (merci!), mais je crois que c'est à peu près tout côté couverture francophone. Oui, la conférence est en anglais. Mais vos lecteurs francophones ne sont pas tous nécessairement anglophobes, ni les personnes qu'ils connaissent à leur tour.

Que ce soit clair: je ne veux forcer la main à personne. Si vous trouvez Going Solo inutile ou même bête, ne perdez pas votre temps à en parler (ou mieux, en fait, racontez pourquoi vous pensez ainsi, ça m'intéresse). Mais si vous désirez soutenir cette conférence et que ce n'est visible nulle part sur votre blog... Prenez un petit moment pour ça.

Et si vous avez un éclairage à offrir concernant ma difficulté permanent à "rallier" les gens autour des choses que je fais (pas les choses que je blogue, hein, celles que je fais), je suis toute ouïe. Merci d'avance.

Just a note to say I’ve published a blog post on hunting for venues for Going Solo (yes, on the Going Solo blog — what? you haven’t subscribed yet? what are you waiting for?). If you have any thoughts on the points I raise there, go ahead.

In the good news departments, it seems my open stage proposal about organizing a conference for freelancers is attracting interest. It still needs votes though, so if you want to help make sure I hit the big stage and you are going to attend LIFT, be sure to vote. (Every vote counts. Thanks.)

Prepare for slight digression.

For some reason, I seem to always have trouble motivating people to “spread the word” about stuff I’m doing. There seems to be a disconnect between the picture people send back to me (“Oh, you have so much traction, you’re so influent, etc.”) and what actually happens when I try to get the word out about something.

I usually don’t have this problem when it’s somebody else’s stuff. If I sign up for your nice new shiny 2.0 service and like it, I’m going to convince dozens of people to sign up. Twitter. Dopplr. Seesmic. It’s even happening with offline stuff like the neti pot.

I guess one of the issues is that I’m not really comfortable promoting my own stuff. Some people seem to have no problem doing that — I always feel like I should shut up, and if what I’m doing is really worthwhile, other people will pick it up and blog about it. On the other hand, I am pretty comfortable page-slapping people with my own writings.

So, what is it? Do people underestimate the support I need from the community? Am I one of those annoying people who ask for too much and don’t give enough? Do I squander my social capital? Is the stuff I do so lame that nobody has any interest in talking about it? Am I simply just “missing” a little something somewhere that I still haven’t figured out? Am I just not active enough in self-promoting?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about my technorati ranking or about the fact that some of my blog posts have already been around the world three times (my stuff on MySQL encoding problems and multiple WordPress installations have remained popular for years — the latter with spammers, maybe, I’m afraid). It’s more about stuff I do as opposed to stuff I write.

Take Going Solo. I know I haven’t really started pushing it out there, because we don’t have branding yet and the price isn’t quite set. But still. When I announced it here on CTTS (and before that, when I said I was starting a company), a lot of people stopped by to leave an encouraging comment or send me a nice tweet. I really appreciated it.

Now, not trying to make anybody feel bad here, but here’s the coverage of Going Solo that I’ve been able to round up (or the technorati cosmos. I’m getting into the habit of bookmarking any “coverage” links, because they’re easy to find on the moment, but 6 months later you can forget about it.

Is it because I haven’t explicitly said “Going Solo needs your link love”? (If that’s it, I’m saying it now.) Is it because it’s “too early) — ie, people are waiting for the venue to be set, the full programme to be announced, sidebar badges to be available and the tickets to be on sale? I personally don’t think it’s necessary to wait that long. I’m convinced Going Solo is going to be a really useful event for many freelancers out there. I want to get the word out and create interest for it, also outside my immediate network. And for that, I need you. You’re the only people who can help me reach “outside my network”. Or maybe I’m being difficult, naive, or expecting too much?

I’d like to understand what’s happening. I’d like more people to talk about Going Solo and try to promote it to their networks, of course, but my main issue here is understanding. So any insight will be… more than welcome. If you think Going Solo is worthwhile, but you haven’t blogged about it, it would help me if you left a comment to tell me why you haven’t (yet, hopefully!) blogged about it. Again — I’m not asking for justifications, just insight from “the other side of the fence”.

This week-end, as I was hurrying to get my LIFT workshop out of the door, I was astonished (in a disappointed sort of way) to see how few people had come up with proposals for LIFT. I know people wait until the last minute to do it, but I also realised that I hadn’t really blogged about LIFT this year. I guess I was thinking that it was so popular anyway, a blog post of mine wouldn’t really make much difference. “The others” were already blogging about it.

Then I took a step back and thought of Going Solo — how my frustration that people weren’t talking about it more. So I wrote a blog post to tell people it was the last minute to send a contribution to LIFT. Did anybody make one because I blogged about it, I wonder?

So, done with the angst-ridden rambling. I welcome your comments. And Going Solo needs your link love.

WordPress Sandbox Theme Problems [en]

[fr] Deux problèmes avec Sandbox: les menus déroulants qui se déroulent décalés sur la droite dans IE, et l'absence de feuille de style pour l'impression. Toute aide bienvenue.

As you might have seen, Sandbox is now my theme of choice for WordPress. Diurnal, here on CTTS, is built upon Sandbox, and I’m using it with a client to build a new design from scratch. It’s a nice base to work from, in a CSS Zen Garden way.

However, there are problems. Here are two I’m stuck with on my client site. I posted them to the Sandbox forums, but I thought I’d mention them here in case one of you smart readers had an answer.

No print stylesheet?: does anybody have a print stylesheet handy for use with Sandbox? If I can avoid writing one from scratch…
Broken drop-down menus in IE: I’m far from a drop-down menu specialist, so I’m not sure where to start to fix the IE wonkiness I’ve noticed. The menus in IE do not drop right below the parent menu as shown here, but overlap on the neighbouring menu item on the right.

Thanks for any help or pointers you can bring me.

Tags and Categories, Oh My! [en]

[fr] Il est temps de faire de l'ordre dans les catégories de CTTS. Je veux en garder 20-30. Vos suggestions sont les bienvenues.

The time has come. WordPress now has native tagging. I’ve imported my old tags and my even older keywords (yeah, even though tags and keywords are slightly different… what the hell). I’ve created an index page for my tags and an index page for my categories. Go and look, then come back.

So, what do you think?

I think the “tags” page looks pretty good (just needs a little CSS fixing so that the huge tags don’t prevent you from clicking on the smaller ones they hide). I mean, it’s a sprawling mess, but that’s what a tag collection should look like. Later, I can add fancy stuff like related tag clouds in the sidebar, or something like that.

But my, look at that listing of categories. It’s a huge sprawling mess, and it shouldn’t be. It should be a concise listing of rather widely defined areas I write in. Not easy. So, dear readers, I’m going to ask for your help.

See, I’ve installed this neat plugin, Tag Managing Thing, which does a lot of what I was dreaming up for a possible future version of Batch Categories. Well, one thing Tag Managing Thing doesn’t do which Batch Categories did, was to assign posts to categories and remove them. Tag Managing Thing only deals in organising tags and categories — including converting one into the other. Update: Rob Miller has a Batch Categories plugin which should do the trick. I can’t remember if he used any of my work or started from scratch, but in any case, it looks very much like what I had dreamed up for it 😉 [/update]

So, here we go. I want to keep — oh, let’s be reasonable — maximum 20-30 categories. (I’ll convert the rest to tags.) Some of the new or obvious ones will remain: Events, Youth, Social Software (maybe Social Tools?), Languages… Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to write a list of categories at the bottom of this post, and I’ll keep modifying it until it looks reasonably good. I’ll be (heavily) relying upon your input for this. Thanks in advance. I really don’t think I can do this alone.

New categories for CTTS:

Events
Languages
Youth
Blogging
Technology
Social Tools
Travels
Livre (the book)
…

Please leave your ideas in the comments! The category index handily gives a post count for each category or subcategory.

Corporate Blogging Talk Draft [en]

[fr] Je donne une conférence dans un peu plus d'un mois à des responsables de communication d'entreprises suisses. On m'a demandé de fournir une présentation de mon intervention, qui figurera sur l'invitation. Voici la version resultant de deux jours en sueur (oui je sais, c'est pas très impressionnant!) -- j'apprécierais votre feedback en la matière si vous lisez l'anglais.

A little over a month from now, I’ll be giving a talk on corporate blogging to leading communications executives of Swiss companies. I’ve been asked to provide an introduction to my talk, which will be included alongside some biographical information in the invitation to the event. Here’s my draft, based on examples of previous invitations I was given:

> Blogs are way more than teenage diaries, and it is now common knowledge that they can be a precious tool in corporate environments. Many companies today are interested in embracing social media, and some take the plunge — unfortunately, not always with the desired results.

> Blogging is not a magical solution. Though it requires little technical skill to ~~exert~~blog (akin to sending an e-mail), it comes bundled with the culture of openness and real human dialogue described at the beginning of the decade in The Cluetrain Manifesto, which can be at odds with existing corporate communication practice.

> When a corporation starts blogging, whether behind the firewall or on the internet, it changes. Not all corporations are ready for that. Not all corporations can accommodate those sometimes unpredictable changes.

> Though one could just start blogging blindly, it is wiser in a corporate setting to identify some particular needs or problems which can be addressed with social media. Though social media is by nature error-tolerant, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of learning the “blogging culture”, or the time required to keep a blog alive.

> Stephanie Booth will share her insights on how blogs can find a place inside corporate culture, and how to go around introducing them in such a setting. The focus will be on blogging culture and practices, illustrated by real-world examples taken directly from the blogosphere.

I’ve been struggling with it for the last two days, and I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments (both on the language and the content).

MySpace supprime les profils de 29'000 "délinquants sexuels" [en]

Il y a quelques jours, on a attiré mon attention sur cet article de la BBC, qui rapporte que le site MySpace (une sorte de super-Skyblog d’origine américaine) a supprimé de son site les profils de 29’000 “délinquants sexuels” (“sex offenders”).

J’ai écrit deux billets à ce sujet en anglais, qui ont reçu pas mal de couverture dans la blogosphère anglophone. J’ai aussi été interviewée par la radio BBC World suite à mon message leur signalant ma réaction.

MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia (liens vers ce billet chez d’autres blogueurs: cosmos Technorati)
Parents, Teenagers, Internet, Predators, Fear… (liens vers ce billet chez d’autres blogueurs: cosmos Technorati)
interview BBC World (je parle à la minute 34, le sujet commence à 29:30)

Ces deux billets comportent un résumé bref en français que je reproduis ici pour plus de commodité.

MySpace exclut de son site 29’000 “sex offenders” (des gens qui ont été accusés de crimes sexuels) enregistrés. C’est problématique d’une part car suivant l’Etat dans lequel elles ont été condamnées, ces personnes enregistrées peuvent être coupables de choses aussi anodines que: relations homosexuelles, nudisme, uriner dans un lieu public, faire l’amour dans un lieu public, etc. D’autre part, je rappelle les chiffres provenant d’une récente étude sur les crimes sexuels impliquant des minteurs, qui vont à l’encontre de l’idée qu’on se fait habituellement de ce genre de cas. En agissant ainsi, possiblement poussés par la paranoïa ambiante, MySpace contribue à cette paranoïa. Je regrette que la presse joue systématiquement le jeu de la peur et ne se fasse pas l’avocate d’une attitude moins paniquée face à la question des prédateurs sexuels en ligne. (En résumé: les enfants courent plus de risques hors ligne qu’en ligne, et probablement bien plus à chaque fois qu’ils montent dans une voiture ou traversent la route…)

Stephanie Booth, MySpace Banning Sex Offenders: Online Predator Paranoia

Conseils aux parents (après mon interview à la BBC ce soir au sujet des “sex offenders” bannis de MySpace):

pas de panique, les prédateurs sexuels tels que nous les présentent les médias ne sont pas légion, votre enfant ne court pas des risques immodérés en étant sur internet;

dialoguez avec votre enfant; intéressez-vous à ce qu’il fait en ligne;

souvenez-vous que fournir des informations personnelles n’est pas un très grand risque; par contre, s’engager dans des relations de séduction avec des inconnus ou des amis adultes en ligne l’est.

J’ai écrit relativement peu en anglais à ce sujet jusqu’à maintenant. En français, lisez Adolescents, MySpace, internet: citations de danah boyd et Henry Jenkins, De la “prévention internet”, les billets en rapport avec mon projet de livre sur les adolescents et internet, et la documentation à l’attention des ados que j’ai rédigée pour ciao.ch.

p class=”sig”>Stephanie Booth, Parents, Teenagers, Internet, Predators, Fear…

Donc, en faisant ma tournée sur technorati, pour voir qui a mentionné dans son blog l’article de la BBC, je suis tombée sur un billet en français qui se réjouissait de la nouvelle. Mon long commentaire à ce billet devenant trop long, j’ai décidé de le faire ici, sur mon blog, et du coup, de parler un peu de cette histoire pour mes lecteurs francophones:

Bonne nouvelle signée MySpace qui vient de supprimer 29.000 profils de délinquants sexuels américains errants sur son espace qui compte 80 millions internautes. La suppression a été effectuée grâce à son partenariat avec le bureau de vérification Sentinel Tech Holding Crop qui développe une base de données nationale de délinquants sexuels. La législation américaine facilite cette tâche car elle permet de consulter librement les fiches de ces déliquants sur le site du ministère de la justice…

M/S, MySpace a les yeux sur les délinquants sexuels

Comme je l’explique donc dans ma réaction à l’article de la BBC ce n’est pas une si bonne nouvelle que ça. Ce sont les états qui définissent ce qu’est un “délinquant sexuel”, et suivant où, on peut être sur une de ces listes pour avoir montré ses fesses en public. De plus, les profils supprimés seraient ceux où l’adresse e-mail fournie correspond à celle qui se trouve dans le dossier des délinquants sexuels. Vous pensez vraiment qu’un “pervers à la recherche de victimes” (et encore, voir plus bas pour ma réfutation de la forme qu’on donne au problème) serait aussi bête?

Aussi, la problématique des prédateurs sexuels sur internet est dramatisée et déformée par les médias. Tout d’abord, on perd de vue que la grande majorité des crimes sexuels sur mineurs impliquent la famille ou des amis proches de la famille (et non des inconnus ou “connaissances” provenant d’internet). Les cas faisant intervenir internet sont une minorité, et sont plus de l’ordre “relation de séduction d’ados” que “duperie et enlèvement d’enfants”. On peut légitimement se demander si une telle action de la part de MySpace est vraiment utile (il s’agit en fait plus de sauvegarder leur image), et si on n’est pas en train de se donner bonne conscience tout en évitant de faire de la prévention utile, mais quelque peu plus complexe (puisqu’il s’agit d’aller plonger dans la façon dont les adolescents vivent l’éveil de leur sexualité et de leurs premières relations amoureuses). Voir à ce sujet De la “prévention internet”, billet qui, au milieu de mes grands questionnements, aborde cette question.

Mon ami Kevin Anderson, journaliste américain vivant à Londres, a écrit un excellent billet au sujet de toute cette histoire suite à un interview assez frustrant qu’il a donné à la BBC: ‘Think of the children’. Yes, but also think about the journalism. Entre autres, il en appelle à la presse, qui couvre systématiquement ce genre d’événement selon l’angle “mon Dieu, ça grouille de pédophiles sur internet, enfin on fait quelque chose, mais est-ce suffisant?”

I am taking an issue with the format and the journalistic assumptions made. Yes, there is a problem here, but it’s not the one that is being shouted in the headlines. The facts don’t support the sensationalist story of a predator lurking behind every MySpace profile or blog post. As Steph points out in her posts, the threat to youth isn’t in them having blogs or being on social networks. The problem is one of emotionally vulnerable teens being preyed upon by opportunistic adults. It’s more complicated and less emotive than saying: Keep the paedos off of MySpace.

Kevin Anderson, ‘Think of the children’. Yes, but also think about the journalism

Après mon interview à la BBC il y a deux jours, j’ai envoyé à quelques (3-4) journalistes romands de ma connaissance un e-mail contenant un appel à une couverture plus “réaliste” que “sensationnelle” de cette histoire. Voici à quelques variations près le message que j’ai envoyé:

Vous avez peut-être entendu parler du fait que MySpace a “viré” de son
site 29’000 personnes se trouvant sur les listes de délinquants
sexuels tenues par les Etats aux USA. J’ai écrit une assez longue
réaction à ce sujet (en anglais) et me suis également faite
interviewer par la BBC.

En deux mots:

la définition de “sex offender” est problématique (dans certains
états, on peut finir sur ces listes pour avoir montré ses fesses ou eu
des relations homosexuelles)

une telle action de la part de MySpace (pour sauver leur image,
principalement) est problématique d’une part car elle renforce la peur
(peu justifiée) ambiante autour des prédateurs sexuels en ligne, et
d’autre part car c’est une mesure peu utile car elle est déconnectée
de la réalité des “problèmes/agressions à caractère sexuel” que
rencontrent les ados en ligne.

[liens vers mes deux articles]

Je ne sais pas si c’est votre rayon ou non et si ça vous intéresse,
mais si vous connaissez quelqu’un qui serait susceptible de couvrir
cette histoire sous cet angle (un angle qui manque cruellement dans
les médias “traditionnels”) n’hésitez pas à leur dire de prendre
contact avec moi (+41 78 625 44 74).

Deux réponses intéressées à ce jour (une personne en vacances qui a retransmis le mail, et un quotidien local pour qui ce n’est peut-être pas évident de couvrir un tel sujet international). Je réitère donc ici mon appel: y’a-t-il une publication romande qui veuille relever le défi?

Notes From San Francisco [en]

So, roughly half-way through my five-week trip to San Francisco, what’s going on? I haven’t been blogging much lately, that’s for sure.

For once, I took some photographs from the plane. Unfortunately my camera batteries ran out just as we were coming down on San Francisco, and my spare ones were in the luggage compartment above my head. Oh, well.

I got some first-level questioning at immigration coming in. No, not the sort where they take you to a separate room, become much less friendly, and have boxes of rubber gloves on the counter. This is how it went:

…And what is the duration of your stay?
Five weeks.
…And what do you do in… over in Switzerland?
I’m a freelance… internet consultant. OMG that sounds bad. …I’m actually here to work on a book project. Yeah I know I should never volunteer information.
What’s the book about?
Er… teenagers and the internet.
And…?
Er… Well, the situation with teenagers and the internet, and what we’re doing about it in Switzerland.
And what are you doing about it?
Well, not enough!
And? Come on, tell me more about it.
Er… OK. OMGOMG Well, see, teenagers are really comfortable with computers and the internet, and so they’re chatting, blogging, etc. — they’re digital natives, see? — and parents, well, they’re clueless or terrified about the internet, and they don’t always understand what’s going on in their kids lives online, so basically, we have teenagers who are spending a lot of time online and sometimes getting into trouble and parents don’t know or don’t care about what they’re doing there, so we have this… chasm between generations and…
Thank you. You can go.

The pick-up from the airport was wonderfully orchestrated and much appreciated. Being driven into town by somebody friendly rather than having to use unfamiliar public transportation really makes a difference. Thanks to all those involved (yes, it took that many people!)

Then, through some freak breakdown of all modern forms of communication (partially documented on Twitter), I ended up waiting outside on the sidewalk for almost an hour while my kind host Tara waited for me inside her appartment. We worked it out finally, and I was introduced to my (nice and spacious) room before going to hang out at Citizen Space. A nice dinner out with Chris, Tara and Jimmy to end the day, and I happily collapsed in my bed at a respectable local hour. You will have taken note that I did not collapse at 4pm feeling like a zombie, thanks to having taken melatonin on the plane. (It doesn’t seem to work that well for Suw, but it works perfectly on me, and I’m never traveling between continents without it again.)

The four next days went by in a blur of Supernova madness: too many people, too many sessions, food with ups and downs, parties with cupcakes and others at the top of skyscapers. I took lots of photographs and even a video sequence that got some attention.

During the next week, I started settling down. Met and hung out with old friends, made new ones, unpacked my suitcases, went walking around in town, saw Dykes on Bikes, the Gay Pride Parade, and the iPhone launch, photographed skyscrapers in the night, ordered a new camera, got my MacBook (partly) repaired, and even dropped in at Google to take notes of Suw’s talk there.

All this, actually, is documented in my Twitter stream — maybe I should add a whole lot of links? — be sure to keep an eye on it if you’re interested in a more day-by-day account of what I’m doing here.

Overall, things have been good. A small bout of homesickness a few days ago, but I’m feeling better now. I need to start focusing on the things I want to get done (blogging, writing, book, writing, fixing things for clients…) — holiday over now!

I’ve been thinking about my “work career” a little, too. I’m very happy doing what I’m doing, but I’m not going to be doing “Blog 101” for ever — I can feel my interests shifting somewhat already. I’ve been interested in the “social tools at large” department for a long time, but unfortunately it seems to translated to “blogging” in most of the work I do, so I’d like to expand my horizons in that direction a little. I’ve had a couple of talks with people in startups recently, and I realize it’s a kind of environment I wouldn’t mind working in — at least part-time. We’ll see what happens.

I’m also realizing that there is more potential than I first thought around the two main things I care about these days: teenagers online and internet language issues. Hence, the book, and also a talk on the subject of languages on the internet which I’ll be giving at Google this coming Tuesday.

Also in the “work” department, two other things have been on my mind. First, the idea of opening up a coworking space in or around Lausanne (Ollie is having the same kind of thought — we’re talking). Second, trying to find a solution so that I don’t have to do maintenance on my clients’ WordPress installations once all is rolling, or spend hours swimming in HTML, CSS and WordPress theme PHP template tags. Not that I don’t know how to do it or don’t enjoy it once in a while, but it’s really not the kind of work I want to spend my time doing. So, I’ve been starting to ask around for names of people who might do this kind of thing (for a reasonable fee), and even thinking of recruiting some students in Lausanne that I could coach/train so that they can do most of the work, and call me up only for major problems. So, see, I’ve been thinking.

Some people have been asking me if I was planning to move here. Indeed, 5 weeks in the city looks suspiciously like a scouting operation. Actually, traveling has an interesting side-effect for me: I tend to come back home thinking “gee, Lausanne is such a great place to live! I’m never moving!” Sure, I have some underlying personal issues which contribute to making me overly attached to my hometown, and I know that someday I might end up living elsewhere. But really, for the moment, I don’t think I’d want that.

And even though I’m told San Francisco is very “European” compared to the rest of the US (which I have yet to see) I can’t help seeing how “horribly American” it is. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this city and am enjoying my time here. I know that what I say can give wrong impressions (for example, people — especially Indians — read the story of my year living in India and think that I hated the country; it’s not true, I really loved it, and can’t wait to go back). But I walk around San Francisco and see all the signs with rules and regulations and “stupid” warnings (like, God, the pineapple chunks I buy at Whole Foods haven’t been pasteurized and may contain harmful germs! or, don’t use the hairdryer in the bath tub!), the AT&T Park and other manifestations of what to me is “consumerism gone mad”, I hear about health care and “you’re expected to sue” horror stories, visa lotteries for non-renewal, the education system…

So, yes, I’m focusing on the negative. And Switzerland, even though it’s a wonderful country ;-), has its negatives too. Like many natives all over the world, I’ve developed a selective blindness to what is “wrong” in the land I come from, considering much of it “normal” as I have been brought up with it. I know that. But too much of what I see here makes my skin crawl. I’m really enjoying spending some weeks here, I love my friends, the food and the sunshine, but I don’t think I’d be happy living here.

Well, this was one of these longer-than-expected posts, and it’s occupied most of my morning. My tasks for this afternoon are (in this order):

one WordPress install for a client
spending a little more time trying to see if there is hope for the aggravating Google Groups problem I bumped into, and if not, setting up a Yahoo! Group instead
writing a post for bub.blicio.us or working on my book — whichever I most feel like.