Category: Social Media and the Web

Social media, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, web design, and all the stuff that isn’t here yet. Subcategories highlight some areas of particular expertise.

My Web World Has Grown [en]

The day before yesterday, a tweet of mine prompted me to get into blog gear again (honestly, why do I need other people? seems I have enough inner dialog going on).

The idea, as expressed in my tweet, was half-baked. I was actually thinking back to when I started blogging, or even when I became a freelance “something-or-other” 2.0 consultant. There are more people around today. The pond is bigger. This is a normal phenomenon when it comes to adoption: if you’re an early adopter, a cutting-edger, well, sooner or later those technologies or subcultures which were the turf of a happy few you were part of become more and more mainstream.

I’m seeing that. It’s been going on for some time. There are people all over doing tons of interesting stuff and I can’t keep up with them (I don’t even try). And here, I’m not even talking about all the wannabe social media experts.

So yes, the pond has turned into a lake, and I find myself a smaller fish than I used to be. Though I sometimes look back with a bit of nostalgia upon the “golden days” of blogging or Twitter, it suits me quite well. I actually never tried to be a big fish: one day, I suddenly realised that it was how people saw me. So I went with it, quite happily I have to say.

But it’s nice to slow down. I’ve never really been in the “breaking news” business, and have no desire to. I feel I’ve retreated somewhat from the over-competitive fringe of my web world, and my life is better as a result. Business too, if I look at my calendar for the upcoming months.

There are times when I regret that my “poly-expert” profile does not allow me to stay as up-to-date with everything as I’d sometimes want to. I haven’t given a talk in a school in nearly a year, and I miss it. I’ve played with Google Wave, but haven’t taken three days to dive into it completely as I would have done five years ago. (One of the reasons, here, is that I simply can’t afford to spend three days diving into something, like I could when I was an employee. The irony is not lost on me.)

All in all, there are more people now in my web world, and in the web world in general. It’s a good thing for the world. It has changed my place somewhat, but overall I’m pretty happy with it.

I don’t feel I’ve shrunk to tadpole status yet, though! 😉

I Need to Blog! [en]

[fr] Ma vie a pris une jolie forme cette année. Par contre, j'ai un peu négligé mon blog ces derniers temps (je ne dis pas ça par culpabilité, mais parce qu'un sentiment de "j'ai besoin de bloguer!" vient de me prendre aux tripes).

Here we are again. Another long break on CTTS (unplanned, as always) and another “OMG I need to blog more!” post.

But this isn’t a “I feel guilty, my poor readers, I’ve abandoned you” one. I don’t do those, you should know by now.

No, it’s a cri du coeur: I just sent this tweet a few minutes ago, and immediately after was overcome by an urge to blog — 140 characters just didn’t cut it.

I’ve been working too much these last weeks — enjoying life, too, though. I honestly have a very good (happy) “work-life” balance (yeah, I know the expression is loaded, bear with me). But I miss writing here, and I’ve only just realized to what extent.

Once before — OK, maybe more than once — I took the decision to start my work day by writing a blog post. I did it for some time (my excuses, I can’t dig it out of my archives, see the sad mess my blog still is). But then stress shows up again, and emergencies, and… I stop.

I think that the problem with writing a blog post to start off the day is that it can be pretty quick (this one is only taking maximum 15 minutes or so of my time) but it can also take half a day. So, maybe I need to do it this way:

I will start my workday by writing a blog post, but if after an hour of blogging I have not hit “Publish” I will save my post and continue it on the next day.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is that I need to build in time for research and fooling around online into my weeks. At this stage, I’ve successfully managed to:

  • have a morning and evening routine and regular sleeping hours
  • exercise 30 minutes on my bike every day (give or take one a week, roughly)
  • take lunch breaks
  • have an end to my business day
  • separate maker days and manager days
  • plan regular mini-vacations (a few days at the chalet)
  • have a social life (yes!)
  • have “downtime” for myself at home
  • unclutter the worst parts of my flat in 15-minute increments
  • clean the flat roughly once a week
  • keep my inbox regularly empty, or at least under one screenful
  • set up a “next action” list system, which, whilst not kosher GTD, works pretty well for me
  • keep my accounting up-to-date and my finances in order.

Two years ago, none of this was working. I’m pretty proud of how far I’ve come! So, next missions: blogging and research.

Fréquence Banane: Internet rend-il stupide? [fr]

[en] On the radio tonight -- and tomorrow night. In French.

Ce soir, de 20 Ă  21h, je serai l’une des invitĂ©s de l’Ă©mission “La langue de bois” de la radio universitaire FrĂ©quence Banane. Le thĂšme: Internet rend-il bĂȘte? 🙂

Grande question pour un dĂ©bat qui, j’imagine, sera animĂ© (sauf si nous sommes tous d’accord avec moi!), avec Lyonel Kaufmann et Olivier Glassey.

Donc, ce soir, branchez-vous sur 94.55 si vous ĂȘtes dans le coin, et sinon, Ă©coutez l’Ă©mission en streaming sur le site de FrĂ©quence Banane!

(Je serai Ă  nouveau sur les ondes demain, mais sur Couleur3, pour y parler de l’eclau lors de l’Ă©mission Saperlipopette, Ă  17h30 si ma mĂ©moire ne me fait pas dĂ©faut.)

Donner 80%, ou la loi de Paréto appliquée aux métiers des idées [fr]

On est tous familiers avec la loi de Pareto: 20% d’effort pour 80% de l’effet, etc.

L’an dernier, Ă  SoloCamp, Dennis Howlett nous en a proposĂ© une application en rĂ©ponse Ă  la question (qui torturait plusieurs d’entre nous): sachant que donner gratuitement est une forme de marketing trĂšs efficace, surtout dans les mĂ©tiers des social medias, oĂč mettre la limite? Combien donner? Quand commencer Ă  faire payer? Comment ne pas se faire avoir, sans pour autant devenir radins?

Eh bien, sa rĂ©ponse m’a stupĂ©faite, j’avoue, et bien tranquillisĂ©e. D’aprĂšs lui, quand on est dans les mĂ©tiers de la “propriĂ©tĂ© intellectuelle” (en gros, ce qu’on offre Ă  nos clients, ce sont principalement des idĂ©es), une bonne ligne de conduite est de considĂ©rer qu’on va donner gratuitement (ou presque) 80% et faire payer (cher) les 20% restants.

Donner 80%!

Je suis presque tombée de ma chaise.

Puis, sachant que Dennis est quelqu’un qui rĂ©ussit plutĂŽt bien en affaires, que j’avais depuis un moment le sentiment dĂ©sagrĂ©able que je donnais de moins en moins et que mon business en pĂątissait, je me suis un peu dĂ©tendue, et j’ai dĂ©cidĂ© de garder en tĂȘte ce principe.

Et si j’y rĂ©flĂ©chis et que je fais un peu l’inventaire de mon “travail gratuit”, je me rends compte qu’on y est assez vite:

– tout ce que je publie sur ce blog et ailleurs sur internet
– les Bloggy Fridays
– l’eclau
– les repas, pots, “petites discussions” oĂč je fais du “consulting gratuit” en Ă©change d’une pizza ou de la reconnaissance Ă©ternelle de mon interlocuteur
– organiser Going Solo et SoloCamp (c’Ă©tait pas censĂ©, mais ça a fini par l’ĂȘtre, du travail “gratuit”)
– les personnes que je dĂ©panne Ă  l’oeil, en ligne et hors ligne
– les interviews accordĂ©s aux journalistes, participations non rĂ©munĂ©rĂ©es Ă  tables rondes et autres Ă©vĂ©nements…

Je pourrais continuer encore la liste.

Bien entendu, il y a un retour sur investissement, lĂ . C’est mon budget marketing, si on veut, toute l’Ă©nergie que je mets dans ces diverses activitĂ©s. C’est “ce qui me fait”, aussi, et j’en suis bien consciente. Mais rien de tout ça ne remplit directement le compte en banque: ça fait partie des 80% grosso modo de mon temps-Ă©nergie que je ne facture Ă  personne, et durant lequel je “travaille gratuitement”, suivant quelle dĂ©finition on donne Ă  “travailler” et “gratuitement”.

Me voici donc Ă  rĂ©pondre enfin Ă  M. Fontana d’Universal, mon interlocuteur contradictoire lors du “dĂ©bat” sur le piratage Ă  la RSR1 il y a quelques mois, lorsqu’il demandait (ironiquement et sĂ»r de sa rĂ©ponse) si j’avais l’habitude de travailler Ă  100% et de n’ĂȘtre payĂ©e qu’Ă  50%. (L’homme de paille favori de mes dĂ©tracteurs concernant les questions de partage de fichiers semble ĂȘtre que je ne veux pas que les artistes soient payĂ©s pour leur travail…)

Oui, oui, Monsieur — et mĂȘme plus que ce que vous imaginez. C’est comme ça que ça fonctionne, dans mon mĂ©tier.

Vous me voyez venir: si l’on accepte de sortir d’une mentalitĂ© d’employĂ©s (ou pire, de rentiers), on pourrait sans beaucoup de difficultĂ© appliquer ce genre de raisonnement au monde des oeuvres de l’esprit en gĂ©nĂ©ral, y compris la musique. Pour les dĂ©tails, il faudra repasser, car je ne les ai pas (j’en entends dĂ©jĂ  qui hurlent) — mais n’y a-t-il pas lĂ  quelque chose Ă  creuser?

Six Twitter Tools [en]

[fr] Une sĂ©rie d'outils/sites autour de Twitter que vous trouverez peut-ĂȘtre utiles.

This is just a small list of links to more or less useful Twitter tools and sites, that you can use (amongst other things) to figure out if this or that new (or old) follower is a spammer or not. I find that kind of information useful when deciding to publish or not “Twitter comments” here (they come in through BackType Connect). None of these ask your your Twitter password, they all use OAuth (you should not be handing out your password to any third-party service, by the way).

  • TwitBlock goes through your followers and tells you (with extensive details) how likely it is that they are spammers or bots. You can block them directly from the site (be careful!) You can also just ask it to check one specific account (this is how I know that there is very little likelyhood that @stephtara is a spammer, cool!)
  • Tweet Blocker also goes through your followers to chase for spammers, giving each of them a grade (I’m an A+ student). I find the explanations given for each evaluation less clear than with TwitBlock. Again, you can block people directly from their site — don’t go overboard.
  • Foller.me gives you information about a given Twitter account, which can also come in handy when trying to figure out if somebody is ham or spam. Again, example with @stephtara.
  • Follow cost is rather basic, and will tell you how “chatty” a given user is. This is how I know that I average 13.6 tweets a day (ouch!).
  • Favstar is interesting, as it centres on favourites, telling you which of your tweets (or any user’s, for that matter) were favourited by whom. I’m less excited by their “100+, 50+, …” leaderboard (the popular just get more popular).
  • When did you join Twitter? tells you exactly that. (Me? December 8th, 2006.)

Any other ones you find useful? Link to them in the comments. (Yeah, there’s a wave, too. Who’s going to write a plugin which creates and links post-related comment waves automatically?)

Playing with Google Wave [en]

[fr] Histoire de s'amuser un peu avec Google Wave, j'ai créé une wave autour de mon dernier article, histoire de voir ce que le contexte "Wave" peut changer à la discussion qui s'ensuit.

My Wave invite arrived this morning (thanks! I actually got two!) and I’ve been playing around with Wave since I got up. It’s fun. It’s a bit buggy. But I find it really exciting.

In the spirit of experimentation and trying things, I’ve decided to create a wave around my last post, Google Identity Dilemma.

A few notes about Wave:

  • big waves make my Firefox so slow that I downloaded Chrome for OSX to run Wave in it — seems much zippier
  • shift+enter “closes” your blip
  • there are public waves around to help get you started — ask me in Wave or ask your contacts about them (love your network!)
  • to make a wave public, for the moment, add [email protected] to your contacts (hit enter, ignore the error message) and then add it to your wave (this might stop working)
  • invites take a while to “arrive” — between the moment people invited me and I got the notice in my inbox, I think a good week went by.

So, if you are one of the lucky ones on Google Wave already, head over to my Google Identity Dilemma wave, add it to yours, invite your friends, and have a wave-fest!

Google Identity Dilemma [en]

[fr] Depuis des années, j'utilise une identité "fantaisiste" pour tous mes services Google. C'est mon identité principale (vous voyez de laquelle je parle si on est en contact). J'aimerais passer à prénom.nom comme identité principale (je la possÚde aussi) mais tous les services Google sont rattachés à la premiÚre, et je ne vois pas vraiment comment m'en sortir. Idées bienvenues!

When I created a Gmail address all these years ago, I chose a “funny-cute” name that was easy to remember for most of the people I knew. I was on IRC all day back then, and my nickname was bunny(wabbit_), and people knew I was Swiss.

I didn’t really think my Gmail address would become so central to my online identity, you see.

Of course, I also registered firstname.lastname and redirected it onto my main e-mail address and identity.

As years went by, Google added all sorts of services that got tied onto this identity (not to mention the 2.5Gb of archived e-mails and chats). Google Talk, Google Profiles, and recently, Google Sidewiki and Google Wave.

These last weeks, I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t “make the switch” and use my more serious “firstname.lastname” e-mail address as my main identity. Actually, to be honest, I’d like to. But there are obstacles — oh, so many.

First, all my contacts are linked to my current account. All my e-mail is stuck in it. My Feedburner and Google Reader settings are linked to it. My blogger blog is. My calendar. Everywhere I use my Google identity for a third-party service, here we go.

And Google does not allow you to link one Google account to another (sure, you can redirect mail, but that doesn’t solve anything).

So, do you see my problem? If you have any bright ideas, I’m listening. I would really like a solution.

Chat ou e-mail pour rester en contact? [fr]

Au dĂ©tour d’une conversation avec Fabien ce matin, je (nous) faisais la rĂ©flexion suivante: mĂȘme si j’adore Ă©crire (preuve les kilomĂštres de texte qui s’alignent sur ce blog, sauf quand je n’Ă©cris pas) je ne suis pas du tout versĂ©e dans l’e-mail “correspondance”.

Certes, j’utilise (beaucoup) l’e-mail comme outil de travail. Pour des Ă©changes factuels. Pour de l’administratif.

Mais pour parler de sa vie ou de son coeur, je prĂ©fĂšre ĂȘtre en intĂ©raction directe: IM, SMS, IRC Twitter, tĂ©lĂ©phone, ou mĂȘme (oh oui!) se voir en chair et en os pour boire un cafĂ© ou manger un morceau.

DĂ©jĂ  avant que l’e-mail ne dĂ©barque dans ma vie, je n’Ă©tais pas vraiment une correspondante. Ma grand-mĂšre paternelle se plaignait amĂšrement du manque de lettres provenant de sa petite-fille, les cartes postales signĂ©es de ma main Ă©taient dĂšs le jour de leur rĂ©ception des piĂšces collector, et les deux ou trois tentatives adolescentes d’avoir des correspondantes dans d’autres pays se sont assez vite essoufflĂ©es.

Peu Ă©tonnant, dĂšs lors, qu’un fois accro au chat sous toutes ses formes, ce soit les modes de communication interactifs que je privilĂ©gie pour mes relations avec les gens.

Je me demande si c’est simplement une prĂ©fĂ©rence personnelle (certains sont Ă©pistoliers, d’autres pas) ou bien s’il y a vĂ©ritablement des caractĂ©ristiques des mĂ©dias en question qui la sous-tendent: l’interactivitĂ© (relativement synchrone), par exemple. Parler de ce qu’on vit ou fait (c’est souvent l’essentiel des conversations), c’est bien mieux avec un retour direct d’autrui en face, non?

Google Forms: Multiple Choice, List, Checkbox [en]

[fr] Attention: dans Google Forms, "multiple choice" n'est en fait pas un choix multiple. Il faut utiliser "checkbox" pour ça.

Like I did last year, I’m currently preparing the blogger accreditation request form for the LeWeb’09 conference in Paris (if you’re not a blogger and want to come, be sure to grab a very early bird ticket before the end of September — if you’re a student, get in touch with GĂ©raldine). We’ll by the way shortly be letting you know which dates the form will be open for you to request an accreditation.

This is not the purpose of this post, however. I was a bit mystified by the difference between the “multiple choice”, “list”, and “checkbox” elements one can use to build a form using Google Forms, so I decided to build a quick test case to see how things worked. Brace yourself for a surprise (the test form is below, with explanations):

Loading…

Summary?

  • list is your normal “one choice only” drop-down list, no surprise here
  • checkbox is your real multiple choice list, with optional “other” choice which can be filled in manually
  • multiple choice is very poorly named, and is in fact a radio button “one choice only” list, but which allows an extra “other” choice which can be filled in manually

In all cases, multiple values are stored in a single spreadsheet cell as a comma-separated list. View the resulting spreadsheet.

I hope this will save somebody the trouble of working it all out themselves like I had to do!

Survivre Ă  l'heure du trop d'informations [fr]

Lors du trĂšs sympathique Bloggy Friday d’hier soir, la conversation est Ă  un moment donnĂ© partie sur les fils RSS, Twitter, le temps que ça prend, et la quantitĂ© d’informations Ă  s’enfiler chaque jour, si on rentre lĂ -dedans.

Je vous prĂ©sente donc ma recette pour survivre Ă  l’heure de la plĂ©thore d’informations Ă  portĂ©e de nos souris qui est la nĂŽtre. Elle est trĂšs simple, la recette:

  • lĂącher prise et abandonner tout espoir d’ĂȘtre “Ă  jour” ou de “tout lire”
  • mettre l’accent sur les connexions et le rĂ©seau (quelles personnes je suis sur Twitter, connexions facebook, abonnements RSS)
  • considĂ©rer que tous ces flux sont comme une riviĂšre oĂč l’on fait trempette de temps en temps, ou comme une station radio diffusant en continue et qu’on allume lorsqu’on en a envie.

Quelques éléments supplémentaires:

  • si l’information est importante et que le rĂ©seau est de qualitĂ© (voir le point ci-dessous), elle vous parviendra par de multiples chemins (exit donc l’angoisse de “rater” quelque chose de vital)
  • la qualitĂ© du rĂ©seau est cruciale: ce n’est pas juste une question de quantitĂ© de connexions ou de contacts (mĂȘme si cette dimension joue un rĂŽle), et chacun est entiĂšrement responsable du rĂ©seau qu’il construit et maintient autour de lui.

Pour ma part, j’ai depuis longtemps acceptĂ© que je ne suis pas une lectrice rĂ©guliĂšre de blogs. Je sais, cette information en surprend plus d’un, car je suis perçue comme une personne trĂšs connectĂ©e et “au courant”. Mes lectures sont des butinages, incitĂ©s par ce que je vois passer dans ces diffĂ©rents flux (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, surtout). De temps en temps, je vais expressĂ©ment voir le blog de telle ou telle personne, ou son compte Facebook, ou son Twitter — parce que j’ai envie d’en savoir plus sur ce qu’elle raconte rĂ©cemment.

Mais je ne cherche pas Ă  “tout lire”, oh non, au grand jamais. Et je m’en porte fort bien!