The fabled woodcutter is so busy chopping away that he doesn’t make time to sharpen his saw. Needless to say, as his blade gets duller and duller, his productivity gets worse and worse. Sometimes, folks, you just need to get out of the office even for a day to sharpen your saws.
A couple of us Renegades sharpened our saws at the recent and eclectic 140 Characters Conference in New York City that is put together by Jeff Pulver. Here are eight somewhat splintered observations we thought you’d appreciate.
Social Media as a Force of Social Good is Boundless
| Pulver set the tone upfront, insisting, “You don’t need a license to do good, you just have to do it, and if you are clueless like me, you don’t have any boundaries.” Pulver is legendary for successfully engaging the U.S. Air Force via Twitter just after the Haiti earthquake. |
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Social Media is Best Taught by Doing
| Professor Rotolo, an instructor of social media at Syracuse, assigns real-world challenges that engage and inspire his students, such as making a video that goes viral. Amazingly, this “Call Me Maybe” send-up did just that. |
Twitter is Providing Access to the Otherwise Inaccessible
| Another one of Rotolo’s students, Isaac Budmen, created a Twitter drinking game (#DrinkUp) that became a global hit. Budmen then used Twitter to connect with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and gain his coveted advice. |
The Proposition Bar Just Got a Lot Higher
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Halfway through “Isaac’s Live Lip Dub Proposal,” it is clear that this (different) Isaac, whose marriage proposal this May resembled a Broadway production, has wrecked it for just about every bachelor to come. |
Bet on Twitter to Survive and Evolve
| Entrepreneur Jack Hidary described a future in which devices could learn from Tweets via TML (Twitter Markup Language), providing smarter crowd-sourced information and maybe even “twe-commerce.” |
Forget Privacy – Here Comes "Prefacy"
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Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, offered a new model of privacy he called “prefacy,” in which the preferences we share via our social networks help marketers serve us in a more personalized manner–like a hotel anticipating our pillow preference. |
From Tragedy Comes Inspiration
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Heather Hamilton told the tragic story of her son, Zack, and how she fulfilled a promise in his memory with Zack’s Dream Room, which was funded through social media outreach and the support of complete strangers, including the Sesame Street Team who produced this video. |
Retweeting the Scarlet Letter
| Jack Abramoff might as well wear a big fat A on his chest for being among the most infamous of Washington lobbyists. Taking a page from Hester Prynne, a now humble and repentant Abramoff is diligently trying to drain the cesspool he used to swim in so effectively. Good luck with that, Mr. A. |
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| As always, please let us know if you have any inspirational observations to add to this list. |
