Thursday, May 20, 2010

From Virtual to Physical – Actually Meeting Another Cast of Dads Member!

by Michael Sheehan on May 20, 2010

in Cast of Dads, Consumer Electronics, Family, Gadgets, General, Hardware, Opinion, Parenting, PodCast, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Video

This past Tuesday, I had the good fortune to actually meet one of the Cast of Dads members in person, Jeff Sass from Dadomatic.com. Jeff happened to be in town for the SF MusicTech Summit and since I’m based in San Francisco, we managed to meet up at an event called SFBeta. Our backgrounds are very different but we share the same passion for technology and parenthood (specifically fatherhood). We came together originally (and virtually) as part of a program with Sony called the Sony DigiDads project and we and the other 3 members (CC Chapman, Max Kalehoff & Brad Powell) had such a great time interacting with each other that we decided to form a weekly podcast called “Cast of Dads“.

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Since the launch of Cast of Dads on December 7, 2009, we have all been getting together virtually via phone (and once via Skype video/in person) to record our weekly podcast about parenting, being a dad, technology and a wide variety of other topics. Most of our interaction has been virtual via emails, tweets, conference calls, social media and other on-line methods. Now Sass can hang a badge (somewhere) saying that he is the first COD member to meet all of the Cast of Dads in person.

Jeff and I spent a few minutes documenting our physical meeting using a Sony Bloggie (yes, we recorded in a bar with low lighting and lots of ambient noise) and talking about Cast of Dads and a few other topics. Below is the result:

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The Ripple Effect of Social Media – Get Mobile for More Waves!

by Michael Sheehan on May 20, 2010

in Cellular, Consumer Electronics, Gadgets, General, Hardware, Lose the Laptop, Microsoft, Mobile, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter

We all know the well used imagery of throwing a stone into a pond and watching the ripples spread out from the center. The same imagery can be applied to social media, I believe. But there are different ways choose the rocks and throw them.

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Most of the time, I stand in the same place, casting similarly shaped rocks into the water. That is to say, I sit at my desk and tweet about things that pass in front of my eyes on a computer screen. Most likely, these are technology stones since that is my job, to engage in conversations about the technology that I sell or use, whether it be Cloud Computing or a gadget review. At my place on the shore, I’m able to gather similarly shaped rocks and I usually throw to the same area of the social media pond. The ripples roll out and I’m sometimes rewarded with a splash back in my general direction.

But sometimes it is important to move from your stationary spot on the shore and bring some diversity to the social stone casting. You must walk around the pond to get other perspectives of the social media pool, to find a new angle to throw, a different bank to cast your opinion and even different types of rocks to pitch into the waters.

And let’s not forget that there are different tools to help you cast your social pebbles into the societal waters.  Choosing the proper type of stone will cause different effects: using a web based social aggregator like ping.fm has the effect of pitching a couple heavy round stones into the waters, causing many waves and ripples to crash into each other and overlap as many different social media properties receive the same message. Flipping a flat stone into the social waters can be equated to throwing that perfectly crafted and elegant tweet that then skips across the water as it is retweeted.

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