Way back in the start of my career, I was a lowly UI designer for a customer facing web application –an extranet called MyExodus. Sitting with a team of engineers, my job was to help deliver a consistent, usable experience that would help our clients quickly ascertain the status of their web hosting systems.

I remember how management would scramble, hustle, and work hard to meet the demands of an Analyst Research firm that was reviewing our product –I was involved in helping to scrape together presentations, gather the right screenshots, and mockup scenarios of where we were headed on the roadmap. Tier 1 Research graded our product (along with over a dozen others) and I remember how stressful it was for us to deliver all of this, show our secret sauce, let them take a peek behind the curtains and letting management beam or scour with the results. It felt exposing, but helped us in the long run, as we knew where we stood in our marketplace, and what we had to improve on.

As I embark on this Forrester Wave Report for Community Platforms, I’m just reminded of what the experience was like.

So if you’ve ever been graded or rated great or poorly by an analyst, I just want you to know, I remember what it was like on the vendor side of the table, but I won’t let it deter me from doing an objective analysis.

Oh, if you’re wondering how we did, we scored pretty well in out category, esp in the UI rankings –I was proud and it was a bullet point on my resume. Of course, Exodus is long gone (although I tell my story here), the remnants were acquired by Cable and Wireless.

I can’t believe how fast time flies, I’m now at my second year for this domain. While I’ve been blogging longer than two years (blogspot, 360, etc), the purchase of this domain web-strategist.com has been a milestone, let’s recap.

By the numbers: A Benchmark
What was the path? When I started this new blog, according to Technorati, it was ranked in the millions of blogs, last year was 1,708 and today it’s ranked at 540 (the lower the better), and has over 10,000 incoming links. According to Feedburner there are now over 12,000 subscriptions. According to Google Analytics, there are 86,725 Visits, 132,198 Pageviews, in the last 30 days. Wordpress indicates there are there are currently 1,914 posts and 17,017 comments (over the two years).

Two year Impacts
Despite all this, most of these numbers are meaningless. For each of these metrics, I question the validity of measurement and measurements only make sense if you benchmark against the previous year, which of course, I did: see last year’s stats. What really matters is the impact that blogging has over the industry that I cover, and the jobs it’s helped me to get.

My Blog Strategy: How I did it
So enough stat-porn, I’ll tell you exactly how I did it, giving you all that I learned so you can improve too. Here’s how I did it:

Created focused content
I focused on the topic of making decisions for corporate websites, primarily around social media. It’s important to find something interesting and unique to discuss, avoid echoing techmeme. When I first started, I tried to be on Techmeme, I just became a small link when someone else would break a larger story. For some time now, I’ve avoided being on techmeme, as I’d rather be original and small rather than larger but just echo. I also avoid ‘blog fights’, I’d rather deliver ‘how to’ posts an be a resource.

Publish frequently
I published nearly every day, in fact multiple times a day. How’d I find time to do that I slowly work on drafts (I’ve over 100 of them sitting in wordpress) and I’d budget my time in the morning to pay myself first. (It’s 430 AM when I write this).

Think of readers first
Make it easy to read. Sure there’s a lot of text, but I organize it in an easy to scan (yes scan) way by indenting, use horizontal rule (lines) bolding and using indent points. I approached this as more of a resource to busy professionals rather than my personal journal (although I occasionally share personal info in the context of posts). Forrester conducted a survey, if you want to see who reads this blog and why, the results are public.

Interact
Join the conversation. Such shallow words that are thrown around now, but it’s true. I link to whatever else readers would want to learn about (knowing the more I helped them, the more they’d come back) answer comments on my own blog, and occasionally leave comments on other blogs (I could work on that more). I self reference to older posts, and that helps to tie everything together as the body of work builds on top of itself.

“Productized” content
Developed some unique posts that were mainstay type of posts: my digest, the many index lists, and the on the move series. These help me to manage the industry I cover, have an online archive, make it easy for info-hungry folks, and reduce my time to come up with constant new ideas.

Have Passion
I’m so lucky that I get paid to do what I love, I think this is one of the most important things to do in life, sadly, it’s hard to tell when work starts and stops. Many people thought it was really strange when is started this blog, many said it was a fad, and really didn’t look down the line.

So what’s the future to hold? Well for one, I’m starting to ask people to follow me on Friendfeed. Regarding this blog, I’ve no intentions to stop this pace sharing and learning, thanks for being part of this, it’s a fun adventure and I learn many new things from being part of the conversation, (from your comments and links) every day.

Today, I spoke at a cross-departmental audience at Sun Microsystems (I only reveal where I’m speaking if they do it first) in Silicon Valley, I was introduced, and the hostess commented about you. Yes you! She said I had a very educated audience. I’d go on to say more (but don’t get a big head) that I learn every single day from the comments. They are thoughtful, passionate, savvy, and bring interesting perspectives (even when you don’t agree).

If you want to learn about who reads this blog, I did a survey, all the results are public with additional analysis.

I learn every day from the dialog we have (that’s right you don’t have to pay to talk to this analyst, we do it everyday) and it keeps on expanding all of our horizons. So if you’re not reading the comments, you’re really missing out, as we often build on top of my posts, or I’m corrected, and occasionally slapped.

Thanks again for reading and leaving very thoughtful comments, let’s keep on growing.

I’m writing this from the plane, as I travel to Cambridge at Forrester’s HQ to teach a Social Computing Workshop with Peter Kim tomorrow. As I daydreamed while watching the clouds go by, I couldn’t help by reflecting on all the stupid things I’ve heard in my short 9 year career, here’s the real nuggets:

Here’s some ridiculous things I’ve heard in my short career of 9 years in web:

“The company is fine, despite some streamlining, we’re on a growth track” (My former CEO before we went Chapter 11 at Exodus Communications, FAIL)

“All those guys in the other group are assholes” J.M. (Hmm, if you think everyone else is the asshole, doesn’t that make you the asshole JM?)

“Yes, of course our system is scalable” –Sales Guy, CMS company (before we deployed an un-scalable and inflexible CMS system)

“I read you email, my assistant printed it out for me this morning” –executive at a large bank (during my meeting with him about the intranet)

“We’ve got that feature, here’s a screenshot of what we’ve got in development and in our roadmap” -web product manager (I reported to this guy, and he asked me to make mock ups of what we were going to deliver during an analyst review…we never implemented)

“Blogging is a fad” –Web Developer at Hitachi Data Systems (guess not)

“Second life is amazing, there’s a future there” -Jeremiah Owyang (everyone’s smitten by cool technology, I’ve since learned)

“I can’t access the ‘C’ Server” -A mid-level business manager said to me (referring to her local drive)

“Backup? Nah, I just make changes to the live code” -Said a .net web developer (just hours before overwriting 3 days of development, oops)

Need to rant? here’s your chance: Add you own below, but no reason to leave the perp’s name, unless they’ve stated it in public. On a related note, my new favorite blog is the FAIL Blog, have a laugh, at the expense of others you mean son of a gun.

Lately, Twitter has been down more than the ground. So many are commenting why Twitter is having so many issues: scalability due to Ruby on Rails, mainstream adoption from press and media, or even just Scoble after two many cappuccinos.

After painstaking analysis of Twitter’s 404 page (above image), I’ve found the reason for the downtime of Twitter, it’s not what you expected: the infrastructure, users, or external factors, it really comes down to poor deployment of internal resources.

Whales can only go one way, gotta get those birds going the same way.

Did you like this? Digg it.

Make a difference, let’s tell millions: Help me Digg this story

Last week, I tried to inspire you to donate to the China crises by showing you beautiful pictures. This time, I’m going to take a little bit more of a realistic approach. Numbers are often hard to fathom, so images (in context to our lives) can really help to illustrate a point.

If the US had as many homeless as the China Quake, the following high tech cities would have no where to live:

San Jose, Calif. Population: 912,332

San Francisco, Calif. Population: 739,426

Dallas, Tex. Population: 1,213,825

Austin, Tex. Population: 690,252

Boston, Mass. Population: 559,034

Denver, Colo. Population: 557,917

Total: aprox 4,670,000, with a leftover to fill many small cities in America. (such as Oakland, Miami, Tulsa, Honolulu, all in the 300k range)

City population from Infoplease

Shocking? I could have used images of death, despair and crying parents. Sometimes, I think that’s less effective, especially if the culture is foreign, so I decided to use something most readers have in common –home town images.

There are 5,000,000, people homeless in China due to the earthquake. If you find this number as shocking as I did, I hope this example puts this into perspective.

You can actually do something, and donate to the Redcross, or other worthy causes. I choose the Redcross as I know the money will be put to good use.

I also learned that my parent in laws are considering adopting an orphan from the earthquake, I’m pretty excited.

Thank you, global citizens. Jeremiah Owyang, a 5th Generation Chinese American

It’s now in a German version.

In one of my recent posts, I encouraged others to donate, it actually worked, I know of at least 3 people that donated, I doubt I was the cause, as they had it within them to help. I’m sure many others donated, but didn’t want to say anything.

CNN reports that: “The government estimated death toll rose Thursday to around 20,000 but could eventually top 50,000, Xinhua reported.” as of Thursday, so I fear that things will get worse.

I’ve donated again, this time, my donation was more sizable than the first time around.

You know what to do, consider not going out to that nice dinner, and donate that money to the Red Cross, it would mean a lot to me if you donated, if you don’t have money to spare, blog it, tweet it, Facebook it, spread the word, that means just as much.

I’m Chinese, and have been to China a few times, here’s some of my favorite pictures compiled over a few trips, I hope they inspire…

My wife and I, newlyweds, celebrate our wedding with her family in Zhongshan, China.

Did these photos brighten your day? Consider donating to the Red Cross China Effort, there a lot of suffering, even $20 significantly support this effort.

What’s the impact of these photos? See the comments below, one in particular is really striking:

Thanks Rachel, that’s fantastic news.

I realize that this is completely off topic from the Web Strategy blog, but I’ve a loud voice, and there’s many well to do readers of this blog, so this is one of the best ways I can apply my resources.

I’ve got earthquake supplies in my closet and garage, I know the ‘big one’ is going to hit us someday in Silicon Valley and it’s going to be pretty bad, I’m expecting at least a week without proper aid or food. I’m sure that things are much worse in Burma and China, so I’m somewhat sensitive to this disaster.

Death Toll:
Cyclone at Burma: Over 34,000 dead, Updated May 13th
Earthquake in China: Over 12,000 dead Updated May 13th
Update Wed: Over 60,000 are missing, death toll could rise.

I donated some money, although not enough to turn the tide. I’m curious, what are you doing out there? Leave links to organizations that are helping, in particular those that are using the internet to do good.

You can start by donating to the American Red Cross, or World Vision.

Update: over 1000 students are injured, not good.

Update 2: Yo Scoble, I see you’re talking about Twitter and the earthquake, why not do a blogpost pointing to the redcross or some other org that can help? You’ve got 3 times the juice I got. Do something with it!

Update 2.5: Scoble came through and told 22,000+ people on Twitter, thanks!

Update 3: Eric Gonzales, who I’ve known since 2000 has donated and is spreading the word. Daniele has posted that he donated as well, thanks. Eric of CN reviews is posting up pictures, videos, and live reports, staggering. Len Devanna, EMC’s Web Strategist has also donated, he’s someone worth knowing, I’ve met him several times.

Update 4: Tuesday morning, I feel a snowball effect happening, this is great

Update 5: Wednesday Morning: Damon Billian of the mint (and someone I’ve known for a few years) has donated $100, see comment 34. Elliot Ng has put together a list of ways you can donate, not just to the Red Cross.

Update 6: Wednesday Morning: Alright, now we’re getting traction, Sarah Lacy has donated money too!

Last week, I wish I had more time to be a bit more appreciative. I had a quite a few meetings on one of the days yesterday, and started to have issues with Outlook. I sent an email to Helpdesk, and they immediately responded and helped solved my issue –all while I was on the phone helping clients.

I forgot to thank them properly, so sent over a quick appreciation note this morning, it’s really important to remember those that are fighting for you behind the scenes, that don’t get the public eye.

So be sure to be thankful and appreciative to your tech support folks this week (and ongoing) those that help with your computers, network, databases, servers, storage, hosting, telecom, applications, management teams, and whatever/whoever else I missed. (Also, I realize that many IT departments are business enablement, not just support, but you get the idea)

If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be able to get business done, infrastructure doesn’t need to be a thankless job.

Thanks Technical Support, as we can’t get our jobs done without you.

I need a vacation, I’ve been on the grid for over 900 days.

I’m going to be spending some time away, which will be the first time in over two and a half years that I’ll be completely offline. I won’t be checking email, my blog, or twitter, so you’ll have to catch me when I get back in a few days.

The last 6 months as an analyst have been very busy, I hit my goals in the role, published research, helped clients, and supported the company move it’s own social media efforts forward –all while maintaining this blog.

But not everything went smoothly, I’ve made a few mistakes on the way that I wish I could have fixed, but I’ll file those away as some hard lessons. A rough customer presentation, a few internal speedbumps, trying hard to learn how to write reports in the Forrester style (it’s like learning a new language) and learning new research and analytical skills. I’ve given up a lot of sleep, frankly, I worked hard, so I need to recharge.

So, I’m delivering a presentation to executives of B2B tech companies from around the world today in Oahu, then I’ll be taking some time off and will return fully charged.

In the meantime, while I take some time off, I encourage you to follow the following people: Colleagues Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li on the Groundwell blog, Peter Kim, Shel Israel who’s cataloging how social media impacts culture, and listen to Jennifer Jones’ Marketing Voices on your walk/jog/workout. Each of these folks are respected peers, and have become great personal friends.

If you want to peruse my archives, some of my most popular posts are here, or you can leave me feedback about this blog in this survey I’m running.

But don’t just take my recommendations, if you know someone that’s doing great work in the internet strategy, web marketing, or social media space, leave a comment suggesting them below.

I really enjoy this industry, the collaboration of the community, and meeting so many interesting people, thank you all being part of this online experience.

Aloha!

Note: This is a repost of a previous post I had on my older blog, I’m reposting it as it’s still relevant, and I’m migrating some of my older content to this blog.

Left: The “e” from the Exodus logo that formerly used to reside on the HQ building. It’s currently in my garage, and I look at it every time I park my car –because I want to remember

I started my career at Exodus Communications, and was there for three long years. If you know your internet history, Exodus was a flagship turned bloated startup that exploded, then died painfully into highway 101. (I didn’t do it, I swear!). We hosted pretty much everyone, massive data centers with great security, right on the backbone. If you were an internet company, it’s likely you were with Exodus at one time or another. We even bragged “we ARE the internet”.

I still half-jokingly apologize to friends that bought stock just out of guilt for a promise that never was. The Exodus (EXDS) Stock split FIVE times in just a little over 12 months…if I can recall corrently–then it went to pennies and we filed chapter 11 –Twice! 3 CEOs later, 10 rounds of layoffs, I was the final 33% (or was it 12%…I forget) and I left on to greener pastures. I wish someone would create a [Edit: I did create a] wikipedia history of Exodus, it’s worth remembering, and a good lesson.

F*cked Company (one of the original grass roots conversational aggregators) always had clever names for us at Exodus Communications.

I remember the people
I learned some powerful lessons at Exodus Communications, I saw a complete business cycle in 3 years, had countless reorgs, and figured out how to survive 10 rounds of layoffs. (The secret is “embrace change”, btw). Most importantly, I remember the people. I had a great manager, (John Perera) who became my mentor, even came to my wedding, and we have lunch whenever we can squeeze in the time. Waili was even my groomsmen, Can you believe that? A sales guy in my wedding party. (just kidding…us IT folks figured you hated us and that’s why we got shipped over to the otherside of the freeway)

I know many other Ex-Exodus Alumni read this blog, I think the greatest takeaway was the people that I met, there was a strong caliber of people, risk takers, movers–the enterprenurial spirit ran deep. I’ve noticed that almost everyone I keep in touch with has a day job AND a side business! (rock on!) We still keep in touch, and even had a BBQ a few years ago. I’m even having lunch with a few alumni today at Rivermark.

I remember the Ferrari we had parked outside of the front door at Exodus, which was used to motivate sales closes, eventually it was awarded to the top earner.

Yahoo and EMC now inhabits the Mission College Towers (left) I used to call home, I drive by there frequently on my way to work.

I remember the dot bomb parties. I went to many dot com launch parties in SF, San Jose, and Tahoe. I saw eStamps, Beenz, Pets.com, and a bunch of other silly companies spend thousands on parties for no particular reason –then reality set in, a business model is sorta-kinda needed.

I remember the sock puppets, lime and purple logos, and a fleet of 3-Series BMWs on 101 in seemingly standstill traffic. I remember that having an Exodus badge got special treatment at luxury car dealers on the peninsula. I remember people doing silly things with big ice blocks and vodka, people dancing and bragging about ‘hittin the gold mine’, and C-level execs performing stunts to garner attention.

I’m sure if I watched carefully, I would have seen people jumping into pools to get attention/money/recognition. So although I was a dot bomber (many others fared way worse that me) I walked away with a lesson.

Now, today things are picking up again for web (called web 2.0). The new era of social software is coming around, and coming fast, really fast. But I’m with Loic, who questions if we’re headed back to the crazy bubble 1.0 again.

Let’s do it right this time, please remember.

Leave a comment, what was the dot bomb experience like for you during late 90s- early 2000s?

For us web strategists (those who make decisions for web sites) time is a precious, limited resource that we’ve come to cherish. Here’s a few tips on how to manage your time effectively:

Time is Like Money: You never seem to have enough, and everyone wants a piece of it. As a web decision maker within a company, you’ll have many touchpoints, since web is one of the most important mediums for business, you’re going to be in heavy demand.

Remember the limited quantity: Cherish your time as you do your wallet or purse, this is yours, and unlike money, you can’t invest and grow new time, you can only manage the existing time you’ve got, cut into other areas, or hire someone under you to do it.

Budget your time like you do money: Set aside time for you, for work, and for passions. I do this before I check my personal email (second priority) then any work email (third email). As soon as you answer emails, you’re now paying for someone else’s time. The same principle should apply for your workout time, reading time, or personal reflection time. Allow a certain percentage at time for writing reports, meetings, and other tasks at work, and defend that calendar.

Pay yourself first: I don’t let anyone cut into this time, as I budget 2 hours every morning to do online reading (to get smarter) and to blog (increase my long term value, and connect with others). Like the advice from most financial advisors, they encourage you to pay yourself first by investing in your own funds, paying your bills, and making yourself (reasonably) happy before paying off your creditors.

Manage incoming web requests: As a web strategist, you’re popular, but will need to manage your fame so you and your team doesn’t burn out. Within your web team, develop a process and tool that will track and prioritize all incoming requests for your web team. Force business stakeholders to justify the need for projects or programs, and seek the ‘cover’ of an executive sponsor who can help prioritize and push back.

Manage meetings with software: Try to avoid meetings, instead use collaborative software of social software after initial the initial kick start meetings. Use the tools that are native to us, I know you shouldn’t have any problems handling this.

Responding to emails leads to more emails: The more you respond to emails, the more you will receive. Keep in mind what your core goals are (why is your employer paying you) and try to manage and budget this.

Instant Messaging control: I avoid using 1:1 communication tools until really needed. I look for one-to-many publication tools or collaboration tools to use, as I can be more effective with my time. The only place I use IM is at the workplace, and in limited quantities. Selfish? yes, but I’ve been doing this for two years, and noticed an increase in productivity without it.

Ironically, I’m spending a great deal of my day online managing for the day job and this blog, while I think I have my budgeting portions right, I’m going to try to trim my overall online time down. I’m actually a bad case for this, so this post is as much of a self-reminder as it is a how to for you.

Thanks to you all I was alerted that my feed was acting screwy, (thanks Matt Dunlap for the extra help) I was able to identify the problem in my recent post. I believe that when there’s a problem with something, you should quickly identify it and let your community know, and keep them updated.

The Problems?
1) A special character had gotten into one of my blog posts, resulting in one post to result in summarized versions in RSS, it caused some havoc with other ones. As a result, I switched the RSS feed in Feedburner and it sent everyone my latest 20 posts.

2) As a default, Wordpress offers three feeds, RSS full, RSS partial, and an atom feed. Different people were subscribing to different versions

Solution:
Thanks to Rick Klau of the Feedburner team (Constantin pointed me to him, thanks), now part of Google was quick to help me fix the problem. His title is Strategic Partner Development in the Content Acquisition group, so I’m under the assumption his job is to be a community facing role and help people use the tools, as you know this is Google’s core strategy, organizing the world’s information. I installed a Feedburner for Wordpress called Feedburner Feedsmith. It consolidated ALL my feeds into one.

Previous Setup (notes from Rick)

feed A –> feed A (partial)
feed B –> feed B (full)
feed C –> feed C (partial)
FeedBurner feed –> FeedBurner feed (full)

Now it does this this:

feed A –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed B –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed C –> FeedBurner feed (full)
feed D –> FeedBurner feed (full)

Results:
All of my RSS feeds are being measured in one location, my reader subscription went from 4500 to 7500 in 24 hours as the native wordpress feeds are now being routed into Feedburner. Secondly, all my feeds should all be full feeds now, making everyone happy.

Recommendations for you:
Start with QuickStart Guides for Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Podcasting. If you’re using wordpress (I assume there’s a plugin for typepad to) and haven’t used Feedsmith, I recommend you do this if you care about accurate stats. In my line of work, accuracy is important. Caveat: Of course, realize that Feedburner is owned by Google, and how data could be used for monetization. Most of us use Google products hundreds of times a day, so that’s non-issue.

Other Concerns: China blocks Feedburner?
I heard from one of the Chinese readers that Feedburner is blocked in China, but apparently, as of last weekend, there may be reports that China is no longer blocking Feedburner. If your country is blocking feedburner, sadly, you’ll have to visit my site directly.

Please click on this post if you see summaries only.

I believe in giving full feeds in my blog posts as I want to make it as easy for you to consume content.

I’ve received about a half a dozen messages that my feed has been acting screwy lately, and you know how I want to continue to share and help my readers. Some are reporting that they are seeing a partial feed or summary. My buddy Matt Dunlap found there was a small piece of code in one my my posts that was the culprit which I’ve since removed. (and no, I’m not using the ‘more’ tag)

I changed one of the feedburner settings and some readers are seeing some of my posts show up as new, even though they’ve already read them.

Now, things appears somewhat back to normal, as I asked my Twitter network if they see a partial or full feed, and it was a mixed result. I’m not going to touch it for a while (as I have wordpress set to full) so I’m wondering if some of the feedreaders need to propagate the changes, or some other black magic.

Someone from China messaged me and said that Feedburner is not supported in China, so they have to subscribe to my default wordpress feed, that clearly shows that Feedburner can’t keep track of all the subscribers.

So, for now, if you’re seeing a partial feed, that was unintentional, and Ill soon have it corrected. So please come directly to these posts if you’re having an issue. I’ll update this post until everything is resolved and full feeds will be seen by all.

Hang with me while this gets resolved, in the meantime you could try resubscribing and deleting the old partial feed.

Last Friday I was offline, not by choice, but due to the power going out due to a storm that hit Northern California. Sure, not a severe storm in comparison to any area that receives regular hurricanes, but most Californians were off guard, myself included.

I’ve a sub-level garage that’s below street level, and in the rare case of a storm the sump pump will activate and clear the drain. Sadly, in this rare case, the power went out, and no more sump pump. My neighbors, who share the same wonderful design and I realized we had to resort to buckets to clear the drainage area or risk our garages becoming a swimming pool.

What was really interesting was to see how the community came together, neighbors helping neighbors (some who don’t speak to each other on a frequent basis) and all chipping in. Some residents were away on vacation, and if they didn’t receive the help of a neighbor, their garage would be flooded. Others, too elderly to carry water in a bucket had to rely on the help of those around them. Not all was well, as some renters let the garage flood, they simply didn’t care.

Strangely, this all reminded me of you all, that is, those who are in my online community. The web industry is a unique one, there’s an amazing amount of collaboration that occurs, and online neighbors help and assist each other. Sometimes, we can’t physically assist them with bailing buckets, but from information, advice, or just morale support. Communities often form by need or interest, in this case, we all live in the same proximity but were brought much closer together than ever before through this bonding experience. I’m on much better terms with all my immediate neighbors, we all helped each other.

Aside from avoiding a minor disaster, (and am getting a backup generator) I learned a lot about how communities and neighbors respond in the physical world and online. The strength comes when members collaborate, help, and support each other.

Tagged Community Conversations:

I was tagged by both Maggie and Shiv to share eight things in this meme, it’s an interesting way to learn about folks, so here are 8 things you may or may not know.

1) I used to be a music major: Being creative has been threaded through my life, I started playing piano at age 4. I eventually picked up trombone, and started to play jazz in junior high; won a bunch of awards. In college I continued this and was a jazz performance major then realized that unless you were really exceptional (I wasn’t) then I had to find another career. I found the web, and I never looked back, it met all my creative desires. I’m listening to all the music that I love often while I’m writing, researching, or working, it hasn’t gone away. Rather than the 88 keyed piano keyboard, I’ve just found a new one, the qwerty.

2) I was born and raised in Fresno, the bible belt of California. I always felt a little out of place in Fresno, it’s certainly not as diverse and open minded as the bay area (although it’s changed now) and my roots are of a rural boy.

3) The first website I made was for a college project: And it involved me wife, we were in the same BICS (Business Information Computer Systems) class and were tasked to build a working HTML model of an eCommerce site. The products we were assigned were Lladro and Disney collectibles. I gleefully did all the work, and she didn’t seem to mind. I think we got a B.

4) My first task at a real company was horrible. My first task as an intern was in IT, I had to scrub the employee directory database and look for inconsistencies, holes, duplicates, and correct them. I screwed it up, as I got my revisions wrong, and had to redo it all over again.

5) I thought my career was going to be intranet focused: For a long time, I thought I was going to be developing web strategies for intranets, when I ran really hard into social media in summer of 2005 I knew that was it, I never looked back since.

6) My family and friends are surprised: I was a wild and crazy boy, and didn’t seem to have the responsibility in school to succeed in the workplace. In retrospect, as much as it was my energy of a youth, I also realize now that structured school systems aren’t for everyone, I thrive in creative environments, not forced learning and forced exploration.

7) For our Chinese wedding we did a Salsa dance. It’s true, we shocked our entire family by doing a salsa dance at our wedding, it was choregraphed by a local instructor, we took over 100 lessons over a few years, and went to salsa clubs, it was our hobby for a few years. As a result, the party was so energized that even the oldest aunties and youngest cousins were excited to dance the night away.

8 ) I was very nervous on my first public speech. In 2005, I gave my first presentation at the Marketers’ creativity event, and I was nerve wracked days before the event, overplanned, and had a hard time relaxing. Over time, you just get used to it, and now I really look forward to most public presentations.

I’m supposed to tag other folks for this meme to spread, but I’m going to try something different. I’ll let YOU decide to share your eight things, just link to this post, share your eight, then link to eight others. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to share in the comments of this very post.

I really owe it to you to continue to live and work as transparently as possible, this is after all, what I preach. It starts with me first sharing, so here goes. The last month has been a whirlwind, I’ve traveled from SFO > Boston > Chicago > SFO > Boston with a quick trip to NY met hundreds of people, even more photos, and I’m just getting started. I’ve officially been an analyst for 31 days, and it’s time to take a look back, here’s what I’ve learned:

1) I’ve a lot to learn
I was in training for three weeks, (well I missed most of the second week at a conference) to learn some very rigorous methodology, meet people, and absorb into the culture. I even had a meeting with the CEO on my first week. I was amazed at the organization that a company of 1000 could have. I’ve made a lot of new friends with common interests in the firm, and I’ve come to learn that many are now blog readers who comment from time to time *jeremiah waves*

2) Evolving communications a challenge
A big part of my training is to learn how to communicate effectively and succinctly. I’m already starting to feel this change in how I write, speak, present, and think. Check out the large binders we received in training, they are a desktop reference and I’m using them frequently. I recently tweeted that working along side Charlene is like getting a masters in business.

3) New incoming pipes
There are a LOT of inputs in this role, from vendor briefings, announcement briefings (It’s easier to glance at techmeme and tell what will be reality in 24 hours and what won’t be). Another major input is the problems and challenges I hear information from many clients. I’m even listening to trends from the press (they have many inputs too). Most importantly it’s amazing to have access to hard core data and research from the firm. Overtime, I’m hoping that my analysis will move up a level so I can start seeing macro trends, in addition to the small changes, I’m not quite there yet, but hope to be soon.

4) Helping clients succeed fires me up
I feel good inside when customers are happy as direct result of my actions. In addition to the time I’m spending inputting, a great deal of my time is spent helping clients in advisory sessions and creating reports. On a related note, A CEO of a startup recently contacted me and said that other startups in the valley don’t understand the influence that analysts have, nearly everyday I’ll be recommending vendors to look at. (By the way, the best way to get my time and other analysts is to do a briefing, not send me an email)

5) Time management has become more important than ever
Compared to previous jobs, this role is incredibly more time demanding. I’m rigorous on how I structure my time (such as avoiding IM as much as possible). I read and research and blog for two hours in the morning (I sleep in 2 three hour shifts at night, and am up right now at 3am to blog) as I really believe in paying myself first. Learning how to manage all the input and output time (and time spent writing reports) around travel and speeches is going to be a challenge, maybe I need a lesson from Tim Ferris.

6) I’ll continue to blog and share
Many people are wondering if I’ll continue to share online as I have in the past. Speculation if what I’ve learned and know will be sucked up behind the “paywall” for clients only. Part of why I was hired was because of my blog, so that’s not going away, and I’m a believer in walking the talk. Since I’ve started, I’m still part of the conversation, have been very active on Twitter (add me), and continue to experiment with social media tools. What do I not share on my blog? Research and reports that I work on in the day job based around data that I would not have had access to if I wasn’t an employee. Also, giving advice from a blog is far too generic. Each client has a unique culture, unique market, and is at a different stage in their social media strategy, there’s no way a blog or any other dispersive communication tool can be successful in delivering true value.

So what did I learn? I learned I have a lot to learn! So if you can’t tell, I’m undergoing a metamorphosis right now, and I want to keep this cocoon as opaque as possible, so stay with me, let’s grow together, and thanks for all your support!

If you have any experiences to share about how you’ve smoothly (or not) moved into a new role, I want to hear.

Update: I just learned that a white paper (PDF) I wrote 2 years ago with Dennis McDonald was seen by a client, and they requested my involvement on the account. I’m a believer that one thing leads to another, it’s just amazing that it can take nearly 24 months for work to come to fruition. Then again, the white paper is on IT and Business for social media, it’s just now becoming relevant. At the time, I wrote this as I was frustrated with my own IT department not understanding or supporting the social media program.

When I do stupid things, one of the best ways to self-heal is to blog it and tell the whole world. Silly and ironic, it just feels right, besides, everyone makes mistakes.

Yesterday, some of my new colleagues and I were sharing embarrassing stories so I sent them these links, it’s a Friday and I’m finally going home to the bay area, it’s been a long trip, I logged a lot of miles (SF > Boston > Chicago > SF > Boston > SF) in the last three weeks. As you know I just returned from HK and Vancouver just a few days before all this.

Here’s three very embarrassing stories about me

My Embarrassing Scoble Powerpoint Incident in front of Hundreds of People: After reading this my new colleague Lucy covered her mouth in astonishment for quite a while after reading this, nice.

A victim of my own doing and how to be a dumbass in Facebook: Why my wife sent me an email with every word in all CAPS!!!1

Crises Management Template: Child Relations for Social Networks (Facebook): Some PR agencies create pre-made crisis templates, I created this one for my friend Jennifer Jones, her son was abhorred when she requested he be her Facebook friend a few months ago.

For some reason, after publishing these events, it somehow felt better, perhaps this is why PostSecret is the 14th most linked to blog. Fortunately, I haven’t done anything really stupid, but as soon as I do, I’ll let you know. This post is set on timer, I’m flying over the rockies right about now.

You have some stories to share? Let go and leave a comment below, feel free to be anonymous if that makes you feel safer.

This doesn’t have much to do with web strategy, but looking deeper on today’s interactive and social web, personality is what it’s all about.

I took the Myers-Briggs personality test this first week at the new job. I enjoy how there’s internal analysis done, in order to better understand how to work with others, and before analyzing industries.

For the most part, I agree with the assessment that was done, I scored high on the extroversion, which suggests that I’m “energized by the interaction of others”. As proof, you’ll notice I almost always ask for your feedback (even if you don’t agree) and I look forward to every comment. Many of those who have blogs or participate heavily on social networks may have similar internal drivers.

I also seemed to be highly focused on the thinking attribute, which may also be a weakness for not leading with intuition. If you watch my adoption of tools, I watch a few other social media practitioners play with them, discard the ones that don’t work and only then do I adopt, but then with full vigor. I’ll bet that the intuition levels of Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis and other entrepreneurs are high.

Tara Hunt has done a unique version of the classic archtypes and converted them to other types of social media related personas. She suggests that I’m a Gate Keeper, and wants to regulate community. Interesting, I may want to do this occasionally, but I don’t feel that’s my primary driver.

Want to take the test? The wikipedia page on the topic, a link to this test, but I can’t confirm it’s the same methodology that I took.

I asked my 1000 followers on Twitter about their personality types, here’s a few of their public responses: (I didn’t publish yours if your tweets are set to private, aka the “red lock”)

Sarah “Intellagirl” Intellagirl @jowyang: I’m an ENTJ too!

Terrence Wood terrencewood @jowyang I’m an INFP, just like princess Di, http://tinyurl.com/2t2lgr

Randy Lawrence randelaw @jowyang - Sometimes I’m ENTJ, other times ENTP. Must depend upon my mood that day

Paul Chaney pchaney @jowyang - I’m an INFP. You’re on the other end of the grid it seems.

Jeff Greco jeffgreco @jowyang inspired me to take the Myers-Briggs Psych Test - I’m an ENFP

Luis Suarez elsua @jowyang RE:the Myers-Briggs Psychological Test, you may want to check this blog post: http://urltea.com/1nhi on how good those tests are

Victoria victoriuhh @jowyang I’m an INTP.

missrogue (Tara Hunt) missrogue @jowyang We did this (when I was mapping MBs to Community Archetypes in Aug): http://tinyurl.com/36tqcl I’m an ENFJ High on ENF and low on J

William Bakker wilhelmus @jowyang Yup, ENTP. What about yours?

Andy Kaufman andykaufman @jowyang - ENTP & I’m a High I, D on the DISC

Chris Doelle ChrisDoelle @jowyang that has always been my favorite psychological test - I am ENTJ baby - large and in charge.

I don’t place my full trust in a test to define someone, but it’s interesting learning a little more about myself, and hopes of interacting better with others, leave a comment if you know your personality type.

VoIP and Live Streaming, in my opinion, have revolutionized the communication industry. Anyone with computer and internet connection can connect with anyone else on the planet, for real time voice and video communications. The clincher? Such tools require a few dollars and commodity internet access –nearly everyone can get in on the conversation.

Skype connects a family
Recently, an Uncle and Auntie of mine recently moved to the Middle East for a off country teaching assignment, in a city known for violence, assassinations and unrest. Yesterday, during a local family get together we were able to arrange a time to call them, and we piped over a video stream to them. We could hear their audio only. I was able to briefly jump into this real world communications with them, as they were half way around the world, and wouldn’t be returning to us anytime soon.

My cousin showed him around the house with the video camera, although the wireless network connection would sometimes drop, they got to experience a virtual tour of what we were doing. Although not perfectly setup, we continue to lower the barriers to communication in real time, and the medium gets richer with each passing year.

Live streaming the human life cycle
I recently spoke with Chris Yeh, the CEO of Ustream (live interactive video), he tells me that in addition to people broadcasting live births on the web, that families are live-broadcasting funerals. Morbid? Not really, some family members who couldn’t be at the service get to participate in the grieving process, in this virtual way to be with their family.

What’s next?
It’s just a matter of time before our traditional home entertainment systems become IP enabled, allowing for PC to TV real-time video and audio to be transmitted. It would be interesting to see the adoption of these tools each holiday season, year after year.

Has VoIP or Live Streaming impacted your family?
There’s so many examples of how these tools impact business, but have you had an experience where these tools impacted your personal or family life? VoIP, live video streaming, what? Share with me in the comments.