Dopp Juice

Okay, here’s the plan:

Everyone in the Bay Area who’s paying attention right now, please do the following (even if you’re in a monogamous relationship)…

1. Go to CrazyBlindDate.com.
2. Walk through the SF Bay Area site wizard (it doesn’t ask for any personal info until the end)
3. Make yourself available for Sunday, Monday, and/or Tuesday nights (the more the better).
4. Make your territory as broad as you feel comfortable with, but at least include San Francisco’s Mission District (you can get there. i know you can).
5. Make yourself available for all ages and genders with no other restrictions (come on! you can deal with this! okay, specify gender IF YOU MUST).
6. Use the “Intention” box to be honest about the fact that you’re just doing this for fun and to meet new people. (You should probably mention that monogamous relationship of yours, too.)
7. Finish the wizard, sit back, and see who it sets you up with (you can always say “no”).
8. Show up (even if it seems really really weird. You’re totally allowed to bail after 20 minutes).
9. Twitter an update about your date every time you or your date goes to the restroom (keeping in mind that your date might see those tweets).

You’ve got nothing to lose except your pride, and that’s really not worth keeping anyway. Ready? Go.

There’s a sour taste floating around in the mouths of personal bloggers right now because of a recent article in the New York Times. I don’t want to add to the negative criticism of the article; I want to join the positive backlash. I want to tell you why I write about my life on the Internet.

Last week something kind of amazing happened. I put out a casual request for people who have a certain kind of personality and lifestyle to poke me and say hi, and 46 people responded over the course of two days. It sparked a bunch of conversations about language and identity, and pulled some people together in a way that none of us expected. Even more surprising were the private conversations I had with people who wanted to raise their hands, but didn’t want other people to know about it. There were a lot of these, and they completely floored me.

I write about my life on the Internet because it creates a space for these connections. What else could make a complete stranger feel safe emailing me to say, “I’m queer, and I can’t tell anyone, but I wanted to tell you“?

I’ve been writing about my life on the Internet for about nine years now. I’ve learned by trial-and-error what works and what doesn’t, and I manage my presence in a way that nourishes me. Sometimes I make mistakes and have to face negative consequences, but they’ve never come anywhere close to outweighing the benefits.

In January, I bought a car almost entirely on advice from my online social networks, which I got in response to my blog posts about how confused I was. Someone even found my dream car for me online and sent me the link. Someone else saw that I couldn’t get to the dealership and offered to drive me. Some of these people (like the guy who gave me a ride) are meatspace friends, while others (like the guy who sent me the link) are people I only know online — I met them by blogging. (And by the way, the car is still perfect.)

I write about my life on the Internet because it changes the way I connect with my own experiences. In order to write down a story, I have to sort through all of the details and focus on the ones that made it significant for me. I believe our stories shape us — the way we remember something affects who we are and how we relate to the world. Writing things down empowers me to consciously decide how I want to remember something, and to me, that’s an act of personal revolution. Then, when details get echoed back to me in someone else’s words — either through a comment or another blog post — my way of seeing things gets a little big stronger, and my voice gets a little bit more steady.

I also write about my life on the Internet because I like to spend time alone. I can spend entire days in physical solitude — writing or working or scheming or exploring — and the Internet gives me a way to stay accountable and honest without breaking the creativity spell. It’s a kind of safety net — if I stopped writing for a day or two and didn’t tell anyone where I was, people would start looking for me (I know this because it’s happened). It’s also a sanity check — I can’t escape too far off into my own little world because I’m still bouncing my thoughts off a network of real people. When I start talking crazy talk, people tell me. (And they seem to love that part of their job, too…)

I’ve worked through some very hard stuff through blogging, and I’ve made some powerful connections in the process. People have thanked me for telling stories that opened doors in their own lives that they didn’t know they were missing out on. Other bloggers have done the same for me.

I believe in telling stories, I believe we’re more powerful when we’re connected, and I believe in telling fear to f*ck off.

There’s a new dating site on the scene called Engage.com, and it’s bragging about its unique social aspects. In truth, it looks pretty awesome. They encourage friends to match each other up (in contrast to the “Web 1.0″ model of seeking out strangers), and they seem to have the tools to make it work. They’re presenting themselves as hip and in touch with what people are really looking for. They’re also sponsoring a party tonight called Love 2.0, which I’m heading out to in about an hour.

They seem well intentioned, but they’ve missed the boat on the categories issue. Their site is so rigidly structured by gender and gender preference that I couldn’t even complete my profile without being forced to lie. It’s not the “okay, i’ll call myself this for now and then go do what I actually want to do” kind of lie. It’s the “wow, I really can’t do half the things I’d like to do here because you won’t let me be honest about who I am” kind of lie. I’m not impressed.

So last Friday, I wrote them a letter:

subj: I’d like you to acknowledge bisexuality.

Hi Team Engage,

A friend just invited me to the Love 2.0 event this Monday that you’re sponsoring, and was excited to tell me about your site. I tried to sign up, but was disappointed to find out that you don’t acknowledge bisexuality. I don’t have a gender preference in my dating, and it would be dishonest and limiting for me to express one.

I dug through your FAQ trying to find some acknowledgment of this situation, and only came up with this:

Does Engage support same-sex matches?
Of course! No one is left out on Engage. You can fix up same-sex couples as long as they’ve both indicated that that’s their preference when they registered for Engage.

It’s important for you to know that I’m feeling pretty left out right now, and many of my friends would, too.

I’m active in the social media tech industry and dating scene, and your site sounds awesome. But I can’t use it if this limitation is going to be such a major aspect of how the site is organized. It’s offensive to me.

Can you change this? Please?

Or at least tell me why it’s important for you to have the restriction?

I appreciate you taking the time to read and respond to this.

Many thanks,
Sarah

It’s been three days and I haven’t seen a response, despite the fact that their automated email promised they’d get right back to me.

So now I’m going to dress up in my finest cleavage-boosting men’s suit, head over to their party, and ask them about this myself. I’ll be joined by a friend who takes issue with the fact that they don’t acknowledge open relationships or the equivalent of Facebook’s “It’s Complicated.” (You can only be matched up if you designate yourself as single.) Weirdly enough, though, they do provide categories for Divorced, Separated, and Widowed… as though those should significantly impact how you should be labeled on the site.

Just warning you in advance.

Tags: bisexuality, customer service, dating sites, engage.com

First, the news. Flickr announced a new service that allows you to post videos up to 90 seconds long.

Next, the response. Flickr Video is getting a lot of criticism, mostly because the 90 second limitation is unusually short for an online video service in 2008.

Now, the joke. In the spirit of Internet humor, the Twitter-based peanut gallery has decided to turn its griping about Flickr Video into a parody of the Barack Obama is your New Bicycle website (which is a parody in itself).

Now, the real joke. Who’s griping about Flickr Video? Oh, right. Twitter users! As Barb Dybwad points out, these are people who love the creative restriction of 140 characters in text, but just can’t yet fathom an equivalent in video. Hey Twitterati! You thought Twitter was stupid when you first heard about it, too. Either give creative restriction a chance, or use Vimeo. Flickr isn’t trying to be the next YouTube. It’s trying to do something new.

Okay, but back to the joke. Even though I don’t support the goal of this protest, I think its execution is brilliant and hilarious. Here’s a sampling of some of the gems I’ve picked up via the Tweet Scan:
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: flickr video, twitter

A new-to-Twitter friend just emailed me asking what she should do about the strangers who are suddenly following her tweets.  And I don’t think she’s the only one who’s experiencing an influx of spotlight attention because of SXSW.

Like any social networking website, people use twitter for different things, so no one suggestion is going to fit everyone. Here are my Personal Twitter Policies:

• If someone follows me, I will click the link to their profile and see if I recognize them. If I don’t, I will see what I can learn about them in less than two minutes, silently thank them for caring about what I write, and leave it there.
• If I do recognize them, then I check in on the following things:
  • Have I met them?
  • Am I ready to put energy into nurturing a relationship with them?
  • Do I want to read what they’re tweeting?
• If they get a “yes” on all three of those, then I’ll follow them. If not, then I have to stop and think about it a little more.
• If I’m not sure if I recognize them and I can’t figure it out in two minutes, then I usually won’t follow them.

This is all a function of how I use my incoming twitter stream: as a feed for ongoing conversation. There’s a murky grey area downside in my policy: there are real people who watch my twitters and care about what I have to say, and I’m not returning the favor. This makes me wince a lot, but still, for me it’s more important to protect my relationship feed than to look like everyone’s best friend. My policy is less open than some and more open than others. For the most part, it works for me.

But this does bring up another one of my Twitter Policies…

I use my most recent tweets to update my Facebook status, Skype status, and the “Last Splash” which appears at the top of this blog. Because of this, I try to avoid using the popular “@” reply convention unless I can articulate a thought that will stand alone. Otherwise, I’m just as annoying to the outside world as someone talking loudly on a cellphone; displaying only half of a conversation is a disservice to eavesdroppers.

There are lots of ways to use Twitter, and I know a bunch of people who take completely different (and totally legitimate) angles on the “follower thing.” For example:

“I’ll follow anyone who follows me and who is clearly not spamming people. If they take the time to read my content, the least I can do is show them I care about theirs.”

Or, “I’m not trying to pick up stalkers, so when people I didn’t know started following me, I switched my tweets to private.”

Do what works for you.

Tags: followers, policies, protocol, twitter

Unless you’ve been following my twitter feed or partying in Austin, TX, you haven’t heard much from me in the last week. That’s because my laptop died a horrific logic board death in Oakland Airport, just before I boarded my flight to SXSW. Emails and blogging quickly became a thing of the past, and I resigned myself to in-person interactions and text message documentation. Now I’m back online with a cheap desktop PC while the Apple store continues to try to fix my baby, and I’ve got a week’s worth of epiphanies and adventures to blog about. So here’s the abridged version.

What’s SXSW?

SXSW (pronounced “South By Southwest”) is actually three different festivals that happen all at once in Austin every March. Most famous is the Music festival, where every band who’s any band comes to town and plays a show. Then there’s the Film festival, where all the top independent films of the year screen their glories. And there’s also the Interactive festival, which no one except us geeks actually knows about, because Music and Film are far more glamorous. It’s all one big 5-day party of brilliance with exceptional speakers and wild nightlife and the most fun many geeks get to have all year long.

What did I learn?

Here were some of my major “Aha!” moments from the panels and conversations.

From Kathy Sierra on wooing users…

• A successful website is one that makes a user feel like they are awesome.
• Adding randomness to a situation increases the chances for serendipity, which increases the chances that people will think an experience was perfect and was meant to be.
• Since lots of people still think the Internet is a “totally lame waste of time,” a successful website will give its users an easy way to defend their use of that waste of time to friends and family.
• The iPhone is awesome because its animations replicate the laws of real physics.
• A successful website will enable people to do something really cool really quickly. Minimize the learning curve for experiencing gratification.
• There are no dumb answers. Encourage people in your organization to answer questions, and keep encouraging them if they don’t give the right ones. A culture of answers is a culture of support.
• Jargon is valuable — it’s a rich language that passionate members of a community use to talk with one another efficiently and effectively. Don’t insist on not using jargon in order to make newbies feel more comfortable. Instead, create a space for newbies that is separate from the jargon users.

More brilliance…

• Parents need to realize that “TV time” and “Internet time” are as different as “TV time” and “reading a book.” Don’t lump it all into “screen time.” (Henry Jenkins)
• The best thing you can do for your health this year is see a therapist. Instead of forcing yourself to go to the dentist (or eat better, or exercise more, or meditate regularly), get some help on unpacking your unconscious avoidance of it. (Kathryn Myronuk)
• True anonymity on the web is not a realistic goal. Whatever you do under a pseudonym, you should accept right now that someday it may be attached to your real name. (Sex and Privacy Panel)
• Marketing is the price you pay for creating mediocre products. (via Tara Hunt)
• “Social gestures beget social objects which beget social markers.” (Hugh McLeod)
• You’re only going to execute on 10% of your ideas, so give the other 90% away for free. It shows people that you have them. (Jeremiah Owyang)
• If you have a startup with a small user base, now is the best time to put energy into answering every question personally and convey that they matter to you. Don’t just put up an FAQ. (Deb Schultz)
• Don’t treat users like they’re stupid. Explain what your service is going to do for them, not how it works. (Leslie Chicoine)

And epiphanies overheard by others…

• Drupal is like getting a dump truck full of legos.
• You can’t control the information that’s out there on the internet about you. But you can curate it.

I’m also honored (no wait, that’s not the right word…) to have witnessed the Zuckerberg-Lacy keynote trainwreck and ensuing analysis. I’ll let the other tech pundits give you their analysis on that one. (Or you can just watch it here.)

The panels were brilliant as usual (especially if you picked them by speakers rather than by titles). But the real focus for me this year was the partying. I was out until 3am every night (except for that last night when I was out until, um, 7am) laughing and dancing and feeling alive and revived among “my people.” This is, arguably, what makes SXSW so special. If all you want to do is talk about technology, there are plenty of opportunities to do so that don’t involve getting on an airplane. But for a whole bunch of geeks to show up in one place equally inconvenient to New York, LA, Chicago, and Silicon Valley and create meaningful experiences with people who do what they do… that’s juice of what matters.

And frankly, I’m pretty sure that when geeks party, the Internet becomes a better place.

Tags: sxsw08, sxswi

I’ve worked the last two years in the branding industry, and I’ve learned what an impact your reputation has on your ability to get stuff done. Please listen to why I support Barack Obama for president:

If you agree with me for the same reasons, please go make a badge, explain your perspective, and post it on your blog or your profile on social networking websites.

If you agree with me for different reasons, please go make a badge, explain your perspective, and post it on your blog or your profile on social networking websites.

If you disagree with me for any reason, please go make a badge, explain your perspective, and post it on your blog or your profile on social networking websites.

Right now. I’m serious. Go.

Thank you.

(hat tip: Chris Heuer)

Emma McCreary of Joy Ninja took my Elisa Camahort Page-inspired Venn Diagram about authenticity and transparency and made it more useful:

(She’s also the one who pointed out that authenticity is a need and transparency is a strategy. I agree — when you boil it down to needs and strategies, this all makes a whole lot more sense.)

Emma redirects this conversation back to the practice of Nonviolent Communication (NVC):

‘When we can all let each other make our own choices about how we get our needs met, whether the need is for authenticity or privacy or something else, then we’ll stop arguing about the “proper” or “right” way to be doing things, and we’ll all get along better.

‘This is why I love NVC: you see someone’s strategy, and if it bothers you, you then become curious and guess what need they are meeting. Something like this, “OH, so when you choose to not be transparent, you are meeting your need for privacy?”. Then you get to have a conversation where you are curious about where the other person is at and why they are doing what they are doing. Bingo, authentic connection.’

I love it! Thank you, Emma.

Tags: authenticity, choice, needs, nonviolent communication, nvc, strategies, transparency, venn diagram

Last weekend I twittered, “I wanna see a Venn Diagram that shows the differences and overlaps between ‘Authenticity’ and ‘Transparency’.”

The thought immediately attracted conflicting (yet brilliant) definitions of the terms.

“‘authenticity’ is about relevance, ‘transparency’ is about defensiveness. the overlap is accidental and uncorrelated.”
– Jenka Gurfinkel, social-creature

“authenticity = what is alive in me, transparency = a conscious choice to disclose that b/c I want to live in that kind of world.”
– Emma McCreary, joy ninja

Understandably confused, I started asking around for more thoughts on the matter. Here are some of the responses that came in…

“I don’t think authenticity means anything more than what is real and true. And I agree that transparency is about how much of what is authentic you choose to give those outside the window in to see. No one said it had to be 100%, by the way. You have choice. That choice is the overlap.”
- Elisa Camahort Page, Worker Bees Blog

Aha! The Venn Diagram!

Beth Kanter continued the conversation over at BlogHer and her own blog, relating the concepts to the nonprofit sector and pulling in some great comments. She also dug up the wikipedia definitions:

• Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions.
• Tranparency means open, frank or candid.

Mark Resch took the business angle: “authentic means authored by who you think made the thing in question. transparent means that the author made it so that you (or anyone) can see how the relevant parts work—especially the important inputs and outputs.“

Meanwhile, another tech industry thinker (who in a completely relevant way asked to remain anonymous) said, “Not being 100% open about everything I know in my professional technical field actually makes me trusted. If people know they can go to you and share information that is yet to be made public and know you are not going to share…. well this makes you trusted. So ‘radical’ transparency is actually not ‘good’ for building trust and relationships. Authenticity is more about how you are sharing and is it ‘true’ and real for you in relationship to others.”

My friend Koan added some pithy thoughts to the pile: “Authentic is what I say about who and what I am – transparent is being open about why I’m saying it. Authenticity is walking the talk – transparency is talking the walk.”

And then Emma threw in another quick summary: “Authenticity is a need — transparency is a strategy. Thus transparency can meet a lot of different needs for different people, authenticity is just one of them.”

George Kelly of allaboutgeorge went for the meat of the definition. “Transparency is an internal choice projected externally, how one acts based on how one desires to live. It’s demonstrated and performed by one person or entity for an other (or others). Authenticity is a valuation, a label, about one’s essential nature, from the outside-in. It accrues to a person or entity and is attached by others (or an other).”

Amy Gahran of Contentious.com put it all into straightforward terms: “I think of “transparency” mainly in terms of disclosure — opening up your process of creation or exploration to examination — not simply selectively displaying the finished, polished product. I think of “authenticity” in terms of being honest (true to yourself and others) about who you are, the role you’re playing in a given context, and your values and identity. This is more of an internal mindset that influences what you end up creating, saying, or doing online or in the real world — whereas transparency is more of an external practice.”

But what about where the green part of the diagram? Whitney Moses tackled that one: “If your true self is very private, then over sharing wouldn’t be very authentic, but it could be transparent. Everyone can tell they’re inauthentic when they’re trying to put up a good front.”

Finally, Melinda Klayman boiled it down to the point: “Authenticity is about meaning what you say. Transparency is about saying what you mean.”

Thank you all for your brilliant thoughts.  I think I get it now.

Tags: authenticity, transparency

I headed out to the Paul McCarthy exhibit opening tonight with co-conspirator Melinda Klayman. While trying to navigate the heavy crowds, we ended up stuck in between two men who were wearing strange sashes.

To make conversation, Melinda asked if the sashes meant they were in a cult. They smirked and looked at each other for confirmation, and then nodded in agreement.

“Well, then, which one of you is the leader?” I asked.

They looked at each other again, and the tallest one said, “The last one standing.“

The shorter one slapped him on the back, laughing, and said, “I can’t believe you still remember that! That’s right! That’s how you choose a leader!”

Melinda and I looked confused, and the tallest one explained. “The way to pick a leader is to have everyone in the group stand in a circle. Eventually, people will start sitting down. The last one still standing is the leader.“

I visualized a group of determined men standing in a circle for 12 hours on end, hungry and thirsty and wriggling their fatigued legs to keep the blood flowing. I realized they probably had to urinate into the center of the circle, too, and I hoped this was happening in the middle of the woods somewhere. “How long does it usually last?” I asked.

“Oh, about five minutes,” the taller one said.

The shorter one saw the look on my face and explained. “If we’re all standing in a circle, I’m going to make eye contact with you, and with you, and with you, and I’m going to think to myself, ‘Well, I’m not the leader here,’ and I’m going to sit down.”

“What if not everyone sits down?” I asked.

“I don’t know. That’s never happened,” said the shorter one.

The taller one chimed in excitedly. “No! It’s happened! Then there’s the second round! See, we put a time limit on the circle. Say, five minutes. If, at the end of five minutes, two people are still standing, well then they’re both out, and we start the circle over again without them.”

The shorter one nodded sagely. “Right… because if they’re unwilling to capitulate, then we don’t want them as our leader.”

The taller one added, “One time we had to do three or four rounds of this.”

Melinda and I sat back and took this all in. “So how well do these leaders usually work out?” she asked.

“Very well,” both of them men said. “We’ve never had any problems.“

Tags: leadership, strategy