Personal

A Back Yard Music Festival

May 15, 2009 by krisis

Six years ago my friend Lindsay had a birthday party with music. With tongue in cheek she called it “Lyndzapalooza.” I carried all of my meager musical equipment down the street to her apartment on my back and we partied to a full day of our friends’ musical talents.

In each of the intervening years Lindsay threw another party, and I helped with each. Starting in 2007 the party become more of a festival – both in execution and atmosphere.

At the moment I am getting dressed to head out to Snipes Farm, where tomorrow Lyndzapalooza (LP) will host their first full-scale musical festival as a recognized non-profit.

In that shift from party to festival, we kept something very important in place: LP is a place to share and listen. The first year people played that had never had a set of their own before – including Gina and I, separately.

Even though our scale is bigger now, the concept remains the same. We’re combining a bill of bands about to get signed with some who’ve never played a show of this scale, and everyone gets hefty, full-length sets. Lindsay, Gina, and I spent the past two weeks interviewing those artists, and each article is an awesome snapshot in the development of a major talent on the Philly scene.

I have different levels of touchy-feely feelings before and after our festivals each year, largely dependent on how many times I skipped lunch, dinner, or sleep leading up to the festival and how many times I feel frustrated, angry, or incapable during the festival.

This year my pre-festival feeling is achievement. As college students we didn’t plan for our musical kegger to transform into a non-profit organization. The us of then could conceive of such a thing, but I don’t think any of us expected it to transpire.

Yet, six years later, here I am inviting you to come out tomorrow to BYM Fest to enjoy ten artists (including our duo Arcati Crisis) playing from 2pm until close to midnight, rain or shine, for just $20.

I think you’ll love it. I think college-us would have loved it, too.

Addicted to Twitter: Pt. 3 – How to keep tweeting?

May 4, 2009 by krisis

After two weeks of daily tweeting Twitter still wasn’t quite a habit. I understood why I was tweeting, what to tweet, but I didn’t feel like I was tweeting effectively.

I had found interesting folks to read and my own niche to write about, but I was at a loss at how to stay organized and interesting while I continued to accumulate follows and followers.

It was getting a little overwhelming. That was driven home by my participation in #blogchat, a weekly series where dozens of Twitter users have a live conversation by hash-tagging their posts as “#blogchat” – making them easily found via search. They were certainly easy to find – hundreds of them. I barely had time to hit reload before a whole new page of thoughts got tweeted out.

I had to find a better way!

Here’s where technology can be helpful. Twitter is a basic interface that doesn’t offer much aid when it comes to managing the flow of information, but its open API allows for plenty of developer interaction.

What does that mean to you and I? That there are a bevy of user-developed desktop and web apps that do all the things that can’t be done on Twitter.com. They’re more than a value-add – they’re essential to get the most of Twitter once you follow more than a few dozen people, and a must if you plan to use it as a platform for interaction or marketing.

There are three cross-platform big hitters that are worth investigating:

My Whole Crushing Life

May 4, 2009 by krisis

About fifteen years ago I started writing a novel called “Crisis Team.”

It was about being a high school student abducted by a secret organization, and having super-powers. I made Gina read my latest drafts every week in health class.

The particular deux ex machina of the early bits of the novel was that the narrator (AKA me) discovered a super-powered, super-portable laptop that was wirelessly connected to the entire network of the super-secret organization.

Fifteen years later my internet handle is “krisis” and I am writing this post from the back of a SEPTA bus on my 10″ mini-laptop, now empowered with a mobile broadband connection that lets me post from anywhere in the city.

In conclusion:

(1) I am now living in my imagined life; the only difference is that I am a rock star rather than a superhero.

(2) I have to get used to writing posts short enough that I won’t miss my stop.

Social Media Club of Philadelphia: The State of Social Media

April 30, 2009 by krisis

Earlier tonight I attended a fantastic networking night and discussion forum hosted by the Social Media Club of Philadelphia.

In a room full of super-mobile urbanites I was the sole attendee clacking away at a laptop, which resulted in my capturing an abridged transcript of the evening. It’s presented below for the utility of my fellow attendees, but you might find it interesting too!

Continue reading for discussions of the following:

Q1: What to say when someone says “I don’t have time for social media.”

Q2: Is Social Media a popularity contest or is social media about genuine relationships?

Q3: Are bloggers responsible for getting the facts right?

Q4: What makes a community real? That is: when does a web site feel like a place to be instead of simply a page of information to visit?

Q5: What are the responsibilities of Web 2.0 services to engage with and respond to the community they serve, and what are the responsibilities of the community to the service?

Q6: How can we best support our social media community and our peers knowing full well we’re often competing for the same clients and client money?

Addicted to Twitter: Pt. 2 – What to tweet?

April 29, 2009 by krisis

It took only seven days for me to appreciate the conversational power of Twitter, and to see why fans use it to follow artists and businesses. As I entered my second week I wondered what I should be tweeting about. I’ve wrangled a consistent audience of blog readers for years, but could I be compelling in 140 character soundbites?

Therein lies the paradox of Twitter. Many people get followed for who they are, rather than what they’re saying. But if you’re not Ashton, Oprah, or even Amanda Palmer, the only people following you for who you are will be your friends and blog readers. Maybe your mom?

That means you need to create a reason to be followed. You need a niche.

Some people skip out on niche-ing and just follow everyone else that they can find, hoping for reciprocal attention. It works – to an extent. You certainly could wind up with a hefty list of followers that way, but what’s the use of 1500 followers you don’t care to read? Are you even writing anything for them to follow and interact with? Wouldn’t a consistent, engaging conversation with 300 be more fullfilling?

Toby Diva eschewed the brute force approach to define her own niche: she’s is using Twitter to write a micro-guide to social marketing, which she’ll subsequently publish as a tangible book.

The idea is original and the content is strong – if you have an interest in social marketing you’d be silly not to follow Toby. Additionally, she’s engaging in conversation – the first time I mentioned her she even wrote me an @ thank-you note for tweeting about her.

In short, Toby is succeeding at Twitter just for talking about the thing that interests her the most.

I realized midway through week two that my twitter-gimmick is the same as my CK gimmick, such as it is. I lead a strange and interesting life! Marketer by day, songwriter by night, and freelancer and non-profiteer on the side.

I leveraged my intense Wednesday as an experiment, first live-tweeting a Lyndzapalooza meeting for the LP twitter, and then offering a play-by-play while co-hosting our weekly open mic with Gina. Suddenly, I was the one people were @ing. Was I live-tweeting an open mic? Where was it? I highlighted the artists, conducted twitterviews, and kept meeting new tweeters as people sent me @s or followed me.

Twitter seemed much simpler to me the next morning. It’s the same as anything else – write what you know and enjoy, and write it well. Even if it’s inane. Converse with like–minded people. And use Twitter to influence what you write elsewhere.

You create a cohesive, compelling, digital identity for yourself – and get to make friends all around the world that you would have never met otherwise.

By the end of my second week on Twitter it was beginning to make sense to me, but I still wasn’t addicted. It took seven more days for that to happen. More on that tomorrow. In the meantime, follow me.