Dopp Juice Archive

SXSWi 2007, Saturday, March 10, 10AM

Panelists: Lisa Stone (BlogHer), Betsy Aoki (Program Mgr, Microsoft), Jessica Hardwick (SwapThing), Jenna Woodul (Liveworld), Jory Des Jardins (BlogHer)

This was my favorite panel so far, and I took copious notes, so I want to share them with you. Lots of insight! These panelists are fabulous smart community-building hotshots… I have so much to learn from them.

Live-jotted notes…

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There are degrees of fame.

If I walk down the street anywhere in the world and say “George Bush did _____,” I don’t have to add, “He’s the president of the United States of America, and that’s a country on the North American continent.” Also, as a general rule, I don’t need to explain the names “Oprah Winfrey” or “Bill Gates,” either. We get them by now. They’ve been around. They have ubiquitous fame.

Then there’s educated community member fame. If I tell you “Jonathan Swift once said, ______,” do you need to be reminded that he wrote Gulliver’s Travels, and maybe given a little synopsis of what that book was about? You might. And unless you’re actively immersed in some kind of historical literature community, I probably won’t look at you like you’re a total idiot.

This brings me to my community, The Web Tech Revolutionaries, and the nature of our members’ fame. We have four methods for getting famous:

1. By contributing something really useful to the community.
2. By being devastatingly honest and public about our personal lives.
3. By having really strong opinions and declaring them loudly and often.
4. By being becoming appallingly rich and successful as a direct result of the Internet.

Check me on my work here. Go look at the SXSWi Speaker List and tell me if anyone on there got famous without doing one of the above things.

Once famous, the fame is fragile. Our medium changes every day and reaches the entire world. To maintain fame on a platform like that, our members have to be more useful/naked/loud/rich than all the other people trying to do the same thing, and they have to do it sustainably. And even then, they’ll run into people in their own community who have no idea who they are. ‘Cuz lets face it, we can’t keep up with who all the current useful/naked/loud/rich people are unless we’re spending all our time at conferences, where namedropping is at its peak. And boy, do we love to namedrop when we’re at those conferences. It makes us look knowledgeable and important and, dare i say it, possibly famous?

So here’s my mission… I’m going to (attempt to) write down all of the names I hear dropped at SXSWi, and give a quick two-line summary of why they’re famous. It will be the Glossary of Famous People for the Web Tech Revolutionaries, and it will be totally obsolete the minute after I publish it.

Rules: If the name is dropped with an immediate description of why I should know who that person is, it doesn’t count. I’m only recording names that are expected to stand up on their own. Also, if you come up to me and drop your own name in an attempt to get famous, I will laugh at you and call you an idiot.

I will publish it at the end of the conference.  This could get interesting…

The booming personals marketplace can get you everything from a high-paying gig to a dental advice to a date on Friday night. But there are often more readers than posters on the site, and competition among responses can be fierce. My advice is this: drop your fear of rejection, and learn to post on it yourself.Here’s how:

1. Try to offer something of value (like a job, or a free couch) wherever possible, rather than ask for something. You’ll get much better results and very good karma.
2. Be very specific about what you are offering, and more importantly, what it are not offering. Assume you will get way too many responses for this valuable offer, so narrow them down right at the get-go.
3. Be very non-specific about what you are asking for. If you want something from someone else, leave it open for interpretation and negotiation. Assume you will get no responses at all if you ask for your ideal. Save specifics for when you have the interested parties in dialogue, and just show genuine interest instead.
4. Make it interesting. Use lots of humor, especially if you’re asking for something (like a job, or a sale). Do not be average.
5. Always use the anonymous email address, unless you’re selling something in a way that you already do publicly. You don’t need the spam.
6. Do not respond to disrespectful emails. If the respondent isn’t acknowledging your full request, they don’t deserve your time, or your real email address. This includes people who are clearly sending you vague form letters. They don’t care about you — don’t spend time caring about them.
7. Do respond ASAP to any emails you care about. Craigslisters will quickly move onto the next opportunity if you’re quiet for more than a day.
8. Follow the rules. Don’t post in the wrong place. Don’t try to trick the spam detectors. Don’t pretend to be offering something when you’re really asking. The community will lay its wrath upon you if they don’t think you’re being respectful.
9. Be okay with hate mail. A sad but true fact about Craigslist is there are a lot of bored people out there who want to yell at you for stupid stuff. If you’re not breaking any rules, take a minute to silently pity their boredom, and then move on.
10. Take a chance. The beauty of Craiglist is that you don’t have to pay for most postings, and the community decides what’s worthwhile. If you’ve got an idea that you want to throw out into the universe, do it, and see what kind of response you get. If you don’t get anything, go back to the drawing board, revise your game plan, and start again.