So it’s been quite a while on update posts but I think I’ve got a good one for you. Welcome to life, after iPhone, lifeline 0.
We spent the weekend in Dallas in celebration of my beautiful wife and her friends’ birthday. Seemed like a great idea, lots of fun, and not even a bad drive in. We shoved off from Northwest Arkansas, mid-afternoon on Friday and set out on the 6 hour trek to the Fairmount Hotel in Dallas. Great place, friendly staff, nice rooms. The first downer came with arrival. It seems we were sharing a venue with Sarah Palin… and every republican, young and old, for three states. Somehow we managed to get checked in, cleaned up and in the same room with the 8 or 10 people we were meeting, and headed to Hotel ZaZa for cocktails by the pool. From there we landed at Lotus, all in the beautiful and upscale “Uptown” area of Dallas. We had a great time and I managed to make it home with everyone and everything I left the hotel with. Day one, so far so good.
Day two opened with Bloody Mary’s courtesy of Chili’s on our ill fated attempt at going to the Fort Worth zoo. After lunch we decided our time was better suited shopping and day-drinking until our dinner reservation at Dragonfly, again at Hotel ZaZa. We ran back to the hotel to clean up, then off to a great dinner. Service was less than desirable (and costly subsequently) but we managed to make it out of the restaurant only about an hour behind schedule. The next stop was Lotus, where Will, a good friend took great care of us all night. We departed Lotus to get our karaoke on at the Uptown Bar & Grill, a great time by the way and hopped a cab back to the hotel at closing time… which is where I cut myself off from the digital world.
Immediately after the cab drove away I realized I didn’t have my phone. The cab company was unresponsive at best on calling them to track down my lost iPhone and oddly enough, the phone was going straight to voicemail even though it had charge the last time I had checked in. three hours of calling everywhere just in case and I retired to get some sleep before the 6 hour drive home on Sunday.
So here I am, taking a break from my constant connectivity and trying to figure out what my next step is going to be. One friend, @traviswilliams suggests that now I’ve got a great excuse to get the next generation… when it comes out. One one hand, I need to feed the addiction, bite the bullet & get another iPhone. On the other hand, maybe I should just disconnect for a bit. Who knows how life might change at a disconnect. Given my career lives at the intersection of always-on and posting-constantly, a full un-plug is probably a bad career move. My gadget obsession also wouldn’t allow me to go back to 10-key. I’m just at a loss right now.
For the time being, I’ll be unplugged. Email me if you need me. Thoughts? Suggestions?
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Some of you might know that when I’m not working as creative director at Collective Bias, entertaining wife, kids, & dogs, or hiding in the woods, I’m working with the Social Media Club, Northwest Arkansas chapter. Yes, even my hobbies include social media… it’s an addiction, I know. This little volunteer job allows me the opportunity to network and hang out with some of the more entertaining people in my area as well as make valuable business connections and grow the impact of social media all over Northwest Arkansas. Recently I’ve had the honor of being included in two other local networking groups of equally motivated and fun people.
As most of you know, the past few months have been at best, bedlam. With all the traveling, changing jobs, oh, and that wedding I had, I’m pretty much devoid of any sliver of what I used to do or be. Now the question is how to get back into the groove… or better yet, how do I make a new groove? Lets start there… and yes, I have a plan.
For those of you keeping score, TidyTweet is one of the latest products from Rockfish, and a handy-dandy tool for easily creating corporate friendly Twitter feeds from various keywords, hashtags, or in the case of my homepage, username mentions. The beauty behind the product is that it scrubs foul language and spammer behaviors by default and produces a PG rated feed that you can confidently place anywhere you want people to view what the twitterverse has to say.
I do… now. Until this morning, I have to admit I didn’t even know what the thing was. I’d never heard of it. I know, I know… this is my job. I’m supposed to know what this stuff is ahead of time and put it to good use. I guess this one slipped through the cracks. Regardless, here’s my take on it.
Actually this change came from a necessity to organize and has been thought through on many levels as part of my personal growth plan. Quit smoking, get well, get organized, and care for family. This is part of the “get organized” section.
The question is that of preference. Do you want a butt-load of followers that are or might not be engaged or would you prefer a small group of highly engaged followers? I’ve had two accounts running for a while now. My corporate account has been running for just over a month and my personal account has been running over a year. The corporate account eclipsed my personal account today but that doesn’t make it the winner. Different strategies were employed to fill the ranks of each. I’ll go over these now:
TweetDeck has come out with a 3 column interface for the iPhone as seen 
Today I took the Organizational Champions ECChO assessment to see where I measured up in the grand schema of it all in comparison to other champions. I’ll review my experience and results below but get to the gravy first. Here’s the link:
