So on a lark, I asked a question on Twitter yesterday. Here is the wholly underwhelming response:

Unimpressive, no? Be that as it may, I still think there’s an opportunity to meet the needs of the niche market of people who enjoy talking about marketing and technology, and who love really good beer.

Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons, I suppose, but I guess the most important one is that I’m really passionate about both of these things. And considering I’ve pledged to do more of the stuff I really love doing, I guess it makes sense.

Another reason? Well, okay, since you asked. I know a lot of forward-thinking marketing folk — folks like Ken Burbary and Amber Naslund, for example — who love beer. In fact, a lot of the people I work with are fans of good craft libations. I’ve noticed a substantial overlap in audiences, from my anecdotal encounters, and I think there’s something to that.

Yet another reason? Shoot, well… okay, how about this? Gary Vaynerchuk began his career talking about wine. With passion. Fervor, even. He found the overlap between business-minded folk and wine enthusiasts, entrenched himself in that niche, and crushed it (to borrow a term). Is there a spot there for little ole me? Perhaps, perhaps.

And that’s it, really — that’s the crux of it. I want to be to beer what Gary Vee is to wine. To some extent I am already; when it comes to beer, I’m as crazy balls-out passionate as they come. My friends make fun of me for it. My wife wants to wring my neck sometimes (that is, when she’s not drooling over the bottles of Belgian Quad or Flemish Brown I bring home). Passion I have in spades — what I haven’t built yet is a platform. So that’s what I’m going to do.

So here’s my question to you. If someone crazy about innovation started a podcast about beer, would you listen to it? Heck, do you even listen to podcasts at all? Would this make you start? These are the questions I need answered by you, the internet’s best and brightest. What say you, interwebs?

I saw two articles today that made me wince.

The first was shared by my friend Ezra. It details the peculiar phenomenon of “Bronies,” or men who like My Little Ponies. (Yes, I’m serious.)

The second was shared by a co-worker, Sheri. It details how the MBTA and MBCR are scaling back trains in inclement weather to prevent the kinds of disastrous scenarios we saw last year, with riders stranded in the cold for hours at a time.

What do these two stories have in common?  … Continue Reading

Anyone who knows me knows that I talk a lot about theoretical stuff. I’m big into innovation. I like stuff that’s never been done before. I like hacking (in the metaphorical sense; I don’t have an ounce of programming know-how). Really big, gigantic, completely impractical thinking – that’s my cup of tea. (That and redundancy, apparently.)

And to some extent, that’s a problem. Guys like Chris Brogan will tell you that if you’re weak in one particular area, that’s okay; you can always hire someone to do the stuff you’re bad at. Of course, when you’re the bottom rung on the corporate ladder, it’s difficult to convince your boss to hire someone to do the practical work while you draw up all the blueprints. That’s my boss’s job, after all – to architect things.

So then for someone in my particular situation, the best possible solution is to learn to be more practical. I need to ship more work. Stop (only) thinking, and start doing.

I’m not talking about my actual job, of course. I ship work for that all the time. My company didn’t hire me to (only) think. They hired me to ship work. And I do, all the time. What I’m talking about, rather, is the extra-curricular stuff. Thought leadership. Developing my personal brand. Networking. Promoting. That stuff.

I’m also talking about my personal life. I’ve been telling my wife for two solid years that we should save more. I’ve been telling myself that I need to be smarter with money. I keep saying I need to find a better work/life balance, to be more involved with my kids’ education, to dedicate more time to the things I’m passionate about, to be a better father and a better husband. Now it’s time to do all of those things.

I’m also pleased to announce to the rest of the free-thinking world that my wife and I are going to have a baby in April. That, of course, comes with its own set of commitments – and I won’t regale you with those.

Who’s about to dump a whole lot of extra work on his plate?

This guy.

So to begin, I’m making a list of commitments. We’ll start with the professional ones.

1. One blog post, every day. No exceptions.
2. At minimum, one half-hour per day dedicated to finding and interacting with (in a meaningful way) one new person on social media.
3. Ask for higher-quality work, when possible.
4. Learn the skills necessary to do even higher quality work.
5. Revamp my resume. Not because I’m looking for new opportunities, but because 1/3 of success is telling people about the great work you do.
6. Read more from people I admire – Seth, Mitch, Chris, Amber, Naomi, Johnny, David, etc.

And the personal ones:

1. Be okay with unplugging.
2. Listen more, and listen better.
3. Get unapologetically involved with kids’ education.
4. Play more guitar, brew more beer.
5. Save more money.
6. Keep a calendar of personal commitments (crazy, I know, but something I’m terrible at doing).

So here’s the favor part of this equation. These are big changes for me, and I know I’m going to have a hard time chunking them up. So if you know of any resources that could help me – books, seminars, people to connect with – please point me in their direction. Frankly, I need all the help I can get. (Don’t we all?) I’m not sure what I can offer in exchange for this graciousness of yours, but if you can think of anything I can do to repay you, I’ll do everything in my power to get it done.

Here’s to rolling up your sleeves.

-MS

At the f8 conference yesterday, Facebook released what may be its biggest platform update yet. The new version of Facebook, dubbed “Timeline”, is available to developers now, and will be rolled out to all users over the next several weeks. Timeline uses a complex algorithm to determine how important the content you post is to you, and ranks that content chronologically by importance. The new Profile page displays as one continuous stream – users are no longer required to click “See More” at the bottom of their profiles – which allows your friends to scroll through your entire life, only consuming the important parts and skipping over the less significant status updates.

Perhaps more significantly for marketers, Facebook released what can be thought of as iterations of the “Like” button. Recognizing that users will probably watch an order of magnitude more movies than they will ever Like, Facebook released new open graph protocol that allow users to simply “Watch” a movie (or “Hike” a mountain, “Bike” a trail, “Read” a book, etc.). This allows users to share interesting content with their friends, but without having to commit to frequent updates from brand Pages.

Apps, too, are seeing an overhaul. Now apps appear as widgets in a user’s profile. Spotify, for example, showed how they are integrating with Timeline by creating a Profile widget that shows what music a user is listening to right now (and what they have listened to in the past). This list updates automatically, without requiring users to frequently publish to their Walls. These updates won’t appear in a friend’s News Feed; instead, they will update on a scrolling ticker in the upper right corner of the screen that displays a feed of all of a user’s friends’ minor updates. The News Feed becomes less cluttered as a result, even though Facebook users will be sharing more content, in theory.

Facebook users will still be able to “Like” brands – Facebook hasn’t killed off that functionality, and likely will not. But it is important to understand that the ways in which users are likely to interact with branded content will change significantly. The emphasis for brands must be on creating avenues by which users can more completely tell stories – and in fact, Zuckerberg talked at some length during his keynote about how Facebook empowers its users to share not just what they’re doing right now, but the story of their lives. Content producers, too, should rethink their creative strategies specific to Facebook to ensure they are aligned with Facebook’s own value proposition, as Zuckerberg (re)defined it on Thursday.