OrlandoNext

Florida High Speed Rail Authority to Reconvene

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:25:00 +0000

Now that President Obama has signed a stimulus package that includes about $8 billion in funding for high speed rail, it looks like the dormant Florida High Speed Rail Authority will reconvene for the first time since 2005. They're actually having a meeting on February 26th at the Orlando International Airport. Alas it's during business hours, so I can't attend.

The proposed Orlando to Tampa route has a lot going for it as most of the advanced planning is done including environmental studies and station locations. Plus it could bolster one of the last strong economies the US has going for it right now, tourism.

Even if we don't get a large enough portion to build a bullet train or (real) high speed rail line with this package, It's clear that the President's priorities include finding more mass transit in the future. So it's a good idea to get the ball rolling again now. So let's hope Governor Crist gets down on his high horse and does what's right for Florida.

Disney World's Meg Crofton supports SunRail

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:18:00 +0000

I wrote about Walt Disney World President Meg Crofton's Orlando Sentinel Editorial on The Disney Blog yesterday. Needless to say, I'm in support of getting SunRail, Central Florida's commuter rail system, chugging along as soon as possible.

Please don't move your company to Florida!

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:12:00 +0000

Nothing says please don't bring your company to Florida like knowing your employees children will be attending schools that can't even afford to hire substitute teachers and instead just puts the kids whose teachers called in sick in a holding pen in an old gym. That's exactly the kind of place I want to move my company if I'm a CEO.

If that's not a crime, it should be. At the very least it's a failing of all the elected officials from the city and county level right up to the state and federal. Governor Crist has to do something about fixing the state's educational system ASAP or it will continue to drive away businesses from moving here and that will place a ceiling on future tax revenue.

Update: It gets even worse. Because Florida has so screwed up its educational funding, we're likely to miss out on receiving funds from the stimulus package. Awesome job by Governor Crist.

Pithy thought for the day

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:03:00 +0000

Egg meet Chicken. Good content and social networking have to go hand in hand. There is no point in
doing one without the other.

Florida, Now Is Your Chance

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Come on Florida. Now is your chance to step up to the teller window and get your ticket punched for state wide mass transit. Possibly a bullet train, but certianly a high speed train. We hear that liability is an issue, but even the trial lawyers have gotten out of the way. Still, state legislators can't seem to figure out what every other state in the nation with light rail or subways already has. Hello? Pick up the bloody phone and call them.

The Website We Need - Change.gov

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:26:00 +0000

This is what responsible government looks like in the social media world.

Change.gov opened today. They're accepting stories and ideas. I'm thinking of telling them the story of Central Florida. What would be your focal point?

How to get the nerd vote

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:19:00 +0000

Matt Haughey writes out his list of policy wishes for how to get his nerd vote. For instance:

Broadband Everywhere. I want crazy South Korea/Japan style broadband I've heard about for years: 100Mbps (upload and download) fiber connections for less than $50/month with unlimited bandwidth and the ability to run your own servers. I know the US is a big spread out country and it makes this stuff somewhat difficult/costly, but it's an ambitious goal with a ton of payoff. We don't have manufacturing jobs in the US anymore: we don't make things, we don't build things, we don't sew things here, but we do have lots of ideas and inventions.

If you read carefully his list is also a blueprint on how to create a community that will attract creative people, entrepreneurs, and small businesses to your city. Some things Orlando should be looking at.

A few things I would add to the list:

Mass Transit and encouraging urban design that promotes its use.
Investment in Green Technology and training for jobs in that industry.
Privacy laws that reflect today's new reality.
Reform the Department of Homeland Security and do away with security theater.

Tags: politics, election+2008, nerd+vote, orlando

CoLab Orlando website opens

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:44:00 +0000

CoLab Orlando, the regions first coworking (wikipedia) space, has relaunched its website and now includes pricing and a growing list of features. Pricing seems very reasonable to me with a permanent space available for just $250 a month. If you want to go one day a week it will cost you just over $70 a month. To join for just one day is $25.

For that you get access to the internet, copier, scanner, and fax. Plus you get the chance to network with other members of Orlando growing creative and technology class in a prime downtown location. CoLab opens November 1st.

Visit the CoLab Orlando website to learn more.

Scott Joseph has a Food Blog

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:49:00 +0000

Scott Joseph, once the food writer and reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel, now has his own blog, which he calls a Food Log or FLOG, where he writes about food in the Central Florida area. I'm so happy to have found this since I have missed not having his column appear in the Sentinel.

In many ways the FLOG is a lot like his articles before. He continues to do reviews, keep tabs on changes in the restaurant marketplace, answer questions from local diners, and write about EPCOT's Food & Wine festival. The writing is sometimes not as tight and he needs to take more care in formatting his posts. But all in all it's a great find and any Orlando resident would do good to add it to their feeds.

Still no picture of Scott for those wondering.

Tags: orlando, food, flog, epcot, sentinel, foodie

BlogOrlando Wrapup Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:49:00 +0000

I had a great time at this year's BlogOrlando. My own personal contribution was being the host for the group at Disney's Animal Kingdom on Sunday. It was a blast and I enjoyed meeting everyone who joined up. While I'm doseing out the fun facts about Disney, I always learn so much from each attendee as well. For those of you who couldn't make it, you missed out on lots of great trivia about the park, some thrilling attractions, and many great animal experiences.

What I took away from this years event, besides dozens of handy hacks I'll be implementing in my personal life and various social media efforts, was the growing strength of the Central Florida tech community. I made some great connections and look forward to helping grow the community is any number of ways over the coming year. The way things are now, if we all stick together, we'll come out of this okay. Fractured, our power is much less.

Some pretty amazing comments from others who attended the BlogOrlando conference this year.

BlogOrlando is one of the top two conferences I've been to. For me it is up there with mesh conference (an Edelman client, but an amazing conference none-the-less). Amazing people who are working in this space I call mine and not just talking about working in the space. A weekend with my peers, great energy from central Florida and some time to relax. It was a much needed break. - Leah Jones

Leah's actually from Chicago. Which is an interesting point. I wonder how many attendees weren't from the Central Florida area.

I’ve never been to a free conference before. And the difference of engagement levels between a free conference and a fee-based one is night and day. I guess it might be because everybody that’s there WANTS to be there. They CHOSE to go. They CHOSE to give up a Saturday and engage other passionate people. I’m afraid most conferences I go to are full of people that have been sent there from their company. They’d rather be checking emails or anywhere else. But it’s part of their job description or a requirement. The result is sometimes a very low engagement level.

BlogOrlando was the exact opposite. - Spike Jones from Brains on Fire

Can't agree with your more Spike. I attended Geno Church's session on Movements and Social Media and can attest that both Spike and Geno have that passion too.

Others who've written up comments from the sessions they led or attended are Sarah In Tampa, Dustin Mooney, Tim at FML, Rob Williams, Chris Thilk, R. Alexander, Amber Rhea (be sure to read her liveblog of the "Online Identity" session), Alex de Carvalho, Nancy N., Benet, and Jennifer. Jennifer went to BlogOrlando and ended up writing about butterflies. There's a metaphor in that somewhere.

And of course, there are the organizer's thoughts. Josh Hallett has pulled this together three years running. I hope there is a fourth and fifth year. Josh has the contacts to pull the event together, but he relies on volunteer help to do some of the work. Let's give them all a big hand and next year consider contributing some time of your own.

Why We Blog

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:05:00 +0000

At BlogOrlando the closing session was Erik Hersman speaking about why we blog. His Afrigadget and WhiteAfrican sites were just the start of his social media experiment (see previous post). Glenda Watson Hyatt wasn't at BlogOrlando, she chose BlogWorld instead, but her video on why she blogs is as powerful as any I've ever seen.

The Future

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:28:00 +0000

I have a bit of a futurist streak in me. So I can identify with this video. The visuals were compiled by Cordt Holland and the music is by Todd Rundgren titled "Future".

"The Future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed"
- William Gibson

BlogOrlando 3 through other people's eyes

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:42:00 +0000

While I did liveblog the sessions I attended, there were five seperate tracks, which meant there was more amazing material to absorb than one could possibly attended. Thankfully others have been blogging the sessions they attended. I'll try and collect as many of them as I can here.

FunkeeMonkeeLand blogged first about the morning sessions he attended ( Jake McKee's Keynote, Raising Digital Children, Wordpress Advanced, and Wordpress Themes ) in one post then all the afternoon sessions he attended (Going Beyond Google, New New Media, Traditional Media and the Web, and The Orlando Scene ) in a second post.

Why We Blog by Erik Hersman; BlogOrlando closing session

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:41:00 +0000

Erik Hersman is the White African. He does good everyday, has spoken at TED conference, and had a website chosen as one of the 50 most important by (Time?). His session Why We Blog at BlogOrlando will end the day. Erik writes two blogs - AfriGadget and White African. He helped start Ushahidi in Kenya to help with crowdsourcing crisis information around the Kenya election.

A blog is a tool, but you can't teach passion and inner drive. The blogger has to have that themselves. Aysmptotic Growth. Blogs in your niche will grow faster than your blog (I know that). Erik's blogging rules: Committment to blogging, quality posts, and consistent over time. But because of the nature of social media you will have a smaller and smaller slice of the pie.

So why do we blog, because we CARE about something. When you have passion about something you can make a difference.

Afrigadget is a group blog who tell stories and interview people around Africa about technology and gadgets in Africa. It was one of the 50 best blogs of 2008 according to Time Magazine. People profiled usually get more business or connections from the publicity.

The Orlando Scene with Ryan Price & Alex Rudloff

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:51:00 +0000

And now I find myself in the The Orlando Scene session (part deux). Last year was a great session, if a bit cheerleader. In the last 12 months so many things have changed and grown and now we have another time for a War Room.

Ryan Price and Alex Rudloff are hosting the conspiracy planning and were off. Ryan's talking about his history with finding and growing an Orlando Community.

Alex Hillman "you know the charge you're getting from BlogOrlando. Imagine working in that environment everyday all day. That's CoWorking" (paraphrased). Sounds like a place I would like to work in. Plus more motivational stuff from Alex. In short, just get started doing stuff. There's a group out there that will support you

The Orlando Scene:
(this will grow, and I'll add links as time goes on)
Florida Creatives - Wiki / Orlando Section is killer.
BarCamp Orlando / BarCamp Chaos (Maker Ethos) / BarCamp Tampa
Orlando Likemind
ORUG - Orlando Ruby Users Group
Doterati
BlogOrlando
IgniteOrlando

Digital Media Alliance Florida (DMAFlorida.org) 501.c.6 Nonprofit Lobby Group
CoLab - downtown space.
CoWorking Orlando Group (StarDust on Tuesdays, Google Group)

Other resources
UCF Incubator
Disney Entrepreneur Center
The Knowledge Shop (Casselberry)

Please email me if you can add anything else to this list.

Movements, Activism, and Social Media

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:03:00 +0000

Geno Church, Brains on Fire presenting Movements, Activism, and Social Media at BlogOrlando. Me Liveblogging. Great Keynote presentation format. But hard to Liveblog. I hope to learn some points on converting a fan base into a movement.

When you're building a movement, where do you start?

How do you turn your customers, employees into FANS and go ONE LOUDER.

Fan cycle: Participation, Evangelism, Ownership.

Movements start with the first conversation - having converations in a vacuum doesn't allow natural contagion of conversation. People want to talk, insiders and outsiders, Asking for a conversation makes it easier to ask for involvement.

Define the Passion Conversation not the product conversation - People connect through shared passions. It's the things we're most passionate about that we want to talk about.

Empower people with Stories. People love the inside stories. An organization is the stories it tells. Once you identify those champions, advocates, catalysts, you have to bring them to Mecca (metaphor). Then teach them how to share your stories.

Communities have to be both online and offline. Word of Mouth is still mostly offline. Movements are word of mouth are about people, not technology.

Great case study on converting Fiskars from an old style company to a new media community based company. Take 4 moms who are users and crafters and convert them to evangalists. Let them run the community and guide them. Disney doing very similar with their Mom's Panel.

Online Identity with Jake McKee

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:18:00 +0000

Liveblogging BlogOrlando session on Online Identity led by Jake McKee. Myself, I have an interesting situation between my Day job and possible conflicts between topics I cover in my blogs, particularly The Disney Blog. Some other interesting stories in the room too.

Some discussion on the 'Personal Brand' - is that an icky concept? Should not the blogger ethos be to put the whole self online and let chips fall where they may.

This is not the first time we've been through a generation of "those teenagers and their Rock'n'Roll," says David Parmet. Have to say I agree, but I'm still going to keep a close watch on who and what is posting about me and my kid.

Personal story time: back in 1998 I started a blog called "You Are Your URL." Much of it was based on the cyberpunk ethos that when you live your life online, you become your online life. That rings very true in today's session. A good strategy is to own as much as you can, and then if something comes back you can at least feel good about what you've done.

How many people in the room are trying to develop a personal brand? About 5 out of 40. I predict next year it will be closer to 20. Even if you're not planning to manage your brand now, the best advice is to own your name. Domain, every new social network, software, etc. Do it for your family too. The metaphor is that your online 'print' is a virtual card that you carry that everyone can pick up even if you don't hand it out.

Keeping Up The Passion with Alex Hillman

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Liveblogging "Keeping Up The Passion" with Alex Hillman of Philadelphia's coworking space Indyhall.org. He'll start with his story about keeping up the passion and then pass it around the room.

Lesson #1: It takes work. Using tools will make it easier, but much of the work takes face to face work.

Lesson #2: Give the people the tools. Let the grassroots take over.

Lesson #3: Listen. Ask what the people want then give it to them. Social Media makes listening easier, for sure.

Every community needs to identify and declare their core values and build around them.

Alex's story about making a homepage that tracks activity in your field to show the world that stuff is going on. Whether it's your email list, blog, technorati search feed, flickr pics, etc. Keep the passion up by keeping the conversation going.

Now some interesting discussion on twittering as a company. Some companies do watch, but would it be better to tap into your community to defend the brand. (I do a bit of that with Disney, btw.)

Question in the room: How do you get a 'movement/community' to be prepared to work without a leader or post-leader? Set up so members are empowered. Nurture, but don't require, permission. If a community member has an idea for an event, check the calendar, and help eliminate duplication of effort, but otherwise support and get out of the way. Creates a feeder system for new leaders and synergies.

Internal Training with Phil Gomes

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Liveblogging the Internal Training session at BlogOrlando. How to keep internal staff up to date on latest technologies and what not via Internal Training. Phil Gomes does that at Edelman as senior vice president of digital integration.

Enjoying Phil's story of how it got into this position by tracking online chatrooms, newsgroups, etc for tracking logs at a PR agency. Some of the stories involve difficulty of getting others to accept social media. Finally, landed at Edelman in 2005. Edelman's CEO blogs and it helps with the person at the top gets it (so make sure you educate them, get them involved - my point).

Phil recommends starting your education of your superiors with context. What is the history of bbs, internet, social media and how it applies to today. (Some online videos may help.)

Phil says Success has a 'long tail'. By which he means ignore the big stories and focus on the long tail success examples. Example that you can no longer seperate the nerds, the digitalness, from your day to day operations. It must be integrated into every level.

The Rick Murray rule: No matter how hard you try, no matter the size of your organization, someone is screwing up. ie, uyu can't avoid failure, you can only get up dust yourself off, learn from it, and move on. This is true for training up. You won't always be successful.

There is a lot of debate in organizations over who owns social media. Is it marketing, PR, IT, etc. Phil believes that Public Relations is the discipline. As social media lets us put the public back into public relations.

Phil's secret: Don't call it training. "Would you rather your kids go to sex education or sex training?" An immortal quote to be sure. Everything should rise to the level of education.

Has a lab set up where users come in and actually use the technology. Set up and use delicious, blogs, flickr, twitter, etc. Make sure students are treated as subject matter experts. You're here to provide tools. Let them know that on the internet things can get 'R' rated very quickly, so don't linger, but don't be surprised. Remind them this is a lab and it's for experimenting.

Exercise: Nature's Oven Bread Company

You're Nature's Oven and you have two types of bread "Whole Grain" and "Diet Bread". A Very well known food blogger posts, "OMG WTF Nature's Oven is a ripoff. I was just at whole foods. There are two different breads, but they're just the same (ingredients, size, etc) except the diet one is sliced more thinnly." And it spins out of control. It's the next Kryptonite Lock.

So the challenge of the exercise is what is your response? Response must be less than 125 words, link to an outside credible source, must be conversational and must meet PR ethic standards.

How would you respond?

Phil G, Recommended book Competitive communication: Classical rhetoric for modern business (College custom series) (Eckhouse)

Advanced Wordpress with Mark Jaquith

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:32:00 +0000

Mark is a lead developer at Wordpress, I'm liveblogging his session on Advanced Wordpress. And he just jumps right in. So here we go.

Scaling.
Best option is WP Super Cache. Sits in between WP and the clients and cachles the HTML Output WP produces. Works with any level of hosting or traffic. Can fine tune settings to exlude some pages if they have to be dynamic. Obviously we could have a whole hands on class just for this.

Other option is PHP Opcode Cache, APC, eAccelerator, XCache. Try them and see which one works. If you have your own server MySQL Query Cache can speed things up. Batcache is your blog is so popular it requires more than one server. Oh to have that problem.

Upgrading with Subversion
Mark recommends not using FTP to update WP anymore. Instead use Subversion. It's a way to track code changes. Everyone should use because it is less error prone. Will also work with plugins.

address starts with http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/ [ file url ]
branches/2.6 - recommend to just get latest files for latest version
tags/2.6.2

cp -R wordpress wp-backup
cd wordpress
svn export -force url . [ the space before the period is important ]

Don't forget to visit WP admin to check for changes.

this will update in just a few seconds. Advice from the back: search :SVN Red Bean" for online book tutorial.

Hardcore: keep all your code in Subversion. Again... over my head.

Advanced URLs techniques
You can add
/feed (or /atom, /rss2) to get feed of anything
/?paged=2 add that to any feed to get 11-20 of feed
/?cat=3,-4 to view just by category or exclude category from feed.

Now you can use this to offer customize feeds to people who come to your site just for one feed.

/?s=foo (? has to be at the end after feed if you're searching a feed)
/search/foo
/search/foo/rss2 - lets you specify the feed
/search/foo/atom
/author/john/feed/ let's you specifiy author

Post Loop - WP_Query

WP_Query let's you customize the loop. Actual code up on powerpoint. Too much to type. Alas.

Raising Digital Children with David Parmet at BlogOrlando

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:49:00 +0000

Now liveblogging the Education session at BlogOrlando. Title is Raising Digital Children. David kicked off with this video on youtube, which also reminds me of this video. Both are must watch TV if you're willing to be woken up to the new reality.

First point is that jobs we have today, most did not exist when we were in school. How have schools retooled to deal with this. What are they doing to prepare children for jobs of tomorrow. Also just added that children need unstructured time, time to be bored, and explore on their own.

Discussing The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) and the disconnect between teaching styles and the millenial generation. We have the tools (computers, projectors, etc) in the classroom now, or most schools do. But we're not utilizing them.

There is a split in families that are digitally aware and those who aren't. The "aren't" group includes families that don't have or use a computer, let alone email, myspace, or other social media. To me as a parent, this means the responsibility is on my to do this work at home. So a course for parents, perhaps with scholarships, would be great for every community.

It comes down to developing critical thinking in the child. Parental supervision (or at least parental direction) is key, of course. Everything else is just a tool.

David's Guidelines:

Turn off the TV - David gives his kids just 1/2 a day.
Leave the iPhone at home - set a good example for the kids when you're on family time.
Keep track of what you're doing - you have to plan and report back on your home schooling. You'll be surprised how many experiences you have that are educational.
Give them freedome but don'w tbe afraid to keep an eye on what they're doing - keep computer in public spaces, etc.

Thanks to David for the great session. Visit delicious.com/dparmet/homeschooling for his links.

Jake McKee and the Lego Conspiracy

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:06:00 +0000

Jake McKee is kicking off the BlogOrlando conference with his great presentation about his role in the effort to bring LEGO into the modern age, at least as far as growing its online community goes. A similar version of this speech is online. So if you're not at BlogOrlando, (and why not!), you can learn the secrets to clueing in your organization too.

Btw, since my other blog is The Disney Blog, you'll note some serious parallels. (ie adult consumers who are passionate about the product and drop 4 or 5 times the amount of $$$ as the usual consumer.)

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (John) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:56:00 +0000

Welcome to what's next for Orlando. I'm excited to be kicking this blog off at BlogOrlando 2008. This is the third year for the unconference organized by the amazing Josh Hallett of Hyku. The previous two years have both advanced my knowledge of and practical ability to use social media multiple times over. I'm sure this year will be no different.