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permanently scatterbrained

Here’s another gem from the song “Victory” by Diddy: to close out his first verse on the song, Diddy raps: “While they making up facts, we raking up plaques.”

This speaks to a focus on one’s goals, even when faced with those who seek to harm, unfairly criticize or lie about you. Whether it’s competition, disgruntled ex-staff members or banned members – if you reach a certain level of popularity, you’ll see people make up facts about you.

“Patrick banned me for no reason.”
“Patrick stole my chickens and relieved himself in my garden.”
“Patrick eats chocolate covered crickets.”

But, you have to keep raking up plaques: you have to keep achieving, keep growing, keep working. Stay focused on your work, on being the best that you can be. When these people are too busy thinking about you, they’re not getting enough work done and they’re falling behind you.

photo credit: AleBonvini

Recently, I was engaged in a conversation on Twitter with someone who couldn’t understand the guidelines that many forums, including mine, have regarding advertising or self promotion. Sue (@SueOnTheWeb) was involved in the conversation, too, as we were both explaining why forums were a tad different from other forms of social media, like microblogging (Twitter), traditional social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook) and so on. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: forums are a different beast.

Different forms of social media require different strategies, different patterns, different levels of engagement, different social norms. Forums are as much if not more diverse, when it comes to this, than any other form of this thing we call social media, which may be more like online community.

photo credit: Asbestos Bill

I apologize. I really didn’t plan to not post anything here for over a month. I guess one never really plans that sort of thing. But, everything just sorted of piled onto me at once. I attended three conferences in three weeks in three different states. IZEAFest, Blog World & New Media Expo and Social Media Business Forum. And there was plenty of preparation, packing and unpacking. And they all went well, which was awesome. Expect recaps for the last two at some point in December.

Being away so much, messages just piled up. E-mail messages, Bloglines subscriptions, forum posts and other things. Almost three weeks worth in some cases. In catching up with that, I just never found time to blog. And then I got sick. And then I had another trip tied to my birthday. And then we have Thanksgiving. And then I’ve been contemplating what 2010 holds for me. It just never ends. I apologize for the lack of new posts here. I can’t say I’ve had a lack of ideas, which I’ve been coming up with and noting for future posts.

Now, it is my hope that things will return to normal. It’s good to be back. Thank you for your patience.

Conferences, conferences, conferences! Well, after IZEAFest and Blog World Expo, this should be my last one for a while. Social Media Business Forum is today at the North Carolina Central University School of Education in Durham, North Carolina. I’m going to be on a pair panels during the first half of the day.

From 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM, I’ll be joined by Gregory Ng, the Creative Director at Brooks Bell Interactive and David Millsaps, Senior Web Architect at VisionPoint Marketing for the “Advertising and the Social Web: Can it Work?” session.

The next panel will be “Building and Managing an Online Community” with Angela Benton, the Publisher of BlackWeb20.com; Ryan Boyles, an Advisory Software Engineer for IBM and Laurie Smithwick, Founder and Creative Director of LEAP Design and Founder of Kirtsy.

Congratulations to conference organizers Kipp Bodnar of Howard, Merrell & Partners, Wayne Sutton of OurHashtag, Ryan Boyles of IBM and Jeff Cohen of OurHashtag on reaching this day!

I’m really looking forward to the event and I hope to see you there!

photo credit: Nick Bastian Tempe, AZ

Blog World & New Media Expo starts today at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you’re coming, I’d love to meet you. I’ll be around during all conference hours (here’s my BWE sched), but there are three scheduled events that I’ll be taking part in.

Friday, October 16, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Book Signing

At the Blog World Expo bookstore, powered by Barnes & Noble, I’ll be signing copies of “Managing Online Forums.” Brandon Eley will also be signing “Online Marketing Inside Out,” a book I served as an expert reviewer on.

Friday, October 16, 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: “Social Media: The Bad and The Ugly” Panel

I’ll be joined by Amber Naslund; Director of Community at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding, Wayne Sutton; Partner at OurHashtag and blogger at SocialWayne.com and Robert Scoble; Managing Director at Building43.com at Rackspace and blogger at Scobleizer. We’ll talk about trends in social media that concern us and could harm the growth of the medium as a whole. These are also trends that could harm your brand, scare people away and damage your reputation. Note: you can only get into this panel if you have a full access pass. Please consider RSVPing on sched.

Saturday, October 17, 2:00 PM-2:20 PM: Forums Management and Monetization Q&A at Skimlinks Booth

In the exhibition hall at the Skimlinks booth, I’ll be participating in a 15-20 minute Q&A about forums management, cultivation and monetization. They’ll also be giving away 10 copies of my book during Friday and Saturday.

It should be a tremendous event. If you’re coming and would like to meet up, please drop me a note on Twitter @patrickokeefe. See you there!

On Sunday, I launched the “Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly” Blog World Expo 2009 conference pass giveaway, offering up a free full access pass to Blog World & New Media Expo (a $1,195 value). To win? You had to come up with the most interesting blog post about a trend in social media that concerned you, and could potentially harm the growth of the medium.

It was a short deadline – entries were due today at 12:00 PM ET – but it did get passed around on Twitter and I’m pleased to announce that the winner is Jason Keath (@jakrose on Twitter). He wrote about the “knee jerk attack responses” that are given by some when they see something silly or something that they disagree with. He did a great video blog accompanying the post, as well.

“Social Media: The Bad and The Ugly” from jason keath on Vimeo.

Totally on point and something I’m sure we’ll touch on in the panel. Congratulations to Jason and I look forward to seeing you at the conference and our panel (right? ha). Also, thank you to @BigBags for entering.

Thank you to Dave Cynkin and Blog World Expo for providing me with the pass to giveaway. If you’d like to come and still haven’t registered a pass, you can use coupon code IFROGGYVIP for 20% off when registering.

photo credit: Nick Bastian Tempe, AZ

Update 2: The giveaway is now closed! Winner to be announced shortly.

Update: The pass has now been upgraded to a Full Access pass!

On October 16 at 4 PM in Las Vegas, I’ll be speaking at Blog World & New Media Expo on the “Social Media: The Bad and The Ugly” panel. The focal point of the panel is trends in social media that concern us, in so much that they could hurt the growth of the medium as a whole. This includes things like unreasonable time expectations, the sense of entitlement some people have online and more. If you’re already planning on coming, please mark yourself as attending on the BWE calendar.

I’ll be joined by an awesome trio: Amber Naslund; Director of Community at Radian6 and blogger at Altitude Branding, Wayne Sutton; Partner at OurHashtag and blogger at SocialWayne.com and Robert Scoble; Managing Director at Building43.com at Rackspace and blogger at Scobleizer.

Blog World Expo is a great conference and if you are a journalist, blogger, online writer (those last 3 are often one in the same!), podcaster, video blogger, traditional media, community manager, forums administrator, marketer or simply a person in business that needs to take advantage of the opportunities offered online (and who doesn’t fit in that category?), I’d definitely recommend going if you have the opportunity. In the interest of disclosure, I’ve partnered with them this year to help promote the event.

From October 1-4, I attended the IZEAFest conference at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida. It was somewhat of a last minute booking because I was lucky enough to win a pass from Table for Five and be able to share a room, for the first three nights, with my unbelievably gracious friend Wayne Sutton, who was a moderator at the event.

October 1

My flight in could not have been better. I hooked up with Wayne who had arrived shortly before and Jayson Flint (read his recap) was kind enough to pick us both up at the airport. It was Wayne’s first time in Orlando and guess where he wanted to go? The Apple Store. After that, we got some lunch at Chili’s and headed to the Renaissance Orlando Hotel at SeaWorld.

After checking in and getting situated (Wayne took a picture of my large quantity of luggage), we headed down to the hotel’s bar and met and/or hung out with Chris Brogan, Jeremy Wright, Amber Naslund, Liz Strauss, Aaron Brazell, Steve Hall, Joseph Jaffe, Zena Weist, Merlene Paynter and others. It was a good group.

The first event of the conference was heading over to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens. But, with registration from 7-9 AM the next morning and the earliest possible return time being 12 midnight, Wayne, Jayson, Brandon Eley (who had just arrived) and I decided to go grab a quiet dinner over at Bahama Breeze. Once again, Jayson came through, providing the ride. Super awesome of him.  After that, we pretty much called it a night.

From October 1-4, I’ll be at IZEAFest in Orlando, Florida. The conference has a lot of great speakers, like Chris Brogan, Lucretia Pruitt, Wayne Sutton, Wendy Piersall and more. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and if you’re attending and would like to meet up, please drop me a note on Twitter.

photo credit: Daquella manera

Part of being a good community administrator is believing in yourself. It’s always easy for an outsider, someone who doesn’t know what it means to manage your community, to say “look in the mirror” and consider how you could do better – without actually thinking of actual situations or moments. That’s too easy. Far, far too easy.

If you care about your community, believe in yourself. That doesn’t mean arrogance, it doesn’t mean that you’re always right, but it does mean that you’re trying hard and that you consider your decisions carefully and when you do something, chances are it was actually required. Caring is that powerful.

There is this train of thought that if someone else doesn’t understand you or doesn’t do the right things on your community, that it isn’t their fault, it’s yours. While may sometimes be the case and  you can always be looking to improve, do not allow that to turn into needlessly blaming yourself for the actions of other people.  People will take warnings the wrong way, people will not like having their post removed or edited, people will not like being told they can’t do something… that doesn’t mean that your actions are wrong. That doesn’t mean that you should change a single thing. Meaningful change doesn’t come from knee jerk reactions to singular events.  Meaningful change comes from witnessing trends and adjusting to ensure your community handles them in a consistent manner.