One thing I began doing was trying to determine if I could sell, donate, or throw out many physical objects that I own. I started by focusing on the tornado of strewn things that lived on my bookshelves. I took a look at my books and donated a large number of them. I then started going through all the other non book objects that occupied them. I threw out some of the souvenir and other cute trinkets that lined some shelves. I read on one of the many resources that I frequent that helps with this behavior that we get attached to the memories of many objects and that one way to maintain those memories without clinging these items is to take a photo of them. That’s good advice. I moved on to many other areas throughout my office like cables and old pc gear I had in boxes and many other items and was able to clear out a good deal of wasted space. This is still a work in progress but things now look more organized and neater which I believe also help me reach a calming state without so much chaos strewn around me.

Some of the things that survived operation goodbye

I don’t know about you folks but the file libraries that occupy my multiple hard drives across my network are also an area that can grow pretty unwieldy. I’m actually pretty good at this now but it took some time. I have a dedicated folder where all new content I download ends up. From there it gets distributed to various other directories that are provide organization methods. The same goes for all media (photos and videos) I create. They end up in a holding zone when transferred from my camera and then I go through this raw dump and delete what I don’t want and then distribute to proper directories setup by year and month. Then nightly my local media gets backed up to my NAS as well as an offline backup service I use.

Then there’s the active software and web services that we use. I always determining whether I need to use all the memory resident apps I use and keeping an eye on alternatives. I look to web services that can help me save time and optimize my life. Mint.com has become one such example of such a service. I tie all of my financial accounts to it which make end of year taxes and monitoring of cash flow and investments in a single location a breeze. I was also a very early adopter of online baking services. I remember the days of sitting down for a half hour to write checks to pay bills and put them in envelopes and mail them out. Now I pay bills in less than five minutes. I’m always looking for existing things that I can do which can be optimized. Time has a huge value in life for me and the more I can do to reduce the amount you waste, the happier I am.

So those are just some examples of methods I’ve employed to try and streamline things in my life.  Another area that I can often get lost in, and have had to work on, is the distraction of consuming online content. This takes many shapes from the firehose of daily generated social content and all the link journeys that I’m taken on, to all the great blog and editorial content generated as well. I’ve recently seen posts that discuss the distractions described above.

• Finding Focus by Chris Brogan
• Apparently it’s called Social Network Fatigue by Luca Massaro (with wisdom from Brian Solis)
• The above story is also based on the Attention Crash concept coined by Steve Rubel that has been around for a few years now.
• I also recommend taking a look at the book Focus: a simplicity manifesto in the age of distaction

I live in Los Angeles and my commute includes what has been ranked as the #1 worst freeway bottleneck in the whole nation. It’s amazing to me as a geek to watch the advancements in technology from my Atari 2600, as a kid to my first brush with a computer the Radio Shack TRS-80, to how online has changed from the single line BSS’s when I was a kid to where we are today.

How is it though that ground transportation hasn’t really gone anywhere in that same timeframe? It’s amazing how much of our lives are consumed moving from point A to point B nowadays at a speed that is even slower than it was 10 or 20 years ago. We’re actually going backwards.

The only saving grace to help with this antiquated non-innovative transportation issue are the technology innovations like, GPS, realtime traffic, and mobile phones which provide some comfort by letting us listen to podcasts or frikkin audio streams beamed over the air.

Being a geek I’m amazingly happy to have grown up during the emergence of computers and the web but I find this lack of innovation in transportation logistics or technology amazing and don’t see how it’s going to improve anytime soon. I think what this all boils down to is that I’m pissed that Back to the Future was a lie. There’s no way in hell we’re going to have hover cars in 2015.

Tummelvision is a weekly salon-style podcast about the art and science of engaging and collaborating in a networked age. Each week we explore how to connect and create a world that puts people at the centre of business, technology and culture with the smart folks creating this new world.

Each week they invite a guest from varied areas to discuss how they “tummel” and share other interesting information about their roles for work, personal projects or other areas. They have varied guests from different fields which make for an eclectic show that both stays fresh and offers interesting topics to learn about. The hosts always make for a very engaging discussion around the topics that surround the guests that often go on welcomed tangents that branch off to other areas surrounding their discussion. It’s definitely a source of delicious brain food that is fed in different tasty chunks each week. I highly recommend it.

When I joined them we covered quite a few varied topics during the first half of the show including higher education, name spaces, and influence. The second part of the show I peel back the curtain to offer some insight to what we do at the X PRIZE foundation. You can visit their website and listen to my show here and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

My SXSW App Group

Here we are on the eve of SXSW and I’ve seen several posts and comments across the social web from people with negative commentary on the conference. Strangely enough quite a bit of it coming from people that are still going despite the mudslinging. Really if it’s such a bad atmosphere then why even go? Many of these people make excuses stating they _have_ to be there despite their reluctance.

It seems that last year sparked a “jump the shark” moment for the conference for many people. The conference has grown and in much the same way an indie band with a following gets dumped by many of their original fans upon penetrating the mainstream, many SXSW OG Geeks are now acting the same way. Sure I understand that last year the parties were overcrowded tons of people and most regulars felt overrun by the mainstreamers, douchebags, and the like, but SXSW is just a victim of its own success.

This will be my 3rd year attending SXSW and I’m approaching it with just as much excitement as I have in previous years. Why? Because it provides me with the best opportunity to spend time with all the great people I’ve built relationships with online and discover new ones. My primary goal is to learn from these people, share knowledge, and have fun along the way. Also each year I’ve met many new great people that I’ve continued relationships with long after the show. Sure SXSW was much larger last year, but I adjusted. I didn’t go to as many parties and spend as much time at them either. The larger parties are usually so loud that you can’t really hold good conversations anyways which is my main goal.

Each year SXSW becomes a proving ground for a startup to emerge as a one week beta test to emerge with a concept that is met with the crowd’s love and approval. The fact is this years’ conference anticipated attendance is much bigger than last year and will prove challenging. So how are the old timers responding? Well it appears that group texting has gained the buzz mindshare as being the breakout mobile app category this year. Why? Because as a preemptive strike people are creating small groups in these apps so that they can quickly communicate to organize meetups to avoid, or as a backup plan to overcrowded parties. I’m sure they’ll also be a good way to have an elite back-channel to the conference as well.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to going and hope that spend time with as many great people as possible while I’m there. You can stalk me so that we can spend time together using one of the links below:

• My Plancast (Event bookmarks. Some of the possible places I might be)
• My Sched.org (Panels I like. Still working on this)
• My Twitter
• My Foursquare (Best realtime way to know where I’m at)

You can also read my post which details my experience at SXSW 2009 as a newbie here.
Some of the photos below are of great people I’ve met at SXSW

Last week my friend and co-worker David Locke who is a foodie and connoisseur introduced me to an old school cocktail called the “Old Fashioned”. I quickly fell in love with this simple and tasty drink. Tonight I went out to get the ingredients to make myself one and while not quite as tasty as the one I had for the first time over at Beechwood, it still didn’t disappoint. In doing some research there are several tiny variations on how to make it. You can get some history on the drink over at Wikipedia.

This morning my Wife Esther knew something was wrong when she filled Chacha’s food bowl and she didn’t excitedly come running to eat. Eating had become the only excited moment of her day in recent weeks. She went looking for her and found her in our closet looking into a mirror and disoriented. She was also breathing with noticeable effort. I grabbed her bed and put it in my office. I then lay her there and spent time petting and trying to comfort her as she continued to breathe heavy as she lay fairly still and falling in and out of sleep. I had lunch in the kitchen and when I went back to my office I didn’t see her. I called her name but couldn’t find her. I then heard the noise of her collar coming from my daughter’s room and found her again disoriented and under her bed standing breathing hard. I called the vet and had an appointment to bring her in.

Esther had already sensed that today may be the day and she communicated that to me. I was already feeling some denial but every time I looked at her she didn’t look good and never wagged her tail in content as she often would. About a year ago she started to have infrequent seizures. Six months ago she had 3 within a 24 hour period and I had to take her to the hospital and leave her overnight. I felt really awful to see her that way but luckily they were able to nurse her back and put her on several medications. The doctor actually told us she had about another 7 months left to live. After we got her home she felt better and didn’t have seizures but the medicine was definitely taking a toll on her. Over the last several weeks we started to see her deteriorate. She looked to be in pain and we started to worry.

As I prepared to go to the Vet today I had my kids come over and spend a little time with her and told them that it may be the last time they see her. Not an easy thing to tell your kids but I wanted to be honest and give them a chance to say goodbye. I then picked her up and drover her to the Vet. Esther met me there and we explained to the doctor everything that had transpired over the day. He examined her and agreed that she was struggling and then gave us several options. We had to decide whether to leave her overnight and put her through more tests or treatment which seemed to only be delaying the inevitable, or put her down. The doctor left the room and Esther and I talked and cried and I was questioning whether it was time, and Esther kept reminding me how bad she’s been.

The doctor came back in the room and we talked to him some more. I asked if he felt it was her time and he was very nice and let me know he’s seen many families choose to put their animal down too soon and others wait too long and he felt that now was the right time for Chacha. He left the room again to give us more time and that’s when Esther and I said our goodbye’s and broke down. After some time the nurse came back and asked if we were ready I gave her one last hug and kiss and then walked out of the room.

This was such an amazingly difficult decision to make and all I’ve done since leaving the Vet is continue to question my decision and other factors while Esther has consoled me. Even writing this has been very difficult. Another major aspect of this situation is that Chacha was my Mother’s dog which we adopted when she passed away a little over 3 years ago. Chacha has since then been an extension and daily reminder of my Mother’s memory. With her passing I will now lose that, and with it many of the constant reminders she gave me. So in a way I’m reliving that pain again as well. I’m going to really miss her…

Visit the photo page on Flickr to view larger size.

One of the funner and more interactive panels was the Using the Social Web to Fuel Real-World Social Action. Jessica Kirkwood, VP of Social Media at Hand’s on Network, moderated the panel.

She stated:

This won’t be a ‘talking heads’ panel discussion”, said Jessica Kirkwood, “instead we’ll be calling on the wisdom of the crowd and challenging our nation’s top bloggers to drive real-world action right from the conference room.

This panel initiated the crowd to participate from the start. They began by splitting the crowd into three groups. Then they provided a long list of ways that the crowd could engage their network on Twitter to do various things to gain points. There were varying things that you could ask them to do from simple things such as asking your followers to share a cause for 2 points to more difficult asks such as donating $10 to a cause for 10 points. Each team would ask their followers to use a specific team designated hashtag (ours was #rwa2) when tweeting a response to the ask.

This exercise was interesting in several ways. It created a gaming aspect which drove us to participate in a way that may have not worked as well if we weren’t getting points to compete against other teams. We had to come up with a strategy that made us determine the best plan of attack based on the many different things we could ask our network to do and what we felt they would respond to.

I chose the simple 2 point ask I mentioned above asking my followers to share a cause they felt strongly about. You can see the results of my ask below:

Initially I was a bit skeptical of how this would play out, but the room got very competitive and folks were calling out their points and the competitive juices definitely got flowing. Well our team came in second but I was pretty impressed with our results. Overall I found the panel to be a really good exercise in thinking about how to strategically try to get your network to engage with a cause.

Update: Here’s more details about the panel posted by Jessica Kirkwood on her blog

I posted signs of the transformation on FriendFeed

So time went on and I continued to see the salt and pepper slowly deciding to lose the pepper. The whole process became annoying to me and I documented it quite a bit on 12Seconds. Here’s a few short videos that captured it.

• Here I’ve identified the transformation as it continues to grow worse in Goatee Hell.
• It became evident to me that I needed to take matters seriously in Goatee desperate measures.
• I was pretty happy with the results in Dying goatees and my daughter.

But dying a goatee is a process that doesn’t last long and alas I couldn’t maintain that sort of grooming commitment. I did notice however that there was a pretty uniformed pattern how the gray had invaded my facial sanctuary. It had pretty much only decided to root itself in the second half of my glorious hair growth. So I contemplated how I could somehow re-invent it.

I was looking at myself in the mirror the other day when it just clicked. I put my fingers to the lower half to cover it and a light-bulb went off. I could take my tragic situation and actually take it to a level better than even the original. It was time to say goodbye to the goatee and hello to the pornstache. If you visit the aforementioned website you will see the long history of this magnificent facial hair tradition. Due to my circumstances I have gone with The Handlebar classification of the pornstache.

Here's the before and after photos

So what do you think? I’m not sure how long this will last but it feels good to once again gain control. Until we meet again salty hair!

Here’s an excerpt where Micki rips the covers off of what online voting contests are and begs a question:

Much ado has been made lately about the Pepsi Refresh contest and online voting contests in general. Contests like these are thinly-veiled marketing tools for the companies hosting them. Everyone who enters a project in Pepsi Refresh becomes a willing marketing drone to benefit Pepsi at the cost of his/her own social capital. What does Pepsi give in return for that precious social capital?

Photo by user Sony200boy on Flickr

In answering Micki’s questions above, we (the voters) often don’t get anything from the companies that hold these contests because they are just catalysts for us to support our friends. This week was also marked by the constant requests in our streams to vote on each others SXSW panels. I try to limit my involvement in campaigning at all when it comes to online voting as I cringe a bit whenever I send out requests for votes. I personally just get a sickly feeling pandering to the rules set by these voting systems and yet I continue the process because the action of supporting my friends is stronger than the repercussions of spamming them.

The biggest problem with online voting is that often those competing will not win or lose on the merits of their submissions but on the strength of their social networks willing to become ballot stuffing robots for them. It becomes purely a popularity contest as voting on merit is cast aside simply for the support of friends.

Besides looking at this from the social aspects and front end I also have had to manage the creation of online voting contests for work and I can tell you that on the back end there are just as many problems to contend with. Micki discussed issues with regards to transparency, daily voting requirements along with proxy voting, and entrant discovery issues. These are all valid and only some of the often difficult issues when implementing a voting contest.

I mention that voting can become a popularity contest but even beyond that it can become an exercise in gaming a system. No matter what mechanisms you try to put in place, if there is a large monetary or other value attached to your contest, it will likely garner methods to circumvent the natural voting process. Sure there are ways to try and minimize bots and other unscrupulous voting methods but if you’ve experienced the process of playing whack-a-mole with your blog comments you know that the methods to overcome valid web submissions has become increasingly difficult. There must be underground networks fueled by human generated submissions for hire powered similarly to mechanical turk.

So depending on the nature of your contest it may require post voting analysis and auditing which can be a challenging and painstaking process. I’ve used PollDaddy in the past which offers some barriers such as limiting votes based on cookie or IP and they also provide voter logging which will list IP’s of individual votes along with count numbers, host lookups, and the ability to export the data if you want to slice and dice it even more. Having spent time doing post voting analysis I can tell you it’s an exhausting process.

So how do we fix this? It’s a difficult issue because these contests are usually marketing plays paired with methods to get user traffic to sites. So while it may be difficult for the tide to change in those instances there are plenty of other online voting contests that I feel organizers would like a better method for managing submissions to try and circumvent popularity contests.

Micki also pointed to this great post by Taylor Davidson on “voting fatigue” where he poses similar feelings and issues.

Here’s an excerpt with 2 links from another post on the Pepsi Challenge issues from Sloane Berrent:

…we need to change the game. But I’m first to admit I don’t have the answer. Simply ending all contests isn’t the answer. At first, I didn’t want to just say “this sucks”, without proposing a solution. But perhaps, by raising the issue, we can start to problem-solve this one out. I’ll certainly be paying attention.

There are some great comments in Taylor’s post that have started the dialog. I don’t have any holy grail answers either. This is a difficult problem to overcome but I feel that if a dialog is started on this topic that we could come up with some good ideas that get fleshed out into existing systems or be created in new ones.

Here’s an idea, how about if we were to start implementing more social features within contests? Instead of seeing a simple number of blind votes, how about when I land on a contest seeing the votes from my social graph along with the required reasoning why they cast their vote for a particular submission. I value my friends opinions and by easily seeing their votes and reasoning for supporting a specific submission, it could help shape my thoughts and ultimately act as a way to campaign for my vote.

This is just one quick idea and I look forward to hearing others thoughts on combating this issue that affects all of us.