Archive for the 'social media' Category
November 4, 2008
I haven’t written about politics on my blog for a variety of reasons but mostly because I think everyone has a right to their own opinion and my blog is primarily about business and parenting…not politics.
However, given that a historic, unprecedented event has just happened in our lifetime, I felt compelled to write this post. I am SO excited that Barack Obama was elected to be the next president of the United States! Not just because I agree with much of his political philosophy, but also because he’s brown, has brains, and has the potential to heal wounds created throughout the world.
If you are someone who has not grown up with brown skin, this might not make sense to you but in my opinion this is a huge affirmation of the American dream. My uncle, a geography professor, was turned away from a restaurant while visiting Virginia New Mexico because of the color of his skin. When I was 8 or 9 years old, a blonde little boy turned to me in the walkways outside my elementary school and yelled at me calling me the ‘n’ word. I had never heard that word before, yet I felt the hate emanating from this young boy, and I still remember the fear I felt standing there all alone wondering why this boy hated me so much.
I’m not even Black (I’m South Asian), but I (and other members of my family) were lumped into the non-White category. When I lived in West Texas, the difference was even more pronounced. I grew up self conscious of my skin color and even now I have moments where I wonder if I truly fit in…despite being married to a White man! Women and Black men have had to consistently work twice as hard and be twice as good to be recognized at the same level as White men in this country.
Time will tell if Obama was the right pick, but the fact that he was picked in this country in 2008 means to me that we’ve reached a turning point in our history. People who are not White and not even men (thanks to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin) now have a living breathing example of how it can be done.
Obama, to me, epitomizes working hard (no riding daddy’s coattails), focusing on education, prioritizing family values, and taking a thoughtful analytic (that man is smart!) approach before acting. As an added bonus, he appears to know how to speak proper English! 
Not only has he broken color barriers, he has broken social media barriers. He has run the biggest, first, and most effective political campaign that has ever been run (oh what money can buy)! By his campaign’s avid use of twitter, YouTube, blogs, MySpace, email campaigns, etc., he has single handedly affirmed an entire new industry and demonstrated how using the Internet and social media can have a huge impact on the success of campaigns, businesses, and causes. If there was any doubt by individuals and big companies as to the efficacy of social media, it has now been shattered!
I was 3 when I came to the United States with my parents, and we landed in Pennsylvania. I was 21 when I became a naturalized citizen in New Mexico. I am now many years older, live in Texas, and tonight I saw the window of opportunity open wider for my light brown kids…
God Bless America!
March 22, 2008
What do 5 White Men, Rebranding, and Dads have in common? Well other than the fact that Dads are usually men, probably not a whole lot. These are just some of the interesting things happening around the blogosphere.
5 White Men Talk About Social Media was written by Connie Reece at Every Dot Connects. Connie is a huge presence in the world of social media especially here in Austin, yet was overlooked for a panel on Social Media the Chamber of Commerce was putting on. She voices her frustration at women still being “invisible” even when they are playing a major role in the world of social media. Connie got me started in blogging almost a year ago! She is also one of the main reasons the Frozen Pea Fund initiative got started as a result of Susan Reynolds struggle with breast cancer. Here’s a quote from her post:
This afternoon I got an email from fellow Dot-Connector Brenda Thompson with the subject line: “Five White Men Talk About Social Media.” That got my attention and I opened the email right away. …
It irked me too. It’s not like the organizers would have had to look very far to find some outstanding women to speak, and I’m not just referring to myself. In less than 30 seconds, Brenda and I came up with a list of five or six local women who would have made great panelists.
See, lists are easy to make. But women on lists are still invisible if conference organizers aren’t looking for the list.
Looking Minnesota. Feeling California and The Gaping Void Between Our Brand And Our Audience were two recent posts written by Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home. After her recent trip to SXSW Interactive, she realized she needed to rebrand because many of her readers are not eMoms or even parents! I love Wendy’s blog for a variety of reasons but mostly because she is open and honest about her experience as an entrepreneur and she readily shares her blogging and business tips. We met through our blogs, had a couple of phone conversations and when we finally met in person at SXSW, it was like we just “got each other” as entrepreneurs and as moms! I’m not sure if she has come to a decision on the new name, so go check out her posts and give her your 2 cents!
AllTop Dads launches. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World my entrepreMusings blog is near the top of AllTop Moms blogger list. It’s a great place to go to check out all the top mommy and daddy bloggers. If you don’t know Guy, he was once asked to interview for the CEO position at Yahoo! take on the CEO position of Google and he turned the opportunity to interview down thinking there’s no way Google Yahoo! would amount to much. He often refers to it as his $4 billion dollar mistake, but he reflects back and realizes that instead he was able to be involved in his children’s lives, which is priceless!
So as I said when I began this post, there isn’t much in common between these links, but all are great reads!
Posted by Aruni
10:09 am •
blogging,
dad,
diversity,
father,
mom,
mother,
parenting,
random stuff,
social media,
working dad,
working father,
working mom,
working mother •
March 10, 2008
It’s been a long, fun filled day at SXSW Interactive today. So this post won’t be as meaty as my previous SXSW post. I met tons of people today and many people who know me and who I know from twitter. It was so cool to have so many people come up to me and say, ‘hey, aren’t you @aruni on twitter?’ I guess I kind of stand out in a crowd. :-) I probably gained about 30 followers just from tweeting about the panels I attended. Here’s a quick overview because honestly I’m kinda worn out:
The Care and Feeding of Your Startup
This panel was made up of some local entrepreneurs from Unwired Nation as well as a venture capitalist from Texas based DFJ Mercury and a couple of others. Some key insights:
- Someone needs to serve as the “Belief Engine” for your startup which I took to mean the “evangelist” but I thought that was a unique way of saying it.
- Make sure your product fits into your users way of life and they don’t have to drastically change what they are doing
- Understand if your concept is a feature or a business. It could be a feature that expands into a business.
- You should aim to exceed investor’s expectations.
- 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs can’t go the distance so they really should identify a strong mentor.
- Make sure the people you hire have ‘karmic velcro’ which means they have the fortitude to stick around when the going gets tough.
- There are 3 key people you need in a start-up. 1 in charge of product, 1 handling business development who can close the early deals, and 1 evangelist.
- It’s not appropriate to go to VCs in the first 2 years of a business, because in the first 2 years you are still assessing the market risk. Almost all the VC deals that occurred with Web companies in early stage have not worked out and they are struggling to get their money back.
- Keep two sets of books. One you show your investors and one with even more aggressive numbers that you aim for internally.
True Stories from Social Media Sites
This panel was moderated by Guy Kawasaki, who was so kind to put my blog near the top of his new AllTop Moms site. It was notably a panel of 5 women and 1 guy. Two of the women were twitter pals so when I got up to ask a question and say ‘hi’ one of them was tweeting about me.
I had my son with me at this panel because he’s home for Spring Break so I wasn’t able to take a lot of notes or do many tweets because half way through he wanted to play a game on my phone! He actually did really well, scribbled a bit, and then drew a funny looking dinosaur who he felt the need to show was pooping. Such a funny kid! He wanted me to go up to the mic and say something, but when I tried to get him to come with me, he got shy…he is only afterall 5 1/2.
The panelists discussed their great and not-so-great experiences using social media. What funny and sometimes unbelievable stories they shared!
I met up with my husband after that panel and we took our son for a late lunch at Bennigan’s and then he took him home, and I went to the BlogHaus to network with more bloggers.
Online Adulation: Use Don’t Abuse Your Fans
This panel had an editor from CNET as moderator and some pretty fabulous bloggers including the infamous Dooce whose current post is called Fueled Entirely by Advil.
I was sitting next to Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home during this panel and she was twittering away. She had her laptop so she could do it much faster than I could so I let her take over so go read her twitter stream if you want to read all about it.
Went back to the Bloghaus after this panel and met none other than Darren Rowse (aka Problogger). Someone took a picture of us and said he’d email it to me so I’ll post it when I get it…assuming he remembers.
Conversation Starters
This event was hosted by DELL and Federated Media and they booked the entire Iron Cactus restaurant on 6th and Trinity. Richard at DELL was the lead blogging rep from DELL, who I had met a few weeks earlier at an Austin Tweet Up.
Because I’m twitter friends with Kim Haynes, I volunteered to help with registration since it was an RSVP only event. Of course, that meant I had access to extra drink tickets and people wanted to get to know me!
The key speakers were top blogger and FastCompany.tv producer Robert Scoble (aka Scobleizer) and Shel Israel of Global Neighborhoods.
I met so many twitter buds at Conversation Starters, including the famous Chris Brogan, and throughout the day that it would take me all night to type up their names. Already, this post is longer than I thought it would be!
Stay tuned for my next SXSWi post on Tuesday’s events.
March 9, 2008
Although I’ve lived in Austin for quite some time, I have never made it to SXSW but now since a big part of what I do for my company is social media related, I finally had a great reason to go. Most people associate SXSW with music, film making, bands, and people partying all night long. For those visiting from out of town and attending the music pieces of SXSW that might be true, but for those of us attending SXSW Interactive who live in town and have kids to take care of, we aren’t able to party (or should I say not interested in partying) all night long. Although tonight I was tempted to stay out late after having been asked by a couple of people to join some after parties. But since I just got back from Los Angeles, I figured I should get home and give my husband a little back-up break with the kids. Here are some brief overviews of the sessions I attend.
Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of facebook
Mark who is a 23 year old billionaire, seemed to be more comfortable during the interview than what I’ve heard he has been before, but he seemed to say some of the same stuff over and over again. I forgot my regular camera and my cell phone camera is not that great, hence the not-so-great picture above. However, here are some interesting things he said:
- He mentioned that facebook was going to change their incentive system to one where the more invites you send out that are accepted, the more opportunities you have to invite others to join your network.
- He also said that at facebook, they begin with the premise that everyone is fundamentally good and not trying to do evil/illicit things.
- He felt that all of the mistakes they have made so far have had to do with them not giving their users enough control over the process.
- He believes terrorism stems from people not feeling connected to each other.
The interviewer, Sarah Lacy, from BusinessWeek.com, had a strange interviewing style. Sadly, much of the audience was wondering why she was asking the questions she did and why she was asking them the way she did. Honestly, it seemed like she was a teenage girl flirting with a billionaire 20 something entrepreneur and many of her questions weren’t really questions they were statements. After, the audience turned on her, I thought she might wonder why but apparently she thought she did a great job and said Mark told her she did a great job. Omar Gallaga, who blogs for Austin 360 Digital Savant did a post-panel video interview with her that you can see HERE. Check it out, it’s a good interview. She believes that since she is one of the few women tech journalists that she always gets flack and is misunderstood. Since I’m a woman in tech, after seeing her today I wouldn’t agree with her assessment of why the audience didn’t like her, but kudos to her for putting herself out there and trying. I know she is being flamed on the Internet for the interview but if she can bounce back from this and learn & grow from this experience, she will be on her way to achieving great things.
Thom Singer, Author and Speaker on Networking
I tried hard to make it to Thom’s book reading, but after getting out of the room after Zuckerberg spoke, it was something like a 3 block hike from one end of the convention center to the other. I arrived as he was wrapping up his Q&A. Thom is an author and blogs at Some Assembly Required. He’s about to release a new book called Some Assembly Required for Women.
Kathy Sierra, Author and Speaker
Kathy Sierra was a very interesting speaker. She gave tips and advice on how to get your customers (and employees) passionate about your products. The room was packed and since I was coming back from the other side of the convention center they wouldn’t let us in! As I came up to the front of the line to ask what was going on, they said they couldn’t let us in because of fire code violation stuff. I was in line with Francine Hardaway and we along with a few others made some noise about how full it had been at the Zuckerberg talk and surely they can let us in since there weren’t more than 20 to 30 of us waiting outside and we had seen some people leave. After a few minutes, they let us in. Since I haven’t been blogging for a year yet, I didn’t know the back story on Kathy’s blogging stalker weirdness almost a year ago. She indicated that she might start blogging again, which I look forward to.
The Super Collider: A Hero of the Social Network
I attended this panel briefly and it wasn’t what I thought it would be. One of the panelists discussed how she was using the various social networks and social media to promote her business. It was interesting, but nothing new so I took off to the Entrepreneur’s Lounge at Fogo de Chao Brazilian restaurant for a short after party. It was hosted by ATI and uShip. Ran into Bryan Mennell of Austin Startup blog there.
Hearing these people speak was fascinating but what was even more exciting to me was meeting face to face with many of my blogging friends and meeting new friends including Wendy Piersall of eMoms at Home, Liz Strauss of Successful Blog, Tamar Weinberg of Mashable, Gina Trapani of lifehacker, Laura Mayes of Sk*rt, Annalee Newitz of io9 (she blogs on sci-fi stuff), and Tim Walker of Hoovers Business.
Stay tuned for more of my SXSWi experiences on Monday and Tuesday.
December 30, 2007
A fascinating thing happened to me and many a folk on Twitter last week. I went from 30 followers to over 175 followers worldwide in just over 24 hours all because of a woman known as @SusanReynolds. Susan blogs at Artsy Asylum and started a new blog called Boobs on Ice to document her journey fighting breast cancer. A woman who I have mentioned frequently on my blog, Connie Reece, helped start a campaign called the Frozen Pea Fund. You can see a great interview of Connie on this particular topic called PEAS and Passion on Thom Singer’s blog. Connie also helped start Frozen Pea Friday where people change their twitter avatars to “peavatars” in support of Susan Reynolds and to build awareness of the Frozen Pea Fund.
As I mentioned in my Social Media Mania - What’s A Gal to Do? post I joined Twitter on December 13, 2007. Near the end of last week, I saw @lizstrauss, @princess-belle and others making challenges that they will donate money to the Frozen Pea Fund if twitterdom would help them get to X number of followers within a certain time period. I decided to join in late on December 27 and put forth the challenge of 175 to donate $50. I had 30 followers at the time. It was down to the wire but just as midnight was closing here in US CST on December 28 a tweet went out to some Aussie twitter folk and I ended up with close to 180!
I would have donated even if I didn’t make it to 175. I was having so much FUN seeing people take action based on 140 character or less tweets to help fight cancer, a worthy cause. Talk about instant gratification for almost all parties involved! I donated my $50 right then and there. To me, the Frozen Pea Fund endeavor has been the best example of a social media campaign I have seen or been a part of. Kudos to people like @conniereece for taking the time to show us how social media can be used to make a difference!
Now I’m going to see if twitter can help me find a good reference for a beginner yoga class to take in 2008. I’ve got a lot to do in 2008 and Yoga will be a big part of it. I even saw that they are offering a Deepak Chopra Center Yoga Retreat at the Crossings in March.
If you’d like to follow me on twitter, you can find me @aruni. If you’d like to see how I figure out how attempt to use social media to help build awareness of my company, Babble Soft, you might want to subscribe to this blog’s feed. If you have any suggestions on how to reach our target market, please don’t hesitate to send me your ideas…they are always welcome!
Happy New Year! Oh and don’t forget to donate to the Frozen Pea Fund…
I haven’t written about politics on my blog for a variety of reasons but mostly because I think everyone has a right to their own opinion and my blog is primarily about business and parenting…not politics.
