Aaron from the “We” Show interviewed me recently about… well, you guessed it: community stuff!
It was a fun interview to do, and was great catching up with Aaron. (We met at Community 2.0 earlier this year) Check out the 20 minute interview and let me know what you think!
I stumbled upon this blog post from the Gift Hub blog, where I’ve been called to task for… well… I’m not exactly sure. Here’s the comment:
Over on that blog’s comments, I issued a challenge to Phil: school me. Give me the education. Consider this blog post the new Public Square. Please, oh please, explain to me how Web 2.0 and slavery even deserve to be in the same discussion.
(As you might imagine, I have comments about this. I’m going to refrain from sharing them until Phil has had a chance to start the educational process)
A while back I had the pleasure of speaking with Jay Cross, author of the brand new book, Informal Learning. It has been a while since he interviewed me and I had completely forgotten about it. But today a copy of the book showed up in the mail. I’m looking forward to digging into this one - it looks like a great read.
Congrats to Jay on the completion of the book!
A while back I talked to Fabio Cipriani about my corporate LEGO blog for a book he was writing. It’s out now, and I just got my copy today. Looks like a good book, but since I don’t read anything but English, I can’t really tell!
Also on the "tooting my own horn" front, Forbes this month has my buddy Soren Lund on the cover. Soren was a colleague at LEGO who is in charge of the LEGO Mindstorms project. He’s on the cover in no small part due to the sucess of the Mindstorms User Panel that brought adult fans into the development cycle.
As the head of US public relations for LEGO told me this past weekend – the reason the Mindstorms NXT product launch is getting so much attention isn’t as much about the product itself. The story is about the community involvment and the open approach LEGO has taken with third parties.
Kudos to Soren. He’s certainly earned it.
I had the pleasure of being invited by Eric over at MarketingMonger.com to talk about Social Media and Big in Japan and other assorted subjects. Eric is on a quest to interview 1000 marketing people, and I was number 79.
Check it out and if you’re interested in helping Eric drive to 1000, drop him an email and introduce yourself. He’s a great guy, and it’s a great project!
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has always been a solid paper when it comes to writing about technology. So it’s with great pleasure when I’m quoted. Here’s the latest:
Jake McKee, a Web developer in Garland who works with online communities, said AOL was once the premier way for early adopters to get online. It has since grown more of a reputation as the ISP for the elderly and technophobic, he said.
"If I was at AOL, the question I’d be asking is, how do we get the crowd to evolve beyond Grandma who signed up last week because she wanted to e-mail her grandkids?" McKee said. "When our audience is made up of people who are stuck in their routine, how do we grow beyond that?"
If you want to read the full article, check it out here. (password required)
OK, this is silly, but I’ll share my excitement anyway. As part of my work of advising the LAPD on their new blog, I stopped by the Los Angeles Fire Department blog today and found my name in one of the posts! How cool is it to show up on the LAFD blog??
If you’re interested, I’ve collected all of my podcast interviews I’ve done around various sites into one handy RSS feed. I’ll keep it updated as I make my way into the hearts and podcast interviews of folks all over.
Check it out here
I just saw a copy of another book I was interviewed for: Primal Branding. Looks like it’s going to be a fun read, and the author got my points very accurately (not something that always happens with writers).
You’ll have to humor me here for a moment – I have a moment of ego to bask in!
Being a community liaison, over the years I’ve had a metric ton of photos taken of me out at events, club meetings, and other get togethers with LEGO enthusiasts. Nearly all of these photos make me look like a trained monkey. Hand motions, facial expressions, and other goofy moments leave me looking like I’m a little…slow.
So you can imagine my surprise when I found this photo and it didn’t make me want to change my name. It’s also cool because it so clearly captures the essence of what I was doing at that moment (at least to me) – listening to enthusiasts talk about their hobby.
Being a community rep takes a thick, thick skin!
Jake McKee is the Chief Strategy Officer and Ant Wrangler at Ant's Eye View, a customer experience strategy practice focused on helping clients escalate their customer experience. With a rich background in customer collaboration, online communities, and fan groups, and Web development, community management, and product development, Jake helps organizations understand how to act like groups of people, rather than soulless money making machines.
