I randomly caught this post from Leah Jones talking about Chris Brogan working with Sony on a project after meeting them during a Panasonic ‘junket’ to CES earlier this year. I was going to leave this as a comment but I exceeded the character limit by over 50%, so here is my reply to “Is this trust”

Its an interesting conversation but haphazardly pointed at Chris (a long time colleague and friend, but I am writing here not for him, but for the broader conversation as a whole) While I can understand where there might be some hurt feelings, it should be about an opportunity lost to develop more then a passing relationship. But its not like Chris is Brett Farve and a one and only fleeting opportunity to have loyally fighting for the Panasonic team!

This was a Blogger, being given the VIP treatment at CES. Happens all the time.

Have any of the folks commenting and thinking this is unheard of and rude and insulting been there? If you have then you would know that no company paying for anyone’s way (and I know the Intel Insiders pretty well personally and professionally) would expect they could keep those people from meeting and talking with competitors.

In fact, seeing other competing equipment is a comparison that Chairman Yoshi Yamada is hoping for people to make – because he believes in the quality of his company’s products against those of rivals. From speaking with many other people who were engaged in different aspects of Panasonics CES work, I understand that the Panasonic Chairman is a wise man and do not believe he would fret over such concerns as this.

Chris was not hired to be a consultant by Panasonic, he did not steal their trade secrets to give to the competition, and most importantly he did not harm anyone, not even the PR people behind the CES program. Chris was flown out to CES for his credibility and reach (lets face it, most blogger relations as Chris alludes to is only about reach). Sony hired him to manage a project and for that project to benefit from his credibility and reach.

What’s the common thread? he was compensated for his time… Panasonic got some coverage, some WOM from Chris at CES and a chance to make sure he was considering and trying Panasonic equipment. Sony is paying for his time to run a program, which already by your post has been a bit more successful in getting attention.

For a moment, lets just look at the practical situation one more time. Had this been an invite out to the Panasonic corporate headquarters, and while on that trip that Panasonic paid for, he met with and started selling his services to Sony, that would be something to merit a discussion on trust and loyalty and good judgment… but it wasnt a private meeting, it was the biggest event in the industry with every competitor in the same 2 square mile (or so) area.

I do not even believe this is a question of trust or loyalty, unless you think you owe everyone who gives you something (which is totally so messed up for so many reasons) a debt for the rest of your life. It’s just a matter of business…

And this post titled “Is this Trust” is honestly just an observation that turned into an implied accusation perceived imprecisely from afar that IMHO has no real merit – in fact, I think in re-reading the blog post that an inflamatory, headling grabbing word was chosen for the title merely because it is so prominent now with Chris’ recently published book… I do really think the rightly focused topic is loyalty.

As for whether Chris Brogan is less trustworthy as a result of his working with Sony, bollocks. Trust is about honesty and character demonstrated over time, and there is nothing here or anywhere to indicate that Chris was dishonest…. nor was he disloyal in that he owes no loyalty to Panasonic except respect and perhaps the friendships he might have with various people involved there.

There are plenty of people out there who are not trustworthy and who are disloyal, it would really be great to see more people telling those stories.

Is This Trust as a post title certainly works at getting attention, but it also serves to potentially harm Chris’ credibility.

To illustrate, just on WED someone asked me what I thought of Vivek Kundra being a phony? I heard the allegations, but didnt know any more about the story, so I expressed my optimism about Vivek based on the perceptions of people I trust who know him and went home to find out the latest news… even I was shocked to see that Om Malik had shot down the false accusations within hours of the story first surfacing. Point being, this person was spreading false information caught in a fleeting moment through the stream because he trusted the stream and formed a negative opinion of Vivek that may never be corrected as a result.

The better question here that other’s alluded to rightly is the matter as to what are the potential conflicts of interest we could get into when individuals can be a journalist, a celebrity and a consultant for hire all at the same time.

As for broader lessons learned, its important for brands to not think they are going to own a blogger’s stories if they treat them to a nice time.  If a PR firm was selling them that, then there is something to really be upset about.

• \n
  Dr. Leo Rangell: Understanding Conversation and the Ubiquitous Human Potpourri of Conflicted Opinions

  \n \n

  (tags: conversation, ncdd, community, collaboration, communication culture leadership management)

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Well its not an official event like InternetWeek NY was, but for me it is a great Social Media Week in London.  While I still have a few open appointment slots on Monday morning, the week is pretty booked up.  I hope you will be able to join me at some point and say hello and we get a chance to talk about all the ways in which social media is creating growth opportunities and changing the way we work.

• TWEETUP!
  Thursday 25 June – 1700-1930pm
  Open to everyone
  The International Bar (near Charing Cross and Leicester Sq) 
• Gov2Gov UK
  Friday 26 June 1600-1900
  Registration Required (sold out, but contact me if you really need to be there)
  Canadian High Commission Office
• Tweetcamp
  Saturday 27 June 1000-1800
  Waiting list only now
  Richmond, Surrey
• Geek Field Trip – Tate Modern
  Sunday 28 June 1100-1400
  Open to Anyone – Show Up at Main Entrance, Look For Me
  Bankside (on the Thames) 

So it is pretty much a Social London Week for me and I hope it will be for some of you who join me as well.

The reason I am coming over is for the Gov2GovUK event and all the other opportunities to get together and talk present themselves when you think differently about how to connect with a community.  We are really hoping to see Social Media Club take off again in London (Lloyd Davis was organizing Social Media Club events before starting Tuttle).

We are really excited about Gov2Gov as I think it will be the start of something very big, where we are bringing together an array of events to facilitate international knowledge exchange on social media between governments and amongst their citizens.  This is one stone that kills about 20 birds, as the outcomes from these sorts of meetings are filled with amazing potential.  Not only does it improve international relations and facilitate cross border knowledge exchanges, it creates opportunities for entrepreneurship, business development, new ways towards civic engagement and so much more.  Pay attention to the conversation around this as the next announcements coming later in the month are going to be very big… in fact, we will start talking about it on Friday evening, at the Gov2Gov UK event.

I would be remiss if I didn’t give out a lot of credit for this event to Lovisa Williams from the U.S. State Department who helped in so many ways from introductions to organizational support and Dominic Campbell of FutureGov Consultancy who (very humbly) has contributed his expertise, his network and so much more.  These are the sort of people that get me excited and make the work we do so much more fun. Am so glad I can call them both friends.

Of course, huge thanks to the High Commission of Canada’s office for hosting the event.  Of course, we have always known how great our friends to the north are (particularly Our Vancouver Crew) – I have now found that their representatives in Ottawa and in London are just as wonderful.

So I hope to see you in London sometime this week, if not at our Tweetup on THUR at The International Bar, or The Gov2Gov UK Event on Friday at the High Commission in London, or at Tweetcamp on Saturday, then you better come out on Sunday for our Geek Field Trip to The Tate Modern.

Or, if you want to meet with me independently, I have some time for business meetings on MON morning 29 June and would be happy to book appointments with you while I am in the UK.

Cheers!

Oh well, might as well post all the domains I have for sale so we can get them all reviewed at the same time.  Some of these below are really really good.  Wood still like to do sites for more then half of them myself if possible.  There are some possibly great blogs in here that would be great as part of a network.  Others are simply great company ideas.

If you are interested in making a serious offer on one of these before I put them up for auction elsewhere (would rather they went to a good home), please comment below or reach out to me through my contact form.  For more details on why I am doing this and how we got here, read the post, Help Me with my Digital Addiction.

1. adoptablogger.net
2. interviewablogger.com
3. mediaglu.com
4. newmediarelease.com
5. socialcommunications.org
6. socialmediabusiness.com
7. socialmediaclubs.com
8. socialmediaexpress.com
9. socialmediafilter.com
10. socialmediaglue.com
11. socialmediagreenhouse.com
12. socialmediainsights.com
13. socialmediamavens.com
14. socialmediapages.com
15. socialmediaproduction.com
16. socialmediarelease.com
17. socialmediascene.com
18. socialmediasphere.com
19. socialmediasymposium.com
20. xtagging.com
21. betterbloggerbureau.com
22. bloggerbureau.com
23. businessbloggeragency.com
24. businessbloggerbureau.com
25. tagfacets.com
26. tagformats.org
27. tagsort.com
28. tagspaces.com
29. tagspaces.org
30. topictags.com
31. bubblecamp.com
32. bubblecamp.net
33. bubblecamp.org
34. bubblejams.com
35. marketing2point1.com
36. unbubbleconference.com
37. unconferenza.com/net/org

Again, if you are interested in making a serious offer on one of these before I put them up for auction elsewhere (would rather they went to a good home), please comment below or reach out to me through my contact form.

In my prior post, I spoke about having many more domain names available I wanted to sell now if possible. Here are a few more that are interesting so that you see there are some real quality ones available.

If you are interested in making a serious offer on one of these before I put them up for auction elsewhere (would rather they went to a good home), please comment below or reach out to me through my contact form.  For more details on why I am doing this and how we got here, read the post, Help Me with my Digital Addiction.

1. connectedlifestyle.com
2. connectedlifestyle.net
3. elifeadvisor.net
4. elifeadvisor.org
5. elifeadvisors.com
6. elifeadvisors.net
7. elifeadvisors.org
8. elifeassistant.com
9. elifeassistant.net
10. elifeassistant.org
11. elifetoday.com
12. elifetoday.net
13. mobileworkplace.net
14. mobileworkplace.org
15. ouradvicebox.com
16. productlaunchsuite.com

I’ll admit it.  I am an addict.

I am addicted to buying domain names. I am addicted to the idea of starting something cool and new by registering an address and putting up a digital shingle.  Even today I had an idea for a new type of Tweetup where people would take 140 tweets and turn them into a story, so I registered 140×140.com – cool eh?

Well it is cool until you realize you can’t possibly run as many sites as you imagine and have to face the reality of an annual domain name registrar bill in the neighborhood of $7,500usd.  

So the time has come to do something about it.  We are letting a bunch of nutty names just expire.  I am seeking partners (mostly writers) for several domains such as SocialMediaCampaigns.com.  We are actually going to be hosting events such as http://socialmediacamp.org/ and ListeningCamp.org and SocialMediaUniversity.org.  We will also be selling a bunch of domain names to try to recoup at least my registration fees paid and hopefully even make some profit on a few like SocialMediaRelease.com.

All of these domains had some great purpose which never was realized.  Some of the names are silly (or rather, some just stink). Some were attempts at new brands.  Some were just drunken rants that were too easy to obtain.  Some are good.  Some are really really good. Many are still valuable. All of them are open for discussion.

So the first batch of names we are going to publish are below.  Rather than running it through an auction service, I thought I would offer them up to friends first (would love them to go to a good home).  I can turn any of these sites on as a blog in about 30 minutes, so if you want to partner, please comment below or reach out to me through my contact form.  You can look at $50 as a sort of minimum if you want to buy one of these from me (to cover costs paid and time invested in transferring) but if its a good one, will need to think about spending more.

Chris Heuer’s Miscellaneous Domain Names List #1

1. 3screens.info
2. 3screenstrategy.com
3. anonymizr.com (this was going to be a service that scrambled your voice and let you leave anonymous audio comments like post secret)
4. boomnotbust.com
5. businessintention.com
6. collaboragents.com
7. collaborants.com
8. docentrist.com
9. docentrist.org (was thinking about docents, and centrists and these being guides or something)
10. geekeducation.tv (a complement but opposite of GETV.com)
11. metaformats.com
12. metaformats.org
13. metagroups.org (microformats go meta… there was a great idea here but I don’t want to crawl back into that whiskey bottle to find it again)
14. mynolastories.com
15. mysfstory.com (so many great opportunities around collecting community stories, inspired by Derek and The Fray of course, also by our good friends in New Orleans)
16. nomorebubbles.com
17. reallysimplepublishing.com (RSP anyone?)
18. rubygnome.com (dont ask, dont tell)
19. stopthebubble.com
20. theparamedia.com
21. therubychallenge.com
22. threescreens.info
23. threescreens.org
24. threescreens.tv (the next wave of user experience is across the three screens of tv, pc and mobile phone, these are some good domains for someone – they are fresh, not like those unused AT&T rollover minutes
25. ubiquitytoday.com
26. web20college.com
27. web20communitycollege.com
28. web20state.com (OMG, too geeky… though state could be useful since its short)
29. channelwiki.com
30. channelwiki.net
31. conteststreams.com (this was going to be a business out of making contests in video streams, like trivia contests – was cool)
32. eholistix.com
33. holistice.com (was trying to come up with a new agency name)
34. kannotate.com
35. kannotate.net (K Annotate was a software I wanted to do for knowledge annotation and sharing – we ended up going with Insytes instead since this wasnt so great)
36. letstalkaboutbooks.com (someone has to want to buy this for a book review blog – there is real money in this domain name – we can make some killer affiliate revenue on this I think)
37. lostlighters.com (lost dollar bills meet lost lighters – put stickers on lighters and a reg number and track your bic as it moves around the country and the world!)
38. partnerwiki.com
39. partnerwiki.net
40. plob.org (it meant something as an acronym, but I cant remember what)
41. rgb-t.com
42. rubycoop.com
43. slotlet.com
44. slotlets.net (slotlets are tokens for authentication purposes – when I thought of them back in 2002 it was all about a single sign on system I was trying to get built – would probably be an equivalent of something like oAuth though not as cool or well thought out)
45. streamotions.com (this is really cool for a video company)
46. thebutterflyballot.com (remember those hanging chads? well this could be a great book title)
47. thefranchise.info
48. thetrustmark.com (damn I like this one, so much potential here)
49. thetruthtellers.com
50. thetruthtellers.net
51. thetruthtellers.org
52. ipodfilmlounge.com
53. ipodtvreview.com
54. ipodvideolounge.com
55. ipodvideosalon.com

Well there are 55 domains and about $2,000 out the door – they could have been great investments, but now its looking like a Domain garage sale with all the little bits and bobs laying out on sheets in my digital lawn…  I have many other good ones I will publish tomorrow, particularly the social media related ones, so stay tuned.

Again, if you want to buy any of these or partner, please do let me know…

• village-idiot.org — reset your lost WordPress administrator password
  (tags: tips security WP, wordpress, solution, emergency script, lost password)

The Camp is part of Internet Week New York, “a week-long festival of events celebrating New York’s thriving Internet industry and community.” Social Media Camp NYC is an Open Space Camp directed toward small business owners and job seekers looking to use social media in their business, start-up or job search. Chris and SMC Co-Founder Howard Greenstein will both lead sessions at the Camp. The Social Media Club wrap-up blog post includes session information and responses.

Chris Heuer presented on Social Media basics, which you can read about here. Slides from the presentation are included following the video below:

Chris Heuer participated in the May 2009 Disruptive Media Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Chris discussed social media management with Pia de Gysser, formerly of Agria, and Andreas Aspegren, community manager at www.aftonbladet.se.

eBay

You are bidding on 2 hours of AdHocnium’s consulting services to be delivered byAdriana Lukas and Chris Heuer in London on Wednesday 13 May 2009.  This is a one time only opportunity (for this moment in time   This is a low cost way for a smart company to take our minds for a test drive, to see if what we know, and to improve what you are doing with social media, marketing and web strategies to make your organization more succesfull in these efforts.  At present, the bidding hasn’t begun, so it is starting off at $50usd!

Place your bid on eBay now.

Why would we auction our time off instead of working hard to get our going market rate of $350 per hour for our time? While the answer is a bit complicated, its also very simple. In short, it comes down to these primary reasons.

Our Story

For a long time now, I have been proselytizing the idea that companies need to stop selling and start helping people buy.  This is one way in which this can be done.  We advertised our rates on the AdHocnium site for this reason, and are extending the concept to see what people are willing to pay.  While we limit the market for our services to a specific geography while I am traveling, reducing our ability to get top dollar perhaps, it is another chance to ‘eat our own dog food.’

The Economy

The mid size businesses, or even smaller ones that are seeiking real competitive advantage and are willing to take bold risks also dont have as much money.  An auction gets us in front of people who normally wouldn’t seek out our services. Of course, even if you are in a big company, and perhaps especially so if you are trying to sell the idea of social media within your organization, we can create tremendous value to help you thrive while your competitors are struggling.

Our Experience

No, I dont mean that we dont have any experience and are forced to do this, but rather that we get more chances to work together, on short burstable projects.  Doing this auction with Adriana Lukas is a fantastic oppotunity for me to get in front of a client together – to get to know each other better, to learn from her while helping others.

Of course, we also get another client to list in our case studies too. Naturally, the more experience we have, and the more we have doing this together, the more valuable our time becomes over the long run and the more we can charge.  The more people giving us testimonials, like Kym Wong, the more you and people like you are going to be willing to trust us too.  Kym told me she had a huge return on her investment of $162.50 when I offered this up in DC back in March as an experiment.

Kym’s feedback on eBay was “Got tons of actionable ideas and advice! Worth 10x the price, highly recommended”.

Our Time

While my time and Adriana’s time is maxed out regularly, I always have a few hours when I am traveling to sit down with people and talk about their business and innovative ideas to help drive to the future.  When I do, as was the case after my session at Next09 with a few people, I always offer up some free advice… to them as individual’s, not to their company.  So if we can get paid a little something, instead of nothing for this, it creates a win-win for everyone.  The reality is though, that we both spend a large percentage of our time on community works and big ideas that dont pay the bills in the short term.  We simply dont invest as much time as we perhaps should selling outrselves (partially because we dont like doing that).

If we were to try to sell our time actively during my visit to London, it would take dozens of hours over several weeks.  If you factor in all the time making the sale, along with the time delivering the education or training, we have to charge a lot to make a reasonable rate of pay.  This auction path allows us to be more effcicient, and hopefully get a better per hour return on our time then we would if we worked hard to sell that halfd day so some of the same people who would buy it.

Increasing Awareness

Is this story interesting to you? Might it be something you might try yourself as Rebecca Caroe suggested? Well, that means more people are going to hear about AdHocnium, about me, about Adriana and about others who are doing this with us.  Our business model is pretty unuque too, so we get a chance to highlight the fact that we have reimagined what a gobal agency should look like, how it should operate, how we can attract the best and brightest talent and how we are leading our clients into the future. So while some may call it a stunt, it is much more (and honestly, it’s a little bit of that too).

The Auction

So what do you think? Anyone in London want to bid on a 2 hour consulting session with Chris Heuer andAdriana Lukas on Wednesday 13 May 2009? Let the bidding begin.