jgreghenderson

Fear of Social Media

When I was little I would get scared a lot at night. Boogy man, zombies, aliens, @andreasmalec’s Chicago accent… you name it when the lights went off it scared me. So what I would do is hide my head under the covers. By doing that I could pretend it didn’t exist, I felt safe and protected. Now of course my threats were imaginary (except Andrea’s accent), but I always felt the best way to avoid my imaginary fears were to hide from them and pretend they didn’t exist.

Some organizations take this approach to social media. They ban it, block it on the server and threaten to fire employees if they don’t stop blogging … everything short of physically hiding under the covers to pretend it doesn’t exist. Much of this fear is imagined. And just like me as a child, if there really is a treat in the room by hiding from it that zombie is going to eat my brains for dinner.

Location Matters - So Does Social

Last night I saw a local blog post by Brant Collins that was a response to a twitter conversation with a good friend @Tsudo. In it Brant expresses a very elementary understanding of location based social media that sadly I have seen other “social media experts” struggle with as well.

Practicing Social Media

Several years ago I had a good conversation with a friend going into medical school and I asked him a question that had always made me curious: “Why do doctors call it practicing medicine?” The answer has stuck with me for a while, an answer I find confirmation in from time to time by doctors who enter and exit my life. The answer was “Because the day you stop practicing is the day you fail to understand medicine”.

Responding to Situations with Social Media

I have two things lately that I am publically passionate about: social media and photography (I am equally passionate about politics but I keep it off the radar most of the time). Normally I reserve this space to express photography, my thought is that between my work with Tweetup, Southern Socials, and RefreshCA anyone who cares about my take on social media has heard it several times. Today however I wanted to take a brief moment to highlight something great in social media that probably went unnoticed yesterday.

The Free Project

Several months ago my co-worker and friend Alex Cone introduced me to the concept of free. Alex felt motivated after reading Chris Anderson’s Free to try the concept of doing services he felt talent in for free. The ultimate goal here is for someone to hire him based on the services he freely gave. These services were directed primarily at non-profit organizations to help further advance their cause. Overall a great move by Alex and helping people at the same time.