Bill Cammack

NY:MIEG Breakfast, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Sobel’s NY:MIEG Breakfast

Hannlin’ Tha Biznezz, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack

A lot of guys are paranoid that they’re going to lose their women or that they’re going to cheat on them with the next man. Those days are over. There’s a new sheriff in town… A new menace, threatening the raps and relationships of guys across the country and throughout the entire world. This menace needs to be recognized and STOPPED IN ITS TRACKS before it’s able to take down all of human civilization….

Fellaz!!! Gather together in UNITY, against our COMMON ENEMY!!!

TECH!!! :(

Morpheus: We don’t know who struck first. Us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun……

Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony…..

Now, I know you’re probably laughing and you think The Kid’s trippin’, but hold on to your hats. I have evidence! :D

I didn’t think anything of it at the time… but NINE MONTHS AGO, back in January, 2008, I was at a TweetUp and tried to take this picture:

Now… Joyce, Julia, Jesse and myself are all looking right at the camera. That would appear to indicate that the photographer had called everyone’s attention to the fact that a picture was about to be taken… But Wait A Minute!!!… Where’s LAURA looking? That’s right… at TECH. Now, in case you thought she wasn’t AWARE that a picture was being taken, look how she has that “I’m about to be in a picture” smile on her face… YET she CAIN’T tear herself away from TECH to fully engage the photographer with everyone else. :/

Like I said, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was just a funny aspect of one of my myriad Flickr pictures.

So fast forward six months to June, 2008. I go to a NNN / Tumblr Rock Band party, and I’m trying to talk to Michelle:

BOOM! Look at that! TECH rears its ugly head again! See the disparity? A brotha’z gettin’ his DRINK on, and a sistah’z gettin’ her TECH on! You see where this is going? This is a serious problem, guys. :(

So a couple of weeks later, still in June 2008, (even though Mike jacked up the shot, and you can’t see the TECH), I’m trying to get Lux’s attention, but nooooooooo… TECH wins AGAIN! :(

So the last straw, and where I realized this post needed to be written, was three months after that, in September, 2008. I attended TechSet, and Bryan wanted to take a picture of Chrissie & The Kid:

Photo by Bryan Thatcher

Notice how I’m already posing, the shot is already framed and the flash is mounted on the camera and working properly. Meanwhile, Chrissie’s FULL ATTENTION is on TECH, except for the motor skills she’s siphoned off to tell me something that was probably “Right after I finish Twittering…” :/

Now, to all of my friends’ credit, I have great, non-Tech-cockblocked pictures with Michelle, Lux, Laura AND Chrissie, hahaha :D Still… The problem has been REVEALED and must be ADDRESSED!

If your girl seems distant, do NOT blame the next man… blame TECH! :(
If your girl is late to meet you somewhere, BLAME TECH!
If your girl doesn’t show up AT ALL, it’s probably because TECH changed the location in her calendar application.
If your girl doesn’t answer her phone, it’s probably because TECH is redirecting *YOUR* calls to her voicemail.
Every time your girlfriend “dialed you with her ass”, that was TECH calling you up to inform you how good a time she was having WITHOUT. YOU!

Get the picture? Guys, we have GOT to band together, before it’s too late!!!

If you STILL don’t believe me… Did you notice that the next big thing is called… ANDROID?

Check these guys out! hahaha “Hi ………… Wel Come To Moun Tain View California…… I Am Spea King Here At Goo Gle’s Headquarters” hahaha

I guarantee you the android phones will steal their women, ASAP. Watch! :D

Go ahead and keep sleeping, dudes, but when it happens TO YOU… Just remember that The Kid warned you to keep your girl FAR. AWAY. FROM. TECH!

If she wants to go to Cancun with her girlfriends, no problem. If she wants to get a new Tech Gadget, *VETO* that ish WITH THA QUICKNEZZ!!! :D

~Bill

DatingGenius Category: billcammack.com/category/datinggenius
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Birthdays are such strange times for me. During all the rest of the year, things are pretty much the same. I feel pretty much the same. When it gets to the last few days of “a year” for me, my entire system shuts down and I begin a phase of reflection… Not so much “reflection” as “awareness”. It’s really strange.

I don’t know why it happens, but it always happens. I don’t tell it to happen or will it to happen. I just start to “listen to myself” and figure out “how I feel”. That doesn’t seem to make sense, because people think they MAKE UP how they feel. I think people come up with mental ideas about how they feel, physically. I have no idea why that would change for me on my birthday, but that’s what happens.

I feel incredibly refreshed right now. The funny thing is that I didn’t feel like I NEEDED to be refreshed yesterday. I’m focused.. Happy about what I have.. Happy about what I’ve done.. Happy about whom I’ve met.. Happy about what I’ve learned…

It’s strange. It’s like waking up from a dream, but without the disconnect from the part that you thought was a dream. It’s like looking into aquarium water from the viewing area. It’s right there, you know it and remember it, but it’s so different from where you’re standing right now.

Anyway… I just thought I’d document this, since I know it’s going to leave me soon, and my system will return to normal… whatever “NORMAL”‘s going to be for this year! :D

My fellow MIT alum, Liz Burr doesn’t care about my pictures. :( She doesn’t care if The Kid drinks a bunch of alcohol and hangs out with a bunch of chicks. :(

(L to R) Oz Sultan, Florence Holdeman, Bill Cammack, James Im, Michelle DeForest & Whitney Hess @ TechSet NYC
Photo by Brett Petersel

This is what I’ve learned since consolidating my blogs into one stream, which is BillCammack.com. Consolidation has gotten me a ton of hits/traffic/whatever, but the end result hasn’t been a crossover by “fans” of any particular aspect/section/category of my blog/life.

For instance, even though my “Brass Rat” is in a ton of pictures, people I’ve known for months are like “I didn’t know you graduated from MIT!”.

Limor Fried, Bill Cammack & Phil Torrone

Or people that happen to know that I’ve been page 1 on Google for “Bill” for the last 8 months apparently never clicked through, because they ask stuff like “So… What do you do?”, indicating that they’ve never been to my ABOUT or CLIENTS/PROJECTS pages, which are clearly marked at the top of my site. :/

I also mentioned in “How many people read my blog?” that 88% of my hits are “single-serving friends” (ref: Fight Club), so there can’t possibly be any crossover if people are only accessing ONE PAGE on my site. :D

So now that I don’t care anymore, I’m splitting my feeds. I used to be interested in people finding out several things about me, but that’s not how this game works. :) The way it works is that people look for what they’re interested in at that moment, and then they move on. IMO.. There’s no point in showing people OTHER STUFF that has nothing to do with what they’re currently interested in. If they came to my site to see pictures, they’re not interested in editing. If they came to research video editors, they’re not interested in my video blog. If they’re interested in my video blog, they’re not interested in my dating advice, etc etc… So now, I’ve created a feed for each particular interest:

Bill Cammack
RockStar
DatingGenius
Video
Social Media
Photos

I didn’t want to do this before, because I was attempting to gather people with different interests into one location. Forget that. :D If people want to read about Social Media and not wacky dating advice, more power to them. I feel they should have a way to get ONLY what they want from my site, instead of what I’m trying to offer them while they’re here.

This also solves an issue I was discussing with Liz Burr about my new “Rock Star” series:

“Rock Star” is partially a standalone series, but it’s actually not. It’s a lifestyle blog at the same time that it’s a music blog. In one way, it should have its own site, and in another, it’s actually a part of my usual video blog. Splitting Feeds solves that issue for me, entirely. Also, if I decided to make a different iTunes feed just for the show, all I have to do is link to the new, standalone “Rock Star” feed.

The “downside” to separation is that BillCammack.com becomes invisible, and just the “host” for whatever people are really looking at. However, the way I see it, my site was invisible to begin with, as most people were Googling stuff and ending up here and then skating immediately. At least this way, if they can subscribe to one particular aspect that they like, they’re more likely to receive an update in their reader that they might actually be interested in, instead of a random picture of The Kid posing with his bike.

On October 18th, 2008 @ 12 pm EST, I was very happy to participate in the first Vlog Global FlashMeeting.

A FlashMeeting is basically a program that allows you to line up, one at a time, and say what you want, while everyone else involved can see you via your webcam. It’s pretty ancient, but it’s also pretty universal and reliable. You can see the archive by clicking here. I chimed in at 1 hour, 53 minutes into the program. :)

I mainly showed up to WATCH, since it was a gathering of a lot of people that I’ve learned stuff from and had conversations with about this internet video thing that we do.

Somehow, three hours went by REALLY QUICKLY! :D

Cheers to the participants and the organizers!

Find out more about Vlog Europe at www.vlogeurope.com/blog.

Chicago River / Lake Cruise, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack – Chicago, IL, USA

Lake Michigan, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Lake Michigan, Chicago, IL, USA

Six months ago, back in August, I wrote “Digital Internet Snobbery”, which was basically about how I had begun interacting with more and more people that knew about, understood and utilized Social Media and fewer and fewer people who didn’t.

I actually halted the process of adding more people to my social sites to see if I could do something about that or if I WANTED to do anything about that.

I’m very comfortable and happy with people that know how to use Social Media properly, because it’s an efficient form of communication. The least time is wasted explaining things. I have very few conversations that I didn’t intend to have. Anything I want to tell someone is available by sending them a link through iChat or Skype. I can talk to Rox in Hawaii or Phil in the UK at the press of a button.

At this point, it just about PAINS me to interact with people that aren’t “hip” to Social Media. It’s so limiting. To me, it’s like speaking to people that don’t actually know English, even though they speak it a little. It’s so inefficient. You end up explaining things that you’ve already forgotten the explanations for because they’re so internalized already.

However, those of us that “get it” are in the vast, vast, VAST minority. We’re a subset of people that want to interact with other people inside a subset of people that have internet access inside a subset of people that have computers in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’ve had a couple of experiences in the last week that have allowed me insight into what “the masses” think about what it is that I/we do on a daily basis.

At some point this week, reader “David” got upset over a post I wrote. Last night, David suggested that I was linking to articles about real-life cases in order to increase my Google rankings. I’m not going to link to that post or his comment because the response would be the same… “You wrote this post so you could link to your other post and increase your Google rankings AGAIN! :( “. hahahaha But the point is that offhand, I just didn’t have anything to say about that, because linking to references from inside posts is as common to me as saying my name when I introduce myself to people. However… SOME people don’t SAY their names when they’re introduced to people. Some people never introduce themselves at all…..

Earlier in the week, I was talking to my friend, Faya, and I linked her to a couple of my posts that reference Renzo Gracie & Carlos Feliz, including the trip Carlos and I went on to see Renzo fight against Carlos Newton @ Mohegan Sun.

Now… You see how much BETTER that last part was? You see how IF you were interested in any of the topics I mentioned, you could just click on them and get an extension of my post? Do you understand how much less typing I have to do because I can hyperlink to previously-posted material instead of having to explain the whole thing over and over? :D

Anyway… So I linked Faya to my posts and her response was “Are you a publicist?” :) I laughed at that, because I was reminded that to people who don’t do what we do as far as Social Media, our form of communication is going to appear strange to them. I certainly didn’t consider her question an actual inquiry as to what I do for work, which, in fact, it was hahaha.

The whole point of linking inside posts is a) avoiding redundancy / reinventing the wheel, and b) allowing the reader to quickly and easily access information which bolsters one’s point… or, in David’s case, refutes one’s point. David didn’t believe that the article I linked to had anything to do with the point I was making in my post, because I didn’t know the person in the article I had linked to. Unfortunately, that’s one of the flaws of the internet. We get information and we can’t possibly get the entire context. It’s just not possible. We have to roll with what we’re told. If they’re having a Presidential debate and there are lines on the bottom of the screen, we’re supposed to believe that those lines represent commoners who have buttons in their hands to click approval or disapproval of what the current speaker’s saying. All we can do is believe that or not believe that. We post what we think based on what we take away from the event.

So if someone posts opinions of the debate based on what they saw the lines do while the candidates were speaking, you can say the exact same thing. “You don’t know the people who had the clickers. You don’t know what their motivations were. You don’t know what was in their minds.” That’s absolutely true…. Unfortunately, what we’re presented is all we have to go on. It’s a flawed system, but it’s what we’ve got.

That’s not to say that I’ve never done things that I think would climb on Google, hahaha of course I have. Google is where you want to be, because it’s the only search engine people actually use. My point in the case that David commented on though, was that I was providing an example, granted, an EXTREME example of the situation I was writing about.

As far as Faya‘s question, I can understand why she asked that. :) Attempting to read my posts as an outsider (read: 99% of the population), they definitely read more like news articles than personal entries on a blog. This is a personal entry right here, and it seems more like a report than anything, to me. This is because I’m not talking to myself…. I’m talking to anyone that happens to read my blog, wherever in the world they happen to be.

That’s what I look at every day. People from several countries reading my blog. I had over 4,000 unique visitors request over 7,000 pages of mine in the last month.

So it wouldn’t make sense for me to figure that people in California know about local NYC news. People in Hawaii? The UK? Germany? If you don’t post links to what you’re talking about, you’re leaving people in the dark that might otherwise learn something new and improve their lives. You’re leaving them to fend for themselves and try to Google the information that you very easily could have linked them to.

This is why it comes off as “being a publicist” to Faya and “increasing Google rankings” to David. When you get involved in Social Media, you learn to speak to the masses instead of to one person. Instead of one-to-one communication, it’s one-to-many. If I Twitter Bre that something’s going on, I’m actually announcing it to my entire roster of 1,200 Followers. That necessitates a different communication than if I had sent a direct message.

Similarly, some people post to the internet as if they’re writing a text diary. A “blog” is short for a “web log”. Some people are happy and content to type about what their dog did today or that happened at their job. I post a lot of pictures, but if I’m going to WRITE something, it’s because I want people to THINK. Think about ME, Think about YOU, Whatever… just THINK!

Even if you don’t like what I’m saying, you’re learning about something else in life that you don’t like and you can avoid in the future. Even if you don’t believe what I’m saying, you achieve a new understanding of the possibilities of what someone might be thinking about you or your relationship or your web series or whatever I happen to post about. So that’s one of the reasons why I post the way I do. Every post is a message in a bottle. I appreciated David’s comment because it’s an indication that he received the message. He didn’t LIKE the message… :) I understand and respect that and I’m willing to debate anything that I post.

As far as Faya’s question… yeah… I guess I *AM* a publicist. :D I publicize myself. I could publicize other people if I felt like it. I spent the last 8 months (still there, I just don’t care anymore :) ) on page 1 of Google for just my first name because I RAWK Social Media. Period.

For better or for worse, it’s changed the way I think and the way I communicate, and I appreciate comments and questions from people that don’t do this the way I do it, because I get to test my logic.

Cheers!
~Bill

Sears Tower, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Sears Tower, Chicago, IL, USA

Chicago, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Chicago, IL, USA

Monroe Street, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Monroe Street, Chicago, IL, USA