Bill Cammack

Let’s say you have something that you do well. One thing. Just one. Next thing you know, you find out about Social Media and all the good things that are now available for everyone to take part in. Before you jump in the pool, consider that you might not be able to swim. Don’t get in over your head with Social Media, because the effect is going to be *YOU* looking unprofessional, AND broadcasting that YOURSELF to the entire world.

Let’s say you’re a football player. Let’s say you have lots of IRL fans and it seems like a good idea to you to start utilizing sites/apps like Twitter, Ustream, Qik, Youtube, Livestream, BlogTV, Tinychat, Tokbox, Facebook, MySpace, etc etc to increase your numbers of “followers” and increase your international visibility. To a degree, this will work for you. If you overdo it, you won’t be able to spend the required amount of time to maintain your position in any or potentially ALL of your endeavors. If you don’t maintain your positions properly, people are going to start recognizing you for SUCKING at Social Media more than they recognize you for playing football.

Of course, this is infinitely worse if you’re supposed to be a Social Media Expert (SME). Do. Not. Get. Caught. Slippin’. in your Social Media if you want someone to pay YOU to handle THEIR SM for them. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago, on January 06, 2008, I wrote and posted “Do NOT Tamper With Your Comments!”. At the time, I offered “Turn On Moderation” as an alternative:

Bill: “Turn On Moderation – Make it so that NOBODY’S comments make it to personalblog or widgetblog unless YOU approve them. That way, when everything ends up positive, you just look like you spun the situation by only letting the comments through that you liked. This is DIFFERENT from changing people’s posts because there’s never anything negative for people to see in the first place, AND dissenting comments don’t become agreeing comments with the same person’s name on the top, posted at the exact same time.”

I wrote that line at a time when I wasn’t doing a lot of commenting on other people’s blogs. I hadn’t achieved a perception of the potential effects of “You *just* look like you spun the situation by only letting the comments through that you liked” on people who visit your blog and make comments that never get approved. Let me tell you about it.

Initial Perception

Initially, when I check out a blog for the first time, I’m thinking that the person who wrote the posts is looking for A DISCUSSION. I’m thinking that if they didn’t want A DISCUSSION, they would have turned off comments.

Actually, one of the very first times I ever posted on someone else’s blog, it was a dating blog and the woman had written flawed advice. With my naive way of thinking about blogs as sort of “personally-hosted forums”, I wrote a nice long comment about what was incorrect about her ideas. To her credit, she emailed me my words, when she could have just deleted them. Hats Off to her for that. :) My ideas could have been lost in space, because I had written them directly to her blog entry form. Last time I ever did *THAT*.

She emailed me my words and explained to me that she wasn’t going to host my ideas about her post on HER site, and if I wanted to, I should place them on MY site. At the time, I wasn’t hip to trackbacks and pingbacks. I had a short email discussion with her expressing my opinion that I thought she was lame for having a blog and ONLY approving comments that made her look good. Pretty soon after that, I found out that this is pretty much status quo. She represents the mainstream and I’m “odd man out” on this issue. Read the rest of this entry »

Podcamp with BlackRobb & the Hip-Hop Association, originally uploaded by thehalfshow.com.

Bill Cammack, streaming live from PodCampNYC.

Podcamp with BlackRobb & the Hip-Hop Association, originally uploaded by thehalfshow.com.

Thanks to Jason Thomas (TheHalfShow), for taking this shot while I was live streaming the Hip-Hop session from PodCampNYC! :D

On Tyme Said, @Juanita L.(29) writes :

Bill, since you are into video what do you suggest people do when they want to get into video?

As A LOT OF PEOPLE have found out over the last couple of weeks, hahaha, I suggest for people that want to get involved with putting videos on the internet (or any other content, for that matter) that you think outside of the box of your own personal experience and sphere of influence.

I could have learned my own lesson yesterday. Tyme posted about me, and while I appreciated it, :) I didn’t think anything else about it. Next thing I know, there are 29 comments on the post. Next thing I know, someone dug up some video that I posted months ago. Next, people started digging in the crates for videos I posted about a year ago! :O

I don’t know how many hours worth of material I’ve posted since 2006, but what I DO know is that everything I’ve posted, I’ve MEANT to post. I meant for it to sit on the internet, and I meant for people to be able to watch it whenever they felt like it, from WHEREVER they felt like it. I’ve received hits from Japan, Hawaii and Australia, so I’m rather comfortable with the concept of my videos being watched literally world-wide.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming easier and easier for people to post videos to the internet. Peggy mentioned Seesmic. All you have to do is have a webcam, click on record, talk and save the video, and you’ve contributed content to the internet. However… There’s a false sense of privacy that comes along with that. Maybe you were talking in the middle of the night to another friend using a service like that. However, that video sits on their servers indefinitely. That means you weren’t *just* talking to your friend. You were talking to EVERYBODY that chooses to watch that video. You might just get put on BLAST, like this => Trapped in a cube.

Now, that video was no big deal, but you get the point. Regardless of who you MEANT for a video to go to, once you put it on the net, you relinquish all control over it. People can watch it, link it, download it to their computers, save it to their iPods… whatever.

So the way to get started in Internet Video is:

A) Practice in Private.
B) Post in Public.