Archive - 2013
March 18th
A Podcast Presentation Tool - @bufferapp and @Tweetchat
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/18/2013 - 19:27On March 30th, PodCamp Western Mass will take place. Already, people are brainstorming session ideas. I've written about PodCamps several times in the past. What is the Difference Between a Good Podcamp and a Great Podcamp? is the blog post that perhaps best captures my thoughts about PodCamps.
A good podcamp does not have people coming in to do presentations. Presentations are done by self professed experts trying to tell other people something important that they’ve learned. There are places for presentations, but I don’t think podcamps are one of them. Presentations reflect a major problem in so much of online media today. Everyone wants to talk, and no one wants to listen. A good podcamp is one where everyone goes to listen and learn.
With this, I thought I'd share my latest favorite presentation tool, a tool that should work well for Podcamp. I've used it for a couple presentations and I know a few other people are thinking of using this idea.
On the screen where the presentation is being projected, instead of projecting PowerPoint, I project a Tweetchat using a predefined hashtag. I set the update speed to 5 seconds to try and minimize Then, I load up my talking points in Buffer. I set Buffer so that it won't do any automatic updates until after the presentation is scheduled to be over.
Then, when I do the presentation, I bring up Buffer on my Android phone. It should work the same way for iPhones. My tweets are their waiting for me, and I can click on the option to send each tweet immediately to twitter as I get the the tweet in my presentation. Within five seconds, it shows up on the screen.
What is also nice about this, is that gives everyone else a chance to add their thoughts to the discussion on the presentation screen.
For those who believe that presentations should follow a 10-20-30 rule, ten slides, twenty minutes and thirty point font, buffer helps with this, if you are using the free version of buffer, you are limited to ten tweets. When I do important larger presentations, I upgrade my buffer account to the paid version.
The problems I run into are trying to see what else has been added to the discussion, responding to it, and dealing with some of the delay. However, it is a great way of doing presentations and a skill I'm working on enhancing.
So, anyone up for some Buffer/Tweetchat enabled presentation/discussions at Podcamp Western Mass?
March 16th
Seven Stitches
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/16/2013 - 16:55As I helped clean out my mother's house last weekend, I came across my writing book from elementary school. There were nine different stories in it, all written to writing prompts in fifth grade. It must have been written in 1969 or 1970. At first, I thought about transcribing all of them to the blog. However, as I read them, some of them were really dark, perhaps it was from the shadow of the Vietnam War.
With that, I'm starting off by sharing the final story in the writing booklet. It recounts a true story that happened to me in fifth grade.
Seven Stitches
It was a nice Saturday. I was going on a campout with Troop 9. We hiked to the Col. Seth Warner camp on the Broad Brook trail. We got to the camp at lunch time. We and and played around. We were up so far Broad Brook was a small stream. Polock yelled, "Nobody get hurt 'cause it's a long way to the Medical Center."
It was my first campout with the troop and I thought it would be fun. Mr. Hatton drove the supplies in with a four wheel drive. We set camp and played in the brook. We threw stones in splash each other. Mr. Goodell said it was time to get ready for supper. So, Harvey Chisson threw his last rock which hit me on the forehead. It did not hurt but I was scared half to death. I had blood drowning my face. I had a big bandaid on my head. Mr Goodell went for help. My dad's car had four-wheel drive, but he was out of town, so Mr. Hatton brought me home, but when he got here two hours after the accident his car broke down. He fixed it and brought me home. My dad had just got home at 9:00 PM. I finally made it to the Medical Center and had seven stitches.
March 15th
I Get My News….
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/15/2013 - 20:43Today celebrates the tenth anniversary of the launching of Blog for America. Over the past ten years, I've followed a lot of different blogs and used various tools to do so. Back in 2005, I wrote about using Flock, del.icio.us and Bloglines. I used del.icio.us quite a bit, but over time started using Bloglines more. Both were shutdown and then resuscitated. Flock never really did much for me, but I did end up using Rockmelt quite a bit, including some limited RSS capabilities.
When Twitter came along, I started spending more time with Twitter, and my wife even made a shirt for me with the line, "I get my news on Twitter".
When Blogline shutdown, I moved most of my blog reading over to Google Reader. Now, it has been announced Google Reader is shutting down, and I need to figure out where I go next. A lot of people have been writing a lot of blog posts about the end of Google Reader and what to do next. These have varied from recommending Feedly, news blur, and The Old Reader. Others have spoken about using IFTTT and a 'read later' site. The option that seems like it comes closest for me is the revitalized Feedburner.
Things that are important to me are the ability to look at all unread blog posts, or unread blog posts on specific blogs. It is important to me to be able to have many feeds. Currently, I'm following around 500 different blogs. Bloglines does all of this fairly nicely. The one thing that I'll miss when I finally move off of Google Reader is the mobile abilities. I haven't been able to find a bloglines client for Android.
Another thing that I liked about Google Reader is that besides having a mobile client, you could also read your stories on Flipboard. Hopefully, there will be the ability to read feeds stored from Bloglines or other sites from Flipboard and other mobile apps as well.
Other sites have suggested using newer news services that select what they think I'll be interested in based on topics. So far, other than Google News, none of these have really been all that interesting to me.
All of that said, I have three months before I have to move off of Google Reader, and I wouldn't be surprised to see lot of new developments between now and then.
If any of you have recommendations for good RSS/Blog readers, let me know
March 14th
"In My Own Little Chair"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 21:01In my own little corner in my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be.
These words came back to me as I helped clean out the basement of my mother's house. I always felt some kinship to Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein production from my childhood; not so much about going to the ball, but more about being picked on by siblings and wanting a place to escape, to my own little corner.
There was a small red rocking chair that I put in my secret hideaway beneath the basement stairs. It was my own little corner.
Cinderella would come around on the television about once a year and we would all watch it. The world has changed so much since those days. Now, Fiona watches whatever she wants on her iPhone whenever she wants. Some of the simple magic seems to be gone.
My sister and brother headed out to take another load of stuff out of the house. I stayed behind, lugging boxes of fabric and yarn out of the basement. My mother loved to sew. She would get together with other women from town for sewing circle. That was her peer group, her time to socialize.
As the car became more and more packed with fabric and yarn, I worried about how it would be received. We have too much stuff at our own house. Yet I knew that Fiona would appreciate it.
Perhaps sewing is a trait that can be passed on, skipping a generation. Perhaps, though I never developed a love of sewing or needle craft myself, I am a carrier, and Fiona has inherited some of it through me, from her grandmother.
By the time I came back from my next trip to my mother's house, Fiona already had one project nearing completion and was dreaming of others.
Me? I now sit in a much larger chair, in a different corner of a different house.
On the wings of my fancy I can fly anywhere
and the world will open its arms to me.
Now, I try to record my flights of fancy in stories I tell online.
All alone in my own little chair.
March 13th
More Dream Fragments
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 21:12The other night, after spending time cleaning out my mother's house to get it ready for sale, I had another one of those "not being able to find my way home" sort of dreams. This time, it was in some sort of university setting. Many of the details have escaped in the morning light.
I suspect these dreams are triggered by thinking about my mother's death. On top of this, my wife's boss's mother just passed away which may be adding to these triggers.
There are several different parts of the dream that I have memories of. One was about a coworker getting into an argument about the role of doctors and nurses in primary care. In another section, there was a large sheet cake that graduates twist a screw into. I was not a graduate, but I got to place the first screw, which made some of the others particularly upset.
There was a section in a bar. This may have been where my coworker had the argument, but I don't remember more details. Then, there was the trying to get home. It involved going through levels of an underground parking lot, trying to find a way out.
My dream then moved into wondering about how a friend who was supposed to have a tumor removed on Friday is doing.
A couple days later, I had more dreams that seem to be related to cleaning out my mother's house. One was cleaning out a car in preparation to try and outrun some sort of coming storm. There were a bunch of weird parts, like someone sailing a sailboat up onto the land, and the keel plowing a furrow in the sand. Then a strange woman tried to get a ride with my brother and I as we prepared to leave.
Later, I was at a party. It was at a house from my childhood neighborhood. My brother was at the party, and a friend from the town I live in now showed up. When I was supposed to leave, and head to my mother's house, I tried to find them to get them to come, but I couldn't.
