Jaffe Juice

3 clips this week from my trip to Miami for Womm-U and our geek dinner:

1. Chatting with my new hero, author JC Hutchins about what can only be called a social media miracle with his book, "The 7th Son"

2. Yahoo!'s Ideologist, Jason Anello, talks about 3 emerging trends to watch

3. "Who are you and what do you do?" - in honor of Mitch Joel, recapping the geek dinner that Rohit Bhargava and myself attended in Miami, organized by ringleader Jay Berkowitz

For those of you who read this blog regularly (that is when I actually get to posting! HA!), you'd know my position on Second Life hypeing and dehyping by the Mainstream Media.

...but I got to thinking about the MSM with respect to "fringe" Twitter.

As 1938 Media's Loren Feldman so eloquently put it, Twitter is for "Geeks, Weirdos, Shills, Middle Aged Women looking to get laid" (I guess I would fit into the middle aged woman category then!)

And although the incredible guys over at Common Craft created "Twitter in Plain English", I'm not sure (despite the rave reviews) that this does anything to "rise the tide" and help newbies to take the plunge:

So I guess my question is whether we need to embrace the necessary evil that is mainstream media and accept the inevitable....new technology might tip within the innovator and early adopter through people like Robert Scoble, but in order to break out of the fishbowl, we need the help of the mainstream (media)

fyi, I'm jaffejuice on Twitter. Just over 2,000 followers, but won't rest until I get to 20,000 (surely there are more geeks, weirdos, shills and middle-aged women looking to get laid that read my blog and listen to my podcast???)

Where: Los Ranchos, 401 Biscayne Blvd., Miami FL
When: 7-10pm, May 8th (Thursday)
Who: Me, Rohit Bhargava, Jay Berkowitz, JC Hutchins and more...
Why?: Just because...

More info here

Forget the Long Tail, this is all about the Linkory Tale. You see the problem with stories living on forever, is that they need to be remembered and written down first.

Enter Linkory, one of crayon's newest clients. Officially:

Everyone has memories.  We share them with friends and family throughout our lives. Linkory.com is the only place that makes capturing and sharing memories fun, easy and free.

Your posting of a particular memory will act as the first link in a chain. Others in the global community with similar experiences will add to the chain. This powerful and exciting Linkory process will reveal the complete recollection of an event, enhance the experience for all participants, and generate an historical sequence. You will reunite with family and friends and connect with others who share common or related memories.

Recall huge world events:  Where were you when 9/11 happened, what were you doing when you heard about the death of Princess Diana or when the Berlin Wall came down? Were you in Myanmar in September, 2007?  Post your photographs and describe your visit to the 1969 Woodstock Festival, your attendance at the Simon and Garfunkel concert in Central Park or the Olympic Games. Share your experiences with others who were in your military unit , at your university, or at a summer camp with you. You can choose to make your memories public, or you may limit who may view and contribute to your Linkory.

In this small world,  Linkory.com is indeed a powerful collaboration and social networking space that connects all of us, globally.

For the first time, the world's history is being written in real-time, collectively and un-edited.  Linkory.com is the future of history.

Linkory isn't a social network per se; instead it provides a suite of conversational tools pivoting around the simple (yet profound) act of memories; life experiences; personal history or just personalized accounts or interpretations of events as they happened.

Like many start-ups in the conversational space, Linkory's success will be determined by the number of memories and the proficiency and extent to which people tag, link, share, embed and comment accordingly. In many respects I see Linkory as a very busy hub, with millions of commuters passing through on a continual basis. On the other hand, I see the Riddler's giant memory bank in the sky (although less sinister)

Either way, I love the idea of people coming together to share in moments that united, divided, mesmerized or shocked us. It can be as serendipitous as "Remember when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup in 1995" to "where were you on 9/11?". In the former case, two people could have been at the same game at the same time, but sitting in completely different places in the stadium...and yet today, they live next door to each other in San Diego. Or with 9/11, it could be a myriad of people from around the world expressing their pain and shock in unity.

Scott blogged about it here on the crayon blog. He also created a memory for Blogger Social '08 (you know, the one where I feigned illness in order to maintain my high maintenance primadonna reputation!) You'll notice btw that Greg (blogged about it here and thanks to his post, Bon Jovi is seared into my memory for all the wrong reasons!) added to this memory (one of the features/functionality associated with the interface)

I've already added my personal memory (as fresh as Friday), documenting my swearing in as an American citizen. I've also included a few photos and a video.

Check it out and perhaps add your own personal immigration experience as well.

Of course, you can always add your own memories here and be sure to provide a link to your own memories on this thread. I'll send a signed copy of my book to the one that inspires me the most.

On Friday, my wife and I were officially sworn in as American citizens. We drove out to Hartford with our 2 oldest kids and after receiving our certificates headed to the Capitol building for an amazing tour/meet 'n greet (including registering to vote)

I've captured the experience in more detail, using our new client, Linkory. If you are so inclined, check it out, along with a video and some photos.

I also tweeted about it and someone mentioned that I'm the first person ever to tweet about this kind of memory (you know how much I love being first - grin)

Finally, I have to thank Cam Beck for a beautiful gift (it's a Marine Corps 230th Anniversary Silver Dollar). Cam is testament to both the power of the social media community and what it is to be American.

Let's see how many responses we can get.

Q. How many social media experts does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. It depends - is it a physical or a virtual lightbulb?
A. Actually I wrote a blog post about it last week...
A. You expect me to answer this in 140 characters or less?
A. A wise crowd
A. The community will decide
A. You'll need to buy my book to find out...
A. I have no idea but I hope they Qik, uStream or ooVoo it live...