The Working Title » GPD08

Good People Day 2008 [Part 2: The List Begins]

Andrew — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:03:38 +0000

I sometimes ramble and post totally random stuff on this blog (though sometimes I like to think that I post some interesting stuff) so first off as part of Good People Day , I’d like to just thank everyone who might be reading this in their RSS reader or browser. So thanks for stopping by, and if you subscribe to my RSS feed, well then thanks for sticking around! And for those of you who follow me on twitter , well you guys see quite a bit of me some days so thanks for continuing to tune in!

So I’m going to attempt a list of sorts of great people that should be followed, subscribed to and connected with. Of course I think my family is pretty great and I would say that they are unlikely to read this, but it seems that my relatives have just recently discovered my blog. So thanks to them for leaving cozy comments like these over the last few weeks.

These are the Good People across the internet I think you should follow closely because they are really pretty great!:

Nick Trusty is a long-time friend of mine who is now out in NYC. If you ever need a contact in the talent agency business, touch base with him and he’ll know who to talk to.
Michelle Compton happens to be Nick’s significant other and also a good friend of mine who focuses on international women’s and children’s non-profit organizations. (and she is incidentally looking for a job, so if you know of anything, be sure to give her a shout). She also reminded me that today is more than just GPD08.
Lisa Young is my manager at Outrider and she has a great blog geared towards moms and has been tapped into social media since the beginning so she is a great source of knowledge if you ever need anything.
I also work with Reem Abeidoh and Tanner Hobin , both of whom know just about everything you could know about social media and online communities.
Sam Harrelson might be one of the smartest guys out there on the internet. I’ve tuned into his podcast more than a few times and his twitter feed is really insightful to the world of the internet and marketing. Not only that, but the guy is getting a PhD in Assyriology. Impressed? Of course you are.
Jeremiah Owyang is an analyst with Forrester and he also runs a popular web strategy blog. It just so happens that I once left a comment on this blog and ended up getting my current job from it. Jeremiah is always available for questions and guidance and he frequently offers great insights to the industry as a whole so be sure to check him out.
Matt Dickman is a great blogger out of Cleavland who has awesome videos breaking down new sites and web concepts as well as regular posts that offer a great look at how brands should be interacting with their customers.
Another blogger/new media evangelist is Jonathan Coffman who specializes in the new media evangelism and convergence journalism. He has some interesting projects in the pipeline built on Adobe Air that harness social media for traditional media outlets.
Nick O’Neill runs the Social Times and AllFacebook.com and he does a great job with both. I don’t think I could ever blog quite as much as Nick does, but he offers great quick insights to developments in the social networking space.
Connie Bensen is a community manager at ACDSee and does great work as well on the Web Strategy facebook group which is really a great knowledge base. As well, her blog is a great resource for both newcomers and veterans of the social space. And as a side note, she is from my native land of Minnesota, so she has to be awesome, right?
David Gillespie is a marketing specialist and blogger over in Australia who also happens to play a little bit of music on the side that I happen to think is awesome. So check out his blog and pick up his album while you’re at it!
Garret Pendergraft is a Philosophy PhD student out in California who once upon a time was my TA in both Ethics and Logic. Honest to God, because of those classes I think I understand the world in a very different context than I did before. Or at least I am able to more effectively articulate it. So in my opinion, Pen is for sure worth tuning into. He is also new to twitter so go follow him .
Of course I have to say Gary Vaynerchuk is pretty awesome because this entire movement was his brainchild! Gary has an awesoem blog that really puts things into perspective sometimes. If you aren’t watching him, you better start.

I’m sure I’ve left as few people off on this first pass so I will come up with my second list later tonight! But these are all great people and I appreciate all that I’ve learned from each of them and I’m sure you will too, so go check them out!

Also, to see the entire internet coming together in this meme, check out the blog I built last night at GoodPeopleDay2008.com .

#GPD08

Good People Day 2008 [Part 1]

Andrew — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:51:40 +0000

For those of you who haven’t yet noticed, I love social media. I like it far more than I think is healthy, but its the good kind of fanaticism that makes you devour every scrap of information you can find and then run out to tell everyone about it. It started when I was a sociology student at the University of Missouri and it occurred to me that some of the theories we were studying were antiquated by the advent of social media and that those that were applicable were too limited. It was like using a Lego model as a blueprint to build the Empire State Building.

The truth is that people connecting over the internet has completely changed the way we interact, get basic information and spread news about our own lives. To think about it really just boggles the mind… a seemingly random spattering of people who are not individually influential can come together without ever seeing one another and unite as a driving force with one voice and astounding effectiveness. That is what amazes me about the world we live in today and I want to be a part of it, which is why I work and live in the realm of social media.

I love the world of social media beyond marketing and promotions; when people rally around a cause and strive for change in something. Usually it is something negative that people rally against but today it gets to be something positive for people to support and propagate. Because in case you haven’t heard yet, today has been declared Good People Day 2008 : a day to thank people just for being themselves and a day to tell the world why those people are great. There are some negative people out there, but I’d say that the vast majority of people have something good about them! So lets celebrate those attributes and spread the word about why these people are great.

So blog it, twitter it, tumblr it, digg it, do it. I’m building my lists of those people who I think are just great for one reason or another to post in a couple parts later today. In the meantime, I’m working hard and fast on GoodPeopleDay2008.com to aggregate and blog all the content out there that gets tagged with GPD08…so spread the word!

Also, as my friend Michelle pointed out on my last post, today is not just Good People Day but it is also the Day of Action: A Day to End Sexual Violence ; a part of Sexual Violence Awareness month so be sure to spread that message as well!

An Idea to Rally Around.

Andrew — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:36:04 +0000

Gary Vaynerchuk is, without a doubt, one of the most open, engaging, motivational and insightful guys I’ve ever encountered. He runs Wine Library TV as well as publishing a daily video blog post that usually revolves around some aspect of social media and the community it creates. Watch a couple of his videos. I guarantee that halfway through the first one, you will already have a new tab open so you can add his RSS feed to your reader. He rocks. That’s about the best way I could ever sum it up.

Anyway, Gary is one of those guys who defaults to seeing the good in everything and has a knack for seeing potential in things that others take for granted. So today, he was struck with inspiration during a conversation with Adam Hirsch , a writer over at Mashable.com and out sprung the video I’ve embedded below. Check it out and tell me with a straight face that you aren’t excited about it.

So, tomorrow reach out to someone; call an old friend; write a blog post thanking your readers for stopping by or thanking those people who have positively influenced you to get you where you are today; twitter a thank you to everyone you have following you, after all you invade their computer screen multiple times a day! Tell other people why the people you follow or the people who follow you are the best. Sell your friends to the world; if you scratch some one else’s back and boost their personal brand, I guarantee it will come back to you twice as strong one day!

This is Gary’s original post with the above video:

I want to try to get the WHOLE INTERNET COmmunity behind this mission I have to make sure that tomorrow people write and talk abd blog and twitter and just flat out SING about people that are AWESOME and GOOD. It is time that we take control of the fact that WE are the media and pump out a day tomorrow that will make NOISE across this WORLD! Please take the time tonight to gather your thoughts as you come up with ideas on how to spread the word about AWESOME people! I am looking for blog posts, twitters, powncers, facebooking, digging, flickring, stumpling on all things that are good about PEOPLE!
Please tag all work “GPD08?

So reach out and touch someone and help push the idea that social media can rally people around a positive message and help draw the world closer together. We walk around with our iPods in everyday and toon out the rest of the world because we are too busy jamming in our heads while we twitter about traffic… well tomorrow is the day to show that all this technology can build us up together rather than separate us across a digital divide.

Tomorrow I’ll post my thank you post for GPD08. (Good People Day 2008!)