Encouraging blogging at Comcast Interactive Media

Posted on by

A few of you know me solely from this blog, others from my time at Knight Ridder/Philly.com, others for the conversation I’m helping spawn between technologists, bloggers, and newspaper industry in the Philadelphia region, and many, many others for my hosting of the Philly Future – Philadelphia’s blogging community. You might consider me a blog evangelist in the Philadelphia region, however, to the folks who announce “Philly’s blog-father is here” when I make it to Philly region blog meetups (which I haven’t in ages – but plan on making a comeback to) – ummm… that’s nice but it makes me want to run for the hills.

I rarely talk about my employer – Comcast – here on paradox1x.org. Shoot – I rarely talk about it at all. I don’t speak for the company and there are better avenues to get customer service then a blog.

However, I *am* qualified to share why I like working for Comcast, and to share a little about what I do (I’m a software engineer, more on that in later posts). Maybe by doing this, just maybe, some of the artificial walls between us may come down, and maybe you’d even want to join the company.

Over the past few months, behind the scenes at work, I’ve been encouraging teammates to join me by mentioning on their blogs Comcast and CIM.

Today, I’d like to point you towards two of them, Flash gurus both – Gabo, our User Experience Lead at gabocorp.com and Arpit Mathur at code zen. One of the interesting personal projects they are working on is wiring up a Flash UI to WordPress with XML-PRC – and that’s just for fun 🙂 Check out Arpit’s review of his last two years at Comcast.net.

Recent Emma Pictures

Posted on by

It’s been a while since our last Emma update. So much has happened since. Emma is walking and running. She dances when the mood strikes – which is everyday 🙂 She’s full time on solids and has learned to use a fork even.

Ya know, it’s interesting how we follow so many markers of progress and growth as parents, but the one that matters most to us is that she is all the time smiling brighter than the Sun and has a laugh that tickles your heart.

I’ve been planning to share pictures from her birthday, but some folks just are too shy and don’t want their pictures on the web. I can’t help but share some of our joy however.





A Must Read: “Frontiers of Innovation in Community Engagement”

Posted on by

Norgs discussion participants Lisa Williams, and Dan Gillmor, along with Jane Mackay produced a must read report that documents a group of newspapers that have either dived in and embraced social/participatory media as part of their mission, or are dipping their toes in the water.

The report shares the tools, methodologies, and approaches these newspapers have taken – along with splashing some cold water on the hype that some of us are apt to shout.

The report includes findings on what works, what hasn’t worked, and provides recommendations.

You can read it here: http://citmedia.org/frontiers.

Bye-Bye Battlestar Galactica

Posted on by

BSG’s season, after a terrific start, culminating in one of the greatest sci-fi space battle scenes ever has gone downhill since. Far too much X-Files-like myth twisting over character and story development finalized last night in the killing off of it’s most developed, interesting character – Kara Thrace – “Starbuck”.

Good bye BSG. The move to Sunday night was killing me anyways. At least now I have my time back.

Anil Dash: “Those of you who are defending this status quo are defending a culture of failure”

Posted on by

The past few days there seems an opening in the ongoing conversation talking place about speaker lists at tech conferences and their lack of diversity. A subject Shelley Powers has rightly brought up to various of promoters and organizers of conferences to their regular dismay.

Take some time and read around:

Eric Meyer: Diverse It Gets: In my personal view, diversity is not of itself important, and I don’t feel that I have anything to address next time around. What’s important is technical expertise, speaking skills, professional stature, brand appropriateness, and marketability. That’s it.

Shelley Powers: Diversity isn’t important…and neither are standards or accessibility: Maybe I’ve been weblogging too long, but it seems to me that a lot of people are doing a lot of crap in the name of ‘marketability’. If you want to be self-serving jerks, that’s fine with me, but at least be honest about it: don’t wrap it in ‘marketability’ and think it noble.

Kottke: Gender diversity at web conferences: From this list, it seems to me that either the above concerns are not getting through to conference organizers or that gender diversity doesn’t matter as much to conference organizers as they publicly say it does.

Dori Smith: Gender diversity at web conferences: The number of conferences I’m currently scheduled to speak at this year about JavaScript/Ajax is the same as the number of conferences that have asked me to speak – zero. So I have to say that no, these folks aren’t even trying.

Anil Dash: The Old Boys Club is for Losers: Those of you who are defending this status quo are defending a culture of failure.

Rafe Colburn : Women and men: Diversity is a worthwhile end unto itself.

Sometimes it requires a series of kicks in the ass to move things forward. As things stand – if tech conferences are a reflection of the Web industry (see Kottke’s post for some figures) – then the Web industry is *exclusive* rather than inclusive. A reflection of society’s status quo. Vint Cerf, might agree.

Aren’t we collectively building an architecture of participation? Our face to face gatherings should mirror that. And if they don’t – then they reveal who we truly care about – don’t they?

Update – More Links:

Meriblog: Conference Diversity .. the Permathread Returns: There is a distinct and definite business case for diversity.

Anil Dash: The Essentials of Web 2.0 Your Event Doesn’t Cover: To conference organizers: If you haven’t heard of these people or their work, or you think that Yet Another Bookmarking To-Do List Guy is more important, perhaps you owe some refunds.

Personism: List of Women Speakers for Your Conference: Making a list is just a start, but what a freaking list it is. I am psyched.

Shelley Powers: Progress: Consider this: every time this topic comes up, about women in the industry and women in tech conferences, who are the people who get the most links? The most attention? The most respect? Who appear in Techmeme, Tailrank, and Megite? Kottke, Dash, Myer, Messino, Scoble, Searls, Winer-do you see something odd about this? Regardless of how many women write on this, it’s the men who get the attention. I’d say if we want to look at what’s ‘wrong’, we start right here.

And with that last insightful quote, human aggregator Karl is ummm… going to spend time with his daughter now. Shelley has a point – a few glances at various aggregators pretty much bore it out today – and all I could think – being the guy I am – is how sadly ironic it was.

Update: More Links

Troutgirl: The gender of conference speakers: With one exception, technical (or tech-biz) conference organizers do NOTHING proactive to seek out or push for female speakers — and I wish they would just stop claiming that they do. I am a long-time LAMP dev and author, a founding member of Dojo, leader of a Comet project, a proven scaler of graph-based systems, CTO of a venture-backed Web 2.0 company, vocal proponent of women in tech, experienced speaker at technical conferences, and friends with many of the people who program talks, panels, and tracks. If I’m not being proactively sought out to speak, I can be confident few other women are either.

A Blogger Might Die For His Writing

Posted on by

He’s going to jail, and there are calls to put him to death. Yet the blogosphere, the Tech blogosphere, the Left blogosphere, and most of the Right, just don’t seem to care. Boing Boing has extensive linkage about Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, and what he faces, for sharing thoughts about political oppression, discrimination against women, and more on his blog. Much more at Free Kareem!.

Update: Global Voices has a post sharing other Egyptian bloggers speaking out. via Ed Cone.

Happy Birthday PapaScott

Posted on by

Hope you had a great one. Keeping my fingers crossed about your back as well.

As for my herniated disc, the good news is that with my right foot healing, the last week I’ve been able to go to physical therapy without pain from it slowing me down. After four sessions, I can’t say for sure if I’ve had any real progress, but it is good that the pain in my left leg, from the pinched nerve, hasn’t gotten any worst, and *seems* to come less often.

I gotta share some pictures from Emma’s first birthday last Sunday 🙂 It was a great time with lots of family coming together at our place.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Posted on by

Just wishing you all a great Valentine’s Day today and every day.

Lots to share, including photos from Emma’s first birthday party 🙂

Spammers have messed up this blog’s commenting functionality. Sooner or later I will upgrade to the latest and greatest Moveable Type – from what I hear things are much improved – but until then – apologies.

Hugh Mcleod: ‘the blogosphere is not a good place to “push” corporate messages’

Posted on by

Mentions of ‘Stormhoek’, a South African vineyard that Hugh Mcleod is Marketing Strategist for on his blog: 31.

Hugh public relations is “getting social media all wrong”:

…the blogosphere is not a good place to “push” corporate messages.

That being said, the ‘sphere does have its uses for corporates, the same way it does for individuals. As I see it, the ‘sphere is the world’s largest “Idea Incubator”. It’s a great place to seed ideas. It’s a great place to test which ideas have traction, which ideas are “Beyond Lame”. Which conversations get people’s attention, and which conversations make people roll their eyeballs.

If your ideas have merit, bloggers will talk about them. If they don’t, they won’t. This lets you know what to expect when you finally unleash your ideas for real on the big, bad world. Without spending a king’s ransom finding out the hard way.

It’s simple and brutal and it works.

Humpf

Very, very, oh, so very related:

Seth Finkelstein: Pay Per Post And The Populism Pose – Or, Blue-Collar vs. White-Collar Capitalism

Shelley Powers: Falling Out

Mathew Ingram: PayPerPost: a Web 2.0 witch-hunt

Mathew Ingram: Scoble says he’s biased — does it matter?

Publishing 2.0: Transparent Ads Are Better Than Fake “Conversations”

Robert Scoble: Scoble’s a shill … more details

Valleywag: Robert Scoble: Shilling for Intel

Buzzmachine: Pray per post

Hypocrisy. Elitism. Us-people-who-get-it-versus-the-great-unwashed. The-rules-are-different-for-us-then-those-who-are-ugly-and-dumb.