This Skin We're In by Dale Beermann

Why Mainstream Media Will Always Exist

The previous two days were interesting ones in the office.  There was a bomb scare and a subsequent arrest in downtown Madison, WI.  We had a bird's eye view of the whole thing.  One of the local newspaper guys actually took pictures out of our window.  When police started taping off the Square again yesterday, I went to Twitter to find out if anyone was talking about it.  I was apparently the only one.

Before anyone on Twitter knew what was going on, the Capital Times had posted a news article.  It was probably a half-hour or hour before the police arrived.  Kudos.  I went to Twitter because it has been known to help news spread fairly quickly (earthquakes come to mind).  In those cases however, there were very large networks of people that were helping spread the news.  The problem is that Twitter, and social media in general, is about relationships and the resulting conversations.  When there are millions of conversations happening, you can't sift through all the noise to find the right information.  In the case of the earthquakes, if you're listening on Twitter you now know that an earthquake happened, you just don't know any information about it.

When the Madison bomb scare happened the Capital Times was monitoring the police scanner.  I'm sure that there are individuals that do this as well.  They could also post that information to Twitter.  But if they do then I need to be listening to Twitter for specific terms, such as "bomb" or "Madison."  But nobody was saying anything.  At least, not about what I was interested in anyway.  Instead, there are tons of references to "[fill in the blank] is the bomb," or MSG or Madison Ave.  So I just went to madison.com and found the link on their homepage.

I was actually disappointed.  I really believe that social media is going to change things.  But when you really need a definitive source for information, where are you going to go?  If it's to social media, then it's certainly to a trusted source who has a large network.   Therein lies the issue.  Mainstream media is defined as having a large audience.  Technical definitions aside, in some cases we need someone to believe and we need to know that we can get the right information from them when we need it.  I don't see social media filling this gap anytime soon.

Recognizing Ambition in Gen-Y: How I Got My Dream Job

I'm the youngest of the Sharendipity co-founders by about five years (and it goes up a bit from there).  It's an interesting position to be in because, supposedly, Generation Y is a bunch of whining brats with no work ethic.  Yet here I am, part owner in a small startup working my ass off every day.  I even got my picture taken.

For the record, the Gen-Y critics are right about one thing.  I did expect recognition.  But I give my co-founders an incredible amount of credit.  They didn't mistake this as entitlement.  Instead, they saw my ambition and potential.

So here I am, the youngest one in a group of head-strong individuals. And that can be an intimidating place to be.  However, If you've taken to heart all of those things that define us as Gen-Y, then you can't let them go once you've gotten to the point where it's paid off.  You have to continue being aggressive and apply that aggression as best you can. 

The difference is that your passion isn't not just for you anymore.  It's for the company.  This is especially true if you've found a group of people that can ignore the Gen-Y criticism and see you for who you really are.  We owe it to them.

BarCamp Madison - User Groups

I'm over at BarCamp Madison this morning at ExtraBold.  First of all, the space is amazing.  Our offices at Sharendipity are only a block away and I've never seen it.  I love the openness.  I think we should go buy some couches now too.

The first session this morning was about Madison user groups.  It's great to see such a lively tech community here.  Abraham Willliams, who is organizing Web608, has a spreadsheet of local groups in Wisconsin here.  Go check it out, find something you're interested in, and head to one of the meetings.

Welcome

Hi everyone, and thanks for coming.  I decided to start a blog for a few different reasons.  First and foremost, I've had a really fantastic experience as the co-founder of Sharendipity.  We started the company when I was 25.  I'm 27 now, and we're going on two years.  I've learned an incredible amount in those two years, both in and out of the company, and I expect that a lot of that will end up here.

In addition, when we started the company I realized how few of my friends were in similar situations.  I was meeting a lot of local entrepreneurs and seeing my network grow pretty quickly.  I wanted to be able to help others do the same thing.  Last year, I happened to go to a talk by Penelope Trunk as part of an event for a local young professionals group called Madison MAGNET.  I found out that they had an entrepreneurial committee so I went to the first meeting.  It also just so happened that they needed a co-chair.  So here I am, a year later, co-chairing a local group for young(ish) entrepreneurs, and I think we're actually making a difference.

Recently I've realized that I don't have quite the outlet I'd like for all these experiences though.  We have a company blog but a lot of the things I want to talk about aren't quite appropriate for it.  Some of them are just personal thoughts and some are technical nuances I've run across as a programmer, but surely some of them are rants and opines that probably shouldn't be seen as the public face of the company.  They'll still be public, and I'm definitely not going to be ashamed of them, but they will be mine and not the company's, and in some cases that might be an important distinction.

I hope that you'll stick around and see what this blog becomes.