As a professional, many of us are troubled by the notion that we may be judged by our actions, our history, our lifestyle, or the people we associate with.

In some cases we go through great lengths to create separation between our personal or public lives, even creating multiple silos within our personal and professional lives to create harmony and goodwill in our conversation.

Using myself as a personal example: I am the person who can have almost any conversation on almost any topic. I have a thick skin that is supported by a multi-faceted personality with humor, morality, and respect at its core. I have had the benefit of dealing with life and death crisis situations, personal tragedy, and industry changing business problems. With that said, I can talk to almost anyone on any subject.I know when to admit to things I do not know, and when to ask the hard questions.

The social media world creates a strange track history of my interactions with these conversations. I have a personal poetry site that doesn’t have a thing to do with my business life, and like every other person: my friends have a myriad of personal beliefs ranging from extreme religion to activism.

With such a varied personal and professional background, the web audience at large could dig into any particular silo and eventually find something they do not agree with… but they can also see a breadth of experience. Continue Reading »

One of my personal / professional projects over the past year has included analysis of dozens of large in-person events. They have ranged in size and scope, but a short list of the events being monitored includes:

• Social Media Club Seattle (150 to 300 person events, held monthly)
• Display Week Seattle (5,000+ attendees)
• DEMO (500 to 1000 attendees, held twice each year)
• Seattle Chamber Tradeshow (5000+ attendees)

Having monitored these events online and in-person, there was a basic and simple theory I was working with: that attendee attention span and information spikes were ultimately at odds with each other. Continue Reading »

As an update to my social media policy articles on 123socialmedia.com, I have collected a list of information that is broken down into real world examples of different social media policies across a variety of top industry niches. Below you can find a breakdown of  the top industry categories, or click through to read additional policies from dozens of companies in each segment.

If you have any questions about social media policies and how they apply to your business model, feel free to contact me and I’ll point you to more specific resources (right now I have about 600 social media policies in my list and they just don’t fit into a singular article!) Continue Reading »

As we move into different types of media, one of the most confusing is Hyper Media.

A few years ago, Hyper Media was an entirely technical term used by computer programmers to identify the linking of information using code. This is a core of the word “hyper” – which is used in terms like hyperlink or hypertext: which is when words link to something like my twitter account for Barry Hurd.

For another spin on the definition:

“Hypermedia, a term derived from hypertext, extends the notion of the hypertext link to include links among any set of multimedia objects, including sound, motion video, and virtual reality. It can also connote a higher level of user/network interactivity than the interactivity already implicit in hypertext.”

But wait… the term Hyper Media is evolving (like everything else on the web!)

The real world and digital world are now linked. This is mostly through the use of several trends:

• The creation of digital profiles
  (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin)
• The migration of real world data to online
  (bills, ticket sales, invitation lists)
• The utilization of online contact lists
  (email, friend networks, associations, employers)
• The usage of wireless browsers
  (laptops, cell phones, mobile gadgets)

Technically speaking, using things like a Twitter handle or having personal website (like barryhurd.com) – has transformed us to become hyper-people (which is entirely different than just having too much sugar in your diet.)

BASIC EXAMPLE ONE
When you have a business card that has a twitter username such as @barryhurd , most of the general population now has a cell phone that is capable of experiencing “more of Barry” than what is immediately standing right in front of them.

BASIC EXAMPLE TWO
A person turns to Google and “Googles me” to immediately find out more information. In this instance, my name has become the technological “code” required to access a variety of different information sources.

EVOLVING AND COMBINING

Hypermedia is now becoming more present in our lives thanks to powerful handheld devices and widespread wireless access (WIFI, 3G/4G), spawning hundreds of different applications using augmented reality to bring hypermedia into an easier to understand platform. For many applications, this means using tags or visual markers that can be identified by a camera and then find additional data on the web.

The FOX smash hit Avatar released an entirely new line of toys that offers additional “toy” experiences using a web cam

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LEGO installed store kiosk that allowed children to view boxes and see animated constructs based on the LEGO parts contained within.

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Have you seen any interesting applications of hypermedia and augmented reality?

I have bought and sold domains for years. It is a fun personal hobby of tracking a unique “digital stock”

A friend has a domain name that has value and recently received a fairly anonymous request to sell it.

That is great… but he doesn’t want to lose his shirt and find out that he sold the next Amazon.com for $100. He also doesn’t want break the bank.

Using some basic ideas around contingency and on-going revenue contracts, there are several ways to move forward. Continue Reading »