Dino Baskovic Can't Lose

The idea came to me by "freak" accident (ahem) this morning when my better half accidentally posted something about rooster hair to my Twitter account. Her laptop is on the fritz so we've both been sharing mine. This means having to sign in and out of our respective Facebook profiles and such whenever we swap the Mac. Sure, we each have our own mobile devices but sometimes you just want to type on a keyboard. Regardless, all week we've been accidentally posting to each others' accounts. Harmless, but it made me wonder...

For the sake of science, would you entrust the keys to your online persona to another soul, and vice versa, even if only for 24 hours? Would you be willing to try?

Sure, you'd have to find someone who would agree to go along, figure out all the privacy and security stuff, all of that. Goes without saying, and perhaps easier said than done. But once you got past that, could you imagine blogging on your lab partner's behalf while they tweeted on yours? And could this work for businesses as well as buddies? Would you make it clear to both sets of audiences, and why or why not?

So many variables to consider, I know. Aimee and I may give it a go, if not just to mess with our in-laws:

[My wife, to her mom, pretending to be me]
"No, Aimee made it clear in no uncertain terms that you wanted the girls all summer. We're just grabbing a bite to eat on the way to your house. No need to help me unload the truck. I pretty much brought their entire wardrobes. But they will want to eat again the moment I arrive and they are already screaming 'Nana!' and 'New toys!'"

[Me, to Aimee's tweeps]
"Screw this green organic vegan crap. The 'Kind Diet' my ass. I need cow, NOW. #winning"

Okay, maybe not to those extremes. In fact, forget the prank factor. Drum up a deal where you guest host/star/chair with someone you know, just for one single day. Trading places on Posterous. Whatever.

Plausible? Practical? Possible?

Please share if you intend to try this at home (or work). But please kids, do not try this at home without consulting a physician, human resources, a law office or a priest. I can't be held responsible if you lose the kids or the farm, especially when you mess with moms.

Photo: Evan Amos via Wikimedia Commons

My wife just asked, "How long is the typical blog post?"

I answered, "As long as it needs to be."

In this case, less is more.

Introducing DB8, my latest brainchild. Somewhat daily, I will ask a simple question. Could be about business, or brain surgery, or bees, or dogs with bees in their mouth and when they bark they shoot bees at you... People post their answers, and if all goes well, all hell breaks loose.

For you web geeks, I am using Tumblr enabled with Disqus and a terrific theme designed by Simon Fletcher. Figured now that Tumblr is hot again I may as well jump back on the bandwagon. Just don't tell Posterous. They'll be pissed.

Anyway, that's DB8 (pronounced "debate"). Play nice.

Photo by Skip Steuart, 2009. (CC)

A little over a week ago and very much on a whim, I invited random people to tweet me suggestions for blog topics. First come first serve, limit 10, one topic per tweep (tweeter, Twitterer—whatever). Oh, and anything goes, even if I am clueless as to the subject matter. Heck, I can make stuff up as good as anyone.

Starting tonight, I will blog the first in a series of 11 posts. (That's right, 11 and not 10. I had to make an exception for another guy named Dino. It's what Dinos do for each other.) The topics more or less include:

1. @BridgettsWorld: The next big trend in "social" punctuation.
2. @Marjo_Elaine: Proper express lane etiquette at the grocery.
3. @prchck123: The Old Spice campaign and Alyssa Milano.
4. @JohnPotterGR: The Grand Rapids Area Professionals for Excellence (GRAPE) and thriving through online collaboration.
5. @BrianCousins: Global supremacy amongst chocolate confectioners.
6. @cjeck: Poor urban planning from a PR perspective.
7. @CharlieCurve: Converting an apathetic public into an ambitious community.
8. @NullFear: Tacos.
9. @tverma29: Viewing people through Twitter-colored glasses, rosy or otherwise.
10. @SClarkWXYZ: The #backchannel.
11. @dino_dogan: A poetic look at French bum named "Pier" in NYC, written in my native tongue.

Many thanks and/or apologies in advance to everybody that tweeted me. I promise to turn this shameless attempt at self-promotion into something worthwhile for all. You can follow the fun on Twitter, hashtag: #PanderingForPosts.

Photo by Ho John Lee, 2006. (CC)

Jennifer Fong is a speaker, consultant, and trainer who teaches direct selling companies and individual direct sellers how to use social media effectively as a business building tool. I got to meet Jennifer last may when she spoke to Amway's PR team in Grand Rapids. About a month ago, Jennifer announced that she was taking a long-deserved vacation and asked me if I would like to be a guest poster on her blog for a day.

Honored and humbled, I jumped at the chance. "Beyond Facebook: Building a global social media strategy" ran last week.  I welcome your thoughts, particularly from those of you wanting to broaden your social media horizons around the world:

Facebook is increasing both market penetration and saturation worldwide, but there are other players in the game, and they are the real deal.

There is more to social networking than Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter (even if it just hit 20 billion tweets) and you should see what else the world has to offer.

And speaking of Twitter, be sure to follow Jennifer and keep her in mind for your social media presentation needs!

It's simple, really. I will blog about whatever the first 10 people tell me to blog. Ten posts in all, first come first served according to datetime stamp. Even if I haven't a clue as to the subject matter and I have to ad lib as I go.

The only stipulations are that you must tweet me your suggestion at @ProfessorDino via Twitter, and only one entry per person, please. No changing your mind, so make your tweet count.

Nothing's off the table here, and I can't guarantee you'll like what I write. But I will of course credit you for your suggestion.

So, what say ye?

ESPN blogs about the Tribe Social Deck, an experiment to drum up excitement (with apologies to John Adams) and boost attendance for Cleveland Indians home games.

The idea is to select Tribe fans that will gladly trade their score cards for press credentials in anticipation that they will cover games online and generate positive buzz. Even though the Indians could stand for more wins than bloggers, it's a worthwhile experiment that costed their PR team virtually nothing to produce.

Being a Cleveland boy myself, it will interest me to see how the Tribe Social Deck plays out. At least one local blogger and the Waiting For Next Year site have sounded off, and I wonder if other sports venues will follow suit.

For now, my Tribe is four games behind the Twins in the AL Central. Tweets are great, but so are stats.

Mr. Sachin Agarwal
Chief Executive Officer
Posterous.com

Thinking I'm done with Tumblr and torn between keeping Posterous or moving back to WordPress for my own blog.

Image courtesy of J.DoyonPhotography's photostream on Flickr

As I lamented on Facebook earlier this week about my pathetic foraging for rabbit food (fennel to be exact), an old high school chum chimed in with her shared disdain of my sissy snack habits.  We scoffed at people that drink organic beer, because really, organic beer?  C'mon.  Carefully stuck into our cursory exchange of witty banter was a simple question:

"And what is with the blog?"

My reply:

"The blog is my soap box: half personal, half professional. I get paid to play with social media for a living. And I smell good."

Smell good.  Soap box.  Get it?  Ahem...

Lately, my blog feels like a soap box.  Which is fine, 'cuz I have been paid to stand on one for the better part of my career.  Still, I can't help but feel like I need to shake things up a bit.  Admittedly, I'm losing interest in half of what I write.  If I write one more diatribe about social media I am going to gouge my own eyes out.  More than enough maharishis rant about why the web is this or that, and this is one swami sick of the same elixir.

I need new material.  Not that I will shelve the social stuff altogether.  After all, it pays the bills.  But this happened once before, long ago, in a magical land where there were no blogs or citizen journalists.  Just brazen geeks with a text editor in one hand and a Dortmunder in the other.  I had a pretty lil' web site with a respectable readership, I got bored with it and let it whither on the vine.  Why?  Many reasons, but namely I got bored with it.  Why?  Because after a while, I felt like I had nothing interesting to say.

Blogging means being compelling, engaging, intriguing.  You know, interesting.  Enough people tell me I am interesting.  I choose to believe them.  My writing at times reads like I am trying to sound interesting.  That's dangerous.  Then I am blogging just to blog.  That serves no purpose.  Like people that tweet every itch they scratch.  That sucks.  Less filler, more barley.  That doesn't suck.

Time to get off my soap box.  Time to make things interesting.  This will be fun.

Photo by Tim Samoff

My mind is swirling with ideas lately, moreso than normal.  I go to bed dreaming up all manner of hair-brained schema, theorems and mousetraps.  And, when my conscious least suspects, the ultimate escape-from-reality plan.  Should any of you find yourselves wanting to part with a prototype RAH-66 Comanche and a gorilla that can mix drinks, then Skype me.  No questions asked.

I am toying with writing my first book, submitting to The Rapidian -- a new hyperlocal in Grand Rapids, Michigan -- and testing a new online strategy for myself.  Yes, that whole personal branding thing that I'm trying to give its fair shake.  In short, sharpening the proverbial blade that will reach far beyond blogging.  Killing two birds with one stone, I want to get those lost manuscripts locked up in my noggin and put them onto paper.  Make that a Kindle.

Getting published has been a big deal for me ever since I was faculty at Lawrence Tech near Detroit.  Not like it was "publish or perish" for us lowly adjuncts but I nonetheless felt a wee bit of pressure.  I taught web design for eight years and felt it necessary on occasion to edit a textbook, do some interviews, score a byline or two.  Looks good on a CV and gets me on stage once in a blue moon. 

I figured a better fit would be to write for web design-related sites such as SitePoint and WebMonkey that I naturally plugged in my syllabus.  Proving grounds for technical articles, POV pieces on best practices and code examples.  I'll be damned if I ever got around to any of that.

So when this hit my inbox earlier today, I was thrilled that SitePoint remembered I still had an account:

So maybe SitePoint's no longer the best fit for me.  Nor is WebMonkey, though I still need that gorilla.  I bet I can find something to write about.  It might be business, but it may be bacon.  Or bologna.  Even baloney. 

Either way, drop me a line if you have some insights and Skype hasn't yet deactivated your unused credits.  I can't promise every piece I write will be riveting, but it's better than letting my works get rusty.