[Space Makers Agency] have been working with the local communities, property owners, local authorities, policy-makers and others to create new ways of "of thinking about the spaces in which we live, work and play. Our approach is to start with what is already there: the stories of a place and the people who live there. Then our role is as a catalyst, bringing out the possibilities which were already present in a situation and making connections which might not have been obvious.

As floor plans go, there isn't much: one medium-size room; a galley kitchen tucked behind a wall; a bathroom; and, in lieu of a bedroom, a sleeping loft up a ladder from the living area, under the sloping roof.

Through motorcycles and text messages, FrontlineSMS:Medic connects doctors and patients in rural Africa.

In the developing world, most communities don't have access to a hospital, let alone a doctor. Valiant community health workers sometimes serve rural villages, but they don't have the training or technology to assist with major medical problems. The distance between village and hospital, both in terms of travel and communication, often spells doom for residents. But FrontlineSMS:Medic is aiming to change that. It

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it's being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice's BackPage.com.

That's all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.

In an email, Village Voice's PR firm accuses Buckmaster of leveraging the legal bind he's in to damage Craigslist's competition.

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn't make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they're proud of it: We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings, they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can't sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later submarine edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist's (relatively tame) adult service' section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) adult service' section of their own?

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We've put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We're fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don't endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren't going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn't viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it's all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York's Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver's Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM's products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Update: an RSVP link has been created, http://www.geekdinners.com/DinnerInstance.aspx?id=11

Shawn Wildermuth is swooping into town next week for one of his Silverlight Tour training events and we thought what better to do than to resurrect the old Geek Dinner. Come join us at The Real Time Sports Bar in Elk Grove Village, IL on Monday, July 14th at 6:30PM for some cocktails, food and geek fun.

What: Geek Dinner
Where: The Real Time Sports Bar, Elk Grove Village, IL (map)
When: Monday, July 14th, 2008 @ 6:30pm
Why: Why not?!? Because you're a geek and you need to eat!

*note: We're going dutch. Everyone is responsible for their own eats.

Spotted on Joi Ito's blog: quick and dirty directions on how to "hack" Firefox 3 into delivering richer, brighter colors more faithful to the original photograph (or graphic).

Snip:

I think that the esoteric discussions about color are interesting, but for most people, the bottom line is, if you turn color profile support "on" on Firefox 3, many images will end up appearing much closer to the color of the original and less washed out. You do this by typing "about:config" in the address bar of Firefox 3. Click thru confirmation page and find: gfx.color_management.enabled. Double click that until it says "true". Then restart Firefox 3.

There are a number of monitor color calibration gadgets and software packages like Eye One Match which will allow you to calibrate your monitor (and camera and printer). If everyone actually did this, we'd all be seeing the same colors.

Whatever, I'm just thrilled that favorite snaps I shot, caressed lovingly in Photoshop, then uploaded to Flickr don't look so anemic anymore. Like "Daniela," above, an aging camioneta cooling her heels on a beach along the Pacific coast of Guatemala. Or these women from the Gaddi tribe in Northern India, at bottom, climbing a mountain to reach a shrine.

Source: DRIA. Gina at Lifehacker just blogged about it, too.

Howcast is also announcing an $8 million series A financing, led by Tudor Investment Corp. In addition to their own site, they already have a Youtube channel (where they split advertising revenues with their former employer). The Howcast team also has signed distribution deals with Myspace, Verizon for its Vcast phones and FiOS TV, Joost, and ROO. JetBlue is the launch advertiser. Howcast faces competition from Expert Village, 5min, and Instructables (even though the latter uses step-by-step images more than video).

The site is launching with professionally-shot instructional videos on everything from How to Paint a Wall (see embed below) and How to Groom Your Cat to How to Get Laid. There is a familiar formula for each one: The Howcast graphic, an intro explaining what you'll need for the task at a hand, and step-by-step instructions explained in a voiceover. The video player on the site lets you jump to different chapters or steps, lets you zoom in for a better look, and provides the transcript as well. Viewers can add comments in the form of tips, warnings, and facts to each video. And the Flash-based site lets you browse the video directory on the left hand side while you are watching a video without interrupting it or going to a different page.

Audience participation in the creation of the videos starts with the ability to suggest video topics such as How to Do A Television Appearance, How to build a Sofa From Scratch, How to Make Tempura, or How to Fire a Nanny. The audience can then vote the best suggestions to the top in a Digg-like fashion.

Audience members can also look at upcoming scripts and improve them or write their own in a guided wiki portion of the site that follows the Howcast script template (introduction, instructions, tips, end with a fact). The script is then approved by Howcast, a voiceover is recorded, and Howcast farms out the production to young film school students and graduates. They get $50 for each video plus a 50/50 rev-share from any advertising. Anyone can also upload their own instructional videos to the site without going through this process.

The video ads are in the form of clickable overlays that pop up to take up the bottom part of the screen. Pre-roll, non-skipable ads are bad, in our opinion, says CEO Liebman, who originally joined Google through the acquisition of Applied Semantics and helped roll out AdSense. Howcast is starting with a $20 CPM rate card. The more targetable those ads become, the higher the rate should go. Each video is tagged by topic and each one has a visible script, making them highly searchable. A paint company might want to buy up spots in the How to Paint video, for instance, or even buy paid links in the list of necessary supplies that is part of the video. Can you say AdSense for video? Jason Liebman can.

Instructables

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Expert Village

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5min

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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

Now, a second useful Twitter example. I'm not sure how long ago, but a while back I became an email acquaintance with Whitney McNamara. I'm not sure when/how it happened. I think he may have commented on Techdirt a few times with pretty intelligent thoughts, or maybe sent in some stories/feedback. Just a couple weeks ago, he started following me on Twitter, and I started following him as well. Last week, he mentioned that he was going to Mamoun's Falafel for lunch with his Dad, which set off a wave of nostalgia for me. I love Mamoun's. Back in high school, Yuval and I used to go visit record stores in the Village and get Mamoun's for lunch. It was a pretty regular ritual. I do still try to go to Mamoun's whenever I'm in Manhattan, though it's increasingly rare that I need to be anywhere near the Village.

Yet, when I saw Whit's Twitter about Mamoun's, I wrote my own about my Mamoun's obsession, noting that I was hoping to go this week, since I was in NYC. A few twitters/direct messages back and forth, and yesterday, we were sitting in Mamoun's enjoying the best falafel sandwiches money can buy and having an interesting conversation about online communities. It worked out perfectly, as I had a hole in my schedule and no lunch plans. Here's his version of the story as well. It's pretty clear that this never would have happened without Twitter.

Without Twitter, I probably wouldn't have remembered that he was in NY, thought to get together with him, known that he liked Mamoun's (or even convinced myself to make a trip down to Mamoun's). So, while I'm still not totally convinced that Twitter is as amazing as some make it out to be, I'm beginning to understand the areas where it has potential.

1. Two dice needed: one die to determine direction traveled, the second die to determine number of miles driven in that direction
2. Drive 100 miles east from Chicago, and start the first dice roll
3. Must only drive on paved roads
4. New roll = new music
5. Game to be played for at least 10 consecutive hours
6. Map can only be used in emergencies: do not backtrack or cross a path already taken
7. Three roll vetoes allowed per person
8. Must introduce yourself to at least one new person a day

My husband Robert came up with the brilliant idea after many vacation discussions with no discernible outcomes. We'd just get in the car with a few dice, he said, and see where fate would take us. This idea was perfect for us the randomness with rules would be a reassuring way to experience spontaneity. This vacation would get us out of our predictable rut of normal activities, and be the first unplanned vacation of our marriage. Five days of uncertainty, doing our favorite vacation activity the Great American road trip.

We started the journey by leaving Chicago after rush hour one morning. We jumped in the car with some clothes thrown in a bag, iPod loaded up, and no map. At the first tollbooth, Robert attempted to introduce himself to the tollbooth operator (Rule 8) but the operator wasn't having it, and just ignored him.

A hundred miles east of our house, we got off interstate 80 and the fun began. We decided to switch off on the dice rolling, in case one of us was just luckier than the other. I rolled first. The first roll of the red square die was a number one, which equaled straight. The second die roll (a funky, bright yellow, rounded Dungeons & Dragons die with increments of 10) yielded a 90 we'd drive 90 miles straight on Highway 421 South.

Robert was next to roll the dice (and my craps-playing addiction made me shout "YO ELEVEN!" as he did it) his first roll was a five left and an 80 from the yellow die. We drove 80 miles on the highway onto which we had turned left I-74 East.

Once off the highway, the rolls continued and fate drove us on a stair-step pattern through Indiana, mainly traveling east and south. We learned that Indiana is really a lot like Illinois farmland, and decidedly rural.

We stopped for lunch when a fortuitous roll brought us to Lafayette, Indiana, where we ate at Puccini's. We decided on another rule (Rule 9) must only order new menu items at restaurants, Not only were we stuck in a vacation rut, but also a same-menu-item-ordered rut. I always get the same things, and so does Robert. I ordered a veggie pizza called Humble Pie and Robert ordered a pizza with sausage instead of his usual pepperoni. Not huge departures from normalcy, but a step in the right direction. The restaurant was pretty good except for their distracting catchphrase: "Smiling Teeth" were we at a dentist's office, or a restaurant?

After lunch, our rolls of the dice brought us closer to nowhere away from any recognizable towns or landmarks, surrounded by farmlands, fields, and nothingness. Even the paved road went away into dirt at one point, and we had to turn around to discover a real live road (Rule 3).

Indiana is dotted with signs that say "Cuz Krazy Harry Sez So." After seeing a dozen of these signs, we're still unclear on who Harry is and what exactly he's trying to say.

We reached a T-intersection in the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and realized we didn't have a rule for that. The quick thinking couple like we are, we decided a T-intersection would yield a new dice roll, new Rule 10. Good thing, too, since the next seven consecutive rolls were done at T-intersections. They sure have a lot of T-intersections in the middle of Indiana; come prepared to make decisions.

Anxiety started to set in about 4pm (or was it 3? Which time zone we were in was a bit lost on us) would we make it to somewhere with a hotel, or would we be forced to sleep in the car? Would we run out of gas before we saw a gas station? Would lonely wild dogs attack us if we got out of the car? Would we become urban legends? We drove so long without seeing a town or village, or even another car, that it felt like we had entered an alternate universe. Without a map, and usually being so rigid on our road trips with planned routes, it was a departure from reality to have no idea where we would end up.

Finally, around 7pm and after 23 rolls of the dice, four diet cokes, two refills of the gas tank, 1 veto used, and no cell service, we arrived near civilization. The highway entrance signs indicated that Cincinnati was just around the corner. Our stair-step pattern through Indiana hadn't landed us in another reality. Instead, we were at the Ohio / Kentucky border. The dice brought us to a Big Boy Restaurant, and his beaming smile invited us in. I introduced myself to our friendly waitress, Pam, with whom I shared a name (check Rule 8 completed) and she took good care of our dinner. After dinner, purchase of a souvenir Big Boy bank and a friendly photo op with the oversized Big Boy statue outside, we found a hotel for the night.

The Ramada Limited was just fine for one night, but we believe the "limited" in the name stood for limited cleaning. The hotel was in Florence, Kentucky, and the nearby red and white water tower proclaimed our location with the text "Florence Y'all." We repeated that phrase for the rest of the trip.

The random path took us around eight hours of driving from Chicago to a city that should have only taken five, but those extra three hours took us places we'd never been, off the proverbial beaten path.

The next day, we took a break from randomness for a few hours and visited the local "Kings Island" Theme Park. Neither of us had ever been there, but as children had heard magical tales of Hanna-Barbera characters like Squiddly-Diddly, Fred Flintstone and Huckleberry Hound roaming the park with awesome rollercoasters. We were excited about this visit back to our childhoods, and ready to see a character in costume other than a giant mouse. Sadly, we were disappointed to learn that Kings Island had been bought by Paramount. Now the magic was gone. Instead, it was littered with lesser Nickelodeon characters.

We consoled ourselves with corn dogs and funnel cakes and visited attractions like the Eiffel Tower, a 1/3 scale replica of the real thing that brought my fear of heights to the extreme forefront. We came back to earth and rode the brightly colored Lazytown Copters (really meant for little kids), which was exactly like being in a cartoon.

After the somewhat disappointing theme park, we decided to gamble with some additional rolls of the dice. A few lucky spins brought us out of Ohio and into Kentucky, and suddenly off the highway and straight into horse country.

The roads were different and so was the landscape a nice change from the flatlands of Indiana. The hills and valleys were mainly full of horse pastures lined with black and white fencing, the horses running or grazing in the pastures ("Out standing in their fields," I joked to Robert). The farms were immense, the houses even bigger, the barns mainly black with red roofs, and the landscape out of a great car commercial. The two-lane road was full of switchbacks, sharp turns and hills. Since the road was also missing a shoulder, our car was only narrowly able to fit on the road. It reminded us of a racing Playstation 2 video game, and with the music up loud and the windows down, we felt free.

Our afternoon passed with uneventful dice rolls, taking us across Kentucky and towards West Virginia in a pretty straight path. We drove past nuclear power plants, traffic jams in the middle of nowhere, county fairs, creeks, farms, a giant bowling pin, bridges, tunnels, a UFO-type building, castles and a river that we kept crossing, over and over.

The evening light brought us to Huntington, West Virginia, a town very proud of Marshall University and full of industrial plants lining the Ohio River. Neither of us had visited West Virginia before, and as the night descended on the city, it seemed like we were in a truly different and foreign place. We stopped at a Holiday Inn for the night. The smell of the hotel brought back childhood memories of indoor pools and chlorine-scented hair.

We slept in a bit, and woke up dreaming of bacon, so it was off to Bob Evans across the street. We both ordered different breakfasts than we normally do (biscuits and gravy for me and French toast for Robert), but I couldn't stop talking about the sign outside the restaurant reading "Bob Evans Carry Home Kitchen." Would they have pre-assembled kitchens available to carry home? And how would we get the kitchen to our house? Were they mini kitchens? The sign didn't mention food.

Reflection of the past two days brought a major turning moment in the trip. We'd had enough of the randomness and rolling of dice and not knowing where we were on the map. That was it. We were done. We went to the local gas station, bought an atlas, and decided right then and there that we were driving to the ocean. It looked so close on the map! Just a few short hours and we'd be running in the waves.

Being without a map for two days had rendered us incapable of judging distance. Something that looked only three or four hours away visually on the atlas to us turned into a nine-hour journey. This portion of the trip was very unlike the previous two days, with a different kind of anxiety setting in would we make it to the ocean before dark?

Wondering about towns named Hurricane and Tornado in West Virginia, seeing giant oil refineries, witnessing tunnel and bridge marvels of modern engineering, stopping at scenic overlooks and flying along the highway all made the time go quickly. We also are fond of the road game that my dad invented (at least, I like to think he did) called "White Horse." It's pretty simple. If you see a white horse, you yell out "White Horse!" and you get one point. I am the undisputed "White Horse" champion, and the vacation just confirmed my title.

We drove into Virginia Beach, Virginia, just as the sun was setting opposite the ocean. We checked into a hotel right on the beach with a balcony overlooking the water, and made our way down the boardwalk for dinner. Tourists were plentiful, and so was the seafood. We introduced ourselves to the hostess at Casby's and the inept waiter, meeting rule 8 for the both of us. They both looked at us like we were nuts.

The next day, the alarm went off early. We woke up in time to see the sunrise over the ocean, while fighter jets patrolled the water along with Navy destroyers deep in the distance. In Chicago, we're not witnesses to an omnipresent military as in Virginia Beach. The jets were intimidating, but they roared over our hotel room like our own personal air show.

We swam together in the ocean me with a newly purchased pink floaty-ring (I'm scared of the undertow) and Robert swimming like a fish. A few sandcastles and a sun-drenched nap later, we roused ourselves and decided it was time to return home to Chicago.

Rolling the dice and getting to the ocean seemed easy. But the thought of driving all the way home seemed close to impossible.

We washed the pesky sand off, changed, and started the journey by heading to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge / Tunnel combo. The 20-mile long bridge is huge, much bigger than any regular Illinois bridge. We stopped at the restaurant on the bridge for a cheeseburger. The windows overlooked the navy ships in the bay, and we bought cheesy souvenirs in the way-too-crowded gift shop. Sunday is a popular day for souvenir shopping.

We drove up the Eastern Shore towards Delaware. The terrain was different again farmlands near the ocean growing tomatoes and sunflowers, not many trees. The road was crowded with trucks hauling millions of tomatoes away from the farms. Who doesn't love a good tomato, besides Robert?

We were surprised to learn that, much like Indiana, fireworks are completely legal in Virginia. And Virginians are proud of their ham. We saw a ton of roadside stands with enthusiastic signs, proclaiming the wonder of their hams. "I like the fireworks / ham combination" Robert remarked. You could buy fireworks alongside a juicy Virginia ham, one-stop shopping for the busy pyromaniac carnivore.

We continued our homeward-bound journey on Interstate 70 after Annapolis. We looked at each other around 4pm. "Is it crazy to drive straight through the night to Chicago?" we asked each other. Yes, it was crazy, we decided, but that's kind of how this vacation was going. Random craziness. And when was the last time we drove all night, or even stayed up all night, for that matter? Nothing seemed absurd at that point.

The sun set over Pennsylvania and we kept driving.

The heavy moon rose and we decided the night would forever be known as "Night of a Thousand Skunks," one of which may or may not have been under the hood of our car. It was that stinky.

I watched the stars turning from the car's moon roof.

Gas stations are inherently creepy at 3am, no matter where you are.

The sun rose over Indiana, and we kept driving.

We hit Chicago rush hour traffic at about 6:30am. Robert was driving, and battled his sleepiness bravely, while I fell asleep sitting up straight in the passenger seat.

It all started with the rules. The road-trip vacation was different because it was so random, unplanned and unpredictable. Who would have guessed we'd end up at the ocean? We saw many new sights, visited new states, ate new foods and met new people. When we think back, it was a dichotomy between random and rules. We started with the rules, but ended up in randomness.

Next time, we're going West.

Pamela Morgan works as a producer and reality facilitator in the corporate meeting world. Recently transplanted to the western suburbs after 15 years of living in Chicago, you can read about her new home adventures at yobotsnewhouse.com.

Before Events

If you're going to an event, start checking around to see who's attending. Look for an Upcoming entry or a Facebook group. Most modern conferences put these up as matter of course (and if you RUN a conference, consider this step). From there, see if you are already friends (social network definition) with any one. If not, consider friending them based on the fact you're heading to the same event.

Other places to check for event communities are on Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. You might have some other recommendations for this one, too.

Before Interviews, and Related to Events

Log into LinkedIN and see what you can find about your interviewer, people who work at the prospective new company, and other companies in the industry. It's a way to build a picture of the landscape without relying on other people's information. For instance, if the company you're thinking of working at turns up zero results in a search on LinkedIN, it might mean that the culture is less forward-thinking or at least not social media equipped. If you look at a few profiles that come up in the search, and note that people are only there a year (two or three samples, maybe), then perhaps the place is big on competition, or maybe not really rewarding to long term employees.

Related to events, once you know someone's going, see if you can find them in Facebook (maybe MySpace), LinkedIN, Twitter, and see if you can search out a blog by putting their name and blog in a Google search. Oh, and don't forget Flickr.

Flickr is a PERFECT tool for searching out info on people. I've known some people who don't use their headshot as an icon on any social network, but a little Flickr searching later, I realized I could point them out at an event. (By the way, if you don't know this, that's why I put LOTS of pictures of myself on my website. It's because I want you to be able to find me at events. Not because I'm vain, though I guess you could argue that one, too).

Conversation Pieces

From here, once you find some shreds of this person or some people online, you've built yourself a means by which to seek out similar points of interest, tangential conversational topics, and maybe even potential business opportunities you can discuss, should the moment arise. That's the beauty of social media and social networks. They let you better understand the people who participate.

If You Find NOTHING About People

That can be a conversation starter, too. I didn't find you on Facebook. What do you think of those social networks? You can assume that the person isn't especially convinced of the value of social networks and making media, but I wouldn't lead outright with that. Maybe this person is a prolific blogger behind the firewall. Maybe they're using an alias. It took me a little TOO long to connect Genuine on Twitter with Jim Turner of One By One Media. They were two different people in my head until spending some time at an event.

After Events

Stealing a page from Jeff Pulver (who is a MASTER at building community in the real world and online), after events is a great time to plumb up all the various social media connections. Get connected in Facebook, maybe LinkedIN, in Twitter, Flickr, and wherever else you tend to use. Consider reading their blog, adding it to your reader for a while. Make it a chance to learn more about the person now that you're in their orbit. Do what Laura Pistachio Fitton does and invite them into your Twitter Village. The point is to get to know them now that you've met in person.

Reflect on YOUR Presence

Some people are debating the value of Facebook right now as a business platform. At the very baseline, fill out your profile. Give information that you wouldn't mind your employer seeing. Not because you have to self-censor, but in this world where people use the tools that are available, your Facebook page and your Twitter stream and all these various artifacts you're creating are available for people to search.

At the same time, once you get over the paralysis of the above, make sure you put enough of yourself into your profiles that people can get these conversational hooks to communicate with you at events. If you're strictly business at your conference appearances, try to indicate that in your profile. The point is, once you realize that you can use these tools to build real world relationships, consider the effect in both directions (you finding them; them finding you).

First Moves Are Yours

The conversation itself is up to you, and no, I don't tell you how to not be shy at an event directly (though one way you can do this is to find your way into circles of people on the periphery, and look for your conversational in). But with some of this prep out of the way ahead of time, you'll find yourself a lot more prepared than when you used to show up at these events cold.

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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Most of my friends during that time thought the store was pretty lame and even now I remember how the owners and employees looked like some of the characters from Revenge of the Nerds, so I guess I could understand their impressions. But one of the employees, who was probably seven years my senior, saw my interest and invited me to participate in some of their role playing adventures (campaigns), which took place on weekend nights.

During that period I played a lot of Tunnels and Trolls, a little Dugeons and Dragons, and some WWII game, which I can't quite remember the name. What I do recall is that I had a great fun and even though the games were a big part of it, I look back now and can't help but feel that being accepted by these older guys was also a considerable part of the attraction.

So a couple of weeks ago when I stopped by my local comic store and they were playing a game called Heroscape, it reminded me of those weekend nights gaming into the wee hours twenty-eight years ago. I decided at my next opportunity I'd attempt to relive a little of those glory days.

This past Saturday I got my first opportunity, and although Heroscape is nowhere near as intricate as those RPG's I played wayback when, it was still thrilling to just dedicate a couple hours moving characters, making attack and defending rolls, and just experiencing the feel of having a D20 back in my hand. Now where'd I put that bag of holding.