47 Project

Today a good friend of mine, Jennifer Leggio, did a little interview/write-up on me and my efforts and Seagate doing the social media thing.

Thanks Jen for the hook up and the opportunity!

Here’s a link to the interview:

“Seagate uses social media to ‘humanize’ storage devices”

Enjoy my shameless self-promotion on a new level….one that will hopefully drive you to either read it, or drive a rusty nail through your eyeball from too much Rich Harris exposure.

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What has always existed…

Human beings have always wanted to connect. It is the nature of who we are. You may have seen some of those documentaries where babies were not given the proper physical/emotional connection with their mothers. They end up rocking uncontrollably in the corners, cerebral synapses needed to function correctly just couldn’t connect, and it can’t be undone in most cases at that level.

Then as children, kids automatically start trivial little clubs with their friends….the desire to connect with others and identify with others. Whether it’s a negative environment (teenage gangs, etc.) or a positive one (communities coming together to help those less fortunate than themselves). We can’t help it. We convene, we group together, we reach out. When we don’t connect with other human beings at least on some level, I don’t care how ’solo’ you THINK you are (for those self-proclaimed loners out there reveling in themselves), we as individuals head down a destructive path…from mild depression to suicide or other violent behavior if we don’t connect with other people somehow. This one of the few common elements in every single human being.

I know at this point you are probably wondering if I’ve fallen off the deep end and “where the hell is he going with this?”

I’m a kooky bastard but I’m getting to that I promise.

Facebook On It’s Own

I use Facebook A LOT, more than your average dude for sure. All my ‘friends’ know it. I’m sure about 80% of the people who are my friends probably thirst for a way to effectively filter Rich Harris. I’m ok with that. I do stuff on Facebook for a living so I’m on it all day, making it easy for me to be active for long periods of time. When I created my Facebook account awhile ago, I first started reconnecting with current co-workers, then co-workers from my previous job, then with as many co-workers as I could remember in my entire career.

Slowly I started finding people from high school, then junior high school, then elementary school, and of course my own immediate and distant family members.

Now, whenever I attend an event for business, almost every new business contact I make is on Facebook. I then find and connect with them.

Facebook is Way Bigger Than Facebook Whether They Realize It Or Not – Keeping Humanity Up-To-Date In Realtime

I realize that MySpace is one of the originals in this social frat party phase of the web but I’m going to use Facebook here since it’s more sophisticated, refined, and people are starting to at least subconsciously feel how it has unlocked something amazing that was hindered before, and rumors about that peeople are starting to bail on MySpace.

The lack of technology: essentially the great wall that existed due to limitations in communication methods, coupled with the shear size of this planet, and lastly, the randomness that holds true when it comes to where each individual ends up geographically while living their lives as adults.

While I do credit the overall Information Age with opening up doors to people/places/products in other parts of the world that we never got to see before, Facebook has started gluing humanity together. It has proved synergistic in catalyzing something that has always been in our genetic makeup since humans first walked the earth: Connecting with other humans.

It blows my mind that I now have friends all over the world, to varying degrees of closeness, that I now always know what is going on with them, with their kids, their careers, their health, their hobbies…with pictures and video. If there is someone that I knew that was associated with that person, regardless of where THAT person maybe, I actually have a decent shot at reconnecting with them. This is really cool for an obsessively social bastard like myself and maybe scary to those who are much more private.

While I don’t feel obligated to communicate with some of the almost 1000 people I’m connected to on Facebook/MySpace via email or private/public messages more than once a month, if even at all, the fact that I can “like” something they posted or quickly comment and nothing more, puts me in touch with everyone worldwide on some basic level at almost any given moment without really invading their privacy. They’ve kind of ‘opted in’ by posting it. I now get such an amazing 360 view of the world, where everyone’s paths have gone and continue to take them and their families…and they are sharing it, almost constantly. I’ve even noticed that friends of mine who are  much more introverted in-person, have no problem throwing it out there on Facebook for everyone to see and comment.

One dynamic that is hilarious to me is that I have pockets and clusters of friends, with varying degress of spirituality, believing in different religions or none at all, different types of humor at various levels, progress in their career, different types of careers, developing chapters in their lives, etc. No matter what I say or post, how liberal or conservative, how right brain or left brain, how logical or abstract, how sensitive or harsh, various clusters of people are drawn in to comment or participate who have commonality with each other and with what it is I had just posted…..affirmation that we are all very different but we all have something to say.

Human beings could never interact like this before. It used to be that after high school, you graduated (hopefully) and then people went to work or to college and just kinda got lost out there in the world. It used to be a freak of nature moment to re-connect with a childhood friend that had gone away from the town where ya’ll grew up to go to college or to travel on some exchange-student program. Now it’s almost expected that we get to stay in contact with these people the rest of their lives instantaneously.

My 3 sons will never know what it’s like to not be able to find someone as all their friends are being raised to use Facebook/MySpace. I think it’s gonna be one cool way to keep their minds open to new ideas and paths that they can take in life. Life is about choices and the nature of Facebook helps remind us that you can do whatever you want in life at any time.

47Project psychology, social media 47, facebook, human behavior, rich harris, social media, social psychology

TwitterFox

Ok so we are getting closer…slow but sure. I’m testing out the TwitterFox app for Firefox (installed on my Flock browser) and so far I like it. It actually has (albeit drop-down vs. the tabbed I’ve requested and hoped and dreamed for in the past) solution to managing multiple Twitter accounts in one spot. The beauty of TwitterFox  for me is that I use Flock for all my social media work and play. Since this sits nicely in the corner of my Flock browser, I don’t need to open TweetDeck or Twhirl on the side….AND with the new version of Flock that adds the Facebook notifications widget into the browser itself even though you can simultaneously look at other tabs that aren’t logged into Facebook, I’m now getting used to, and enjoying being able to check the lower-right hand corner to just see what is going on activity-wise with the tools I use all day. My only ‘con’ I’ve seen so far is that I’m totally addicted to how TweetDeck overlays 4 buttons on top of each person’s avatar. I find myself hoping all Twitter apps operate that way…oh well…not at all a showstopper for me though with TwitterFox..more of a personal nit.

The more I can do with the less apps the better and TwitterFox is pushing us another step closer.

In a perfect world I’d be able to use Flock and have a bunch of little icons on the browser’s bottom toolbar for Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc. that were always checking/active/displaying notifications or little indicators while I did other stuff, so that I could open one app – Flock – and see and monitor all. It’s pretty fascinating to watch it all unfold.

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Did I use that title for SEO reasons? Why the hell not.

It seems like I can’t get away from the two topics this blog post title refers to but I have to admit, there is nothing wrong with fodder for more SNL sketches, more South Park episodes, and most importantly, something for me to sarcasticly make light of because it consumes the information/controversial/drama-thirsty American social/pop culture. Anytime news like that rolls like a big boulder over cnn.com, I can’t help but attribute a bunch of over the top humor to it, which most of the time reminds everyone that I’m permanently a 13 year old trapped inside this carb-happy 34 year old body of mine.

The Swine. The Flu.

On Facebook I recommended…errrr…asked if people thought it was too early to run a t-shirt print simply stating, “I have the Swine Flu AND I love bacon.” 80% of the people liked and/or commented on the post that read it. The other 20% gave me some shit about me making a joke out of something that was killing people. Funny thing is that for every 1 person that dies from Swine Flu, 100+ people die from the ‘regular’ household flu. So WTF? To those gettin’ extra emo about it, I’m on board 100% with your empathy but please remember that when people joke nowadays, in this case about the Swine Flu, no one is laughing at someone else’s misery, we aren’t making light of their mortality and worse, their fate in the fact that they happen to catch it and die from it.

It’s just jokes…at no one’s expense really more at the expense of the news and media for over-inflating it. We are all battling things like this in the world together. I firmly believe that the key to the survival of humanity is their ability to find humor in the catastrophes that surround us. ‘Tis the only way.

Obama’s First 100

Oh let the sweet media frenzy latch onto some other goofball idea to attach the consumer’s hungry emotions to.

First off, I’d like to say that I’m EXTREMELY pleased with Obama’s efforts, philosophies, cool-headedness and follow through. Given the shit he is expected to ‘fix’, I’d say he’s been pretty productive so far. So I guess this quick point I’m gonna blarf about (barfing/blogging), is more aimed at the ‘marketing’ of the First 100 Days.

I’m just waiting for the commemorative plate (thanks Don), the key chains, the logos, the flamethrower (thanks Fong), the doll, the skateboard, the commemorative First 100 Days jockstrap and tube top set…..you laugh and have a smirk on your face right now but there’s probably some backwoods jackass producing it somewhere.

Please, everyone in the media, I love how America is so celebratory about everything to the point of thinking we need to have an annual national holiday ‘celebrating’ stuff as trivial as the peanut butter sandwich, BUT, stop pushing it like he’s the second coming of Christ, the Alpha and Omega, Allah, Buddha himself. You know why? Because he’s just a dude…….You know what Obama did on his 100th day in office? He worked. Then on 101st day, he skipped the First 100 Days Sears photo shoot and he worked some more…and that’s what he’s going to do every day until he’s not president anymore….head down..working.

Done.

47Project media, news, politics 47, barack obama, diseases, media, obama, pandemics, philosophy, pig flu, rich harris, swine flu

Ok…I’m really freakin’ late in posting these photos…I got to go to a private party for Wolfgang’s Vault in San Francisco, CA. WV is basically this amazing archive of music industry schtuff from vinyl to tapes to old rock posters for old shows dating back decades. Some really amazing stuff….down UNDER the party on the bottom floor is this old set of bank vaults that are really amazing. The hallway just went on for days. A lot of the old doors were still in tact.

It was interesting too because I started walking down the stairs and it just felt ‘heavy’ down there…I think just from all the history and all the human activity that had been down there over the years. There were some really amazing rooms down there. Anyway…enough of my blabbing. I’ll post some photos from the shoot below and then a link to the full set on Flickr….it was a fun place for sure. I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Click here to see the full set on Flickr

47Project Photography, Uncategorized 47, bank vault, creepy, haunted, Music, old vault, photographer, Photography, rich harris, san francisco, the mint, wolfgang's vault

A good friend of mine in Tucson sent me this….it definitely is indicative of what my role at my current company feels like..websites organizing data from other websites that feed more data into other websites that aggregate and store more data…..blah….nutzo…anyway..enjoy below…

47Project Technology, social media 47, comics, Funny Like "Ha Ha", Humor, rich harris, social media

This is has been bothering me for awhile now. Everytime I turn around I hear or see news clips and feedback from the general public (yes even democrats) bitching and whining that they are frustrated with the fact that Obama is not working fast enough. I have a couple things to say about this…

First of all, must I remind those that I speak of, the incredible dinosaur-size pile of shit that he was handed when he was sworn into office?

The Economy: The U.S. economy not only has not been this bad in decades, but worse, is that most of it is the final burst and fallout of decades of corporate corruption that has made itself the backbone of how this country manages it’s own financial culture. I can’t blame the republicans for this either….it transcends political parties whether you want to admit it or not….Obama’s administration not only now has to be bear the burden of his own country’s economy, but that of the world. So give the guy a fucking break. I know hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, I know families are poor and struggling, lifestyles are changed forever for ‘innocent’ people that never deserved to be shit on by insurance companies and banks. As a single father of 3 sons, I feel it too, not as bad as some, and not as little as others. We are all in that boat together. Remember (I try and remind myself of this as well) that people raise their kids in places in the world where dead bodies are lying around while their children play ball and have fun anyway, where a loaf of bread needs to last a family of 10 an entire week….The rippling effects of what are going on right now are so much bigger than Obama. Consider ourselves lucky that this shit didn’t all fall down after McCain was sworn into office, or more scary – while Bush had another two years as president.

Terrorism: While I do believe that Bush was a complete moron and not fit to run even a doughnut shop, the issues that exist from terrorism also are a reflection of greed and decades of corruption and cultural extremism and dysfunction, not just with the U.S. but with the world and each country’s own radical fundamentalist bullshit artists. We get mad at Obama for stepping up some troops in Pakistan and Afghanistan but at least he’s focusing our soldiers on this issue in a geographical location that matters and is a real source on this issue instead of the mind fuck distraction that even Colin Powell helped to skew with the Iraq war.

Conclusion: The world is a fucked up place that can only be fixed with unity from every person in every country across the globe and an exorbitant amount of patience for the man who has been voted in to help make a positive contribution for humanity. His attitude is on point. He can’t fix the world and surely can’t fix the U.S. over night after decades of unethical infrastructure establishment, but he can get it started and he needs a positive attitude from Democrats and Republicans alike…. Democrats – Quit your bitching and pull up your boot straps and get ready to work harder than you ever have before. Republicans – Stop disagreeing with new ideas because of your religious ideologies and just for the sake of it because you are in a different party. God created humanity so if you believe in God, started thinking in terms of One People and all that He created. Cherish it and do what you can to be a team player so we can all get through this together.

And to the media….if you don’t have something positive to say right now, STFU.

Sorry about all my expletives….my passion ensues.

Thanks.

47Project politics 47, barack obama, Commentary, economy, news, obama, Opinion, political opinion, politics, rich harris, terrorism, the media

My boss recently went to check out SXSW 2009 in Austin, TX on business. He got to see so many great bands like The Bronx, The Riverboat Gamblers, Metallica, and more. He got this great clip of the vocalist from The Gallows bitching out people at Emo’s in Austin for being too mellow. I love The Gallows a lot and this clip is classic. He forgot that he’s not playing a real show with hardcore kids in attendance so couldn’t quite put 2 and 2 together to figure out it’s all media, music industry peeps, etc….pissed him off, he let them know….I love it.

47Project Music 47, austin texas, emo's, hardcore thrash, live show, rich harris, rock music, sxsw 2009, the bronx, the gallows, the riverboat gamblers, Videos

If you have ever been a designer, trained, professional, schooled, know-what-you-are-doing, designer…you’ve probably experienced the joy of difficult clients that not only think they are designers too, (and if so why the fuck did they hire you in the first place???), where your customer basically disembowels everything you’ve just done that was intended to make them look good. A good friend of mine (@timeriedesigns on Twitter) sent me this video. I laughed so hard it made my stomach hurt for hours after….finally someone poking fun at the shit we deal with as creative types in the corporate environment. Enjoy.

47Project Comedy, Videos, design 47, Comedy, design, graphic design, make my logo bigger cream, rich harris, Video, youtube

Now that title may at first glance appear somewhat pretentious but even being someone who manages social media for a large company like myself, I have a hard time proclaiming guru or expert status.

Here’s the thing. You can’t be an expert at something that first of all has really only started culminating the last couple years, and second, changes almost every week. You can call yourself a social media ninja, bad ass, maestro, whatever the hell you wanna call it….but there’s a 96.87% chance you are no guru or expert.

First, to say something positive (I’ve been trying to start off all my recent blog posts on a positive note), I love social media and I love how excited everyone is about it. It’s reshaping company/brand PR/Marketing efforts in a way that is healthy, creative, and cost effective…most of the time. I’d say my only complaint about it is that it’s made internet life quite a bit “noisier”…which I expected to happen.

Now then…..my point in this post is that to those claiming to be social media experts or even someone that claims to be in the know with social media and it’s big picture….this is probably not true. Just because you have a twitter account and you know how to use it, doesn’t make you a social media marketer. There’s an art to understanding that social media is all about people, about meaningful conversation that is genuine, relevant, intelligent (sometimes), and more importantly: REAL.

No one likes repeated spammy comments on Twitter, their MySpace comments section, or their Facebook walls, etc.

Also, you need to understand that because you have accounts on all the various sites, it does not make you an expert. If you want to eventually be an expert or guru at social media, the most important aspect of it that you need to understand, more important than the tools themselves that are at your fingertips is PEOPLE. To be really good, you need to ‘get’ people….different types of people, their interests, personalities, various thought processes, locales, etc. You might say to yourself..”ok that’s basic segment marketing analysis,” but we, as social marketers, have to understand that this landscape is different. The consumers of social media don’t like to be spoon fed empty one way communications about products, services and other crap. They are smarter than the old consumer, they have a lower attention span, and they put up with less bullshit than ever before. They have the power to immediately weed out and block all crap, unlike email spam which is and will always barely be under control.

The other side of this on the tools/technology side is that you need a cohesion that takes the sum of all the parts of what you do for a company or client. There should be a high level premise and plan on how all the accounts/tools all tie together to push out one message and a wave of consistent content. If you don’t have that, your efforts are null and void. Might as well head home and start gardening.

To be a social media expert or guru, you need to understand all the tools, how they all work together and you need to have a passion for human beings and their behavior, good, bad and ugly. If you understand that stuff, have a vision,  and are fascinated with human beings, you will be a social media jedi one day. I hope I get to be one too.

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So what can I say? Twitter is rad. Aside from all the poachers and spammers out there that try and ruin it (which always happens with any new tool that comes out), the function and the culture is awesome. And of course all the accompanying indie apps that have come out to support it like TweetDeck, Twhirl, TwitterBerry, etc….these are all excellent.

Will there be enterprise level tweeting tools available?

TweetDeck and Twhirl have allowed me to definitely speed up the process of managing my tweets and interactions with others but companies like Dell and soon Seagate are maintaining multiple Twitter accounts to server multiple purposes. Dell has accounts ranging from customer support, to enterprise computing, to discussions and tweets on Dell’s thoughts on cloud computing….as they should. While it’s easy if you have individuals maintaining each account, what happens when you’re like me and several other social media people that I know that maintain several accounts all day and need to be retweeting, DM’ing, posting and replying simultaneously? Twhirl sorta helps but then I have a mess of about 15 windows on my desktop and on more than one occasion have posted or replied to the wrong account out of sheer desktop organizational confusion.

I’m aware of Twitterhawk. I think it’s got some powerful features but they’re still trying to automate certain thing to the point where you are borderline spammy in nature even though not blatant. I cannot have very strong opinions on this app yet though as I have not tried it myself…but I will try it out hopefully in the next couple weeks.

What I would like to see is a really nice granular interface that takes the Twhirl concept, pulls all the windows together in a tabbed format like a web browser, and allows you to manage view your different accounts that way. I know that based on what I’ve seen with TweetDeck, if you have several accounts with several threads going at once, the API calls could get pretty obnoxious for the infrastructure guys to the point of hundreds of thousands of calls per second if it really blew up, but hey…this is 2009 and we have the technology. I’d almost like a more refined Flock concept but ONLY for tweeting and managing Twitter accounts. This would be SO useful for me and many other corporate social media folks that I know who are making Twitter, or at least trying to, an essential tool in their web marketing toolbox.

If someone out there makes a tool like this, I will pay for it in cash.

Tweet on my brothers and sisters! If you know about something that I don’t app/solution-wise, please comment here.

47Project Technology, blogging, microblogging, social media 47, Business, enterprise, microblogging, rich harris, social media, tweetdeck, twhirl, twitter, twitterberry

So I just got back with my 3 sons from a family reunion trip down in Orange County, CA. I had an amazing time. My sons were angels the whole time and we had a blast. It was really touching to see them meet some of their cousins and other family members for the first time. I wish they could hang out with them more often. My oldest was pretty bummed we were leaving and it made me all emotional since that’s where my roots are. Anyway…I’ll now get out of the waaaambulance. Below are some of the more artsy photos of the set I shot at our reunion and just generally on the trip. I hope you dig ‘em as much as I do….I love candid, that’s how I roll.

47Project Uncategorized 47, aunts, cousins, family, family reunion, father, grandparents, kids, mother, photographer, Photography, rich harris, uncles

I found out this morning that my iPhone app has hit #1 in top paid sports apps. I feel like finally some rewards may come from my hard work and the amazing work of my team. Yay! I had to show off the screen shot below. 

Ok I’ll shut up about it already.

47Project Business, iphone golearn fitness, golearn skateboarding, iphone, iphone apps, ipod touch, santa cruz skateshop, sc brand, skateboard tricks, skateboarding app, whagaa software

My 6 year old and I have a nightly routine before bed of making a couple ridiculous videos. This is the 80,000th one we’ve made this month. This routine goes on for about 30mins every night. Liam is currently the head of the household. I just live here and pay the bills. He’s a goofball.

47Project Videos, family family, fatherhood, fun, kids, silly, Videos

In 2008 I designed the UI for a How-To skateboarding iPhone/iPod Touch app called GoLearn Skateboarding. In December Apple approved the application, and this month they said they wanted to feature it! The feature went live yesterday and as of today it is ranked #2 in the top paid apps within the sports category at the iTunes app store! I’m super proud of and stoked on this project and we have a few more apps we plan on rolling out. I only did the front-end UI design so I have to give credit to Erik Florio/Giuseppe Taibi from Whagaa Software for providing the engineering expertise and the GoLearn platform. Credit goes to Danny Keith for all his help and support. Last but not least I need to thank Jarrod Allen and Jason Crum of Half Pint Skateboards for the video expertise and rider support. Everyone has been so awesome and I’m excited to see what opportunities arise for us in the near future. I’ve included some screen shots in this post.

PURCHASE THE APP NOW AND SUPPORT US!

47Project Applications, iphone danny keith, golearn fitness, golearn skateboarding, iphone, iphone app, ipod touch, jarrod allen, jason crum, skateboarding