Blog Comments as Social Currency is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

When I peruse blogs every day, I find a lot of stuff I like, some stuff I don’t like, and a little bit that I really like.  Like enough to warrant a comment, anyway.  But I don’t always comment.  I read through the comments first, and see if someone already said what I am planning on saying.  If so, I try to think of a different angle.  I try very hard to not simply say, “Great post!”.

What value does “Great post!” add?

None.  It gives the blog author a 0.1 second hit of euphoria, but that’s about it.  Blogs should be treated like conversations (despite what Mitch Joel has to say).  Let’s use the standard cocktail party analogy again (see item 8), because it works so well.

Imagine you’re at a cocktail party, in a circle of seven or so other people.  You have the floor, and are closing up a salient, original point on a current event.  You finish, take a sip of your drink, and someone in the circle says, “Great point.”  Then a pause, silence, and someone next to you says, “Great point.”  More silence, two seconds pass, a third “Great point.”

This isn’t a conversation.  It’s barely even dialogue.

Instead, someone else in the circle jumps off your point and starts up another, related conversation.  Partway through, she references something you said 60 seconds prior, thus tying the two thoughts together.  How much more interesting and engaging is her point, in addition to the total conversation?

The (new?) social currency among bloggers and readers these days isn’t so much “great post”, but rather heading on over to what they have to say and seeing if you can add value to one of their conversations on their site, if applicable. n That’s far more valuable (and euphoric) than “Great post!”, don’t you agree?  After all, isn’t that what this is all about?

Thanks to Tamsen McMahon {http://twitter.com/tamadear}, who inspired this post.

image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradipo/1435739708/

What Happens When You Don’t Have Executive Level Buy-in For Your Social Media Project? is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

But what if your social media plan, initiative, or campaign doesn’t have senior-management buy-in?

Please take 60 seconds and drop a comment – I’m really curious to see how we all handle this stuff.

image courtesey of http://www.flickr.com/photos/evrtstudio/

Why Your Twitter Follower Count Matters / Why Your Twitter Follower Count Doesn’t Matter is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

Is that title seemingly schizophrenic? Yes, but on purpose. I started this post, and set it aside, and then lo and behold, Max Kalehoff at AttentionMax wrote about it in a very similar fashion. So, go read his post, then come back here.

Here’s the problem with Twitter follower counts…

To some, it does matter. They want to amass the most followers to their message gets out to the largest number of people, and they (perhaps) feel a bit of an ego rush because they have 50,000 followers or whatever the case may be. It shouldn’t matter, though, because there are scams (no idea if they work) to instantly gain followers, so that number might not even be real. Plus, at any given point, 10% (or so) of followers are porn, spam, and robots – unless you actively police and block that.

To others, it doesn’t matter. When you strip away the ego and the superficiality of it all, it so doesn’t matter. And if you read this, you probably know that. It comes down to you using Twitter the way you want to use it (Chris Brogan says you’re doing it wrong anyway). People follow you for a reason (more on that below). So if you have 10 or 10,000 followers, that’s the right number. Want more? Continue doing what you did to get the first x followers. If you’re on Twitter for a numbers game, go play the lottery.

Here’s where I think the two follower mantras co-exist.

When I get a notification that someone is now following me (I use Topify, and it’s awesome), I look at a few key things for me to determine if I follow them back. Do they have a picture? And is it of them or a reasonable facsimile, or is it a sunset or something else? Is their bio complete? What did they recently tweet? How many people do they follow? And… how many followers do they have?

Yep.

I look at that number. How can I not? Who doesn’t? (you’re probably lying if you say you don’t)  But… if you’re using it as the sole reason to make a decision on whether you should follow someone, you’re doing it wrong. I look for a picture because it gives them depth and a sense of vulnerability (“Hey, it’s me, and not the beach.”). I look for a bio, because it lets me know what they might tweet about, or a sense of interest. I look at recent past tweets to ensure that they don’t blast out inane stuff (though this can be misleading). I look at the follower/following counts to get a sense of their ratio and try to determine if they are a broadcaster, lurker, or sharer. And, I look at how long they’ve been on Twitter. If someone joined Twitter only hours ago, are following a ton of people, don’t have a lot of people following them, and have a picture and a bio – I’ll follow them back, even though their follower count is low (they’re just starting out). There’s a good chance that it’s a real, human person.

For me, and for how I use Twitter, that’s important.

How about you?  What do you value most in a person’s Twitter ‘composition’?

image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twitter-follow-me.jpg

How To Be On Twitter Without Being On Twitter is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

[note: If you're reading this in an RSS reader, the images may not line up well with the text. If you start to get sea sick, pop on out to the full post.]

OK, so not the most SEO-friendly headline.  But have you ever been faced with this scenario (either you or someone you know)? “I don’t really get Twitter.  And even if I did, I don’t care if people walk their dogs.  Plus, I don’t have the time.” Below is an example to follow a select group of people without being ON Twitter, and push those updates to a once-a-day, compact, combined digest e-mail.  This lets the person keep a pulse on what’s going on, and <gasp!> might even get them on to Twitter.

Here’s an example to keep in mind when reading this; YMMV: Say you work in PR at a consumer-packaged goods company, and you want to show your product managers that people (some customers, some analysts, etc.) are talking about their products on line, on Twitter.  You want a summary of those tweets, once a day, in e-mail, because that’s a form they’re comfortable reading and it’s one that’s forward-able.  Let’s go. (NB: This procedure makes a few assumptions, documented along the way).

1. Take the list of names and e-mail address you have.  You have to start some minimum of e-mail addresses for this to work.  Presumably you have them in your mail program (I’ll use Outlook as an example; File >> Import and Export… >> Export to a File… >> Comma Separated Value (Windows) [a .csv file] >> pick your contacts, pick a location pick ‘next’ >> pick ‘Finish’)




2. Create a dummy GMail account (you can use one of the others and follow a similar approach; I’m listing the steps using GMail; the process is going to be similar).  I suggest a dummy account, because all we’re really using it for is as a host of the .csv file to give to Twitter (see step 5).




3. In GMail, on the left, click ‘Contacts’.  Since this is a new/dummy account, there shouldn’t be any.  Under ‘More actions’, select ‘Import’.  Click ‘Choose File’, and navigate to the .csv file you created.  Add them to a group if you like (not required).




4. Finish the default prompts, click yes, and otherwise finish the importing process.  Close that tab/window and get out of GMail.




5. Log in to Twitter (This presumes that you have an account, and that you’re helping others lurk; if not, go to https://twitter.com/signup and create one; or go here for other Twitter account creation options).  In the upper right/middle, click ‘Find People’ (see first screen cap).  Click on the ‘Find Friends’ tab.




6. Huzzah! you say.  Click GMail, then enter your uname/pwd info for the dummy GMail account (also another good reason to use a dummy account and not your typical/personal account).




7. Twitter will now look through the contacts list for e-mail addresses, and see if any of THOSE e-mail addresses were/are used in Twitter.  This whole exercise would be obviated if one could just upload a .csv file right to Twitter, but I digress.  That would shorten this blog post significantly.
   1. As in, it’s a shortcoming of Twitter, not my editing skills.




8. Twitter will report back the number of matches.  It may also report that it found a user, but that the user didn’t want to get found via email.  So, you may have to send a request.




9. DO NOT CLICK FOLLOW ALL, or follow any individually!  (You can, but that’s not the goal of this post).  Instead, print to .pdf or otherwise screen capture the results.  Essentially, what you’re looking for is the individual user IDs/Twitter handles.  We’ll do something with those later.




10. Save your work.
    1. [that’s a joke]




11. On the results page (the page where I mentioned to NOT follow all in step 9), right-click and open that Twitter-ers account in a new browser tab (you’re using a tabbed browser, right?)




12. Of each new page that’s opened, scroll down on the right side of the page, about half way, and look for the text ‘RSS feed of ___ ‘s Tweets’




13. Huzzah! you say again.




14. Depending on your browser, grab that feed URL, and throw it into Google Reader (the dummy GMail/Google account you made)




15. In Google Reader, I suggest creating a new folder and adding each RSS feed of a Twitter-er into one of your folders (using our example, you might create a folder for each product this Product Manager manages, so you can fire off a digest email per product).  The idea is that you create a new folder for each lurking activity.
    
    
    1. You can click the drop-down next to the newly added feed, or simply drag ‘n drop the feed into the new folder (presuming you created at least one new folder to start).  If you do go through this again, clear out your Google Contacts list before connecting to Twitter so those names from the previous exercise are not ‘found’ again.

    
    

    2. Repeat this for each of the found Twitter-ers.  It might take a half hour, so grab a cup of coffee and settle in. Once you get into a rhythm (and if you have a good Internet connection), it takes about 20 seconds per person.  Again, YMMV.




16. Following some international Tweeters?  No problem.  If you surf in Google Chrome or some versions of Firefox, Google translate will prompt you if you want the page translated.  Answer accordingly.  If you use Google Chrome, there’s an extension that will translate tweets and Facebook updates.




17. Take a break.
    1. Save your work.
    2. [that’s a joke, again]




18. In the bottom left of Google Reader, click ‘Manage Subscriptions’.  Up top, click ‘Folders and tags’.




19. You’ll now see a list of your folders (this is why you created them).  Look for your folder name and then scan to the right and look for the familiar RSS symbol and the word ‘private’.  Click the gray RSS symbol to toggle it to ‘public’.




20. Next, look directly to the right of that, and click on the option for view public page.  You should now see a page of just those Twitter-ers tweets.





21. Like you did before, you want to grab the RSS feed of this page (just the feed URL; we don’t want to add it to reader – that’d be a bit recursive).  Look for the ‘Atom Feed’ text on the right.  Right-click on it and pick ‘Copy Link Address’ (or the equivalent in your browser).




22. Head over to FeedMyInbox or any other RSS-to-email tools.  You can read what the site does on your own, but it does one thing very well: it converts an RSS feed into a once-a-day digest e-mail (up to five feeds free; after that, you have to pay).




23. Huzzah you say again!




24. Right-click and paste (or CTRL+V if that’s your thing) the feed URL into the first window. Enter a valid email address into the second window.  Click the huge green submit button.




25. Check your e-mail and confirm the message.  Make sure you white-list this address/ensure it doesn’t end up in junk mail.

OK.  So this seems like a fair amount of work.  But it’s 90% one-time setup.  Here’s how to use it moving forward….

• Set up a rule (Outlook) or filter (Gmail) in your e-mail program/client that forwards this message along to other colleagues so they get it, too.

• When a new Twitter-er pops on the scene, you can manually run step 7 with their email address; and then steps 12 through 14.  The rest is taken care of.

Conclusion

A bit of labor upfront, yes.  But if you’re trying to convince someone to get into the swing of Twitter, or if you yourself want to do some listening, but don’t have time to do the talking (baby steps), this is a good start.  How about the rest of you?  How do you listen on line?  Do you do something like this?  Or something different?

Passionate People: Fred Mullins is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

Fred Mullins at Panzano Market

Fred Mullins

How I Met Fred Mullins

Fred’s Approach

“Dammit, Just Bring Me Something”

A gentleman came in and sat in the restaurant.  He’s a Francophile , and really wanted a specific Pinot Noir.  He described what it was (this man knew his wine), and I recognized it.  Alas, I apologized that I didn’t carry it.  The gentleman insisted that it was likely next door [at Panzano] and that I could just grab a bottle.  That, too, wasn’t the case.  Exasperated, he says, “Dammit, just bring me something”.  So I find a nice sangiovese – not one I select for just anyone – and bring it over.  Mind you, it’s not expensive ($32 a bottle) – but I think he’s going to like it. I explain that the producer has a nice touch, really works with the soil, is long in the palette, and that it finishes well. [case in point: as Fred is telling me this anecdote, he describes the wine to me for about 20 seconds!] The gentleman takes a sip and concurs that it tastes good.  But the wine really opens up after about 20 minutes.  As the evening went along, I noticed him really start to like it.  He was really examining the label and pointing out details of it to his wife, and so on.  He ended up buying three bottles that evening, between the restaurant and the store!  He’s now a loyal customer, stopping in at Panzano about five times a week and Tomasso three times a week.  On top of that, he’s often bringing in some friends of his who have never been to either place.  He often responds to the newsletter first, and attends all my wine classes.

“Wine and food is about sharing.”

Sharing, in a Different Sense

What’s Your Take?

disclosure: I ordered a beer before I met Fred and sat down for the interview; he prevented me from paying. When I later returned to take a picture, he gave me some Italian chocolate from the market.

Free and Fast Market Research and Keyword Research is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

If you’re looking to spin up quickly on a topic, understand keywords or related (secondary) words to a search term, find out what a person talks about, or want to do some market research, keep reading.  You can use two free tools (Twitter and Wordle) to give you a graphical representation of content, all in about three minutes.  And, you don’t have to “be on Twitter” – you can do this without having a Twitter account.  In the example below, I’ll use the term “Red Sox” for my query, and pretend that I’m interested in starting up a blog about my thoughts on the Red Sox.  What are people talking about?  How can I get a quick glimpse into that conversation?

1. Go to http://search/twitter.com/advanced.  The other way to get here is to go to http://search.twitter.com, and click the ‘Advanced’ text, just to the right and below the search box.  In my anecdotal discussions, this is often underused, or not even known.
   




2. Enter “Red Sox” (using the quotes) into the ‘All of These Words’  box.  You may want to run this a few times (spending 6, 9, or 12 more minutes) with variations, like using the #redsox hashtag instead, or searching for tweets within a certain geographical area, or tweets with the : ) or the : ( ‘sentiment’.




3. After you execute the search, you’ll see the results page.  On the right, look for ‘Feed for this query’.  Click that.  Depending on your browser, and if you have a pre-configured RSS reader (like Google Reader), you’ll see something that looks like this: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=”red+sox” It might be in a new window (e.g., you use Chrome and it doesn’t link over to Google Reader), or it might look like this (if you use Firefox and have Google Reader as your RSS aggregator): {pic}  You can save yourself a click by instead right-clicking on the ‘Feed for this query’ and select ‘Copy link location’ or ‘Copy link address’ or whatever your browser’s equivalent is.




4. We’re done with Twitter.  Now open http://www.wordle.net.  If you’ve never been, it’s cool – it’s a free wordcloud creation tool. [Bonus tip: drop the text of your resume in here - what word pops the most?  Is that the word that you want to pop the most?]. The premise is that the more often a word is mentioned, the larger it is.




5. On the top tab, click ‘Create’.  In the second entry field, past the URL you just copied – the atom/RSS feed – into the box and click ‘submit’.
   




6. Wordle thinks for a second, and then churns out some content.  Under the ‘Layout’ option, change to horizontal if you’re having a hard time reading vertical or diagonal text. Play with the colors until you get something that looks good for you.  Be sure to check out the ‘Language’ to get a text version of word counts, or to only show the top few.
   n words.




7. Now open in a new window and screen capture it, print to a .pdf, or otherwise do whatever.

That’s it.  In three minutes, you’ve taken a river of news using one free tool (Twitter) and distilled it into something generally cogent using another free tool (Wordle).  And, it looks pretty.


What about you?  How do you do quick and dirty market or keyword searching?  Or, what are the other creative ways you use advanced Twitter search and Wordle?  let us know in the comments.



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Free Ideas for the Transportation-Consulting Industry is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

I think marrying existing technologies today to seasoned industries will refresh the outlook on those industries and potentially breathe new life into them. I describe four business ideas and how certain technologies can be applied.

The Background: I’m a Recovering Engineer

In a former career, I was a transportation engineer for a consulting firm. The firm served a mix of public, private, and institutional clients, and their services ranged from transportation planning, traffic engineering and design, permitting, land development, and environmental services. Put into layman’s terms: when that empty lot got turned into a usable site at the end of your street, I worked for a company that helped get those plans and permits and meetings taken care of.

I enjoyed what I did, and moved onto other things, and now I’m here. But, I still can’t stop thinking about that job, and every so often, I’m struck with a business idea or technology application. Below are four of those ideas, and they focus around marketing, content creation, and value addition.

Idea 1: A Geographical Mash-up of Completed Projects

What about a map of the US (or other locations) with typical Google push-pins of where project work has been completed? A little fly-out that reads something like client name, type of work, length of permitting, point person, construction cost - you get the idea (see example, though that’s just regular data from Google maps). Put the information that matters in that fly out. Link out to pictures of the site. Bonus points for ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. And show videos, too: interviews with the site owner, or a neighbor, or the lead design engineer talking about the site challenges.

The developers (the engineering firm’s clients) could use this as a marketing tool as they court other site owners. The firm I worked at could use it as a marketing tool to attract more clients. Heck, the firm I used could use it internally, for when other projects are starting up nearby, as a way of doing some due diligence. I got this idea from a Mashable! post referencing a digital/dynamic yearbook for Colgate University.

Idea 2: Ebooks

Ebooks aren’t new, but they’d be new to this company. What about an ebook that shows the timeline of a permitting process for a ‘typical’ private development project? What about calling out the typical hurdles and where that process might go awry, and how seasoned veterans of the permitting industry (this is where a very soft sell comes in) can help get it back on track? I even thought of a design in my head as I drafted this: a Chutes and Ladders  approach. Or how about an ebook that talks about the interplay of the multiple permits for airports? Or a comparison of a ‘typical’ residential development approval versus a Massachusetts Chapter 40B approach? The point is to provide content that has value to help cement a position of thought leadership. Give (and demonstrate!) the impression to others that you know what you’re talking about.

Idea 3: Video

When I was a transportation engineer, we used TLAs like it was nobody’s business. We threw around so much jargon, it was hard to keep up. Many industries are like this – this is nothing new. What about a glossary of these terms for the layperson? The beauty of this idea is that could be an ebook (see above), or a video of someone explaining them. YouTube is the second-most used search engine right now. Load up a video, tag it appropriately and provide the right meta data, and score some juice in Google.

An extension of that is the following: One of the terms used in traffic engineering is ‘level of service’ (LOS). It denotes the quality of traffic flow, and follows a typical grade school (US) report card system: A is great (free-flow), and E is at capacity (traffic jam). F is failure (more demand than capacity). Why not show what level of Service is? Record a few sessions of intersections or freeways or side streets where there is LOS A, B, C, D, and E conditions. Add an audio track that describes why. Not only will this get Google juice, but this can be used in client meetings and public meetings to show what some of the analysis actually means in the real world (it is often very tricky to describe to the public). It can be used over and over and over again.

Idea 4: Augmented Reality

This is similar to my Google maps idea, but on steroids. Augmented reality is – in a nutshell – the overlay of digital data on a digital device screen, combined with a ‘real world’ view through the device’s camera.  Mashable! has not only a good definition of this, but a static screen shot and an embedded movie of this, in action.  What if a mobile phone app (iPhone or Android, maybe?) were made that let a user (say, a prospective client) to drive through a town to see all of the other work this firm has done?  Similar to Wikitude, maybe, but just for developments?  As the view changes through the camera and onto the screen, up pops little digital tags of the work that the firm has completed, with links out to a deeper description of those projects.

A second version (or same version, but with permission/user controls) could be developed for internal employees, as they go out to do site visits and site reconnaissance. Knowing what’s around (this time, not just work done by this firm, but maybe data pulled from the Town’s/City’s municipal database about other projects) could make any report and research that much more rich and detailed. The app could be sold (to make a profit) to other engineers/engineering firms. The app could be given away to prospects (as a source of lead generation). Update: I had this idea a few months ago, and never wrote about it. Just yesterday, ReadWriteWeb published an article about SAP doing something very similar. So, I had to get my post out for fear of looking like copy cat.

So, How about You?

Here are a few closing questions (more than usual) to hopefully make you think for a moment. Do you work in this industry? Can you see this happening? Or, have you already? Can you apply these ideas to your industry? Can you think of another technology application and apply it towhat you do now to put a different face on it?

image credits: richardmasoner on Flickr ; shawnblog on Flickr; jntolva in Flickr

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Using Social Media to Increase Event and Webinar Attendance is a post from Alan Belniak's Subjectively Speaking blog. Click through to read more.

"I cannot wait to attend this webinar!"

I’ve been asked a few times by colleagues to assist or consult on how to use some social media sites to drive traffic to webinars, virtual events, actual events, and the like.  Instead of recycling the e-mail over again, I’m turning it into a post [this one].  I can point colleagues to it, you all can comment on it, and the world is a happier place.

Here are a few thoughts below.  I’ll use webinar as an example, but you can easily substitute in a live event, meet-up…  whatever (obviously some things may need to change).…

• Look back at the attendance of previous webinars and see if they are interested.  Is this social media?  Nope – this is just good common sense.




• Look through the notes of your listening exercise and spend some time in the networks where conversations are happening.  Not a ton of time.  But not zero time.  After all, you want them to attend – you’ve got to at least tell them.




• Use a site like http://www.boardtracker.com to search for your search term on only discussion boards.  As above, do not just go in and advertise a web cast.  Listen, listen more, comment, offer content, then ‘pitch’ the webcast.




• Look for other groups on LinkedIn that relate to your topic.  See if you can join them (to the ones that you are not members of).  Same as above - do not post the link to the webinar.  Instead, become a member of the community, answer questions, ask questions, offer content.  Then post a link to the webinar.




• Same process for Facebook (though if you’re doing a more business-focused webinar or event, I’d start with LinkedIn).




• Are you featuring a speaker at your webinar?  Great!  Here’s what you can do: Let’s pretend our speaker is from Forrester Research.  You could search Twitter for the text “Forrester Research” (I did it here for you: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=Forrester+Research).  Go to those tweets, and then look at, say, the first five followers of the people who used that term.  See if, from their bios, that they might be interested in this kind of topic. Follow them.  There’s a good chance they will follow you back.




• See if your guest speaker has a Twitter account.  Follow her for sure.  And… see who else she follows, and maybe message them.  If they like her content (by virtue of following her), there’s a good chance that they might be interested in your webinar.




• Use a site like http://www.Twellow.com to search on Tweets and bios for keywords relative to this webinar.  Here are other Twitter directories you can consider.




• Once you find people, follow them.  Then listen for a few days.  Then offer up links about other kinds of related content.  Then offer up a link to the webinar.  You need to ‘win them over as a friend’ before you pitch to them.  As Chris Brogan has said, “be there before the sale.”




• Send out an internal message to colleagues in your company with suggested copy that they can use to send out beyond the company walls to promote the webinar.  Suggest that they use
  • certain text and a link for Twitter;
  • create a bit of a longer, but more personal message (and link) for Facebook; and
  • a more professional (but short) message for LinkedIn (you can update your LinkedIn status, too, like Twitter).
  • Email these people and suggest that they update their statuses with this.
  • Key takeaway: reduce the friction for participation by giving people tools instead of orders.

• Does your company use Yammer?  Great.  Send out an internal Yammer message, asking people to do the same.

• When posting links in any social channel (like LinkedIn), it’s helpful to use bit.ly to shorten those links.  You get free tracking statistics if you use one of those services.  Can you use others? Sure.  I like bit.ly.  I also like Coke, and you might like Pepsi.  You get the idea.  No one wants to read a URL that 128 characters long.

There are probably more, but this should be plenty between now and then.  You’re probably saying (correct me if I’m wrong), “Wow!  I don’t have a ton of time to get into these sites and listen, comment, offer content and links, and *then* offer the webinar.””  You might be right.  The real value in social media is to foster and curate long-term relationships, even if they are digital.  The reason being is that when you have a call to action, it doesn’t come across as, “Buy my stuff!”  It comes across as, “Hey, I’ve offered up lots of good stuff before, in the form of comments, links, content, etc. - here’s another, and it’s a webcast.  I think you’ll be interested, based on our past discussions.””


Make sense?  The key is to start now (notice that there’s no reference to when the webinar actually is)… start now, so your involvement won’t look planted.”  Key to your success is to stay somewhat involved after the webinar.  This isn’t a one-time broadcast.  If you’ve participated in these groups (maybe even pre-solicited questions ahead of time to feed to the speaker?), then you know the conversation won’t end as soon as the webinar is over.  It doesn’t if you’re face-to-face, so why should it online?  And if you think about it a bit more deeply, it’s a good idea.  You’re really just starting early for the next one.


Depending on your level of social savvy-ness, some of this is old hat to you, and some is new.  Also, I am “… like a dwarf on the shoulders of giants.” I picked up some tips along the way, augmented them, added new ones, etc.


image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnie_bling/830286666/