Archive for August, 2009
TechCocktail DC (8/27) Recap
On Thursday, August 27, 2009, BOALT co-sponsored TechCocktail in D.C. along with AOL and others. BOALT’s main purpose was recruitment. The event which was covered by TechCrunch, was a spectacular event hosted by Frank Gruber who presented 9 local D.C. startups. Here’s a quick recap of the night.
1. BOALT ’s table and first visitor. (Forget your start up and come work for us!)
2. Yes, that’s right, we had frisbees! (A little game of ultimate?)
3. Liz Presson trying to recruit developers to come work with us on exciting projects! (Fake it, till you make it)
4. This is the back of my t-shirt. (Yes, i could have been a bit more creative)
5. Dan Dawley refusing to give somebody a frisbee unless she gave him her number. (She looks startled, don’t forget to tell me how that went Dan)
6. Liz is trying to explain that a frisbee has many uses and can double as a fan. (Thank goodness, I could use a cool down)
7. A BOALT frisbee doubling as a fan! (Sigh, relief)
8. When all else fails, order a bunch of pizza and use the frisbees as plates. (Yummy)
9. Meet and greet, with AOL’s AIM. I still like G-Chat better. (Wonder how hot it was in the AIM costume? Ahh the lovely summers in D.C.)
10. Innocent bystanders, my fiance Liddy Cooper and Melody Hildebrandt, Transcapitalist, founder and blogger. (What’s all the commotion about?)
Great job Frank, we look foward to sponsoring the next TechCocktail that comes to D.C.
Photo Credit: Shawn Duffy and Adam Boalt
Earth Aid is a service that measures consumer energy consumption trends, and then pays rewards based on how much energy is saved. Earth Aid gives consumers a big picture of their electric, natural gas and water usage on one platform.
The system identifies opportunities for rebates, tax incentives and discounts for saving energy. On August 26, BOALT had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Bixby, Chief Executive Officer of Earth Aid.
(Note: Sorry for the hard cutaways, it was my first time editing video but the content of the video is important for everyone to see.)
On August 5th Adam Boalt, the founder of BOALT Interactive Business, gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University about social media. He discussed the importance of incorporating social media into every business, whether you’re a realtor or an auto dealer, there is a place for social media.
Included below is a video we put together from that speech. We want to thank Johns Hopkins University for the warm welcome BOALT received and the opportunity to share our insight on the topic of social media.
So check out the video and let us know what you think.
Most of what you read about social media will focus on the what to do and why you would care aspects. Very little is said about the dangers of using social media, so let us take a look at that side of the story now, shall we?
Protect Your Privacy
The main problem with social tools above any other Internet use is the fact that people think they are making friends, just like in the real flesh and blood world. Of course with social tools you have none of the early warning systems that you get in face to face, that “middle aged female CEO from Texas” you were talking to might be a 19-year-old male hacker from Eastern Europe.
- Only share the kind of information that you would happily tell a stranger … because by using social tools, that is what you are doing
- Do not allow anyone automatic access to your primary email address, telephone number, geographic location or postal address
- Remember that there is no “undo” on the Internet – it has a veeeeery long memory. Assume everything is cached and stored for later. Because it probably is.
- Keep your chat to things that you would be happy to be shared with your boss, spouse, parents, kids and anyone else you respect.
- If in doubt, don’t say it.
Protect Your Safety
Do not get into arguments. Be careful how you phrase things so people are less likely to take offense.
Remember there are people out there who are, um, psychologically fragile shall we say? It does not take a lot to tip people into being an agressive nightmare. One of my friends had a crazy person turn up at his house in a threatening manner because of something my friend said, once twisted in the crazy persons mind, had caused him to get angry.
Someone is wrong on the Internet
Someone being “wrong on the Internet” is not a good reason to risk your family or business security.
On security, I need to share the first big tip above anything else.
When you are not using a tool … Log Out.
Yup, simple but very powerful.
Many of the problems with social media as far as hacking and hijacking your accounts are concerned are caused by people leaving their accounts logged in and logging out stops a lot of the exploits dead. I am not even meaning when you have used a public computer, in a library or cafe for example, but using the tools on your own machine.
You see there are people out there looking for ways where they can send malicious code out to a wide group of people to further their own nefarious aims, such as grab login details, spread malware and virus laden download links, and so on.
A recent example is this Twitter exploit discovered by David Naylor
Imagine that for a moment. Simply by seeing one of these tweets, code can be run inside your browser impersonating you and doing anything that your browser can do. Perhaps it may simply redirect you to a pornographic website? Or maybe delete all of your tweets? Send a message to all of your friends? Maybe it would delete all of your followers, or worse still, just send the details needed to log in to your account off to another website for someone to use at their leisure.
All of that, just from seeing one of these tweets.
A good reason to use a trusted desktop application like TweetDeck really, or otherwise to keep your following list down to people you trust and who are least likely to get trapped by scams and spam.
I love Social Media, and I think you should to, but we should always remember not everyone out there wants to play nice.
BOALT sponsored and attended the Social Matchbox Summer Social 2009 last Thursday at the E Street Cinema. The event hosted ten early stage start-ups that were picked from a pool of 50 applicants. The audience consisted of 200 handpicked industry leaders, investors, designers and press.
According to Social Matchbox, the audience also included representatives from Ashoka, Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, The DC Office of Economic Development, Department of Defense, Grotech Ventures, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, The Obama Administration, Sunlight Foundation, Valhalla Partners, the Washington Post, ThrillList, and TechCrunch.
Each emerging company presented their plan in a four minute secession followed by four minutes of Q&A. The event also set aside time for 60-90 second presentations in an open-mic session– “Opportunities and Ideas for Startups”.
On Friday, I was approached by a company that is creating a travel book for the West African country of Benin. This company had seen my photos on Flickr from the two years I spent in Benin as a Peace Corps volunteer and they wanted to use many of my photos throughout the book as well as on the cover.
Fawaze...from my Photostream.
So I wanted to brag, and also give a few pointers to those having trouble getting their work noticed.
Flickr is like any other social media site, if you want to be successful then you have to be active.
1. Complete your profile fully, including a photo of yourself. The Flickr profile is very short, not like Facebook, I still haven’t filled in mine, so it is a lot easier to complete.
2. Post a photo a day. A lot of people get on Flickr and upload a ton of photos all at once. This is fine if you want to use Flickr to share photos with friends and family only but if you post one to two photos a day you’re more likely to get noticed.
3. Tag your photos. It is important that you are very thorough when you tag your photos. Go through the photograph inch by inch and if you see something that you think someone would search for, add it. You’re limited to 75, so try to use them all. Have a photograph of a cloudy sky? Try these: blue, clouds, white, cloud, cloudy, sky, heavens, up, puffy, stratus, cumulus, cirrus, photo, digital, etc.