It’s always been hard to put a label on the big bag of things I do for my work . At Flock I was the “Community Ambassador” (a term I made up), lately I’ve been talking to some people lately about “Director of Emerging Technology” roles and such…but “Technology Evangelist” is growing on me. The only catch is that my focus is more on people than technology, but I’ll try not to get too semantic about it.

A technical or technology evangelist is a person whose job or role is to promote technologies, usually new technologies. This may be, officially or unofficially, on behalf of a company or organisation, or on a personal basis, for instance open source evangelism. An evangelist promotes the use of a particular product or technology through talks, articles, blogging, user demonstrations, recorded demonstrations, or the creation of sample projects. The word evangelism is taken from the context of religious evangelism because of the similar recruitment of converts and the spreading of the product information through the ideological or committed.

Technology evangelist – Wikipedia

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Quite a few companies might want to rethink their MySpace startegy for 2007. If users have to change their behavior in a way that takes away the value of the service, just to avoid what they see as spam, you can bet they are going to put their guard way up. Frankly, who can blame them? The “MySpace Generation” is the most advertised to and cynical about marketing ever, and it’s not going to change until companies get more human in their approach.

MySpace has turned into a massive zit full of marketing puss. Most teens don’t mind advertising but when things look more like spam than advertising, you’re in deep shit. Every PR organization and marketing arm is leeching onto MySpace like a blood thirsty vampire. Problem is that vampires kill their prey. Teens who wanna hang with friends are mostly protecting themselves by privatizing their profile (more cuz of the marketing predators than thesexual ones) but this quickly loses the luster, particularly when it’s fundamentally hard to do what you want to communicate with your friends.

apophenia: some thoughts on 2007 (advertising, bullying, and mobile)

technorati tags:myspace, marketing, pr, advertising
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Why is the standard choice for air travel customers “window or aisle”? Are there really that many first time flyers for whom getting the window seat is a big deal, or people that need to be able to get to the restroom with no delay?

Here’s a freebie for the airline industry: social seating. Seems to me that on most flights, for most travellers the real question should be “Do you want to make a new friend today?” If the customer says yes, they get seated next to someone else who is feeling social today too. They can swap business cards, wallet pictures of the kids or travel stories. If the customer just wants to pop on some headphones and get into their own personal zone for a nap, read or work they can decline.

If the flight attendants knew know which areas of the plane had social and non-social travellers, they would be able to quickly anticipate and respond to their individual needs. More blankets in rows 7-15, etc.

Imagine the customer stories that airlines could get out of this. “Last summer I sat next to Bob from Spokane and thanks to Air Scoot’s social seating I’ve got a new golfing buddy and doubled my sales this quarter.”

technorati tags:travel, airlines, social, marketing
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Opera Software has hired a community leader as their first Technical Evangelist. Since October 2004, Daniel Goldman has been writing the Opera Watch weblog. I’ve been reading Opera Watch since I joined Flock in March and he does a great job. I’m sure he’ll continue to do so in his new role.

One of the advantages of meeting and speaking to many Opera users is that I’ll get the feel of what features users want added or modified in the browser. I’ll have direct access to our development teams, and I’ll work hard at making sure those features that our users dream of, turn into reality.

Joining Opera Software as a Technical Evangelist » Opera Watch

That’s one of my favorite and the most important parts of my job as Community Ambassador at Flock, Daniel. I hope it’s as enjoyable for you too.

So with all the major web browsers now having “community” people, and my respected colleague Jeremiah even saying that the Internet Explorer team gets community one question comes to mind. Has there ever been a better time to use a web browser? We’re all listening.

technorati tags:opera, operawatch, danielgoldman, browser, community
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A girl friend of mine was recently explaining that geeks madethe best lovers. Her logic was that most didn’t have the mostfulfilling social experiences in school, so they payed close attention to what their significant others wanted. Geek boys with the right attitude were casanovas in waiting, she said.

Queen of tech passion, Kathy Sierra, is talking about how marketing to geeks should be like a good lover. I think what’s she’s saying can be applied to most kinds of marketing too.

That’s where the marketing-as-good-lover model comes in. A good lover is NOT afraid of finding out what his (or her) partner wants. A good lover does NOT view it as “selling out” if he does things simply because it’s what the other person wants. A good lover does NOT believe it’s a compromise to try to be more popular, if being popular means making things more stimulating, exciting, sexy, enticing, compelling, appealing, and attractive. A good lover respects that our perception matters. A good lover respects and trusts us.

…Why does a lover go out of his way to do things for us? (besides the obvious–that he’s hoping for a repeat)

Because it’s rewarding. Full stop.

Geek marketing should be like a good lover – Creating Passionate Users

All the best marketers I know in the web industry are these kind of people. Most of them don’t act like you would expect marketing people to act, and think of their customers as their community.

Personally, I’m a geek-first kind of marketer: I was a geek longbefore I merged people, communication and geek skills together intogeek marketing; and a large percentage of our community at Flock to are geeks. I don’t know if that makes me a good lover or not *wink*, but I do love the people in my community. The trick of course is not to be geek exclusive, but that’s more for another post.

technorati tags:marketing, community
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