Since I keep hearing this over and over again, I’d like to clarify once and for all: You shouldn’t publish stuff to build your personal brand. It’s not a value in itself. (That would be like being famous for being famous – nothing good can come from it.) You should share what you know; if it’s valuable to someone else, you’ll get the positive feedback that some call “personal brand building”. But it’s a side effect. So stop boasting with your successes and get working on cool stuff!

Just had to get that off my chest. Thanks.

Image by Eneas (CC some rights reserved)

A couple of days ago I’ve given a short look back at the year 2009 from a personal point of view. Right after, I realized there were a couple more things with a wider tech perspective that I’d like to include – again, more for personal documentation than anything else. So here goes.

Everything went to the cloud
We had been talking about cloud computing for a few years, but for me, 2009 clearly was the year The Cloud took off. I moved practically everything to the cloud, and cloud often equals Google these days. My email has been living inside gMail for years, but in 2009 I’ve ditched my email client altogether. Now I’m IMAP-ing browser-based between my computers and my phone.

Everything but my most sensitive documents live in the cloud, especially most collaborative docs. (Again, Google Docs or Etherpad, but Etherpad has also been acquired by Google recently.) My calendars are 100% up in Google Calendar.

Am I happy about this focus on Google? Far from it. But at this point, I see no equally well-executed alternative. For an overview of just how googley 2009 was, head over to Gina Trapani. Also, I recommend This Week In Google, a great weekly podcast with Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis and, again, Gina Trapani.

Still all this is clearly just the beginning. It should be interesting to watch where cloud computing goes in 2010.

Android killed the iPhone (for me)
Ok, ok, Android may not have killed the iPhone officially. But ever since I switched to an Android-based phone (HTC Hero), I haven’t felt the urge to get an iPhone. Not a single time. Before I had been playing with the idea, and had always restrained. (I really don’t like the product policy behond the iPhone.) Android is a gorgeous, stable, powerful platform, and it’s all open source. It’s clear to me that while I might change phones a few times over the next couple of years, it’s not likely I’ll be leaving Android anytime soon.

Speaking of open source, 2009 is also the year I ditched Windows for good. I now live a Windows-free live (with a mix of Mac OSX, Ubuntu and Android), and boy, it’s feeling good.

The fight for our data
2009 has also been a year of intense battles in the digital realm, although certainly it’s not the last (or worst) to come. These fights have been along many different fronts, and not all have been going well at all.

In politics, Europe has been covered in conflicts regarding data retention. (German government introduced excessive data retention laws which are now under court review as far as I know.) Also in Germany, the basis for government-run censorship was laid under the pretense of fighting child abuse, search for #zensursula for details. The best German-language resource for these topics is certainly netzpolitik.org, so check them out for more details and updates. Good news, if not a solution to the problem: President Köhler has so far refused to sign the law.

In the corporate world, the conflict lines have been a lot more fragmented and twisted. However, one thing has become clear: Internet consumers will have to make a clear point regarding their expectations in terms of privacy and data control in digital contexts. Be it Facebook and its privacy settings, be it data ownership in other social networks. Important keywords in this field are: Data Portability identification systems like OAuth, microformats or the decentralized social web. (Like so often, Chris Messina is right in the middle of it. Check out the DiSo Project.) The same goes for End User License Agreements (EULA for short). Everybody is so used to just clicking those pages upon pages of legalese away that we’re bound to have a discussion about their use and legitimacy sometime soon. This isn’t new, but hasn’t been solved either, so maybe 2010 will bring some news there.

But worry not, it’s not all lost – these topics seemed to be very niche, and maybe still are. However, everybody in their right mind will come to the conclusion that there’s a line to what consumers have to bear before just moving on to another brand or product. (Even my mom was asking about the insanity of DRM the other day!) It looks like these topics, obscure as they may seem, are getting more publicity and more people to help out. Hopefully we can all collaboratively take some of the load off of the few individuals that have been doing such a tremendous job of raising awareness so far. (You know who you are.)

Obviously I’m happy to be able to end this post on a happy note.

So, again in short: the tech year of 2009 the way I perceived it = year of privacy discussions, cloud computing, Android.

Did I forget anything important? Let me know…

(image source)

The Seven Things

1. When I was a little kid, I wanted to make it my job to take things apart. I had no interest in putting them back together (or maybe I lacked the skills). I just wanted to take them apart, piece by piece.
2. Watching Road Trip always puts me in a good mood. I’m not proud of it, and it’s not even a particularly good movie, but even five minutes and all grudges are gone.
3. I got two masters degrees, almost by accident.
4. The two tools that I found help me most to increase productivity are, in this order, a large second monitor and static-adhesive whiteboard sheets (like these).
5. At home, I have a massive stack of chopsticks, and a glass from the Washington, DC, German Embassy’s basement bar. Both are completely unrelated.
6. I don’t understand, and never have, what small glasses are for. Cups are a completely different matter.
7. I’m writing this from a completely empty office because the rest of the crew won’t move in till tomorrow morning.

Who’s next?
Nicole Ebber – Zeitgeisty
Patrick Rathke – Pointkilla
Michelle Thorne – thornet
Ian Forrester – Cubic Garden
Sebastian Grünwaldt – Berlinblase
Janetti Chon – Janerri
Alien Ted – Alien Ted

The Meme Rules

• Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Charlene Li‘s presentation about the future of social networking, touching on general trends as well as the opening of networks and how to monetize. As always, excellent stuff. (via mashable)

While tapping into some very interesting points in itself, the clip was produced by Demos, a “think tank for ‘everyday democracy’”, as a teaser for their report on Network Citizens (PDF). From a first glance, the report looks like it digs into some interesting points. From the executive summary:

Social networks are providing tremendous opportunities for people to collaborate. But until now, thinking has focused only on how organisations can respond to and capitalise on networks. This report argues that we have to look equally at how networks use organisations for their own ends. That is where the new contours of inequality and power lie that will shape the network world. We have to face networks’ dark side, as well as their very real potential.

Interestingly, the report concludes that in economically tough times, networks are even more important than at other times:

The kind of networks considered in Network Citizens–relationship ties between workers in different types of organisation – are likely to be more important in difficult economic times. Our analysis suggests that the ‘ties that bind’ within organisations are important incubators of innovation and productivity. Networks contribute to organisational resilience, a vital attribute in an economic downturn.

This is something I have thought about quite a bit recently and hope to get around to posting some thoughts on this blog soon.

(via)

Good news: If you live in the U.S. or Canada, we can now print and ship the shirts to you much cheaper through our new U.S. Spreadshirt shop.

Nearly all of the shirts are American Apparel. (Except the German girl tee with black on black print: for some strange reason there seems to be no black American Apparel shirt for girls in the German store.) We stuck to American Apparel so you know what quality and cut to expect, and I’ve been quite happy with it.

On a side note, we were thrilled to see the shirt in the wild, too, as you can see in the picture below. It was taken at Communia Conference.

Photo by Juan Carlos De Martin, (jdcm on Flickr), released under Creative Commons (by 2.0).

Today I met up with Erik and he told me a few bits and pieces, good fun. The idea is to really take the audience along and share the whole experience, and use the whole range of social media tools: Blog, video podcast, Flickr galleries, you can leave video messages for them via Trombiblog. Also, it’s a deeply, inherently human and very personal topic, so it should be great for an online community.

I haven’t heard of another project catering to this particular niche: totally long tail in a way, but then again, also totally mainstream. And as I said: This one I have a hard time making a clear judgement about. But one thing is certain, it’s a very ambitious & innovative* project, and I wish Erik & Jodi all the best. So I’m curious what you think about the project!

ps. Also, we agreed to a brief introduction of RealBirthTV on blogpiloten.de. Expect it before the end of the week. (Full disclosure: I’m project managing blogpiloten.de.)

* Update: innovative, I thought after posting this, isn’t the right term here. It’s more a logical next step, the application of a certain set of rules, mechanisms and ideas to a particular niche: Here, total transparency during pregnancy.

Here’s a few brief thoughts, distilled into no more than 140 characters each, Twitter style (Max’ Twitter, my Twitter). We even scribbled a bunch of them in a notebook, in long-hand, but as it is with paper we lost it. So all I can provide right now is what I remember off the top of my head.

Don’t expect anything too deep; but maybe we were able to dig up a nugget or two that resonates with you. Without further ado, here’s the first few rough ideas.

• Documents are conversation.
• We live in the network, and you should, too.
• Sharing is growth.
• Social is the new black.
• A paywall is a wall folks crash into. Free is a freeway that folks love to surf.
• Hardware infrastructure is dead weight. We love to fly in the cloud.
• Iterate, iterate and iterate: Nothing is ever finished.
• Reputation, character and smarts are our capital.
• We don’t give a shit about fancy titles. Neither ours, nor yours.
• We want to deliver excellent results. For our clients’ best, but also to impress our peers.
• You can eat your cake and have it, too. And know what? Your colleagues and your competition can eat that same cake, too. You’ll still have it.
• We prefer casual talk about biz talk. We like to Get Things Done. There’s no contradiction there.
• Flexibility is key. We won’t buy expensive stuff without checking them out up front. And we always prefer flexible rent-on-demand services.
• Probably we know the people you’re looking for. Just ask us.
• All this corporate stuff isn’t very sexy. We’d like to bring our own equipment.
• We like to remix, mash up, hack. And we don’t care if the producer likes that or not.
• Don’t broker with information. Sharing is much more effective. More fun, too.
• Our watercooler lives in the cloud, too, it’s called Twitter.
• Word of mouth is a powerful thing. And through Twitter it spreads fast. Really, really, really fast.
• We’re always on. But here and there, we’ll go off the grid. During those rare times, we really won’t answer calls. Not even yours.
• Our carry our social networks around in our pockets. Yes, even right now.

Now there’s a whole set of design patterns for a reputation system, as well as some solid basics on online reputation and how it works. (You can find some thoughts about online reputation browsing this blog’s Identity 2.0 category.)

(Image: Screenshot of the collection Yahoo! Reputation Solution Patterns)

Reputation systems are important for online communities of all sizes: In a really small community, reputation might be implicit, but as the community grows, reputation needs to be managed in some way or another. Says the Online Journalism Blog:

In my experience, reputation systems are pretty important in encouraging users to keep coming back to your online community – you could argue, for instance, that the number of friends in Facebook or followers in Twitter is one simple example. Plurk more explicitly uses ‘karma’, as does (in a much better way) Slashdot

Yahoo says, this set of reputation-related design patterns is just one of “several collections of social-design related patterns that we’re working on. (…) They don’t tell you how to lay out a page or where to put an interactive widget. Instead, they address how to design a reputation system for your social software.”

This is excellent news: With something as tricky (and important) as your online reputation, you want some professional advice!

(via Online Journalism Blog, thanks Puja!)

(This version includes audio. If you’re looking for a slide-only version, you’ll find it here.)

My favorite point? Newspapers are the medium of our great grandparents, TV maybe the medium of our parents. But we live in the web.

Also, Steffen gave this presentation at a cross media seminar. Judging from the audience’s questions and feedback, they felt quite uncomfortable with his ideas. Which, of course, leads us right back to the main problem traditional media are facing these days: The media makers, or at least the decision-makers, largely belong to a different generation of media users than following generations. This development isn’t just going to go away, so big media: Why don’t you just come talk to us? You are familiar with good ol’ Cluetrain, are you? So come out and play!

Disclosure: I’ve been working with Steffen on Blogpiloten.de and may be biased.