Better Interviews - SMC San Francisco
February 22, 2007
On 20FEB2007, we gathered at CNet headquarters in San Francisco to talk with Tom Abate of the San Francisco Chronicle (and ) about interview techniques. It was certainly the right group of people for this topic, with some people just getting started like Lorna Li of and her friend/new editor Marianne Betterly, a veteran from radio Stacy Bond of and Peter Shaplen, a veteran television producer. Listen in to this 87min podcast for some really valuable insights. We had a great, diverse group of people sharing their experience and helping each other with this important topic. The group included about 20 people, from our new advisor Tom Buckholtz to good friend Andy Kaufman to Jordan Gray & Jonathan Grindstaff.
Sphere: Related ContentSocial Media Club San Francisco Tonight - 20FEB2007
February 20, 2007
If you were not aware of our meeting tonight here in San Francisco and are not busy somewhere else, we hope you can join us for a very interesting round table / workshop. We are very pleased to have our friends Tom Abate and Tom Foremski leading a discussion about what makes a good interview, and more broadly how to be better journalists. Tom Abate has written up a good post called “How to make friends and interview people” which you can read before coming down to CNet HQ tonight at 6pm. Please register here if you are coming…
My inspiration behind this topic was the realization that I often spend too much effort trying to get out my own thoughts and ideas, rather than giving my full undivided attention to the person I am interviewing. While that may just be symptomatic of the fact I am interviewing my peers, I guess I should have gone for the Major in Communications while at American University instead of the Minor. Ultimately, my hope is that we can all learn a thing or two about the process of interviewing someone and are able to improve the quality of of our blogs and podcasts. (if you want to bring a podcast rig, or video camera for your interviews, please do so!)
6:00pm - Registration opens, beers are cold
6:30pm - Kickoff
6:35pm - Introductions, share a new resource, tool or site you are now using
6:50 (or so) - Tom and Tom will be speaking for about 30 minutes, after which we will have a short break
7:30pm - Workshop - I propose that we break into pairs to do practice interviews for 5 minutes each focused on using some of the techniques and tips you learned, questions to be discussed
7:50pm - Reconvene as a group to discuss what worked, what didn’t work and what you learned
8:15pm - Wrap up
We will have beers and waters on hand to quench your thirst and a few light snacks while you soak in the good conversation.
We are getting busier and busier helping people all over the country and the world, which means we could really use some more help locally in San Francisco and Silicon Valley to assist things in running more smoothly here. If you are interested in helping organize future San Francisco gatherings, please let us know and/or just edit our San Francisco Wiki page, which is one of the things that needs help in getting updated at the moment…
BTW - the tag for the event is smc:interviewing
Sphere: Related ContentI could really use your help… (Social Tagging Project #1)
February 7, 2007
As some of you know, I have been working on Social Media Club, and before that BrainJams, since October 2005. Until recently, it was all pretty much funded from my consulting work and on credit cards. Now we have the framework for a sustainable business and are busy trying to write the plan while organizing events and helping people connect with the experts and expertise they need to succeed with Social Media.
It is a very exciting time as things are starting to take off globally, and we are just about to break through the first floor of real world social entrepreneurship. Perhaps most importantly in this regards, Howard Greenstein has joined to serve as Executive Director/CEO leaving the security of his position at NYU to put it all on the line with our grassroots startup. His prior experience in building community groups such as NYNMA and WWWAC.org is invaluable, and his insightful counsel is exactly what I really need to help balance my passionate views on practical idealism.
So now we are at a point where we need to get a few part time people working on some projects along with some more volunteers - and hopefully a college intern or two. While I have been here before with other startups, I could really use your advice in this regards. In thinking about this the other day, it occurred to me that everyone who is getting busy right now probably could use help with this as well.
What I would like to propose is a topic for what could be our first ever “Social Tagging Project” - hiring for startups.
There are some key questions I am trying to answer right now, and we are fortunate enough to know some very bright people like yourself, who may have been down this road recently and could perhaps share what you learned. The knowledge we need is out there, it’s just not very easy to see or find in a short amount of time.
- What are the best sites to use to find the right people for a startup with a limited budget and a need to not invest much time with people who are not really the right fit? (last time I put a job ad on Craigslist for an Exec Asst, I had to go through 200 resumes - I don’t have that time right now) (tag - hiring:findtalent)
- How can we go about setting up Social Media Club to hire and provide the right sort of opportunities for a college level intern? What are the best things interns can get out of a work experience, so we are sure we’re providing value to this person in exchange for their work? (tag - hiring:interns)
- What are the most powerful questions you have asked or been asked in an interview? (tag – hiring:interview)
The way that I envisioned the Social Tagging Project working is that everyone who was interested could share a common set of tags, focused around specific questions (like the one’s above) related to one slightly broader topic. Additional tags could be suggested and shared via the comments section of the post that starts the project. Participants would invest about 30 mins to an hour on the following sorts of tasks.
- Adding a comment to the post/project page to indicate your interest and participation, perhaps link to your social bookmark account or a specific blog post that answers the questions
- Reviewing current bookmarks you have already saved to see if any answer the questions being considered, then adding the appropriate tag
- Researching these topics on your favorite search engine, or by going through other people’s bookmarks and identifying relevant content - then tagging these as appropriate
- Creating original content that answers the question or questions and adding the appropriate tags
The bottom line is, we can do more together then alone. As we discovered with BrainJams, a little bit of structure and intention can make a huge difference in manifesting outcomes that can benefit everyone. This is my first, ‘informal’ attempt at getting this idea off the ground, and it feels like the right sort of topic for it. What I would hope we see out of this is a set of resources that can benefit everyone, and really help with what we need to do right now - find some great potential employees without having to invest a lot of cash and a lot of time. Ultimately, we will be launching a site at www.socialtaggingproject.org to facilitate the connections and supporting the discovery of information across systems.
Of course, if you know someone who wants to work in digital media production, event management, informal learning and/or just wants to get involved with Social Media, please do send them my way. We’re open to candidates in New York and San Francisco, as well as folks with specific skills that can work virtually, but only if you really think it might be a great fit as we are not formally hiring for any positions just yet…
So what do you think? Got a few minutes to look around and tag some stuff to help everyone? Or am I completely off my rocker thinking something like this could work?
Sphere: Related ContentInterviews with Chris Heuer, Co-Founder of Social Media Club
January 4, 2007
A couple of fine fellas have done podcasts with Chris recently, and I would love to share them with you all.
(1) Shel Holtz and Chris discuss the social media press release; the evolution of the effort, the components of the social media release, the progress made by the working group, composition of the working group, the desirability of standards, the issues the social media release is designed to address, and Chris’s expectations for a release of the initial social media press release standard. Phew! All this in 31 minutes. The podcast can be heard on the For Immediate Release website.
(2) Chris sat down ‘virtually’ with Brian Oberkirch and chatted about Social Media Club, disclosure/blogger ethics and the Social Media Press Release. It is a long one, but a good one which can be heard here.
