One of the first things I’m usually asked when people ask me about WordPress blogging regard the types of plugins I use. In response, I’ve gathered a short list of the very best plugins that have given me the best results over time. It is my hope that you’ll find some benefit in them too.

All of the following plugins are supported by the WordPress community and can be downloaded through eh WordPress Plugin Directory. All of them have been highly rated and tested, and should not give you any trouble upon install (provided you follow the instructions given by the plugin developers). Simply click on the plugin title to go to the download page.

——

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Google XML Sitemaps Homepage.

——

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

Author: Dagon Design

A very useful plugin. Unlike the Google Sitemaps plugin, It creates a sitemap for your site that is readable by humans. This is not an XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable one with its own options page in the WordPress admin panel.

Some features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more.

I use this on my blog. It works with WordPress 2.7 but requires WordPress Version: 2.1 or higher. You can see the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator on my blog here.

For more information, including installation and usage instructions, please visit the page for this plugin: http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/

——

podPress

Interested in podcasting? podPress is extremely easy to use and super-powerful. It has tons of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.

* Full featured and automatic feed generation (RSS2, iTunes and ATOM and BitTorrent RSS)
* Preview of what your Podcast will look like on iTunes
* Podcast Download stats, with cool graphs. See below.
* Support for Premium Content (Pay Only)
* Makes adding a Podcast to a Post very simple
* View MP3 Files ID3 tags when your Posting
* Control over where the player will display within your post and what it will look like.
* Support for various formats, including Video Podcasting
* Supports unlimited number of media files.
* Automatic Media player for MP3, RM, OGG, MP4, MOV, QT, FLV, ASF, WMV, AVI, and more, with inline and Popup Window support.
* Preview image for videos
* Support for seperate Category podcasts
* Audio Comments

For the latest information visit the website: http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress.

——

Redirection

Note: This Plugin is for WordPress 2.7 only!

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

This is a super-powerful plugin that is especially useful if you don’t want to mess with .hta access files. Saves a lot of trouble and headache.

Existing features include:

* Automatically add a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes
* Manually add 301, 302, and 307 redirections for a WordPress post, or for any other file
* Full regular expression support
* Apache .htaccess is not required - works entirely inside WordPress
* Strip or add www to all your WordPress pages
* Redirect index.php, index.html, and index.htm access
* Redirection statistics telling you how many times a redirection has occurred, when it last happened, who tried to do it, and where they found your URL
* Fully localized

——

WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

However, because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment, the plugin will only serve static html files to:

1. Users who are not logged in.
2. Users who have not left a comment on your blog.
3. Or users who have not viewed a password protected post.

The good news is that probably more than 99% of your visitors don’t do any of the above! Those users who don’t see the static files will still benefit because they will see regular WP-Cache cached files and your server won’t be as busy as before. This plugin should help your server cope with a front page appearance on digg.com or other social networking site.

See the WP Super Cache homepage for further information.

——

Google Analytics for WordPress

Confused on how to get Google Analytics to work with your WordPress blog? The Google Analytics for WordPress will solve your problems.

This plugin by Joost de Valk automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.

In the options panel for the plugin, you can determine the prefixes to use for the different kinds of outbound links and downloads it tracks.

Google Analytics for WordPress homepage.

——

All in One SEO Pack

Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Some features:

* Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
* Generates META tags automatically
* Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
* For Wordpress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
* You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
* You can fine-tune everything
* Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Download All in One SEO Pack.

——

WordPress Automatic Upgrade

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

——

WP-Polls

Note: This plugin requires WordPress 2.7 or higher.

WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

All the information (general, changelog, installation, upgrade, usage) you need about this plugin can be found here: Twitter Tools

This popular tool by Alex King creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. You can choose to automatically update Twitter when you make a new blog post, or integrate Twitter into your blog.

If you use this plugin, please change the default Twitter notification text from “New Blog Post” to something more creative. It’s a bit overused on Twitter and people tend to ignore it when they see “New Blog Post” all over the place on Twitter.

——-

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. Key features include:

1. Limiting by a threshold: Peter Bowyer did the great work of making the algorithm use MySQL’s fulltext search score to identify related posts. But it just displayed, for example, the top 5 most “relevant” entries, even if some of them weren’t at all relevant. Now you can set a threshold limit for relevance, and you get more related posts if there are more related posts and less if there are less. Ha!
2. Using tags and categories: New in 2.0! The new 2.0 algorithm uses tags and categories. The new options screen puts you in control of how these factors should be used.
3. Related posts in RSS feeds: New in 2.1! Display related posts in your RSS and Atom feeds with custom display options.
4. Disallowing certain tags or categories: New in 2.0! You can choose certain tags or categories as disallowed, meaning any page or post with such tags or categories will not be served up by the plugin.
5. Related posts and pages: New in 1.1! Puts you in control of pulling up related posts, pages, or both.
6. Simple installation: New in 1.5! Automatically displays related posts after content on single entry pages without any theme tinkering.
7. Miscellany: a nicer options screen (including a sample display of the code that is produced New in 2.0), displaying the fulltext match score on output for admins, an option to allow related posts from the future, a couple bug fixes, etc.

Download Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

——-

IntenseDebate Comments

IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Full comment and account data sync between IntenseDebate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake.

Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!

IntenseDebate Homepage.
——-

WP Greet Box

Author: Thaya Kareeson

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter.

You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors (not matching any referrer URLs) suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction. Best of all, this plugin is compatible with WPMU and various WordPress cache plugins (so you do not have to sacrifice speed).

—–

Installing Plugins in WordPress 2.7

You can find additional plugins for your site by using the new Plugin Browser/Installer functionality.

Installing Plugins in WordPress 2.6 or Older

If you run WordPress 2.6 and older, you can find plugins by browsing the WordPress Plugin Directory directly and installing manually through your favorite FTP client.

——-

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who studies new media and the relationship between humans and computers. She enjoys data visualization (click for more info on conference tracking), search engine optimization (ask), and how marketing works in the online ecosystem.

You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, or drop her an E-mail at caseorganic[at]gmai[dot]com. She’s spoken at various conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3, Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conferece, Ignite Portland, and Ignite Boulder.

Fictional character creation is a useful tool in creating an intriguing narrative that captures attention, especially since the character can be easily adapted to fit different digital spaces, such as Video, Microblogging, and Image sharing sites. Media diversity  is also useful in building and unifying online communities that access with media in separate channels.

Creating a consistent brand all through many all social sites one of the best ways to maximize the value of a character or brand campaign.

Ryan Summers and I created a presentation on how to track users across various social media sites using mostly free tools. It was given at Web Analytics Wednesday in Portland, Oregon.

History

A few weeks before the MITX awards ceremony, ISITE Design created a short video called “El Consultador” as an introduction to other agencies.

The El Consultador campaign generated diverse social data. This created issues with tracking data from multiple social media sites across problems with social media is that these is no singular way to gather and rank all of the data over time. Tools like Radian6 and Trucast are in use by larger agencies and businesses, but there exist an increasing amount of free tools for data visualization and engagement reporting that are available online.

This Powerpoint was made for an audible presentation. I collaborated with Ryan Summers of ISITE design on it and presented it at Web Analytics Wednesday. I will attempt to explain the results/processes in a textual manner here.

Profiles Created for the El Consultador Campaign

We used analytic data from Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo and Twitter to determine the most successful aspects of the campaign.

On Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/2309025

On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz6jt_aSFg0

On Flickr:
http://flickr.com/photos/elconsultador/
(Workers at ISITE design superimposed the Consultador face onto a variety of characters in pop culture).

On Twitter:
http://twitter.com/elconsultador

——

Key Performance Indicators

We determined a number of Key Performance Indicators of the social media campaign.

-Direct awareness of ISITE design agency
-3rd part mentions
-Social media followers (number of Twitter followers, comments on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr).
-Direct communication

YouTube Reports

We used YouTube reports to track the engagement with the video campaign.

Data tracked included:

-Age Demograpics
-Gender Demograpics
-Discovery Sources
-Timeline Trends

The campaign was viewed predominately by 26-45 year old males and mostly during and around the date of the MITX awards. This is the demographic it was aimed at.

Vimeo Stats

Vimeo is a high-quality Video sharing site with a limited but very engaged traffic demographic. We used Vimeo data to find more about who engaged with the campaign and compared it to YouTube data.

Flickr Reports

Flickr has a reporting tool for image views over time for every image. The data can be accessed with a premium Flickr account. We used this data to determine the most viewed (strongest/most impactful) pictures associated with El Consutador on the El Consultador account, and which images should be associated with the campaign on other sites (if future campaigns needed to be implemented).

Google Analytics

We used data from Google Analytics for the page on which El Consultador existed on the ISISTE Webpage. Data was tracked from the “El Consultator” and “MITX” keywords. New visitors and direct traffic were also analyzed.

Social Nodes

The campaign was picked up by three prominent bloggers, including Chris Brogan, Davaid Armano (VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass), and C.C. Chapman (Prominent figure in the community of podcasting, new media, cofounder of the Advanced Guard, a marketing company which focuses on utilizing social media and other emerging technologies).

Blogs linking to the campaigns were not found via inlink searches in Yahoo! Site Explorer, but with an intelligence feed created in Yahoo! Pipes (see below)

Tracking Overall Data

Custom intelligence feeds are useful for checking overall propagation of data. Yahoo! Pipes provides a free custom way to aggregate data across Google blog search, Google news, Technorati, Flickr, and Twitter.

———

Data Visualization and Tracking for Twitter

I presented an extended set of tools and data visualization methods for Twitter. Links for all of them are here:

Reports/Demographic Research:
Summize
http://tweetstats.com/

TweetVolume
http://tweetvolume.com/

Twitter Mobile (vs. Twitter in browser)
http://m.twitter.com/home

Neoformix Twitter Stream Graphs
http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php (I provided a live demo of this).

Twitter Stream Graphs are a simple way to rsearch keyword volume associated with a brand or campaign. Neoformix also tracks keywords over time, meaning that one can see when a certain keyword became popular.
——–

Future Suggestions:
More Flickr photos could be linked to all of the other accounts, such as Flickr, Youtube, and Vimeo. Linking together social media campaigns in a more robust fashion will affect CTR’s by making the campaign spreadable across various demographic profiles and types of social media users.

——-

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist who studies new media and the relationship between humans and computers. She enjoys data visualization (click for more info on conference tracking), search engine optimization (ask), and how marketing works in the online ecosystem.

She graduated from Lewis & Clark College in May 2008 with a degree in Sociology/Anthropology and wrote her thesis on cell phones and the effect of technology on cultural constructions of space and privacy.

You can follow her on Twitter @caseorganic, or drop her an E-mail at caseorganic[at]gmai[dot]com. She’s spoken at various conferences including MIT’s Futures of Entertainment 3, Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conferece, Ignite Portland, and Ignite Boulder.

She also blogs at Nerdabout.com and http://www.blog.makerlab.org, a Portland new media incubator. She founded CyborgCamp, an unconference on the future of humans and technology. She is also involved with building and studying electronics with DorkbotPDX.

What an epic month it has been! There was  the WordPress 2.7 Release party, the Cubespace Holiday party, a couple of Beer and Blogs and a lot of snow. Also, CyborgCamp ran smoothly (the keynote videos are up if you haven’t seen them yet).

This next week looks pretty awesome, too. If you haven’t been before, you should really attend Dorkbot. A lot of amazing people and devices usually show up, and it’s kind of like going to a museum of electronics.

Next month, be sure to check out the SOUK holiday party, as you can work there for free the entire day. And January 14th continues the epic Lunch 2.0 saga at the OTBC headquarters. If you’re heading out there on the Max, make sure not to miss the Lunch 2.0 Party Train for some on-the-go networking.

If you’re a creative type, come to Drinking and Drawing on Jan 14th at 6:00Pm, where two types of fun will undoubtedly collide in new and unexpected ways.

Finally, on Februrary 20th, don’t miss out on RecentChangesCamp. If you’re at all interested in wikis, this place will be heaven for you. It is the only event of its kind in the world.

See below for a sequential list of all of the events happening this month, with details and ticket/RSVP information.

———————–

Monday, December 22, 2008 from 7–11pm

DorkbotPDX Meeting

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall
1945 NW Quimby
Portland OR 97209
US

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

Description
Come join us for an evening of socializing, talking about odd hacks and poking around with other people toys. Bring things for show and tell if you like, or just bring a willingness to share your interests. We’ll be the kids with all the coolest stuff on the table. Hope to see you there.

See original posting on Calagator

Sunday, December 28, 2008 from 1–5pm

DorkbotPDX Open Lab

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) Room 205
1241 NW Johnson Street
Portland Oregon 97209
US
(map)

Website
http://dorkbotpdx.org/

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday January 2, 2009

Beer and Blog (weekly, every Friday from 4-6Pm)

Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://portland.beerandblog.com/

We’ll still find a way to hang out and warm our bellies with Holiday ale! After all, even if I said we weren’t meeting, people still would show up. I love you guys for that. So, this Friday we’ll get together and toast to 2008 as we enjoy the last official Beer and Blog of the year (although people may still show up on the 26th).

January will be Beer and Blog’s 1 year anniversary and we have some cool plans in the works. We’re pulling together the best of what we learned in 2008 and turning it into a full or half day workshop for all those who want to start a blog or improve one. We’re also going to do a mini Job Fair.

Monday January 5, 2009

souk’s Birthday

souk
322 NW 6th Avenue, suite 200
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social

Website: http://www.soukllc.com

Celebration of a local small business serving the creative class - we’re 2 years old! Work for free today, or just stop by to enjoy cupcakes, cheer, Blazer tix drawing and more.

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 12, 2009 from 6:00pm - 7:00pm

Mobile Love, Android Style #8

Lucky Lab Brew Pub
915 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon
Category: Social
2nd monday of the month is android day. Android is the mobile phone operating system from Google. meet with local area developers.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Lunch 2.0 at the New OTBC Office

OTBC in the Beaverton Round
12725 SW Millikan Way
Beaverton, Oregon 97005
Category: Social
For the first time, Portland Lunch 2.0 will happen in the ‘burbs, Beaverton to be precise.

The OTBC is moving into new space and partnering with the Beaverton Round Executive Suites.

So, to showcase their new digs and introduce Lunch 2.0 to the suburbs, the OTBC will be hosting Lunch 2.0 on January 14, 2009.

The Beaverton Round is right on the MAX line about 20 minutes from Portland. Just jump off the Blue Line at the Beaverton Central stop, and you’re 90 feet from the new OTBC office.

Lunch 2.0 is a Valley phenomenon that you can read about at lunch20.com, and we’re putting a PDX stamp on it.

You can follow all things Portland Lunch 2.0 at Silicon Florist.

Are you vegan or vegetarian? Please leave a comment so we can plan food accordingly. Thanks.

RSVP on Upcoming

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 11:00am

Lunch 2.0 Party Train to OTBC

Pioneer Courthouse Square
701 Sw 6th Ave
Portland, Oregon 97204
Category: Social
All Aboard! We’re going to par-tay all the way down to the OTBC for Lunch 2.0.

Here’s the scoop: Meet up at Pioneer Square MAX stop and catch the Blue Line MAX at 11:27. It will arrive just a few feet from the OTBC at 11:50. We’ll all be in the rear MAX car cuz that’s how we roll.

Don’t forget to RSVP for Lunch 2.0 http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1148458/

Chuga Chuga Choo! Choo!

RSVP on Upcoming

Saturday January 17, 2009 from 1:00pm - 5:00pm

Masterbacon: A day for bacon lovers

Kveton’s
2822 SW Boundary St
Portland, 97239
Category: Social

Website: http://bacongeek.com/masterbacon

Have you ever wanted to get together with a bunch of other bacon geeks and just geek out about bacon? What if there was an event specifically catered to bacon geeks to be able to share their favorite bacon treats with the world? Wouldn’t it make sense to make it a competition complete with trophy and prizes? Of course it would.

Masterbacon is just such an event.

RSVP on Upcoming (63 people have saved this event at the time of posting).

Tuesday January 13, 2009 at 7:30pm

Portland Arts and Lectures: Michael Pollan

Portland Center for the Performing Arts - Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

1037 Sw Broadway
Portland, Oregon 97205
Category: Education

Buy Tickets

Wednesday January 14, 2009 at 6:00pm

Drinking and Drawing

The Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave.
Portland, Oregon 97209
Category: Media
Website: http://www.drinkinganddrawing.org

Drinking and Drawing is an evening of collaborative animation. Artists, animators, spectators- everyone is welcome, and anyone can participate!

The event is free to Cascade SIGGRAPH and ASIFA members- all others pay $5 at the door, and everyone must be 21+.

Visit www.drinkinganddrawing.org for more information about the event and how it works, and follow @DrinknDrawPDX on Twitter for updates.

Ticket Info: $5

RSVP on Upcoming

Monday January 26, 2009 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm

PDXCritique

CubeSpace
622 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://pdxcritique.com
The mission of PDX Critique is to provide a monthly forum for designers of any stripe (graphic, web, whatever) to crawl out of their work void to share information and constructive criticism.

Have something you want critiqued? Contact us via the google group or on the blog.

RSVP on Upcoming

Thursday February 19, 2009 at 7:00pm

Ignite Portland 5

Bagdad Theater and Pub
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, Oregon 97214
Category: Social
Website: http://www.igniteportland.com

Save the date! Ignite Portland 5 will happen on Thursday, February 19, 2009, at the Bagdad Theater. Stay tuned to http://www.igniteportland.com/ for more details, and submit YOUR talk idea now!

RSVP on Upcoming

Friday February 20, 2009 - Sunday February 22, 2009

RecentChangesCamp 2009

University Place Hotel
310 SW Lincoln Street
Portland, Oregon 97201
Category: Other
Website: http://2009rcc.org/

RecentChangesCamp (RCC) is the unconference for the Wiki community. Born of the intersection of wiki and Open Space (an unconference facilitation method), it is named after the “recent changes” page found on many wikis.

RCC is 100% free to attendees, and is open to everyone: from hardcore wikiholics to the mildly curious. No pre-registration is required, but it would be helpful if you could add yourself to our list of attendees on our planning wiki. You can also follow our updates at http://twitter.com/RCCamp.

RCC is held over the course of three days, with participants welcome to come and go as they please. Exact times have not yet been nailed down, but it generally starts Friday morning, continues all day on Saturday, and closes late Sunday afternoon.

RSVP on Upcoming

Tuesday February 24, 2009 - Thursday February 26, 2009

“Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills” Workshop

McMenamins | Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97211
Category: Education

Website: http://www.agileuniversity.org/course_details.jsp?courseid=1…

Beyond technical skills, Agile success depends on productive self-organizing teams. How do you develop, grow, and maintain a functioning self-organizing team? It’s not magic, but it doesn’t just happen either. Effective self-organizing teams rely on personal and interpersonal effectiveness.

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll discover the secrets to developing the skills you need to succeed and lead on a self-organizing team.

Ticket Info: $1500
Buy Tickets

RSVP on Upcoming

————-

Amber Case can be followed on Twitter @caseorganic. She is available for new media and online productivity consulting, data aggregation, and training in blogging and Internet marketing. E-mail caseorganic at gmail dot com for inquiries.

After seeing presentations from both Ignite Portland and Ignite Seattle at Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex this September, and then speaking at Ignite Portland 4 last month, I kind of got addicted to the Ignite-style conferences.

More Ignite-like Events

It’s not just Ignite that inspires people to press great information into short chunks — there’s also Pecha Kucha which in Japanese means ‘the sound of conversation’, and allows a slightly longer period of time (6:20) for a symbiotic exchange between a human, an audience, and a automatically-progressing series of Powerpoint slides.

I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and am currently visiting Colorado for a week to see my parents. When I heard that Ignite Boulder would coincide with my visit, I was extremely excited.

Cool New People

So tomorrow, I am very excited to meet some very excellent Denver/Boulderites. Namely, Jeremy Tanner (@Penguin), Kit Seeborg (@zsazsa), Andrew Hyde (@andrewhyde).

Thanks to Portland and Seattle for getting me hooked on one of the best ways to present information. It will be very exciting to see presentations from a different region! Hooray Hoorah!

———–

Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and New Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.

During my last semester of college, I became obsessed with the idea that I would be able to somehow put my degree in sociology/anthropology to work in the real world. When I stumbled upon search engine optimization, I was elated. When I learned that Cyborg Anthropology applied there as well, I was even more excited. And when Todd Mintz encouraged me to write my first blog post ever on the SEM PDX blog, I was so nervous that I didn’t leave my friends house for 4 hours while I composed it.

Perfectionism was a difficult thing to get over. I gradually realized that I had to allow myself to suck in order to get anywhere. At Weiden+Kennedy, there’s a massive art piece on the wall that says “Fail Harder”. I knew I had to fail harder than ever before. Oakhazelnut.com was the silliest name for a website I could think of, and the early WordPress template I used was ugly, heavy and clunky. But I kept on it.

I also realized that I wasn’t going to have a community anymore when I graduated from college, so I searched hard for one in Portland. I attended meetups relating to pretty much everything until I found Legion of Tech and Beer and Blog. Some of the first people I ever met were Reid Beals, Bram Pitoyo, Dawn Foster and Rick Turoczy. It was the beginning of an exciting and busy journey into the heart of the tech scene. But it didn’t take long to get oriented. Everyone was filled with zest for their ideas, and it spread quickly to me. I began to take small risks and write more.

Up until now, I’ve been putting in 110 hour weeks trying to do anthropological studies, blogging (which as anyone who blogs knows — is much more difficult than it looks), attending events, and learning more about seo and Yahoo! Pipes. My learning curve is strange, so it has been a long process. I’ve been given great support from people who really know what they are doing. Focused, brilliant, fascinating people.

Now that I am blogging, writing and consulting full-time, I feel like I’ve been thrown directly into the open arms of the tech community. There’s more time for coffeeshops, events, and research now. I’m excited to be able to see more faces.

It was great to be able to walk into the local Backspace coffeeshop and get high fives from all of the great people there. Bram Pitoyo said, “welcome to the life of a Freelancer”. I wholeheartedly embrace it.

My last job was excellent, and I took it after graduating from college in May so that I would be able to learn a bunch of new skills. I learned so many new things I was ready to explode. Drupal was fun, E-mail marketing was great, and new seo tools were awesome. I look forward to how that company does in the future. It’s doing very well and has an excellent business model I was excited to learn more about.

Now I have time for CyborgCamp, MIT’s Futures of Entertainment Conference, Makerlab, Ignite Portland, Refresh Portland, blogging for the Discovery Channel at Nerdabout, AboutUs.org, Dorkbot, search engine optimization, Beer and Blog and of course, Cyborg Anthropology.

Thanks to Marshall Kirkpatrick for the Discovery Channel write-up on Read Write Web. Marshall has been a tremendous help to me. In addition to showing me things like Skitch, he’s lent advice and support to me on numerous occasions.

I want to thank everyone in the Portland Tech community, but there are infinite people to thank. Perhaps I can thank an entire directory of great Tweeple at once (via AboutUs.org Portland Tech Twitter).

I think that’s about it. I am a little speechless at the support I’ve been given, and I can’t wait to share it with a wider audience.

Sincerely,

@caseorganic

I organized a session at this weekend’s WhereCamp Portland called ‘Geolocal AutoScribing RSS Feeds’, and began the session by drawing a big grid of Portland’s quadrants on the white board. I labeled them NW NE SW SE, and then began drawing circles all over the place. The circles represented ranges of ‘hearing’ that a mobile device might have to RSS feeds. I pointed out that as one progresses from street to street, quadrant to quadrant, one’s phone should understand this and automatically subscribe the user to the geolocal RSS feed for that area. That way, data can be very relevant and contextual to the area.

I explained this in the concept of a video game. In order to optimize load time, the content of a video game loads relative to the user. Data streams load from nearby places into the user’s dashboard and notification bar, or ‘feed reader’. There are two types of feeds — the global, overarching data streams of the game, and the feeds that deal with timely events. James Whitley of GoLifeMobile described

While I don’t have the time to transcribe the entirety of the session right now, I will say that we talked about a number of things. We discussed some of the apps that currently exist for Geolocal RSS, namely:

1. Geourl
2. Everyblock
3. Fireeagle
4. Icecondor
6. Britekite
7. Twitter
8. Palatial
9. Shizzow
10. Meta Carta
11. Carrot 2

People, Places, Things

Paige Saez pointed out some of the philosophical ramifications of place, and how the concept of place is constructed. I pointed out that a person can be a place, or an event can be a place. This moved into a discussion of the shift from responding to place (as traditional place is often immobile and very contextual) — to making a place (due to the light modernity and the ease with which place can be arranged) — to people as place (people as an experience, place as an experience, people making place).

We all discussed various use cases of why/where/when/how Geolocal AutoSubscribing RSS Feeds might come in handy. I noticed that the use cases presented by the group members were strongly tied to cultural, beliefs and experience. I think a point was made concerning the structure of systems. I pointed out that a Go board is empty when starting a game, and as the game is played, the Go board allows some structure while allowing many permutations of forms and ecosystems.

Twitter functions in a similar manner. The system allows short turns, similar to Go, and each of these turns contributes to the overall shape of the game. Twitter allows people to be treated as place, and allows people to visit segments of a place, or turn off that place from entering into the environment of experience.

Use Cases

“I’m new to this city/here on business, and I have three hours to do something cool — what is around me that is useful/interesting? What people share my interests?”

“I don’t know this area and need good food.”

People become a location when they’re tied to experience.

Whether you don’t know the area or you do, it can be useful to be able to quickly understand the social/placial cartography of the area.

I forgot who it was, but the system was joking labeled, “a gateway drug that gets you to engage with your neighborhood. That gets you to the people who can make the best recommendations”.

Theses are Geographical conversations. They’re also technosocial conversations, because it’s not the website that has the data, it is the people in the area. But to get to those people easily in a short period of time can often be helped along by technology, RSS, geolocal decides. So, in a way, content is people and people are content.

Community Custodians

Then the discussion went back to video games such as ‘Ultima Online’. We discussed the roles of ‘Gatekeepers’, or ‘Custodians’ that help people into a foreign online territory. Custodians continue to preform these orientation tasks is because it gives them a tremendous sense of use value.

Robots have been programmed to act as gatekeepers to new techniques and experiences, but many have failed (See Microsoft’s “Looks like you’re writing an E-mail - can I help you?” Wizard). It can be noted that humans are matchmakers, not machines. However, a machine can help one human reach another by breaking the boundaries of the distance and time that it takes for those two humans to travel to see each other in the real world. For instance, there is Yahoo! Answers that uses real people to connect Answers to Questions, and Wikipedia for collaborative knowledge creation. Places facilitate conversation, but they must be inhabited by meaning first.

We talked about the semantic web next, and ubiquitous technologies that ID markers and tags might bring. We talked about subscribing to tags instead of feeds (some blogs do this already as a more dynamic/fluid replacement for categories).

Planned Serendipity

We talked about a new kind of serendipity, in which fortuitious and existing social connections and meetup in locations that were predefined as as “excellent” could happen, without all of the hassle of being introduced to a new location. But some objected to this new kind of social relationship. Paige pointed out that it this new kind of serendipity would reduce the organic excitement that unplanned serendipity provides.

To which I pointed out that the modern person is disassociated from a peer group or community, and generally cannot talk to one another on the street. In this way, technology could recolonize the public space with actual social connections instead of shells. Paige, of course, had an excellent point. It is very exciting to come into serendipitous contact with others, but how can one tell if that serendipitous contact will be enjoyable? It is often difficult for a person to walk up to another and ask to hang out. It is sometimes easier with the computer as an icebreaker. When personal music devices isolate people from each other on the street, and laptops isolate one from another at coffee shops, and people cannot look in each other’s eyes on the street, or give another a high five, perhaps it is a clue that we have become afraid of the company of one another, or shy, or disassociated.

Every day we walk down the street or ride bikes or drive cars, and though we are doing the same thing, we cannot speak to each other while doing this. Twitter has allowed a certain type of backchannel to traditional modes of communication that allows for many to communicate with each other on a backchannel while doing the same thing at the same time.

Four Dimensional Search Methods

We talked about fourth dimensional search as a form of data on top of the traditional data flow of real life. Technically, geolocal autosubscribing RSS feeds could be considered forth dimensional data.

Geolocal feeds would allow one to gain information, getting an accumulation of information. doesn’t eclipse the actual experience of getting that information.

Someone blurted out the title of a “New Tech, New Ties”. How cell phone information is affecting us.
The landscape has scaled but we haven’t. Suburbia is so decompressed that huge amount of non-space connect it. These non-spaces take the form of highways and airports and airplanes and bus stops. The inner city — the walking spaces — have many landscapes to them. Stores have microlandscapes everywhere. Food courts compress low-resolution versions of the experiences of other countries into their culinary offerings. Already we have a surplus of landscapes - we have so many that we can’t pay attention to them.

So these landscapes must be filtered. Anselm pointed out a term he invented: “Hygradeing — we filter for the best of the best and leave the rest.” He gave the example of a bag of trail mix being passed around a campfire. All of the good things get taken by the first few people that have access to the bag, so that the rest of the campers have less access to variety.  Naturally humans are able to weed out what is good or not good and unsubscribe from the rest. Geolocal feeds can only work if they have high enough quality. Twitter allows one to block feeds that are not interesting or relevant by simply ‘unfollowing’.

We’re Urban Nomads on limited time scales. We have a limited time to access and filter relevant information. Like actions must be compressed together. We’re changing — growing our own gardens and becoming different people, and

Technosocial synchronicity by topic, location, and person can result in synergy. I’m using the Masuda’s 1979 definition of the word synergy, which is used to describe individuals with similar interests pooling towards a common goal.

Silo Sites

It was O’Reilly that said that Internet is becoming one large database.

The hub sites have been created now. Data has been submitted and receptacles have been created for most data types. One does not have to build a silo but a thing that collects and reechoes. Let people subscribe to a geography and re-echo it back to them.

We’re all living here — there is just too much data in the way to be able to hear each other. This is the period of trilobites. Filter feeders. API’s. Mashups. Yahoo! Pipes. Combined RSS feeds. Dynamic content. Relevancy and efficiency means integrating people instantly into a community of relevant data.

One of the more accessible practical applications of these ideologies could be a simple wake-up device. If you’re on a train and you fall asleep, your phone knows where you are and rings right before your stop to wake you up.

WhereCamp Portland was an excellent and invigorating event. Perhaps some of these discussions will

WhereCamp Resources:

From Hazelnut Tech Talk:
WhereCamp PDX Resources | A Combined Yahoo! Pipe for Pictures, Tweets, and Session Notes.
Wherecamp PDX | Paul Bissett on Illuminating the Dark Geoweb.

From the Portland Tech Community:
WhereCamp PDX Roundup
WhereCamp PDX Takes on PacManhattan (Includes an excellent video by Adam Duvander.
NowWhatPDX. A community about social change developed almost entirely at WhereCamp Portland.
Rules for PacManhatten.
Drop.io WhereCamp Portland Resource Drop.

Relating to Geolocation Studies:
DorkBotPDX.
MakerLab.
CyborgCamp (Dec. 6th, 2008).

Blogs about Online Communities:
Dawn Foster writes high-quality posts about the care and feeding of Online Communities on a regular basis.

————–
Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Social Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.

This is the PowerPoint of a lightning talk given by Amber Case (@caseorganic) at Inverge: The Interactive Convergence Conference in Portland, Oregon on Sept 4+5th. NOTE: This was a 10-minute compressed presentation. From Telephone to Tweetup: an Abbreviated History of Technology and Social Exchange.

Some Theory Behind the Subject

The invention of the telephone ushered in an era of ‘on-demand’ social connection. These conversations were freeing, but were still limited to location and time. As communication technology matured, telephones became detached from their cords and were allowed to travel with their users.This detachment from location allowed conversation to happen in more times and more places. As the amount of time and space between nodes of connection decreased, the intersection of rapid news methods such as blogging, mobile technology, and chatrooms begin to merge. This convergence allowed dramatic increases in the ability to rapidly convey information to others. Instead of engaging with one person at a time, many are now capable of talking at once. No where is this more prevalent than on Twitter. It has found ways to connect communities, stave off suburban isolation, and warn of earthquakes before medical help can access them. The distance between individual and community will continue to decrease, and those products and services which decrease the amount of time and space it takes to create an action will be the most successful. Actions and devices will become lighter and lighter, and the social will continue to become more and more mobile. The convergence of various technologies will result in rapid learning and communication never imagined before. For details on the original event, look at the SlideShare Link.

Slideshow transcript

Slide 1: Every bullet point in this presentation is less than 140 characters.

Slide 2: This is because the text of these slides will also be broadcasted on Twitter at the time of this speech.

Slide 3: In this way, the speech can live in two places at once.

Slide 4: To one audience here at Inverge.

Slide 5: And also to 600+ followers on Twitter. [@Inverge] [#Inverge]

Slide 6: You can follow @caseorganic to see it in action.

Slide 7: [this is a waiting period because the Internet connection here is probably slow] @caseorganic

Slide 8: Hello.

Slide 9: My Name is Amber Case.

Slide 10: I am a Cyborg Anthropologist.

Slide 11: I study the symbiotic relationship between humans and computers…

Slide 12: And the psychology of space that is created by online environments.

Slide 13: Or, how the online experience is “ experienced” .

Slide 14: In Anthropology, one could call this a Digital Phenomenology

Slide 15: …

Slide 16: We live in a community that increasingly transcends time and space.

Slide 17: It is our relationship with technology that allows us extended capabilities.

Slide 18: Right now, search engines and people are interacting with your social profiles and websites.

Slide 19: While you aren’ t there.

Slide 20: And with social networking sites like Twitter, you can watch many conversations at once.

Slide 21: …

Slide 22: Consider Letter Writing, the first Internet.

Slide 23: The message to response ratio was very slow, but it was social.

Slide 24: Enter the Telephone.

Slide 25: Thus began the era of ‘ On Demand’ social communication.

Slide 26: This made the world very small.

Slide 27: You could stand on one side of the world, whisper something, and be heard on the other.

Slide 28: But to those who had never experienced a telephone, the device was as foreign as the Internet once was in 1993.

Slide 29: The fact that a human could speak into a machine and hear a voice on the other side gave the appearance of schizophrenia.

Slide 30: Over time, the strangeness of the new dissolved into formal society and the landline telephone started to get along with humans.

Slide 31: Those living in suburban communities were less capable of reaching actual members of society on a daily basis.

Slide 32: …and the telephone allowed them an escape from the isolation of industrial modernity.

Slide 33: But the telephone was limited by the length of its cord and its proximity to a phone jack.

Slide 34: So along came the cordless phone.

Slide 35: It was free! {yay!}

Slide 36: …to run around the house…

Slide 37: So then the Cell Phone arrived on the scene. {take that!}

Slide 38: While it was the least rooted to place,

Slide 39: The Cell Phone did not offer information transparency.

Slide 40: It only allowed one conversation at a time (excluding 3-way).

Slide 41: Cell Phone + Text allowed decentralized message access and multiple recipients, but limited message transparency.

Slide 42: Then Twitter happened.

Slide 43: It was not rooted to place and time.

Slide 44: It allowed multiple communication channels and recipients.

Slide 45: Users were praised for contribution and helpfulness to those in their network.

Slide 46: Why does it work?

Slide 47: Twitter is a centralized technosocial hybrid that asks a single question that can never be fully answered.

Slide 48: …

Slide 49: What

Slide 50: Are

Slide 51: You

Slide 52: Doing?

Slide 53: The question is asked by all, to all. Socialization is aided by machine.

Slide 54: The time and space it takes to absorb and disperse information is compressed.

Slide 55: Twitter takes advantage of the 4th Dimensionality of the Internet.

Slide 56: [Analog] [Demonstration]

Slide 57: Lets look at some Architectural Theory

Slide 58: “ Our daily existence is normally filled with short walks and passing through interfaces. It is not the number that we remember but rather the poor quality of them and the time spent in moving through them.\”

Slide 59: “ It is not the number that we remember but rather the poor quality of them and the time spent in moving through them.\”

Slide 60: “ Interference interchanges must be fast, convenient, comfortable, without undue effort in a controlled environment.”

Slide 61: The General Theory of Relativity

Slide 62: The shape of space makes people more, and people create the shape of space.

Slide 63: The Analog World is full of Friction

Slide 64: The level of Friction in the Digital world has far less.

Slide 65: Online, we are capable of innovating in a frictionless atmosphere.

Slide 66: There are dangers to this.

Slide 67: Frictionless development becomes cancerous if not restrained.

Slide 68: Too many features/innovations reduce overall value.

Slide 69: LIKE FACEBOOK.

Slide 70: Now, lets talk about highways.

Slide 71: Highways are giant projects requiring high levels of funding and cooperation.

Slide 72: To dig up a highway and move it costs millions of dollars.

Slide 73: But rerouting a path online takes a few minutes with a 301 redirect.

Slide 74: People, when compressed, can do more in less time and less space.

Slide 75: Actions flow to spaces with reduced activation energy and barriers to entry.

Slide 76: Humans and Technology Co-create each other through an Actor/Network of technosocial interaction.

Slide 77: “ In the search for itself and an affectionate sociality, it easily gets lost in the jungle of the self…”

Slide 78: “ Someone who is poking around in the fog of his of his or her own self is no longer capable of noticing that this isolation,

Slide 79: “ This ’solitary-confinement of the ego’ is a mass sentence. [Ulrich Beck, 40 in Bauman’ s Liquid Modernity 2000:37]”

Slide 80: [So Technosocial Interaction is about Transcending the silos of Mental Isolation]

Slide 81: Hello

Slide 82: The key to the semantic web is to always reduce the steps in user action.

Slide 83: Twitter engages the user in ways that do not decay.

Slide 86: See SlideShare for image

Slide 87: See Slideshare for image

Slide 88: Husband on Google Street View

Slide 89: Old map

Slide 90: See Slideshare for image.

Slide 92: @caseorganic On Social Sites Everywhere Thesis: “Cell Phones and Their Technosocial Sites of Engagement” Available @:oakhazelnut.com

———-
Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthopologist and Social Media Consultant from Portland, Oregon. You can contact her by E-mail at caseorganic at gmail.com, or on Twitter @caseorganic.

The date’s been set. Due to scheduling conflicts (including the event being really close to Thanksgiving) CyborgCamp Portland will be held on December 6th, 2008, at Portland’s CubeSpace, which is at 622 SE Grand Ave Portland, Oregon 97214

You can RSVP for CyborgCamp on Upcoming if you’d like to attend, but note that the formal registration will begin in a few weeks. If you follow @cyborgcamp or @caseorganic on Twitter, you’ll know when you can officially register for the event. If you don’t use Twitter, you can E-mail caseorganic at gmail.com and I’ll personally let you know when official registration is open. There will also be a link from the Upcoming page, so check back in a few weeks.

CyborgCamp is a conversation about the future of technology, and how humans fit in.

Want to help out? You can do it in 4 different ways!

1. Sponsor. E-mail Nate Angell at ixmati at gmail.com or Twitter @xolotl. See the sponsors page.
2. Blog, Tweet, write and broadcast the event (before, during and after.) See the Marketing Page Email Amber Case at caseorganic at gmail.com or Twitter @caseorganic
   

3. Volunteer before, during and after the event. Email Bram Pitoyo at brampitoyo at gmail.com or Twitter @brampitoyo We need 3 more volunteers for the morning set-up (7 Am) and take down (6-7Pm).

4. Attend. RSVP on Upcoming.org (Note that RSVP does not guarantee you a space if you’re not paid for register).

What to Expect at the Conference:

One room will be devoted to keynote sessions on various aspects of the cyborg (technological, health, spiritual, communication, humanity, etc.), and the other three rooms of the conference will be unconferences, done BarCamp-style

Who should come?

This is an educational mindsharing and networking event that encourages high-level interdisciplinary interaction.

Classrooms, individuals and businesses are encouraged to attend the event remotely. It will be livestreamed through multiple channels and will be archived and tagged for future viewing. Details on remote conference access will be available a week before the conference begins.

Tags

Flickr Tag: cyborgcamp

Twitter: @cyborgcamp or #cyborgcamp

All other social media: cyborgcamp

See you there!

I can’t say it enough - Portland’s Twitter community just keeps getting better and better. With it, everyone can meet great people and pool need resources. In just four days, we were able to raise over $400 for a new bike/laptop for @brampitoyo after his bike and laptop were stolen last week.

The following is the larger story:

————–

The First E-mail

Dear Members of the Extremely Awesome Portland Tech Community,

As you all know, Bram Pitoyo is one of the most involved and valued members of our community. He’s helped organized and implement a million events and made them excellent. And this week, he’s bringing us Lunch 2.0 at the Art Institute of Portland. More impressive is the fact that he bikes everywhere and still manages to make it to almost every tech event in town (and then still has the energy to live tweet and blog).

However Bram Pitoyo lost his bike on the Max last night. It was stolen while he was composing a blog post (the really cool one he’s about to release). This morning, @Mettadore direct messaged me and challenged me to $20 for the cause.

So, I agreed. I have $20 that says we can raise enough money to get Bram Pitoyo a new bike. Interested? Lets keep this on the low-down so that we can surprise him with it.

If you’d like to donate any amount, you can do it through PayPal caseorganic@gmail.com or just bring it by to Beer and Blog this week at the Green Dragon from 4-6 Pm.

Please forward this as necessary. I know I’m missing a lot of people (like @reidab and @billder) A lot of people know Bram. Direct message if possible through Twitter to keep it low key.

Hopefully we can raise enough money by the end of this week for him to get a bike light enough to commute with for the winter. Money is generally tight these days, so if you can’t contribute, don’t antagonize.

Sincerely,
Amber Case, et al.

—————-

The Second E-mail

Hey Everyone,

A tremendous thanks to those who’ve pitched into the Bram Pitoyo Bike Fund by Paypal already. We’re about halfway there to a new bike! This funding will probably really

Tomorrow is beer and blog. If you haven’t donated already, I’ll be collecting it at Beer and Blog before Bram’s presentation. I know money is generally tight these days, so if you can’t contribute, don’t antagonize.

After Bram makes his presentation, we’re going to be giving the bike fund to Bram. This way, he won’t know what’s coming.

If you’d like to donate any amount, you can do it through PayPal caseorganic@gmail.com or just bring it by to Beer and Blog this week at the Green Dragon from 4-6 Pm.

Please forward this as necessary. I know I’m missing a lot of people (like @reidab and @billder) A lot of people know Bram. Direct message if possible through Twitter to keep it low key.

Thanks so much!

Sincerely,
Amber Case, et al.

————-

The Results

The fundraising went very quickly. When Justin Kistner, founder of @beerandblog invited Bram to give a speech (slides and description are available here) during Friday’s event, I knew it would be the perfect time to follow it up by presenting him with the fund. It’s going to help a lot. It went brilliantly!

We raised $190 via. paypal before @beerandblog

John Metta
Marshall Kirkpatrick
Kevin Chen
Barry Cadish
Steve Gehlen
Allison McKeever
Betsy Richter
Amber Case
Mark Dilley

———————————–

We raised $195 during @beerandblog by cash and paypal

Nate Angell
Doc Normal
Dawn Foster
Justin Kistner
Kathleen McDade
Mark Colman
Derrek Wayne
Steven Walling
Carri Bugbee
Alex Williams
Todd Kenefsky will be donating a U Lock bike Lock.
Pete Forsyth

———————————–

We raised $80 after @beerandblog by Paypal

Todd Kalhar
Adam Duvander
Gary Walter
MaryEllen Hockensmith
Jean-Paul Voilleque
Marie Deatherage
Raymond King

——————————-

What Next?

Donations are still open. Simply Paypal caseorganic at gmail.com to donate. Your contact information will be listed here shortly. And if I missed anyone, let me know @caseorganic.

Thanks so much to the entire Portland Tech community for helping out. It’s been fantastic watching the support that’s been given to Bram! Hooray!

Beer and Blog is held every Friday from 4-6Pm at the
Green Dragon
928 SE 9th Ave
Portland, OR 97214
(503) 517-0606
And you can follow the Green Dragon on Twitter @greendragonpdx.

If you haven’t been before, please stop on by! It’ll be an awesome experience; we promise.

[display_podcast]

Click to Subscribe

I spent a wonderful morning at Maryellen Hockensmith’s Organic Farm. Before we went out to check out the garden, she gave me a bunch of wonderful tips on sustainability, growing your own organic garden, the usefulness of worms, high-yielding plants, and crop rotation.

I know what you’re thinking: Hazelnut Tech Talk is taking a break from tech to talk about gardening! Well, that’s somewhat true. It’s not often that our technosocial lives let us take in a beautiful view the countryside, or an enormous bite of a delicious tomato right off the vine. But what about connecting the two?

One of the reasons I wanted to do a podcast with Maryellen is that she is also an active member of Twitter @yogacowgirls, blogs at YogaCowgirls.com, and makes wonderful music.

So if you’re into food, organic crops, sustainability, yoga, Twitter, or Blogging (go WordPress!), then give Maryellen a warm hello. That is, if you don’t know about her already.

Hazelnut Tech Talk is a collaboration between Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo