3by9

A Purpose Served

When I came up with the idea of 3by9 (yes for once I can honestly say that it was just me that came up with the idea…I know it’s a complicated idea that only brilliant minds like myself could think up) I knew that it wouldn’t have an extended period on the web. I was with two geniuses of the web and figured we all had something important to share with people. However, doing it over at the 9rules blog didn’t seem appropriate so I figured we could start another blog to share these ideas.

Since then over 200 entries have been published during the past 18 months and each of them showing how different our personalities are, but how similar our views of the world around us are. When I brought up the idea of 3by9 to Mike and Tyme I informed that every 3 months we would revisit the site to see if it was time to put it away. Well we did that the first 3 months and haven’t looked back since. However, we all agree that now is the time because we are moving in our own directions.

We are still very much a team when it comes to 9rules, but have started to diverge into our own projects and this has taken time away from the site. So instead of keeping a site dragging along it is time to put it to rest. It served its purpose and it was a relief knowing that we didn’t intend on making the world’s greatest blog, just a blog that was great to us.

If you are interested in what we are doing I suggest you subscribe to Flyosity and Tyme Said. Be sure to also follow us on Twitter: @scrivs, @tyme and @mike9r.

With all of that said thanks to everyone that reads the site and who has commented. It was a joy writing for a site with no restrictions, no concerns of traffic or worries about money. It was a blog that started the way blogging itself started, to share ideas and have our voices heard.

Pushing your limits

2009 was the year where, coming from two crappy years (medically), I was determined to pick up life where I left it. Where it was sort of ripped away from me. It’s not the end of January but so far I’ve:

• Had a party I wasn’t expecting to have in Vegas. Met a bunch of new people and inadvertently increased my exposure.
• Reached Level 80 in World of Warcraft.
• Ran an instance and raid in World of Warcraft.
• Made a couple of dishes I swore would cause my oven to explode if I tried them.
• Resolved the “where do the missing socks go?” dilemma in my house.
• Did some break-dance moves and didn’t break anything.
• Started the process of having some customized Dunks and AF1s made. So slick…
• Finally decided a direction I wanted to go with my career that I am satisfied with (not that I won’t tweak it).
• Found three new programs to watch on TV. Expand my horizons.

That doesn’t include the goals I achieved with the munchkins. The odd thing, looking back, is that I didn’t say “let me see what I can do different today”. I just did it. I wouldn’t say I’ve changed because I’ve always been that way. I’m picking up where I left off. Now let’s look at another example…

My ex-guild leader created a guild called Hell. It had several hundred members in it. The guild leader had a dream that God would be mad because he created a guild name Hell. When he became ill the next day, he freaked out and disbanded the guild without telling anyone, clearing the bank, etc. Poof, the guild was gone. Next he joined a guild named Hate. Then changed his name to TotalLoser. Then made a one person guild named Worst Player Ever (or something like that). He went from straight PvP to PvE. As I am typing this I looked on my buddy list and he’s changed his name again to Ezeil and he’s in another guild. Last night it was TotalLoser. I told my friend (who was in the guild too) that something was up with the dude and he said I was nuts. He spent a lot of time with him in voice chat and the guild leader was cooler than ever. As a new person I saw things my friend didn’t see.

Then we all watched his public melt down puzzled at what the “real” reason that was pushing him in the direction he was going. Let me be clear, I never would have guessed he’d have a meltdown like he had. I could tell something was bothering him from the way he spoke and what he did. My friend felt bad because he didn’t see it coming. It looks like he’s re-invented himself, moving on from his meltdown. He’s back PvPing which is great because he was really really good. I wish him the best of luck.

My point is that we all fall down (make mistakes, have tough situations to over come, etc.) but what we do after we fall makes all the difference. You can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue on in life (what I did) or you can make the situation worse (what my guild leader did).

But to survive you have to dust yourself off and continue on. It’s not easy…recovering from what I went through while I having to be strong for my family was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m sure Ezeil felt bad dismembering the guild, not distributing the guild bank and the guilt from that made things worse (it was so public).

In the end, it really doesn’t matter does it? The end result is the same: to survive you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue on with the hand that has been dealt to you.

Every action has a consequence

I’ve often said that any decision can change the direction of your life forever. I usually use the scenario of a hall of doors one can walk through or forks in a road one has to pick from. Every action has a consequence, good or bad. Success (maintaining it) is the result of many good decisions. Failure, decline, etc. is the result of bad choices. Like I said, I’ve said this many times so it was refreshing to find a video where someone makes the point in a way better than I ever did. His points start at 2:34 and 3:33 and the story which highlights his points begins after.

What about social media? Well, the same principles apply. For every decision there is a consequence. In social media it would be a disaster if there were no consequences. Someone that talks a lot about the consequences of start ups is Mike Arrington. This week he talked about the Facebook Burger King campaign drama. Burger King was giving out free sandwiches to Facebook users who dumped 10 friends - and the friends were notified they were being dumped, which goes against Facebook’s policy. Arrington said:

Facebook consistently tell users they can’t do things in the name of privacy, despite the fact that those users know full well what they are up to.

Now let’s go back a minute to what I said about actions having consequences. Burger King was the one who initiated the action of going against Facebook’s policies. If you don’t like the rules don’t play the game. In other words, don’t use Facebook. It’s really that simple. Since Burger King decided to ignore the rules Burger King should be willing to take the consequence - close the application until the friend notification part complies with Facebook’s rules.

If Facebook allowed Burger King to circumvent the rules, what is to stop other application developers from doing the same? One of the “promises” for Facebook users is that the friend will not be notified if he/she is removed. That’s a two way street. The person removing is free to remove people without the ex-friend being notified of the removal. The person being removed will never open their inbox and have that potential humiliating feeling that their “friend” removed them.

It’s a two-sided promise.

But I guess the receiver doesn’t matter, huh Arrington? No, of course not! Only the person sending the notice matters! Yes, that is sarcasm because it is nonsense.

People were willing to dump “friends” (most likely people they don’t know, don’t really care about but accepted to be nice but who knows?) for a sandwich. Self-pleasure for the win, right? As Swoozie’s video points out, every action has a consequence.

It would poetic justice (karma) if someone who dumped a friend ended up having to go for a job interview and the person they dumped as their friend makes the hiring decision. Or he/she falls in love and the best friend of the person he/she fell in love with is the person they dumped for a sandwich.

Because odds are, the person who dumped the friend (depending on the depth of the friendship) will forget who they dumped. The person dumped however, due to the way it happened, might not ever forget.

And up comes that forgotten consequence….

Home

I did something new this holiday season. Usually my friends stop through some time during the day (before Christmas), especially if they are obligated for family time on Christmas. This year, we had the bright idea of having some fun while they wrapped Christmas gifts so my core group of friends came over my house. A little while ago I couldn’t believe my ears when I said, “Why don’t you guys stay over?”. My friend Yo snapped her head around then started to smile and she said, “Yeah, we can cook a big breakfast in the morning [Christmas] before everyone heads out to do their Christmas thing”.

Astonishingly, that went over with glee. Tis the season.

I pulled my laptop out to type an entry real quick (I won’t be in the mood on Friday and I’m not doing it on Christmas) and I looked around me. My house is a home. I’m creating memories in my home. I wondered about when I get into relationship or married would I be doing the same thing?

Probably…instead of my friends it would be our friends.

Because in the end, it’s about being around the people your care about and have a good time with. I’m looking around me as I type this. I know the kids are upstairs looking forward to Christmas morning (Christmas Eve is THE night they trip over themselves going to bed), the music is playing, eating, drinking, dancing and the beautiful sound of laughter. Happiness. Companionship. Love. Appreciation.

Home…and I look forward to creating a new one because I finally feel like I “get it”.

Have a wonderful and safe holiday season. See you on the flip side!

Extending your blog

One of the common questions asked around the internet is whether now is a good time to start a blog and if so, how do you build and expand it? Wayne Sutton wrote about the topic yesterday referencing a conversation we had at the beginning of the year. How do blogs and social media sites work together? Here is a piece of his article relating to our conversation:

Earlier this year I had a conversation with Tyme White about twitter and personal branding that had stuck in my head ever since I got off the phone with her. She brought up the fact that I had a lot of twitter followers but where or how would I stay connected with those followers if twitter goes down (fail whale) , twitter gets purchased by google & closed like Pownce or their business model just doesn’t work and everyone leaves the community. We talked about how some people who I admire like Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuck have huge online followers despite twitter. Robert has a large following and readership on his blog before twitter and the same for @GaryVee but we do know they both have used twitter to extend their brand.

Towards the end of his article he disclosed his plan on how to extend his blog. Everyone will take a different approach and should do what makes them feel comfortable. However some thought should be given about how what you do today impacts you tomorrow.

It is easy to build a Twitter audience (Facebook, MySpace…you get the idea). It is much easier than a blog because the tools are there to quickly send friend requests - which most people accept. Send out enough you’ll have people subscribed to your content. However, how many of those people are actually reading or are interested in what you are saying? It is common for people to only read what Twitter displays the moment they log on…they don’t scroll back to see what they missed. Same thing goes for a blog. Just because your FeedBurner stats state you have X subscribers doesn’t mean all of them actually read your content. Just because you have X amount of subscribers to your blog doesn’t mean everyone subscribed actually reads your articles.

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t use third party services. They can be a great compliment to your site. However, if you have more subscribers to a third party site than you do your own site that might work against you in the long run. If those sites ever went out of business, blocked access to your profile (who often does that happen on Facebook?) or even worse had technical difficulties and lost your friends list what would you do? How screwed would you be?

Another problem is overextending yourself. If you are spread out amongst too many services it makes it very hard for people to follow you - to catch all of your content. Imagine telling your readers go to Facebook for this, MySpace for this, my blog for his, Twitter for that. I had a profile on Pownce but it is gone, update your records. My work record is on LinkedIn, I have Yahoo, AIM, MSN, ICQ and Skype - add me! See what I mean? It’s information overload on one person. Add more people and the odds are they aren’t tuning in as you’d like them to.

With my own audience I don’t put anything in between us. It’s me and them. That’s how we roll. For me, it works out. Sure, we drive each other crazy sometimes but I know they are reading what I say. Not necessarily expressing their honest opinion (we’re working on that) but they are reading and interacting with me. Not via Twitter or anywhere else but my site, my email, my IM…me.

I answered Wayne’s question in the comments section of his article. Head on over if you want to take a peek. Remember - social media sites are tools. Use them wisely.

Take a good look in the mirror

One of my clients had a problem and he asked for my advice. Hearing the problem and having an understanding of his relationship with some of his employees, I came up with a plan. Twisted, but effective.

One of his employees, who he is friendly with, needed work done on a floor in the house. The employer knew a friend that could help and keep it cost effective. Long story short, the employer and the floor repair person went to the employee’s house to fix the floor. The employer introduced the floor repair person to the employee, and the floor repair person was showed the problem, finances were discussed and the work started being done. The employee was cooking and went to attend to pots on the stove while the employer and the repair person dealt with the floor.

Eventually the employee went back to the room where the work was being done and it was empty. Looking around the employee found them in the living room laughing at YouTube videos. Scarlett Takes a Tumble is kinda funny, you know (and she’s a GREAT sport about it)? Going a long with it for a minute the employee laughed but wanted the floor fixed and tried to subtly remind the repair person to get back to work.

In which the employer said something like, “Oh, you mean like you surf the internet and talk on the phone using company equipment on company time?”

Ouch! But you have to admit - BOOYAH!!!

I always suggest this type of scenario (if they can set it up) because it is 100% effective. Never had an employee yet say the person they hired to come to their house (or someone misusing their stuff) should actually be using their computer. It doesn’t happen, yet they are the first to tell the person to go back to work. When my client mentioned he was going to the employee’s house I said “Do it!”. Use the computer, watch TV, talk on the phone…do the same thing and see what happens.

Because seriously, when employees do that SOMEONE pays for the loss of time and resources. It’s not free. Bank of America is laying of 30K-35K employees over the next three years. I laughed when I saw that. I feel bad but BoA was lax. I know of employees who spoke on the phone (long distance by the minute charges) for hours a day. And in one case it took at least two years for them to catch up with it. How do I know? Because that is how long it took for them to call my house and question why my number was on their phone bill. Very surprised my number was residential.

If you’re one that wouldn’t be cool with the repair person watching TV on your time, perhaps you shouldn’t being using your employer’s resources. Sure, everyone needs a break but don’t abuse it.

Just like every vote counts, each case of abuse adds up.

Guiding Your Audience With Twitter

I was a late-comer to the Twitter party. I signed up for an account early-on (user number 10,000 and change) but never really touched it until the past few months because I just didn’t see the value.

In the beginning everyone was using Twitter to post what they were having for breakfast, or how cute their dog was — typical LiveJournal type junk. That didn’t appeal to me so I left it alone.

Over time, and without me posting much at all, people started following me on Twitter even though I rarely updated. I slowly got a couple hundred followers, and before I knew it, I had an audience.

As soon as I saw that I had an audience, I decided I might as well give them something interesting to read, so I started posting.

What I post on Twitter may not be exactly what everyone else posts. I rarely post about where I am, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, or with whom I’m hanging out. What I do post on Twitter are links to interesting things I’ve found plus a little bit of commentary about those links — like Delicious with 1-sentence descriptions. Here’s an example of what I like to post on Twitter:

Download “pinvoke” set of 1000 free icons: http://idek.net/hD …better than famfamfam I’d say. I’m gonna use these starting immediately!

The reason I posted that is because in my regular travels around the Interwebs I stumbled upon a link that I think my audience would appreciate, mainly because my Twitter audience is made up of designers and web people. My normal action is to link it up in a new Twitter post (a tweet if you like that word, which I don’t!) but instead of saying “Hey, check this out: ” which a lot of people do, I like to show some of my personality and enthusiasm in the few words I get before and after the link.

I use a URL shortening service called idek.net that’s run by my friend Adam (and I’m in the process of redesigning it, check the mockup) and not only does it shorten your URLs but it also gives you detailed click-through statistics on every link you create. By seeing how many people click on my links, what time they click, and how they re-tweet or re-link it, I can figure out what types of links my audience likes to see. This has been integral in knowing what will get people interested which gives me some insight into what links work best with my Twitter audience and which don’t. What works best? Practical design and web development articles that can be immediately applied to someone’s work. Tutorials, downloads, how-to articles, and new ideas that can be useful when building websites and software. I wouldn’t know any of this without using idek.net so if you want to know how your audience is responding to your links, I highly recommend it.

Mall, err…site, shopping FTW!

It’s Black Friday - a heavy shopping day in the United States. I know some people who got up at 4:00am to be the first in the store. I was up but I’m not that type of woman.

Because seriously, if I go to pick up something and someone tries to take it from me, they best be prepared to get their teeth knocked out. It has happened when someone was that stupid. I’m not sure if it was my deadly voice saying “let it go”, the look on my face, my fist balling up or my body stiffening up - but they put it down. Goes with the theme I wrote about last week - be prepared on how someone will react to what you do before you do it. Crazy people on a shopping high acting rude isn’t where I want to be. I’m more down for the “hug random people cause I’m happy” type of behavior seen often in Vegas (I’d say per trip I get at least 25 random hugs from happy people winning money. I can’t help but be happy for them).

For years I’ve done my shopping online and I absolutely love it. I get it done early because I enjoy site shopping. Browsing the isles pages, being able to compare items and prices while I sip on some wine (rocking to my favorite tunes) thinking about the reaction people will have to the things I’m getting them is priceless. It’s the perfect shopping atmosphere for me. Then it is delivered to me, in a box, where I can whisk it past the kids’ prying eyes and they don’t know what it is.

No lines.
No crazy attitudes.
No “they don’t have the color I want”.
No trying to remember where the car is parked.
No going to the store to find they don’t have what I want.

Another option is to shop online and pick it up in the store. I know many who do this because they work and can’t accept deliveries during the week. And if you need to budget, if you haven’t gotten your lay-away scheduled you’re running out of time.

Christmas is right around the corner. If you want to get your loved one geeky stuff start now! Like those netbook (under $500) computers - get those now because they are selling like hotcakes. I picked up one the other day and there were four other people getting them too - smack in the middle of the day.

Happy shopping!

Right back at ya

The other day in World of Warcraft an Alliance player thought he’d be cute and PvP me. He was a lower level and he wouldn’t have won. Instead he hedged the odds in his favor so he couldn’t lose. He waited until I was in a fight, fighting multiple mobs, then used a spell to pull me off a cliff (meaning I take damage from the fall) so I died with very little effort from him. He received honor for my death.

What he didn’t expect was for me to think, “WTF! This mofo is going DOWN”, resume my body, heal real quick and destroy him. He “really” didn’t expect me to make it a point to kill him every time I saw him. And to tell my friends to destroy him on sight. That one cowardly (but brilliant) move cost him a lot of gold in repair bills (but hell, let’s admit it…one could say it was worth it because what he did was epic). See, if you’re going to receive honor from my death you have to earn it. One day I’ll lose interest and I won’t kill him on sight anymore (I only saw him twice since then…not sure about my friends but they kill Alliance on sight anyway).

One shouldn’t live in fear but one should take a moment to anticipate the reaction or repercussions of what one does.

Many people use their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. to rant, snark, and other wise express themselves. In many of those writings the writer is sharing an experience, talking about something he/she does or doesn’t like, telling someone off, disagreeing with someone, agreeing with someone only to have others disagree with their opinion…it comes in many flavors. Do you think about how the person or company you’re writing or talking about will take what you’ve said? If you say something behind someone’s back did you think about how he/she will take it if they found out what you said?

Going through sites for 9rules one of the things I look for is the ability to take criticism and how a person deals with confrontation. Most times it is impossible to tell unless the writer goes through it a lot but that doesn’t stop me from looking. It is easy to sit back with the “shield” of the internet and throw stones criticizing people, many times with no real basis (you know, like facts) to back up what was written. It is very easy to take a “persona” and try to detach yourself from the persona saying the things that could land one in hot water. The common thought process is that the person writing will never see the person being written about, so why not?

Think again.

With conferences, meet ups and most important social networks the ability to “bump into” the person being written about is much greater. A common past time on You Tube is for someone to put a video up complaining about something and asking his/her viewers to leave comments or contact the person he/she is talking about. Voice your opinion! That turns into an avalanche of criticism for the person that made the original video. Did you expect that?

Did you expect the person you talked about behind their back to find out about it?

Did you expect that your public enthusiasm for X could block your company for getting sponsorships from A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I because X is their competitor?

Did you expect your blog entry about skipping work to play Warcraft with your friend (which you put a picture of on your site) would get your friend fired?

Be careful what you say and how you say it yet be true to yourself.

PlayTyme

It’s the end of the year and the same thing happens every year. I want to chill out. The same thing happened in school as far back as I can remember. First couple of weeks I dive into the class. About half-way through I become bored. The last weeks of the class mentally I checked out and I’m ready for the next class. When I noticed this pattern I realized to survive I needed to make allowances for it. I tried to change but I found mitigating the pattern was a much easier route for me (ie. suits my personality better).

In school if I could get hold of the syllabus ahead of time I would and start chunking through it. See what assignments I could get done early. When my classes were six weeks in length within the first two weeks I had the majority of my assignments done. I only had to deal with team stuff and remember the attendance requirements. The advantage of having something done early was the ability to fix anything I might have wrong because I wasn’t rushing through it. The method worked for me because I did well in school when, technically, by the third week it would appear I was slacking.

Life isn’t as easy as a class and sure enough, November hit and I started the ImBoredOutofMyMindOMGIWant2Play blues. It doesn’t help that Wrath of the Lich King comes out next week. End game - the fact it comes out in November instead of December implies to me I’m supposed to chill. I have responsibilities and I can’t chill out the end of the year.

Bullshit. Of course I can, and I planned for it.

Whenever they announced Wrath’s release date I started budgeting (because I knew I was toast). I have November and December’s bill money taken care of so I don’t have to worry about anything until mid-January. My Vegas trip is paid for. Groceries, house stuff and the kids that always need something…check…done…taken care of. That freed up a lot of my time, didn’t it? Sure did. Also made sure all my clients were paid up, billing was done, etc. (if you have your own business you know what a PIA year end can be). For the most part, outside of small billing issues, my work (personal stuff) is done.

Yeah baby, that’s how I like it.

Next hurdle: we just closed a 9rules round. Wrath comes out next week. See my dilemma? I know, you’re thinking, “Tyme, that’s messed up…” but I’ve got it covered. I go through the list multiple times to check my accuracy. Freeing up my work time left me more time to go through the list. Meaning I will go through the list quicker. Meaning I will be done earlier. The pieces of the puzzle begin to fill in.

Next up: my 3by9 articles. Next week (before Wrath comes out) I will bust my butt to get all my articles pre-written. Eight articles. What I like about this is that they are done in advance but I can always change my mind if something else interests me more. I found when I pre-write articles I am more satisfied with them (whether they are better or not, who knows?).

There are three holidays in my “chill” period. Thanksgiving…yeah, I’m not cooking this year. No one else wants to solely cook either so we’ve decided to do what we did last year. A bunch of us get together and bring a dish or drink. We had a blast last year and I have no doubt this year will be fun times too. My freed-up time gives me more time to have fun with Christmas. I have weeks to plot out practical jokes on my kids and drive Monarch crazy. New Year’s I’ll be out of town, the kids will be partying it up with their friends, and Monarch will have private time to recoup from whatever huge ass prank I pull on her this year. However, my 3by9 is due on the 2nd. I won’t be here and between Christmas and New Year’s I’m rarely in the mood to write. See the beauty of pre-planning?

There are several other things needed to be done to pull this off but this year over the others I have a personal goal, that is very important to me, to achieve. With Wrath coming out I want to spend time in the game and get to level 80 ASAP. True, my other personal site revolves around the game but it is important to me to achieve this goal because it took me years (literally) to get a level 70 in the game. For reasons I can’t begin to describe, there IS no excuse for it. It’s pathetic the amount of alternate characters I had. I was fucking up, no excuse for it, and I’m not doing it this time. I was doing it in other areas (but ironically shined where it was most important - my health issues). I worked to fix those slacking areas. The game is the last one left (err - that I know of?). This time, I’m whooping the expansion’s ass.

When I know I’m fucking up I might wallow in it for a minute but it is completely against my nature to continue to fuck up. I can’t look in the mirror and be proud of what I see. When I start the new year, partying my ass off in Vegas (and hopefully celebrating my level 80), I can look back at 2008 and see where I’ve improved, changed, grown. The way I see it, I have a clean test bed for 2009 fuck ups.

I made my sacrifices during the year to have my fun time now. There were times when I passed on going to the club, cooked in instead of going out, passed on an impulse purchase, etc. so I have the freedom I have now. It slightly sucked at the time I was sacrificing but it feels very good now.

It’s PlayTyme.