Netizen: Google Groups

Showing posts with label Google Groups. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I Did My Part

I protested. I did my part. If the protests are not going to work, and the ban on me at the Google Wave API Google Group is not going to be lifted, I move on. I guess I will have to find out other ways to spot trends in Google Wave development. I am sure there will be several good blog options. We are at the early stages of seeing blogs dedicated completely to Google Wave. Maybe some of those bloggers will do the reading for me in those Google Groups.

A great way to follow an open source project is in the very open perhaps.

Google Wave API Google Group: Got To Undo The Ban On Me

Thursday, March 26, 2009

I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic

http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1395909715
http://twitter.com/SteveCase/status/1396557074

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1397036314
http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/1396372381
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390833818
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390025531
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390019459
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390009306
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1390004039
http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1389082919

Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

I moved to New York City to work on my tech startup, but got distracted for a few years by some urgent political work for Nepal, best work I ever did so far: the king of the country had pulled a coup, now we are a republic. Obama 2008 furthered the distraction, kind of.

But Nepal does not go away, Obama does not go away. 75% of the work on Nepal is done, 25% remains, only Nepal does not have to be my sole preoccupation no more. So recently I got into a little online discussion at a private online group. In the course of making my moves I went to check out my Nepal mailing list, the largest in the world. I hit a message that said the mailing list had been removed by Google. I panicked. There was no way for me to contact Google Groups directly.

So I wrote to Google directly on Twitter. And it worked like magic. My mailing list is back. It deserves to be. It played a key role in Nepal's democracy and social justice movements.

Thank you, Twitter.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Diller Country, Month 2

So this was going to be the second time for the NY Tech MeetUp to be in Barry Diller's fancy building on 18th street by the Hudson. And this was going to be the 50th tech meetup. And Scott's first time presenting himself. Scott comes along in the long line of successful entrepreneurs who are not engineers themselves, but who provide the leadership and the vision and make it all happen. He is a guy with plenty of soft skills. And by now he knows several of the top names in tech today, and not just on this coast. He has been tallied number five in this city, number one being Bloomberg. That is quite an achievement. I remember the first time meeting Scott. It was at a bar. The tech meetup. Less than a dozen people. Now it is so big, he can't provide room for all who want to show.

NY Tech Meetup July Meetup

Scott's presentation was the highlight of the evening. The MeetUp Alliance is quite a concept. I like Scott personally, but I think I am being fairly objective when I claim Facebook is a 2.0 company, MeetUp is a 5.0 company. (Web 5.0: Face Time) Unlike so many of those dot coms before the nuclear winter, MeetUp actually is a profit making venture for a simple concept, a "mid-sized company," as Scott puts it. If you are going to organize a MeetUp, pay $15. And then go around and charge people who show up, $1, $2, $5.

I know a few organizers for whom this is brisk business. Like this Prospect Park Soccer group. It is so popular, the slots for RSVP open up at midnight Thursday for the Sunday game. Within minutes, they are gone. That success story is also something to take note of. How do you scale that success so people don't have to be turned away? Don't tell me MeetUp has become too successful. Existing organizers train new organizers to start new soccer groups?

With a company like MeetUp, there is only so much you can do in terms of tech. Facebook does not have that constriction, because that is meant to be a screen time experience. You can keep enriching it infinitum. But with MeetUp, the action is not at its site. The action is when people meet in person.

And so what will give MeetUp its edge is a program to keep training its thousands of Organizers fairly continuously to make them do better and better and better. How do you improve the quality of the experience for those who show up? MeetUp needs to hire engineers, but also group dynamics specialists, team psychology specialists.

Like my advice to this particular Organizer, Scott himself, the founder, CEO of MeetUp, dear friend.

Would it be possible to make people make a mock presentation to the Organizer or a rep before they are approved to get on stage? Perhaps days ahead? One guy on stage fast forwarded his entire presentation because "the clock is ticking." It was hard to follow.
The idea that people must have their full name and company name when they RSVP is a great one. I find it a waste that this MeetUp brings together the top tech talent in the city, but there is very little opportunity to actually go ahead and mingle and get to know each other. At least with the full name and the company name, you can go visit their sites.
To Scott's credit, he does suggest a bar to go to after. I have skipped that part the last two times.
How about letting people add a link to their Facebook profile page on their MeetUp profile page?
The stretch break half way through was a good idea, a few minutes to say hello to people sitting next to you.

Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived

The Meetup Alliance is such a cool idea, but I guess it is in beta because I was not able to add a few groups I wanted to add to the Obama alliance just a while back. I think at some level Scott wishes Obama 2008 would use MeetUp.com like Dean 2004 did but hasn't. I am fairly active with Obama 2008, that has been a decision for the Chicago people to make. They have turned BarackObama.com into a Facebook/MeetUp mashup. It is not as good as either, but they feel it seems to work good enough.

I think that's where MeetUp Alliance comes into the picture. It will expose MeetUp to people who otherwise have not been exposed to the MeetUp concept.

Silicon Alley Insider

Startups 101: Make Sure Your Pitch Doesn't Suck
Zuckerberg: I'm Sorry. Go Ahead And Turn Beacon Off*
NY Tech Meetup Review: The Meta Meetup The monthly NY Tech Meetup packed the lobby of Barry Diller's IAC building Tuesday night. ........ Ignighter ..... Evolvist .... The Funded ..... Kaltura ..... Unype ..... Meetup Alliance .... Peter Kamali, co-founder and former CTO of Meetup ..... soft-launched as a pure Facebook app play; Peter mentioned plans to extend the app to other platforms (i.e. Google's Open Social) ....... a typical Ruby on Rails application mashed up with Google Maps; I think they could have used Ning and accomplished the same thing. ...... This online group video making startup won the "people's choice" award at TechCrunch40 past summer. It's a complete video editing application that allows multiple people to collaborate. It boasts a very rich (and complex) user interface. ........ After hosting more than 50 tech meetups Scott Heifferman finally gets to demo his own product. It's the Meetup Alliance, (previously announced here) ...... allow Meetup, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and MySpace groups to interoperate, creating large alliances. ..... Scott Heiferman (SA 100 list #5) ..... platform-agnostic, open to not just Meetup groups, but to Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, Facebook Groups, MySpace Groups ..... the International Tech Meetup Alliance, Barack Obama for President Alliance

December's NY New Tech Meetup Review

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