Patrick O’Keefe

Gary Vaynerchuk (who I am just kind of getting into now) came up with the idea of Good People Day 2008. Basically, the premise (explained in the video below), is to talk about good people. I like the idea, I’m all about positivity and, at times, I really dislike the negative stuff that so many people focus on.

So, who are my good people? I’ll go ahead and define this as people that I know, personally, that are great people and people I don’t know, but that do cool and awesome things that I enjoy. I wasn’t sure which direction to go in with this, at first, but I’m going with that. I’ve come up with a list (in no particular order) of people below, in addition to my family, of course. I’m sure I’m leaving plenty of people out (sorry about that). But, here we go:

Adam Polselli, the Angry Video Game Nerd (James Rolfe), Anthony Violante, the Ask A Ninja guys, Barats and Bereta, Blame Society Productions, Brad Kelly, Brandon Eley, Brandon Hardesty, Brandon Levan, Camp Jinx, Cesar Gonzalez, Chris Wodicka, Chrispian Burks, College Humor, Lee LeFever, Darren Rowse, David Askaripour, Derrick Comedy, Download Squad, Homestar Runner, James Fintel, Jared Smith, Jason Calacanis, Jeremy Wright, Jonathan Bailey, Josh Ulfers, Keith McLaughlin, Lifehacker, Ray Angel, Ryan Leslie, Stephan Segraves, Tanner Smith, Thomas Rutter, Zack Urlocker, Ze Frank, Jason Bean, Denzil Coleman, Diddy, James Dasher, Tris Hussey, Ethan Kwassman, Matthew McGough, Michael Singer, Tom Tollefson, Brian Walker, Danielle Williams, David Williams, Heidi Wilmott, James Varghese, Matthew Whiting, Nikita Warren, Ryan Zieno, Seamus Molloy, Eric Miller, Rusty Baird, Edwin Vaughan, Nicholas Morrison, Laurie Snow, Doug North, Tammy McBeth, Pat McQuinn, Scott Shepard, Greg Heinisch, Jeremy Rogers, Reuben Regier, Jay-Z, Will Smith, Kanye West, Grant Robertson, Jacquie Flynn, Erika Spelman, Jennifer Holder, Omar Al-Hajjar, Debbie Hammond, Whitney Hoffman, Matt Schweber, Kyle Hunt, Pete Murray, Brad Williams, Nasir Zubair, Neil Salkind, Dave Nekoukar, Aziz Nekoukar, Alex Belth, Sam Unruh, Scott Stubblefield, April Burba, Sarah Large, Ted Sindzinski, Georgina Laidlaw, Cynthia Mosher, Martin Reed, Jake McKee, Ramona Iftode and Andrew Tatum.

Thank you to all of you for being good people (or, at least, people doing things that I enjoy!). :)

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Congrats to my friend James Dasher and his wife, Amy, on the birth of their brand new daughter: Kathryn Joy Dasher. Big stuff!

Cripes, I’m getting old. My friends are married, are getting married… and having kids?!?

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Congrats to Brandon Hardesty (who I wrote about in October of last year) on being featured on the homepage of USA Today online with this story.

The comments on the article are a disgrace of jealousy and short sightedness (is USA Today allowing their comment section to turn into Digg’s?) - but, anyway, great stuff.

Via ProductPlacer.

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Congrats to Ryan Leslie on hitting the Billboard Hot 100. His song, “Diamond Girl”, checked in at 95. I have a feeling it’s going higher. I like the track a lot and Mr. Leslie provided advance praise for the book, so of course, I am pulling for him.

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I’ve posted the video from my SXSW Interactive presentation online. You can check it out over at ManagingCommunities.com. Hopefully, not too unbearable.

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I’m back from SXSW. I’ll have a full recap soon, but I thought I’d throw a post up real quick. So much to do, I’ll be catching up for a week probably. Argh. But, the reading went well and I had a lot of fun. More details to come.

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Congratulations to one of my best friends, Stephan and his fiancée Jessica on their engagement. I wish you guys nothing but the very best - always!

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Ray tagged me, asking me to show my start menu. Here it is:

You are supposed to tag three more people. So, I will tag Brandon, Chris and Stephan.

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I will be doing a book reading in March at South by Southwest Interactive. Instead of a “reading”, it will actually be a presentation around an idea or series of ideas that I discuss in the book, most likely backed by slides of some sort. It’s the first time that I’ve done something of this nature. But, I am looking forward to it.

What should I do the presentation on? That’s the stage I’m at now. I’d like your feedback. I’ve given it some thought and have come up with half a dozen ideas. Please give them a look and let me know what your favorites are or what your favorite is. If you like none of them or have a better idea, feel free to look at the table of contents and suggest something entirely different. Keep in mind one key limitation: I have only 20 minutes of stage time. So, I want a presentation that I can fit into 15 minutes, in case it goes long or so that I can take a couple questions.

Here are the ideas I’ve come up with:

Are You Ready to Manage Online Forums?
This discussion would cover the fundamental things to consider before you decide to start a community. What do you want the forums to cover, who do you want to attract, are you ready for the time commitment, can you support the community financially, etc.

Training Forum Moderators
I would focus on the training of community staff members through staff member guidelines, a violation documentation system that they can learn from and by encouraging staff members to ask questions.

Developing User Guidelines for Forums
Talking, in a general sense, of the creation of community guidelines. The time limit prevents me from covering all of the things that can be covered in guidelines, so I’ll need to, as I said, speak generally, as far as the guidelines influence over the community and what they can do.

The Process of Community Forum Moderation
I will discuss the process of content moderation that I use on my forums. Basically, it goes in four general steps: recognition of the violation, removal of the violation, documentation of the violation and the action taken and notification of the member, if needed.

When Community Staff Members Leave
Covering the four most common scenarios that staff members leave under and how you should handle them. They are: inactivity, resignation in good standing, resignation after disagreement and when the person turns into a lunatic.

Creating a Positive Environment on Your Forums
Discussion of some of some common ways to create a positive, friendly atmosphere on your forums. This would include requiring that members treat each other with respect, welcoming new users, staff member involvement, how you answer questions, how you can make members feel involved, how to deal with problems, not allowing political, religious or other controversial discussions (unless that’s what your community is about) and more.

So, what do you think? I appreciate any thoughts.

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I was just reading the latest issue of Billboard where I saw a small article noting something that Matchbox Twenty has been doing on their tour.

While they are performing a show, they do a soundboard recording of it. After the show, this recording is placed onto a USB drive that closes into the shape of a wristband. And then they offer them up for sale. So, fans can buy the audio from the show that they just listened to. This is a wonderful idea along the lines of my desire to buy performance .mp3s after watching the performance. All big tours should be doing this. It’s a great new revenue stream with little downside that I can see. I’d love to see all major performances offer something like this.

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