problems

How SXSW Inspired Me

As I am flying home from my first SXSW, my mind is reeling. Spinning really. Having worked in digital development and communications for 15 years, I’ve been to dozens if not a hundred conferences. But never has one affected me so profoundly. To be immersed in a creative, collaborative and hyper-connected environment was amazing.

In many ways, it was like I walked out of Plato’s cave for the first time only to wonder that despite all of my experience and exptertise, have I spent 1.5 decades merely looking at the shadows on the walls. There are too many experiences and ideas rattling around in my head than I could really convey and share at this point. But one feeling that I have to share is a bit of sadness. I feel supremely inspired, but with that comes a bit of depression.

I have dozens of learnings and lessons to apply at McDonalds. Dozens of news tools and techniques that I master, both personally and professionally. I am awestruck by the possibilities of online learning to fix so many maladies of both our educational system and the flaled local funding systems that support them. I want to join more boards. Volunteer at charities. There are three startups that I want to start up. Which is exactly where the depression comes in. I have but one life to live. I am bound by that infinite and infernal curse of having a mere 24 hours in a day. I miss my sons terribly and already feel like they are growing up without me.

I want to jump and learn and discover and build. I also want to cry when I think of the many thousands of miles that both currently and in the future will separate me from my family. This is far from a lament. This is an opportunity. If my experience in Austin taught me anything, it is that we are living on the precipice of a new age where any problem is solvable. It is up to me to define the problem and find the solution.

SXSW 2012 is a year away. That is 365 days to see if I can solve both problems I see and ones that I have yet to fully define and comprehend. Both personally and professionally. So expect a new focus on my blog. I don’t necessarily want to write more (because forced blogging could be yet another burden to shoulder) but I want to write better. I want to develop a focus that applies the lessons of the last four days into methodical and focused journey to fixing these problems. I welcome thoughts, tips and general sharing as I count down the 365 days until the next Austin moment.

Rick Wion

A Problem Affecting Twitter’s B2B Marketing Adoption (It Ain’t Easy)

Over the past couple of months as we’ve been working with clients at Make Good Media, we noticed a social media trend I thought I would share. It has to do with Twitter. As an active, daily user of Twitter, it is fairly easy to overlook this trend. But repeatedly, we’ve heard the following, “At first, Twitter is really hard to understand, quite confusing, and frankly I don’t get it.” Some have even gone so far as to say, “I’m ready to give up.”


Now as someone who is very active on Twitter, and knows all the ins and outs, this can come as a quite a surprise. It’s not until you sit down with someone, begin going through it, and say statements like, “That’s a DM.” Or “You see this, that is a ‘mention.’ To reply to that, you just type in the at symbol followed by their username.” Pretty quickly you realize you are almost speaking a foreign language, and there are several things that need to be learned for someone to really grasp the basics of Twitter.

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