Thursday, October 9, 2008

Are you following me?

I love Twitter. One of the most exciting events of my day is when someone I look up to starts following me. Today one of the best in my breed (at least I like to think so) did: David Armano (@armano). When that Twitter email enter my inbox I felt as excited as that groupie that a member of the band invites backstage but without the sexual connotation.

I read this week “The Only Two Secrets to Motivating Yourself You’ll Ever Need” on zenhabits about how to “1) make things enjoyable and 2) use positive public pressure” are the only two things needed to motivate yourself which I totally agree.

The more I’m connected through the different social media tools, either to those I consider mentors or to my peers, the keener my “Creative Mind” becomes. And that’s what I love about Social Media too.

I have a very special type of company, we do a bit of everything since that’s what our type of economy requires -no budget available for specialists but only generalists. So we say that User Experience Principals are the basis for what we do. We also promote the fact that we are very well connected in the country and the industry -information technology. So combining both and in response to the market demands -Costa Rica has become a haven for IT outsourcing/nearshore services- our small, thriving company offers: Content Strategy, Human Strategy and Brokering Services. Under the three areas of service we have many products and sometimes I ask myself how are all these related, because they are somehow. And mostly I ask how do we ended up knowing about them all enough to be an expert service company. It’s definitely curiosity and that’s a criteria I also use when hiring people.

But that curiosity could not find nourishment if it weren’t for social media. How else could I learn in small remote Costa Rica about the prophets. This is how I do it:
  • I read blogs of all sorts
  • I’m always reading Twitter updates
  • I use LinkedIn a lot
  • I look at SlideShare public presentations
  • Always subscribing and trying out new tech tools, etc.
And all the information I get from these and other social media tools, I check out. Thanks to a Jason Fried post on Twitter about SquareSpace I immediately analyzed the site and saw its potential in our market. After all people around me are constantly asking me if I do websites because they need one. How was I to explain that I only do the architecture and the content of a website but wasn’t able to do a whole website by myself? Now I don’t have to, because now we can do a complete website and adjust to the type of budgets the SMEs can afford.

My local followers on Twitter and offline as well benefit from the knowledge I transfer, which is 98% made up of other people’s inputs than my own idea. The value I add is in spreading the virus, not inventing it. And sometimes I do come up with a mutation of it that applies better locally.

There’s always going to be those of us who find value in trying to keep updated and those that find it a waste of work time or distracting. Yes it’s difficult to try and be in the loop, mainly if you are hundred of miles and a culture away. But it has paid off for me.

I was one of the first people to bring up the concept of User Experience in our country, our IT industry. This was back in the late 90’s when I discovered the SIG - IA mailing list, which I believe could be classified as early versions of social media which is now more related with Web 2.0. Through it I became aware of Morville’s and Rosenfeld’s Argus and their Polar Bear book; eventually the Adaptive Path people -I’ve even emailed with Jeff Veen at some point whom had been surfing in Costa Rica several times-, Christina Wodtke, etc.

I’ve come a long way: from going to the only LP store right downtown, the only LP store that sold records by “alternative” groups like The Clash and The Pixies, to finding new business ventures/ models online. In that LP store there were this huge books printed by a branch of the BBC, they were album listings so we would select a group by it’s name sometimes ordering recorded interviews by the Melody Maker. In those interviews the groups we were already listening to would talk about other groups that they currently liked or that influenced them and that was our queue to ordering new LPs from similar or related bands. And a couple of decades later I was deeply in love with Pandora until they banned non-US countries. So do you see the similarities in process but how technology has made it sooo much easier?

So when the people that since the late 90’s and the dozens of others that have also stepped up to the plate connect with me somehow I feel my effort in keeping up is being recognized, and that’s a lot for a girl from beautiful but tiny Costa Rica.

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