I didn't mean to call Giovanni out specifically. I knew he was slated to speak in a couple of hours already and I was about to make a point that social media doesn't have to be all about making money. This was not planned but "Giovanni will not like this point" or something like that slipped out. I went on about the assumptions that social media is all about money, marketing, etc. is wrong.  Then I went on to define "Douchebaggery". Apparently this word resonated with Giovanni. He spent the next hour changing his entire presentation from "Extreme Social Marketing with Youtube" to "Extreme Douchebaggery with Youtube".

Yes, he did.

And this was his opening slide:

I'm Not Ignorant.

I have never been called out like this before and it was hilarious. Now if you were there and missed the Mad*Pow after party, you missed Giovanni and I having dinner. We did not duke it out. Giovanni definitely has a stage persona. Real Giovanni is a really cool guy. He's very smart, smarter than I am, but he is more like a whore to my slut. I guess I give it away too much but loathe myself in the morning. He feeds his children using his knowledge and is proud of it. I respect that.

I also appreciate his good humor and the fact he made his presentation all about me. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. It was like an early birthday gift of self-absorption.

Anyway, thanks to Giovanni for his presentation and his ability to do some serious riffing. It was the best time at the conference for me. I think I want to do a panel with him sometime, but who would clean up the mess?

I'll be speaking at this year's Big Design Conference doing a presentation I've named "Just Do You Think You Are?" This presentation has nothing to do with the NBC TV show of the almost same name as I am not a celebrity and apparently not anywhere as interesting as Sarah Jessica Parker. My presentation is about social media.

Many of us on Twitter who are not in marketing or PR are acutely aware of the social media people who are two steps away from being full-on spammers. There's a general assumption out there about social media requiring open, frank discussion. This assumption is that everyone with an Internet presence is there to make money. This assumption is so pervasive, it's the driving premise in most social media articles (see Zemanta linked articles after this article). The Social Media Summit this year has the following welcome message:

Dear Fellow Marketer;

Are you using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but not getting the results you hoped for?  Could you use some guidance and fresh ideas?  Yes, the promise of social media is strong: Direct contact with customers (and prospects) who were previously unreachable.  This means greater exposure and more business opportunity—all without costly advertisements or middlemen.  And given this economy, who wouldn't want more business!  But if you're like me, you're looking to choose your social media activities wisely, without getting consumed by all the options. You simply want to know what works best.

Michael A. Stelzner's conference is geared toward marketing people. However, I want to point out the base assumption that social media is for making money. The "Social Media Summit" isn't the "PR and Marketing Through Social Media Summit" or the "Social Media Marketing Summit". It's just assumed that you assume that's the main audience for social media content. I'm not saying the conference is good or bad, but I do think it's time to stop having a one-dimensional view of social media.

Blogging, Facebook, and Twitter were not grown by people looking to make money. They are the evolution of human interaction on the Internet. Marketing people are a lot of things, but they are not trail blazers on the Internet. They are opportunistic and swarm technologies once they see ways to "monetize" the environment.

Before I got into social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook as this blog existed before those, I watched from the outside without a full understanding of what was going on. A friend of mine continually tried to explain it to me, but I would only mock it. The reality was I didn't understand the value it had for me personally. I had a tainted opinion of social media based on the money making assumption.

What a mistake it would have been to continue to ignore my friend. I have made genuine friends through Twitter and have broken out of a slump of depression as a result. I met people within my own company I would never have met and discovered our mutual desire for Sprint to succeed. Several of these coworkers were using a completely genuine, Cluetrain Manifesto approach to customer service. I also started meeting people here in DFW and broke out of my shell. Finally, I discovered the UX community and began to rethink my approach to work and career and my professional education was resurrected from a dusty tomb.

Come to Big Design to hear me present on these ideas. I'm excited to share my personal story because I know it's relevant to a lot of people who don't consider themselves marketeers.

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Photo Courtesy of Fred Beecher at SXSW

So you thought you graduated high school went on to college and live in the real world. Unfortunately high school actually was preparation for the real world. Adults are nothing more than grown-up versions of everyone you hated back then. It used to be it hidden by social norms. At least ten or twenty years ago people pretended to be what we all thought adults should be. But thanks to social media, big events, perpetual networking, and the complete disregard for manners, pretending to be an adult is so last century.

I've prepared a listicle for those of you who only read blog articles if they contain lists that you can eat and poop like Chicken McNuggets. In this list I will tell you everything you need to know about fitting in so the next time you go to a big meetup with a bazillion other people.

1. You're a celebrity; act like it. You have a blog? You have a few hundred followers on Twitter? Well hell, you are a celebrity. Make sure you drop your @twittername when making reservations at the hotel. Being an Internet celeb has perks, dammit. You let everybody know it too. You deserve your free drinks and unlimited finger food.
2. Dominate every conversation. So we've established you're a celebrity but you have to work on your conversation skills. Obviously people wouldn't be talking to you if they didn't want to hear everything. Why deny them that privilege? If you are practiced in the art of conversation, you can take any topic and make it about you. Just deftly relate the topic to something you thought of in the shower. It works every time.
3. Act your age. All of us are arrested in some phase of our lives. Find your real age. No, not that sappy Oprah crap age based on how much grease is creeping its way to your heart. I mean your real age. That age where time stopped because Lizzie dumped you right after you were kicked off the football team for pissing on the bleachers during half time. Yeah, that age. You embody that age before you go to any karaoke bars.
4. Tweet while other people are talking. Why listen to somebody else's claptrap? If you have to relent to somebody else driving the coversation for a few seconds, make sure you take a picture with your phone and tweet about it. Make it clear only you can keep your attention. Include their @twittername in the tweet just in case they are as famous as you. If the other person is annoying you, then openly mock them.
5. Make sure you're an esoteric bandwagon snob. Beer, music, sports, it doesn't matter. Make sure you are on board with the latest meme, but also you think most people into it are morons. Only you know that hops from the Brazilian rain forests of Quebec make the best pilsner lager coffee porter. When it comes to music, all you need to is to drop this band name periodically: The Stone Roses. I don't know why, but it works every time.
6. Remove your wedding ring. At meetups, you have to make absolutely sure you come off as single and 20-something. This is really hard to do if you keep bringing up your wife and kids. Just don't. Nobody in Silicon Valley has kids, the government saw to that. You cannot come off as genuine if you talk about some Oompa-Loompas who only exist to drain your soul and prevent you from attending every other meetup.
7. You are the only one with a brand to sell. If you don't fully understand how important it is to sell your wares, you might as well stay at home and feed insects to your Venus flytrap. Create a perimeter around yourself that covers at least  three dozen earshots. Saturate said perimeter with your elevator pitch at regular intervals, similar to a tornado siren.

Now you know how to play the game. Go forth and network. I'm going to sit here and watch the #sxsw feed for a few hours.

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People disappear and reappear all of the time on social media channels. It's part of what makes it great. If you can't take a break from Twitter long enough to do your laundry, go shopping, and attend elocution classes, then you need to question why you are flailing your arms about to get noticed. Social media is great when you are genuine. It's better when you are grounded in who you are. It's best when you pay attention to other genuine people.

Pay attention to your stream and make an effort to periodically give people an individual shoutout. When somebody is gone for days, do you notice? It's easy to maintain friendships online. You can be a butterfly and people get that. But stop periodically and remember who these people are and what they mean to you. They are not money trees, zoo animals, or even an alternative to you doing absolutely nothing. They are people just like you and I'd like to think we all need somebody singling us out and saying "hi" to help us know we are not alone living our lives and supporting our families.

I don't ask a lot from people but I'd like to ask you today to think about who helped you in the past with an Illustrator question or didn't give you a snarky let-me-Google-that-for-you answer when you tried to figure out where to get budget numbers. Remember who retweeted something funny you wrote. Remember who put up with your self-indulgence when you went on about your good time at SXSW. Remember who live-tweeted your presentation from a conference with supportive comments. Remember those who first helped you get started in your career. Remember that your network is made up of people and don't take them for granted.