Disqus - Latest Comments for TimWalker

Re: Singular ‘They’ Named Word of the Year, Dear Megan Loses It

TimWalker — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 13:58:57 -0000

Excellent article, Megan. I wanted to add something regarding gender prescriptivism, because there are, I believe, two separate issues at play here:

First is the issue you cite in your disclaimer, in which Person X requests that "they" be used as their preferred gender pronoun. You have it exactly right, in my view: As decent people, we respect the right of Person X to be called "he" or "she" or "they" or whatever pronoun of choice.

Second is the broader issue that "he or she" is gender-prescriptivist even when used in GENERAL terms, because it reinforces a (false) gender binary that excludes non-binary people. In that sense, "they" isn't just a handy substitute for "he or she"; rather, "he or she" ought to be actively eliminated because it's incomplete in referring to the general population.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

TimWalker — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:04:42 -0000

Intriguing viewpoint, Fred -- and I think Levchin in likely correct about where the mass market is going.

This higher-risk reality should also mean that there will be a slice of the market in which the reduction of these risks will command a higher premium. To take an example from the excerpt here, while many people will need insurance against the risks posed by using a lawyer they don't know, some people and institutions will continue to need lower-risk, in-person lawyers -- and the best of these lawyers should be able to command a special premium for concierge service and minimized risk.

Re: http://tumblr.heyamberrae.com/post/543758160

TimWalker — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:05:50 -0000

Woo!

Re: The Cost of Paying Lip Service

TimWalker — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:43:15 -0000

Love the use of "primary driver" versus "bolt-on," Chris.

Too many of our business tools / projects are regarded -- or implemented -- as bolt-ons, rather than being woven into the fabric of how we work. Some of them are explicitly social (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.), some aren't (new CRM system, sales training, MBTI analysis of team members, etc.).

The moral of the story, to me: Bolting something on is easy. Weaving it in -- making it a primary driver -- is hard.

Re: SXSW – What Can We Learn From Sports Metaphors?

TimWalker — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:53:25 -0000

Thanks for posting this summary, Christine! Tying our topic to Caddyshack gets you super-extra-bonus points in my personal scorebook. :)

Re: Twitter Needs an OPML-like Function

TimWalker — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:24:36 -0000

A little arcane for the average user, no? Or even the average user who could manipulate OPML?

I'm comfortable with OPML and I've used Twitter and Twitter-ecosystem tools a ton, but I don't immediately grok "in the API," "load up the list as a series of IDs," or "use curl on your Mac."

Granted, I'm not technically savvy -- but you shouldn't have to be, for what Chris is talking about.

Or am I way off?

Re: Twitter Needs an OPML-like Function

TimWalker — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:21:52 -0000

It makes sense, Chris. It's not just you.

In the future, all of this ought to be so easy that it never gets harder than, say, exporting a dataset as CSV so you can manipulate it in Excel or the like. But we're a ways from having real portability like that, methinks.

Re: William Shatner to Star in “Sh*t My Dad Says” TV Pilot

TimWalker — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:16:19 -0000

Beautiful. I can't wait.

Re: Man Drives Plane into Texas IRS Building | Pat's Papers

TimWalker — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:01:17 -0000

One minor correction: the crash wasn't anywhere near "downtown Austin," but rather about eight miles northwest of downtown, in the Arboretum area.

Re: List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

TimWalker — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:19:15 -0000

Thanks, Jeremiah -- I only found out about Paula's move in the past few days myself.

Cheers!

Re: List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010

TimWalker — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:13:42 -0000

Thanks for taking the time to compile such a great resource, Jeremiah.

FYI, Paula Berg is no longer with Southwest Airlines.

(By the way, I think I would fit all the criteria for inclusion here, but only by counting the size of our parent corporation Dun & Bradstreet [c. 5,000 employees], not just Hoover's [c. 500 employees].)

Re: 14 Day Social Media Challenge

TimWalker — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:09:20 -0000

Just wanted to thank you for inclusion here, Colin -- makes me proud to be included alongside several of my personal friends here. Cheers!

Re: amber rae. (kicking the shit out of preconcieved notions: my 2010 manifesto)

TimWalker — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:09:26 -0000

Two things:

1. Love that you're embracing everything you're embracing in this post. These are great experiential lessons to be learning at a young age.

2. I will make sure not to overly sanitize my conversation next time I see you. ;)

Re: Geopocketing- When Twitter Gets Cool Again

TimWalker — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:10:08 -0000

Very good, Chris. It's the selectivity that's the thing, in my book. I've had to go to some lengths to turn *off* geolocation as the default on some of my smartphone apps, just because I don't always want to broadcast my location. (Example: when my whole family was away from home for 10 days over Christmas.) But there are plenty of times when inserting my location into the mix would be helpful to me and my social audience.

And I don't even use FourSquare. ;)

Re: Finding Hidden Communities

TimWalker — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:20:53 -0000

I've always been struck by how some blogs cultivate communities within their comment threads.

What I don't mean: you and I see plenty of familiar, favorite names in the comment threads on (e.g.) Amber Naslund's blog, and the thoughts shared there are great. But in those cases much of the community-building may be happening somewhere else (Twitter, SXSW, etc.).

What I do mean: the long, detailed, intertwined, subreferential discussions in the comment threads of Making Light ( http://nielsenhayden.com/ma... ) or John Scalzi's blog ( http://whatever.scalzi.com/ ). These loooooong-time bloggers have built audiences of smart people who keep coming back for more, not least because they become community participants with other commenters.

You think?

Re: Google Wave- My First Feelings

TimWalker — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:58:28 -0000

THANK YOU for the Gizmodo video. It makes sense now!

Re: A picture is worth a thousand words…

TimWalker — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:37:39 -0000

Interesting image, Tyson.

What strikes me is the divergence of experience of the people in the picture. As you suggested in your bullet points, there's a range of people experiencing a range of thoughts and emotions, even though they're all in the same setting.

This reminds me of people's widely varying takes on other shared areas of experience -- for example politics or social media. I had a guy tell me recently that, despite his relatively active use of Twitter, he hadn't found it to be a good place for starting conversations. If I weren't braced for such diversity of reactions in general, I would have been dumbfounded. As it was, I just encouraged him to look through my Twitter stream to get an idea of how conversational it *could* be.

In whatever context, it's worth keeping in mind how differently each of us may experience the same setting.

Re: 3-Something AM

TimWalker — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:30:51 -0000

I ask this because I've been on a big fitness kick lately, Chris: it's four and a half years later -- how's progress?

Also, would it help if you had someone to keep you accountable on this? I'm game.

Re: How to calculate your social media influencer value

TimWalker — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:23:32 -0000

Good post, sir. I would make one caveat: for many people, it's too easy -- and hides too many variables -- to peg their salaried hours per year at 2,080.

An obvious tiny adjustment would be to subtract three weeks of paid vacation, during which you collect pay but don't work. That moves the number to 1,960.

A non-obvious major adjustment is to calculate the *real* number of hours you work per week, including *any* time that you're doing work-related things instead of doing something you'd rather be doing -- or instead of something else that earns you money. For many professionals, this number easily tops 50 hours per week, even though they're technically on the hook for only 40. At the higher number, the raw total for 50 weeks is 2,500 hours, which significantly changes the hourly rate.

Bigger picture: lots of folks don't net nearly as much as they think they do from their work, because they don't genuinely account for *all* the time they put into the job.

Re: ayşe.'s Tumblelog

TimWalker — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:53:45 -0000

Don't mind if we join you.

Re: Ten Characteristics of Great Companies

TimWalker — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:50:43 -0000

Doug -- I think you're right. Many companies wonder why they're bad at innovation, but what this really means is that they're blind to all the ways they stifle it. Great companies *welcome* beneficial change.

Re: Ten Characteristics of Great Companies

TimWalker — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:40:13 -0000

Thought-provoking list, Fred. I would amend #4, "Great companies don't look elsewhere for ideas," maybe to say "Great companies don't HAVE TO look elsewhere for ideas." They're perfectly *willing* to come up with all their ideas themselves.

But really great companies also avoid Not-Invented-Here syndrome: if a great idea does come up from a competitor, a vendor, an outside researcher, an unrelated industry -- they're happy to run with that idea, too. The point is that they're always looking for great ideas that make a difference, and then executing the hell out of those ideas, whether they came from inside or outside their own company.

Re: How Batman will help you beat social media narcissism

TimWalker — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:21:24 -0000

I like this a lot, Christopher. It reminds me of what Kathy Sierra is always saying -- it's not about how *you* kick ass, but about how you help your *users* kick ass.

Re: Jigsaw finds profitability by delivering sales contact data as a service

TimWalker — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:59:15 -0000

Sorry I missed this one when it came out, Anthony. Due credit to Jigsaw for their success, but it's not accurate to say "customers traditionally pay a one-time fee to a database like Hoover’s for a specific set of contacts." For many years now, Hoover's has earned most of its revenues from enterprise subscribers. These companies buy annual subscriptions so they can have nonstop access to our database -- which is updated every day through a combination of technological means and the efforts of our expert editorial team.

So, kudos to Jigsaw for how they're building their business, but the contrast portrayed in the article (at least in the specific case of Hoover's) is misplaced.

Cheers,

Tim Walker
Social Media Manager
Hoover's, Inc.

Re: http://ayse.tumblr.com/post/151093042

TimWalker — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:40:37 -0000

Love these kicks!