Image by Tojosan via Flickr

Heading to SxSW for the first time? You’ll want to check out these quick and dirty tips from some recent attendees. Most of these apply to any conference over a day in length or with multiple tracks. Do you have some quick and dirty conference tips?

SxSW Tips:
Carry water, protein bars and a sweater. Think back-pack style. Get used to sleeping on the floor. – @DavidBaeza

Great sliders at The Driskill, great place to hang. Roppollo pizza by the slice on 6th, The Hilton lobby rocked too. – @fusedlogic

Make your most important meetings over breakfast. Only time of day you can totally control. – @cc_chapman

Well if you go to the bridge over to the Hyatt at sundown, you can watch the 1.5 million bats come out from under it. – @shawnmcpike

Double book yourself for everything so that you always have a back-up plan. – @PeevedMichelle

3) good shoes 2) cold bottled water 1) portable phone charger – no phone = nonexistence – @carybranscum

Choose sessions that help you achieve your biz goals and that you aren’t already an expert in. – @georgemanty

Show up, find out where you want to start, then trust the SW wind will take you from there. – @CommercialScott

Sleep before you go, no time to sleep at the #SXSW. That’s our dirty tip! – @evokesalon

always be charging (both body and phone!) – @pepsi

review speakers/panels ahead of time. Even if you pick 5 in same timeslot, know options, then choose on the fly. – @SheilaS

Guilty pleasure: grilled cheese sandwiches at convention…real Austin blues at Antones. – @1680PR

my best tip is to not have a plan and make sure you bring your own power cord like this Belkin http://t.co/wMPHEE – @clickflickca

And to round these out, how about a tip or three from you?

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Pinball Wizard Tweeps

Klout – a lot’s been made of it. Klout purports to measure your online influence, social reach, and even your relevance. Metrics? Number of followers, retweets, and mentions. Seems fairly reasonable. Reducing all of those down to influence though is obscure, and the value of the things measured is of questionable return.

Clout is where Klout gets its name. Clout is defined as ‘influence or power, esp. in politics or business.’

So if online influence is hard to work on, what about offline? Are there tools and tips for building your offline clout? You bet!

Face to face is the original and dare I say best way to influence others. What you do and say is immediately visible to those nearby, less open to interpretation, and results show in an instant.

Taking the best of both worlds gives us a great way to build offline clout using modern tools – a tweetup. Tweetups are informal gathering in the physical world of folks connected on Twitter.

Tweetups are often held at restaurants. Breaking bread together is a great ice breaker and lends its self to chatter.  Add in a few cold beverages and most folks become more relaxed.  Fertile grounds for networking are right there.

How can this build influence though? It’s all about how you behave in the group setting.  What do you share? How do you involve yourself in conversations? How do you act towards wait staff, other attendees, and friends. People in attendance can witness who you are first hand.

Tweetups around an activity work here as well. Gather a bunch of Twitter folks together at the local bowling alley, the park, or your city’s crazy museum. Hang out shooting guns if you dare.  The key here is up close interaction.

Seems obvious perhaps but repeated group activities is the easiest and fastest way to build relationships. Important as well is you don’t need anything special to host a gathering.

The last two summers I hosted the Bring A Tweep To Lunch, #BATTL, summer series. Each Friday during the summer I selected a restaurant and shared it out. Open invitation was the rule, encouraging people to bring friends and family. These lunches weren’t sponsored, didn’t have speakers, and no one was excluded, even if they’d never heard of Twitter.

My return on this? Besides good food and conversation I made new friends, cemented connections, and introduced people. Long term? Trust and influence.

Local folks are already wondering where the lunches will be this year, who they’ll meet, what new food they’ll try, and if this will be there stepping stone to being more social.

Wrapping up, I’ll give you a few quick tips.

• Go with a central location.
• Go where lunch can be under $10.
• Go with locally owned establishments when possible.
• Go with what you want to try. Don’t put it out for a vote. I’ve found this just leads to hurt feelings and rivalry.

Go.Organize.Grow.

This post is part of #UsGuys Twitter group’s weekly blogging round up.  Building offline influence was the topic for week 3.

WEEK 3 ROUND-UP  - BUILDING YOUR OFFLINE KLOUT

• Kase Study on Klout – The Highest Lama by Mark Robertson. @markosul
• I Build For Life by Stephen Caggiano. @stephencaggiano
• Offline Klout: I Know The Source by Libby Baker Sweiger. @libbytalks
• Measuring Reality: 4 Game Changer Trends For 2011 by Nick Kellet. @nickkellet
• You ‘Da Man! by Gaby O’Rourke. @gabyorourke
• Klout Doesn’t Measure What Really Matters by Margie Clayman. @margieclayman
• Offline Klout – Secret Algorithms Revealed by Jonathan Brewer. @houseofbrew
• The One Thing Klout Is Not by Thomas Moradpour. @tommoradpour
• Can Your Klout Score Get You a Job? by Mark. @youternmark
• Building Offline Clout Not Klout by Todd Jordan. @tojosan
• In The Klout World by Rabab Khan. @rababkhan
• From The Mouth Of Babes by Josepf Haslam. @josepf
• T-shaped On Twitter And In Life by Lex Bradshaw-Zanger. @lexbz
• Sorry, I’m Not On Facebook by Allie Walker. @NYC_allie
• Under The Influence by Karen Lund. @karen5lund
• Making Connections: Real Life Edition by Patrick Prothe. @pprothe
• Offline Influence Now Measured Online by Lewis Poretz. @lewisporetz
• The Klout Myth And Living Above The Influence by Dan Perez. @danperezfilms
• Klout In The Cracker Jack Box by Matthew Browne. @matthewliberty
• What Is Your Influence Report Card by Heidi Cohen. @heidicohen
• In search Of Leader by Shrinath Navghane. @mrshri
• Building Offline Klout by Jackie Coughlan. @jackinessity
• Got Klout by Jill Manty. @mantywebdesigns

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Today I was Todd the volunteer, originally uploaded by Tojosan.

Karen Goodman, a good friend, invited several of us to help out at The National Council of Jewish Women Back to School Store.

Shopping for themselves, boys and girls from low income homes took home jackets, shoes, pants, and even school supplies.

Each child was accompanied by a personal shopper. Other volunteers stocked items, manned changing rooms, and supported other areas.

Sitting on the parents and other family was my role today. I kept the peace in a side room while a child shopped and his/her family waited back. Carrying on conversation, putting together puzzles, and more, the best moment was watching a proud and happy child coming into the room with an arm full of new clothes, books, and more.

Even now I’m about to cry thinking about the joy.

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Usability on the iPad is key to the reviews and articles so far in the 31 Days of iPad series.  Touch rules the day on the device.  Today however I saw touch in a whole new way, by using eyeballs instead of fingers.

Eye recognition driven computer

The computer mounted above is running Windows. Attached below it is the eye recognition device.  It attaches to the computer and acts as both mouse and touch input.

Programs on the device above are all Windows based.  No games come installed or other applications besides the eye recognition software.

My brother** can use this to navigate the web, send email, make speech and even dial and talk on the phone.  It’s surprisingly like an iPad.

Windows though brings it’s own problems, specifically one type of problem: viruses

Taggart has been using this for a couple of months now. He’s become quite adept.  Virus infection though has slowed down response time and nearly made some aspects unusable.

Contrast that with the iPad.  Beyond the OS choice there is the methodology behind it. No applications install by accident. The user can’t be tricked into installing or running anything.

Taggart was excited about seeing the iPad. Though unable to use it an in any fashion, he was intrigued by the interface and more than that the way apps install.

Immediately we realized how such an interface layered with the eye recognition would improve his computing experience. Taggart’s eyes seemed to light up at the possibility of such a device. Imagine a touch centric interface designed from the ground up instead of bolted onto a PC.

I’m officially shouting out to you Makers out there. What would it take to get an  eye recognition and tracking device attached to an iPad and act like a finger touch?  Hey Apple, any thoughts here?

Pass the word, point me to the master gadgeteers, just don’t tell me it couldn’t happen.

** Taggart is afflicted with advanced ALS. He is unable to control anything but some small head movements. His body is essentially paralyzed. Luckily eye movement is still controllable.

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Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Quoting Ben Franklin makes one sound wise. Having a rise and shine routine is wise.

Powering down for a good rest or a night in bed is just the beginning.  Jumping out of bed early isn’t the follow up though. Moving and shaking with a purpose at the right time is more effective.

Making your morning great:

• get out of bed when you’re body is ready. If you can’t wake without an alarm, waking is too early.
• move as soon as possible. Get your bearings and get moving. Head to the first step in your morning prep.
• have a routine. Ignore those who say they’re random. Their success is random as well.
• keep moving. While you’re listening to the weather or traffic, while you’re drinking coffee, while your putting on tie. Motion is key. (this isn’t about health but momentum)
• don’t randomly pick up the paper, turn on the television or start a big discussion
• make time to kiss your spouse. Do this regardless of any issues, problems, time constraints, or anything short of a life threatening disaster.
• prepare for your morning
  • pick clothes out the night before or set up easy options
  • prep the toiletries
  • make breakfast the night before or prep for it then
  • communicate your routine to other members of the household
  • decide ahead of time about showering and shaving

Sounds like a check list? No. You must create your own.

Above all this approach is about momentum.  Momentum isn’t just moving your feet or falling, but it’s about moving with direction, purpose and intent.

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Photography is fun. It’s even more fun tonight with the iPad.

Snapping the photo above took an instant with a Canon PowerShot SD780IS(affiliate link).  It looks good and sharp even if goofy.

Editing in iPhoto is good for simple fixes. Sharpening, cropping, and fixing colors is the order of the day. Making fun things is limited to ordering prints or photo books.

Filtering comes to life though on the iPad with Camera Bag. Camera Bag (listed as camerabag) provides filters, borders, and cropping options rolled into one application.

Camerabag was originally an iPhone application offering a small number of filters and other options. The iPad version offers a growing suite of choices.

Filters:

- Original – This clears all other filters and returns the image to its original state.
- Helga – Square-format toy camera with washed-out highlights and old-school vignetting.
- Lolo – Shoot from the hip and take life as it comes with vibrant, colorful shots.
- Mono Smooth, refined, balanced black and white.
- 1962 – Dynamic, high-contrast black and white from the photojournalism of a bygone era.
- 1974 – Your father’s camera: faded, tinted, and hip.
- Instant – No need to shake this instant-developing film.
- Magazine – Rich tones for glossy pages.
- Cinema – Dramatic, moody coloring with a widescreen aspect ratio.
- Colorcross – Hazy, chemical color-swapping straight from the darkroom.

Filtering defaults some cropping and border choices.  Crop and border can be changed without removing the selected filter. This allows the Instant format with the Cinema cropping.

Below is the photo from above passed through the Instant filter.

Texturing, cropping, and an instant photo paper border have been applied with just a touch. Enjoying this application is easy.

CameraBag is a product of Nevercenter. I’m confident that for the price you’ll get more than enough value out of it.  Some reviewers say the application offers too few options. It’s cheaper than the price of a movie ticket and you won’t be done playing with it in an hour and  half. Give it a try today.

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If you listen to the right song loud enough, long enough – all is well ♫ ♬ power of music…

by leslie.

Leslie says about herself:

Speaker. Social Media Enabler. ENTP. Author. Hockey.

Leslie was a good find via other Twitter friends. She loves to share and engage. I recommend you follow leslie on Twitter.

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“Any task, big or small, do it well or not at all.”

by bookworm21.

Bookworm21 gives credit:

No idea where it came from; my mom used to say it all the time & now I do

Great quote. It may not strike you as original but it’s probably the most straightforward way I’ve seen this idea put.

Bookworm21 is a newer contact of mine. She’s outgoing and personable. Beyond Twitter, you’ll find her on the Bookworm’s Blog.

(Daily Quotes is an ongoing series. If you’d like to share a favorite quote for inclusion, send it to me on Twitter, drop a comment on any post, or shoot me an email – tojosan at gmail.)Similar Posts:

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Day 1106 – The Saints Baby! THAT’S Who!, originally uploaded by lrayholly.

Guessing we don’t have to tell my friend Lynn who won.

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