Time For A Comeback (I’m renewed, refreshed, and ready to blog)
September 1, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
It’s been way too long since I last posted to my blog here. For that, I apollogize. It seems (and I plan to analyze this a little more later this week) that the more I Twitter and micro-blog, the more my full blog suffers. I’ve effectually decided to put my site and blog on hold, because of the immense value I get out of Twitter.
We live in such a crazy world don’t we!? My lack of blogging on my blog-proper isn’t for lack of topics and interest, live has just been crazy after moving to a new state, taking on a new job (which I love) and all of the associated things needing my attention.
In the time since I last blogged, a lot has changed in technology and social media. I’m here to help guide you through that. Come back soon, to read what I have to say and be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, or Feedburner Emails there in the sidebar of the blog.
PS: I recorded a little welcome back video today with my Flip camera.
Why I’d Make A Good Social Media Club Board Member
July 14, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
—Please Vote For Me, Jonathan Coffman for Social Media Club Board Member by clicking here (voting is open until Thursday —
I’ll try to keep this post short and sweet, but I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and my ideas for the SMC.
If you weren’t already aware, I am a candidate for the final open seat on the founding Board of Directors of the Social Media Club. The SMC is a national non-profit organization that is working toward standarization, simplication, and openness in social media.
Members include people like me who live, work, and breathe social media professionally as well as people who support the ideas of an open and inviting social media landscape. I’ve been a member since about a month after they opened their (online) doors.
As someone who understands and works in and with social media daily for a major media company, and as someone who supports and honestly believes in an open and safe Internet I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to assist this great organization in getting off the ground.
My current employer is PBS, also a non-profit with beliefs above and beyond most American media brands. While I work each and every day to spread and enhance social media adoption and usage across the system I also devote a large amount of my personal time to research and participate in conversations surrounding the best practices and most inclusive ways to foster online community building. Here at my personal website I publish and evangelize my own personal beliefs outside of my professional capacity.
Social media is more than a job for me, it’s a way to look at world. My vision is for a social media landscape that we don’t even have to call social-media. Social media should become as ubitquitous as the Internet itself.
My vision and passion for social-media and online communities is why I’d love to assist and be a part of the Social Media Club. I feel like I can bring a lot to the table for them and help to not only evangelize current and emerging standards, but also serve as a beacon to newcomers in this exciting time.
Please feel free to contact me via any method that’s efficient for you and I will gladly answer any questions or clarify any information.
How To Get Hired Using Social Media
June 22, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
I was lucky enough to know and be on the bleeding edge of social-networking when it began several years ago. I also spent a lot of time cultivating and contributing to my online identity and making connections with people online. The good news is that you don’t have to be an early adopter, or an Internet wiz to get hired using social media.
Looking for a job isn’t easy, and it can be very frustrating. Social media can help, but it’s not a replacement for old fashioned phone calls, emails, and letters. When I graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism I had multiple job offers, and the best of those offers were ones that I came across or was a candidate for because of social media.
For some time, I had been Twittering, Facebooking, and Blogging. I spent money to make sure my blog looked good. I spent hours finding interesting people on Twitter. I stayed up late when I should have been doing other things honing in my online portfolio. And you know what? It all paid off.
One job offer came from a person who followed me on Twitter for two months and noticed that I was talking with increased frequency about finding a job. A couple phone calls and emails later, I was interviewing and had an offer before I got home from visiting.
The other job offer from social-media crossed platforms, I knew the person who knew about a job, but we follow each other on Twitter, and are Facebook friends. Again, my talking about finding a job was seen by this person and I got a Facebook message about openings where she worked. It just so happened that this job was a perfect fit, I got the offer, and took it.
In two paragraphs I just explained how I got a job using social media, but that’s not incredibly useful is it? To help with that, here are my tips and suggestions on finding a job using social-media.
- Put your portfolio and resume online. This is more important than you realize. You’ve just in an instant opened up your resume and portfolio of work to the millions of people online. Now you just need to help people find it.
- Sign up for Twitter and find some people with similar interests to tweet back and forth with. You’ll quickly understand by looking at some of the so called Twitterati how useful and powerful this service is. After you sign up for an account “follow” @chrisbrogan, @guykawasaki, and @scobleizer the three of them have thousands of followers already and actively tweet throughout the day and night. A lot can be learned by example.
- Start a blog. This is a GREAT way to show off your knowledge and skills. This doesn’t have to be complex, start it off on Blogger or Wordpress.com if you want (although I would highly suggest putting wherever you portfolio and resume is). Write one or twice a week at first about what you’re working on, what you’re thinking about (that relates to your job ambitions), and your goals. Some of the best job related feedback I got was on my blog by people emailing and commenting when I wrote a post about “My Ideal Job”.
- Drive traffic to your online portfolio and resume. Do this by putting links on your Facebook page, in your Twitter profile, putting it in big type at the top of your paper resume, and by having it on ALL correspondence online and off. You never know where emails or resumes may get forwarded, and if your online portfolio is linked right there for easy access it makes a world of difference.
- Make It Personal. This is your job hunt, and it’s not going to be easy, but by taking advantage of the basics of social-media your job hunt can expand beyond the traditional into the extraordinary. Social media doesn’t work unless you’re human and make it personal. Being professional and sharing ideas is going to increase your credibility, but not including personal moments will exclude you from the conversation.
Why Life Has Been Crazy: My Huge Job Announcement
May 23, 2008 by Jonathan · 3 Comments
Over the last few weeks I’ve been dropping hints on Twitter, but it’s about time I just came out with it. I’ve accepted a position at the Public Broadcasting Service. In case you’ve been wondering why the big move and road trip from Missouri to Washington DC was happening, that’s why.
I’m joining the ranks of those working full-time on social-media. Social media is such a huge part of the Internet now, and it’s not going anywhere and I’m here to make sure of that!
My title and job at PBS is Assistant Product Manager for PBS Engage. PBS Engage is the social media initiative funded by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation to get people to engage and connect with all of the great content that PBS distributes (like the awesome new series Carrier!).
The PBS Engage team is only a handful of people and the fate of social media is in our hands! 
Well ok, social media isn’t going anywhere regardless of whether or not we’re pushing for it, but I can dream right?
Feedback and response to Engage has been tremendous already with tons of comments on the Engage Blog, and lots of Twitter followers across PBS shows and communities.
At PBS I’ll be working with some really brilliant minds to come up with new ways of enabling participation, engagement, and conversation based around PBS content across the country. In addition to thinking of great ideas, we’re also building social tools to make things like social-networking even easier for PBS viewers regardless of the distribution channel used.
I’m really excited to be joining the PBS family here in the Washington DC area and am looking forward to seeing all of the progress we make in the next year.
With this new position I’ll be relying on YOU even more than before, so keep those @jdcoffman’s, dms, emails, and Facebook messages coming. Without YOU, there is no social-media.
Why It’s PayPal’s Fault, Not The Browser
April 27, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
About a week ago there was some buzz floating around about how PayPal may block Safari because it doesn’t have phishing protection built in. This has since been retracted by PayPal:
PayPal: No plans to block Safari
A representative for PayPal on Friday said the ecommerce firm is developing features to block customers from logging into PayPal when using obsolete browsers on outdated or unsupported operating systems, but has no intention of blocking Safari as a company white paper seemed to imply.
“An example of such a browser/OS combination might be, for example, Internet Explorer 4 running on Windows 98,” said spokesperson Michael Oldenburg. “In doing so, we better protect our customers from viewing a phishing site through their browser. We have absolutely no intention of blocking current versions of any browsers, including Apple’s Safari, from our website.”
(Nugget by AppleInsider)
Might I suggest that it’s not the browser’s responsibility to block security threats on particular web sites? Maybe it’s my not-liking of blaming others for your own problems but I believe that PayPal and PayPal only is responsible for their own PayPal.com site. It’s their job to keep their customers safe, not browser developers, or any other type of web application developer.
Sure, I have a little bit of a bias here. I used to be a large (in my mind) PayPal merchant, who ditched all that in favor of better customer service elsewhere. I know I’m not alone in that boat. However, I feel the same way when eBay blames Apple or denies support of the site if you’re using Safari on eBay.
(Wait a second, I may be on to something here, both PayPal and eBay are owned by eBay and both were virtually run into the ground under Meg Whitman).
To close out this ranting post, let me say that I fully support web application developers and browser developers who want to protect their own customers from the dark side of the Internet, but I don’t think the fault and responsibility should lie on their shoulders as opposed to a multi-national corporation who certainly has the tools and resources available to help themselves help the world but chooses not to.
On Email Organization
April 22, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
For the last month or so I’ve been on a rampage, an email rampage. I haven’t quite hit Inbox Zero but inbox 30-40 suits me well actually. Here’s what I’ve done:
- I now have only 2 visible email addresses, Gmail and my @jonathancoffman.com mail. Those other addresses (.Mac, Yahoo!, Mizzou, and my secondary Gmail) all now get picked up by my primary Gmail account, this way I only have two inboxes to check, and hopefully by responding to those with only one address I gradually get fewer and fewer messages going to those other addys.
- Combining the last two addresses, my primary gmail and my domain email isn’t yet feasible. I can’t quite take myself down to that level yet. Because they’re used for two very different purposes (personal and professional) the use cases will remain mutually exclusive for the time being.
- The downside to still having two inboxes: two sets of gmail tags/folders. My domain email is handled by GoogleApps (which I love by the way), so for now I have two identical but disconnected sets of tags.
- Account and Login Information
- Banking
- Bills
- Blog Conversations
- Contributr
- Current Projects
- Pipeline Projects
- Coupons and Discounts
- Job Hunting
- Journalism School
- Newsletters
- Personal (family)
- Private Betas
- Product Orders
- Service Orders
- Require followup
- Servers and Hosting
- Social Media
- Travel
- URGENT
A Personal Update
April 19, 2008 by Jonathan · 1 Comment
Today’s post has two different themes, 1) a change in blog format and 2) my job search.
I wanted to start out by saying that I’ve changed the way things work on here a little. After getting several emails, I re-evaluated having my Twitter updates archive to my blog. I’ve decided that there isn’t very much value derived from having those posts reposted here.
This blog and my Tweets fill very different needs and have very different value. I have decided that while having a searchable archive of my Tweets here was nice for me, it really wasn’t providing very much value to you, my valued readers. I’ve disabled the cross-posting of Tweets on this blog until a better solution crops up.
In the meantime, be sure to Follow me on Twitter. About two weeks ago I hit 300 followers on Twitter and am now proud to be followed by nearly 350 people. Thank you so much for your support and I hope that you enjoy the insight and knowledge that I share with the community.
On another personal note, you may have noticed that my blogging has been inconsistent as of late. This is a short-term situation and I hope to resume normal daily posting very soon. As you know, I’ve been actively seeking full-time employment, and looking is nearly a full-time job. Normally I would be writing daily and scheduling posts a day or two ahead of schedule about ideas, thoughts, and conversations happening. However, I don’t want to jeopardize any of the opportunities coming down the pipe.
I’ve already had to make some tough decisions, and there will be no shortage of more difficult decisions for at least the next several weeks. As I make those decisions and finalize plans, I will post some information from the numerous conversations I’ve been having with wonderful people across the country on the future of information and knowledge distribution (formerly known as the news business).
If you haven’t already, I’d like to invite you to subscribe to my blog via email by using the form in the right-side column or by adding my RSS feed to your feed reader.
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-04-14
April 14, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Drinking with Mickey Mouse, what’s wrong with this picture? #
- Changed into my night clothes, going out with some friends to mingle #
- Headed to bed, good night Twitterville #
- Good morning Twitterville, getting dressed for NAB Show this morning #
- At the State of the Industry Address at NAB #
- Oh come on, Youtube is more than just funny videos, give them some credit #
- President of NAB says he wants radios in every portable music player…. #
- I don’t want a radio in my iPod and Steve Jobs knows that thank you. #
- NAB is spending $1 billion on DTV transition, estimates 640 touches to each citizen #
- He said DTV is coming to iPods, but I’m not sure I believe him #
- The NAB policies on XM/Sirius and whitespace is rediculous #
- Charles Osgood is about to take the stage. Quite the legend. #
- Why did the NAB invite a celebrity to give us a political speech on the war? #
- I think thats very innapropriate of them #
- Just had lunch with a venture capitalist interested in my wares. Good times! #
- The lunch speaker was Bob Barker, how exciting. #
Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-04-09
April 9, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Hello Twitterville, busy at work this morning finishing up plans for my NAB attendance next week #
- @dsilverman Keynote is a solid presentation app, it hasn’t let me down yet. #
- @chrisbaskind You are lucky! I never win European or Australian lotteries I’ve never entered, will you share with the Twitterverse? #
- @juancarzola True, don’t let the bumps in the road knock you off course for success. #
- @shawnz @blondebydesign ditto, and no kidding, it is odd to think that’s how we know each other. #
- @chrisbrogan What’s happening in Chicago today? #
- @maratriangle What a great way to raise awareness of your situation. Congrats on coming to Twitter! #
- @Ronna Looks like there are several UI changes this morning. #
- @maratriangle I’ll certainly take a look and see if I can help in other ways. #
- Good afternoon Twitter, the job search continues again today, I’ve got to take a serious look at my strongest leads #
- @mightykenny No I couldn’t make it to the coffee tasing, job interview. #
- @TheLowdown That excellent! #
A Contributr Update
April 8, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
The Contributr team has been taking a little break recently, and that’s not a good thing. We’re trying frantically to make up time but other commitments got in the way.
Colby Palmer has been working on a complete redesign of the web application and the AIR desktop application and is doing a great job. He’s a great designer and a great guy and we’re glad to have him on our side! The difficult part now is pulling together all of the little bits and pieces before NAB next week.
I’ll be there presenting Contributr to the industry and friends and I’m really hoping we have the new design implemented enough to use it for our demos. It is a HUGE improvement over our first user interface and I’m very proud of it.
Thursday I’ll meet with the Missouri Innovation Center again to look at some of the business possibilities behind Contributr and its market viability as an early-stage startup. I hope that I’m able to take Contributr with me into my next job and continue working and enhancing it for the news media, and the public.
It would be a disservice not to give Contributr a shot and continue development.
So wish us luck as we try to get version 1.1 of Contributr out the door and ready for more widespread testing.
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