Your brainstorming session on storytelling via the Internet.
Nate Baker
I'm a storyteller and a chronic creative. Here I explore creative collaboration, tell story across various media, and highlight the side streets of Nashville.
I awarded a few consistently articulate friends above with bookmark flags; Start there. If you're looking for Nashville content, be sure to follow my Reader Shared Items.
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Sexiest Commenter of The Month
David Cintron is a native Texan, enjoys audio engineering, getting free movies from Redbox, and SMSing. Learn more about David at loudestnoise.com.
Other Sexy Commenters
(Just not quite as sexy as David Cintron)
The Sexiest Commenter of The Month is awarded to the commenter with the most overall comments. It's science.
About Nate Baker
I'm a storyteller and a chronic creative. Here I explore creative collaboration, tell story across various media, and highlight the side streets of Nashville. Belmont pinned a journalism badge on me in 2008. I work at Sitemason and founded Diving Board and Click Homeless.
There's an easter egg hidden somewhere on this site. Can you find it?
It's a throwback to a hidden message I included in my first few websites. In 5th grade my dad handed me a copy of some website editing software. Web design has been a creative outlet since.
One reason why I blog is to collaborate with folks.
I’ve had plenty of projects that have needed to die, but I didn’t know how to give them a proper burial till now. Dead Yard greatly benefits two types of people: Serial Website Starters and Internet Hall Monitors.
Serial Website Starters
I have over 30 website domain names. I’m a little addicted. I love creating online concepts. When your instinct is to impulsively create, inevitably it leads to a lot of stuff online, and sometimes that stuff sucks. Enter Dead Yard, a way to find closure when things go horribly wrong.
Apparently I’m not the only chronic creative out there. In the act of buying domains, I felt a little addicted and asked the Nashville tech community how many domains people had.
Brad Blackman has 5. Megan Morris has 7ish. Nicholas Young has 10ish. Mitch Canter has 10 or 12. Julia Corrigan has 18. Jackson Miller has 18. Stephen and Samantha have over 25. (This is when I start feeling less addicted.) Chip Hayner has 45. Chris Ennis has 47—oh and 104 expired. Jason Moore has 57.
And I’m pretty sure some of these folks are being humble and not including the alternative extensions or alternate spellings for their websites. And there’s probably a few domain juggernauts out there who have yet to come forward. Comment below if you can beat Jason so we can either applaud or gasp depending on how personally addicted we are.
Internet Hall Monitors
There are certain people on the Internet, such as Morgan Levy, who were born to call people out when they’re doing it wrong. If Morgan thinks you are being spammy, it’s because everyone else thinks you’re being spammy, but we’re being polite. We respect the truth that comes from the lips of an Internet Hall Monitor.
Sometimes someone needs to make a stand and declare a website dead, like this one. I’m just saying if Morgan posted an obituary describing a tragic accident and how a website she hates died, I’d totally read it.
Godin is a marketing expert, but since he has been talking about online marketing so much lately, he often gets lumped into the technology category. If this is the only technology book in your reading diet, I need to get you excited about some other selections.
Here are five great books on technology if you need to diversify. Enjoy!
In 5 minutes and 20 slides I’ll cover a few selections of fiction, non-fiction, comics, and other gems that serve as great alternatives and supplements to your reading list on technology.
In all fairness, I’m trying to finish The Complete Works Of Seth Godin in time for PodCamp. You can’t fully refute anything unless you’ve fully immersed yourself in the content.
Which reminds me, Tom Cheredar, have you finished reading the Twilight series I let you borrow? (Actually all his Twilight-bashing points are valid, but I still like the movies—er I mean… I probably just lost all my credibility.)
Back to establishing my ethos…
Godin is a marketing expert, but since he has been talking about online marketing so much lately, he often gets lumped into the technology category. If this is the only technology book in your reading diet, we need to invent a new dietary word and start using it and then of course start marketing it to our friends: Tribeans?
A taste of what can be in your mouth right now:
A Logic Named Joe
One neat way to dissect how the Internet is affecting our society is to read books that foreshadow the Internet before it was invented. It makes it easy to pick up on universal trends when authors envision technology as utopia or dystopia. When things come to pass, we can see how far off they were.
An example in science fiction is a short story written in 1946: A Logic Named Joe. Basically “logics” are computers and the story explores society after the “logics” start talking to each other and making information widely available.
It took four hours. I sketched in pencil, painted, then added marker.
I would totally do it again. I can see how painting would be a sweet profession or side gig. There’s nothing like raw creation.
I suspect there’s an untapped market for commissioned artwork for the technology crowd (at least in Nashville). For instance, an artist could incorporate tweets from a region or person into a work.
Visual Art complements Social Media
Musicians are all up on twitter, but I can see how visual art complements twitter to even a greater magnitude.
You can twitpic for a critique as a visual artist, whereas, exporting an mp3 takes more effort. Yes, Imogen Heap is a great example of how a musician can use twitter well.
My argument is this: if Imogen was a visual artist, her twitter account would be even more engaging because her medium would translate more powerfully.
How this could be taken further
If I wanted to make it as a full-time visual artist, here would be my game plan:
Look for untapped markets.
Start having work commissioned to build recurring revenue.
Find a niche during my 20 percent time and create a group of themed paintings to exhibit in a venue, such as a coffee shop.
Build relationships on twitter around my work. Rather than post everything I do, I’d become a thought leader in my craft and blog about social media and visual art.
The community likely won’t be interested in simply looking at an artist’s art on twitter, especially if they are up and coming. This is why I’ve unfollowed many folks on twitter who simply post what they are selling on etsy.
In order to engage others, artists can place their work within a story or within a larger theme.
Here’s an overview of the networking opportunities I’ve stumbled upon in my less than two years as a full-time IT professional in Nashville.
Some friends have asked where to get started. It’s a small town, but it still can be overwhelming. Here’s where I’ll now send them.
If you’re just getting started in a technology, interactive, web, or internet marketing field; are just now focusing on networking; or are wanting to simply meet some folks with like interests, here’s an immersion strategy and links for the following in Nashville:
Part of the fun is meeting early adopters and their innovation. Waves tagged with Nashville are starting to pop up, including a wave from the Nashville Scooter Enthusiasts—trendsetters in more. than. one. way.
Read on for strategies on getting an invite, search techniques, and why Wave is different.
Epic Artwork made in a Google Wave wavelet by Christy Frink
I shared the concept of tech fasting at Ignite, which was during the after-party for BarCamp Nashville 2009. The idea is if we take breaks from technologies that are hurting us, we’ll learn how to best use them, and not allow them to use us. Here are the slides. What do you think? Do I have a career in telling jokes in bars?
Setup a Community Photo Email Address with Twitter & Flickr
Here are 4 steps on how to set up an email address a group can use to email and text photos to a community pool.
Photos can automagicly be sent to a Twitter account, Flickr, and your website.
This is free as long as you don’t need a custom email address like pic@yoursite.com or you won’t be collecting more than around 500 photos a month.
Here are some good uses for this crowdsourcing method:
Weddings: Put an email address at tables and capture moments not caught by the photographer.
Twitter Groups: Enhance groups using retweetbots such as the PredsFans and give your photos a central location.
Promote Events: Plan an epic Halloween party and ask users to submit how their costume is coming, or award a Twitter follower a prize for a specific photo during a social media campaign.
Tech Events and Mixers: Make it easy for people to upload to your photo pool by giving them an email address at events like BarCamp, CS Mixer, and Geek Breakfast. Configure Flickr to add your hashtag to uploads.
Concert: Engage concert goers by allowing them to upload photos of the show and give them a reason to visit your website.
Nashville’s tech community spawns gpsAssassin mobile game
Kill your neighbor.
That’s the motto of gpsAssassin, the iPhone application which became available on iTunes yesterday.
Players scan for targets and launch mafia-style attacks on nearby friends.
“What has been great is the huge community support that we have received,” developer and co-founder Jackson Miller said in an email.
For the over 50 beta testers and numerous contributors to the game, killing neighbors cultivated a community which fed the game’s development.
Nashville companies including Griffin Technology, Sitening and Firefly Logic have released iphone applications, but not necessarily with the same degree of community input.
Nashville’s growing technology scene may indicate a shift in the readiness of Nashville to be known not only for its music and healthcare industries, but also for technology, according to co-founder Nicholas Holland.
“Many feel we haven’t had a major success - something that is so innovative and/or cool that [it] garners world-wide attention,” Holland said in an email.
“We’re hoping that gpsAssassins can solve that problem due to its Startup Weekend roots and the innovative combination of GPS gameplay with social interaction.”
Co-founder Nicholas Holland grabs lunch at Nashville Startup Weekend last October, where he pitched the idea for new iphone game, gpsAssassin.
Startup Weekends are gatherings of community members which work to launch various companies in a weekend.
In less than a year, and after co-founders Holland and Miller put in an estimated 500 hours each, the project went live.
“We thought this would be much simpler when we started,” Miller said.
“We have had a really incredible group of beta testers working with us for several months. They deserve a lot of credit for the high quality of the gameplay and mechanics,” Miller said.
Players can create custom weapons, so they can kill their friends in as many morbid or cute ways they can imagine.
Health, armor and money are tracked during gameplay.
“I can easily say that gpsAssassins wouldn’t be half as fun (or feature rich) if it wasn’t for the excellent feedback of the local players,” Holland said.
RSS
I have over 30 website domain names. I’m a little addicted. I love creating online concepts. When your instinct is to impulsively create, inevitably it leads to a lot of stuff online, and sometimes that stuff sucks. Enter Dead Yard, a way to find closure when things go horribly wrong.
There are certain people on the Internet, such as Morgan Levy, who were born to call people out when they’re doing it wrong. If Morgan thinks you are being spammy, it’s because everyone else thinks you’re being spammy, but we’re being polite. We respect the truth that comes from the lips of an Internet Hall Monitor. 
Confession: I bash Seth Godin on Google Wave.
Come stalk me Saturday at 
Kill your neighbor.
