Lavacon is an annual conference held in Portland, Oregon that caters to technical communication and content strategy professionals. Not surprisingly, this group generated a flood of tweets on Twitter using the hashtag #lavacon. Below are some of the most helpful and hilarious tweets I saw over the week; you can see the full fire hose by searching on Twitter for #lavacon.
As a frequent and fervent tweeter, I found Twitter to be invaluable in a conference setting. Not only did I gain insight on sessions I didn’t attend, I found new friends and colleagues simply by sharing an experience on Twitter. I also finally met people in person that I only knew through tweets.
1. The horizontally buttoned bottom shirt button. This button goes against established tradition by buttoning from top-to-bottom, instead of right-to-left (unless you’re a girl. Your backwards buttoning is just weird). This lowly button makes you think extra hard at 7 in the morning just to put on a shirt. There’s no possible benefit to this. Just stop.
Why no pockets?! Think of the children!
2. Lack of a shirt pocket. An egregious error. If you don’t carry a cell phone (that’s mobile for all one of you European readers) to work, most likely you carry some sort of ID. Where to put them? Both in the same pants pocket? With your keys? C’mon, clothing companies, it’s almost 2012. Know your audience.
Surely you also have clothing pet peeves. Also, Happy New Year.
I finally convinced my lovely fiancée to accompany me to Walt Disney World in sunny and nearly tropical-in-September Orlando, Florida. I blame JetBlue and their $99-each-way fare to Orlando.
Our Disney history
Spaceship Earth. The most well-known thing in Epcot. Also one of the crappiest rides.
My family went a few times when I was growing up. Now that I’m an adult and actually had to pay for it (good thing the airfare was cheap), I am thankful we went even once. My parents also managed to take us to Disney World in the fall, during the school year. Nicely done, Mom and Dad.
So, when exactly did it become mandatory for everyone on the intarwebz internet to have a “social media strategy”? Thanks to the good folks at Google, we now have a chance to “reset” our strategy with Google+, the #ohjesusnotanotherone of social media. We have the Twitter, we have the Facebook, we have the Foursquare, we have LinkedIn and if you’re hip, Tumblr and Oovoo (which still makes me think of olive oil, and unfortunately, Rachael Ray) and Quora.
But now that I’m one of 1020x million fortunate early adopters, I get to “reset”. At first I thought OK, I already live a lot of my life in public, I’ll just extend that to Google+ and let everyone in.
I’ve been told I spend a bit too much time on Twitter. To illustrate this point, I once tweeted my most hated word in the English language: slacks. It’s just an awful, harsh-sounding word. Since then, fellow twitterers and technical communicators @afox98, @billswallow and @seanb_us (and some of the best people I’ve never met) have referenced The Word a few times. Continue reading My most hated words→
