The pulse of Alexander Interactive

Earlier this week I was invited to speak at my son’s 1st grade class. The topic was entirely open-ended: arrive, talk for an hour about something that I know about, and contribute to educating the future leaders of America.

I opted to teach the cadre of six- and seven-year-old learners about “How the Web Works.” A few slides on the Internet, a few fun screenshots of websites, something called “HTML,” a brave dive into the world of desktops-routers-servers, and a lot of Q&A. I did not know what to expect in terms of the class’ understanding of websites, their purpose, or how they work.
Was I ever pleasantly surprised.

These kids knew everything. I showed BrainPopJr.com, FreshDirect.com, Amazon.com, SteinerSports.com, Disney.com, YouTube, Skype, Google Weather, Google Maps, and more. Every kid knew every site. “That’s where Mommy and Daddy buy our groceries.” “Yeah, we buy LEGOs, books, and Wii games there.” “Can we watch Kittens Inspired By Kittens?”

They knew what a web browser was. They could identify every modern browser. Unsurprisingly, they asked “What’s that N thing?”

Beyond the digital, I wanted to give the kids a sense of how everything on the web ties together. Stretching my own arts and crafts capabilities beyond their sensible limits, I prepared a number of wearable pictures of desktops, routers, and servers. We embarked on a game to route Internet traffic.

The kids wearing computers looked down at the site on their chest, found an available router walking around, connected a cable to the router, the router found the appropriate server for the site, connected a cable, the server connected back to the router, router back to the computer. Rinse and repeat. Seventeen times, with 17 giggling kids and their patient teachers. The scene quickly devolved into the controlled chaos of blue and red yarn crisscrossing the room. I think the kids got it. They certainly had fun clipping yarn to each other.

We returned to the digital Interwebs to enjoy the lighter side the Net. If nothing else I got to use all of the Keynote effects that Ai’s Design Director never lets me have fun with during our sales pitches, most notably when I got to “peel away” a web page revealing the HTML under the hood. That felt great (Sorry Nathan.)

Now it was YouTube time. I sheepishly glanced at the head teacher, asking with my eyes, “Is this ok? Trust me…” and got back a subtle “Yes, but you better know what you’re doing” nod.

If you thought Internet celebrity videos were funny to watch crowded around Pete-from-accounting’s cube, I encourage you to try out a few with first graders.

Numa Numa incited a spontaneous 34-arm-flailing hysterical dance you’d more likely expect to see at a Phish concert. Think your co-workers do a good British accent? You should have heard my son’s classmates lamenting Charlie’s teething woes. And forget about that Sweet, Confectionery Precipitation. That just wasn’t fair to the teachers that had to deal with these kids for the five hours following my presentation.

I had an incredible time. Most important, I learned quickly that the future of the web is in very capable hands. And I got to use the Keynote Sparkle effect.

The digital profiles that represent our personal and professional lives are becoming increasingly intermingled. My Facebook account isn’t just made up of my friends, but a motley mash-up of friends, family, colleagues, clients, others, and some dude who said he went to my high school but I swear I can’t remember him. On Twitter, I follow co-workers, clever people, some people I sold concert tickets to, and the family members that signed up for Twitter accounts whose both posts (first and last) were “This is my first twitter post.” On LinkedIn, I accept any request, unless it’s from an aggressive recruiter.
The (inter)net effect of my mixed up profiles is that I must always consider this varied audience when posting an update. Do I want everyone knowing that I had a nice time at the zoo this weekend with my kids? (maybe) Do I want clients knowing that I was out late the night before a big meeting? (probably not) Do friends care that we just won awards for some website? (most definitely) Does anyone care that my Entourage crashed and the rebuild progress on its database? (no, but they don’t ask me to stop tweeting about it)
So it shouldn’t be surprising that I was thrown two curve balls during recent new business engagements. During the first, we had reached the end of an exciting, and very competitive RFP process. I learned it was down to 2 firms. I was invited out to coffee to make our case, one-on-one. I did my best, explained our passion for the project, shared our ideas, and spoke to our other relevant success. I thought the meeting went well. On my way home that evening I see a LinkedIn request from the gentleman I had coffee with just an hour earlier. “I’d like to invite you to Join my LinkedIn Network!”
What did this mean? Was he saying that we had won the business and this was a cute way to notify me? Was he saying that he needed to complete more due diligence on me, check out my network, see who I know, and try to glean more information about me and our firm? Or was he simply asking me to join his network, even though we weren’t really networked yet?
I couldn’t very well ignore the request; I had to accept it and see how things developed. Spoiler: we won the business, it’s an incredible project, and our client is a fabulous company to work with.
More recently, we were involved in another very competitive RFP engagement. We traveled to our client for the big pitch, presented, said our goodbyes, and were on the way back to the office. Suddenly an email comes in: “PersonX would like to make you a friend on Facebook.” PersonX? Who was that again? Does anyone remember who was PersonX? Why are they friending me? To see if I really *get* social media and will promptly accept the friend request? To see if I had properly maintained a filter between my personal and professional life in my digital profile? To maybe find some forgotten nugget on me that I had posted years ago?
I agonized a bit over this one, but again came to the only logical conclusion: I had to accept the friend request. Spoiler: again we won the business, and have partnered with this truly awe-inspiring institution.
In both cases, but perhaps more importantly with Facebook, I felt completely comfortable accepting the requests because I have taken great care to preserve my digital image. Sure, Google can find a few oddball posts from Usenet and some funny discussion forums, but all in all, I’m squeaky clean. Some friends and colleagues maintain two profiles: work and fun. That seems like way too much effort and is far too dangerous. Just imagine the “did I just say that out loud?” moment when you post your opinions on the latest scandal to befall your favorite Yankees player to your Twitter feed usually reserved for ecommerce and UX tips.
In the two cases above the outcome was positive. But that’s not always going to be the case. I have a friend that consistently uses Twitter to complain about his frequent air travel, usually to one particularly annoying destination to see a client. He doesn’t seem worried one bit that the client will start following him on Twitter and will be somewhat put off to read, “oh joy, traveling again to the armpit of the U.S. via XYZ airport.” Another colleague complains about meetings and co-workers, right on Twitter, for the whole world to see. He masks names, but everyone who knows him knows exactly who he’s talking about. And yes, we’ve welcomed an employee or two ambling late into work one morning after posting 3am FB updates from the bar the night before.
I only see the personal/professional divide becoming more blurred. So, Caveat Twitterer: once you hit send, it’s out there for the entire world to read. And if someone–a friend, significant other, a prospective client–wants to dig up a little dirt, it’s just a search away.

We are witnessing an historic event, ladies and gentlemen. Captured on film for the very first time is the birth of a Twitter Spam Bot. Why, this is spectacular! Look at the rate at which she’s growing.
Shh, quiet, as we get a bit closer to her and watch her spawn followees and followers. Stupendous! In just 30 seconds she’s followed over 100 people and almost doubled her followers.
Rejoice with us in this momentous occasion:
http://www.screencast.com/t/ZQWkpIeTmvo

A couple of weeks ago, I had some time to kill before taking my son to Webop! class at Jazz at Lincoln Center.  Ever the technophile, we dropped into Best Buy, found a few items we didn’t really need, and were on our way to the checkout counter.

We were stopped by a innocent-enough looking woman, not clad in Best Buy attire.  She told us, “You better stick around for 10 minutes, something great is going to happen back there.”  (She motioned towards the always awe-inspiring flat panel section in the back of the store.)  Ever the skeptic, I asked, “Will we receive a free flat panel TV?”  “I can’t promise you that,” she replied, “but trust me, you’re going to like it.”

We hung around for 10 minutes and proceeded to the back where we stumbled into another customer talking live to Oprah Winfrey via Skype.  We quickly deduced that Oprah was doing an entire show on Skype, and we were her unknowing, but very willing, participants.

The woman who approached us 10 minutes earlier ushered us into the camera view.  Fearing the stigma of being labeled “that guy” who stood behind a customer talking to Oprah in Best Buy, I attempted to exit the frame.  But the woman ushered me back, whispering, “Stick around,” “She’ll talk to you next,” “She’s coming back.”

Oprah cut to London, and again at the woman’s urging, we stuck around for another few minutes.  As predicted, Oprah cut back to me and my son idling around the TV and web cam:

Oprah: “Hi Mr. Best Buy.”
Me: “Hi.”
Oprah: “It’s Oprah on TV.”
Me (to my son): “Say Hi Oprah.”
Son: “Hi Oprah!”
Oprah & Audience (collectively): “Awwww”

Oprah: “This is as fun as twittering.  This is a step above twitter twitter.”

Watch video of Mr. Best Buy and son talking to Oprah.

After the airing, Oprah was blasted by numerous people about her flagrant promotion of Skype.

So, what’s the point of sharing all of this?  First I thought I would write a blog entry defending Oprah for her promotion of Skype.  Then I thought maybe I would call @oprah out for saying “a step above twitter twitter.”  Finally I realized I just wanted to write this blog post to show people that I was on the Oprah Winfrey show with my son.  Enjoy!

<blatant self promotion>

Watch video of Mr. Best Buy and son talking to Oprah.

</blatant self promotion>

Have you ever been in the middle of a project, needed a few quick lines of code, and Google wasn’t quite helping you out?

Are you the kind of person who enjoys taking a few minutes from time to time to help out your friends with your coding prowess?

We created a new social coding utility called @codeoff just for you. Use the Twitter @codeoff account to reach out for quick programming help and/or exercise the good Samaritan in you by responding to quick requests.

We’re also hoping @codeoff awakens the competitor within the coder, as people fight to be the fastest/best in posting requests and sharing code replies.

Need some code?
1. Follow @codeoff on Twitter.
2. Tweet code you need to @codeoff:

Format:
@codeoff language requirement
Example:
@codeoff python: writer a retweeter

3. Wait for @replies

Code some code?
1. Follow @codeoff on twitter.
2. Look for code tweets.
3. Code.
4. Post your code to http://gist.github.com.
5. @reply to @codeoff, including the requester and your gist url.

Format:
@codeoff @user http://gist.github.com/gistid
Example:
@codeoff @apumapho http://gist.github.com/101263

We hope you enjoy using @codeoff.  Drop some comments and let us know your feedback.

After much cajoling, poking, and prodding, the office convinced me to perform a magic show at this week’s Hamster Time (our Friday afternoon “blow off some web-steam” gathering).
Enjoy the show, part 1, part 2, and the encore.

A few people have asked me for my “shut off the world and work” AppleScript. It’s simple, but here goes:

Having been very skeptical of any usefulness I (or society) could derive from Twitter, I recently began finding real-world benefits.
Lost?
This morning a friend’s tweet scrolled across my screen:

So apparently there are 5 W hotels in NYC. The conference is not at the one I went to. In cab.

Ever the good samaritan, I scrolled down a few tweets earlier, found the conference this friend was attending (he habitually let’s everyone in his life know where he’s going), looked up the hotel address, and direct messaged him back. Sure my friend could have called someone, hopped on his mobile browser to figure this problem out himself, or used an antiquated alternative communications method like email. But something about the thought of my friend driving aimlessly from W to W in NYC compelled me into action.
New Business
I am responding to an RFP that a former employee broadcast to his network on Twitter. I don’t keep in touch with this colleague too often, and this was a great way to reconnect and talk about the opportunity.
Advice
The other day I was researching hosting options for a client. I could have spent several hours googling, reading online reviews, or researching options. Instead, I sent a tweet to my friends and received advice back from three trusted sources within moments. Soon after I chose my web host.
G-T-what?
A significant downside to my recent love affair with Twitter is the sharp decline in my GTD/Inbox Zero Zen. I fanatically adhere to my system that shuts off all digital distractions when I need to get work done: I empty my inbox, close extraneous applications, and hit the trusty CTRL-o keyboard shortcut (an applescript that puts Entourage into offline mode, closes iChat, and turns my desktop background to a soothing gray that says, “get your sh*t done now!”). Except recently I started using Tweetdeck, an application designed to push every last bit of digital Twam right under your nose. While trying to do work, and laden with guilt, I secretly leave Tweetdeck running. What if I miss something? (Admission: I responded to a tweet while drafting this post.)
So we’ll see where my recent Twitter obsession takes me…and for the time being, I continue to enjoy the strange irony of following the very active streams produced by @hotdogsladies and @gtdguy.
Update: CTRL-o now silences Tweetdeck.

Exactly one year ago this week we started Soup Club at Ai. Once a week, a different member of our staff received the high honor of walking over to Hale and Hearty Soups at 23rd & Madison. They presented a redemption form torn-up, taped remnant of a redemption form, got an employee to initial it, and walked out with a steaming hot cup of liquid lunch. They also got to choose the subsequent week’s recipient. Thanks, H and H, for a memorable year.
Suggestions for this year’s lunch club?

Sara Summers graciously donated a set of social site UX elements at her blog, UX Array. I am so happy to see members of the UX community embracing open source concepts and giving back.
Check out our ongoing OmniGraffle Tutorials, to tickle the UX in us all.