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Fast Wonder

Consulting services for companies wanting to engage with online communities through social media.Focused on online communities, open technologies, open source, web 2.0, social media, RSS, blogging, and podcasting.

SXSW Interactive Portland Meetup on January 19thYesterday

Are you planning to attend SXSW Interactive or considering attending?

I was just talking to Hugh Forrest, SXSW Interactive Event Director, and he told me that they are organizing a meetup here in Portland on January 19th. I can say without hesitation that SXSW is my favorite event (outside of Portland). It is also affectionately known as spring break for geeks due to the large number of parties every evening, and the sessions never start before 10am to accommodate our late night partying. The Austin BarCamp also runs in parallel to SXSW at a nearby location, so many of us hit BarCamp along with the main event. In other words, it’s a great event. You should join us at the meetup if you want to learn more:

January 19
6–8 p.m.
Fez Ballroom: 316 SW 11th

Here’s the catch: If you want to attend, you must RSVP to interpress@sxsw.com. Please be sure to put Portland in the subject line of the email (they are doing a few of these in various cities).

This will give you an opportunity to learn more about SXSW from the people who organize it. If you’ve never attended or were on the fence about attending, it’s a great opportunity to learn more. For those of us who already love SXSW, it gives us an opportunity to get to know some other Portland people who plan to attend.

On another note, a few

Why Your Company Should Have a BlogYesterday

While doing some research for a consumer products client over the holidays, I was surprised to discover that almost half of this company’s competitors, distributors, and other related companies did not have any type of corporate blog presence. Since most of my clients are technology companies, I sometimes forget that companies in other industries aren’t as focused on social media technologies and blogs.

The research shows that more people are reading blogs, those people expect your company to have a social media presence, and blogs influence their purchasing decisions. Those sound like very compelling reasons for companies to start blogging or to improve their existing blog!

The Research

Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media: September 25, 2008

Sixty percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites. One in four interacts more than once per week.

According to the survey, 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

“The news here

Modifying RSS Feeds: 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Video DemoJanuary 5

While many people use Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds, Pipes can also be used to modify RSS feeds to work better for your purposes. In this example, we will add the author name to the beginning of the title to make it easier to see the author without opening the item in your rss reader. I recommend watching the Introduction to Yahoo Pipes: 2 minute Yahoo Pipes Video Demo if you haven’t already, since we’re going use the basic pipe developed in that demo using fetch feed and sort modules, but without the filter module.

This Yahoo Pipes video series is also available as a podcast on iTunes, and as a separate feed.

You can watch the embedded video above, but I recommend downloading the higher resolution Quicktime file (19 MB) or clicking the full screen toggle icon in the player to watch. The quality will be much better than the flash version embedded above.

More Details

The Demo Pipe. A copy of the Modifying RSS Feeds demo pipe click “View Source” to see the modules.
Fetch Feed. Fetches t

Portland Data Plumbing User Group: Discuss RSS, Yahoo Pipes, and More!January 4

I’ve decided to resurrect the Portland Data Plumbing Group to give us a time and place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies.

We’ll be having these meetings on the 2nd Tuesday of every month at 6pm (location TBD). The first meeting will be on:
Tuesday, January 13th
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location TBD
Please RSVP on Upcoming if you plan to attend.

The agenda for the first meeting:

Intros
Round table discussion: each person gets 3-5 min to talk about the coolest thing they’ve done to manipulate an RSS feed.
Talk about ideas for future agendas.

If you want to be notified of future meetings, you should subscribe to the Portland Data Plumbing Google Group. A huge thanks to Justin for starting this group and for encouraging me to schedule a new meeting!