Author Archives: Javaun

About Javaun

32 and married to a wonderful woman, my life is meeting new freinds and recreating outdoors. Once they put a screw in my ankle, I'll be back to hiking and trail running and mountain biking.

Soldiers in Airports Part II

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I always feel humbled, grateful, and somewhat awkward when I see soldiers at the airport. Is it appropriate to talk to them? Certainly I have nothing in common with their most immediate experience.

Sometimes it’s a man in his mid 40s. You see the wedding band and know that he has someone he’s leaving behind, maybe a full family. Sometimes it’s a woman in her mid 30s. She couldn’t wait to start a family, and they make it work with her deployment.

Sometimes their unit patches or their carry ons tell you whether they are career soldiers or reservists. Every single one of them is a normal person who struggles with family, money issues, life aspirations. And on top of everything else they have chosen to shoulder an incredible burden.

An hour ago, we went through security at Reagan. The woman in front of me has silver matching Tumi luggage, a French manicure, a designer down parka, and a bunch of fabulous accessories that I’ve never seen before but look really expensive. She’s really put herself together for this trip.

The kid 10 feet behind me is in his mid 20s, and the first thing I see is his cane, the second the digital camo pattern on his rucksack, and then his high and tight haircut. He’s probably infantry. His face is wrinkled and hints at

He’s so polite. The woman behind him is asking him all sorts of personal questions, the kind you sometimes don’t mind answering but can be irritating when you don’t feel like making small talk or are occupied with something else. “Yes, ma’am…”, “No ma’am” is how he begins all of his answers. Most of his answers are curt but still convey an enormous story. Why is he in Washington? He is being treated at Walter Reed. Where is he going? Oklahoma. How is it there? There’s 2 things you can never predict about Oklahoma, the people and the weather.

Is he excited to go home for the holiday? Yes. This is the first time he’s been home for Christmas in 5 years.

I’m speechless. I’m overwhelmed.

Facebook’s Silent Revolution with Sponsored Ads

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Amid all the outcry over Beacon’s privacy concerns, (like having Facebook tell your wife what she’s getting for Christmas) the simple brilliance of Facebook’s on-site advertising is going unnoticed. Here’s a personal account of how Facebook’s relatively straightforward “sponsored messages” are finally making personalized word-of-mouth a reality.

In addition to banner ads, Facebook now features sponsored advertiser messages in their homepage feed. I rarely look at them, but like all ads you unconsciously take them in with a glance. I decided to click on one that was a new Apple video ad lampooning Vista. Funny and so true. As an XP user who purposely avoided Vista, the message was relevant. It wasn’t going to make me rush out to a Mac store, but I did click the integrated link to post it to my Facebook profile because surely someone else would think it was funny. What followed was a debate with three Facebook friends who were silent Mac advocates. My conversations with them also spurred 2 offline conversations (which I alluded to in a comment posting on that Facebook thread.)

Word-of-mouth on product review sites and bulletin boards is nothing new. Likewise, I could always get a word of mouth reco on any product when I ask someone in my offline (or online network). But this was different because I didn’t intend to start a conversation. I wasn’t seeking an opinion. In this case, the advertiser (Apple) planted the seed and what ensued was an awakening of mac advocates who were people in my closed personal/professional network; these are people I trust far more than any expert on CNET and more than the aggregated opinions of hundreds of reviewers on Amazon. I could also have received this video by email, but it wouldn’t have spurred the same interaction that a small Facebook Thread captured (and preserved) for all of my network to see. Not to mention the analytics that Facebook or Apple could get from this episode.

Here are some guesses at what an advertiser might be allowed to see in the analytics, in order of increasing value.

  • Impressions: number of people who might have seen the ad blurb because it was on their feed page
  • Video Views: Number of started/completed views of the mac commercial
  • Number of forwards to friends
  • Number of adds to profiles
  • Number of viral views (forwarded link views plus views after posting to profile)
  • Number of discussion comments
  • View actual discussion comments (tone/subject of the discussion)

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Atlanta Endurance Riders Featured in Cycling News

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Two of the nation’s best endurance mountain bikers, who happen to be married and happen to be good friends of ours were profiled on Cycling News yesterday. Eddie and Namrita O’Dea will both be racing for Vassago Cycles next year. This should make for some interesting laundry, as probably 90% of their stuff on any given week will be similarly logo’ed jerseys and shorts, which will require diligent sorting (and you do want to separate them Eddie, because you don’t want to show up to a race having packed one of Nam’s jerseys).

In the last few years, they’ve made some serious life commitments to their training and also left their desk jobs to found a performance bike fit and coaching company, 55nineperformance. Not to mention promoting and running mountain bike races such as the Fool’s Gold and the BURN, which Jen and I attended back in May.  Jen and I also had the privilege of putting together a racing clinic with those two, and the notes can be found here (I’ve been slowly working on a repository of helpful cycling documents and hope to add many more in the coming year.)

Huge congrats to Eddie and Namrita for their successes in 2007, their deal with Vassago and good luck to them for the 2008 racing season.

A one month hiatus…

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So it’s time to dust the cobwebs off this blog. A job search, 2 conferences, and a vacation to Colorado have all taken their toll. And I’ve become utterly addicted to Facebook. So much so, that I just installed a new WordPress plugin to syndicate my posts to Facebook:

WordBook Plugin

Lots of stuff going on. I’ll be working on two committees with the Web Analytics Association: Social Media and Public Sector. I’ve ratcheted up my activity (let’s hope the ankle cooperates) and I’m hoping to train for the bike all winter. I did start jiu-jitsu at a local school, and it really makes me appreciate just how world class Tiger Academy was. A few friends are trying to rope me into start-ups. And then there’s everything else with settling in and trying to make D.C. feel like home.

I’m going to have to catchup on entries. I could write for days about our trip across Colorado.

I’ve also decided to fully document my ankle injury from onset to diagnosis and all the way through treatment, including my X-rays and CTs. I remember how frustrated I was when trying to research this injury because there was such a dearth of information. I went to some of the top ankle specialists in Atlanta, and even then most had only seen one or two cases in their entire careers. The few posts I have blogged about snowboarder’s ankle fracture have attracted hits from the US and Europe, so clearly there’s a need.

Getting ready for eMetrics

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Washington D.C.’s web community has an amazing breadth and depth of talent. The eMetrics Online Marketing Summit rolls into town next Monday, and I’ll have the honor of moderating one of the speaker panels alongside some very remarkable members of the D.C. community, including Phil Kemelor, Julie Perlmutter, and Ann Poritzky. Should be an exciting week…

In the near future, I’ll also be working with both the public sector and social media sections of the Web Analytics Association.

Chicago Toying with Rental Bikes

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Mayor Daley is considering a test of 1,500 public rental bikes in a program similar to Paris’ Velib experiment. After visiting Paris this summer, Daley was very impressed with the Paris bike rental program; the Economist reports that Velib has seen daily rides hit 100,000 for its fleet of 10,000 bikes.

This would continue Daley’s long streak to make my hometown one of the greenest in the U.S., and transportation has always been a key component. Though its public transportation authority, the CTA, continues to face financial shortfalls and maintenance issues, Chicago still has one of the nation’s best transportation systems. Millennium Park also offers bike commuters a secure, public bike lock-up facility featuring public lockers and showers.

New Studies: You shouldn’t be an over-protective parent

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Parents should take note of two scientific studies that came out this week and added further muscle to otherwise common sense beliefs about education and hygiene. Bottom line: your kids are going to play and get dirty whether you want them to or not. Make sure they get an adequate dose of the truth.

First, an Oxford University study of tens of thousands of American teenagers concluded that Abstinence-Only programs don’t work. A second study, though not statistically significant, suggested that Abstinence-Plus programs (teaching abstinence plus advising on condom use) probably do work. (Of course, as the article mentions, this means that were wasting a huge amount of money on policies that are ineffectual in the U.S. and likely to be ineffectual in developing countries.)

Second, a University of Michigan public health study found that antibacterial soap was no better than regular soap at preventing disease. Triclosan is the antibacterial ingredient that manufacturers like Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive dump into products ranging from soaps to deodorant and even toothpaste (yuck); triclosan may also cause bacteria to become drug-resistant. Of course, this raises the issue of whether we should be so paranoid about germs in the first place. Obsessive hygiene is one theory behind the rise in allergies in children. The hysteria to kill every possible germ is a new one, and you can thank the marketers at the big companies mentioned above.

NOSO: the anti-Web 2.0 Experience

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Do you need a momentary escape from your Web 2.0 lifestyle of blogging, vlogging, texting, updating facebook, trading stocks online, and writing Amazon reviews?

Check out NOSOproject.com . Here’s how NOSO bills itself:

NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends.

Social Media Haiku

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I applied to a job opening today that required I write a haiku about online technology. And yes, I’m as excited as you might imagine.

Without further ado, I present: “Thanks for the Add”

Profile never said
You’re 40 and live with mom
Don’t want 2 meet u

So with that, if anyone has a favorite haiku to post, let’s hear it…