Last week, I was walking around Buffalo and had an idea for a direct-action in support of the gay community. Being a straight man, I couldn’t very well organize it myself. So I brought my idea to my friends on twitter and we decided to have a mojit-ing (meeting + mojitos… get it?). So on Wednesday evening, my co-conspirators and I gathered to plot out this hilarious escapade. Stay tuned for what I hope to be the first of many guerrilla operations in the fight for equality.

My Co-Conspirators:

@veganjesus – Norm is one of the funniest #tweeps that I follow, always good for a laugh and a genuinely nice guy. He’s a member of the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus and a talented graphic designer. His interests also include Vegan cooking, something that I don’t have the will power to do myself; so kudos to Norm on his self-control.

@cmohrblu – Cory is politically active, he is currently working on a campaign for a democratic candidate in Buffalo, NY. For the past two years, he has worked in consumer advocacy and protection. He is co-founder of the gayest blog in Buffalo. Cory keeps the blog politically charged and a force for change. Check out the blog’s twitter account @pinkbflo to stay up to date on local and nation LGBTA issues.

@michaelempricu – Michael is another Buffalo organizer, he was one of the driving forces in organizing the Powder Keg Festival this winter. He has worked in PR, Fundraising, Branding, and Marketing. He is co-founder of http://www.pinkbflo.com. Michael adds entertainment and flair to their content around LGBTA issues.

@susanlynncope – My Fiancée is always willing to help me out with my crazy ideas; in fact she specializes in crazy ideas of her own! She just received the license to throw a TEDx event in Buffalo and is obsessively organizing the event. You can get involved with through the website and you can stay up to date on the planning by following: @TEDxBuffalo.

@arampino – Amber is a talented graphic designer and an active member in the Buffalo Advertising community. She is currently Vice President of the Advertising Club of Buffalo and works for a local agency as their Interactive Art Director. She specializes in User Experience/Information Architecture and is helping me redesign my site with those principles in mind. To top it all off, she’s an excellent cook and brought delicious cupcakes to our mojit-ing!.

@clarkdever – If you stumbled across this list and are not already following me on twitter, I would love to meet you! Follow me and drop me a line, I love making new friends who are interested in Buffalo, NY, Photography, and Technology!

@AaronIngrao is an Action Sports and Lifestyle photographer from Buffalo, NY. Susan and I have known him for over a year now, we met him at Bidwell park during a Buffalo concert series. He had set up his camera to be remotely operated and left it in the field, when people would come over to look at it he would trigger it and the flash; simultaneously blinding them and taking their picture. After many LOLz, I spotted the man with the Pocket Wizard and introduced myself.

@PhilCormier and I met in college. I was an engineer for a semester, Phil is working on his third engineering degree (I can’t wait to call him Dr. Phil). He’s one of the more well rounded engineers I know. He drinks beer, skateboards, bikes, and has a hot fiancee.

@GrantDever is my younger brother. He’s a faster runner than I am and a much better student. He pushes me to do cool things, I need to be better than him at something.

P.S. I can still beat him in a wrestling match (for the record).

@MarkZorn is the reason I passed several classes in college. An expert programmer who shares my deep seeded love for blast-beats, breakdowns, and growling. He introduced me to the metal-claw and I taught him how to talk to women. He also built a neat twitter app called: TweetFlix.

@DanaSaylor is a talented jewelry designer in Buffalo, NY, I met her and her husband Jon at my gallery opening for “When The Financial Levees Broke”. They are both super active in the Buffalo arts community and just tremendously positive people to be around. I highly recommend you check out her jewelry and follow her tweets to stay up on happenings in the art community.

@MichaelMurphy is my go-to guy for all things xhtml/css. He is a talented Web Developer in Rochester, NY. Definitely one of my best friends and a great twitter user.

P.S. If you’re not following me… you should be: @ClarkDever

I’ve been on a HUSVAR set all week (50+ Hours so far… on Friday Morning).  We’ve had a great team energy and despite numerous set-backs, we’re getting these shots “in the can”.  Which brings me to my take away from Seth Godin’s talk last night at Canisius– SHIP! — The most important thing is getting the product out the door, it does you no good in development.

Since that’s what this team specializes in, let me highlight some amazing Buffalonian’s for you.

Sean Husvar

@HUSVAR – Serial Entrepreneur and Fine Artist,  Sean is a good friend and mentor of mine.  I am currently helping him with his web strategy campaign and as the Second Assistant Director during the current series of images he’s producing.

Luke Copping

@Luke_Copping – Luke is a fashion and fine art photographer working in Buffalo, NY.  He was also nominated for “Best of Buffalo” in the photography category. He is the Assistant Director on this shoot and Associate Editor of Auxiliary Magazine.

Nate Perraciny

@NPeracciny – Nate is a great Buffalo Videographer!  He’s running first camera on the set and developing a multimedia version of Sean’s images.  Another super-friendly and helpful individual, he was a runner-up in the nominations for “Best of Buffalo” for Photography.

Steve Medison Rittner

@DJMedison – Steve is a talented Buffalo DJ who spins electro/dubstep and and an amazing dude to have on set.  He went to school for production.  This week he’s working the second camera on the video crew but always takes the time to help me rig sets or manage a cables.

Susan Cope

@SusanLynnCope – My manager and the love of my life.  She keeps the wheels on the bus and me pointed in the right direction.  She’s also an elite Event Planner working out of Buffalo, NY who specializes at integrating Social Media technologies in to her clients projects. Did I mention that she’s organizing TEDxBuffalo?!  If you live in Buffalo and Love TED Talks, be sure to get in contact with her today.

Clark Dever

@ClarkDever – If you’re reading this but not following me on twitter, I recommend you check my feed out. I publish a mix of web strategy, photography, and conversational tweets. I was recently nominated for “Best of Buffalo” in the Photographer category. I shoot events, environmental portraits, and stories that need to be told.

Images Courtesy: HUSVAR Studios Photobooth (of death).

I love Follow Friday, it’s a great way to add value to your network by suggesting quality feeds to your readers. Traditionally, you would just create a list of twitter user names of people that you found interesting, maybe a few words for context, and the hashtag #FF.

Here is an example of a properly formed #FF post:

@buffalogeek: Here’s a #Buffalo FF @susanlynncope @nickelcity @clarkdever @charlieriley @peteherr @buffawhat @mattbova @herobeth @nowbuffalo

The benefits of the traditional form of Follow Friday are these:

• Concise
• Easy to follow people directly from the tweet
• You tend to get retweeted as a Thank You from the people you list

The drawbacks that I see are the following:

• You don’t get to give much information about why you are listing them
• It’s a very ephemeral media to make a recommendation through
• It spams up the twitterstream all day and makes it more challenging to find good posts
• It doesn’t allow you to give them any link-love;  In-bound links are the currency of the internet.  If you really want to promote a friend or follower, a link to their website helps their google rank and their follower count.

With these issues in mind, I present to you my first; second-generation #FF post.

• @adriandayton – Had a great lunch with this man today, he tops the Twitter charts for Buffalo with over 50k followers.  He makes his living consulting and speaking on Social Media for Lawyers.
• @buffalogeek – Broke the Carl Paladino E-mail Scandal this week, spends equal time muckraking and nerding it up.  He is an anchor point in the Buffalo tech community and his political blog is a great read.
• @susanlynncope – My fiancee surprised me this week with her initiative to create TEDxBuffalo;  She strives to be a thought leader on how to integrate Social Media in to Event Planning.
• @kevinpurdy – Editor of one of my favorite blogs and a fellow Buffalonian.  His personal blog might not be as geeky as LifeHacker, but it’s still well worth the read.
• @karakane – Kara is in charge of Communications at Medaille College, she recently hired me for an event.  I was pleasantly surprised by her media savvy and her communications blog.
• @himay – Jamie is a biochemistry graduate student at the University of Buffalo, if you thought his hacking ended with GMOs; you’d be wrong.  This guy and his bacteria blog scare the crap out of me; I’m recommending you read him not only out of fear for humanity(someone needs to keep an on eye on this guy) but also for his great conversational skills and futurist interests.

So there you #FF 2.0 (#FF2).  I hope you enjoyed it and if you like the idea, feel free to steal it.  I’d love to see more in depth descriptions of peoples relationships with twitter and their community.

What is Twitter, Who started it, and Why?:

Twitter was started by a guy named Evan Williams (@ev) as a way for people to update their status. Some of you non-nerds may think that facebook came up with the status idea, however, ever since time in memorial; Nerds have been broadcasting their status. From .plan files on unix shells, to /away messages on IRC, and then “Away” messages on AIM, every time a new communication medium is created nerds figure out a way to update their friends on what they’re doing. With the growing prevalence of cell phones it was just a natural evolution for nerds to update their status via Short Message Service(SMS) and want it to propagate to all of their Points-of-presence. After all, according to Wikipedia “SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers sending and receiving text messages on their phones”. So Twitter is the convergence of the nerds need for statusing, saturation of cell phones, and the open protocols of the internet. Basically, @ev and his team of hackers wrote a little app that took SMS data and published it in a “micro-blog” on the web. The reason that tweets (The nomenclature used for twitter posts) are limited to 140 characters is due to the SMS standard being restricted to that length.

What can I do with it?

You can use the tool in several different ways; Twitter is part Hive-mind, part global consciousness, part blog, part marketing tool, part instantaneous telepresence, part flashmob generator, and last but not least a nifty way to synchronize your status on your social networks.

Hive-mind is the concept that none of us are as smart as all of us. If you post a question on twitter and tag it properly, there is a good chance that you will get a response. Even if you don’t post a question, if you use some of the twitter search tools you will find tons of leads that will point you in the right direction.

Global consciousness is similar to the idea of a hive-mind, but it has more to do with awareness. Twitter has users all over the world and there are tools that will automatically translate their posts for you and translate your responses back to them. The staccato nature of twitter posts leads people to speak concisely and directly, a side effect of this is that messages tend to be easier to translate. The asymmetrical nature of twitter allows for interesting dynamics, you can follow anyone you wish who has an account. They get notification when you do and get to decide if they wish to follow you back. Twitter gives you access to some of the biggest influencers in the world. I follow a plethora of technologists/futurists, the dalai lama, lance armstrong, tony hawk, levar burton, and kevin smith. Interestingly enough some of them follow me too, on a theoretical level this means that my reflection on a subject could influence the dalai lama’s view of our existence… neat, huh?

I originally joined Twitter in mid-2008, right before I left for Arizona to travel back to New York. I used it to micro-blog my progress across the United States. I didn’t know if I would have reliable internet access, but I wanted to be able to update my family and friends and allow them to know where I was at fairly regular intervals. With twitter I could type a message up via SMS and even if I didn’t have cell phone reception at the time I could rest easy, knowing that it would be beamed to my account as soon as I had the slightest hint of cell phone reception. Since then, I have used it mainly as a way to document and journal interesting events as they happened, so that I could reflect on them later or share them with friends in real-time.

You can also use twitter as a marketing tool. As I continue to develop my Photography, I seek both models and feedback from my fellows. I can tag a tweet with the word #photo or #photography and it instantly becomes accessible to the thousands of photographers around the world.

Twitter is a stream of data, you choose how much of the flow you want to consume by carefully selecting who you follow. Every second of every day, hundreds of thousand users are adding tweets to the unimaginable choir that is the twitterstream. Many of them tag their tweets so they can be more easily filtered out of the noise and heard by those who are interested in the associated topic. When Continental Flight 3407 crashed in Clarence, NY (15 minutes from my house) the twitterstream provided an immense amount of data, within a few hours I had links to youtube videos from the scene, tons of photos on flickr, analysis of the crash from other pilots, even the ATC radio traffic in mp3 form from a local Hammer. All I had to do was search for #3407, #Continental, #BuffaloCrash and a few other tags. Twitter provides you a rich source of data from anywhere in the world at any given time.

Another powerful feature is it’s ability to generate “FlashMobs”, unrelated or loosely tied affinity groups that suddenly appear at a location. An example of this is two days ago when Levar Burton invited his followers to meet him for a beer in Toronto. If I had a car at that moment, I would have raced across the border to share a drink with Mr. Reading-Rainbow-LaForge himself.

Lastly, if you’re not interested in the consciousness, the celebrity, or the networking aspects of the application; you can use it for it’s original purpose… To update all your status notifications! There are plugins for just about every social networking site, blogs, and instant messaging clients that will allow you to automatically synchronize your status messages from your twitterstream.

How do I get started ?

1. The first thing you need to do is go to: http://www.twitter.com and sign up for an account.
2. Then I recommend setting up your mobile device and adding the twitter SMS number to your contacts (40404)
3. Grab a twitter client, I highly recommend Tweetdeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com
4. Tweet your first message to the twitterstream
5. Next start following me by going to http://twitter.com/clarkdever
6. Then use Twitter’s tools to find other contacts you might know: http://twitter.com/invitations
7. Now might also be a good time to google for plugins for twitter and social networks
8. Lastly, if you’re looking to find other random local people (say for marketing purposes) I recommend the following googlehack: http://www.google.com/search?q=site:twitter.com+”Location+Buffalo,NY”+OR+”Location+Buffalo” (Obviously, replacing the city with your own).

Twitter’s Grammar

It’s up to you to decide how you’re going to use twitter. I’ll leave you with a few twitterisms.

@username This is the way to publicly reply to a user
d username This is how to send a private message to a user (you can only DM people who are following you)
RT @username This is how you tell people that you are “Retweeting” what another said. Important Note:If you want to comment on their post, your comment goes before the RT (ie. Congratulations Dude! RT @clarkdever Check out this magazine article that I’m featured in: http://bit.ly/12hours)
#keyword This is how you identify the topic of your post, even if you didn’t say it directly (ie. “#Buffalo The 198 has an accident by the albright knox heading East Bound” Users who have searches for the word #buffalo would instantly get the traffic update.)

I also recommend using tools like http://bit.ly (which has the ability to tweet built in) to shorten long urls, so you can provide some information about the link you’re posting if it’s not apparent from the URL itself.

Please share this Primer and feel free to Copypasta it as your own note, all I ask is that you ask people to follow me if they join twitter!

Hope this was insightful and I’ll tweet you later,
Clark Dever
https://twitter.com/clarkdever