What exactly is a Pogoplug? As clear as I can explain it, it’s a device that you can use to put your data easily into the cloud – just take whatever storage device you have, whether it’s a hard drive, thumb drive, or USB device and plug it into the Pogoplug and you can share the data across the ‘net to your friends, co-workers, business clients, etc.  I recently got this just about a month ago and used it to share a thumb drive with my co-workers. And then, trouble hit me.

It was on a Sunday evening when I was working on my desktop computer when all of a sudden my computer crashed. It was a hardware issue – something had malfunctioned…something about a SM Bios. I got really scared because this had happened to me before, but with my external hard drive and I was petrified about losing all my data, including my photos, documents and music. Sadly I managed to escape that ordeal with a majority of my data but there was some things I could not recover. Now this most recent example caused me to reminisce about that and after sourcing my problem on Twitter, I discovered that my hardware failure was probably due to RAM or my motherboard – two things of minor consequence to me. My internal hard drive on my computer was the most important because it had contained my tax information – of which I needed to send to my accountant in the next few days. Fortunately I took my computer to the Best Buy Geek Squad for them to diagnose – fortunately because they could help diagnose, but not sure if I’d go back to them again – and they said I could take my internal hard drive home with me. All that I’d need to do is to buy an enclosure or an adapter to transfer my data.

The next day I bought an enclosure and set it up. The one thing I wanted to do was to take the data from my internal hard drive and access it while transferring it to an external one, but in order to do that, I’d need to plug it into my laptop to be the facilitator – probably causing me some trouble. So instead, I decided that I needed the data now and plugged my hard drive into the Pogoplug and began to transfer data off of the internal drive. And thanks to using Pogoplug’s new desktop application, I’m able to use a “Windows Explorer-like” feature to easily drag and drop files from my internal drive to an external one.

Having your data placed automatically in the cloud can be a really great thing for certain occasions, like transferring large files from your hard drive straight to your partners for review or publishing or sharing of other documents, files & programs across the web in a secure manner. I have a lot of computers and one of the things that I find myself concerned with is versioning and whether one computer has a latest version of the file or is it on another version. Now with the Pogoplug, I can easily remedy this issue by simply using a regular hard drive but now online. Think of it as a large scale Google Docs system that can easily be controlled by you and not a third-party. In terms of security, you can also get very granular on what files you want to share – and tailor what each person can see, edit and download.

Another bonus? The Pogoplug also has a mobile component so you can also manage data from your drive to and from your mobile device – just how cool is that?!?

Check out more about the Pogoplug on their site here.

Disclosure: Should mention that Pogoplug is a client of mine at Stage Two, but I haven’t been compensated or ordered to write this post.

Don’t forget to bring clean underwear!

Okay, that’s not the next point I want to make. But, there are some things that you probably don’t want to forget. Keep in mind (as Aaron Brazell wrote in his post) that you should “pack lightly”. You’re going to be spending the entire day on the move from session to session to events & parties. Don’t bring what you don’t need. But there might be some essential things that you shouldn’t forget:

• Chargers – don’t just bring one unless you have a universal multi-product adapter. Bring your phone, computer, and camera chargers with you throughout the day so you won’t miss a thing.
• Surge Protectors – No conference is prepared for the onslaught of technology. You’re not going to find enough electrical outlets near where you want to be. Safe bet is to bring a surge protector and share the outlet with some new-found friends. Good ice breaker, yes?
• Camera batteries – bring plenty of ‘em – this goes for those of you who will be bringing a Flip camera or some other type of video equipment. Don’t forget to charge them up every night. Lots of stuff going on so you better not miss a thing!
• Business cards – I’d say that 9 out of 10 people that go to SXSW each year is trying to get something out of it…whether that’s meeting people or learning from the panels. Regardless, you’re going to meet a lot of people there so you won’t remember all of them. Bring A LOT of business cards. And when I say “a lot”, I’m not talking about a handful. You know that the business cards usually come in boxes of 250, right? Well you might want to bring half of them, especially if your goal is business development.
• Comfortable shoes – for one, you’re going to be at a conference for five days and you’re going to be walking around all the time. You might find a few minutes to rest somewhere, probably at the blogger lounge, but you might want to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible. My advice is don’t try and look really good by having those Armani shoes. Stick with sneakers – you are at a tech conference, after all.
• Wi-Fi Card - While I suggested this last year, I think that it’s still a good idea, but keep in mind that you might not get a signal. Most definitely you’ll be unable to get on the conference wi-fi because of the thousands of people trying to do livestreams, twitter, interviews, photos, etc all at the same time. But if you have an EVDO or wi-fi card, you might stand a better chance.
• Jacket - last year was a bit cold and a jacket was warranted, but in looking at the weather thus far, it seems it’ll be sunny with a high in the 60s and the lows in the 40s. An umbrella might also be needed just in case.
• Money – You’re at a conference so things aren’t going to be free. Sure, you get into parties and events for free, but you might need to save up some of those dollars to help pay for drinks and, most importantly, your cab ride back to the hotel.

So how do I survive?

First of all, make sure that you know exactly why you’re going. If you’re going to make business connections, then don’t hide in your hotel room. If it’s for marketing and business development, then make sure that you’re always carrying around the tools you’ll need to make an impact. People at SXSW are friendly and open to making new acquaintances. Remember to brush up on your 30 second elevator speech because that’s pretty much all the time you have. And if you see any of the influencers you’ve been trying to reach for a while and follow on Twitter, Facebook, on their blog or any other medium, then just approach them. I’ve found that I’ve made many new connections by just walking up to them and saying “Hi” and striking up a conversation. Now it may work differently for you, but you might want to look at possibly talking to people like they were casual friends rather than pitching them. Yes, it technically is a business conference but it’s not billed as the “spring break for geeks” for nothing.

Make sure that you go to my.sxsw.com before you get to Austin to see what panels are happening. Map out your route of attack but don’t expect to stick with that game plan. The one guaranteed thing that will happen at SXSW is that your plans will all go out the window. You’ll find that you’ll go to some panels and make some new connections, but things can come up unexpectedly and you should remain fluid on what you do. If you think something else will help you accomplish the goal you set out for at SXSW, then make sure that you follow through.

Drink lots of fluids (particularly water) and make sure that you have an opportunity to eat because the way SXSW operates, you won’t have time everyday to take care of getting sustenance - there’s always something happening.

Lastly, make sure that you’re following the Twitterstream, blogs and location-based services for all the latest things happening at SXSW. This includes using services like FourSquare, GoWalla and Brightkite – because that’s the way to know just who is where and what parties are the ones to be at. And not one to talk about the parties because you can definitely learn a lot at SXSW to take back to your company, but you should always find the ones you really want to go to – but don’t feel like you must go to the ones with the long lines. There are better ones at SXSW with no lines and you’ll be thankful since you’ll be able to hear and talk to others. Oh, and make sure you’re aware of flash mobs that might happen each night – never miss one moment of the action.

If you’re going to be at SXSW, make sure that you let me know…I’ll be there and would love to meet you!

I’m not originally from Hawaii, but I did spend a great deal of my years there visiting friends and family. Needless to say, I have a lot invested in this island state and when something impacts it, I’d really like to keep watch and pay attention. This past weekend just reinforced that belief with the impact of the earthquake in Chile.

It all started on Saturday morning when I woke up and checked my Blackberry for any messages from the night before. Turned out that I read a couple of tweets on @BreakingNews saying that there was an earthquake in Chile and that a tsunami was going to reach Hawaii. That instantly got me worried and I began calling several people of interest, including my parents. Afterwards, I checked online to try and find more information and there was none. The Weather Channel, CNN and even FOX News didn’t really cover the tsunami except for it being an afterthought of the unfortunate earthquake in Chile. And while that was rightfully tragic, I was frankly more interested in hearing about what was being done to protect people on the islands. I was pretty distraught that this didn’t merit coverage on mainstream media until I came across a few tweets on Twitter with a unusual hashtag – #hitsunami.

Started by digital media designer and Hawaii local, John Garcia, this hashtag soon became the citizen journalist way of communicating to the world just what was happening in the state. From the very beginning of this natural disaster, Garcia knew that something had to be done and starting at 1:25am Hawaii time, the project started and he estimated it took him 14 minutes to get it up and running and at minimal cost. Incorporating a live feed on UStream.tv from a local news anchor to conversations happening in the chat room, the site produced some pretty fascinating results:

• 118,340 visits and 139,935 pageviews
• 96,878 absolute unique visitors
• Traffic was sourced from 1,053 sources and mediums.
  1. direct
  2. google (organic)
  3. facebook.com
  4. twitter.com
  5. mbl.is
  6. ustream.tv
  7. godlikeproductions.com
  8. cnn.com
  9. orkut.com.br
  10. hawaiitsunami.com
• 34.11% of all traffic was direct, 51.31% referring sites, 14.5% search engines.
• Time on site averaged at 1:28 peaking to 2:40 at 10:00 a.m. Hawaii time.
• Time on site tapered down to an average of 1:11 by 1:00 p.m. and :30 for the next 11 hours.

Initially, the word about this project was spread through word of mouth and via Twitter, but through the course of the day, mainstream media caught wind and it grew in prominence. With sites like CNN, FOX News and even the BBC taking an interest, Garcia soon found out that this one-day social media event was going to need to be maintained. And that’s just one of the lessons he learned from this ordeal. Soon after gaining prominence, like most large websites, the hitsunami.info website suffered a DDOS attack, but thanks to the efforts by Angry Hosting, the site was only down for a few minutes and a mirror site was quickly established to handle the load and prevent another outage.

It’s interesting to note that during a crisis like this, the government websites would be the most heavily trafficked in order to find evacuation routes online. Garcia told me that one of the things that he learned was that there were a lot of complaints about these servers lagging due to the traffic – they just weren’t prepared for such an onslaught of people wanting the information. However, by gathering backup copies of evacuation maps and even hosting them on “high-capacity servers”, Garcia helped to alleviate the traffic and provided alternative locations for people to download these maps. In addition, the local news station broadcasted on the hitsunami.info website was chosen because there were actually few options for them to choose from – this particular news station, KHON2, was one of the rare stations to air 24-hour news coverage about the tsunami.

But did you know that by tweeting excessively, you could be rate limited and, as a result, find yourself unable and locked out of your Twitter account? That’s exactly what happened in this situation. Several outlets and other local tweeters were found guilty of exceeding these limits and as a result could not publish news that others might find interesting. Garcia mentioned that eventually someone at Twitter found out about this problem and helped alleviate the issue – but it’s interesting that this kind of situation can happen even after the microblogging’s applicability in citizen journalism was well-proven during the Iranian elections, the Miracle on the Hudson, the Presidential election of Barack Obama, and many other significant events.

Luckily, there wasn’t a real disaster to hit Hawaii…this time, but while there were tangible problems with the disaster preparation plan in Hawaii, there are also things that we can take away from John Garcia’s approach to social media in a time of crisis/disaster and what we can do to maximize the reach, but still be sensitive to the nature of the scenario.

RT @mashable HOW TO: Donate to Chile Relief Online http://bit.ly/aVE7ic

Of course, being lazy or minimizing the work that I’d need to do, I’d simply push that out on Twitter. However, if I wanted to add some more missing data or other words to the tweet, I’m free to do so – therefore it’s impossible to track all the tweets that reference that specific article.

So what options do we have?

That’s the part that leads to some confusion…because there doesn’t seem to be any uniform Twitter metric system out there for agencies, companies or marketers to figure out just how can they track all activity. Obviously I think Tweetmeme would be a helpful tool out there because it shows you how many times that one article has been retweeted. In taking the Mashable.com article I references above concerning Chile, as of this writing, it has received 1836 tweets. That number is significant because when I want to know how many different media has covered a story my company, client or competitor has produced, I would be very much inclined to reference that information since it will simplify the amount of work needed to be done. Even so, this would have to be a part of every news and blog website out there, but unfortunately there probably won’t be that type of consensus ever.

Twitter will most undoubtably plague the world of web analytics for the next several years as people try and figure out just how to put together these metrics. However, I’d like to know what secrets and tips you may have used in your reporting or understanding of Twitter analytics.

Is there a uniform Twitter metric or tool we should get behind in order to show a better ROI to each other?

Image Credit: Guitargoa

But I think it all started when I read Brian Solis‘ latest book Putting the Public Back in Public Relations where I found it quite informative although I felt I would never pitch someone or be involved in any public relation type work, but soon enough, I’ve been thrust into this area getting in contact with people of influence and also in the media. All without the training afforded to one in  school. While it seems pretty straight-forward, I’ve always been wondering what people in the press/media think about the pitches that they receive – do they really work that great or is it through the work of a good relationship that stories get written? Well now a member of the press has highlighted what works and what doesn’t.

Pro PR Tips: Public Relations Advice from a Jaded Journalist was written by CNET’s WebWare writer Rafe Needleman. After receiving a series of “interesting” pitches, Needleman became a bit fed up and compiled a list of tips on a blog that many could consider a resource for PR pitches. While not fully in detail filled with examples, what Pro PR Tips does have is a great and succinct way of getting the point across.

The book is so neatly arranged that you’re going to be able to see tips according to a variety of needs. You start off by getting tips on the basics of public relations, then Needleman offers insights on building relationships, phone ettiquette, emails, product marketing, embargoes/NDAs, pitches and, ultimately, demos.

Here are some interesting tips taken from Needleman’s book Pro PR Tips:

• Tip #3: Search First: Before you personally pitch me, take the time to find out if I’ve written about your company before.
• Tip #16: Not BFFs: We didn’t “work together” back in 1999. You pitched me. It was beautiful, but don’t make it more than it is.
• Tip #17: Tweet me: Twitter pitch? Ok, but direct only, and provide a link and reply email in the tweet.
• Tip #18: IM not impressed: A pitch on IM? Ugh. At least make sure I want to hear it before you start. Better yet: Email.
• Tip #32: Follow-up: If you talk to me on the phone and I ask you to follow up by email, do so immediately, while our call is still on my mind.
• Tip #46: Subject matters: Unless you want it to be all I read, make sure your email subject line gets your point across.
• Tip #67: Presumptive NDA: If you send an unsolicited email with an embargoed press release in it, we consider that fair game to cover immediately. Get your NDAs agreed to before you send them.

The above tips were taken from Pro PR Tips and you can read the rest of the 100 tips on his Pro PR Tips blog or by buying the book.

Sure you might have read other PR-type books, but the perspective that this book takes – from the mind of the journalist – really gives you an understanding on how to better build your relationship. I think that if you’re wanting to begin any relationship with journalists or members of the media, then you need to read Needleman’s book. Why? Because you’re not going to get any more candid advice from a journalist than this – short of them actually reviewing your specific pitch, that is (which most likely just won’t happen). No longer will you need to worry about wondering whether your PR efforts will work…just read these 100 tips and you’ll have a great understanding on what it takes to reach a journalist.

You can buy Rafe Needleman’s book Pro PR Tips on Lulu by clicking here.