ELLO MONKEY: Social Media Reanimated

By now you all know about the new book. And yes, it's my fourth book in 13 months. We're a goddamn family now.

After three books they just slide right out.

I'm not a comics artist. I'm not a graphic novelist. What I've been doing here on my blog for the past four years, is creating little illustrated stories, like little picture-books. And now I've drawn on the picture-book format to create my first book on social media exclusively for grownups. Here it is:

ELLO MONKEY: Reanimating Social Media.

It is totally free on Gumroad: choose PDF or MOBI. Just enter "0" in the price box and the credit card window will disappear.

Why Gumroads? I want to give you this book just as if I had posted the story on my blog. Of course, if you really want to support my work, you can always throw a dollar or two my way in the "0+" option. Twist my rubber arm you crazy motherfuckers!

ELLO MONKEY is also on Amazon, set at the lowest price possible. Man, those guys don't make it easy, but they do have visibility. So if you like (or hate) this book, please get your glutes on over to leave a short review and rate this sucker.

*More ridiculous drawings of me giving birth to books*

For the record, Gumroad was easy to set up and their support on Twitter is stellar. In the future, I'm going to deliver more of my stories as 'picture-books for grownups' and 'picture-books for children' of all ages.

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An Animated Announcement.

Boy was I surprised when my friend Jasmine Banks phoned me up, sweet-talking like a pro...


...and asked me to be the KEYNOTE SPEAKER at the very first, long awaited #SoFabCon.

It's the inaugural conference of Collective Bias to bring their community of bloggers, their Social Fabric, together to learn, hone their skills, connect and party. Obviously.

I'm tremendously honoured.

Who's coming to this? I hope to meet some of you in person in Bentonville Arkansas, during the May 3 - 5 weekend. I may do some toonswag while I'm there, if any attendees hold still long enough for me to draw them. My keynote is on the Saturday afternoon and it'll be animated. Obviously.

And for the record, the video was Jasmine's idea. That girl is spectacular.

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404 Klout not found.

OOPS! You must have mistaken me for someone who actually has influence.

I can assure you that I have none. I couldn't talk my way out of a brown paper bag! But don't take my word for it. And don't feel obliged in any way to share this. Or this.

Thanks for the inspiration Jon...or did you just influence me? Gah.

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The Balancing ACT.

Trust is huge.

But even between best friends, a small misunderstanding can have terrible consequences.

There are times when you must really stretch to bring things back into balance.

Although emotionally taxing, it's usually worth it!

However, it's a good idea to talk about things afterwards so it doesn't happen again.

Also, remember to use the bathroom before going out.

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Feeling the PINCH.

Remember this? I blogged it as the COFFEE Conundrum about 6 weeks ago and Pinned it right away.

Amy the Coffee Lovin' Mom said she noticed the image appearing on Facebook and then on Pinterest, but not linked back to me. For the record I don't really mind my images getting around on social networks (as long as it's not generating revenue without my permission, cuz that would be very UNcool). But even though I had Pinned the drawing myself, there were tons of re-Pins from another source.

Pinterest makes it easy to link back so it seemed worthwhile chasing it down. Amy and I waded through thousands of coffee related images (I want a coffee so bad right now) and she managed to follow the trail back to this Pin 'uploaded by user'.

Why indeed...? It's possible she saw the image somewhere else on the net (maybe Facebook?) and downloaded it. I like to give folks the benefit of the doubt. So I left her a note asking her to link back to the COFFEE Conundrum. Hopefully she will!

Do you Pinch when you Pin?

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The Animation of Empathy.

Sometimes I like to geek out with social media people. Yesterday I spoke at the "State Of Now" 140 Conference here in Montreal, or #140MTL. So here's ten minutes of me talking about "The Animation of Empathy" wherein I use my drawings to get the audience to do funny deeply meaningful things.



The 140Conf series was created by Jeff Pulver and they typically attract gatherings of inspirational speakers from across the planet. Montreal's 140 was no exception; produced by Mila Araujo from Ogilvy & Ogilvy Insurance (the main event sponsor), the speaker lineup she curated was nothing less than spectacular. I was actually nervous...I hope it doesn't show.

If you're interested in social media for marketing, charitable causes, business management, human resources, or just want to be inspired, you can check out the videos here. The hi-lights for me personally were the humorous and direct Jeanine Morber's "what do I want to share, who do I want to reach and where are they?"; the impressive Deb Weinstein "social media is 24/7" and what companies should not do in a crisis; and Ted Curtin's disarming "courage to be humble" where he quotes Mr. Rogers' philosophy of 'deep and simple' to describe the importance of authenticity in one's online voice. Beautiful.

Oh and the all new SeeSaw app was launched at the conference, which is a new way of viewing and saving twitter convos and images - it's mesmerizing.

I met (and hugged) some amazing people at this event and I can't wait for the next one.

Also? BEWARE OF RAGING ZOMBIE TEDDY BEARS.

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QR Codes and STUFF.

I made some new business cards (I use the term "business" loosely).

There's a QR code on the back instead of loads of text. Honestly, I wish everyone used them for their cards cuz it's kind of a pain to manually input names, numbers, websites, twitter handles, G+ profiles blah blah blah. See where I'm going with this? One nicely integrated QR code can do it all. Whatever link you submit, make sure it's mobile-friendly. I used this site to generate my QR codes.

"How do I read a QR code, JC?"

 Aha! I thought you might ask that. This vlog is short and you get a nice view of my lap.



For those who prefer list instructions:

1. You need a smartphone. Stupidphones don't do QR codes.
   
2. Download a QR reader app onto your smartphone.
   
3. Point your smartphone at the QR code, as if you were gonna take a picture of it. Make sure you see it in your viewer.
   
4. The phone reads the code and displays the info on the screen.
   
5. The app menu will offer you the chance to save the info in a number of ways.
   
6. If it doesn't work, you maybe need to get your phone's IQ checked.

I heard there was some mistrust of QR codes cuz they're being used for commercial marketing and stuff and folks are sensitive to that. I also heard that you should only read a QR from a trusted source in case of viruses. I plan on using them to enhance print media with cartoons and animation cuz it's fun, fun, fun!

Stay tooned for tomorrow's release of the Pickle Weasel Calendar, complete with QR code FUN enhancers.

A camera that focuses close-up is on my Christmas wish list.

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Compare your KLOUT Score with your SEXYTIME!

No algorithm needed to predict this particular KLOUT Perk. And prolly the only Klout perk that comes with -K. (<-- see what I did there?)

And no, it doesn't matter which colour is which.

If you were sad to see your Klout Score drop, I hope I've cheered you up.

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My KLOUToris.

WARNING: You have been warned.

My Klout score has been going down on me (<--see what I did there?) since yesterday's Klout Fall. Turns out I'm not all that influential... but the good news is that there is one person in my life I am able to influence and he's giggling over my shoulder as I write this.

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The KLOUT Fall.

The big news today is that Klout changed its algorithm* to be more accurate. Yay for accuracy! I, along with many others, found our Klout scores hurtling towards certain ignominy, without a parachute. Turns out we weren't as influential as we thought we were.

Does this matter? I don't know! I have yet to figure Klout out. Here are 5 things a high Klout score probably cannot do for you:

1. Rub ointment on your chilblains.
2. Comfort you when you cry at movies.
3. Get you a roll of toilet paper when you really, really need it.
4. Draw a funny picture of you.
5. Tell you when Mr. Crusty is hanging out of your nose.
6. Feed you bacon. Wait, that's six. Okay six things then.

But perhaps Klout can actually feed you. So I want to know - have you or anyone you know ever put food on the table, i.e. landed a job or a sponsor, based on what their Klout score is? If so, I'll give you some +K and a big high five.

Drawing stuff about Klout is fun. I like it because Klout taps into a basic human condition: the need to be validated. If you're upset about your plummeting score, it might be useful to remember that Klout is not a social service, it's a business. You are valuable and awesome with -K and a big high five!

*An algorithm is a really amazing and fabulous thing that can predict stuff, like what size underwear your future mother-in-law will wear. Probably. 

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GOOGLE+ is getting BUSY.

My First Day on GOOGLE+ went okay. But not everyone shared the experience.

Do you still need to be invited to GOOGLE+ or what? And will G+ become part of Klout's freaky algorithm? Are these questions that need answering?

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About KLOUT.

So I'm on Twitter and I often see tweets with the word "KLOUT" in them. It's always "KLOUT this", and "KLOUT that", and "I'm so worried such-and-such will affect my KLOUT score" and stuff. And I'm like, what is this KLOUT thing everyone is talking about?!?

Now when I want answers* to my questions, I ask my Twitter following. And if it's social media related, I hashtag #UsGuys. All you need to know about #UsGuys right now is that they are remarkable and they like male strippers and, uh... cake.
*not necessarily the right answers, but that's what makes it fun.

So my tweet went something like this:

A very helpful #UsGuys tweep named @barrypeters suggested I go look at @SeanMcGinnis' vlog post about The Problem With Klout. So off I go, tarum tarum tarum. I watch the video, I read the post and I learn that people who check their KLOUT 'score' always change the way they behave online afterwards. They go from being genuine, to being oh-so-influential. Which then supposedly somehow renders the KLOUT score meaningless.

Do I now know what the heck KLOUT is?

No! I do not!

Being essentially curious, I just go to the dang KLOUT site and sign in... You're curious too, huh? You want to click on it to find out how you score don't you? Haha.

I see this:

I'm like, what? My "score" is 66 and they say that's "high"? Hmmmm. 66 is not high people, 100 is high. Am I wrong? Okay 66 out of what? It doesn't say and I'm too impatient to dig.

Then I read this:

What? I'm a thought leader? Cool!

But then, my eyes fall on this:

So apparently I'm really influential on the subjects of Cinderella, Hello Kitty and Renee Zellweger. Three things about which I'm fairly certain I've never discussed anything online or IRL ever. Well ok maybe I did say something about Hello Kitty one time on Facebook. But still.

What does it mean???

I dunno. All I care about is that it made me laugh out loud to draw this:

Oh yeah, I did notice that these two buttons are all over the KLOUT website.

Gee. Any idea what that's all about...?

UPDATE! June 6, 2011:
Since posting this, my Klout score went up to 69. Which is a very auspicious number, I'm sure you'll agree. Was I doing anything different in my online behaviour?

You can make someone else smile by sharing.

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