In the mail today, I received my registration guide for the Texas Society of Architect 72nd Annual Convention and Design Products & Ideas Expo. This makes it officially official – I am presenting ‘The Purpose of Balanced Social Media for Architects‘ on Thursday, October 27th from 4:00 to 5:30 (seminar # 111016). The irony of this topic title, along with the timing of receiving my registration guide, kept me chuckling the rest of the day.
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I was thinking over lunch today that I needed to write a post apologizing for becoming less and less responsive to the people who take the time to send me emails and post comments on the site. I am always amazed and humbled that anybody takes time to read what I have to say – I still don’t get it since I know how full of BS I am, surely everyone else has figured that out by now… but I am a regular person, complete with terrible grammar, half-baked ideas, shoddy story-telling etc. etc., in other words, just like everyone else. All the things that stress me out about writing a blog or following up on emails, twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and so on and so forth, are part of the reason people can relate to me and what I am doing here. I’m no different than anybody else (wouldn’t my Lutheran Norwegian kin folk be proud of me for saying that) except I’m an architect and I have been doing this longer than most other people.
It wasn’t that long ago that I could say with pride that I responded to every email I received or every comment that was left: Pppphfffttt on that … not anymore.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was able to thank people on Twitter for generously retweeting my posts and extending the conversation: Now it’s hard to find the time to connect with new followers or engage people
It wasn’t that long ago that there were 20+ blogs that I read every time they posted: If I read 1 a day I am doing good – saving them up for the weekend kills the momentum of any conversation that is occurring in real time.
See the irony? I’m presenting on “Balanced” Social Media and I’m finding that concept difficult to achieve myself. So I am left asking the question regarding my TSA seminar – why should anyone listen to me?? … I don’t know other than they think I might embarrass myself publicly and they want to see it live.
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There are some things about my circumstance that are different than most of the people who might be sitting in on this seminar. This “social media” thing isn’t part of my job description, my blog is more social than driven by business goals and as a result, I have a “friends with benefits” arrangement with my blog and the whole of Social Media. I can’t take time out of my work day to actually work on it – not really. The busier we become at the office, the less time I can take to pop over onto Twitter or Facebook and be social. I have to try and play catch-up in the evenings once everyone else has gone to bed. These days we are blessed enough in our office that we are being crushed with work, so despite setting most of my own deadlines, I don’t let my personal social media hobby interfere with my job. I can’t and I won’t (I got responsibilities yo!)
Since there are so few people like me doing this (talking about other architects, not narcissistic ADHD wanna-be comedians), my head and this site stick above the the others and I am the default go-to architectural website. Eventually the real cream will rise to the top and I will assume my rightful place as a non-dairy substitute for the real thing. The part that has become fun is that I get to make up my own rules. There are most assuredly mistakes being made – but few people can tell because there aren’t any examples in place yet to compare and contrast what I am doing with “how it’s supposed to be done”. I am looking forward to more architects getting off the top step and jumping into the deep end of the pool so I can have some more company – who doesn’t like a good party?
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If you are one of those people who have reached out to me and feel slighted because my response was slow, short, incomprehensible, or missing altogether, I apologize … I am figuring it out along the way.
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As I prepare the direction of my Texas Society of Architect presentation, I would love to hear from other architects or designers. What sort of things would you like to know, what can this panel talk about that you are interested in hearing/ learning? It would be great if you would leave a comment here (you can even post as anonymous if you like) so that I can tailor my message and content to what the people who might attend. Thanks for reading and for participating – I really do appreciate it.
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