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UPDATE: @Neenz just published the Paralympics page at Alltop.com last night, Mar 5. If you know of or write a blog on the Paralympics, submit it here to be included.

I first got schooled in the Paralympic Games from Kim* during a telephone conversation my first week on the job back in 1996. For those who don’t know, I used to sell exercise bikes to paralyzed people. True.

“I am a tennis player,” she said.

“You mean you used to play tennis?” I asked.

“No, stupid. I play tennis. Wheelchair tennis. And I’m training for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.”

“The Special Olympics?” I said.

“No, I’m in a chair, not a f***ing r*tard!” she shot back angrily.

She was not one to mince words. She had also served four years in the US Navy and she swore like a sailor.

By the time I left the company several years later, we had gotten to be pretty good friends. I wish I had kept in touch, but that wasn’t what Kim was all about. She was one who lived in the moment, curious and anxious for the future with no regrets for the past. She never made it to Sydney, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

That was my introduction to the Paralympic Games. They are held two weeks after the Olympic Games everyone knows about and gets broadcast on TV. Here is the Web site for the Games in Vancouver.

Eventually, I hope the Paralympic Games are played alongside the Olympic Games as paralympic athletes are every bit as tough as their able-boded counterparts. It seems to me that even when NBC doesn’t see the value in broadcasting the Paralympic Games, Social Media should be all over it. The Paralympics are like a really cool blog that you accidentally stumble into that you didn’t know existed, but changes your world view forever. If you want to see some real athletic ability, I encourage you to watch this year. And London. And Russia. And Rio.

Get involved on twitter. Encourage Guy and Neenz to establish a blog directory for the Paralympics on Alltop.com that doesn’t lead to disability. Write a blog article about how you feel about the Paralympics.

Do something inclusive. We’re all in this together.

*Withholding last name, but in case she ever reads this and I have permission to fill in the last name, I’d be happy to.
**Please don’t contact me about ELA being out of business. That happened way after I left.

I ran out of coffee filters the other day. Not a big deal, I’ll just hike to Kroger and get some more. When I got there, I saw the empty peghook that once held my filters. Moreover, there was a red tag on the hook informing me that this product would be discontinued.

Here’s why this is a big deal. A few years ago, the 53rd automatic drip coffee maker I have ever purchased in my life, died. Just quit. Arrgghh, there has to be a better way. And there was. Melitta makes this carafe and cone set that only requires hot water and gravity to make coffee. The only wrinkle is that it also requires a size 6 cone filter. But, since Kroger carried it, not a big deal. I adopted my new system. And it was great because it was so simple. It only really required gravity to work. And gravity was free.

Then someone at Kroger decided they were not selling enough #6 filters. And, without asking me, they just quit carrying them.

Amazon.com still sells the #6 and I just bought approximately 2.6 years worth of filters. Until my filters arrive, I am using paper towels to line the cone. In the event Melitta decides to quit selling the #6 cone filter altogether, I know I have 2.6 years to come up with an alternate solution to a perfectly good system. But, what I foolishly adopted outside of the normal 10-cup basket filter automatic drip coffee maker is now showing signs of that death-march to obsolescence. An inferior technology persists because it is ubiquitous.

We get change and new stuff. Really, we do. It excites us. It gets us out of bed every day. But we also have a library of 8mm reels our childhood is on that we can’t watch, a library of 8 track and cassettes our music is on that we can’t hear, a library of VHS tapes our children’s lives are on that we can’t relive and a mountain of Zip Drive cartridges our careers are on that we can’t share or pass on. We’ve seen the result of a system being brought to its knees when a tiny bit of the supply chain becomes obsolete right after we dedicate a large chunk of our lives to it.

We grew up in large families (which is why there are so many of us now clogging the ladder rungs to the top) where everything from dinner to clothes to mom’s attention was a competition with the people you lived with. Most of our families had one car and one income and choices were made based on the supply of resources. We got jobs that promised us work, retirement accounts and free benefits that seemed too good to be true. We took them and squirreled them away, believing that one day they would be gone (turns out we were right.) We’ve lived through and survived at least three recessions and a very large oil embargo. We’ve seen an explosive increase in the divorce rate. In short, we’ve been conditioned to know that free is never unlimited free. Free will run out. Free has a catch. The good times do not last. Commitments are broken every day without apology, remorse or obligation.

And now Twitter and Foursquare want to be the operations in our supply chains, somewhere between service delivery and invoicing. I can see the possibilities for several industries we do work for and it is very, very exciting. But Twitter is free, it has really no reason to be there tomorrow, no obligations, no contract with me.

As I reach for the coffee filters that are no longer there, between boiling the water and lining the cone with carefully folded paper towels, I pause and think, “What if Evan Williams decided to just quit doing Twitter?”

After thinking a bit about what sort of New Year’s Resolutions I needed to make a few days ago, I decided that I would put a list of five things together that I will NOT do for 2010.

Here goes, in reverse order of importance (IMHO):

5. I will not use free software or services
I have come to the conclusion that there are two things true about “free” software/services. 1) Business that uses them only have the advantage until they break, cease operations or go off-line unexpectedly and 2) “Experts” who advocate that you use them are only trying to force you into reason #1 to keep themselves at a competitive advantage.

4. I will not create any more Google Alerts
Google Alerts used to be useful, but now I get so many of them so fast and so many of them lead to a false positive that they are just clogging up the inbox, wasting my time reading them and causing undue anxiety.

3. I will not sign up to receive any more newsletters
Eventually, the really cool stuff that I needed to know that you were publishing turns into a spam email every day/week/month and a really lame Holiday greeting card at the end of the year. If I need to know something, I’ll Google it. If you are doing your job well, I will find you there.

2. I will not create any more user accounts
If you require that I create an account to read your stuff, use your “free” online tool or order from your online store, I’m just going to shrug and move on. I already have accounts with the major online retailers like Amazon, B&N and MacZone. The chances that I won’t be able to find what I need from them is not very high, even if the price is a little bit more.

1. I will not read any more blog posts about using Social Media.
Everything that needs to be said about social media has already been said. I already know how to use Twitter and how not to use Twitter.

That’s my list and I’m sticking to it. What about you?

I received a call from someone who pulled my phone number from the Whois record of a client. He was having trouble signing up for some services on a Web page because he didn’t know where to go next. In his mind, the page simply ended without any direction.

When I went to the page in question, it was clear in my mind that the “Complete your profile now” was an obvious link and that he should click it to go to the profile page. But he didn’t see it. I wonder how many others didn’t see it and didn’t bother calling me.

So, I added “Click here to complete your profile now.” Yes, I know that is so Web 2000, but I don’t care. Users expect to see “Click here” as a call to action and regardless of how dorky it looks to Web designers, we’re going to use it. A lot.

Click here is alive and well. And works.

The Center for Media Research sent out their email Research Brief today about how small business are not into social networks for leads. As a small businessman myself, I agree with them. Kinda. I can’t recall the last lead I got twittering out my latest status or a coupon deal or where I am going to be at a certain time if anyone wants to chat, etc.

But then I got to thinking about how all the ways I use social media networks and how we employ them for a lot of our clients and kinda changed my mind. The problem is not the social media networks not being effective, but the MARKETING of the social media networks not being effective.

For example, one particular client uses Twitter to send out job posts, facilitate responses back to the post which enables qualified applicants to reply very quickly and the listing client to fill the job quickly. This in turn enables them to schedule in-store work faster and drive their completion rates higher with their clients. Yet, if you asked the primary client if social media networks are helpful in generating any leads, they would say, “Not at all.” Mostly because the process is automated and invisible, but also because it is not marketed heavily. They know traffic is up dramatically and that jobs are being filled exponentially faster, but because they don’t have a direct hand in the process, it is taken for granted.

Moreover, since the client is also on a WordPress framework, their bi-weekly articles are now more “Google/Yahoo!/Bing-friendly,” which enables potential customers to find them more readily as SEO/SEM is easier to implement. Since all of this is invisible, again, their answer would be, “Not at all.”

Tools like RSS, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN are being used effectively by small business even if they are used invisibly. Just because the CEO doesn’t tweet doesn’t mean they are not using social media. Dig a little and you’ll find many probably are. They just don’t know it.

For small business, it is all about the return today for effort I put in yesterday. Market social media without the “engagement” and “conversation” hype and stick to the operational parts and only then will we see a rise in the “Very helpful” 3%.

Just for fun and visual cognition, I made a Wordle Cloud from my résumé.

I think a lot of hiring managers would benefit a lot by running résumé through a word cloud so see the major words and concepts show up quickly. Maybe some already do.

What does your résumé word cloud say about you? Would it get you hired?

Image above generated by http://www.wordle.net/ Click through to make your own.

I was talking with a colleague of mine this morning about how Social Media is taking shape and changing the world, and that it would be good for people in business to know who the movers and shakers are. People like Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Danny Brown, David Armano, Robert Scoble, Hugh Macleod, Shannon Paul, Cali Lewis, Karina Stenquist and a few others. You know who you are.

And his response was: “I talk to my clients and they don’t know who any of these people are and they don’t really care. These people are all just social media/blog people who really don’t have any impact on the real business for these companies.”

And one respect, he is absolutely correct. Many of the social media experts are consultants, authors, theorists and people who really don’t have P/L responsibilities at the Fortune 100/500 level.

But….

In 1914, nobody in the railroad industry knew who Orville and Wilbur Wright were and even if they did, they would dismiss them as a couple of nut job bicycle shop hacks from Dayton, Ohio.

In 1876, nobody in the telegraph industry really cared what some speech professor and part-time mad scientist named Alexander Graham Bell was doing with his goofy electrocution equipment.

In 1908, nobody in the buggy whip, horse carriage or saddle industries really cared what some farm-boy turned engineer named Henry Ford thought about personal transportation.

And in 2009, few people know who Rufus is and why an itty bitty blog named DogWalkBlog is of any cultural significance whatsoever. (Hey, it’s my blog and if I want to plug myself with greats like Ford, Bell and the Wright Bros, I can.)

Just because you are not a captain of your industry doesn’t mean you can’t change it dramatically. I have no idea if any of these folks sitting around blogging in their underwear are going to change the way retail or marketing or advertising or publishing does business, but I’d sure as heck have at least one sideward glance in their direction.

Here is the ugly truth about American soccer. It is something kids DO, not who they are. Yet many soccer clubs and tournaments focus their marketing and message around the assumption that soccer is central to the players lives and that everything else is ancillary or inconsequential.

The ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) produced the video below for their annual meeting just this past weekend. (It runs a little long, the movie beats you up a little with the message, but pay attention to the subtitles. They are really small, but perhaps the most important part of the whole piece.)

I get it; trade associations connect people together and that was the obvious point. But, the not so obvious point is that all these people who are working at trade associations during the day are spending their nights and weekends with their true passion; music.

We have seen this kind of thing before, but usually the talent is mediocre. But, these folks are darn good! The ASAE not only had the criterion of involving their members, but that the member had to have a high level of skill, proficiency and passion. Brilliant!

What does a harmonica have to do with biodiesel? Nothing except for Joe Jobe. Or a guitar with concrete or paint? For Joe Vickers and Phil Bour, the combination make perfect sense. Railroads and drum kits? Michael Fore makes it work. He probably taps out routines on his desk, driving his co-workers crazy. And there is no hiding the rapture Mike Skiados (ASAE) feels when he plays his guitar.

The Disney movie High School Musical (HSM) was a similar deafening intervention cry from kids, yet few adults paid attention to the underlying message, mostly dismissing it as bubble-gum entertainment. But the kids got it and that is what made the movie “stick.”

Social Media like Facebook gets this concept by allowing members to establish a core identity and then add interests and groups to them. More specialized sites like Meet the Boss, various Ning sites and sites like WePlay.com don’t. Neither do “gardens of brands” like Skittles or Ford. In their world, there is no room for “other interests” and no way to connect the person with them. (As an aside, the WSJ had an interesting article on fans. Worth a read… after you are done with this post and have commented/tweeted, of course.)

Anyone who doesn’t know me is surprised that among my passionate interests are newspapers, old typewriters, literature, photography, coffee, typography, dogs and harmonicas. Computers and soccer come in almost last on the list. Internet is the way I make a living and it is imperative I am knowledgeable and skilled in it, but it is not my passion. In their world, I develop Web-based properties therefore I must be a geek and only care about the latest technology. Sorry. Technology is a tool; no more, no less.

For sports organizations, the random connections that social media reveals is like gold. How many times have you approached a large brand for a sponsorship and gotten, “What does our brand/product have to do with soccer?” If you dig deeper into the social media networks like Facebook, you may well have a stronger answer. Your model is HSM and the ASAE video.

Our advice: Find the connections. The more random and strange, the better. Watch the touchlines and the space between games more intently than the games themselves at your next tournament. What are the kids doing? What are their parents doing? How many questions do your get about a particular topic? Why? Ask questions, observe behaviors. Your next sponsor may be in the non-soccer parts of the game that your sponsor’s target audience is most passionate about.

Note: This post was originally intended for just TourneyCentral, but because the medium here is also the message, we posted this on almost every brand we own. Dogs and soccer? Coffee and soccer? Marketing and soccer? Yeah, it all fits when you start looking hard enough. And, thank you Cindy Butts for the inspiration.

This past week, most news organizations reported that Twitter had been hacked on Thursday, causing wide-spread outage to the micro-blogging service. As it turns out, this was wholly inaccurate as Twitter was the victim of a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, not hacked.

Why is this important? Because it is two different things and news organizations who pride themselves on being the trust agents of the media should know the difference and report it. On MSNBC, the anchor had an on-air argument with the guest who tried to explain what a DoS means for the security of her banking Web site. She clearly did not understand the difference between hacking and DoS and was doing her audience no service by trying to equate the two.

Simply, hacking is someone breaking into your home and messing with your furniture. A DoS is someone calling all his friends to pile outside your front door to prevent anyone from ringing your doorbell and being let in. One is a security concern; the other a major inconvenience.

Not every computer network is a “hack.” It is the same thing as calling every human death a murder. It is not always true and scares people. It is about time the media understands the difference and quit scaring their audience. Just use the analogy above and people will understand the difference.

Jacqui Cheng wrote a blog post in which she posits:

Twitter may be gaining new users at the speed of light, but more than half of those users aren’t actively participating in the service. With no tweets, no followers, and no one to follow, do those users even count?

Some brands/companies don’t tweet and don’t follow, but they are probably searching, compiling and engaging behind the scenes.

The best twitterstorm is one that doesn’t gather enough clout to bring you to have to act in a public way. We will probably never see the number of mesocyclones that never become tornados because a brand was listening.