This Guy Falls Down

Where to find me on the web

If you've been waiting around these parts for a new post from me, let it be known that I am no longer updating this blog.  

But don't fret!  I'm still very active in the blogosphere:  

• check out the Third Day Weblog, where I keep Third Day fans up to date on the goings on of the band.  
  
• also visit my posterous site, a VERY low key personal blog that I maintain
  
• you can follow my Twitter feed at twitter.com/marklee3d
  

Finally, I have a BRAND NEW BLOG in the works that should debut very soon.  Details to come!

Pulling an "Old Yeller" on my blog

I barely remember "Old Yeller".  I couldn't tell you much of anything about most of the movie.  But the ending is forever seared into my consciousness.  I saw it when I was about 9.  I hated that movie. It made me cry at a time that crying was NOT cool.  And it wasn't fair that the dog had to die at the end, and the boy had to do it.  But you know what?  The dog had to be put down.

OK, now that I've drawn out the setup way too much, let's relate it back to this blog. 

The blog has to be put down.

It's served me well.  It's a good old blog.  It's loyal. I can leave it abandoned for weeks on end and I come back here and it's still there, wagging its tail. 

OK, enough with the analogy.  Back in '03, when I started this blog, it was fun.  I didn't start it as a career move.  Heck, I didn't even put it out there who was running the blog for the first several months.  I didn't really publicize it, but it got out there, and it evolved into an unofficial Third Day weblog.  Then we started an "official" Third Day Weblog and I wasn't sure what to do with "This Guy Falls Down".  I just kept plugging along.

Meanwhile the whole scene changed. Over the years, blogging got more popular, and became a part of a bigger movement called "social media". Blogging grew up, but "this guy" stayed the same.  While that's charming on a certain level, it bores me to no end.  And if you're bored, it's time to either change your circumstances or change yourself.

So I'm going to change.  I'm going to take this blog out back and - KAPLOW! - do what needed to be done a long time ago. 

But I don't think I'll cry too much.  There's nothing to take the sting away from losing a pet like a new puppy.  I bet that kid in Old Yeller even got a new dog out of it when the dust settled.  

I think I'll just start a new blog.  Details to come...

When blogging jumped the shark

I think blogging jumped the shark in about fall of '02.  If you'd like, I could pinpoint the exact date.  It coincided with the debut of the Technorati blog ranking site.  We bloggers are a vain bunch, and - let's be honest - we were all checking stats long before there were any rankings.  But Technorati was different.  It created a pecking order for blogs, and most everybody started mimicking those at the top in order to increase their blog rankings.  Suddenly, you were supposed to blog a certain way.  Then you could increase your ranking to a certain point that you could (gasp!) make money from blogging.

You had a lot of people blogging about blogging. Not very many people made money from blogging, but it sure did get boring.

Here's the problem: nobody gives a %$&@ about your blog stats.  If you're blogging in a certain way about certain things to get a certain number of people to read your blog, you might manipulate the process a little bit.  Your Technorati rank may even go from 250,000 to 249,999.  But who cares?

What do people care about?  Quality, concise writing by people they deem "experts" in certain areas.

• Instead of worrying about your stats, you should be worried about great writing. While there is no shortage of blogs, there is a huge shortage of quality writing. Focus on writing better.
• Instead of worrying about your stats, you should focus on your expertise.  Hugh Hewitt likens it to being a sherpa leading people up the mountain. What area are you most interested in?  What do you know even a little more than anybody else?  If you do this and write well, you can quickly establish yourself as an expert in your field. You might not make money directly off of your blog, but I can assure you that blogging can help you increase your impact in your chosen field.
• Instead of worrying about your stats, focus on your audience.  What do they care about, and what do they want to see you write about?  Use a tool like Skribit to find the sweet spot between what you want to write about and what they want to read. 
• Finally, BE CONCISE! I know earlier I complained about people telling you that you're supposed to blog a certain way.  But it's a fact that people are very busy, and there are literally millions of blogs out there.  Don't kid yourself into thinking that people have a lot of time and that they don't have other places to go!

So there you have it.  Blogging jumped the shark for sure. But if used correctly, it still has the potential of being your primary medium of communication.  Just because Fonzie jumped the shark didn't mean Happy Days didn't still rule... 

Good luck, and let me know what you think!

What's your favorite Pandora station?

After using it for a couple of months, I can now say that the Pandora radio app is one of the most used items on my iPhone. Pandora, along with Shazam, has really helped me get my iPhone groove on.  It's a great way to listen to exactly what you're in the mood for, and also to discover some new artists.

Here are a couple of favorite stations I've come across:

• Corey Smith - something about Corey puts him in the perfect place with Pandora.  You get Corey, John Mayer, Train, Live, and even some country stuff like Lady Antebellum. 
• Travis - this seems to be the Britpop sweet spot.  Coldplay, U2, Keane, The Verve, plus some great non-British music like Neil Finn and Paloalto.
• Justin Townes Earle - This is the gateway to singer-songwriter heaven.  And what was cool about this one is that I didn't even know most of the artists on there.
• Becoming the Archetype - I'm still working on finding the perfect Christian metal on Pandora.  BTA is pretty close.  Let me know if you have any other ideas.
• Michael Hedges - I don't listen to Michael Hedges usually.  But on Pandora he seems to be the way to find great instrumental guitar that's not too flashy or too jazzy.

It's not always perfect, and that's part of the fun:

• HIM - every now and again I'm wanting something heavy and moody.  Evanescence is cool as are Flyleaf.  I thought HIM might be a good Pandora station.  What I wound up with was a strange mix of techno and old school dub music. Wha?
• Wes King - maybe they don't have much Wes in their database, but this station seemed to play everything BUT Wes King...

Here's what I want to find:  Christian metal (current, not old), and acoustic mellow Christian music ala Wes King.  Ideas?

What about you?  What's your favorite Pandora station?

How to follow thousands of people on Twitter, pt 3: the secret spy way

OK, I wish that I was about to give you some really cool technology that you can use to follow hundreds or thousands of twitter folk.  But I'm not.  This is so ridiculously simple that I almost feel silly telling you this, but here goes:

Set up two twitter accounts.

That's it.  You set up one account where you follow everybody and their brother.  You set up another where you just follow your closest friends and relations.  If you're online, you could have one account open in, say, Firefox, and another open in Safari.  With a couple of keystrokes you can toggle between the two. 

If you're not at your computer, you can use a program like Twittelator Pro that lets you switch accounts from within the program.

This way, you have the best of both worlds.  You can turn on the firehose and see what everybody's doing, and check your @ replies.  Then you can switch over and see what your smaller circle of friends are doing.

Sorry if I put you in suspense for such a simple idea.  But if it works, by all means.  If not, just send it right back...

(Disclaimer: Let it be known that I do not endorse breaking Twitter policy.  I just looked and couldn't find anything in their FAQ's about whether you're officially allowed to have multiple accounts or not.  If it's not allowed, then please ignore this post!)

How to follow thousands of people on Twitter (and live to tweet about it!), part two

Hopefully, in part one I gave you a compelling enough explanation of why I've enjoyed interacting with 1189 twitter folk.  Now let me get to some of the nuts and bolts. 

How in the world can you keep up with so many people?  Here are a few tips:

1. Change the way you read.  When I first started using Twitter, I followed a few dozen people.  I would check it several times throughout the day, and I "read it thorougly" with the intention of "keeping up with everybody".  Now I'm skimming, not unlike looking at a newspaper, looking for something interesting.  Sometimes it's a funny one-liner, sometimes a great link, or even a prayer request somebody has.  (The flip side of this is that it's changed the way I write, but I'll save that for another day.)
2. Turn off device updates for everyone except for your close friends.  This could be a good middle ground for some.  When you're online you can skim the masses for information, and when you're out and about with your phone you can check up on your close friends.  One caveat:  if you are prone to getting a lot of direct tweets, this method will not work.  Obviously if you follow more people, that's more people who can DM you.  You will get overwhelmed.  Trust me.
3. Tweetdeck:  Tweetdeck is a cool desktop app that presents your tweets in columns.  Each column is a different group.  You can see everybody you follow in one panel, and your @ replies in another.  You can create custom groups with it, making organizational sense out of hundreds, even thousands of incoming tweets. @recreate, @spencesmith, @michaelhyatt have all been using TweetDeck and seem to like it.  I have it and use it occasionally, but I'm not a big fan.  Yet.  Right now, it feels kind of clunky and Windows-y.  I have a personal policy of not using any computer program that makes me feel like I'm on a PC.  (Sorry!)  But I get the sense that they're on to something, and that future updates will make it even cooler.
4. Twittelator Pro: Twittelator Pro is a wonderful iPhone app.  It's elegant and easy to use.  You can quickly look at people and see their tweets and who follows them.  You can search based on topic, person, or location.  This is my prime Twitter app when I'm away from my computer.  Highly recommended.
5. Follow people manually:  There are several apps to automatically follow everyone who follows you.  Unless you have tens of thousands of followers, I would still recommend the manual route.  While you want to follow every person that follows you, you probably don't want to follow every company that follows you.  I have also run across a little dose of Twitter spam that is to be avoided.  It only took me half an hour or so to follow my initial thousand, and I've added the others incrementally along the way.  But if you use an automatic service you like, by all means...

That's about it for now.  Well except for my secret spy way.  That's for the next post...

Do you have any apps or ideas for making it easy to follow a BUNCH of people on Twitter?  Let me know!

How to follow thousands of people on Twitter (and live to tweet about it!), part one

Earlier this week, one of my favorite authors and Twitter extaordinaire Guy Kawasaki penned an article about how to gain more Twitter followers.  An interesting read.  Beyond the obvious vanity of it all, we all want to try to reach as many people as we can, and make sure we're being effective with our platform.  In the article, he recommends following everyone who follows you.  Since that article, I've noticed quite a few people who are trying this philosophy on for size.  Since I've been doing just that for a  while now, I figured I'd share a couple of notes from my journey.  Maybe you'll find something that will be of use...

A few weeks ago, I was at a party talking to Carlos.  He was saying how he was going to trim the number of people he follows on Twitter to a more manageable number.  Being the general smart aleck that I am, I said "I'm going the other way - I'm going to follow EVERYBODY who follows me."  We laughed, but then I got to thinking.  Why not?  The technology's there, and there are several Tweets with a lot more followers than I who follow this very policy.

@fussypants follows just under 900 people. @mufan96 follows almost 7000. @guykawasaki follows TENS OF THOUSANDS of people on Twitter... 

So without giving it much thought other than "I'm crazy," I took the plunge.  And I've never looked back.

As we speak, I am following 1189 people on Twitter and I love it.

Let me give you a little philosophy, then a couple of ways you could do it (and survive!).  Finally, I'll give you my secret spy way of pulling it off.

The philosophy, part 1: We don't give ourselves enough credit when it comes to reading 

Try an experiment for me.  Go to your Twitter home page and click on "Everyone".  Skim the first page.  It's a little daunting at first, kind of like turning on a firehose.  But you'll find something useful there, I'm sure.  As fascinating as I'm sure they are, you'll skip over all tweets in other languages.  You'll also skip just about all the @ replies.  And you'll skip over all of the "eating lunch at McDonald's" because, well, that's kind of boring, as well as all the "I hate my job - I can't wait til 5:00" kind of chatter.  In between, you will find SOMETHING of value.

Done yet?  I just did it and found out that carpooling's illegal in Canada:
"                                                    annieatthelake                                                         Retweeting @RobLane: No carpooling in Canada. It's illegal http://tinyurl.com/5r4wql

The philosophy, part 2: Twitter as your personal concierge
OK, now that you see that it can be done and that it's useful, how much cooler would it be if you had that same kind of experience, only with a bunch of people that are only one or two degrees of separation from you?  Think of the ramifications.  You're already using Twitter to get movie and restaurant recommendations, and you love all the links you find from your friends on there.  How much more valuable of a tool can it be?  Loads.

Since I've done this, Twitter has become my primary way of following the news, of finding cool links, and of seeing what to watch on television.  It's really quite unbelievable...

I've found that there are other people out there (with only a couple degrees of separation) who love Georgia Tech football like I do.  I have found others (again, that are "friends of friends") who share some of my same musical tastes.  I can not begin to tell you how many cool articles, online interviews, gadgets, and other cool links I've found through expanding my Twitter community.  Just this morning, I found out that a radio interview I did was being broadcast.  And there was still time to let all my Twitter followers know about it. 

OK, since this post has already run on so much further than I had intended, why don't we just break it up into two posts?  Hopefully, you're starting to see how cool this concept can be.  Or at least you're starting to think I'm less (more?) of an idiot.  In part two I'll talk about how to use technology to pull it off, then I'll let you in on a little secret...
            

Welcome to the Fall Reading Club! Just kidding...

To the three of you who still read this blog, please accept my apologies for not doing the Summer Reading Club recap sooner.  You have a new baby, you put out a record, you go on tour, and next thing you know, it's fall and you still haven't finished the Summer Reading Club.

OK, so today's mission, if anybody's still here to accept it, is to make your case for why you deserve a prize from the Summer Reading Club Committee.  It could be a list of all the books you've read.  It could be a GREAT review of one book you've read.  You could go the sympathy route and try to get me and my committee to give you a pity award. 

At any rate, you know the drill.  Do a post, link to the URL of this post, use the Mr. Linky tool to link back to YOUR POST (not your general blog URL).  After the committee confers, prizes will be awarded next week...

Thank you, and godspeed.

Extreme / King's X / Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp

A few weeks ago, I thought I had died and gone to rock and roll heaven.  I was wrong, but not by much.  It was the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp, and that's pretty close to rock and roll heaven.  Oh yeah, and a couple of little bands called King's X and Extreme played that night, too.

A couple of days before the show, I got a call from Mark Slaughter.  Mark lives in Nashville now, and I met him when we were doing a show there back in the spring.  Great singer, great guitar player, cool guy.  This summer Mark is touring with the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp.  Since they were in Atlanta he invited me to come to the show and "meet the guys".

Well, it wasn't until I got to the show that I realized who "the guys" were.  Gilby Clarke from Guns n Roses, Elliott Easton from The Cars, David Ellefson from Megadeth, Chris Slade from AC/DC, Deep Purple bass player Glenn Hughes, Kip Winger, Mark Hutson, and John Lennon guitarist Earl Slick.  I had the chance to meet them all, and they were some of the coolest, nicest people you could ever meet.  Oh, and I met Doug Pinnick walking around backstage, too.  I finally got to ask him about working with Sam Taylor.  Um, well... 

The Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp is a cool concept.  People pay like $2000 to hang out and jam with all these guys during the day, and that night "bands" are put together featuring campers and a couple of the rock legend guys.  The talent level was hit or miss: the participants were pretty good for the most part, although there were a couple of "winners" who made William Hung look and sound like Ricky Martin by comparison.  Massive thanks to Mark Slaughter and the "guys" for letting me hang for a while.  That pretty much made my year right there...

Oh, and there was a show, too.  King's X played first.  Let me tell you, it made me wonder what I've been doing with my musical life for the last 15 years since I last listened to them.  They are SO GOOD.  There's so much power coming off the stage, you can't believe it's just those three guys.  It sounded great - easily the best sounding club gig I've ever seen, honest.  Their new songs fit right into the set, and their vintage stuff has aged really well.  And Doug has added this new screaming thing ala AX7 or Killswitch.  A-maz-ing.  If you get the chance to see these guys do a show, do yourself a favor.  Oh. My. Gosh.

Extreme played last.  They came right out rocking and kept it going for two solid hours.  It's been 13 years since they've toured together, and you get the sense that they're wanting to make up for it, both for the fans and each other.  These guys flat out brought it.  Nuno is the guitar god that he's always been.  And I still contend that Gary Cherone is one of the most underrated frontmen in rock history.  What was Van Halen thinking to not keep him?  The new stuff is great and stands tall next to the classic Extreme.  It's taken a turn towards the Queen/Zeppelin thing to very good results.  They played a little bit of everything, and it did not disappoint.  PLEASE don't wait 13 years to come back to Atlanta!

It felt like a reunion in a lot of ways.  Besides seeing these bands that I listened to and loved "back in the day" I saw a bunch of friends from that era at the show.  Derek Bruner, who lives and works in the music industry in Nashville, is from Atlanta and I've known him since I used to bug him when he worked at Lifeway in Marietta.  Lee Broadwell, who now works at our management company, was in my high school youth group.  Clint Winter, another youth group guy, met us at the show too. 

But it doesn't stop there.  I saw a couple of buddies of mine from Georgia Tech.  One is a literal buddy.  As in, his name is Buddy.  I used to go to every Christian rock show that came throught town and would see Buddy there.  So it made sense that I would see him there tonight.  And my college roommate Neil was there.  It was so crazy seeing all these folks from my past.  It felt like an Adam Sandler movie or something!

Great night.  Easily a highlight of my year...

Best closing ceremonies ever...

...the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

OK, so maybe not really, but because I was about 11 when this happened, it will forever be seared into my psyche.  During the broadcast they say that it's a "real" UFO that really flies using jet fuel, but I've since read that it was lowered into the stadium by helicopter...

And then there's Lionel Richie...