I’ve never used the Slick Edit product but I’ve got lot’s of experience using Atlassian products (Jira and confluence) and would love to get my grubby mitts on a copy of bamboo since I am a huge fan of the other Atlassian products I’ve used.

So head on over and find out how you can win some of this software (hint, writing a blog post about it get’s you 25 tickets in this raffle style give away)

For the past 2 years the amazing sales team that I work with at Q4 Web Systems have ventured out to San Diego for the annual NIRI conference. It’s a really important event for us and it’s always great to hear about it when the team get’s back.

This morning while I was going through google reader, I noticed this post from IR Web Report talking about some of the newer social networks (twitter and friendfeed specifically) and NIRI’s presence on both of those social networking sites. There is a friendfeed room dedicated to this years conference and you can follow niri08 on twitter.

I was really excited to see this, as part of my job going to these events doesn’t really make sense for me personally but I’m always really excited to hear about the event afterwards. This year it looks like I’ll be able to follow the event a little more closely and share in the experience even though I won’t physically be there.

It’s great to see these newer technologies playing a role in business sector that’s just starting to realize some of the potential of these new networks, it goes a long way to prove how valuable some of these services can be.

(video source: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter)

Now problems are understandable and everyone expects sites that have massive amounts of traffic to have some problems, but there has not been a peep from twitter (the company) about any of the issues that have been going on. It’s been since at least friday and not one word? Are they working on it? Going to be fixed soon? Later?

Twitter, where are you?

I’ve been asked by several people what twitter is and what is the value? I admit, we do live in a world that is riddled with information in all different forms. Twitter is just another one of those streams. But back to the value, it’s not an easy question to answer and it’s not a one answer fits all type of deal either. Twitter is effectively what you make of it. It’s not for everyone for sure but those who use it, do love it. The key thing though is that like myself everyone uses twitter in there own particular way. Twitter not a form of communication it’s a venue for communication and with that comes a vast amount of noise that you are responsible for cutting through.

Twitter is the perfect example of a network of trust. You don’t immediately start following hundreds or thousands of people, you begin with a few people that you trust. In my case some of the earliest people that I started following were tech blogger’s who’s blogs I’d followed. A couple of examples would be Robert Scoble and Scott Hanselman. Now these aren’t people I would necessarily trust in real life but in the digital world I tend to value and agree with a lot. What started happening is that I would see them replying to things people had asked them then I would go and look at that other persons twitter stream and I might follow that person or I might not, but that’s how your network builds out and it’s an interesting real world example of a natural built in human condition.

But again, back to value. It’s going to be up to you here to make it valuable for yourself. It’s easy to get sucked into the negativity of twitter but it can be something that is a positive experience. If it’s important to you, you can make the twitter experience work but you just have to give it a fair chance and at least a bit of your attention.

Some of the reasons?

• It’s more communicative, I can send a direct message to Robert Scoble or Jeffrey Zeldman and chances are they will reply to me.  Post a comment on their blog?  Don’t expect a reply
• I learn more about people through twitter then I do on their respective blog.  Twitter is about the details and the subtlety of  life.  Blogs are about the big picture.
• It’s easier to read 140 characters as apposed to multiple paragraphs.
• A tweet doesn’t require the same effort and thought as a blog post, people expect short and sweet and sometimes irrelevant information (going to the store, my kid just puked on me, woke up with a headache etc)
• You can learn a lot from blogs, but it’s hard to get the information out, tweets demand you be concise.

Personally I think twitter provides a much more real look at people in general, if you haven’t tried it or aren’t using it go check it out at http://www.twitter.com