Nethazard.net

Becoming Social Media expert

Gabriel Saldaña — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:57:37 +0000

Social media expert books, originally uploaded by gabrielsaldana.

By a strange series of coincidences, I turned out to be called the “social media guy” at the office. Now its part of my job to socialmedia-ize company stuff.

Although from some developer’s perspective this seems laughable and to others might sound ephimeral, pointless or just dead easy simple, the new tasks assigned to me have taken a big chunk of my day job time, analyzing strategies, browsing content, finding and posting content, and all this that involves getting a brand out there and start building a community.

So I guess what you need to learn to become a “social media expert” is:

- know all the social media tools available and what they are for
- provide useful content out there to build your brand’s reputation
- learn to connect social media services to publish things everywhere without taking you too much time or drive you crazy using tools like NetworkedBlogs or Hootsuite and the like.
- observe and learn from others. If you’re new in the social game, you’ve got to first observe how others do it, research and analyze which approach works for your particular case and goals and test them out.
- listen and monitor the community you are forming up around your brand. You can get very valuable input from the community, and that’s the whole point of the “social media”: to get close with your audience.

I guess this is like a “community manager” of a sort. Its going to be interesting how this new role is going to play in my life and what path it leads to. Its certainly a strange weird job to have. Maybe its another cycle, the social media thing is laughable just the same as blogging was laughable in the early 2000′s years.

Just hope that it won’t “dry” up my brain and become the real dummy these books are directed for, since I’ve been taken a bit away from real development work.

I’m both excited and worried on this new role. I’ll learn the best I can from it. I find it funny and entertaining.

No related posts.

Flickr

Gabriel Saldaña — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:56:50 +0000

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Platica de Software Libre en el IEST

Happy 17th birthday Debian

Gabriel Saldaña — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:53:00 +0000

I just wanted to post a few lines about Debian today since its the 17th anniversary of the project.

I haven’t been a long time Debian user. I started using GNU/Linux as an experimental project back when RedHat was on version 5. Then one day, I purchased my first distribution. Yes, I paid for it even though I knew I could get it for free, I decided to support with some money by buying the discs at a store. The distribution was RedHat 7. Then I went on with Fedora …and so on.

The thing is that, I never totally stuck using GNU/Linux up until I tried a Debian based distribution: Ubuntu. I always got burned by the RPM hell, so when I switched to using debs and apt-get, I was in heaven. The system was stable, upgrades were easy and I didn’t have to shake and sweat when I hit the update/upgrade button (or command) like with RPM distros. Other people like Eric S. Raymond has also talked about this subject.

Then, when I finally switched to Debian thanks to several friend’s peer pressure (kidding…or not?), I liked it even more. My computer run faster than with Ubuntu, and I learned new tricks and things that I never noticed on Ubuntu.

Although I still don’t consider Debian to be as newbie-friendly distro as Ubuntu is, I still recommend it for new (and interested) people that switch to a GNU/Linux system. My girlfriend switched and she loves it, and she’s not very techie or geeky. Also, the lack of some “user friendlyness” is actually benefical since that forces the user to learn the system, and not think that computers are “magic”. Yes, lack of “magic” can be confused with “annoyance”, but most things are a few shell or aptitude commands away.

So if you’re not a Debian user, try it out! Leave the tricycle (ubuntu) and try a real bike (debian)! If you’re not a GNU/Linux user, try Debian and check out a real, solid, stable operating system…and learn a few tricks (commands, concepts) on the way.

Not most of the best and popular GNU/Linux distributions base their code on Debian for nothing. Check out why and get involved with the great nice and big Debian community.

Started podcasting

Gabriel Saldaña — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:00:44 +0000

So after having planned some podcast projects, I finally started one of them. Its a show in spanish that talks about copyright, software, tech and legal news regarding our freedom.

Its been a very interesting project. We talk mostly about Mexican laws and events that affect our freedom through copyright or any tech or data law. We also talk about the free software movement in Mexico. Many people in this country seem to think that there are no legal advancement in the tech area, but there is, and it is greatly ignored. That’s why we decided to start this podcast, so there’s a place someone talk about these subjects and bring up conversations about that. Also to rise awareness of the free software movement and since its not too geeky-oriented, we use the space to talk about free alternatives to common proprietary software tools or software needs.

You can find the podcast at the Sociedad Libre website. We stream it live every Wednesday, and you can find the information on how to participate on the live show here.

I hope you enjoy it! And let us know what you think by leaving a comment.

After the storm, Alex in Monterrey

Gabriel Saldaña — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 22:10:42 +0000

For those far away from Mexico or unaware that the hurrcane (then tropical storm) Alex hit Monterrey city, well, this weekend has been a very unusual one. On Wednesday I drove back earlier than usual from Saltillo, since the rain had already started. The road was very dangerous and I had to drive through intense rain (low visibility) and avoiding sliding rocks from the mountain that were being washed down with the water.

The storm hit the city on Thursday’s early morning (during the night still). And what normally is a dry river, with golf courts, football fields, a circus, a flea market, go karts… and there was even a town fair going on, turned into a very aggressive river. It destroyed several main streets of the city, wiped out about 1200 houses and took down monuments and bridges.

Me and my roommate went out a little bit, since the river is a few blocks away from our flat, to see it with our own eyes. We didn’t get too close, because the roads were falling into the river, so we had to be very careful and discrete.

Fortunately, nothing got damaged at my house or building or any of my belongings. Services were intermitent, mainly the power went out for long times. Yesterday we had no internet access all day until today, and today I have no running water, but well, overall I’ve been very very lucky. This “trouble” was nothing, compared to the thousands of people left without houses, or got their cars floated away and crashed somewhere else, and worse loses.

I just want to say that me, my girlfriend and my roommate are okay and suffered no damages or loses. I only miss my girlfriend, since she lives on the other side of the river and its been very complicated to cross. Fortunately she hasn’t been alone, since her mother has been there with her all the time.