It’s to be a big year. Will mobile rule our hearts as it does, today, our minds?

And how exactly are we to create the kind of stuff that stops our communities in their tracks.

It’s CTMTC. Content To Make Them Come.

Happy New Year.

You see, as a virgin conference chairman, I made more mistakes than a blind boy judging a beauty contest. Though I do agree beauty isn’t just skin deep.

1. If a conference organiser hands you a ‘script’, read it through numerous times, disregard the language entirely, and write it in your own hand and voice. What people who ‘organise’ don’t plan for is the speaker’s delivery. In much the same way as when I host web radio shows, I cannot script things out in full. I’d prepped my introduction (fluffed that but turned it round after kicking off with a gag about an SEO expert and starting to call them a ‘social’ engine optimisation expert) but all the ‘housekeeping’ details I read from the sheet rendered me a monotonous drone.
2. Make sure you get a complete lowdown on the presenters’ presentations before they present. Quite an obvious one but being drafted in last minute meant my research was limited. Now I’ve experienced the challenge of mind-reading and finding it not to be one of my core strengths, the next time I do this I’ll get copies of presentations in advance so I can introduce them with the greatest of professionalism, ease and good humour
3. Don’t overestimate your abilities until you’re absolutely versed in the art of chairing a conference. Though I was confident about ad-libbing on demand up until two minutes before the event, I quickly realised my powers of stand-up comedy had evaporated when the bell rang for the audience to enter the hall. I expect Robin Williams does a lot more preparation for receiving an Oscar than a quick look in the mirror to check his side parting.
4. Have some seamless segues up your sleeve. Hosting a conference really is an art form. I only found out who followed who on the panel discussion minutes before it went live. What I wanted, in rattled perfectionist mode, was to have a few notes planned to take the audience effortlessly from one speaker’s presentation to the next.
5. If you offer technology to the audience, have technology on the podium. “Throughout the sessions please do Tweet your questions to #ess2011…” On reflection, a tablet or device to receive said Tweets would have been a logical counterbalance.
6. The little things are big things. Remembering to give the audience full opportunity to applaud speakers, to stick around between sessions, to move from the conference to the exhibition that doesn’t close for another hour… Chairing a conference really is a military operation. And it’s the little things that people remember, that get you another bite of the cherry.
7. It’s not easy. There’s a lot to think about. I went in with the mindset that I’d performed in so many theatrical productions in the past and it would be a relative walk in the park. It isn’t. You need the mind of a genius and the will of a hostage negotiator. And a beautiful woman to kiss you well done when you’re through. Thankfully, I have one of three…

So now you really can do as I say, not do as I do. What a thrill, but it’s only now the homework really begins!

Resources on chairing conferences

• http://www.heanet.ie/conferences/2003/guidelineschairs.htm
• http://www.alia.org.au/groups/topend/chairing.html
• http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~alistair/research/conferences/chairing.html

And if you’re anything like me, working with designers is a little like playing Chinese whispers. I tell them one thing, they produce another. It’s nothing bad on the designer’s part – it’s just we speak different languages, and neither of us have bought into the communal dictionary.

That’s why I’m one of the world’s biggest fans of Headway Themes. I find a site I like, I go into the Visual Editor, and I produce something that looks pretty similar but with my own special flourishes.

Headway Themes is powered by WordPress, a content management system that makes creating content for your site easy.

The only weak spot in the game at this point is finding the images to customise.

My pal Ileane (who supports Thesis, another great WordPress theme – but in my opinion all the sites you create on that framework look samey and unless you have advanced/ninja coding skills, you’re pretty much tied into that look) has a solution to your image, icon and graphics woes – right here.

Why am I telling you this stuff now?

The second most exciting thing to happen on the web in 2011 happens on Friday. The first was the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, and that was a monstruous disappointment. I feel bad relegating what I’m about to tell you to second place now, but the hype about the new Sammy smartphone was so great that I bought into it and ultimately got burned. Back to the Samsung Galaxy S2 – what I believe is the best phone in the world.

No, the second – and now first – most exciting thing to happen on the web is the launch of Headway 3. The Griffiths family and their team have been wracking their grossly-oversized minds to figure out a way of making web design even easier, and they’ve come up with some totally out-of-this-world grid technology.

Take a look at the video.

So it’s super-easy to use, but the customisation and control you get is unparalleled. You could use a free tool like Gliffy to draw up how you want your site to look, based on other websites you admire, and all you have to do is plonk the respective content containers where you want them and boom – your best-ever site is ready to be populated with all that incredible stuff you write and create.

And I’ll be building Talknology.tv on it – my most important project yet. That’s how confident I am that this is going to sing like a bird of paradise.

And it’s coming out Friday – November 25.

So why not tell me then?

Simples. The cunning Headway Themes team want to give loyal customers the very best deal. And so anyone who’s bought Headway Themes by the end of the day on November 24 gets unlimited support and lifetime upgrades.

Brand new customers dazzled by the allure of Headway 3, who buy in after the fact, will pay a yearly subscription for support and upgrades.

Here’s an Einstein-level equation to put that all into context:

If U = Logical, Buy It Now!

What do I mean by that? Well, curating content is kind of new. Many people see it as finding stuff relevant to your audience, and simply sharing it.

I see content curation as Avinash Kaushik sees web analytics. You have at your fingertips the raw data, and that’s all well and good. But it’s only when you add the actionable insight do you really start to wake it up.

Thus content curators fall into to categories: Those who share, and those who affect and inspire. The latter takes more work, but the latter also gets more work.

The content curator of 2012 that survives and thrives will be they who understand exactly what their consumers are seeking, and consequently are viewed as the go-to expert through their ability to interpret and explicitly translate the value of third-party content to their needs.

What do you think?

That’s the verdict of the crowd posse and speakers at #tedxl, the phenomenal leftfield TED event curated by Herb Kim of Codeworks and Dave Brown of Apposing. Kim is one of my biggest inspirations, not only in what he has achieved on the event level, but also in having unwittingly introduced me to my now-business partner Dan Lyons.

Dan, creator of the Fake Steve Jobs Blog and tech editor of Newsweek, is teaming up with me on a fairly ambitious web TV project called Talknology. We’re making geek speak chic, if you will, by taming tech and bringing all that guff to the mainstream in a digestible and fun format.

Lyons first roared at Thinking Digital in May – the first Herb Kim production I’d ever attended. By chance I remarked to Dan he should podcast, since he reminded me of Leo Laporte (TWiT) but was clearly better-informed and funnier.

Time passed and eventually we started working on Double D Guys, a web radio show featuring a ‘different’ (read marginalised) look at the week in tech.

Now we’re about to launch Talknology. More about that soon.

Lyons redux was at TEDxL where someone was foolish enough to shoot a video of me and my ideas on mobile tech. Probably half-arsed, and worsened by spilling particularly hot coffee on my hand during filming. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!

In the past few years almost every conceivable hurdle has been placed in front of the normals, the vast majority of the world’s civilised community. Remembering passwords, mastering previously unknown skills and almost every week finding someone, somewhere wants you to do stuff differently.

Today Microsoft is less than a year away from launching Windows 8 that simplifies everything – effectively removing most of the complications that have hindered the normals from embracing tech full-on.

Facebook is bringing on stream a way everyone can share what they’re watching, listening to and experiencing – thus democratising the social experience.

The most significant obstacle to this adoption of the power of tech by the mainstream – aside from in developing businesses – is ‘what’s in it for me?’

Technology is becoming softer, more instinctive, and a more integral part of our lives. It is becoming as effortless as sipping coffee in the morning.

Finally we’re seeing the mists clear, and I think we’re all going to like it.

The social network is incredible. It’s sophisticated enough to be jam-packed with all the features we need, yet oozes the kind of simple UX that means anyone can plug in and with a brief time investment be comfortable and sufficiently savvy to make it work.

But how do we want it to work?

There’s an interesting environmental issue at play that I believe makes the work of Google+ very difficult indeed in making the platform sticky for users. Sure it’s viral – amassing millions upon millions of users in about the time it took to cook an egg in the black-and-white days of 1998.

I think the problem we have here is we’ve all grown up with, acclimatised to, and become wisened to the novelty factor of social networking.

Whereas before I think we were just happy to test stuff out and enjoy the uniqueness of being able to amplify our message to many, and share great content, now we’re starting to realise that we want some kind of two-way value element. What we put in, we want back out. So Google has to really show us reciprocity of value before many of us will commit to any amount of time here.

Social network apathy, if you will.

That’s certainly the way I feel. Unless I’m building something – value for my community, or profitable opportunities for my business – I have a million other more instantly obvious ways to generate advantage for us.

Does that make even a morself of sense? I do go on sometimes…

It’s just as well. Enter this peculiar Twitter conversation that occurred over the course of the weekend:

Ready for a podcasting revolution? http://bit.ly/nmSjzP

July 10, 2011 2:04 pm via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@davethackeray

Dave Thackeray

just a quick Tweet to let people know about this story over at The Podcast Guy.

@davethackeray "100 devices out in the cold" -meh about 1% of consumers. Then I've always said iTunes is distribution not platform

July 10, 2011 2:26 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

fair comment.

@The_Rooster fascinating exemplification of the groundswell of opinion in deference of the titan, wouldn't you say?

July 10, 2011 2:34 pm via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@davethackeray

Dave Thackeray

quick reference to Todd Cochrane speaking out against iTunes’ dominance, as per the original story.

@davethackeray is it at all possible for you to respond in a fashion that is easily discernible as a conversation?

July 10, 2011 2:39 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

hmm. Odd response – didn’t think I’d said anything overtly peculiar back there. Sounds like a fun guy, though.

@The_Rooster not at your level, no. :-)

July 10, 2011 2:42 pm via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@davethackeray

Dave Thackeray

backatcha. Gentle, friendly banter – sure I’ve come across this podcaster before, and us podcasters are fun types, right?

@davethackeray thanks. You can kindly fuck off then. I've not meet someone as full of their own shit that they've mistaken for importance.

July 10, 2011 2:46 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

whoops. Maybe not. Ah well, I’ll clear the air…

@The_Rooster blimey, I'm genuinely sorry you've totally misunderstood my gentle humour. Have a great Sunday n keep up the awesome podcasts.

July 10, 2011 3:07 pm via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavorite

@davethackeray

Dave Thackeray

there, a sincere apology and a wish-you-well. That should sort it.

@davethackeray well I'm sorry you've a very peculiar humour that is quite frankly insulting.

July 10, 2011 3:11 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

oops. Maybe not.

@davethackeray I mean insulting someone by implying that they can't relate to you because you choose to converse in such a convoluted way?

July 10, 2011 3:15 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

crikey!

@davethackeray Try - myself (and most if not all others) could not be bothered de-cyphering the gibberish to get to your point.

July 10, 2011 3:17 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

blimey!

@davethackeray thus totally alienating yourself from the very conversations you appear so desperate to be a part of.

July 10, 2011 3:19 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@The_Rooster

Dave Gray

lumme? Block, anyone?

What did I learn from this ‘conversation’? That fun isn’t universal, and that you can’t necessarily expect others to share your sense of humour.

I interviewed a fantastic woman recently from a firm called Konsensia, specialists in cross-cultural communications. She told me misinterpretation is rampant on the internet, and this proves conclusively that this is so.

Onward!

You probably know about my (mis)adventures with InspiRadio. They were cool. Lot of great people on the shows including many tech artisans creating amazing future-changing stuff.

I’m now all about The Podcast Guy, which has sapped any morsels of time I once had to devote to this ‘ere junkyard.

And I’m thinking about starting a Talknology show. I got the domain, I just need to fathom where the time comes from. Meantime I’ve got a couple of quick bursts of audio inspiration to share with you over at the Talknology Audioboo feed.

It’s great to be back. Thanks for sticking around. Now it’s the weekend – so go grab some rays.