WordPress founder visits Memphis

WordPress powers over 16% of the web, including this blog.  WordPress founding developer, Matt Mullenweg is in Memphis this week for the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Contest.  He and part of his development team stopped by Launchpad at Launch Memphis on Tuesday, 5/15/2012 for some Q and A.

Matt Mullenweg wp WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg visits  Memphis

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Joe Spake is a Consultant and Real Estate Broker in Memphis, TN. If you enjoy this blog, please Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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Among the Luddites

by Joe Spake on May 16, 2012


Luddite Among the Luddites

Ned Ludd Lives!

Once in a while the term Luddite enters the conversation. We who presume ourselves to be on the cutting edge all things social and techie are occasionally floored by a remark or observation from a Luddite – or neo-luddite, or as I referred to them in a 2010 post, Luddite 2.0, a term coined my friend and deep thinker, Bill Wendel.  I have worked hard  since I wrote that post to avoid the Luddite mantle, and I can hold my own with most of the Gen-X, Y, Z or whatever Gen folks I encounter, because, as Brian Solis points out  Generation-C transcends age.  And that C is about being Connected.

TechCamp Memphis (5/12/2010) featured some of the area’s best minds in  social media, internet marketing and strategy, and an array of developer specialties.  I will admit that the developer stuff is way beyond me, but a big part of being Generation- C is having a good handle on just how much you want to be connected.     One attendee told me that her co-workers are not only not “connected”, but they don’t do very well un-connected either. “Most of them don’t know how to create a folder in Windows to put their files into.”  I wondered later if she was talking about electronic files or paper files.  I see that type of thing in my business a lot: “No, I don’t have a scanner; I’ll just bring you the contract.”  These are probably the same folks who fear the internet because someone might grab their private information; who find it easier to say NO to social media, Google, and in some cases email, rather than looking into how those things could possibly enhance their lives and make lots of things easier for them.  Having adopted the use of the telephone, they still carry pagers. Luddites 2.0.

Remember studying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in Sociology 101?  Look at how closely the upper 2 levels (and possibly 3) of the pyramid reflect what most of us are accomplishing, in a large part, online today through being connected.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs Among the Luddites

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

I am not saying that’s good or bad, but think about it.  Once you are there can you go back?  Can you give up that connection?  Do you see a day when technology will evolve to the point that you will draw a line in the sand and say, “I’m a Luddite now.”?

-Images via http://en.wikipedia.org

 Among the Luddites
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Joe Spake is a Consultant and Real Estate Broker in Memphis, TN. If you enjoy this blog, please Subscribe to the RSS feed.

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Get fresh Joe Spake Weblog posts via email

by Joe Spake on May 14, 2012


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Sometimes you just don’t have time to go looking for the latest post from your favorite blogs.  If you are using an RSS reader, and you are like me, you probably have hundreds of posts to wade through to get to what you really want to read right then.  I haven’t been a big advocate of blog mail subscriptions in the past, but one of the features of WordPress’ Jetpack Plugin lets readers easily subscribe via email.

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So, “big deal,” you might say, “I have always been able to subscribe to blogs by email.  Yes but major handlers of  post subscriptions  like Feedburner usually only email post once a day, so by the time you get them they are old news – already made the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and the RSS readers.  A WordPress subscription (see illustration above and widget in the far right column of this page) emails you instantaneously every  time the blog posts.

So if you enjoy the Joe Spake Weblog posts, subscribe by email in the right column.

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Joe Spake is a Consultant and Real Estate Broker in Memphis, TN. If you enjoy this blog, please Subscribe to the RSS feed.
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