Frequent thinker, occasional writer, constant smart-arse

Tag: Marty Wells

The artist formally known as liako

Yesterday I switched over my blog to a new domain name: previously Liako.Biz, it now resides as a sub-directory off a domain with my real name (http://eliasbizannes.com/blog). Further more, I renamed myself on the primary micro-blogging tool I use (Twitter) from @liako to @eliasbiz. For most, you wouldn’t see why that matters so much – but for those knee deep in social media, you’ll understand how much of a big deal it can be. In the course of my decision, I realised a few things, so I thought I’d share it here.

Your brand – it matters
I created Liako.Biz in 2005 to document my travels. Although I was partly doing it to explore blogging as a concept, I never realised that my future would be in technology. A year after my trip, I relaunched my blog with a focus on issues I came across in the information and technology sector. The name “Liako” – which is a nickname for “Elias” in Greece and used by my brother and an ex-girlfriend – extended across the web as my online identity. With all these sites I would sign up to, I didn’t think much of it. Turns out those sites now matter.

Due to my work in the DataPortability Project, the concept of online identity has always been on my mind, so perhaps I am a bit more involved in such thinking than most people and hence why I think it’s a bigger deal. More recently however, I noticed Chris Messina have to go through this thought process as he renamed his Twitter profile. Rebranding yourself is a big deal, that I can understand why Messina hasn’t got around to rebranding his blog. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it – changing your name on a service is a big deal. The question I suppose is why is it so?

All these technology tools are enabling us to stay connected with other people. Twitter as a case in point: I was pulled into that two years ago after Marty Wells and Mick Liubinskas told me it was critical if you are involved in tech.

We are seeing now beyond the tech community but in our everyday life, our reputations grow and develop based on our online activities. As relationships form and develop through these online tools, an emotional connection is attached with the persona of the person they interact with. As soon as I announced a name change on Twitter, I immediately got a reaction from friends – it wasn’t just me, they literally felt like something had changed – validating the emotional connection people build with a brand.

Twitter _ @EliasBiz

Anyone that has a blog understands how hard it is to build up its credibility. You require hundreds of people to link to you, for your blog to even reach a credible level. So to create a new domain name, you effectively are throwing out all that brand value and starting again. It’s like throwing money away for no reason.

Why it matters
Chris Saad and Ben Metcalfe convinced me I needed to drop my liako brand and go with my real name. It’s just common sense to do that – as your profile in the industry grows, people need to know you by your real brand (your actual name), not some alias which in the flood of other aliases makes it even harder for people to remember and distinguish you.

Twitter as a case in point (again), to get value from the service, you should follow people you don’t already know -which is how I know the people pictured below. These people created their own brand which is fine, but it’s lost opportunity – as far as I am concerned, they are two separate people and unless I know them well I may not join the dots.

Twitter _ Home

Our online identities are no longer a play thing: they’re now an intrinsic dimension to our overall identity. Identity is a crucial thing that we need to protect: it can affect our emotional health due to the standing we have in a community – and it can also affect our financial security due to people compromising it. It permeates our life in more ways than one.

Working in the Internet industry, I’m more acutely aware of the importance of my online identity as it directly relates to my career. But our lives are slowly being transformed by the Internet, and even if you don’t have a career touching technology, your online identity is increasingly going to become an important part of you.

Privacy
From a personal branding point of view, it’s obvious why you consolidate your names. You don’t need to necessarily pick your real name, but you need to stick with one name that makes you unique. If you don’t have a unique name, it makes more sense to pick a nickname. However, our actual names are the only brands that matter. We are not companies selling products; we are people selling ourselves.

But something that is worth considering are the privacy implications of using your real name on everything. A Google search for me will now bring up my real time thoughts on Twitter, which sometimes are about other people – not something I want happening in real time. Using multiple names actually can be a good thing, as I don’t want some girl I meet in a nightclub to be able to instantly track me down online (which has already happened – jut because I meet someone doesn’t mean I want to be permanently connected with them!). Separately, I’ve recently had some people harass me (non-stop communicating via multiple channels that I wasn’t responding to) and stalk me (turning up somewhere uninvited), and it’s frustrating to not be able to control the communication from them as you are everywhere and cannot really hide from them.

So why did I do it
Although I’ve developed some goodwill on the Liako brand over the years, I am aware my real break into the industry hasn’t happened yet. So better to start fresh now – and do it right. My future is in the industry, and as painful as it has been to change over – getting it right now will pay off later. I’ve grown accustomed to Liako (my real world friends call me that now!), but using a nickname is exactly that. It disappoints the creative inside of me, but when we are talking about our identity – unless you’re an entertainer seeking attention – it’s worth being boring about that.

Postscript:

      people that subscribe to my blog via feed readers shouldn’t be affected;
      all my posts have been fully ported here so nothing has been lost;
      legacy links will get automatically redirected to the equivalent new URL

BarCampSydney2

Things I learned at this BarCamp

  • It was a very different crowd from the first one.
  • It’s so easy to network – it was as difficult as breathing in, breathing out! I gave a presentation, and as a consequence, I had people throughout the day approach me and introduce themselves.
  • In the morning, collaboration was a bit of a hot theme. John Rotenstein from Atlassian asked the question of how do people define collaboration: “when two or more people work together on a business purpose”, was my answer. We agreed. Everyone else, kind of didn’t.
  • How to raise money – was the afternoon’s theme. Great points were brought up by Marty Wells, Mike Canon-Brookes and Dean McEvoy who led the discussion.
  • Some things mentioned:
  1. Aussie VC’s lead you on. “Nice idea- let’s keep in touch” is their way of not burning bridges
  2. VC’s work in a cycle that are in five or so year cycles – raise money at the beginning of the cycle
  3. Rule of thumb: give 30% away on the first round, 30% on the second round
  4. Advisor’s that give out Comet grants work on a 2% commission of future venture capital that you raise.
  5. No one understands the advertising market – everyone in the room wanted something they could read to learn more (check back here soon – I promise!). For example, Google’s adwords programme is largely supported by the property market – the mortgage lending market that is affected by the current credit crisis, is going to affect start-ups relying on adsense as the money drops out of these ads.
  • I met Jan Devos, who randomly approached me and blew me away with what he has done in his life. Basically (and from the age of 17), he created an implementation of the MPEG4 compression technology (for non-tech readers – MP4 as opposed to the older MP3) and he licenses out the technology to major consumer appliance companies like Samsung, who incorporate the technology into their products.
  • I met Dave O’Flynn – self-described as a “tall Irish red-head” developer; Matt June – a former Major in the Australian military, and now pursuing a project based around social innovation; I discovered Rai of Tangler is a commitmentphobe; Mick thinks he can skip most of BarCamp because he thinks organising a wedding is so hard; Mike Canon-Brookes over beer revealed he is a Mark Zuckerberg wannabe; and Christy Dena one of the lead (un)organisers of the conference looks completely different from the person I thought she was!

I got a positive reaction to my half hour session on five lessons I have learned on successful intrapreneurship due to a large internal project I started at my employer, with people throughout the day getting into a chat with me about it. Richard Pendergast, who is starting a online parenting site, said he was going to write a blog on one the points with his own personal battle of creating credibility. Glad I helped! I said to him I was going to blog what I talked about it so we could turn it into a discussion, but I have decided, this exam I have to sit in 12 8 days might need to start getting my attention. Anyway, here were the five points I made, however given the discussion during the session by everyone, is a very rough framework as people brought up some great points when talking:

1) It is a lot easier to seek forgiveness, than permission when doing something in an organisation. Or in other words, just do it.

2) Be proactive, never reactive. By pushing the agenda, you are framing the agenda for something that works for your project. Once you start reacting to others, your idea will die.

3) The more you let go – the bigger your idea will get. Use other people to achieve your vision. Give other people a sense of ownership in it. Let them take credit.

4) It’s all about perception. It’s amazing how much credibility you can build by simply associating your idea to other things – and which in the process, builds your own personal brand to push through with more later on.

5) Hype build hype. Get people excited, and they will carry your idea forward. People get excited when you communicate the potential, and have them realise it.

Thank you to all those involved – both the organisers and the contributors – and I look forward to the next one.