When is Sharing on the Internet Too Much?

February 6, 2012 randallw

// Coming Soon: Double Trouble

A little over a month ago, I made a fun announcement for my 5,000 tweet on Twitter. I had been holding off on the information for quite a while, as often times I ride the line between sharing too much personal information on the internet.

But yes, my wife and I are expecting twins. At the time of this blog, my wife is currently in her 27th week, so we have about 10 more weeks to go! It seems to be a more common thing these days, as there are currently two other couples that are in our small group that are pregnant with twins, and a pastor his wife in Oakland with twins (who just recently turned 6). We’re expecting two fraternal girls, and are almost done picking out names. What’s funny is that between the 3 of us couples having twins, there’s two boys, two girls, and one boy, one girl, so we seem to have all the bases covered in our little group.

It’s kind of amazing to think that in just a few short months, I’ll be a dad. I happened to have a dream about it about a week ago where I was holding them and kissing them as they were just little infants. We also signed up for a couple registries for the Showers being thrown for my wife. Surprisingly, she’s actually having three showers (and almost had a fourth, hah). We’re having one where we live in the Bay Area, one in Los Angeles because my wife grew up there and still has a lot of close girlfriends in that area, and the school she teaches at insisted on throwing her a baby shower (since according to them, “It has been so long since anyone in the English Department has had kids!”). Her former boss at the after school teaching academy also wanted to throw a shower for her, since she couldn’t make our Bay Area one. It’s nice to know she’s loved.

One idea that I’ve been debating is starting up a blog or putting in my review section baby gear. As I did some research on gear, so much of the reviews online are catered to, and written by Moms, but there’s only a few sites that focus on the Dad’s point of view or are written by actual Dads. I’m sure there’s other tech-savy Dads who would glean from the same information (For example, I already purchased and setup a FOSCAM IP Camera for the nursery, that I can access from online via a web browser, or my iPhone to check the baby room). Society typically says it’s the woman’s job to take care of the kids, and that Dads are more hands off, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know baby products as well.

// When is Sharing on the Internet Too Much?

Working previously in PR/Communications for the largest provider of Mental Health services for youth & children in California, I had to learn a lot about HIPAA. We couldn’t talk about youth by name outside of the office, and in written reports, we actually had to use just the initials of clients we served.

I’ve also read some articles that talk out against posting the full names of your children as well as posting photos of your child on your Facebook (I guess with an open network).

So will I be one of those sharing every intimate detail of my children’s birth, their full names, weights, time of day they were born and more? Probably not, as my wife and I tend to be a bit more on the private side of things regarding home life. I would say to other parents, why risk it? What benefit are you getting out of letting everyone else out there know details that they don’t need to know?

Music, Television

Friday Music Confessional: I’m a GLEEk!

February 3, 2012 randallw

I have to admit it. I’m a GLEEk (a fan of the show GLEE on Fox).

Yes, it’s a show about high school Glee clubs.

Yes, I probably did make fun of those same kids back in High School.

Yes, I bought the first season on DVD for my wife for Christmas, but secretly wanted it myself. (Whoops! Hope she doesn’t read this…)

My first time my wife and I watched GLEE, we actually weren’t impressed. We were hearing great things about the show, and caught the second or third episode of Season 1, but was severely disappointed. In the episode, it had the Spanish teacher and Glee coach, Will Schuster starting some boy band with the other male teachers of the school. It didn’t have much of the students singing that episode, and I distinctly remember the “Bad Boy Teachers” singing Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up”… (horrible memory, please delete this from my brain).

It left such a bad impression that we held off for a couple of weeks, thinking our friends who told us this show was great were all insane. We gave it another chance when it returned from their mid-season break and loved it.

As a musician and singer, I appreciate good music in any form. The GLEE writers are taking already great songs, and performing them in fresh way that makes it impressive. Sure, they use the same formula for songs and highlighting certain singers (and they’ve also made fun of that on the show), but it works.

Love it? Hate it? Let me know in the comments below.

Social Media, Work

The Practical Steps From: My Road to Becoming a Community Manager

February 3, 2012 randallw

So in my last post, I talked a lot about my personal journey on becoming a Community Manager in the gaming industry. Looking back and wanting to provide something for the community, I wanted to make a posting with some actual practical steps that can be taken from my story.

1. Be Active, if even on a volunteer basis.

I started out by just volunteering my time on a forum. Others I know started by writing reviews on community gaming sites. Being active and staying involved helps to show a passion towards being part of a community and the industry.

2. Get on Twitter/Facebook & Network!

If you’re not using Social Media (Twitter – Facebook – Google+, etc.), you should be. Brands and their respective Community Managers all use these as tools to reach their audience. Most of them also have their own accounts that can be followed. When I began branching out and following other Community Managers, I used Social Media to talk to them about what things they were posting.

[Edit: Starting up on Social Media can probably be a whole blog by itself…]

If you’re able to attend a gaming convention like PAX, attend those panels run by Community Managers! They provide some great insight on their own journeys and what game companies are looking at for new hires. The best thing to do is also stay around after the panel and try and get some face to face time with those CMs. Follow up with them on Twitter saying how you attended their panel and it was great to meet them.

3. Be a “Jack of all Trades”

Today’s community manager isn’t hired just to handle the social media for a company (or if they are, they’re really more so a Social Media Strategist). Instead, we’re asked upon to gauge the voice of our communities, keep track of our competing companies, delivery engaging content, market our own brand/products, and much more. It would be great if we were an expert at all things, but that’s impractical. Instead, if you’re well rounded at all of these things, it helps you to shine that much more.

Don’t forget that this applies to playing games as well! You could very well pigeon hole yourself by being a Halo fan, dedicating all your expert knowledge into what Bungie and 343i has done with the series, but be waiting on the sidelines so long because they already have a Community Manager. Sure, you could wait around for that CM to move on (or up) and the space to open up, but be aware of the other companies that do have open positions.

4. Always Keep Gaining Knowledge

Even if we’re hired into a Community Manager role already, there’s still so much we can learn. Keep up with what other CMs are doing, what tools they’re using, and what they’re finding is difficult. If you need some paid training for a certain area (writing, social media, creating graphics, etc.) find a mentor, or there’s also workshops and classes for these things. Justin Korthof and Jon Long, aka SixOkay and Weezul, have a series of 100 podcasts, 15 Minutes of Game, focused on the CM role with lots of great knowledge. There’s also “My Community Manager” a very active community for CMs of all industries. They provide a lot of great articles relating to the CM role.

These are just some basic things, but I hope that they help some of you out there wanting to become Community Managers. I’m no expert (I’m really just 4 months into my role), but love being able to share and talk about these things. Feel free to leave a comment on the blog, or hit me up on Twitter with comments: @randalw.

Social Media, Work

My Road Becoming a Community Manager aka How I Broke into the Gaming Industry

February 2, 2012 randallw

Growing up as a kid, we all have had our dream jobs and careers. I used to want to be a Paleontologist and discover some new dinosaur. At one point I wanted to be involved in the comic book industry, but my art was terrible, so I thought maybe I could ink (and in the words of Kevin Smith’s “Chasing Amy” film, it’s just tracing!).

I’ve spoke about how I started playing video games at a young age with the Nintendo Entertainment System, and while I never quite had a moment in life where I knew I wanted to work in the gaming industry like Cliff Bleszinski, I just didn’t think there was an actually opportunity to walk down that path.

in 2008, I had been part of a group of gamers from my church who played Halo 3 and Gears of War almost nightly. One of them had recently bought an ASTRO A40 Audio System and raved about it. A gaming headset was definitely something that I was interested in, living in a small condo with my wife, and always needing to turn down the game volume at night while I played, so I wouldn’t disturb my wife’s sleep with the gunfire.

About a year later in July 2009, ASTRO Gaming started up their forums. I had been a forum hound for years, as I always found it interesting conversing with people of like-interests from around the world. (Side note: Through some forums is how I found the acoustic guitar I still use today!). As for any company, these forums started out pretty small. A lot of them people came on to ask questions about the intricacies of their gear, what benefits it provided, etc.

Through the last year desiring to pick up one of these gaming headsets, I had a lot of the knowledge to help people out, so I started out as part of the community. I helped answer peoples questions, saw and read the info that the ASTRO staff was saying in other outlets, and repeated that to customers. One of the big changes was moving the forums to less of a Tech Support “HELP! MY HEADSET ISN’T WORKING” to more of a community feel. So just as ASTRO Stanimal was directing those customers to fill out support tickets, I did as well.

Where it gets funny is that I wasn’t even an owner of their gear. I had been helping out as a member of this community for about 3 months, and my dear wife finally gave in and allowed me to purchase my gear post-Christmas in 2009.

Not even a month later, I was approached by ASTRO Stanimal who contacted me and thanked me for the help I had been on the forums, and that they would like to invite me in to the ASTRO office to talk over helping out on the forums in an official capacity. At this point in my life, I was working in the administrative side of a company, so I was already in front of a computer most of the day and able to do that job and continue to visit these forums throughout the day.

I met with Stan, the Community Marketing Manager, and became a contractor with ASTRO Gaming with a role as the Forum Moderator. It was a nice part-time gig that received a small stipend each month. It was a fun thing to be in-the-know on what ASTRO was releasing (as that year had the debut of both the A30 Mobile friendly headset, and the wireless MixAmp 5.8). Being that there would be a lot of questions about new gear just as it’s released, I was able to preview these things ahead of time to familiarize myself with the product.

ASTRO was going to have their booth at the 2009 PAX Prime (Penny-Acade’s yearly Expo held in Seattle), and I was pretty determined to see if I could help out an attend. I feel like I asked and pestered them to death, but it worked, and I was able to secure a 3-day exhibitor badge. I paid my own airfare and travel, and found some people that were part of the DestructoidSF community to stay with. PAX was a tiring and long 3-day weekend working as booth staff, but such an enjoyable time as well meeting gamers, explaining our ASTRO gear, and seeing the latest games.

As 2011 rolled around, I inquired about attending PAX East, their Expo in Boston in the Spring. Though ASTRO was without a booth, there was still a lot of companies that was using our gear that needed setup and assistance throughout the weekend. I paid my own airfare, but was able to stay on the rollout bed in Stan and Walter’s (ASTRO Events Manager) room.

Throughout these conventions and through the community of DestructoidSF, I had been meeting people involved in the industry on all levels. Seeing some of the same industry people from convention to convention, I made connections which I kept up through following them on my Twitter.

E3 comes around, the mother of all video gaming conventions. This has been the exclusive to the industry go-to convention where the latest games and consoles are shown (just the year before Microsoft released their new Xbox 360S). As a contractor receiving a 1099-MISC, I was able to sign-up myself for E3 to attend. Walter asked me back to help out with companies activations of gear, as well as helping with whatever photography coverage I could provide. I had been making enough impact with the company that they paid for my hotel stay (I still paid my air travel, much to my wife’s chagrin).

Towards the Fall, I was offered a position as Community Manager with ASTRO Gaming. I took over all of our Social Media channels and joined the marketing team to further work as a voice between the community and ASTRO. Much of the same information that our customers talk about (whether problems, changes, or praise) get voiced back to our team. Much like the Game Studio side, our team has a team of Engineers and Industrial Designers who work towards creating our products who receive this feedback.

All in all, it’s been a fun journey so far. There were times where I was an outsider looking in, and debated about trying to find positions within the industry. Making the decision to take that plunge was a big decision for me. I’m also lucky that my wife was okay with me making this move from my stable job working in PR/Communications at a company providing for children’s mental health needs. My job now is much more challenging and in tune with my passions for gaming and I feel I’m making a better impact within the gaming community by being able to listen to their needs.

Photography, Social Media, Technology

Update: Kickstarter / CustomSLR & The Power of Social Media

February 1, 2012 randallw

So I posted my last blog entry “Kickstarter: Great idea, bad experience” today at around 1pm.

I also send out a tweet to my followers highlighting this blog entry.

By now, we all know the power of social media, and just some of the stories that were picked up by the media in which customer’s posted to media outlets in order to receive coverage and attention to what was going on. There was the AirBNB scandal where a customer trashed and robbed a home-owner in San Francisco. There’s also the Ocean Marketing blunder where the PR representative/”CEO” went off on not only the customer, but also Mike, the co-creator of Penny-Arcade and received tons of backlash from the gaming community.

No, my story was not covered like that, but it did gain a response from CustomSLR today. Around 3 hours ago, CustomSLR posted this to the comments section of the M-Plate project.

This is a great move by CustomSLR as it helps for those of us who funded the higher tiered package for the extras. It’s great that CustomSLR is listening to their customers and want to make things right for those who need the equipment sooner than later. Being part of a marketing team for company that sells mainly online, I know it was a hard decision to offer early shipments (due to finances), but it is the right decision.

For Kickstarter and the case of other projects by other companies, what are they doing to help those with vapor-ware projects that get funded? According to their HELP section on their website, not much.

No where else in their HELP section do they offer a way to receive a refund once the project is funded. Sure, they point out that you should trust companies that have a better track record, etc, but who’s to stop a renegade company from doing one last swansong of a project, offering something really cool, getting people to back their project, then run away with the money once the funds are released?

I hope that there doesn’t end up being a company like this to smear the Kickstarter name, as they do have some great companies with some neat products (Case in point, there’s the “Elevation Dock” for iPhone by Casey Hopkins that has raised an astounding $767, 803 as of today, with 9 days left to funding), but I feel it’s almost inevitable for some bad apple of a company to come along and break this system. Perhaps Kickstarter will take heart, read posts like these of the community and make some changes to the way accountability is held.

[randallwong.com]

Coming Soon: Double Trouble // When is Sharing on the Internet Too Much?