Rivendell operation guide

SliceHost... !

Just make a quick pause to recognize the good work of this guys. I hired their services from Chile, using my chilean credit card. After about 20 minutes of getting my account, The billing system flagged my account, and they suspended it and told me that i would need to supply some info, including phone number.

I kindly answered all the questions and provided all the information required, plus a little more to make them sure that they know that it was me on the other side, and told him that it was kind of rude to suspend the account, just to test the support reaction. The answer that I got nicely surprised me. Here is a small quote:

"I do apologise for any inconvenience or offence our system caused. We work very hard to protect the security of customers - new and old - and hope that you appreciate the level of care we put into keeping you safe."

That's exactly the kind of service that I would look forward in a service provider. Solving the problem as soon as possible, and turning over the bad situation into an opportunity of taking their good qualities into the table.

The company is www.slicehost.com. I'm not sponsored, and not even using the slice yet, but it really seems that will be a good experience working with them. Otherwise, you will know about them :)

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Things Happen for Something

This phrase has long been used in many situations to be considered a cliché, but this time, I'm using another point of view.

Usually, people use it when bad things happen trying to say that better things will happen in the near future, or in they could replace it for "God knows why he do things". But this is not the case.

In the last few months, a lot of good things have happened to me in the professional area that of course is product of hard work, good mentors and decent management of the opportunities. But looking back and following the threads that leads to all this good things, there's a lot of bad things like financial disasters, unfair situations at the University, depression and other disorders, failure at several proyects, either commercial or personal, etc... But none of the good things could ever be possible without that bad situations.

On the past, probably i would thought in coincidence, but it's too much coincidence. Providence is also out of the equation, since God is not an option for me. But what is really different then and now is two things. The first one, is a lesson learned from Tribes: We need you to lead us. Faith is the most important human characteristic. Not blind faith but conscious, righteous and fiery faith. No matter if you need a god or a church between you and your faith, but that needs to be there, supporting what you believe on, your acts and giving you strength while facing unbearable challenges... with faith, there's no such thing.

The second, is that every situation, no matter how good or bad it is, is an opportunity. Apes didn't turn into humans eating bananas in their trees, and the ones that didn't see the oportuniy in his misery, died. No matter how bad a situation is, it can always mean a good thing, and accepting as God's will is the wrong way. Fighting against it and taking as much as you can from it always, and i mean ALWAYS give profits.

With this two points on the table, "Things happen for something" completely loose his sense, since once things happen is when you make them happen for something, and can completely change your life and your destiny. Actually, sounds weird, but getting profit from bad things, after failing on things that were supposed to be right, makes me want bad things to happen... of course not literally, but something like "If it's gonna happen, let it happen soon".

So as punchline, i would say... When bad things happen, you, and only you have the power to take advantage of them, use that power!

Regards and probably you will keep hearing from me in the near future.

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Preparing some content.

Since it's half of the year, I'm going with a little recap. Probably I'll start posting some interesting things on the near future since I've realized that I didn't have much to share, so used this time in making myself more interesting reading a lot and planning some work, what is alraedy on their way. It's kind of secret, but the launch date is near, so there should be news soon.

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Brand Tags

I was working on a project report, and @Jowyang twittered about this wonderful site. BrandTags. As with most of links from Jeremiah, I decided to take a look, and was one of the moments when you say... why didn't i think about this?. An extremely simple but powerful idea in a pretty simple engine, that uses technology from a few years ago to make an awesome system.

The mechanics are simple. You watch a logo and write whatever comes to your mind. After a few tags, you can check what people is tagging about the brands on the site. Definitely a win win situation, where you change a few seconds of your time tagging, to let you spy what other people is saying about the brands you may be interested in. Brilliant!.

Liked it? Twitt about it:
#BrandTags: check what community says about your favorite brand http://twurl.nl/h0j4xh

Or Twitt it in RT mode:
RT @edavaria: #BrandTags: check what community says about your favorite brand http://twurl.nl/h0j4xh
Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Leadership, Politicians and 2.0.

In Chile, we are close to elections. Both presidential and parliamentary. Since is our 1st election after the Obama's great success, and after being reading a lot about communication, web strategy, social marketing, massive collaboration, leadership, and so on, it makes impossible to not to recall all the articles ever read about Obama's strategy, and read about the post war analysis, so we can get a nice critic view of what is being doing locally, and how good or bad are the results.
So far, the low quality of the webpages, and the zero understanding of social technologies is the rule. Seems pretty much like the so called "Dot com revolution" when people thought that only raising a web page will make their bussiness sky rocket. Sadly, the same phenomenon is happening with people trying to start their very own world wide rave, but without wanting to leader it. We have the tools, the people, the (misguided) willingness, but we have no leaders at all, and the politicians, that should be natural leaders and jump into the new challenges to make the country a better place.

Searching for the official web pages of the candidates, one took just one "I'm Feeling lucky" seach. The second one took me 3 searches, and the last one, took me full 60 seconds of search with no result at all. Guess something is wrong... espect me reporting about this in the near future.


Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria

Back on Posting

It's been a few weeks since my last post. I've been solving some really important issues. Things like the way my career should go, how to make money for my personal projects, how much academy and how much business and a lot of things more, including studies... a bit of Artificial Intelligence, some Business Intelligence, a lot of marketing and enterprise creation.
Of course I haven't forget about my beloved books. Wikinomics was finished more than a month ago, and Tribes: We need you to lead us was after that. Of course I'm posting my very own review of both pretty soon.

Right now I'm defining my next project. Have several good choices, every one of them as good as the former, but with different aspects. That's the problem. Hope to make my mind soon and be back on the hardcore posting. I guess that tomorrow will be up the Tribes' review. A pretty good book, short and neat that absolutely deserves a comment.

Eduardo Avaria
www.thesocialpartner.com
www.twitter.com/edavaria