: Name: Paul Hyland; Location: Silver Spring, Maryland, United States

I'm the executive producer for the web site of a nonprofit publisher of education news, information, and resources, I play in a band, and I work on analyzing and influencing the impact of computers on society. I love my partner in life and my daughter very much.

My Daughter

She hangs w/ her peeps
Old Pictures | More Recent
Videos:
She Walks @ 1 (9.6MB)
She Drums @ 2 (2.6MB)

Paul's Web Space 2.1

Politics, Culture, Technology

Stories about cool events I've attended, musings about social media and other technology, and commentary about people, issues, ideas, whatever. I've had a web site since 1994, at my own domain since 1997, and switched it to blog format in 2005. Now, in 2008, I've added labels, shuffled things around a bit and fixed some style and UI quirks - hence 2.1. Watch for more widgets and microformats....

Thursday, July 31, 2008

New Blog - Online Marketing for Marketers

As I wrote last week, I just completed two speaking engagements for the Online Marketing Summit – Summer Tour 2008, in New Jersey and Boston. These were great conferences, our panels featured good experts answering interesting questions, and the other speakers were top-notch. I'll write more about that experience shortly.

In the course of events I was invited to be a blogger on the associated blog Online Marketing for Marketers, and I can only guess that the invitation results from my years of experience with online technologies and social media, versus my much more brief and improvisational experience with marketing. That said, I will do my best to find interesting things to say in this new forum.

My first post on the new blog, SEO Basics for Content Sites, contributed to last week's discussion topic, Search Engine Optimization. I've blogged about SEO before (see my guide to SEO resources), and even gave a shout-out to lead topic contributor Ray "Catfish" Comstock, but I missed a couple crucial SEO resources before:

Ray's own SEO Blog at BusinessOnline typically digs a little deeper into important SEO concepts, and provides a great birds-eye view of SEO consulting;
John Battelle's Searchblog keeps a very close watch on technology and business developments among the companies that provide us with search and related technologies.

While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I've also signed up as a blogger at Social Media Today, a cool group blog featuring numerous social media marketing types (several of whom I know), but I have yet to see a post of mine make the front page — maybe tomorrow, maybe some day....

Labels: blog, blogging, marketing, seo, socialmedia

Link: http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/

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Sunday, July 06, 2008

BlogPotomac - June 13, 2008

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA, hosted by Geoff Livingston and Debbie Weil. I thought it was a great (un)conference, filled with interesting talks, lively Q&A, and great networking opportunities. On her blog, Debbie recapped the event, linking to varied social media coverage; she also highlighted two of my favorite talks (but all the presentations were interesting).

Dan Beyers, the Local Business Editor for the Washington Post, recently spearheaded the launch of the WashBiz blog. He spoke about local business blogging at a newspaper, and how social media is affecting the Post and the newspaper business in general. (Read the preconference interview with Dan.) Then Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media Group, one of the world's largest PR agencies helping business navigate the world of Web 2.0, spoke about the impact of social media on traditional PR.

Frank Gruber, gave the post-lunch keynote talk. Frank is principal product manager for AOL in the social networking & platforms group, and is responsible for the recently launched myAOL suite, and spoke about social media efforts underway at AOL. He then led a lively discussion on "Bright, Shiny Objects" — his favorite social media tools, ultimately a fairly comprehensive list of the most interesting and useful social tools available today.

KD Paine is author of "Measuring Public Relationships: The Data-Driven Communicator's Guide to Success" and is the publisher of KDPaine's Measurement Blog and The Measurement Standard. She presented a methodology of measuring engagement in social media, and later sent me numerous presentations and links, most of which are catalogued at her company web site, Measures of Success. In an interview conducted by conference co-chair Debbie Weil, Katie states that measuring engagement goes beyond counting clicks or visits, but rather should seek to determine the quality of the interaction.

Kami Huyse closed BlogPotomac by leading an interesting discussion of ethics in PR and marketing; she posed hypothetical cases involving creating fake campaigns, and discussed a real fake campaign by Coach, astroturf (fake grassroots political movements conducted by lobbyists and trade associations), and even mentioned The War of the Worlds (different media perhaps, but many of the same issues). They opened the State Theater bar for this last speaker, which may have enlivened the conversation.

I also met up with several people I know from the local social media marketing scene; for the first time in person: Chris Abraham, George Brett, Suki Fuller and Helen Mosher. Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda was among a raft of Flickr shutterbugs, Shireen Mitchell, and Jill Foster bent my ear about the BlogHer conference and blogging the Democratic National Convention; Jill also captured many attendees using Utterz .

Labels: blogging, blogpotomac08, marketing, measurement, socialmedia

Link: http://www.blogpotomac.com/

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Blogging for Net Neutrality

I recently signed up as a blogger for net neutrality with SaveTheInternet.com, so I might as well blog about it. I've long been a supporter of the concept, and signed CPSR on as a charter member of the coalition when it formed a couple years ago. Recently, People for Internet Responsibility has contributed a good technical foundation to the debate, offering a proposal to measure Internet traffic in order to settle debates on net neutrality, and creating a new discussion list covering technical issues, nn-squad.

Some recent developments: U2's manager Paul McGuinness wants ISPs to cut off file sharers, AT&T thinks file sharing is worse than child abuse or terrorism, and a major Canadian ISP tampers with packets to alter web pages delivered to its customers. These developments follow more infamous incidents like Comcast hindering Bittorrent, AT&T censoring anti-Bush lyrics at a Pearl Jam webcast, and Verizon blocked NARAL from using its SMS network to facilitate political organizing.

Stories such as these, combined with a strong bias toward freedom of expression and communication, lead me to my strong belief in the concept of net neutrality. Stay tuned, and consider attending Freedom to Connect in Silver Spring next month.

Labels: blog, blogging, freepress, netneutrality, savetheinternet