Checking Your Phone While Someone is Talking to You – IRL

“Sorry, what were you saying again?”

It’s even worse when someone checks back into the “physical world” and introduces a NEW topic based on the virtual message they got and completely ditches what you were previously talking about.

Do you say “Hey that wasn’t what we were talking about!” or just go with the flow and completely forget about it?

I’m not hating on those who do this because I’ve done this countless of times myself. I’ve been both the “ignor-er” and the “ignor-ee.” Either the person I’m talking to all of a sudden gets a text message or a tweet and I’m left talking to myself or I’m the one checking out of the conversation to do the same.

Is this the new normal now? Or do you still consider this type of behavior rude?

P.S.

Check this restaurant out – it gives you a 5% discount if you DON’T use your phone in their restaurant.

My Friends Don’t Care About Tech. Or Startups.

I’m not saying my friends still use typewriters or that they ask me “how to enroll on Twitter” – it’s just that they don’t have the same level of interest in it as some of my startup/tech enthusiast (virtual) friends do. By that I mean, if Jeff Bezos announced tomorrow that he’s leaving Amazon or that the Smart or even Globe LTE launch isn’t actually happening, none of them would bat an eyelash. It’s like me finding out about Snooki’s pregnancy. Who’s Snooki? Bahaha.

But yes, I bring this up because this topic seems to have been following me around for a couple of days now. Last Thursday, I met up with Paul Rivera of Kalibrr (will do a separate post on his team soon) and we were talking about how difficult it is for Filipinos to embrace startups. Here, you either become a lawyer or a doctor. Okay, so you may have had more options (accountant, engineer) but you know what I mean. Starting your own business isn’t usually encouraged (unless you come from an entrepreneurial Filipino-Chinese family).

“It’s not stable.”

“How long will that business last?”

“What about your future?”

Then yesterday, I attended Peter Cauton’s Juan Great Leap event and they were basically saying the same thing but this time added things like lack of investors, the startup community being small, the government not being supportive, etc.

This may be obvious to some but seriously, there are times when it becomes so easy to get trapped in this bubble I will call the “TechCrunch bubble” (maybe I read that somewhere, don’t accuse me of plagiarizing!). It’s when you think everyone and her grandma is using Path or is upset that Twitter is being such a bully because it’s all the tech sites talk about (and your favorite Twitter client is in danger).

At work, we talk about it. On Twitter, we tweet about it. We read it on blogs and tech news sites.

For those who are also in this bubble, it’s easy to forget that the rest of the Philippines doesn’t care what will happen on September 12, much less care about the crazy people working for or on a tech startup.

Oh yes. They exist.

Those Newsletter Subscription Popups? They Work.

This is a classic example of how just because you think you know almost everything about what you’re doing, doesn’t mean you can tell other people who you think  don’t know as much as you do, to shut it. After all, how can they know any better, right?

It’s embarrassing but this was me.
 

True Story

See, with all the webinars, white papers, articles, and case studies I’ve read on email marketing, I seemed to have been so convinced that I was a semi-expert (expert level would be if I charged people to let me talk about it) on this subject. It’s easy to get caught in this state of absurd arrogance knowing that not a lot of people (at least in the Philippines) invest time in doing the same thing.

One day, a team member asked me, “Now that we have our newsletter set up, maybe we should have a popup screen asking people to subscribe?”

Within just 5 seconds, I looked like this:

Oh dear. I was quickly coming up with ridiculous reasons as to why we cannot possibly do that. What have I turned into! My teammate had the WTF look. “Yeah! WTF?”, I asked myself.

It was a humbling experience. More than humbling, it was mortifying.

“Why can’t we at least TRY it?” was the next line I heard.

I was so full of myself thinking I’ve read it all that I didn’t even think that those case studies and best practices might not necessarily apply to our company! (A mistake I think all of us at one point also made. Bah. Look at me trying to drag everyone into this.)

I changed my rage face to something more amiable.

Then I went back to my desk and started looking at possible solutions and if they really did work.

I found Padiact, met Claudiu Murariu, their wonderful and very helpful co-founder, and the rest is history. We installed it on our site and almost a year later, we’re now at 10k subscribers. We were and still are, seeing about 2-3% conversion rates each month. What a waste it would have been if I insisted that I knew everything.

Lesson Learned

My newsletter popup story might not work for your company or for your website but what I can guarantee you that will always work is this: having team members who are brave enough to call you out, to experiment, and to make sure that it’s not just your business that is growing, but also yourselves.

Claudine Barretto, Raymart Santiago, and Now Blair Carabuena: How Social Media Makes Us All Contestants on MTV’s Boiling Points

If you never went through that period in your life when MTV was still the popular time suck and not 9gag, here’s a quick recap of what that show was all about:

Boiling Points was a prank reality TV show way back in the early 2000s where random people (including Stefani Germanotta before she became Lady Gaga) were subjected to extremely annoying situations. The goal was to basically exhibit ginormous amounts of self-restraint and not give in and lose your cool. If you could stand being in that situation for 2-20 minutes (the boiling point), you’d get $100. If you couldn’t keep your cool, well, sucks for you. No $100.

Fast forward to 2012 and we apparently have our own version of it. In fact, we might just have 3 of the most famous Filipino contestants of the year. Losing $100 cannot be compared to having viral YouTube videos of themselves in attack mode.

Case #1: Guy Loses Cool Over Traffic Rules, Goes Crazy on Enforcer

Case #2: Celebrity Couple Loses Cool Over Luggage Issues and Paparazzi

The main difference between actual Boiling Points contestants and these more recent participants is that the latter resorted to the hell-naw-oh-no-you-diint of the interwebs: violence. And boy did they feel its wrath.

Social media is strange. You can suddenly become a semi-famous fashion blogger or suddenly have your personal number and home address passed around so people can send you hate messages.

If you’re one of those rare people who never gets mad, good for you. For the rest of us, it’s always good to know that one outrageously disrespectful act can get you to lose your job, embarrass your family and friends and be the internet’s most-hated person… until they find a replacement.

The next time you encounter someone really really annoying (in public at least), imagine yourself on camera being watched by a couple hundred people.

Because you just might be.

That thought should give you enough willpower to… check yoself before you wreck yoself.

Why I Will Think 10x Before Attending Another Philippine Internet Congress

This is how PowerMax Consulting Group‘s event was for me and since we don’t have a Yelp for conferences, I will write my “review” here hoping that at least one person will read this and be more discerning when it comes to conferences they choose to attend and pay for. (I’ve also written about last year’s Search Engine Marketing Conference, if that’s something you want to check out.)

I found out about this event through a friend’s forwarded email. The email didn’t look professional but I thought it sounded pretty interesting anyway so I bookmarked it. I am not even going to say anything about their email and how it looks like. Not even their website, which got this response after I gave someone their website link:

Very legit comment btw.

To be extra clear, I only attended the morning session of the Philippine Internet Congress‘ 2nd day schedule. If you’ve attended both days and feel that my review is inaccurate, feel free to write your comments below. I am basing my post on the 4 hours I spent at the Megatrade Hall.
 

1. They tried to rip us off.

   Here’s the conversation I had with them (I went with my co-worker):

   Lady at the registration booth: Have you registered?
   Me: No, not yet. Do you accept credit card payments?
   Lady: Yes. *a couple of seconds after she uses her calculator* That would be 19,000+ (I forget what the exact amount is but it was 19k something for 2 people)

   Nineteen thousand? Did I hear that right?

   Me: I’m sorry, what?
   Lady: You can’t just attend one day, you have to pay for both days.
   Me: Uhh. I got an email from your co-worker that I can attend just one day. Let me look for it.
   Lady: Okay ma’am. That will be Php 9,850.40.

   Uhh, what was that? I didn’t even get the chance to show her the email.

   Had I not emailed someone from the company, would they have charged us Php 19,000+? Did they do this to someone else? Even if this wasn’t intentional, this is still terrible because that means their staff are uninformed and will end up making their attendees pay more than what they have to.

 

2. They had singers… and dancers.

   So we walk in and there are about 15 people in the room. It’s 8:45 AM and their schedule says it will start at well, 8:45. Nuninoo. Nothing. 5-10 minutes later, I hear a voice. It sounds like I’m at a wedding. Where am I?

   Then he says something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, while waiting for our speaker, let’s listen to [insert name] as he serenades us with his rendition of ‘Breakeven’ by The Script!”

   No one claps.

   It’s about 9 AM… and we’re listening to someone SING. I look around and no one seems to be reacting and by that I mean they’re all poker-faced. I look at my coworker and we both end up looking like this:

   

   He sings again before Jim Ayson speaks, this time doing an Adele cover and eliciting this tweet from a participant:

   

   We obviously didn’t get the memo that this was a variety show slash conference because before the lunch break, about 3-4 guys in plaid shirts start dancing to a mix of Teach Me How to Dougie and other pop songs.

   Here’s a picture I took of them:

   

   Sorry but I came here to learn. Not be entertained. Also, I really think that there is a more appropriate type of venue for these types of performances.
    

3. They had tons of technical difficulties.

   Ear-splitting mic feedback, videos not playing properly, speakers having to use a mic so they can use it as their laptop’s speaker. Why are these things happening when it’s already their second day?

   See it’s fine if only one of those things happened but all of them? That just tells me they didn’t prepare for this. That, or they don’t mind that they’re getting a significant number of technical issues.
    

4. Their conference kit is terrible.

   I’m really beginning to think that conference sponsors/advertisers here like to waste paper. I did not keep a single flyer nor did I look at one for more than 5 seconds. They were photocopied fliers on green and yellow paper. I suppose I should return them to the organizers next time. Also, why force participants to poke holes on their shirts by giving them button name tags?

   

   Well, at least I’d be able to use 3 items here: the free 20 sheets of bond paper I got, the Philippine Internet Congress notebook which has photocopied sheets that I can write on (also comes with photocopied ads on the last 10 pages), and the canvas bag. Oh but wait… while taking pictures of the notebook… the sheets came apart.

The Verdict

We left after that as we had other plans. I am not going to go into their line up of speakers anymore. Just know that I loved Janette Toral and Jim Ayson‘s talks. If they didn’t have them, I would have definitely asked for a refund.

If you encounter any of their events in the future, my advice is to make sure that you know at least 2 or more speakers in their line up and that they’re worth going for.

Got unfollowed, unfriended… rejected? Don’t feel bad.

Unfriending and private profiles are the new trends on social networks. I thought about this some more and realized there are 2 main reasons why people are doing this. Now I know this isn’t mind-blowingly new and there may be other reasons as well but I figured I’ll make a quick list out of it anyway.

Let’s say you’re the person who was unfriended. Painful and perhaps slightly embarrassing to realize but read up, it’s not that  bad. They most likely did that because…

1. They’re just trying to protect what they’re posting or will be posting.
• If you’re paranoid, they’re probably going to start bashing you. Dundundun.
• They’re just trying to downsize their friends list.
2. They are now questioning your “friendship level.” (Notice that I didn’t use “circles”) This is what happens after people realize the consequences of going on a Facebook friend adding craze.
• You barely know each other. You can’t even remember the last time you guys talked.
• Or you post things that make them question if you should still be their friend or why you’re even friends in the first place.

Whether you’re the one unfriending or the unfriended, understand that it’s… for the best. Maybe you’ll be friends again one day. Ha!

But seriously, now that you know why they’ve unfriended or unfollowed, is there really a reason to feel bad? Would you have wanted that person to keep seeing your posts even though it irked them? Clearly that person is just opting out.

Maybe there’s a good reason, maybe there’s not. Either way, no need to feel bad. Granted that you weren’t close anyway, look at it as just a “trend.” :)