Scott M. Fulton, III @SMFulton3@qoto.org

@DeanObeidallah I worry that this is actually Tp's lifeline, and that it may have been for some time. It's my hope that Tp is finally charged, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for his crimes. I would not trade that hope for the possibility of disintegrating the GOP. We need Tp out of our lives.

@isomeme @null @palin Here's the problem, though: It's easy for folks to feel like they're contributing to Twitter when there are celebrities or important public figures, often saying something extreme (e.g., some other celebrity sucks, some ethnic group is not really equal to other ethnic groups, some election results are false). They can respond, "That's right," or, "You suck more," and either way, that's it, that's the tweet.

Being here in an environment where you truly are an equal, may be scary. Suddenly, it's up to you to decide if there's anything important going on in your life, your world, your work, your family, your planet, that's important enough to merit global publication. The spotlight here is brighter, even though the stage is smaller.

Here's where we come to an important, counter-intuitive, revelation: Twitter, and to varying extents, other social channels, have cultivated a generation of shy people. Like folks who act like stone statues in person, but explode in fits of road rage behind the wheel, they leverage their personas on the threads of others with higher follower counts - of things that makes them look bigger, while at the same time hiding their true visages.

Now, here we are, on a system where their relevance levels are not determined by the levels of those they follow. And suddenly, the question becomes, what do we say to one another that's important enough to merit being read? What do we believe as individuals? Have we done anything people at large would care about? Are our own cats or dogs funny enough for sharing their antics?

The onus is on us here. And the only way to help folks answer these open questions, is to be more open to how they feel, what they do, and who they are.

For those #StarTrek Twitter refugees who may never have seen Bill Krause's work, this isn't a 3D mesh you're looking at. It's the work of a master shipbuilder. And if you think he's just a fan... If you've seen the Picard Season 3 trailer, you've seen the forthcoming USS Titan-A. That's an Admiral Buck design. https://greatderelict.libsyn.com/designing-the-uss-titan-a-with-admiral-buck

@AdmiralBuck@universeodon.com It looks superb to me, Bill! Really good to see you here! Hope to catch up with the work you've been doing soon.

Here's a Preview of Coming Attractions for folks considering taking the dive and hiring me for something: If your company is only capable of describing itself metaphorically, and is only comfortable with cloaking itself in a shroud of verbiage salad, you're not going to like me very much.

I'll use @Neo4j as an example, even though that company just laid me off, because I still love the people there, and I still am an advocate for its key product: In my time there, I always advised the company to state what Neo4j is and what it does, plainly, up front.

Thus: The Neo4j #graphdatabase is a system that embeds into the database itself the information about relationships and properties of data elements, that you would have to use predicate logic and math to obtain using a relational database. You can see those embedded relationships as a graph, and thus you can design the relationships yourself by drawing a graph. As a result, queries of huge quantities of data only take marginally more time to process, than queries of small bundles of data.

There. Was that so difficult?

If what you're saying about your product or service within the first 50 words does not include a function that has a clear and measurable impact upon the people or companies that would use it, I don't want to see or hear it. In other words, if you are so uncomfortable with the value of your own product that the only words you can get onto a page are something like, "We enable synergies that maximize the value of collaborative decisions and optimize the service delivery experience," then you're actually afraid people will see your product as too plain or ordinary.

Look at your own customers: the canners of soup, the manufacturers of tape measures, the sellers of soap. Tell me _they're_ as afraid of being perceived as ordinary, as you are. No, they present themselves as products with established and unchallenged value. That should be your goal. Your #contentstrategy begins with simply identifying yourself and your product.

-Scott "Sick to Death of Synergy Experiences" Fulton III

Okay, let's see if this works, folks. I've migrated my #mastodon account from masto.ai to qoto.org (Question Others to Teach Ourselves). I liked the basic concept of the server as it presented itself. And I had absolutely nothing against masto.ai, and wish it well (who knows, if this experiment doesn't work, I may migrate back).

But here's the thing: After being laid off for Christmas, I felt like breaking a barrier. Folks who know me well, or at least well enough (which may be only partially) know I do not work well in confined spaces. Even 500 characters for me is confined space. I actually had to practice the art of tweeting in a few hundred characters, and I do about as well with that format as I would do with souffles. I don't do small. Okay, besides my height, I don't do small.

So here I am on a new server with a character limit of 65,536, which may as well be Delphi (my online home in the 1980s). At least this will give me the space to share with you what I think, in something more closely resembling the way I think it. Hopefully you don't flee in droves.

Scott "Can Resume Signing His Work with a Signature Longer than the Average Tweet" Fulton III