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Building a Social Presence for the Anti-Social

The journey of a technology leader as he blunders his way through improving his social presence. It'll be amazing, or a complete comedy of errors. Grab your popcorn.

I've recently been given feedback from a trusted source: I need a better social presence, particularly on LinkedIn. I'm the younger side of GenX, but this still doesn’t come naturally. I grew up programming computers, not posting every meal to social media.

Ironically, being a technologist in San Francisco / Silicon Valley for the last 15 years I've consulted at almost all the big social media companies, where I had an amazing time building the new data scale needed to make the UX fast and easy. But... as a user? Meh, I don't feel compelled to curate the image of a perfect life. My life is messy and crazy, and I love every minute – but I’m too busy living my life to always stop and document. Guess I live life like a lazy developer programs.

All that said – I take candid feedback seriously, and I take action. Humans are social creatures, and social media is a good way to share experiences in a scalable format. I don't really consider myself anti-social (clickbait), just happily distanced from social media. My new goal is therefore: build a MVP social media presence that is fun and authentic and of some value. But I want to do this my way -- I don't want to build a curated facade designed to impress, I just want to share real experiences with authentic thoughts.

Where to Start

I decided on LinkedIn for fairly obvious reasons, and a few non-obvious ones:

I’ve spent several years consulting at LinkedIn back-in-the-day (I was badged when they IPO’d) and LinkedIn still reigns as the center of professional networking, so they’re doing something right. Given most of my posts will be business related, it seems like a good place to start. Plus, I’m too old for Instagram, too young for Facebook, too loquacious for TwitterX, and don’t want to be monitored by the CPP, ruling out TikToc. I guess that leaves YouTube and LinkedIn. I’ve no appetite for video content, so LinkedIn it is.

What to Post

There are many smart and thoughtful leader publishing daily insights into our quickly evolving world - it can be intimidating using those well-polished professionals as a personal yard-stick of success. So instead, I'm setting more realistic expectations: I’ll post what I know. This means topics like tech leadership, start-ups, solution engineering, customer success, AI, Web3, and the connective tissue that brings all of that together; data. And the occasional off-target rant about my dogs or some random topic. This is my madness; I make no promises.

Keep Posting

Honestly this is the hardest part. It’s easy to start something new when the idea is fresh and shiny. The challenge will come in a year, when deadlines are at-risk and priorities seem to demand every waking hour. This is where rhythm helps – I’m a believer in the power of rhythm and the calendar, so I’ve blocked off 2 hours on my Friday morning (PT) to make sure I’m more connected. Not "work time" nor "family time", this is "network time". Some weeks this might end up being a new blog, or a short post, or me catching up on other's posts and blogs. We'll play it by ear.

Keep It Real

When fiction authors start writing, they talk about “finding their voice” – a style and rhythm that readers can settle into. If you’ve read Stephen King, you’ll know the easy, colloquial voice of his stories are very different than, say, the terse dense prose of Earnest Hemingway. If you don’t find a voice that readers can settle into and focus on your story, maybe it’s time to consider a career change.

I bring that up because I think humans are starting to hear the “voice” of AI. They’re starting to intuitively pick up when content is AI generated, which – given the sheer volume of it – isn’t hard to understand. We’re a pretty adaptable bunch.

There are so many bots shoveling so much AI slop around, generating real value means, well, generating REAL value, not reconstituting the collective wisdom via a next-token probabilities.

But if you’re NOT using AI, you’re making a mistake. It’s like a caveman swearing off fire, or landed gentry in the 1800’s swearing off electricity. AI is here, and of equal importance to those other world-changing inventions - ignoring it will only hurt you. Also like the invention of fire, it’s not applicable to all use-cases. Fire can keep you warm at night, but you can’t wear fire (safely). Similarly, you can use AI to make parts of your work more efficient, but it can’t (yet) synthesize and communicate new human experiences.

This is all to say: I AM going to use AI while putting together blogs, to help me stay consistent and efficient. However I will NOT be doing a prompt/copy/paste. I may use AI to edit before publication, or record audio thoughts while walking the dogs and ask AI to transpose and clean up. But all thoughts will be mine. If-and-when AI slop is no longer distinguishable from human slop, it’s time to drop the pretense and join the church of our new machine-god.

Future Topics

The best way to hold yourself accountable is to make public promises you’ll almost certainly regret later.

Here’s a few ideas for future posts:

  • Vibe Coding a Static Webpage Framework with AWS-Q and Publishing on Github pages
  • Vibe Coding a Blog AI Agent and Logo Generator
  • Solution Engineering, Sales, and CSMs – What’s the Difference?
  • Strategies in Leadership for Solution Engineering Teams
  • Strategies in Leadership for Customer Success Teams
  • Why Web3 Should Rule the World (but probably won’t)
  • King-for-a-Day: Regulations in AI and Web3
  • Other thoughts / recommendations?

As I complete these, I may come back and add URLs.

Thanks, and remember to be human out there.