John Eckman, Jay Batson, Marc Amos, and Tom Herer. Photo (c) Trev Stair

Unfortunately Jake Goldman was ill and couldn’t make it, so Christine Greene agreed to step in and moderate in my place, while I represented WordPress in Jake’s. (See also Trev’s iPhone sketches of myself, Jay and Marc – he was unable to get Tom).

It was a fun night – I’m not sure I represented WordPress as well as I might have with a bit more prep. (On the security question in particular, see Brad Williams’ presentation from WordCamp Boston.)

Here’s the video, broken into three parts. (I’ll replace these links with embed codes once Blip finishes transcoding to Flash)

Part One (20:03)

Part Two (26:57)

Part Three (27:59)

The audio quality on the video isn’t great, and the video itself is a bit off from a color perspective (the room wasn’t well set up or lit for recording, so we’re in low-light mode) but I think it’s watchable. (Thanks to Julian Rex for getting what we could get).

The event will be hosted by North Shore Web Geeks and sponsored (as in some free beer) by The Atom Group.

North Shore Web Geeks

(I still think of myself as a North Shore Web Geeks member despite no longer living in Newburyport – Salem, MA is still the North Shore, isn’t it?)

We’ll talk a bit about some popular content management systems, including (but not limited to) Expression Engine, Drupal, Kentico, and WordPress. Representing each of those platforms will be:

• Marc Amos, who will be talking about Expression Engine (a proprietary PHP/MySQL CMS with quite cheap licensing for small businesses and free-of-cost licensing for non-commercial, non-profit use).
• Jay Batson, who will represent Drupal (a free and open source PHP / MySQL CMS and web application framework)
• Tom Herer, who will speak about Kentico (a proprietary ASP.NET based platform with what I’d call low-end-of-market pricing for small to medium sized businesses)
• (Fellow WordCamp Boston organizer) Jake Goldman, who will represent WordPress (another free and open source PHP based platform, traditionally more focused on blogging but also increasingly used as a broad CMS)

I’ll be moderating, though I can’t (and won’t) claim to be impartial. ;)

In truth, all of the folks on the panel have worked with a number of different platforms – they’re representing one just for the sake of the panel.

I’m hopeful we’ll get beyond “what CMS is the best” and on to a more nuanced “how do I select a platform that meets my needs, risk profile, budget, and skillset?” or even “how do I figure out what my needs are?” which is where most folks who ask me which CMS to use should be starting.

If not, at least there’s networking and beer.

(Photo from Marc Amos via BrightKite)

You can find her own recap here (with slides). Here’s some random notes I jotted (on my phone to evernote) I found interesting:

Don’t try to actively manage identities / profiles / updates on the 600+ sites out there. Don’t let your profiles rule your life.

Instead, choose just three: she chose Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Why? Those are the ones which seem most useful to her for locating clients, getting key news updates, and keeping in touch with friends. Your three may vary.

[I feel a need for closer to ten: Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, BrightKite, Dopplr, TripIt, Last.fm, and Identi.ca. I guess if I were to choose between Linked In and Xing, between Dopplr and TripIt, and between Twitter and Identi.ca, I'd be down to seven. Still can't quite get to three. That also leaves out project specific ones like Drupal.org or WordPress.org where I have an account/profile associated with a specific community, or broad aggregators like Chi.mp, Strands, and FriendFeed, not to mention my own johneckman.com - but then I don't update those directly, they copy content from other places.]

Half of her clients (as a social media consultant) she advises not to focus on Twitter. For example, law firms or regulated industries which have significant privacy concerns – even with “protected” accounts it has happened that Twitter has inadvertently exposed private messages. That said, though, one of her clients – La Casa De Las Vides winery in Valencia – founder her on twitter as she was tweeting with someone in Spanish. (They’re having a Boston Blogger Wine Tasting this week).

This doesn’t mean, though, that you should ignore the sites you aren’t going to keep as your primary networks. You should regularly claim your name: get your logo, picture, link up. This is important to prevent others from claiming your name and acting as you.

She uses repeater services like ping.fm to post to her secondary networks once or twice a day – just so the accounts don’t fall dormant – but doesn’t push all updates everywhere as that gets too spammy.

Her social toolbox includes:

• Evernote (great notetaking client for Mac, Windows, Linux, and many phones)
• Shareaholic
• Ubiquity / Firefox 3.x
• Ping.fm
• Twhirl / Tweetdeck
• Textexpander [see Texter for Windows]
• Quicksilver
• Google Tools: Mail, Calendar, Docs, Analytics, etc

She also includes as a tool her phone: HTC Mogul (Windows Smartphone) running iCal and SyncMate for Mac.

She also discussed FriendFeed, Strands, SocialMedian, SocialThing, Yammer, and SocialCast, as well as TweetBeep.

Are you able to limit your activity and profile management to just three sites?