#NECC09 & an iPhone

This year, I am going low budget... just me, my iPhone, backup battery and my digital toolkit:

These are the tools I'll be using while at NECC and EduBloggerCon. I use these tools on a regular basis and find them quite handy for capturing images, mircroblogs, retweeting, video streaming, uploading images, tweets and posts as well as listening to great music and finding the right places to eat... Here's a description of a few of my favorites:

Pixelpipe allows you to get your photos off of your iPhone and out to your favorite social network, micro-blog, photo/video and blog services. I use this to mass upload all #NECC09 / #EduBloggerCon images to Flickr.


ShuZu is a nice tool to post to your Blogger account, Flickr, Facebook or other social tool. I use this to post content to my costillacommunity.blogspot.com. Quick and easy.


Google App is a great tool to view your RSS / blog feeds with Google Reader. I use this to follow all the great posts from bloggers sharing their insights at #NECC09. Additionally, I use the Google Calendar to manage and track live sessions and events from the ISTE NECC calendar.

Twitterfon is a handy resource to have at #NECC09. This allows me to Tweet, ReTweet and follow all the buzz at conference. You can direct message me a@jcostilla


Additional tools that I will have in my mobile digital toolkit include Qik, a great live streaming tool to capture live events and share or post to my blog, Facebook or social site. With folks like Wes Fryer and others using their iPhone to record and upload sessions to YouTube, I'll have my phone ready to watch prerecorded sessions. Finally, with the many sites and walking excursions, I'll have my Pandora running to the tunes of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Patti Griffin, Michael Jackson and few other artist as I look for the cool spots to shop and eat with iWant.

That's it for now, unless I learn about more tools to fit into my toolkit.

See you @ NECC09!

EduBloggerCon - I'm Attending! (jcostilla)

I'll be there... jcostilla

EduBloggerCon / Classroom 2.0 "LIVE in DC" 2009

Saturday, June 27, 2009
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Main Room 206!


This is an international all-day "meetup" of educational bloggers and those using social media and collaborative technologies in education. All are welcome--whether you yourself blog, are just an educational blog reader, or even just want to hang out with an interesting group of people.

• ATTENDING - SHOW YOU'RE COMING AND SEE WHO ELSE IS (Classroom 2.0 event page)
• THE SCHEDULE / AGENDA

I'm looking forward to network and meet with the many folks attending eduBlogger. I participated in this last year and it was truly a great learning experience. I met many great thought leaders and have continued to follow them online. This is definitely worth attending.

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Beautiful night

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Time ran out.

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Fathers Dsy gifts

All about Me (TM)

On my flight back from Knoxville, Tennessee, I came across this article in the AA magazine. The title: Achieve Success by Building Your Personal Brand. You can read the full article here.

Stand Out

With so much white noise out there, it’s imperative you stay at the top of people's minds. Website posts, newsletters, Twitter updates, press releases, stories freely swapped with trade journals in exchange for a published link or a personal bio -- they all make effective self-promotions. While there’s a fine line between annoyance and assertiveness, one can’t afford to be coy. Remember: The greater your visibility, the likelier you’ll be clients’ first port of call.

This is something that has really captured my attention for some time now. Coke, Nike and the likes of Michael Jordan all have tremendous brand, but what's the big deal with "Me" as a brand? Last year, David Armano shared a lot of insight on this topic, especially as it relates to social media and marketing yourself as a brand.

Brand "U.0"

View more Microsoft Word documents from David Armano.

The basic points made in the article and in David Armono's slideshare deck is that "You" as an individual can build market share with your personal brand.

Know what makes you special and unique, and tap into those qualities as you build your personal brand online. Most people can spot a fake when they see one, so remember that being genuine is more important that presenting yourself in an artificially glossy manner. It used to be important for bloggers to "find their voice" -- now it's relevant to all of us.

This is so true. As I follow Tweets or bloggers, I can instantly tell the voice, content and even the image/profile pic across various social tools from folks who have carried their brand across various platforms. I think it's important to have a consistent brand; I also think it's more than a logo or profile pic, but that's a great place to start. Some of my favorite "You brands" I follow include: David Armano, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Parillo, Guy Kawasaki, Wes Fryer, Steve Dembo, Bud the Teacher, David Warlick, Will Richards, Lucy Gray, Miguel Guhlin and way too many others to name.

See also: "What would you pay for a name, by Steve Demo."

Here's my personal brand. As much as I'd prefer to change the pic, it's something that has just stuck and what it conveys to me is technology, marketing, education, social media, current, fun and all around good guy.

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Me