It’s obviously not a good thing. But what was surprising is that within 45 minutes, the other people on the team adopted the “bad apple” behavior. They started acting like the bad apple. Turns out it’s contagious.

This got me thinking about team dynamics, and the criteria we use when we build teams, interview people for a job, etc. When it comes to looking at the personality traits, and how well a person can fit within a team, it occurs to me that it’s crucial to avoid someone with those “bad apple” traits, because it will spread to the rest of the team.

Thinking back to teams that I’ve been on, I know this is true. I’ve seen it happen. And I’m really grateful that the team I’m on now at work, Intel Software Network, doesn’t have any Bad Apples to bring us down. I’ve marveled at how great the team dynamic is in this group since I joined almost two years ago, but only now do I realize that the lack of Bad Apples is one of the (probably big) reasons.

So keep Bad Apples away from your teams! It’s hard to make a person change behavior, and if you can avoid it, it’s probably better to not get into that situation in the first place.

Interestingly, the researcher on This American Life said they discovered an antidote to Bad Apple behavior - someone who exhibits strong leadership by asking a LOT of questions, of everybody. In fact, that person in the study was the child of a career diplomat. So if you do get stuck with a Bad Apple on your team, there may still be hope.

But i didn’t get the writing done that I wanted to. In fact, as you can see, it’s been weeks since I’ve posted anything substantial here.

So I’m going to try to “reboot” my blogging here, and just write, write, write. I’m going to try to avoid the distractions of throwing thoughtlings out on Twitter, sinking into reading feeds and forums, etc. It feels really weird to think that I’m actually procrastinating something that I really enjoy, that no one is forcing me to do.

I finally got out today and snapped some pictures with my “big boy” camera (Nikon D40), instead of the lousy iPhone shots I’ve been posting to Flickr all week. You can see all of the photos in this set. Here are a few, to give you an idea of what’s been keeping up cooped up inside for a week.
The beginning of the Snowpocalypse:

Meltpocalypse on Thursday 12/18 (my birthday!)

Our backyard on Sunday 12/21:

View from the front porch:

8 inches on the Garbage Can:

Our car was clear yesterday - we ventured out. This is 1 day’s snow and ice accumulation:

We’re safe and warm in our house, got lots of supplies, and enjoying the Christmas tree, etc. Our biggest problem is a little cabin fever, so we’re pretty grateful. It’s looking like we’ll get a White Christmas this year. We’re planning on traveling to southern Oregon after Christmas, so I hope this stuff melts eventually!

Neato.

Thank you all for being my friends, and putting up with each one of my ten thousand tiny Twitter tweets. Here to ten thousand more!

This post is NOT going to be a list of “tricks” or quick fixes. I’m not talking about linkbait, or SEO black magic, or anything like that. Hopefully, the things I lay out will seem like common sense. It takes sustained effort over a period of time to build up your reputation and influence - you don’t just instantly “get famous”. So be prepared.

Update: Google has posted some great tips for bloggers. It’s mostly on how to optimize your site for Google, make your stuff more findable, etc. In case you didn’t want to just take my word for it…

Step 0: Build Your Network

This is “step 0″ because it needs to be worked on for a while before you get real results. I’m talking about connecting with people, in real life and online. Get to know them, what they like, what they write about, and what they’re interested. Help them get to know you, what you’re passionate about, and what you know. You can do this by exchanging comments on each other’s blogs, following each other on Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, or whatever. The medium itself isn’t specifically important, but this is why I’m always talking about how important it is to connect with other people on places like Twitter.

Don’t be a snob about who you connect with. I have people in my network who are senior editors at large, popular tech publications, and also people who write small, narrowly-focused niche blogs or don’t blog at all. I’m friends with them because we have interests in common, and have shared inteactions - NOT just because of where they write! Don’t be blinded into thinking you need to connect with the “big fish” more than other people. First of all, it doesn’t matter. Second, you’re going to be asking people to link to or say something about your material, and you’ll sound like a jerk if it seems like you only care about attention from the “popular” crowd. Everyone has their own audience and sphere of influence. Be grateful for any and all links and attention that you receive.

Step 1: Create Interesting, Easy To Find Content

This is hopefully a no-brainer, but it bears mention. If you want people to link to something you’ve created, it should be interesting enough to merit the attention. No matter how good you think you are, not every single thing you write or create is going to get picked up on all the news sites and linked to all over the web. Some of your stuff is going to be higher quality than the rest. Consider exercising some restraint in what you try to promote, so you don’t become “the boy who cried wolf” by trying to get EVERYONE to link to EVERYTHING that you create. Attention and goodwill from other people is a precious commodity. Don’t squander it.

Also, make your stuff easy to find. For most sites, the majority of traffic comes from search results, not referring links. Think about what you’d search for if you were looking for the topic you’re writing about. Be clear and specific and relevant in your post title. Try putting your post title into Google, and see if Google has any suggestions for making it better (”Did You Mean…”).

Step 2: Link to Other People. A Lot.

Get in the habit of linking to other sites and people in your network. Do it a lot. It makes what you write that much more interesting and useful, and it’s a great way to connect with and show respect for the people you link to, and make them a lot more willing to link to you in the future. If you want people to link to you, don’t be stingy with the links you give out.

Don’t worry AT ALL about trying to keep people on your own site. Think of what’s probably the most visited and most useful site on the internet - Google. Is Google popular because they try to keep people on their site, or try to be “sticky”? No! Google is popular and useful because they send you away as quickly and efficiently as possible. Be like Google.

Step 3. Submit to the News Centers

There are lots of news sites and aggregators out there whose sole purpose is to link to interesting stuff that readers have submitted to them. Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, YCombinator Hacker News, etc. Discover which ones that are most influential for your area of expertise. Learn the process for submitting something, and what the criteria are for it getting published. Become a member of the community - read what gets posted, and post comments on stories.

When you have created something that you think would be a good fit for one of these news sites, submit it! On rare occasions, someone else might pick up your post and submit it, but for the most part, if you don’t do it, no one else will. Don’t be shy.

Don’t get discouraged if what you submit doesn’t “make it” to the front page of the site, especially on really big and popular sites, like Digg and Slashdot. Don’t give up, and keep at it.

Step 3.1: Use StumbleUpon

This one deserves its own subsection. StumbleUpon is a collaborative “hey, this is cool!” service that lots of people use. Basically, there are two sides to StumbleUpon. First, in the course of your web browsing, you “stumble” pages you think are interesting or cool. Second, you can see what pages other people have “stumbled” as interesting. That’s a super basic explanation.

The reason I put StumbleUpon apart from the other “news” sites is the quality of the visits that getting on StumbleUpon brings compared to the other sites. Getting linked on the front page of Slashdot or Digg will bring a BIG spike in traffic, but it doesn’t tend to last. People who read those sites are voraciously looking for “what’s hot”. Traffic from StumbleUpon is different. Because there’s not a “front page”, once your stuff gets into the database, it generates a pretty steady, constant flow of visits. Which is really nice.

Step 4: Ask Your Network, Nicely

Once you’ve built your network (see Step 0), get in the habit of letting them know when you’ve posted something that you think they may find interesting. Send out a link on Twitter, or in your Facebook status, etc. Try to make it “hey, I just posted this, let me know what you think” and not “hey look! I posted something awesome again!”. Ask (nicely) for people to link to your post, or to vote for it on Digg and the like. Again, don’t become “that person” who only ever tries to promote their own stuff. But when you’ve done something that you think deserves some attention, it’s OK to let people know about it. Again, if you don’t do it, it’s unlikely that anyone else will.

Step 5: Listen and Respond

Once you’ve put the word out, monitor for links and mentions of your stuff. This is where having “ego” search feeds, or a personalized listening dashboard like the one I created for Intel comes in handy. Set up search feeds (I use Google Blogsearch, Google News, Ask.com blog search, and Twitter search) for your name, and the URL and name of your site. This topic probably deserves a whole post of its own. I’ll write something up soon.

When a news site or a blog does link to or mention you, post comments on their site, thanking them, answering questions, and basically being involved in the conversation. The reason for doing this is to show that you’re smart, savvy, listening, and engaged in the conversation. Engaging in the conversation, wherever it happens, builds connections between the participants, and makes them that much more likely to want to link to you again in the future. Which feeds right back into “Step 0: Build Your Network”.

Step 6: Make This a Habit

Like I said at the beginning, this isn’t a trick that can be learned. This stuff takes time and effort. That’s why you need to think of it as skills to be learned and habits to be formed. Keep practicing. Accept that you might not get stellar results at the beginning. But if you keep it up, you’ll find that you’ve grown your own reputation, influence, and network of people who listen to you. That’s what makes all the effort worth it.

Step 7: ???

What have I missed here? If you have ideas, suggestions, or things that you do that you think would be helpful for people trying to get noticed and get linked to, please let me know. Post a comment, or post something on your own blog and link here. Like I said, I’m not proclaiming myself the expert on this subject. I learn lots every day, and I love it. So tell me what YOU do to get people to link to you and talk about you without being a jerk.

Some of the things I hope to be writing more about soon: Ignite Portland 4, Ignite Portland 5, more netbook stuff, and gearing up for a project I hope to kick off next year that I’m really excited about. So stay tuned. I’m not dead yet.

The audio bits are a little annoying. Wish there was a way to turn them off.

This is my new screensaver, for now, thanks to IdleWeb, a cool free little Mac app that lets you display any web page as your screensaver. I had been using the Digg Arc visualization. We’ll see how long this one lasts. For my screensaver, I can’t stand just some random visualization. I want realtime ambient data streaming across my screen when I’m not

Know what would be really cool? An open, customizeable, hackable version of this. Like iGoogle, My Yahoo, or NetVibes run amok. A framework to build and display the data, and a library of widgets to show realtime information. THAT would be awesome. Someone get on building that, would you?

Ever wanted to subscribe to a feed in a language other than one you understand, and have Google automatically machine translate it into your language? Now you can.

Of course, machine translation is usually terrible. I worked in software localization for a few years, where I learned first hand just how far out the idea of usable machine translation is. But hey, it’s better than nothing, and is a nice option for that Chinese or Russian blog you REALLY wish you could read.

I tried this out on the feeds for the Intel Software Network blog in Chinese and Russian, and it seems to work pretty well (as well as Google Translate ever does). Pretty slick.

Oh, those wacky Wikipedians. For a brief time this morning, when I first heard that Michael Crichton had died of cancer, his Wikipedia entry stated that he’d died "after a long, private battle with a velociraptor."

Somehow, I think he would appreciate the joke. The Wikipedia page has since been edited to remove the reference.

I loved the way he wrote about science. It wasn’t always science fiction, per se, but even when he was writing about corporate politics in Airframe, he just had a way of tickling both the literary and scientific parts of my mind. Too bad he won’t give us any more books.

Update: Hey, the New York Times linked to this post!

I know it’s just something Blogrunner automatically picked up, but it still feels pretty cool. The AP, CBS News, IMDB, the LA Times, and TinyScreenfuls.com.