Letter to Naveen Selvadurai

An Open Letter to Naveen Selvadurai, Co-Founder

Foursquare Labs

New York, New York

Dear Naveen,

Thank you for awarding me the Gym Rat Badge on Foursquare. I worked hard for it, always whipping out my iPhone to check in on your little location based service that lets me tell my Foursquare Friends precisely where I am at any moment of the day. 

(Actually, I guess your service is not so little. According to The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog, you expect to hit 1 million Foursquare users within a few weeks. Ty McMahan, the blogger, compares you to a loyalty program for businesses, and he’s right. The difference is that your product is way more fun than getting a card punched.)

A few comments. . . Following a number of checkins at Healthworks Brookline, you gave me your School Night Badge for being out after 3 a.m. Did it occur to you that I’m long past the point of late nights out? Actually I’m one of those boomers who by 4 a.m. has gotten 7 hours sleep, and tries to get to the gym by 5:30 a.m. after playing on the computer for more time than I care to admit.

When that Gym Rat badge popped up on my iPhone, you said: “10x trips in 30 days? Go reward yourself to the nastiest double cheeseburger you can find (bonus points for cheesy fries and milkshakes). And ps: you look nice today!” I liked that last part of your response, and thought I did look nice, particularly since I was wearing a new spandex outfit from Lululemon Athletica.

Just for the record, I typically exercise 5 days a week, and no longer eat cheeseburgers after that article in The New York Times a few months ago about a young athlete becoming deathly ill and then paraplegic after having consumed contaminated beef. But you didn’t give me credit for all my workouts because on some days I go to Healthworks Chestnut Hill, which has an early a.m. Zumba class I just love. 

For reasons I won’t go into, I’ve chosen not to do Foursquare check-ins at my rowing club. Wouldn’t a special badge for rowers be pretty cool? Ok, there aren’t enough rowers to make that one worth while, and rowing clubs -- known for long waiting lists -- aren’t usually in recruitment mode.

Yesterday, one of my favorite blogs, Hubspot Internet Marketing, listed your top 10 badges. Despite my being on Foursquare, I pride myself on not running with the pack. So I’m kind of happy to think of myself as being in that elite class of the fewer than 26 per cent of Foursquare users having earned that Gym Rat Badge. 

Before closing, I also want to thank you for making me “Mayor” of seven different venues, including Healthworks Brookline, Hair by Pepi, and my favorite restaurant, La Morra Brookline. I would have liked to have become Mayor of Max’s Wine Dive in Austin  -- if only for the cool factor -- but it just didn’t happen.

BTW, you and I have never met. But I feel like I know you -- having waited in a long line to hear you speak at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin earlier this month. You made me smile when you said that measurement graphic on LinkedIn -- telling users know when they’re shy of the 100% mark -- is a game too.

You were right on the mark when you said people just love games. Even a boomer like me with a very limited number of Foursquare Friends.


Cheers,


Bonnie

Links


Foursquare


Healthworks 


Venture Capital Dispatch


Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog


La Morra 


Max's Wine Dive


South by Southwest Interactive


LinkedIn

Rowing Video Goes Viral for Good Cause

,

(Photo credit: We Can Row Boston)
When people ask me if I rowed in college, I laugh, explaining that I’m a pre-Title IX baby. But rowing has been my passion for the last 22 years. I feel blessed to belong to one of the rowing clubs along the Charles, and own a red racing shell with a carbon fiber rigger. At 26 pounds, it’s just light enough for me to carry without help.

For the last two months my left wrist has been encased in a white plastic splint -- ostensibly a cure for the severe tendonitis I’ve suffered on and off over the years. So though I knew I would be headed to Austin for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival a few weeks ago, I made no arrangements to ask friends at the Austin Rowing Club if I could borrow a boat.

That being said, during the course of one of my early morning runs along Lady Bird Lake, I could feel the water beckoning. Coincidentally, the dock for the Texas Rowing Club, one of two community facilities in Austin, happened to be on my route.

Fortunately I had $20 stuffed in my sport bra, and a super kind man named Pete set me up with an ocean shell incapable of flipping or tipping -- an appropriate choice for a rower in unfamiliar waters. I happily left the white plastic splint in his care.

Despite the pain in my wrist, the harder I pulled, the higher my endorphin level. Within minutes, I was on top of the world.

Earlier this week, my friend, Jane Morse, sent out a link to a YouTube video -- asking all her friends -- rowing buddies in particular -- to help it go viral. Jane is a retired, senior executive and elite rower whose own passion is raising money for Community Rowing, a non-profit in Brighton, MA.

“We are dedicated to the idea that rowing is a sport for everyone,” said Jane in the email she sent me. “It doesn't matter if you're young or old, able bodied or not, we want to give you the opportunity to get on the water. The more views the video gets, the more Concept2 will donate to the new Veteran's Rehab program at Community Rowing - so watch a fun video with a great song, and support American Veterans doing rehab at Community Rowing.”

For those of you not familiar with Concept2, it’s the Morrisville, Vermont company that manufactures those rowing machines you see at the gym -- or ergometers as they are known in the trade -- and also oars for rowing on water. Having experienced first hand the mental and physical benefits of rowing, I applaud their good corporate citizenship.

Now one of the largest rowing programs in the United States, Community Rowing has two magnificent boat houses on the banks of the Charles and delivers after-school programs to urban youth, provides health and fitness programs to physically and mentally challenged members of the community, and just ordinary people wanting to row. Programs range from one-time learn-to-row classes to year-round memberships.

My daughter, Daphne, who has a lot more Facebook friends than I do, was happy to help circulate the beautiful video, made by a member of Community Rowing. I knew she would have good feelings toward the program, even though she hasn’t rowed in years.

The summer of 1993 is probably just a blur to Daphne, but I remember it well. Having rowed just once at the Florida Rowing Center, and enjoyed it, she agreed to sign up for a Community Rowing program that went for several weeks.

Community Rowing then had nothing more than a dilapidated ice skating rink for its boathouse. As it happened, Daphne ended up in a boat with 7 middle-aged women who probably grimaced when the coach told them to emulate the technique of my then 16 year old daughter.

Following an announcement that their boat would participate in a regatta, Daphne declined, saying she had no way of getting to Community Rowing on the Saturday of the event -- as Mom would be away at the Craftsbury Sculling Center in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

One of the women insisted on providing my daughter with transportation. Never mind that our home was in Chestnut Hill, and this woman happened to live in Medford, not exactly next door.
But rowers are their own community, and that’s the spirit that Community Rowing has captured.

Links

Texas Rowing Center

Austin Rowing Club

Community Rowing Video

Community Rowing Named Paralympic Sport Club

Concept2

Florida Rowing Center

Craftsbury Sculling Center

Embracing Change in Our Professional Lives

Photo Credit: Papermag.com

Mom was in her late fifties when she moved back into the work force and learned how to use a Wang word processor. I don’t think I even owned a computer at the time, but I admired her ability to embrace or at least accept change. 

Recently I gathered with a small group of senior public relations colleagues. Our speaker was Paul Gillin, a new media expert and a guy who’s reinvented himself many times over the course of his professional life. He’s a good speaker, and I liked his take on the democratization of information -- and how that’s changing the dynamic of control vs. leadership in the workplace. 

But I could sense palpable discomfort in the room. Colleagues younger than me were lamenting the speed of change in a digital age. One, a man who began his career as a print journalist and transitioned into public relations more than 20 years ago, now heads communications for a community hospital. He half jokingly asked me whether I ever thought I’d need to be learning about things like Facebook and Twitter when I entered the profession.

I laughed and told him he had a choice: either make the process of learning new media into a fun game, or think of it as drudgery. Of course I could also understand his frustration of working in an environment where the IT department -- amid concerns about viruses -- has blocked Facebook, Twitter and all other social media sites. Computer viruses are certainly real, but wouldn’t the ultimate solution be to block all Internet access or better yet, go back to memory typewriters?

Perhaps exhausted by the demands of dealing with people too unsophisticated to grasp the power of social media, he seemed to be telling me he wished things could go back to the way they were before users could upload their thoughts, pictures, videos and other content onto the Internet to share with the world. Ironically, this was the very colleague who introduced me to social media. 

It was at least three years ago that he convened a panel discussion featuring Boston’s Twitter doyenne, Laura Fitton, a/k/a Pistachio. When Laura referenced the fact that people in the audience were tweeting, all I could comprehend that night was that people were doing something with their smart phones.

Being a mom has its advantages. Rather than accepting feeling lost in a changing world, I resolved to get my daughter, Daphne and her husband, Etan, involved in helping me understand Twitter and Facebook and how these new channels might might be useful in my professional life. At their prompting, I began by setting up personal accounts just to get my feet wet.

Etan turned me on to Lee Aase, new media guru for Mayo Clinic and a genuinely nice guy. Last night, I pointed my colleague working at the community hospital to Lee’s web site, Social Media University Global.  It’s dedicated to helping “lifelong learners” get up to speed in a changing world. Here’s hoping a few parochial IT people can see how a world class healthcare institution is using social media as a strategic advantage.

The SXSW Swag Review

(Photo credit: Kaboodle.com)

My daughter, Daphne, once persuaded her editor, a man of Cuban descent, to let her have the drawstring, canvas backpack he’d gotten at the National Conference of Hispanic Journalists. At the same time, she recently told her husband, Etan -- a frequent speaker and panelist at assemblages of journalists and digital media folks -- of a new house rule. No more freebie T-shirts or baseball caps. The drawers and closets of their spacious, Atlanta home simply can’t accommodate any more.

Oh how we love swag! I cherish the Twitter T-shirt and drawstring backpack I got at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conference in New York last June. Though I have shelves and shelves of performance athletic wear in one of my walk-in closets, I occasionally wear the T-shirt with an old pair of spandex shorts to the gym.

But it has to be swag signaling the participant was at a cool event, or else something of intrinsic, practical value. In that spirit I will list and evaluate 6 items I received at the recent South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas:

1. A copy of Brian Solis’s new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. I got it at a book-signing party, and carried it away in a recyclable shopping bag bearing the logo for PGi, a company providing "global conferencing solutions." Having purchased and enjoyed Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, Brian’s first book last year, I consider this latest acquisition first rate.

2. A Pepsi Challenge T-Shirt (size small) and a Pepsi Challenge Baseball Cap with adjustable Velcro strap, both emblazoned with SXSW. Because the T-shirt is in a size I can actually wear to the gym, and the logo signifies I attended an event with an off the charts cool factor, it rates really high. I hated to part with the hat, which I could wear for sunbathing at Cape May this summer, but I thought my husband, Dennis would wear it even more.

3. A navy blue Loopt T-shirt (size medium). The fuschia logo, saying “ping me on Loopt,” is very attractive, and though I would have preferred a size small, the shirt is potentially wearable for the gym after it’s been washed and tossed in the dryer a few times. Loopt is an i-phone app designed to let your friends know where you are, and vice versa. But I think I would have preferred a Foursquare T-shirt, because as the market leader in this type of app, it’s got more of a cool factor. 

4. A charcoal grey Adobe T-shirt (size medium) that says “I Know Something You Don’t,” cool in and of itself, is exponentially more valuable than the item above mentioned T-shirt because it has an Adobe@SWSX below. I will always remember that I got the item at a panel discussion on the digital rebirth of Wired magazine.

5. A set of Newell-Rubbermaid’s Sharpie, chisel tipped, permanent markers in every color of the rainbow. Getting this required that I ask a question following David Meerman Scott’s panel discussion on social marketing. Admittedly my query was a bit mischievous: “How are we going to convince people 55 and older that using location based iPhone apps?” Dennis uses these markers to sign his oil paintings. Had there been an SXSW on each marker, I’m not sure I would have let my husband have them.

6. Edible goodies. I liked the dark chocolate-caramel pecan, 190-calorie Zone Perfect energy bar boasting 12 grams of protein. Knowing the bars sell at CVS for close to $2, I considered this a find, and swiped as much as a carton’s worth from the hospitality desk. On the other hand, I chose to leave a Monster Hitman Energy Shooter for hotel housekeeping. Not being of the Millennial or Gen Y age group, I eschew anything that messes with my nervous system.

Links:

Brian Solis

Foursquare

David Meerman Scott

Ten Takeaways from #SXSWi

(Photo Credit: Retrojunk.com)

I still have visions of me, a middle aged woman, tossing my Coach shoulder bag on the sidewalk outside the Austin Convention Center.  All for the sake of playing a game involving a chalk grid drawn on the sidewalk containing 4 squares and a rubber ball smaller than a basket ball but larger than a wiffle ball. (I would have done better with a beach ball, despite the efforts of a really nice young woman from Poynter Institute to show me how to play.)

Of course the sidewalk game was all for the sake of promoting Foursquare, a location based smart phone app for checking in at various lecture halls, restaurants, and parties to see which of your friends who were using the same app were in attendance. And believe me, nearly everyone in attendance at South by Southwest Interactive was using Foursquare, unless they were using Gowalla, an Austin based version of the same thing.

Forget about the Woodstock Nation atmosphere of young attendees wearing nothing more formal than T-shirts, jeans or cargo shorts with sneakers or flip-flops to complete the ensemble. SXSWi is the best conference I’ve ever attended. Its target audience is computer geeks, web designers, public relations pros who embrace new media, and journalists from print and broadcast outlets savvy enough to know that their success can only be enhanced by using Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as tools for gathering global news from a more diverse population than ever before. 

I’m still trying to pull together everything I learned at the nearly 20 panel, solo, and keynote presentations I attended, supplemented with parties and tweetups. Still here are ten nuggets I came away with:

(1) If you can listen and hear in real time, your whole strategy changes. If you’re selling sweaters, you need to know where people feel cold. If you want to listen, you had better have thick skin, because you will hear the truth. (Jeffrey Sass #140Conf)

(2) Social Media is the best gift advertising has been given because it gets us back in touch with people. Start thinking like maestros rather than masters of the universe. (Hank Wasiak, #140Conf)

(3) Change your passwords every week. Identity theft has gone way beyond somebody taking a credit card out in your name or that of your young children. Now it’s about criminals using your i.d. to apply for jobs and purchase homes. (Crime Scene: Digital Identity Theft, Bill Morrow and Aaron Strout #digitalidtheft)

(4) Privacy is about control. The more you put out in public, the more you’re able to maintain privacy about what matters to you. (Privacy and Publicity, Danah Boyd #danahboyd.)

(5) Anonymity is bad for community – allowing us to become parts of polarized angry mobs with no sense of consequences for our actions. Contact between people is king, not content. (Program or Be Programmed, Doug Rushkoff #programorbeprogrammed)

(6) It’s fine for me to make fun of mom’s paranoia about online banking. But if her bank made fun of her, that would be a problem. You can’t force people to use anything they don’t want to use. (Melanie Baker #socialcustomerservice)

(7) Parents of enlistees concerned about whether their son is safe would rather hear from the guy blogging from the trenches than the guy with the big title who’s far removed. If you entrust an enlistee to protect other people’s lives and be in charge of equipment costing millions of dollars, why would you worry about him having a Facebook account? (Capt. Nathan Broshear, U.S. Air Force, #mediarelationssocial)

(8) If you’re redesigning your online magazine, make it platform agnostic and easy on the eyes. Understand that people will be reading it in both landscape and profile, on their smart phones, on a tablet, and on a desktop. (Scott Dadich, Creative Director, Wired #wireddigitalrebirth) 

(9) Talk to people at parties. April Andrews, a member of CNN’s public relations team, whom I met at a reception hosted by iReport Senior Producer Lila King, insisted in taking me to a tweetup hosted by Sarah Evans. If you’ve been under a rock for the last few years, Sarah is that new media professional listed in February 2010 edition of Vanity Fair’s America’s Tweethearts, Forbes’ 14 Power Women to Follow on Twitter, invesp’s Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2009 and ereleases’ 30 PR Experts to Follow on Twitter.

(10) Did you neglect to take notes? Not at SXSWi? Use the # or hash tag assigned to that particular session to search the Twitter stream for what got said.  (Andrea Davis, an MS candidate at Simmons Grad. School of Library and Info Science whom I met on my Jet Blue flight returning to Boston.)

Essential Links:

CNN iReport

PRSarahEvans 

Douglas Rushkoff

Dana Boyd

A Newbie’s Take on SXSW

(Photo credit: Projectdiaspora.org)

Austin – It’s been a heady experience watching thousands of people peering down at their iPhones as they stroll around the streets surrounding the Austin Convention Center and a handful of hotels hosting the interactive portion of the South by Southwest Festival, affectionately known as SXSWi. People can also be seen holding their iPhones up to sites of interest. Are they snapping pics to be Tweeted or using augmented reality, a new cool kid, mobile application imposing informative text over what’s being seen?

As a middle-aged woman here amid swarms of loveable, friendly geeks in their twenties and thirties, I have little trepidation about asking questions that betray me as a newbie. T-shirts with eye-catching graphics are always an ice-breaker, and when I approach a young man with Venmo across his chest, I can’t resist asking him what Venmo does.

Jameel Farruk is only too happy to explain that Venmo is a new mobile service that lets you use your smart phone to exchange money via text messages. The Venmo account can pull from a credit card or a bank account. You can pay for services with Venmo -- same way you would with a debit or credit card -- assuming the vendor has a Venmo account. The service is in beta mode and invitation only at the moment for SXSW registrants.

Standing in line to enter a forum on the “what’s next in mobile experiences,” I query another young man, Vinicius Vacanti, about the Yipit on his name badge. He explains that Yipit is an online service, now available in key cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston that allows people to purchase gift certificates for a variety of services – including restaurants, spa services and stuff like cooking lessons – for a fraction of face value.

 

As one fellow communications professional, a middle-aged IBM alum told me, what you see at SXSWi is likely to come into widespread use two years from now. So there really is something to the festival’s motto, “tomorrow happens here.” We happened to be standing in the packed Lanai Rooftop Lounge, the site of the

“State of Now – 140 Conference SXSW Cocktail Party” hosted by new media rock star Jeff Pulver.

I’ve actually been more of a “lurker” than “creator” on Twitter these last couple of days because I want to soak everything in before I attempt to add any value with Tweets marked #SXSW. Still the Tweet that really made me smile came from @ralphcochrane, the co-founder of a mobile and online service called MOFILM.

Ralph’s Tweet was a link to an iPhone shot of the contents of the SXSW goodie bag sprawled across a hotel room bed. He framed the question posed by every conference attendee across the globe: which is the swag worth keeping and what should be tossed?

I caught up with Ralph, an incredibly gracious man, at the 140C cocktail party. He confided that like most parents, he and his wife have concerns about their 16-year-old son being on Facebook – accepting the FB account as part of new media parenting.

Ralph's response to my query about what brings him to SXSW proved fascinating. MOFILM is a competition site that helps aspiring filmmakers create promotional videos for big brands and social causes. Among MOFILM’s clients are AT&T, Campbell’s, Chevrolet, Haagen-Dazs, Pepsi, and Renaissance Hotels and Resorts – to mention just a few. The winning videos get shown at major film festivals including Tribeca and Cannes. Curiously, Ralph began his professional life as an engineer.

SXSW is ultimately about the fulfillment of dreams. Waiting for a panel discussion on how to create viral videos, I struck up a conversation with an exceedingly friendly and articulate young man named Peter Murner. He grew up in Bourne, Massachusetts and majored in filmmaking at Fitchburg State. Just before his final semester of senior year, he googled “film production and distribution,” found AMS Pictures, and headed to Austin for a six month, unpaid internship with 60-hour workweeks. 

A guy clad in cargo shorts, Ralph Lauren blue oxford button-down, and backwards baseball cap, Peter figured Austin's filmmaking community would feel more welcoming than that of New York or L.A.  Four years later he’s an account manager passionate about the company’s work -- including training and educational films to help low-income families choose the most nutritious of WIC approved foods -- and another focused on helping low-income kids and their parents prepare for the college application and financial aid process.

2010 is the first time Peter got to experience SXSW as a badge-wearer on behalf of AMS Pictures and he was determined to make the most of the opportunity. So am I.

Helpful links

South by Southwest Interactive

Venmo

The Thrillist talks about Venmo

Yipit

MOFILM

AMS Pictures

Headed to SXSW, Slouching Toward Geekdom

(Photo: Courtesy of Swarm Collective)

My world is getting geekier than I could ever have imagined when I got my first Internet enabled computer back in 1995. This week I’m headed to a conference in Austin, Texas called South by Southwest Interactive or SXSW. Once dubbed “spring break for geeks,” this event will draw more than 10,000 attendees with a stake in new media, and a compulsion to stay ahead of the curve. Who can resist the “tomorrow happens here” tag line?

Yes, I work in public relations, and continue to be a card-carrying member of Public Relations Society of America. But it’s been years since I’ve been to their annual, national conference – even though they’ve started to feature speakers like Brian Solis, a Silicon Valley PR guru known for his proficiency with social media.

Were it not for my son-in-law, Etan, I might not be going. My personal consumer tech coach, he helped me set up my blog, get it registered on Boston.com and Technorati, and also taught me about “tagging,” or adding search terms to improve its ranking in Google searches. Knowing he was going to SXSW in March 2009, I stalked him on Twitter – eager to find out why the conference in Austin was such a big deal for communications junkies.

Is it a see and be seen event – just like most professional conferences? Following not just Etan’s posts, but anything marked #SXSW on Twitter, I realized that if I wanted to see and hear the heavyweights in communicating all things online, this was the place to be in March 2010.

At the risk of sounding like a Jeff Keni Pulver groupie, I’ll admit that I can’t wait to him talk about “The State of Now” at his mini 140C event at SXSW. (I came away from his 140C event in New York last June feeling like a whole new Twitter world had opened up to me, and still enjoy strutting around the gym in the Twitter t-shirt that came in the swag bag.)

I’m also looking forward to hearing Lila King, Senior Producer for CNN’s iReport, Gary Vaynerchuk, star of Wine Library TV, author of a book on building brand equity called Crush It, Twitter CEO Evan Williams, and Mashable’s Pete Cashmore. 

But I’m also feeling anxious. It’s an anxiety that stems not from flying or dread of getting bumped from the one and only non-stop flight to Austin on Jet Blue that I monitored daily last August. My technophobia -- coupled with a fear of being judged hopelessly not cool -- is rearing its ugly head.

Yesterday I happened to read Robert Scoble’s post called “Augment Your SXSW Reality.” Knowing the man has a reputation for being a new media genius and pioneer, I thought I should read what he said with care.

Of course I had loaded the SXSW iPhone app more than a month ago. But now Scoble was telling me I needed to use the SXSW QR Code. I now know that badges of conference attendees have will a “Quick Response” bar code, enabling them to exchange contact info on their smart phones. Business cards will be so not cool.

Following Scoble’s instructions to the letter, I downloaded an iPhone app called I-Nigma that will allow my phone to scan other people’s badges and vice versa. I began to get goose bumps at the prospect of non-techie me practicing with the online bar code provided by SXSW.

Then reality hit. Scoble noted that AT&T, the service provider for my i-Phone and G-d knows how many other attendees bearing i-Phones, is doing its best to prevent service lapses during the conference. But just in case, he’s bringing his ‘Droid.

I haven’t asked Etan if he’s got an Android in addition to his i-Phone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does. I guess I’ll have to make do.

  

Tales of Stolen Shoes

The story on the front page of today’s Sunday Times sounds like something out of Sex in the City. Remember the time Carrie Bradshaw arrived at a friend’s party in Brooklyn and was asked to check her trademark Manolo Blahnik’s at the door? The shoes were stolen -- presumably by another guest -- and the rest of the episode focused on whether Carrie should demand that the host reimburse her for an obscenely expensive pair of shoes.

The difference is the story in the Times is set in Seoul, South Korea, and deals more with men’s shoes than women’s. One thief allegedly stole 1700 pair of expensive, designer shoes. The police believe he took them from – among other places -- funeral homes connected to hospitals. The story goes on to say that Korean culture encourages people to remove their shoes not only at funerals but at restaurants and other places too.

According to the story by Choe-Sang-Hun, the Seoul police set up a massive lost and found after discovering the cache of shoes. Unfortunately only 95 out of the 400 victims who showed up could be matched with their stolen footwear.

I admit to having a no shoes rule in my home – particularly in winter weather. We have a small Oriental rug in our vestibule, the gift of one of Dennis’ Persian clients. It absorbs water, sand, salt, and mud particles beautifully, and that’s where most people volunteer to leave their shoes. But I wouldn’t dream of asking anybody to leave their shoes in the hallway of our condo complex, and wisely chose to suspend the rule the day we hosted Daphne and Etan’s engagement party.

The shoes we wear are a part of our identity, and losing them can feel like identity theft – though I would never pretend the consequences are as severe. Unlike Carrie Bradshaw, I own no Manolo Blahnik’s. Aside from the fact that I’m in no position to pay close to $1,000 for a pair of sandals, my bunions preclude me from wearing high heels.

Similarly, on the advice of an orthopedic surgeon who advised against bunion surgery, I’ve stopped wearing the Ferragamo Vara bow pumps I used to purchase in multiple colors. My dressiest shoes are of the Taryn Rose variety, black ballerina flats accented with a silver rhinestone on each vamp.

With Boston experiencing sunshine and 50-degree weather, on Friday evening, I felt compelled to order a pair of new Mephisto sandals. After talking with a very helpful Zappos customer service rep., I decided to settle for a style called Halona in black. Though I preferred the silver, the likelihood of a new shipment in my size seemed unlikely.

The shoes are what my Mom would have called scuffs, the type secured to one’s foot with just a narrow band – just like the Dr. Scholl’s exercise sandals I wore in college. I suspect the shoes identify me as a woman who puts comfort before style.

Though my Dad has always discouraged me from leaving ANY of my possessions in public places, I have no choice when it comes to rowing. With sneakers mounted on most racing shells, rowers typically leave their shoes on the dock.

My rowing club is a place where everybody knows one another, and I never thought what happened to the Seoul funeral goers could happen there. Still somebody tried to steal my Nike rubber scuffs with the Velcro closures the year I rowed in the 2005 Head of the Charles Regatta.

When I returned from my race, my shoes were not on the dock where I’d left them. After gathering my belongings from the locker room, I decided to run down to the dock just one last time in my socks. The scuffs had reappeared, and I scooped them up with great pleasure – knowing that whatever jerk had “borrowed” them would be walking over a lot of gravel.

I’ve learned my lesson. Despite abhorring the identity conferred on the wearer of Crocs, I own a pair just for rowing. Unlike those really ugly ones in bright colors that look like clogs, mine are baby blue and open toed. I bought them for $14 at TJ Maxx, and if anybody wants to steal them, be my guest.

In Seoul, Police Link 1,700 Pairs of Shoes to Just 2 Greedy Feet

Carrie Bradshaw's Stolen Manolo Blahniks

Boomer Friends Foursquare

(Photo Courtesy Tippingpointlabs.com)

It’s 5:18 a.m., I’m at home blogging, and a burden has been lifted from my shoulders. Since I’m not at my gym, there’s no need to whip out my iPhone and check in on Foursquare. Huh? About a month ago, Daphne turned me on to a new, mobile smart phone application that tells “friends” exactly where I am.

When I asked my daughter how to use Foursquare, her response was of the try it, you’ll like it variety: “Oh Mom, just go online, open an account, and play with it.” I’ve since learned that if I check in often enough at one place, I can earn “badges.” So, for example, I am now the “Mayor” of Healthworks Brookline, the Milk Street Café, my default lunch eatery, and my favorite Chinese restaurant, Jumbo Seafood in Newton Centre. Too bad the first person to “check in” at Jumbo got its name screwed up, and there seems no easy way to change it, which irks me.

As a baby boomer, my only Foursquare “friends” are two women I’ve met at national conferences for communications professionals, a friend who’s in charge of new media for the Governor’s Office, a college professor who’s a friend of my son-in-law, Etan, and of course Daphne and Etan. Recently a reporter for the local NPR affiliate whom I met through Twitter accepted my “friend” request.

Since Foursquare provides people with my precise physical location, I’ve made a point of accepting “friend” requests only from people I know and like. I know when the WBUR reporter – also getting familiar with Foursquare – has arrived at work, and also when he’s arrived home, because he, too is taking the time to “check in.” I also know when my friend, Brad, is at his gym swimming laps for yet another one of his upcoming triathlons.

On my recent visit to Atlanta, Daphne and Etan laughed when they saw I’d already checked in at restaurants like Six Feet Under – where I used Foursquare’s “Tips” function to report a 45 minute wait, and Ria’s Bluebird, where I gave a big thumbs up to the caramelized banana pancakes floating in hot maple syrup.  

The developers of Foursquare presumably had a serious business purpose when they created this new smart phone app. Real friends in search of something to do on a Friday night can use the app to see who’s gathering at which bar, and use Foursquare’s little mapping function if the location is unfamiliar.

Some people use it to see what trusted friends think of a particular bistro – the value of the tips function is obviously a function of the number of “friends” one has. Supposedly restaurants or other vendors may eventually choose to reward people with frequent check-ins. The latter seems a little silly, since Dennis and I are regulars at most of the places we eat, and get greeted by name.

Yes, Foursquare can be irritating, and my niece, Ruth, who presumably is not using this hot new app, didn’t hesitate to call me on what she considered annoying behavior. I thanked her for telling me to de-link Foursquare from my Twitter account because she would prefer not to receive a Tweet five times a week telling her I’m at the gym – even if I provide tips about Zumba instructors.

If truth be told, I began using Foursquare for the same reasons I opened LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts, and also purchased my iPhone and flip video camera. As a new media newbie, I learn best by experimenting. 

FourSquare How to Videos on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm12GMKBF2w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnq_mWhUH9w