You already know me as that guy who stops you cold in your tracks on the street, pleading, beckoning, or plaintively asking if you know all about those popular social media tools (aka "Web2.0") sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, or Facebook.

I'm that same kat who asks you what you're doing here in Cesko to leapfrog the inertia of our local bureaucracies and the manoeverings of our legions of stodgy gatekeepers who bar your rising up swiftly through the Czech ranks. The same apes who would prefer to keep you permanently servile to the Masters, who apparently have all of the right answers, all the time. These are the same, mostly older, women and men who could give a right two-poops about your otherwise novel ideas on how to business process improve or how to render even better customer service, thereby jacking up their bottom line.

Your ideas suck, they say, period. Improvements, they scoff...who needs yours.

Aha, I sense an opportunity! Do you?

So I ask the question again -- what are you doing, friend, to break through the tall barriers obstructing your path?

What social networking tools are you presently leveraging in order to network outside those traditional, inefficient channels? And have you been successful in building the kind of social network you deserve working outside of the Mainstream?

Who actually likes bureaucracy? Yet despite all of the complaints you'll generally hear about that same Czech bureaucracy, how many young people actually dare to do something about it? Hardly any whom I know personally. How many dare to suggest ways of using social networking tools as a means of creating nodes and contacts in ways which go above and beyond the same-old, same-old? I only know of a handful.

Allow me to introduce 3 new tools which I use on a daily basis to advance Our Czech Cause.

Utterz

You have something to say...then just utter it!

One of the few true Web2.0 finds which permits you to combine voice, pics, video, and text all from the same interface window -- with cross-posting capability to all of your other popular social networking sites like Twitter (explained below), Pownce, Blip.tv (plus several others). Whatever you post up at utterz.com goes careening onto your famous sites ten minutes later. Major upside with utterz.com? Now you can dial in your "utter" locally, at +420-246-019-060. I make a habit of "uttering" at least once a day, sometimes more, depending on how vigorous was my battle with the bureaucrats or how chatty I feel.

For an example of what an "utter" sounds like, touch this.


Twitter

Twitter is part of the popular "microblogging" trend presently happening on the dub-dub-dub.

The gist is to encapsulate what you're currently doing in the span of only 140 characters or less. "Tweet" as often as you like. If your tweets are savvy enough, you can amass a nice following relatively quickly -- not to mention learning a whackload of things as you go along. I've managed to glean hundreds of tech tips, a bevy of URL referrals, and you can even squizz breaking stories from certain parts of the globe via your Twitter contacts, very often faster than from mainstream media channels or traditional blogs.

Most Czechs will have already heard about Twitter because it's been around for the better part of a year. I've even got several Czechs on my list, who tweet in their vernacular. Have a look...

And -- time permitting (at 2:03 minutes) -- for your entertainment (wait until the Czech version of this comes out):




Wahooa

Wahooa is a new Prague-based, mostly American-run social advocacy initiative which will highlight a contentious Prague "social reform" campaign per week, throughout the entire summer. It's apparently been designed as a way to cast a discomfiting beacon on some of the more pernicious social problems plaguing our capital that the mainstream Czech media simply refuses to cover.

I suspect the reasons why mainstream Czech channels generally refuse to cover such issues ranges from:

** Czech media organs coming under the aegis of people with chummy ties to the ruling Parliamentary oligarchs and former Communists -- sorry, ahem...dissidents.
** apathy on the part of Czech citizens for issues generally deemed to be lost causes of Pyrrhic victories (not true, in my opinion).
** genuine schadenfreude on the part of the local Czech population for their fellow citizens (just have a read through today's Blesk [a Prague tabloid, for my US-based readers] and you'll see exactly what I mean).

I love Wahooa's tagline: "Evolution is nigh." Conjures up all manner of primate-like thoughts. Dig the logo, too.

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Enjoy the new toys, but remember to play safe.

I wish for you the very best of things,
ADM