The things in my messenger bag:
Jennifer 8. Lee’s “Forune Cookie Chronicles”, macbook, black moleskine day planner, two moleskine sketchbooks (the red one and black one), ipod classic and headphones, business card holder, 13 Pilot G2s and a sharpie, wallet, ClifBar, CA ID card, lip gloss.

Two rules:
1. Give a crap.

To do this job well, you have to give a crap. You have to give a crap about community. You have to give a crap about connecting with people. You have to give a crap about providing relevant information, blogging, helping people, knowing everything about the industry and answering some of the weirdest questions ever. Above all, you have to give a crap about our end users. They’re the ones that matter. If you’re not serving them, you’re doing it wrong.

2. Stand up for yourself.

You know what you’re doing. Be vocal. Stand up for our end users when you’re asked to contribute. If you don’t, no one else will.

I think it applies to just about everything, no?

Last night during derby practice, I fell – a lot. At one point, I was hip checked so hard I went airborne. While I was in the air, someone canopenered me. Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back on the track, my skates under me. I’d like to show you my butt because there’s a fairly nice shiner on it.

Before I could really register what happened, though, I had gotten up and started skating again. I was halfway around the track before I realized that holy crap, I was in a world of hurt.

A few months ago, I spoke on a panel at a social media breakfast here in Memphis. Things were going pretty well – I was chatting about what I do at the day job and how I try to inject some personality and humanity into news updates.

At one point, one of the other pannelists said “I’m not going to go around advertising the fact that I’m in roller derby.” That’s totally how she said it. The “roller derby” was very much in vocal italics, and she was looking right at me.

It was a little weird. Yes, several times a week, I dress up like a super hero, lace my skates up and play a full-contact sport. Most of the time, I’m just your average social networking Girl Friday with a record and books addiction.

I don’t separate myself in my head, so why should I when I meet people? More and more frequently, work lives and personal lives are blending together. It’s not a bad thing – instead of fragmented people, we’ll have more whole ones.

What do you think? Should people keep their work lives and their personal lives separate? Do you? Would you rather do business with someone you knew on a personal level, or not?

Let’s say you run a company’s Twitter account and you’re looking to gain more followers. You sign up for one of these instant follower services because you see someone else on Twitter that’s posted about it. And yes, within an hour, you’ve got tons of new followers and you’re autofollowing them all back. Now, all you have to do is sit back and tweet, confident that your message is reaching the right people.

Only, it’s not. Sure, you may have thousands of followers, but when you rely on a sketchy follower service, you’re not necessarily reaching the people that care about your message. If your followers don’t care about your message, they’re not going to be engaged. Because Twitter is all about conversation, engagement is everything.

Ultimately, there’s no substitute for seeking out likeminded people and replying to them, retweeting them, and following them. It’s going to take a lot longer to get a huge follower number, but if you’re playing well with others, people will notice.

If you use a scammy get-followers-quick scheme, people will notice that, too. If I’m one of those people, chances are, I’m not sticking around.