Sex::Tech into the future - themes from the morning

Running around with our nerdy heads in the Sex::Tech clouds was the ultimate. However, the one regret that most of us at ISIS have is that we couldn't enjoy everything. However, the sessions that we did all enjoy together, the keynotes, really framed some of the central challenges public health-ers and educators on shoestring budgets are facing.

Day one:
Given the opportunity, youth will tell us what they want. They will tell us what's missing from the prevention messages they receive. Why doesn't public health employ more young people to reach their peers? "Digital natives" know how this stuff works. They are masters of flash, they are widget geniuses, networking gurus and mobile warriors. We should all diversify the age range of our staff.

Day two:
We are a creative group, scrappy fighters, and strategic friend makers. So...we need to make friends with the ad people, the business people, web designers and folks that don't always live in a pile of epi stats. Partnerships outside of government health arenas and outside of education are a great idea.

For more conference takes:
Margaret (ISIS' youth outreach coordinator) wraps things up nicely on the Sex::Tech blog as does our superpal Cory Silverberg in his post of the century on About.com. Also spreading the word are SexRev2.0 blogger Regina Lynn, Melissa Gira who live-blogged Marty Klein's popular session for thos who missed it, and Jeremy Fisher, our talented Fresh Focus third place winner.

Phalligator will soon return to regular programming with what's happening in the center of the sex/health/technology Venn diagram.

Fresh blogger face for Friday

ISIS has been changing whether you realize or not. Our new program manager, Allegra Madsen, will be guest blogging on Technically, it's About Sex! She's both cooler and nerdier than me and has blog ideas pouring out of her ears...I just can't hold her back any longer. Stay tuned for future sex/tech/health salads she'll concoct.



Happy Friday!

Social Site Aggregators - Useful?

Ever take a break at work to check your friends' blogs? Then take another minute to see if any of those new MySpace comments are real? Then another five minutes to upload a few photos of your weekend to Flickr...and before you know it you've forgotten whether your password on Twitter is hotdog1 or 1hotdog and you realize you really should get back to work. Does this happen to you?

I don't have the solution...and perhaps just more to add to the problem. But how can we begin to catalog the multiple profiles, tag collections, photos, podcasts, etc that we all love to consume into one place? And how can we start to realistically digest the media jumbles our friends create?

Well, there are some new options to try. Each has some strengths and some wussiness too. My friend Lauren from Object Adjective (they designed the Sex::Tech website for us) recently reviewed Plaxo Pulse.

Some others are Flock, FriendFeed, ProfileLinker, Fuser, Spokeo and MyLifeBrand.

Flock seems promising. You can access and update many social sites (the usual suspects plus Piczo, del.icio.us, Twitter, etc.). Flock even supports massive (up to 1000) picture uploads. One major downfall is that you have to download it. Alas.

What does this have to do with ISIS and sex you ask? Well, I'm not entirely sure, however, we have this contest called Fresh Focus. To promote the contest we have MySpace pages, a Flickr account, a couple of blogs, friends and colleagues that blog about us, press releases, emails coming in, emails going out, podcast promos, youtube videos...you get the idea. How can we manage all this stuff, even with a stellar cast of 6? We're working on finding the best way.

Happy Turkey everyone, if you do that sort of thing.

Blogger sex ??

So, a great blog I just found is Boinkology, edited by Lux Nightmare who offers "the sex ed you never got in school." Several clicks in I found this clip about "blogger sex." No, this is not about commenting back and forth or cybersex...the question is, if you are a blogger, do you blog about your first date with someone (or the first time you do it with them)? ...and the converse, if you are dating a blogger, should you worry that the word is already on the street?

Just some Friday fun. Scroll down to "blogger sex" and enjoy.



My thought is, if really like your new person, and you really can't resist, you'll write something very nice that you actually want them to find. If you don't like them, just remember the golden rule?

Massmen vlogger shows some skin

Daniel, a Massmen blogger known for his chronicle of non-monogamy struggles and recovery from long distance hell, is taking a step by using video blogging for the first time. Meet Victor and hear a little about their trip to Montreal in this first episode:


Nico the Great, another blogger of ours, recently sero-converted. Lately he has been challenged by people with age assumptions and has been frustrated with guys' takes on online status disclosure.
Read: Age is deceiving? and Newbie HIV+ vs. Seasoned HIV+.