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How to enable Verizon free call filtering

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Want to learn how to enable Verizon free call filtering? Read on!

Verizon now offers free call filtering, but enabling it can be incredibly frustrating! Many reviews complain that after downloading the Verizon Call Filter app, no option for the free version appears. Instead, you are only offered a free 10-day trial or the option to purchase a monthly subscription.

Here’s how to activate the free version of Verizon Call Filter

I found these instructions buried in a comment on the wonderful TidBITS website, posted by Paul7. I have cleaned up Paul’s explanation and added a couple of screenshots, but Paul deserves full credit for this solution.

The crucial step omitted from Verizon’s incredibly brief explanation of free call filtering activation is that if enrolling via the Call Filter App doesn’t work, you need to log in to My Verizon. Here’s what to do.

  1. Sign in to your Verizon account.
  2. Go to My Plans & Services and select Manage Products & Apps.
    Or your menu might look like the image below, in which case go to Plan and select Add-ons and apps.
  3. Click on the Get Products tab and the Premium Products option.How to enable Verizon free call filtering
  4. Scroll down until you find the Call Filter app and select the Call Filter Free option.How to enable Verizon free call filtering
  5. You’ll see a Checkout box where you can add Call Filter Free to the lines in your plan. Select the checkboxes next to the lines you want, and click Confirm Purchase.How to enable Verizon free call filtering
  6. On your phone, close the Verizon Call Filter app if it’s currently open. When you reopen it you’ll see that free call filtering has been turned on!
  7. Paul notes that if you have more than two lines, you may have to go through this process multiple times since it only shows two lines at a time. Alternately, your My Verizon may offer this process for each device/line separately. If that’s the case, select each device in turn and repeat the above process.
  8. Finally, follow the steps in Josh Center‘s helpful TidBITS article to enable Verizon Call Filter’s spam filtering.

That’s it! Did this work for you? Do you have comments/additions/corrections? Please share them in the comments below.

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The hive mind will see you now

Monday, February 11th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

Check out the above video. The hive mind will see you now.

In his post “The fourth cycle of the hive mind (and what to do about it)” Seth Godin explores how advances in computers are changing our world.

The first three of his revolutionary cycles are well established, the fourth is now arriving. Cycles one through three introduced calculation and data storage, connection, and shifting place and time.

Above all, Seth’s fourth cycle adds prediction.

“Call it AI if you want to, but to be specific, it’s a combination of analyzing information and then predicting what we would do if we knew what the computer knew.

…we’re giving those computers the ability to make predictions based on what thousands of people before us have done.

…If you’re a mediocre lawyer or doctor, your job is now in serious jeopardy. The combination of all four of these cycles means that the hive computer is going to do your job better than you can, soon.

With each cycle, the old cycles continue to increase. Better databases, better arithmetic. Better connectivity, more people submitting more data, less emphasis on where you are and more on what you’re connected to and what you’re doing.

…just as we made a massive leap in just fifteen years, the next leap will take less than ten. Because each cycle supports the next one.”

In an earlier post, I wrote about how neural networks can now quickly learn to do certain tasks better than humans with no external examples, only the rules that govern the task environment.

Seth points out that when we supply computers with the huge, rapidly growing databases of human behavior, the fourth cycle becomes even more capable.

In conclusion, Seth ends with:

“Welcome to the fourth cycle. The hive will see you now.“

Attributions: Clip of AI HR interview and poster image

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Why have my Twitter impressions suddenly risen?

Thursday, March 29th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

Why have my Twitter impressions suddenly risen?Something strange is happening in the world of Twitter. For well over a year my average Twitter impressions count has hovered at 2.0K impressions per day. (Twitter defines an impression as anytime a Twitter user sees your Tweet.) I’ve never seen that figure deviate by more than 5% (i.e. between 1.9 — 2.1K) for a long time.

And then, starting at the beginning of March, I’ve watched my daily impression count steadily rise to 2.7K per day. Every time I check, it’s gone up. That’s a 35% increase in one month!

I haven’t changed my tweeting activity in any way recently. I continue to post each day:

  • One tweet about my latest blog post
  • One tweet for each of an assorted selection of 8 of my older blog posts;
  • A tweet or two about my upcoming Participate! workshop; and
  • A few mentions or retweets of other users I find interesting.

All my other Twitter monthly count statistics: engagements, link clicks, retweets, likes, and replies are essentially unchanged.

Yet Twitter insists that suddenly, 35% more people are seeing my tweets!

I would like to think that I’ve suddenly become 35% more interesting, but I doubt that’s what’s going on.

Is anyone else seeing this? Any ideas about what could be happening?

 

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How to create amazing conference programs that don’t waste attendee time

Monday, March 19th, 2018 by Adrian Segar

How to create amazing conference programsDo your conference programs include pre-scheduled sessions you belatedly discover were of little interest or value to most attendees? If so, you’re wasting significant stakeholder and attendee time and money — your conference is simply not as good as it could be.

Now imagine you could learn how to routinely create conference programs that reliably include the sessions attendees actually want and need. Imagine you could create amazing conference programs that don’t waste attendee time. How much value would that add to your event; for your attendees, your sponsors, and your bottom line?

If you’re serving up a program that’s 100% pre-determined, if you’re not crowdsourcing part or all of your conference program at the meeting, I guarantee you are not creating the best possible conference program.

In fact, my research has shown that at least 50% of the sessions you’re offering are not what attendees actually want.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

I’ve put everything I’ve learned from 33 years of participant-driven conference program design experience into my new book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need which covers all you need to know and do to successfully integrate effective real-time program crowdsourcing into your events and sessions.

Event Crowdsourcing will teach you how to create conference programs that are what your attendees actually want and need.

Every single time.

You’ll learn that to build the perfect program, every successful conference requires the following components:

  • Discovering in real-time attendee needs, wants, and resources.
  • Uncovering the most important topics and issues to include by:
    — efficiently obtaining suggestions and offers.
    — cleaning up potential topics.
    — selecting the most highly rated topics.
  • Determining the right sessions to hold.
  • Scheduling sessions to create an optimum conference program.
  • Designing sessions that meet attendees’ needs and wants.

You’ll learn how to select the best techniques to crowdsource all or part of any event. Whether it’s a one-day meeting with thirty participants or a four-day conference with thousands.

You’ll learn, detailed step by step, how to apply these techniques to successfully crowdsource your event.

Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need is now available! Buy it here!

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All I want for Christmas is an unFUBARed SM feed

Monday, December 11th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

All I want for Christmas is an unFUBARed SM feed

FUBAR
acronym

  1. Google it.

FUBARed SM feed
noun phrase

  1. A social media (SM) platform feed that is not a chronological list of all posts, and only those posts.

I am sick of social media platforms deciding for me what I should see. (Read this entire post for a rare exception.)

Every major social media platform started with a simple chronological feed of all the posts from all the people you chose to follow/be “friends” with.

But every platform subsequently FUBARed their social media feed. They dropped some posts entirely, and added content that you had never asked for.

  • Facebook’s news feed has been FUBARed since 2009.
  • YouTube has been messing around with search ranking of videos since 2012.
  • LinkedIn’s homepage feed became FUBARed in 2016, when the company folded in its “Pulse” content.
  • Twitter’s timeline got FUBARed in 2016. (You can turn off their adding “tweets you are likely to care about most”, but they still insert tweets “we think you might be interested in” into your timeline.)
  • Instagram stopped chronologically listing posts in 2016.
  • Google Plus has fussed around with its home feed algorithm for several years, but it doesn’t matter because — and I wish this wasn’t true — Google Plus is dead.

Here are three reasons SM channels do this. Feel free to add more in the comments. They:

  1. Want to add sponsored paid content (aka advertisements) so they can make money.
  2. Want to create incentives (like “boosting” your Facebook posts) to pay them to let more people see your posts.
  3. Know that some of their users — the ones who “friend” or “follow” everyone — would quickly withdraw from their service if the resulting torrent of requested posts were actually provided.

No one likes reason #1 but we understand why SM platforms do it. They need to make money to stay in business. Fair enough.

Reason #2 is really damaging to the concept of a SM channel as a reliable communications tool. Old media doesn’t have this option: when you buy the paper or watch TV you receive the same content as everyone else. But today, two users who follow the exact same people on Facebook may see very different feeds, thanks to Facebook’s secret and ever-changing algorithm. Essentially, Facebook makes the feed unreliable so the company can make additional revenues. I find this unreliability infuriating, and it’s why I use Facebook as little as possible.

Reason #3 is understandable — but what’s annoying is there’s no way to turn this behavior off! It would be easy for SM channels to default to their algorithmic filtering but provide an option for users to say, “Just give me everything I’ve said I wanted to see. Yes, I know I’ll still get all the ads you insert, but I’d really like not to miss anything else.” I guess that they worry too many people would choose to see everything, and the incentive for organizations to pay them to boost content eyeballs would be reduced. In fact, I suspect that only a small percentage of users (like me) would pick this option.

Ultimately, I want a social media channel that doesn’t filter. I suspect I’m not alone. Let me pick what I want to see, and let me see it. All of it.

Is that too much to ask?

A reward for those who’ve read this far — an unFUBARed SM feed!
I know one way to get an unFUBARed SM feed. From Twitter, no less — use Twitter Lists! If you create a private Twitter list of people whose tweets you want to see, you can view the resulting stream on Twitter at https://twitter.com/YourTwitterID/lists/NameOfYourList or via other Twitter clients like TweetDeck and the list is chronological and unfiltered! (Please don’t tell ’em; they’d probably FUBAR it immediately.)

Do you know other ways to get unFUBARed SM feeds? Feel free to share in the comments!

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Everybody likes me, nobody tweets me, guess I’ll post on LinkedIn

Monday, December 4th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

Everybody likes me, nobody tweets me, guess I’ll post on LinkedIn. guess I'll post on LinkedIn

The effectiveness of Twitter as a connective social media channel is declining
In July I wrote about why 2017 is a tipping point for Twitter, noting that the rate at which users follow established accounts has slowed dramatically. As the year draws to a close I’m seeing further evidence that conversations in the Twittersphere are drying up too.

The evidence for my observations comes from my own Twitter account. My experience may not be representative of other Twitter users. But, as in my tipping point post, there’s a wealth of corroborative evidence from other sources.

The evidence
Here’s what I’m seeing. First, here’s a graph of my cumulative retweets over the last seven years.

Notice the fall off over the last eighteen months?

Second, the same graph for mentions.

Here we see a gradual decline in Twitter mentions for the last three years, one that has become increasingly severe recently.

Unfortunately, what I don’t have is a corresponding graph for the number of Twitter likes over time. If I did, based on my regular observations it would show a significant increase in likes over time. I estimate that the increase in likes is approximately the same as or slightly greater than the decrease in mentions and RTs combined.

To summarize, my tweets are getting just as much or more engagement than before. But much more of the engagement is in likes (“I’m interested in this and approve/agree/will mark it for later study”) at the expense of mentions and RTs (“I want to share your tweet with others/respond to what you said“).

What are the implications for social media marketing and branding?
To me, these findings mean that people are still reading my tweets at the same or higher rates. But they are less likely to interact with or share them.

The effectiveness of Twitter as a social media channel that fosters connection and conversation is declining.

In addition, I doubt that the recent doubling of maximum tweet length from 140 to 280 characters will make any difference to the trends I’ve noted. In fact, it may exacerbate them. I find that I’m less inclined to fully read the longer tweets increasingly showing up on my Twitter feeds.

An alternative channel to consider
Although it is not an especially interactive social media channel, I’ve been finding that sharing my website posts on LinkedIn has led to an increasing number of views and comments recently.

I have three caveats, however:

  • I don’t recommend posting to LinkedIn Groups anymore, since policy changes have severely limited their effective reach.
  • Also, I don’t recommend publishing an article on LinkedIn. That’s because your content is now tied to their platform, rather than one you control. This is a mistake.
  • Finally, when you share a post, be aware that LinkedIn counts as a “view” when the post summary displays on the viewer’s screen. The “viewer” doesn’t have to click through to read the post in order to be counted! So be aware that the number of post “views” reported by LinkedIn exaggerates the number of people who actually see your entire post.

Are you noticing trends that are affecting social media engagement? Share your observations in the comments below!

Image from J House Vlogs

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Why 2017 was a tipping point for Twitter

Monday, July 17th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

Twitter analytics

After years of predictable behavior, Twitter analytics reveal that something strange is going on with how Twitter is used.

Something is happening to Twitter, but you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

I started tweeting 16 years ago. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Twitter would turn out to be the most important way for people to discover my work and for me to connect with thousands of kindred souls all over the world who share my specialized interests. Over time, Conferences That Work grew into a website with ten million page views per year.

But as 2016 drew to a close I noticed that something was changing in the Twitter world. Here’s a graph of my follower count over time:

Twitter analytics

What I’ve noticed about my Twitter analytics over the last nine months
Since I began posting in June 2009, the graph shows that I consistently added between two to three followers per day — until around September 2017. At that point, highlighted by the red circle, there was an unusual increase to ~six followers/day for the remainder of 2016, followed by a sudden flattening that has persisted through the first half of 2017 to less than one follower/day.

In 2017 I’ve also noticed a dramatic reduction in the number of retweets I’ve been receiving. Though I haven’t had time to develop quantitative statistics, it looks to me as though in 2017 retweets have been replaced to a large extent with likes, (though the frequency of mentions seems more or less unchanged).

Why are these changes happening?

I’ll begin with a caution that everything that follows is ultimately speculative. I can’t say definitively what is going on, and can think of multiple plausible reasons for these significant changes. For example:

  1. My experience may not be representative of other Twitter users. A sudden surge of engagement with my posts during Q4 2016, was followed by a rapid loss of interest.
  2. The US election results caused more people to visit Twitter for a few months, but attention eventually shifted to the continuous torrent of breaking news at the expense of general engagement.
  3. Twitter user growth has been flattening for some time as per the graph below; my 2016 EOY bump is reflected in the graph’s Q1 2017 bump, but future official statistics will show little continued active growth.

    Taken from statista.com on July 14, 2017; click on graphic to see current stats
  4. In retrospect, 2016-2107 will be seen as a period when late adopters continued to join Twitter, but a critical mass of active users concluded that engagement on the platform was not for them and moved to other social media platforms (I’m thinking Instagram for one). Although Twitter seems to be doing well in percentage market share of social networking site visits, as per the statistics below, it’s becoming more a site that users visit for breaking news — engagement is moving to other platforms.

    Taken from dreamgrow.com on July 14, 2017; click on graphic to see current stats

What do I think is actually going on?

I’d put my money mainly on #4 above. Perhaps this Twitter analytics trend has been accelerated by #2’s associated flood of U.S. breaking news (61% of my followers are in the United States). It will be interesting to see if the trend continues, which may help to shine more light on what, to me, are changes that are interesting and important for anyone who uses Twitter for connection, content marketing, and engagement.

What do you think is going on? Add your ideas in the comments below!

P.S. My friend Heidi Thorne has just posted her thoughts on the changing Twitter landscape. Well worth a read from a different perspective!

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22 great Apple apps for event professionals

Monday, May 22nd, 2017 by Adrian Segar

great Apple apps for event professionals

Two years have passed since the last update of my great Apple apps for event professionals. Apps continue to be born, evolve, and, sometimes, die—so it’s time for my latest list of event professionals’ great apps!

Read the rest of this entry »

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The best way I know to radically improve your conferences

Monday, September 5th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

This 3-minute video explains why registering for one of my upcoming participation techniques workshops could be the best career decision you’ll make this year.

You’ll save $100 when you sign up for my Chicago workshop by September 9th, earn 16.00 CE hours, and — most important — learn how to significantly increase attendee satisfaction at your events.

Please share this post with your colleagues too! Thanks!

Stay informed about future workshops or help Adrian hold one!
Can’t make it to the Chicago workshop but want to be informed about future workshops? Interested in partnering with Adrian to hold a workshop in your location? Just complete the form below! Any information collected will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold, rented, loaned, or otherwise disclosed.

    Your Location (required)

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    Ask Me Anything About Conference Panels—Annotated Video

    Monday, July 25th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

    I guarantee you will learn many new great ideas about conference panels from this Blab of my Thursday chat with the wonderful Kristin Arnold. I’ve annotated it so you can jump to the good bits . (But it’s pretty much all good bits, so you may find yourself watching the whole thing. Scroll down the whole list; there are many advice gems, excellent stories and parables, folks show up at our homes, Kristin sings, etc.!) With many thanks to Kristin and our viewers (especially Kiki L’Italien who contributed mightily) I now offer you the AMA About Conference Panels annotated time-line.

    [Before I turned on recording] We talked about: what panels are and aren’t; the jobs of a moderator; panel design issues; some panel formats; and our favorite panel size (Kristin and I agree on 3).

    [0:00] Types of moderator questions.

    [1:30] Using sli.do to crowdsource audience questions.

    [2:40] Panel moderator toolboxes. One of Kristin’s favorite tools: The Newlywed Game. “What word pops into your mind when you think of [panel topic]?”

    [4:30] Audience interaction, bringing audience members up to have a conversation; The Empty Chair.

    [6:00] Preparing panelists for the panel.

    [9:10] Other kinds of panel formats: Hot Seat, controversial topics.

    [12:00] Continuum/human spectrograms/body voting and how to incorporate into panels.

    [13:50] Panelist selection.

    [14:40] Asking panelists for three messages.

    [16:30] How the quality of a moderator affects the entire panel.

    [17:30] More on choosing panelists.

    [18:30] How to provoke memorable moments during panels; Kristin gives two examples involving “bacon” and “flaw-some“.

    [20:30] Panelist homework. Memorable phrases: “The phrase that pays“; Sally Hogshead example.

    [23:00] Panelists asking for help. Making them look good.

    [24:10] Warming up the audience. The fishbowl sandwich: using pair-share as a fishbowl opener.

    [25:30] Other ways to warm up an audience: pre-panel mingling, questions on the wall, striking room sets.

    [26:30] Meetings in the round.

    [28:00] Kristin’s book “Powerful Panels“, plus a new book she’s writing.

    [29:00] Pre-panel preparation—things to do when you arrive at the venue.

    [30:00] Considerations when the moderator is in the audience.

    [31:00] Panelist chairs: favorite types and a clever thing to do to make panelists feel really special.

    [32:50] Where should the moderator be during the panel? Lots of options and details.

    [36:20] A story about seating dynamics from the late, great moderator Warren Evans.

    [37:50] The moderator as consultant.

    [38:40] Goldilocks chairs.

    [39:40] Adrian explains the three things you need to know to set chairs optimally.

    [41:00] “Stop letting the room set being decided for you,” says Adrian, while Kristin sees herself as more of a suggester.

    [44:40] When being prescriptive about what you need is the way to go.

    [46:30] Ideas about using screens at panel sessions.

    [49:00] The UPS truck arrives at Adrian’s office door!

    [50:00] Using talk show formats for panels: e.g. Sellin’ with Ellen (complete with blond wig.)

    [52:20] Kristin’s gardener arrives!

    [53:40] American Idol panel format.

    [55:20] Oprah panel format.

    [55:50] Control of panels; using Catchbox.

    [56:20] Ground rules for the audience.

    [59:10] What to say and do to get concise audience comments.

    [1:00:00] A sad but informative story about a panelist who insisted on keeping talking.

    [1:03:20] The Lone Ranger Fantasy.

    [1:04:00] The moderator’s job, when done well, is pretty thankless.

    [1:05:30] How you know if a panel is good. (Features mind meld between Kristin & Adrian!)

    [1:06:10] The end of the fishbowl sandwich.

    [1:07:40] Room set limitations caused by need to turn the room.

    [1:10:00] Language: ground rules vs covenant; “Can we agree on a few things?”; standing to indicate agreement.

    [1:13:00] You can’t please everyone.

    [1:14:20] Kristin breaks into song!

    [1:15:00] Non-obvious benefits obtained when you deal with an audience’s top issues.

    [1:15:50] Why you should consider responding to unanswered attendee questions after the panel is over.

    [1:16:40] The value (or lack of value) of evaluations.

    [1:18:00] Following up on attendee commitments.

    [1:20:00] Immediate evaluations don’t tell you anything about long term attendee change.

    [1:21:10] “Panels are like a Wizard of Oz moment.”

    [1:22:30] “Panels reframe the conversation in your head.”

    [1:25:00] Kristin’s process that quickly captures her learning and future goals; her continuous improvement binder.

    [1:26:40] Closing thoughts on the importance of panels, and goodbye.

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