While the BarCamp session selection is at random, the Centresource team is representing strongly, and we are stoked! Here is a list of the Centresourcerers and their respective topics.

Evan Owens & Chip Hayner – Stop Managing and Start Leading
Winston Hearn – Coffeescript: Six Reasons and a Movie
Micah Redding – Saving History from the Data Monsters
Mark Wise – Building Music Applications with Javascript
Jon Arnold & Centresource Panel – Minecraft: The Game for Everyman (and Woman)
Jeremy Holland – A Crash Course in Crypto
Nicholas Holland – Sneak Peek & Early Access to http://populr.me

We also had a hand in developing the newly launched BarCamp Nashville website. Shout out to our ace Drupal dev Evan Willhite for the awesome upgrades to the site.

If you’re not yet signed up to attend the event, go ahead and visit the sign up page, and we’ll see you there on October 20!

While it is a notable improvement, the update isn’t just the typical bug fix though. It is a step towards the social network digging deeper into the mobile world. As most folks are transitioning their web usage from laptops to mobile phones and tablets, companies like Facebook and Google are adjusting their platforms to stay viable and profitable.

A New York Times article about the topic quotes the company’s vice president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, as saying, “We have basically retooled and focused the company around mobile.” This shift includes Facebook integration with Apple’s upcoming iOS6 mobile operating system, which will allow users to post status updates through Siri and upload photos directly from their photostreams straight to Facebook.

There is also speculation that Facebook is developing its own mobile platform, but at this point it’s just speculation. With the company dependent on ad revenue, this might be a good way for them to combat the decreased screen size problem that mobile majority presents. The GPS / location features and constant accessibility of mobile phones allow for non-traditional ad types, not just smaller ads. Personally, I don’t know if I would want a Facebook phone, but the concept is definitely interesting. For now, I am just glad I can use my Facebook app without being disappointed with my user experience.

Like many of us have done, I talked to the service rep on the phone, signed up, and waited for the tech to come between 8am and 12pm. The tech came and installed the modem, he finished at about 3pm, and I had wireless internet! The following morning the internet was down, and I thought it was probably a fluke. I reset the modem, but had no luck, so I chalked it up to the modem getting acclimated to my house like a new pair of shoes. That afternoon when I returned home, the service was working fine, and continued working into the evening. The following morning, however, the service was down again. Deciding this was more than a fluke, I called customer service to try to get the issue resolved.

I will spare the chronological details of the 5 days that followed, but suffice it to say that I was on the phone with AT&T customer service for roughly an hour a day, spent several of those days waiting at home between 8am and 12pm, had at least 6 techs visit my house, and spoke with over 10 customer service reps who varied in competency. It was a poor customer experience to say the least.

I eventually got so frustrated with the customer service call centers that I took my issue to Twitter. (As a sidebar, I rarely rant or speak negatively on social media. I don’t feel that it helps anyone to permeate negativity…especially online, but in this instance I was mad.) I unleashed a bevvy of tweets, each one containing the @att mention, and bluntly described my situation. Within 20 minutes I received a reply tweet from AT&T’s social media team to send them a direct message with my account number. I did, and received a telephone call in about 15 minutes. The person whom I spoke with was on the ball. From what I understand, the members of the social media team are specially trained to deal with all aspects of all account types; apparently they are the gatekeepers of customer service.

After speaking with the gatekeeper, I had techs visit my house several times. Apparently, my issue was quite complicated. However, I felt like I was in good hands because I essentially had my own personal account manager whom I could call or email directly with any problems. Eventually the problem was resolved, and I received credits to my account for the inconveniences.

While I am satisfied that the issue is resolved, and happy that I now have a direct line to a gatekeeper, I am just generally disappointed with the whole experience. It is so backwards that I had to endure the incompetencies of a traditional customer service call center; backwards that I had to get mad and use Twitter with a high blood pressure fueled tweet rant; backwards that to get any efficient results I had to publicly blast the company. If I had bypassed the call center, would my tweets have been treated with the same sense of urgency?

The traditional call center model is known to be flawed. Anyone who has ever been put on hold for more than 10 minutes, spoken with someone whom they couldn’t phonetically understand, or had to relay their story multiple times to multiple reps knows that there is a serious problem within the customer service arena. How are so many companies big and small relying on call centers to serve their customers? What is the alternative? In this instance, I got pretty good results out of social media, but at the expense of my mental health and loss of time. If companies start turning to social media to resolve customer service issues, will it eventually turn into the new call center?

There has got to be a better way.

This content generation by the league and player/fan interaction is beneficial to the NBA brand, and it stands to reason that it is a model that will be followed by other sports leagues like the MLB and the NFL.

What NBA personalities, and which social platforms, do you like to interact with?