Google Buzz is a Twitter/Facebook type of sharing service in Gmail. You can communicate and share items of interest with your Gmail contacts and others you meet on Buzz. Conceptually, Buzz works very much like Facebook.

Buzz came out of nowhere on February 9th. No one, I mean NO ONE, saw Buzz coming. Google kept it totally under wraps until the day it was announced. None of the pundits or publications ever spoke of Buzz. This is certainly a tribute to Google’s ability to keep the wraps on their secret projects.

Buzz’s Potential
I believe it’s accurate to say that Buzz has the potential to facilitate communication in a way that’s nothing short of revolutionary. Why? Because it’s so tightly integrated with Gmail. Your Buzz updates go into your sent mail and buzzes you comment on are sent to your inbox. You can easily create filters to keep them out of the inbox, that’s your call. This tight integration provides a new type of email experience that you simply won’t find with other email services. Yes, Buzz is still a little rough around the edges and probably isn’t quite ready for mass adoption. I think it’s safe to say that Buzz is more for geeks like me at this early stage of the game.

Gmail Integration: Asset or Liability?
I also understand that most of you who are still hanging on to your Hotmail or Yahoo accounts are not likely not move to Buzz right away. I know how difficult it is for most people to embrace change like this, especially if the tools you’re using now work well for you. Heck, many of you are just now starting to use Facebook regularly and it’s been around a few years.

While I believe it’s awesome in terms of current and future product features for Buzz to be part of Gmail, I understand that this integration could also be a liability when you consider how many people are using other email services. My guess is that Google will offer Buzz as a standalone application for all you Hotmail and Yahoo mail users. This would be an application similar to Facebook that would not require you to be a Gmail user to post updates with Buzz. Undoubtedly you’ll need a Google account though, much the same as you must now sign-up with Facebook.

Perhaps once you start using Buzz you’ll find some good reasons to migrate to Gmail in order to enjoy the benefits of having full integration with your email service.

More About Buzz
Rather than rehashing what dozens of respected journalists and pundits have been saying about Buzz over the past week, I thought I’d highlight some of what I consider to be among the best writings to date about what Buzz is and what it might mean for you. If you want to learn more, give them a read.

What is Buzz?
Getting started with Buzz
Google Buzz in Gmail from the official Gmail blog
Google Buzz Brings Social Sharing, Aggregation to Gmail by Louis Gray
Most Popular Buzzers

Tips for Using Buzz
Millions of Buzz users, and improvements based on your feedback from the official Gmail blog
12 Undocumented Tricks for Google Buzz from aext.net
Google Buzz Tips from Google Operating System

Buzz News, Discussion, Criticism and Response from Google
Buzz on Mashable
Dèjá Google from Slate
A new Buzz startup experience based on your feedback from the official Gmail blog
Google Message Feature Moves Beyond Twitter from the NY Times

There are many more articles and discussions about Buzz. Watch my Buzz feed where I’ll be posting links to these and other resources to help keep you up to date what’s going on with Buzz.

Finally, turn Buzz off if it’s not for you.
If after reading about Buzz and playing with it some, you may decide that it’s just not for you. Or you may just decide that you have too much on your plate at this time to mess around with another social networking tool. Heck, some days it seems that just keeping up with your Facebook friends can be overwhelming. I understand. If you’re a Gmail user you can easily turn off Buzz. If you use Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, you can just ignore Buzz.

If you do ignore Buzz, promise me that you’ll take another look at Buzz in about 6 months. You’ll see a lot of changes by then and I believe, just like Facebook, Buzz it will become a resource you won’t want to be without. I have a feeling that you’ll eventually be won over to this versatile and promising technology. Google is going to give you lots of reasons to love it. I predict that eventually you’ll be Buzzing too.

The monthly Knoxville Geek Breakfast is joining forces with other Knoxville community advocates to promote community building and geekdom within the greater Knoxville area. Today’s breakfast had representatives from Knoxville Overground, Entrepreneurs of Knoxville, the new JustUsLeeg.com, and the soon to be legendary CodeStock event. We shot some video of each of these folks briefly describing their organization to the group.

Alex Lavidge – Knoxville Overground

Leonard Knight – Entrepreneurs of Knoxville

Patrick Christian and Brian Ellis – JustUsLeeg.com

Walter Lounsbery of ETNUG & CodeStock

The first Austin Geek Breakfast was held yesterday morning during SXSW. Even though it took place at 8:00 on Sunday morning (what was Dave thinking??) we had around 25 people show up. Several folks from Austin attended, as well as people from around the country and the world. That’s right we had one geek who flew in all the way from London to attend. Well, maybe he was really here for SXSW, but we’d like to think the geek breakfast had something to do with his decision to attend. We even had social media rock star Saul Colt show up.

It was definitely an impressive group of geeks. Kudos to Dave Delaney for doing such a great job getting getting these breakfasts organized around the country and around the world. If you’d like to start a geek breakfast in your area, check out geekbreakfast.org for details.

Here’s a playlist of 4 videos I shot during the event:

I also shot a few photos:

This week was both a fulfilling and a very tough week. I pulled off the first monthly Knoxville Geek Breakfast with 30 geeks in attendance, this was fulfilling. We also lost one of our favorite pets, Rocky, our too-tough-for-his-own-good Chihuahua. This was tough.

The geek breakfast was awesome. We had a nice mix of people, from IT management, an author, business owners and guys looking for a job. Lots of smart people. I know this group is the start of something that can help make a difference in our community. We collected a total of 56 lbs. of peanut butter and canned tuna for Second Harvest Foodbank. As we grow, hopefully our contributions will as well. Next month’s meeting has been set for Feb. 12, same time, same place. Join our Facebook group and RSVP, even if you can’t attend this coming month. This way you’ll receive messages about meeting dates, etc.

Geek Breakfast Welcome

On a more somber note, we lost Rocky the same day to kidney failure after he was attacked by our German Shepherd, Sheba. Though under a vet’s care, his little 4 lb. body couldn’t fight off the infection that resulted from his large puncture wounds. We opted to put him down, rather than to submit him to lengthy hospitalization that had just a marginal chance of turning him around. He’s buried on our property next to 2 other Chihuahuas we’ve lost in the last few years. Christine posted a nice memorial to Rocky on her web site.

This coming week will be a busy one as well. Tomorrow we’re driving 2 hours to trade a miniuture horse for a llama. This llama is a show animal who is very well trained and good around people. I also have a new web site design to review, videos to produce for Boogey Lights, and at the end of the week I’ll be traveling to the federal prison in Florence, CO to visit a friend who is doing time there.

It’s going to be a non-stop pace between now and when we leave for Daytona Bike Week on Feb. 21. The Boogey Lights web site conversion, brochures to design and print, and new product videos to shoot. Then we have a full 2 weeks in Daytona with a trip to Austin the weekend following our return. I’ll be attending the SXSW Interactive Conference for 5 days. Whew! It’s just sneaking up on me all at once after a relaxing holiday season.

After consulting with my new Twitter friend, Brandon Moore, I’ve decided to pick a date and location for the first monthly Knoxville Geek Breakfast. It will be held Thursday, Jan. 8, at 7:30am at the IHOP on Lovell Rd. in Knoxville. If no one else shows, at least I’ll get to meet Brandon. I’ll be using Twitter to find geeks in Knoxville in an effort to rouse up some folks. Will you help me? Read more about geek breakfasts here.

Please take a moment to confirm your attendance, or at least to click the “I’m interested” button at the event page. If you can’t make this one, it’s my plan to repeat the event monthly. Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: We had 30 people show up for the breakfast this morning. We’ve created a Facebook group called Knoxville Geeks and we’ll be communicating monthly meeting dates and locations there. We’ll no longer be using the Upcoming site.

I made the 150 mile trek to Nashville early this morning to join Gnomedex friends, Dave Delaney and Marcus Whitney – as well as 50+ other geeks from the Nashville area – for the one-year anniversary of the Nashville Geek Breakfast.

I wasn’t the only one to travel a distance. My new friend, Dave Barger, traveled 3 hours from Memphis. DaveD took this shot of the two of us who traveled the farthest to attend. We must have filled half the restaurant and I turned out to be one of the only event photographers, so I got to meet a bunch of folks. One of the guys really liked my Sanyo Xacti 1010 camera and took a short video (below).

Here’s the photos I took this morning. I’ve also created a public group tag on PeopleBrowsr (Nashville Geeks) that others can add themselves to if using this cool Twitter client. It’s still in alpha, but well worth a look. You can @message an entire group and follow the group’s stream in PeopleBrowsr. Very cool.

I’m going to work on getting a similar monthly breakfast going in Knoxville. It’s a great place to meet local talented people with a common interest in tech. Maybe you should do the same in your area?