Editor's Note

Thanks to everyone who participated in this week's hangout. To our special guest Quinno Rashad, and our audience, thank you for hanging in there while we dealt with some technical difficulties. Click here to view the recording of the show. We're not exactly sure what happened, but we think Google was making some updates to their user interface. We usually get started around noon eastern for an hour long planning session before we go live at 1. It was after 1:20 or so before we could even get into the hangout interface and we live just a few minutes later. We then had trouble posting the links the view the hangout, and we were bumped at least once during the show. It was amazing just how well it went considering the difficulties we encountered.  I know I was freaking me out when after almost an hour I couldn't get it to work. It was the worst technical issues I've faced in the past year of working with Google Hangouts.

A lot of times we get requests from people to join the hangouts as a guest without a clear understanding of what goes into the planning and implementing of the show. I try my best not to be rude, but at the same time I sometimes feel insulted. I know it may seem as though we're just a group of friends talking on a video conference call, but a lot more goes into it than that. It can be difficult to give everyone a chance to talk, especially when there are more than five people on the show. There's also managing our personalties. Not everyone is going to like what you have to say and it takes a certain level of professionalism not to take it personally. And I find it's hard it is to talk continuously and coherently when when thinking about the hundreds of people might be watching me. We have had a few guests who have just frozen up on camera. Luckily there were others there to fill the silence.

I am grateful that over the past year the contributors of M3 have become so good at doing the hangouts. They were able to roll with the punches of the technical difficulties. We are planning on having more guest. I've learned that there are other bloggers who already have those skills from years of being on video or writing and I'm looking forward to learning from them and their experiences. I think that is what we are all about. We want to share our experiences with others, but we also to be open to learning for each other as well.