Heading out to my second day of Northern Voice 2007, a blogging conference hosted here in Vancouver by a group of incredibly bright, passionate people -- and being attended by same. My head was spinning yesterday as I considered everything I learned and heard (not always one and the same, unfortunately) and all the amazing people I met.
Day One was called Moosecamp and billed itself as an "unconference", meaning that volunteers came forward with ideas for sessions and pitched them first thing in the morning, and the group itself scheduled them throughout the day. Sounds chaotic, but it worked brilliantly. Not all sessions were brilliant, mind you, but the best more than made up for the so-so. Most useful to me: a session on getting sound right in podcasting (with a reference to an incredible new FREE tool called the Levelator that I'm going to be downloading first thing Monday morning at work); an open discussion on community identity; and a presentation on search engine optimization for blogging by Alexandre Brabant, a super-bright and passionate guy behind eMarketing 101. Incredibly useful stuff. More today.
Oh and the New York trip is off. I'm bummed, but in the end was the one who actually made the call. We're launching our first mini-site next week and it would be crazy if I weren't around. Next year, I guess.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
success tips
I haven't been a reader of Business 2.0, but have subscribed to their RSS feed and am finding it surprisingly useful. I particularly liked this feature I discovered today: How to Succeed in 2007. Who's not interested in that? It features succinct tips from a diverse range of success stories, including Richard Branson, Steven Covey, and Muhammad Yunus. My favourites: Yunus (who talks about how to do well by doing good) and of course Michael Scott of The Office. Chocolate as a motivator. Brilliant.
As a side note, my trip to New York is now up in the air. We'll make a final call this week. Cross your fingers for me.
As a side note, my trip to New York is now up in the air. We'll make a final call this week. Cross your fingers for me.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
new york city!
Woo hoo! It looks like I'm heading to New York for an amazing-sounding conference on digital magazines.
Magazines 24/7 promises to be a fast-paced primer on publishing online -- absolutely perfect for me right now. Presentations of particular interest for me include:
Magazines 24/7 promises to be a fast-paced primer on publishing online -- absolutely perfect for me right now. Presentations of particular interest for me include:
- Perry Nelson of Dwell magazine speaking on Dwell.com's relaunch
- Reps from Business Week, TVGuide.com, and nymagc.om speaking on blogging strategies
- Deanna Brown from Yahoo! Media Group discussing the use of a variety of mag content on a web site
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Random Thoughts on A Few Cool Resources
I've been working on about a thousand things lately as I get more comfortable with my role in developing a digital division for a print publishing company here in Burnaby, and in my varied research have come across these excellent resources ...
On Digg, I found a link to Smashing Magazine.com which links in turn to some of the best free templates on the web -- CSS, whole websites, and Flash. Very potentially useful.
Through my RSS subscription to Read/Write Web (which is fantastic) I found this article from BusinessWeek.com yesterday about how social networking sites like Facebook are making themselves more available to third-party developers -- kind of like a controlled open-source-ish model for improving themselves and inviting innovation. This is interesting to me as my company is now considering using Drupal, an open-source CMS for our online publishing going forward. I love the idea that a piece of software can be continually improved by a group of passionate, smart people -- and with Drupal am really impressed by the look, feel and quality of the software. I also particularly like this quote from the BusinessWeek.com article:
"Part of what's exciting about a developer community is you don't know what people are going to do," says Lucian Beebe, director of product management at LinkedIn, which is considering opening up its software. "It offers you the ability to harness innovation."
I have to add that I'm liking LinkedIn a lot, as well, particularly because as we proceed with hiring for our growing Digital team, I've discovered that LinkedIn lets you post jobs to your personal network for no fee. It lets you post more widely, too, for a small fee ($125/job, I think) but by just posting to your contacts, you can feel out your network -- people you trust -- for interest in prospective jobs. This works for me, as I'm not quite sure I'm ready to post positions widely yet, but am interested in finding out about the types of people who might be up for the positions we will have open soon.
On Digg, I found a link to Smashing Magazine.com which links in turn to some of the best free templates on the web -- CSS, whole websites, and Flash. Very potentially useful.
Through my RSS subscription to Read/Write Web (which is fantastic) I found this article from BusinessWeek.com yesterday about how social networking sites like Facebook are making themselves more available to third-party developers -- kind of like a controlled open-source-ish model for improving themselves and inviting innovation. This is interesting to me as my company is now considering using Drupal, an open-source CMS for our online publishing going forward. I love the idea that a piece of software can be continually improved by a group of passionate, smart people -- and with Drupal am really impressed by the look, feel and quality of the software. I also particularly like this quote from the BusinessWeek.com article:
"Part of what's exciting about a developer community is you don't know what people are going to do," says Lucian Beebe, director of product management at LinkedIn, which is considering opening up its software. "It offers you the ability to harness innovation."
I have to add that I'm liking LinkedIn a lot, as well, particularly because as we proceed with hiring for our growing Digital team, I've discovered that LinkedIn lets you post jobs to your personal network for no fee. It lets you post more widely, too, for a small fee ($125/job, I think) but by just posting to your contacts, you can feel out your network -- people you trust -- for interest in prospective jobs. This works for me, as I'm not quite sure I'm ready to post positions widely yet, but am interested in finding out about the types of people who might be up for the positions we will have open soon.
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