Month: October 2008

For the past three years I’ve been using a wonderful online app for simple project tracking and billing for my writing business. I can access it from either of my computers, even when I’m on the road, and I don’t have to worry about backups.

Or so I thought.

A year ago the app developer, who had been working on a pro version of the app, got a job with Facebook and stopped updating the free app. However, since the app was quite stable, she left the site up and running for the “legacy” users like me.

Today the site wouldn’t load, and I discovered that the phone number (obtained from a Who Is lookup) is out of date.

Is this a temporary server glitch or The End of the app? If it’s the end, it means this month’s project tracking records are inaccessible — ironic, because, when I visited the site last night, I noticed that October is the best month my business has ever had.

I’ve spent the past hour researching tracking and billing apps. The apparent winner? A paid online service, Harvest, which offers a good monthly rate for a one-person business and provides the first month free.

R.I.P.: The “corporate blog.”

Meet the “corporate newsfeed.”

I owe a big debt to a senior product manager at a meeting I attended earlier this week. When the presentation about search engine optimization techniques turned to my role in creating a corporate blog, I got a good look at her expression. It started with incredulous and progressed to annoyed. Her face told me that “blogging” is something she associates with an 18-year-old with a Facebook account, not with a major corporation’s marketing strategy.

She has a point.

Yes, yes, I went on to explain the effect that blogs have in terms of Google rankings; the algorithms reward getting a steady stream of fresh, keyworded information onto a business website. And pretty soon she came around to embrace the concept to the point where she wanted to discuss topics for the blog posts.

But I decided right then and there that one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done is to repeatedly sell skeptical managers and executives on the benefits of a “corporate blog.” Why beat my head against the wall, when I could get immediate comprehension and endorsement (and likely, a better hourly rate) for offering them a “corporate newsfeed?”

I’m still an advocate of blogging for small business sites where a personal tone, or the owner’s identity, is key to branding. That sort of writing is, in fact, quite close to what we think of as traditional blogging.

But, quite frankly, the concept of the corporate blogs has always been awkward. Most CEOs and marketing directors are too busy to blog consistantly, so the posts are either ghost-written under their names or, weirdly, anonymous. A corporate newsfeed, written by a team and edited by a communications professional (yes, that would be me), is quite a bit more honest and direct. And, to come full circle, isn’t that what blogging is all about?

Yesterday the Twitterverse live-blogged the BigFoot Blogging Conference. Today the blogs are weighing in with some in-depth analyses.

Baconismyenemy provides a newcomer’s take on the day-long event at UW. “People are excited and energized about what they are doing. This attitude is infectious. People are doing good work that they love doing. Who doesn’t want to be around that?!?” she notes.

Nerdseyeview gives…well, just that. “It was more conversational than educational for me, but that in itself says a lot about the wildly social direction blogging is going,” she writes. Her post captured the tenor of the event perfectly.

And Mary Pat Whaley made a sharp mini-video at the event. Wow!

URLs for some of the sites I’ll be citing tomorrow at the BigFoot Blogging Conference.

The History of Weblogs
http://oldweblogscomblog.scripting.com/historyOfWeblogs

The Register (on blog conferences)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/08/13/webloggers_deal_harvard_blogbores/

The Register (on teenage girls blogging)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/30/most_bloggers_are_teenage_girls/

Anne Kilkenny email (repost of)
http://www.andrys.com/palin-kilkenny.html

Guy Kawasaki’s blog “How to Change the World”
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

Seth Godin’s blog
http://sethgodin.typepad.com

iStock — photos, artwork, video, etc.
http://istock.com

Cute Overload
http://cuteoverload.com

Unmoderated comments:
Making Light
http://neilsenhayden.com/makinglight/

Immoderate comments:
Horse’s Ass
http://horsesass.org

You can control how you go about seeking professional recognition but you can’t control how or when it comes — or what you’ll be doing when it arrives.

The news of the biggest and most exciting contract I ever won came just minutes before one of my best friends called to report a horrible family tragedy that ended with his mother’s death. My teammates went out to celebrate getting the contract; I went to my friend’s house and stayed sat him through a long, sleepless night.

Yesterday morning I sat down to eat my Cheerios and read the Wall Street Journal and was thrilled to find in the Journal an extensive article by jazz critic Nat Hentoff praising Yizkor, the new album by David Chevan and Afro-Semitic Experience with cantor Alberto Mizrahi. A old friend from New Haven, Stacy Phillips, plays in the group. Stacy, a teacher, writer, and performer, is a “musician’s musician” — renowned in the upper echelons of bluegrass, Western swing, and klezmer, but (despite a Grammy and 40 years of professional work) not a “name” who could sell out a venue like the Triple Door or the Moore Theatre.

“Never before have I heard this lyrically powerful a fusion of Jewish and jazz souls on fire,” Hentoff kvelled over the group’s performance. At last! I thought.

Sometimes recognition comes and you’re so sure you won’t get it that you fail completely to react. That happened to me yesterday. I’ve recently begun writing short speculative fiction; the SF field is replete with contests and small magazines for the beginning writer, and I submitted stories to two contests. My goal was to place in one of the two contests.

The first contest, part of Fencon V in Dallas, had the results announced at the convention last weekend. However, I wasn’t at the convention, and had no way of finding out how I’d done. Tuesday evening I contacted a Twitter friend who had attended Fencon and asked him to check the convention program for the contest results. He wrote back:

“The 1st place short story winner was “Dark Running” by Justin Macumber; 2nd place “Undying Love” by K. G. Anderson (you, congrats); 3rd place ‘The Color of Midnight” by Dan Hiestand. Alas, only the winner’s tale was published in the Fencon V booklet. I don’t know if they will post them online.”

I found out in such a roundabout way that it didn’t really sink in. All I could think was: OK, it didn’t get published, all rights remain with the author, so I should workshop this, rewrite it, and submit it to some small ‘zines.

It was only after I told a friend about the contest results and he replied “What shall we do to celebrate?” that it sunk in: A story I’d created had placed in a contest, and I’d met my (admittedly modest) writing goal for the year.

I celebrated by harvesting the basil and making pesto. So there.

The first BigFoot Blogging Conference, featuring ubergeek Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and Gnomedex fame, is this Saturday at the University of Washington.