With the recent Instagram terms of service changes, I’ve had several people ask me how to create a mobile photoblog here on WordPress.com, since I use it for my own mobile photoblog.
It’s pretty easy. Here’s what you do, with appropriate links. You’ll be reading this to publishing on your mobile photoblog in the next five minutes!
This past Saturday I presented “Digital Curation: The New Frontier of Knowledge” at KnowCamp, an Italian BarCamp in Modena about knowledge and the web.
If you’re not familiar with the Ignite format, it’s very exciting for both speakers and spectators. 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds each slide. It’s a timing nightmare and you’re always racing against the clock, but it’s a great exercise to really concentrate on the meat of your presentation and remove the extras. (I gave another Ignite earlier this year on the New Digital Company: Distributed, Online, Transparent)
The liveblog of my panel at BlogHer ’11: Social Media Geek | Adding Community Features to Your Blog is now online. I talked about BuddyPress and bbPress as ways to extend your WordPress site into a community and I definitely recommend checking it out.
The liveblog is about 90% accurate, which is amazing since we were talking so fast, so if you see particular sentences with a few words missing you should know that the point being made was brilliant and we were coherent the entire time. 
Podcast (audio recordings) of all sessions will become available soon, as well as videos of select sessions (it’s not clear if my session will be included or not) and will be available at BlogHer ’11 VirtualCon. And all of those materials are free!
Image from DesignSponge.com
I’ve been reading, learning, and watching a lot of content about presenting lately as it’s something I’m very interested in and there’s no definitive manual to learn how to do it. I’ll be sharing that info soon, but first I thought a parallel subject is learning how to speak with the media.
I spent three years as an organizer for the Girl Geek Dinners in Milan, when blogging and social media was gaining ground in Italy so I had a lot of opportunities to speak to the press and work with different companies on messaging (you can check out my Press page). Many times an article came out that didn’t clearly represent what I had said or who I was, and while you can’t control journalists, I think having access to this Design*Sponge guide, Media Training 101 would have been very helpful.
Design*Sponge is a site for creative types, and they have one of my favorite series, “biz ladies” with tutorials and how-tos for entrepreneurs from all sorts of topics from brand strategy to CSS tricks to networking (written by me!) to media training. I highly recommend sorting through their past biz ladies articles.
A few nuggets from the article which was co-written by both a journalist and a blogger. The journalist’s advice:
I would approach it like a job interview. Think about how you want to present yourself. Think about how you explained your business to the loan officer at the bank or when you pursued a business license. Be guarded, but not unapproachable.
If you like to make jokes, make jokes, but remember that anything said in an interview is fair game UNLESS you precede the joke by saying, “Off the record.” It’s very annoying to have someone say later that they never thought their comments would go in the story; unless the reporter has agreed not to publish something, it’s considered part of the interview. Personally, I try to use my best judgment and be as fair as possible. I’m not in the business of burning newbies, but I’ve met reporters who have no qualms about it.
and what to do if the article was wrong (like the time I was listed as a housewife with a photography hobby in an Italian magazine – no disrespect, but my paychecks say otherwise):
If you believe the article was truly unfair, contact the writer first, and try to stay calm. Emails written while angry often come off as irrational and nonsensical. If the writer brushes off your concerns, contact her editor.
If something is inaccurate, contact the writer first. If the story is online, you’re in luck, because she will probably correct it immediately before too much damage is done.
And the blogger’s advice regarding preparation:
…There’s absolutely no way to over emphasize how important it is to be prepared for any interview situation. I used to think that being prepared meant answering their questions ahead of time or thinking about the topic, but I’ve now learned that having more examples/tips/info than they could possibly use is the best way to prepare.
and saying no:
It may seem crazy, but sometimes it’s good to walk away from a press opportunity if you don’t like the theme or tone of the article. It’s often as simple as recognizing if the answers you’re going to give project the message you want your brand/business to have.
It’s an excellent and detailed intro to Media Training – so check it out!
If you’re reading this it’s possible until recently we used to be friends on Facebook. But before that, we probably were friends IRL…in real life. We fell out of touch, or maybe we just saw each other rarely.
And then we joined Facebook. We became “friends.” And I had a lot of friends, racing steadily towards 1,000 friends. Wow, I was popular! People liked me! What could I do with all those friends?
What could I do, indeed.
I started hiding people’s updates from my News Feed. Facebook said I could put people into Lists, so I did, and I dissected and debated contacts into this list or that one. I diligently managed permissions and access for people on those lists – this list could see my photos, this one couldn’t. This other list could see my Wall, and this one could not. I removed my comments on others’ updates from my own profile feed, as well as the notice of any new friends I added. I blocked applications. I deleted Like requests. I ignored Pokes. I change my profile picture about 1x year. I was updating about once a week.
And I started thinking, this is a lot of effort I’m investing in not furthering any of these relationships, and making sure they don’t intrude on any other relationships.
After the initial “Add to Friends”, and most of those requests included no personal notes or questions, there was still no communication. Nothing was strengthened. Nothing was reborn. Nothing was created. A few old contacts wrote me to say hi; others asked for favors. But most just stayed silent. Maybe they browsed my profile or my photos, or maybe they weren’t that curious after all.
So why does un-friending someone on Facebook feel like you’re rejecting them?
It’s a bandaid in our relationships. It’s not that I don’t want to be “friends” with you, it’s that Facebook doesn’t define what relationship I have with you. Most likely without Facebook, our relationship will remain the same as it has always been: casual friends, business-related associates, networking acquaintances, old high school friends, occasional chatters, daily Re-Tweeters, or even weekly emailers. Facebook doesn’t fundamentally change that.
But I’m not really worried about unfriending.
I am accessible; I was before Facebook and I am even more after I joined. I have websites. Many websites. All with forms and addresses to contact me. I hand out business cards with an email address. You can Tweet @rosso at me. If you search for Sara Rosso on Google, my sites are about 90% of the first page.
So why am I still on Facebook at all?
First, I have several fan pages for my websites and I do see a utility in keeping them – they’re an additional way for content consumers, if not friends, to stay updated with your very-specific content and to give me feedback.
Secondly, for some of my family members, who live more than 5,000 miles away from me, and for a few of my very close friends, it’s the only way they have decided they will participate in this whole online world. Email didn’t work, a phone call is expensive and different time zones can be challenging, and for now, I’m ok with staying in touch with them this way. But I know where they live, what their phone numbers are, and I’ve probably seen them in the last 12 months.
And for now, this small minority has priority over acquaintances, people I meet networking, and whoever else is online and has many, many, many other ways to stay in contact with me and what I’m doing other than Facebook.
I don’t know if I’ll ever leave Facebook completely. I’ll probably continue to cut down my friend list, encouraging them to interact with me in other ways.
But don’t take it personally if you get unfriended.
Do I want to be friends with you? Sure I do. But it doesn’t have to be on Facebook.
I’ve been a busy bee this month, and in addition to what I’ve been doing here, I’ve written quite a few articles for Suzuki Europe’s Big in Small website at www.small-things.eu as their technology correspondent.
Here’s some of the articles I’ve written in January – I hope you enjoy them. Let me know!
Image by thetrial / CC BY-ND 2.0
The following interview was published in Italian for the Girl Geek Dinners in Italy: Girl Geek Life website. Below is the original interview in English.
Tara Hunt, @missrogue on Twitter, is a notable Canadian entrepreneur, founder of unconventional marketing company “Citizen Agency” and frequent keynote speaker talks to me about her new book.
SARA ROSSO: You’re the author of “The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business.” What is “Whuffie”?
TARA HUNT: Whuffie is a fun word coined by Cory Doctorow in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom that means social currency. In Cory’s book, he describes a future where there is no money, only Whuffie. One makes whuffie by being nice, networked and/or notable. You can ‘ping’ someone else’s whuffie, getting back a score. A high score means that you can probably trust that person and you may want to get to know him/her. When I read Cory’s book, I thought to myself, “Actually, this doesn’t sound any different from how we relate to one another in online communities.” We are constantly pinging one another’s whuffie.
SARA ROSSO: There are 5 key principles of the Whuffie Factor -
Which principle are you finding companies are having the hardest time with? What advice are you giving them to overcome this?
TARA HUNT: The principle most difficult for companies to gr0k is Embrace the Chaos. Giving up control of the message and opening oneself up to the vast opportunities presented in building relationships with one’s customer community is a risky thing to do. Of course, everything is a risk, even when tightly planned, so I help coach companies through taking baby steps towards embracing that chaos, pointing out the rewards along the way.
SARA ROSSO: Why do you think that companies should focus on “delighting and enchanting those people already part of your community” first? If there is no official existing community, how do companies start identifying who is part of the “community”?
TARA HUNT: If you delight your current customers, they will go out and tell their friends and contacts about their great experience. This word of mouth is still and always will be the most effective type of marketing. When people give their peers recommendations, it’s much more powerful than a pitch from a company. As far as identifying who is part of the customer community? The advice I give is to step back and figure out what problem are you solving/need are you filling? And then ask yourself, “who has those needs?” Those are the types of questions that will help you identify your customer community.
SARA ROSSO: In Italy BarCamps are very popular – you’ve been very involved in BarCamps from the start in California. What do you think has changed, for better or for worse, in the way BarCamps are organized and executed in these past 4 years? Any advice to share?
TARA HUNT: BarCamp is amazing because, I believe, it is morphing with the needs of the social geek community (who are the ones primarily driving the adoption of BarCamp). I think it is changing around the world. People are getting really creative with the idea of BarCamp, applying it to non-tech questions and industries and seeing really great results. This is bringing BarCamp to a wider audience, so I believe strongly it is for the better. Advice? Only that I think that BarCamp is an awesome model for getting the creative juices flowing. Apply it liberally!
SARA ROSSO: Are there any new and upcoming tools or sites you’re using that might interest the Girl Geeks in Italy?
TARA HUNT: I use an abundance of travel tools nowadays. I really love Tripit.com and Dopplr.com (want them to synch together, though). I’m really looking forward to seeing how Open Social unfolds as well to help me solve my social network management issues. Other than that, I’m loving various Twitter applications like Tweetie for my iPhone and Tweetdeck for my desktop. I think there is going to be more ideas and applications to emerge out of Twitter. It’s all in the beauty of their open API.
Thank you, Tara! Her book, “The Whuffie Factor” is now available on Amazon.com
Here’s a presentation of hers on Whuffie. There are 261 slides but they FLY!
