Vitamin CH

Is your community a convenience store or a mall?

2009-01-19T18:16:20-12:00:00

This morning, I had the privilege of presenting to the CEO/ head of the company where I work. The presentation was all about my new team: who we are, what we will be doing, how we will measure our success, all the usual fun. Thanks to a lot of mentoring from my boss and a lot of practice time prior to the presentation, I was fully prepared and the presentation went well.

During the course of the conversation, we got to talking about the goal of our new community. He made an analogy which struck me quite strongly. He asked me:

Are we a convenience store or a mall? Do we expect our community members to come shopping, wandering, and socializing? Or, do we expect them to come looking for answers?

It is an interesting analogy. Because we are going to be opening our community to business people who are short on time, we expect people to treat us like a convenience store. We want them to come looking for answers, find the answers, and go on about their way. At the same time, we want them to find enough other information that they are eager to come back.

This is a very different approach than one would take at a purely social community site. At somewhere like Facebook, people come to shop, but they come for the experience and the social aspect as much as for the final purchase. Like a mall, they come to talk to people, to browse the stores, to find out information about a wide variety of things.

I believe there is a need for both kinds of communities in the world. But still, the conversation left me wondering... If you are a participant in a wide range of community sites, which appeals to you more, the mall or the convenience store? If you run a community site, which kind is it?

Moving on...

2008-11-07T11:21:35-12:00:00

What a month November is turning out to be. All kinds of good things happening in my life, all at the same time.

PodCampAZ

What a weekend!!! Over 500 people came together to network, learn, win prizes, eat, drink, be merry, etc. My sessions weren't as full as I would have liked (10 to 20 in each), but those that were there were very willing to talk about the topics at hand. Other than session time, I spent the days running around getting the prizes sorted.

Unlike last year's epic fail on the prize distribution, this year we only had an epic fail half the time. The first day, we tried to do a normal random name draw and announce on Twitter thing. That didn't work. Over dinner at the party at Chinos, we came up with a better idea: A fake silent auction.

Sunday we put out a sign up sheet for each prize. If you were interested in winning that prize, you put your name down. Twice during the day we pulled numbers for winners for each sheet. The winners had a pre-set amount of time to pick up the prizes. Anything not picked up went into the next drawing.

It worked really well - we gave away almost all the prizes and everyone was happy with what they won.

The rest of the weekend? Awesome Awesome Awesome. There aren't words to describe it.

The election

Obama won! What a relief! The right candidate (in my humble opinion). The right time. The right changes to come.

The upcoming move…

Yup - you heard that right. I am moving on. My contract with allvoices to get the community position up and running is almost over. I have accepted another position to start right after. The new position is with a superstealth startup. I will be leading a team of community people helping owners of small to midsized businesses find the answers they need. The new company is based out of San Francisco. I will be moving there by early December.

Bruce? He is still at the same job. He will be doing the AZACC user group tour from December 1 to 21 (taking vacation to do it). That tour will be on TechSmith products, so you know it will be good. He will be joining me in San Francisco next year - probably in the January/February time frame.

CLMS/CLHS

Are you a California teacher coming to the technology conference December 4 through 7? Look for me. I will be leading the Office 200 and 2008 hands on sessions on Friday and a OneNote session on Saturday. Look for me in Monterey!

Join us at PodCampAZ

2008-10-27T12:05:46-12:00:00

Are you coming to PodCampAZ this weekend? By now, you know that it is a two day event. You may even know that I am speaking twice. But this last update is going to give you a few more things you may not yet know...

Door Prizes

Among this year's door prizes are some Target gift cards, copies of Office and Vista, some blogging software, and... I know I am missing something... OH YEAH - SnagIt 9 and Camtasia Studio!

Yes - loyal readers, you could win a copy of either SnagIt or Camtasia. TechSmith is one of the sponsors of the event, so they have sent prizes for the pool.

Meet Bruce

Want to meet the wonder hubby himself? He will be there - right inside the front door. You won't be able to miss him. His job for the day is to man the TechSmith table. He has some great giveaways, a few trials of Mora, and a bunch of flyers. He will be showing off the wonderful products of TechSmith all weekend long. See if you can stump him!

See me

I will be starting off each day talking with you. I will be presenting in the 8:45 session both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday, I am talking citizen journalism. Sunday, Jay Ferron and I will be talking about our experiences bringing APCUG back to relevance by using social media. Both talks will be great - promise!

See lots of others

Did you know that Chris Pirillo and iJustine are speaking? Lots of other people are as well. Check out this video from IzzyVideo for the full list.

On top of those presenting, we currently have over 300 people registered to attend.

T-Shirts

This year's t-shirt is even better than last year's shirt. I'm not telling what it is, but I bet that there are hints out there. Let's just say that it is a great take off on both last year's shirt and a great horror movie title. And the price on them is great - only $10!

The basic schedule for the event is available on the PodCampAZ site. It is going to be a long day - but a great one. I hope I see you there!

PodCampAZ needs you!

2008-10-21T15:06:22-12:00:00

Are you coming to PodCampAZ? If you read this blog with any regularity, you know it is one of the events closest to my heart. It happens in less than two weeks. I am speaking (twice). Bruce will be in the same place as last year, showing off the great things TechSmith products can do for you.

But, there is still something missing from the event: YOU!

We need to know if you are coming. We need to know if you can sponsor us. We need to know if you can help with prizes.

Yeah - you got it - we need YOU.

There are over 300 people registered for the event. The speaking schedule is absolutely killer. You won't believe the people that will be here. And you can come without paying a dime... Ok, you can - but we hope you don't. The t-shirt will cost you a small amount. Lunch is on you. That's about all that will cost you. If you want to come and hear people, that part doesn't cost a thing.

Because the great people at UAT provide the facility at no charge other than insurance, there is no admission fee. We do our best to get enough sponsorships and friend donations to cover things like the booklet, the bags, the name tags. The whole event is done on a volunteer basis - none of us would be involved otherwise.

But what that all means is that without you, there is no event. We will be there at UAT. That is for sure. But it would sure be easier to do it if you were too!

Health Insurance almost made me go broke

2008-10-15T16:50:08-12:00:00

Poverty is a big issue today in the blog-o-sphere. We in America are trained to not let the problems show. A close friend or neighbor could be living beneath the poverty line, and you would never know it. For Blog Action Day, I wanted to share a personal story with all of you about what health insurance can cost. For my husband and I it almost cost us everything.

For many years, my husband and I ran our own business. For most of that time, that meant carrying our own insurance policy. When we started the business, he worked for a company that had insurance for both of us at a reasonable charge. When that company downsized, our insurance did too. We went looking for new insurance.

We eventually found a plan that the state of Arizona was offering to small businesses. The cost was about $300 a month and most things were covered. That worked for a long time. Then, about three years ago, the premiums started going up. Over time, the monthly payments went from $300 to $500 to $800. But that wasn't the worst of it.

In addition to the premium increases, the plan started cutting benefits. First there were higher co-pays. Then there were uncovered costs. Then medicines started being "not covered". Eventually, we were paying $800 a month for the insurance, plus over $500 per month for prescriptions, plus $150 a month for regular lab work.

At about this time, I had my most recent knee surgery. The insurance decided that close to $3,000 of the costs were "above and beyond". That meant that we had to cover them. We could no longer afford it. My husband had to go back to work to a lower paying job just to get the health care. They also played games that caused a surgery to be delayed several times. We think they were hoping we would switch companies.

And then we discovered how bad things were.

The insurance for his new job looked great at first glance. Then, we discovered that it was not covering things that we thought it was. Instead those things had been taken automatically out of the flexible spending account that was supposed to cover the co-pays and new glasses.

Now, I know - it could be much worse. We could have no insurance. We've been there. In truth, it wasn't much more to go without than it was with the coverage over the last couple of years. I figure that insurance and health costs over the last 3 years have cost us between 40K and 50K. That's a lot of money. It makes me think… What if…

What if we hadn't had any income
What if we hadn't had a safety net (we really don't anymore)
What if he had not been able to find work that had some coverage

Luckily for us, the business brought in enough that we made it through. There were rough spots. There were days where the account was overdrawn and the next check wasn't going to cover the bills coming in. There were weeks where dinner was minimal. There were many times when the choice to be made was rent or insurance.

I am very thankful that those days are behind us for now. I still wonder how others survive it. We are slaves to the health insurance industry. Because we are no longer in our 20's, one of us must always be working for a company that provides health coverage or we risk bankruptcy. Private coverage is no longer available to us.

What are you doing Oct. 1?

2008-09-29T18:33:41-12:00:00

Are you in Arizona? If so, I would love it if you would join me at Gangplank for Wednesday's hacknight. I have been meaning to get to hacknight for many weeks and now I have to go - no backing out for Kathy.

Why? Because Wednesday from noon to 9 pm, I will be sitting at Gangplank doing usability testing on the allvoices site. I am hoping to get a bunch of people to sit with me (one at a time) and let me know what they think of the site. We are in the middle of a re-design - what a great time for you to let me know what you think of the site, the direction, and the whole idea of citizen journalism.

How do you participate? Show up! Check out at Gangplank for the location and a map.

I would have liked to have used Morae for the usability testing, but I am not far enough up to speed on the tool yet to do so. It isn't that the tool is hard to use. It makes sense to me already after just a short time of playing with it. The real problem has been getting enough time to play with it and really understand what it can do. So, for this round, the testing will be a series of tasks followed by a series of questions. I will (hopefully) be timing you as you do the tasks. If I can work it, I will even be recording videos of the participants.

Do you want to come? Let me know. I have set up an event on Facebook and one on upcoming. You can also reach me by email, etc. You don't have to RSVP. But the more people I know are coming, the more like I am to get permission to get some giveaways for the participants. You like free stuff, don't you? Then - RSVP and show up!

Thanks to Gangplank for letting me camp out and use a corner of the space to do the testing. It is much appreciated!

Wondered where I am?

2008-09-24T15:41:47-12:00:00

Sorry to have neglected the blog lately. A big change occured in my life and I have been happily pursuing it.

That change: I am now the community guru for allvoices.com. They are citizen journalism at its best. Your news, your views, your videos. The things that are important to you, both on a hyperlocal scale and on an international scale. We look for your contributions on what is news and what matters to you.

My job is to grow the contributing community, grow the visibility of the site, and get people involved. That includes blogging on the company blogs, helping contributors understand the site, finding out what people want from the stie, that kind of thing.

I am loving my job. They are based out of San Francisco. I have been out there already once and will be going again in the next week or so. I also got to go to BlogWorld Expo and lead a panel. It is an exhausting job, but a good one.

What have I learned? I need to make sure I get more sleep! I am excited about my job - which translates into a tendency to work too many hours without moving from the home office for any kind of break. I like to travel, but I learned I need new clothes to do it in (that one is being worked on). I like interviewing people on camera, but doing so over the weekend showed me that I desperately need to get some media training from the company. It also showed me that I need to get back into the habit of wearing makeup... much as Bruce doesn't care for that idea (and my skin isn't sure it likes it either.)

I also learned that I need to force myself to eat in the morning before my first call. If I don't, miscommunications happen rapidly. Working on that one...

Bruce has learned that when I love what I do, I do it more and more. He has taken on the job of reminding me to take a break every once in a while. He has also reminded me (repeatedly) that I need to be sure to schedule time to connect with him. I am at the computer by 9 am most mornings. He gets up at 11, leaves for work at 3 and works until 12:30am. Doesn't leave a lot of connection time unless we make time for each other.

I am also re-learning the usefulness of stats. Seeing who is doing what helps me learn where my energy is put to best use. Seeing where the people and stories are coming from helps me to learn more about what holes we have and where to push for more users.

If you are interested in allvoices, join us. You can find a signup on the site. You might also want to start following the blog, as I announce giveaways and incentives there.

I'll be back here as often as I can. Know that I still am passionate about OneNote, SnagIt, Social Media, and all the other things I started this blog to talk about. I will just be using this space more as an outlet than anything else for a while!

PodCampAZ 2008 coming!

2008-09-23T15:33:34-12:00:00

What are you doing November 1 and 2, 2008?

I know what I am doing: PodCampAZ!

If you have been following my writing for very long, you know that I was a member of the organizing committee for last year's PodCampAZ. I volunteered, I helped, I presented, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. I even won a Frys Electronics gift card!

This year, I will again be there presenting, learning, and helping. I am hoping you will come too!

Why come?

This is going to be a great event. Over 50 speakers are already signed up. You can learn about them on the speaker's page for the site. We will be talking relevance - Are you relevant? Is your news relevant? Are the sources you get information from relevant? There will also be the usual sessions on starting out in the podcast, blogging, and social media worlds and keeping yourself going.

Last spring, Betsy Weber and I put together a quick list of why companies should sponsor PodCampAZ. Since we are still looking for sponsors as well as people to come join us, here is some of that list:

1) last year expected 100, 250 showed up
2) all comments back on content were positive
(only neg was the registration system and process and we have fixed it)
3) Only ONE no-show presenter last year
5) Location is UAT - max size is 1000 (but we don't plan to go that big)
6) Self funding
7) Lunch and t-shirts will be provided for a small cost - all other parts of the conference are free to attendees
8) Presenters last year included some of the top pod casts of the southwest
9) All day podcast AZ will be done again

Oh - another great reason to come? You should see the other great speakers we have coming... Chris Pirillo, Evo Terra, Clintus McGintus, Jane Chin, and so many more!

TechSmith is just one of this year's planned sponsors. You can learn more about who's sponsoring and how you can too by checking out podcampaz.org/sponsors.

Want to know more? Follow podcampaz on Twitter or our hashtag #podcampaz for information. We follow over a 1000 people and have almost that many following us.

So... How do you find us? Check out the site: www.podcampaz.org or just go ahead and register at reg.podcampaz.org!

I'll see you there!

Hire me…

2008-07-15T12:15:21-12:00:00

Is your company looking for a good community manager or social media geek? I might just be who you need.

How's that for the opening of a blog post? It's a post I have been considering writing for several weeks. I am looking for full-time employment in the social media world. I would love to be a part of team that is dedicated to reaching out to their audience and listening to what they have to say.

What I bring to the table:

I am experienced. I started in the newsgroups before the turn of the century. Because of how much I did there (and do there), I was invited to become a Microsoft MVP in 2003. I got back active in the user group arena 3 years ago. A year and a half ago, I joined Twitter and from there… Things just blossomed.
I will be good at the job. If your product is a good product, I will be an effective evangelist for it. I will bring my enthusiasm and communication skills to your place and to your customers. I will help those who use your products use them better. I will help those who don't yet use your product see why they should use it.
I am able to communicate with both users and developers. I have spent the majority of my career helping non-technical people understand technical topics. I speak geek, but I also (as a friend once put it) speak mid-west.
I am enthusiastic. If you have any doubt, check out any of the blog posts here on OneNote or SnagIt. If I love your product, it is going to show in my life.
I am willing to come to where you are. I may live in AZ right now, but I am more than willing to move - just about anywhere.

What I am looking for:

A company that makes a product (or series of products) that excites me and get my creative juices going. A company that is willing to listen to what I have to say, yes. But more importantly, a company that is willing to listen to what the community has to say.

Make no mistake: I am talking full time work here. I know that there are many who do social media on a consulting or part time basis. That is a great career path. But it isn't my career path. I want to find a company who will hire me to help them full-time for as long as it takes.

My network:

Twitter since February of 2007. Plurk since early June 2008 (just after the first launch). LinkedIn since… well, not sure. But my first recommendation is from 2005 . I am on Britekite and Friendfeed. I am active in the Spock community. I even have done some answering on GetSatisfaction. I am also active in the peer to peer user group community. I am even on the board of directors for APCUG.

My qualifications:

I know how to present information so people can understand it. I have a good reputation for working hard and getting things done.

Technical background? Yeah - I've got that too. I have been in the computer industry long enough to have worked with most parts of the software lifecycle. Check out my profile on LinkedIn. You'll see.

So, why blog this?

Because I have been looking hard and not getting much response. I have applied for many many jobs and not heard anything back on most of them. It is time to be more proactive and make it known that I am available, good at the job, and just what you need.

(Oh - and Plurk - if you are listening - I want the plurkinista job. I think I would be good at it.)

Plurk Ratings

2008-07-14T22:12:42-12:00:00

Just a quick post to share a cool site with you. If you are on Plurk, you should check out Plurkerati.com. It's the site for tracking plurkers. It has a feed of the most recent plurks and responses (nice), as well as stats and rankings for a variety of things.

If you go to the Rank tab, you can search for any plurker and find out how they rank in the plurk universe. I checked my ranking and found this:

What this means is that I am in the top 200 plurkers in all categories. In the category of friends, I am ranked 320th. If you look at the stats below my [icture, you can see that I have 324 plurks, but 1144 responses. That means I respond almost three times as often as I plurk. Not suprising, since I love to join conversations already in progress.

On the other hand, if you go to the stats page, you can search for who are the top 10 plurkers by any of a number of criteria. I didn't find this as helpful, because some in the top 10 lists have many friends or fans, but don't participate in the conversation as much. On the other hand, going to the top 100 lists for each category did show seem to show some of the people I consider to be truely "part of the conversation".

I'm curious: How do you rank? Which is more important to you - friends or fans? Plurks or responses?

Post in the comments. Who knows, you might me someone on plurk you didn't know existed!

PS: If you didn't already know it, the Mars Phoenix project is on Plurk too. Its stats? Check this out: