Successful Blog

Open Mic 7pm Chgo Time: Internet Heroes

by

Join Us Tonight

JOIN US TONIGHT AT 7PM

With Guest Host Joe Hauckes
and his Alien Friend

Which Internet People Have Changed Your Life?

The best part of being part of the social web is the people. Let’s celebrate them with a few words of how great they are. Bring a link a story or just a comment to tell us who on the Internet has made a difference to you.

Online life can be the best. Let’s talk about it.

Oh, and bring example links.

The rules are simple — be nice.

Do be nice. 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related article
What is Tuesday Open Comment Night?

Read-Only Web 1.0 Blog: What I Learned Outside the Signal and the Noise

by


The Story

liz-at-blogpotomac3by-eastcoastblogging

It started with server downtime, a WP upgrade that rewrote the database, and something that went wonky. It was almost fixed; then it wasn’t. No one could find the problem that caused my home page to want to download a file or why the database decided to allow only one-way communication with my blog.

Everyone who worked on it — WordPress gurus and geniuses, Server sages and savants — said they had never seen anything like it. My husband kept repeating his mantra, “When someone says ‘one in a million’ they are talking about YOU!”

In this case they were talking about MY BLOG.

Perhaps the database had decided it was done with social media. It would talk, but it wouldn’t listen. My blog could fetch information from the database, but it could not send any to it.

I was the proud owner of the singular READ-ONLY WEB 1.0 blog.

Fired by My Blog

I’d been busy preparing for the Blog Potomac and 140conf trip. So much to do before I left … suddenly I couldn’t do anything about any of it.
What future posts I had done were scheduled to run. I wouldn’t be adding any more.

It was as if a snow day, an unexpected vacation was forced on me –except it was the snow day that wouldn’t end. My blog refused to recognize me for more than a week.

What that meant to you was that it looked like I took time off. What that meant to me was that my dashboard didn’t work. I could log in, but every attempt to change, post, edit, or write was returned with a white screen message that said “action unknown.”

I’d been fired by my blog.

A friend asked if I used the time to get on Twitter to push out content.
Is that what I should have done?

I’m an introvert. I actually went to Twitter less. I didn’t feel much like talking about what was going on. An endless stream of support tickets got written to explain the problem. Friends were helping. Hours were invested by so many. Nothing was working. I did client work — I could put that in order before I left town.

DAY FIVE the feeling of being fired by blog started to sink in.

Every morning I logged in and clicked “Edit Post” to see the same no response. I started thinking of the investment my blog represents, what it take be to recreate it — yeah we had a backup, but who trusts that? — I had started to relate to my blog the way I used to relate to my job.

The same friend said, “But did you post on your other blog?”

I didn’t want to start posting over there. It would have been like admitting that this blog wasn’t coming back.

Weird. Huh?

Outside the Signal and the Noise

I decided to ride it out. I wanted to see what would happen if I lived outside of the signal and the noise. It wasn’t a clean experiment because I had uploaded four future scheduled posts. Still I didn’t add any new content for two weeks … I lived that.

Eight thoughts about what I learned …

  • A community history lives in the comments of this blog.
  • I can live without the content, but I’d miss the opportunity to visit the words of the people who have visited it.
  • Being helpless to fix the tech is an abject lesson in patience, humility, and gratitude.
  • People continued to read deeply into the pages even when I wasn’t adding new content for ten days.
  • People continued to read deeply into the pages even when I wasn’t adding new content for ten days.
  • I had some fine conversations without ever touching a keyboard.
  • No one died. No one cried. Twitter and the blogosphere did fine without me.
  • I am not my blog.

Though I was traveling and couldn’t comment, the future scheduled posts helped my blog keep moving. I soon snapped back to where it was tracking before it shut me out. Now I just have to show up again when folks stop by to comment.

It’s sort of like starting a new job … I’ve gotten used to like the habit of having time away, still I’m ready, so ready, to be back.

Weird huh?

What would happen if you had ten days locked out from your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Buy the ebook. Learn the art of online conversation.

Beach Notes: Nostalgia Trip

by


by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

This long weekend is the focus of a big event held in and around our “twin towns” of Tweed Heads and Coolangatta, here on Australia’s Pacific coast

Wintersun (yes, it’s officially winter here right now) is a nostalgia festival focused on Rock ‘n Roll & cars of the period.

One site declares Wintersun to be Australia’s and "possibly the world’s" biggest Rockabilly and RocknRoll Festival.

nostalgia1

Some streets are lined with bands and some often very skilled dancers, and others with hundreds of lovingly maintained or restored cars on display, mainly from the 50s and 60s. For a couple of nights there is a parade of cars, driven by mature age rockers.

Not everyone goes to the extent of dressing for the era as the women in our photo have done, but many members of the various rock ‘n roll groups who come here en masse are obvious patrons of the stalls along the beach front dedicated to selling the shoes, the special petticoats and skirts, the leather jackets…

We took a day off from the computers, Twitter, Facebook and all that yesterday and spent some very enjoyable hours wandering among the thousands of visitors who descend on this relatively sleepy beachside joint for these few music filled days each year.

Seeing so many people so happy in their deliberate nostalgia was very heart-warming, even if a lot of them would know more about what the door handles on a ’59 Eldorado look like than what a Twitter handle is.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 191 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

alldaybuffet
how-to-make-my-blog
christinelu
new-social-economy
shatterbox-media

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Delegation Happens: Working with Friends Can Be Dangerous

by

Ever End Up Doing Someone Else’s Work?

Working Plans logo

Susannah was an editor who worked me years go. She had a project that needed help and knew just the person she wanted to call … her friend Christie. Christie was an experienced editor on maternity leave.

A meeting was set. Christie came in to get the work. Susannah explained exactly what was entailed and when it was due.

When the due date arrived, the work never came. When the work came, it was less than what Susannah had described. Susannah ended up doing the work and paid her friend anyway.

Ever been there?

Some things to remember when you’re about to delegate work to a friend.

  • Prepare for a friend as you would for someone you’ve never met. One clear signal to your friend and yourself of the business nature of what you’re doing is to treat the conversation as a strictly “work” conversation.
  • Define the relationship as you would with a new client or a new employee. When we’re delegating to a friend, communication can complicate itself. Friendship filters can recast everything that’s said. State your expectations. Write out guidelines and share them.
  • Leave room for the possibility that you’ve misjudged your friend’s skill set. As you describe the task ask whether this sounds like something he or she wants to do and has the time to do well.
  • Explain everything as clearly and in detail. We tend to endow our friends with information they don’t have. Understanding is often assumed — we assume they know things because they’re our friends.
  • Take time to say what the work means to you and your situation. Let the friend know that you are depending on him or her for your success. State clearly why you’re delegating the work and what depends on part of the project that you’re handing over.
  • Talk about who will make corrections or revisions to things that get missed if the work is incomplete or incorrectly executed. If at all possible, have time in the schedule for sending it back to your friend for such revisions.
  • If your ability to communicate during this conversation seems difficult, call off the delegation. It’s better to find someone else than to move forward with what doesn’t seem to be a good communication already.

On the Internet, we meet and make friends easily, but sometimes we endow them with the “halo effect,” thinking their great personality is a sign of their great compentency.
Sometimes the only way to learn that we’ve gotten a wrong impression is by asking for help and finding out the person isn’t who we thought. Usually though, asking a few questions, and offering complete information can get us to a great working relationship.

We all have friends who are better than we are at so many things. Are you finding the right ones to help you when you need them?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Buy the Insider’s Guide. Learn how to write so that the Internet talks back!

It’s Time to Prepare for SOBCon 2010!

by

The SOBCon2010 “Reserve Now, Pay Later” Program | TerryStarbucker.com

We have a theme for 2010 – “Where the Virtual Meets the Concrete“.

Or as Terry Starbucker likes to call it – “The Return of the Digiloggers, Part 2“

But there’s a catch.

We can only accommodate 150 people, max.

This is a gathering where size does matter, and we really want to keep the numbers at a level where we maximize the value of the learning and interactions.

So that’s why we’ve already opened up registration, so those who would like to get a head start on reserving a seat to this event can do so, right now.

Because I know you don’t want to miss it.

But we also know that plucking down cash so far in advance is a lot to ask.

Therefore, we are announcing the “Reserve Now, Pay Later” program. It’s a “three-fer”:

1. You get a seat early, and rest easy – your there
2. You get a deeply discounted rate – $300 off the “at the door” price
3. You only have to put down a $95 deposit now – and just pay the rest by December 31, 2009

Here’s what you need to do:

* Go to the SOBCon2010 Registration site
* Click “Enter Discount Code“
* Put in this code: paylater10, then click “apply discount“
* Buy your tickets at $95
* Pay the remaining $500 per ticket to us by 12/31/09 to keep your seats (I”ll let you know how to do that)

To take advantage of this program you need to act quickly – the $595 rate, and thus this program, expires on July 3, 2009