Today is my last day in LA, and I must admit I’m a bit sad about it. Since I have been here (since November!) I accumulated a little life. I first came here just for the holiday season, that rolled into going to the GRAMMYs, which rolled into seeing my doctor, going upstate to see my college BFF, and that finally rolled into going to SXSW. And here we are. I have to pack up all my things, ship some things back to NYC (finally, I’m able to pull my Wii from the hard cold hands of my little brother!) and get going.
It’s tough.
I thought I was mentally and emotionally prepared to go until it came time to pack up my things. Now it’s like that time I moved to NYC last year: I know I’ll be coming back to LA, but I don’t know when?
It’s not as if I’m not looking forward to living in NYC. I miss my friends, I miss the City, I miss my roommate, I miss my bed. But I know when I get to NYC I’ll look back at LA and I’ll miss my car, I’ll miss my family, I’ll miss the beach weather, I’ll miss all the clean and orderly Target stores.
I just feel a bit torn, and I guess living bicoastally has me feeling torn, constantly. Cue Natalie Imbruglia.
No sense in dwelling on it though. Just gotta do it and see what happens next!
This week I had the honor and privilege of joining Scott Hanselman on his podcast, Hanselminutes, to talk about what it is I do for a living, as well as some diversity in tech talk. A basic rundown of the topics:
My time at MIT
How confident are we in Social Media Analytics/ROI?
Strange how things I halfway joke about come to pass, effortlessly. Like, Moving to NYC last year? I just happened to mention to someone that I was thinking about it and next thing I know, I’m being flown to NYC to check out an apartment. Somebody flew me out to NYC to look at an apartment. And voila. I’ve got an apartment in The City.
I need to will some super awesome stuff into the atmosphere, on purpose, and see what happens.
Moving right along.
It’s my last week in LA for quite some time. I’ve been here since November, save ten days in January when I went back to pick up my mail, see a Broadway play with my aceboon, and say hello to my roommate and my doormen. I’ll be going to SXSW this weekend (more on that later), and then after that I will be making my way back to NYC. I hope the weather is nice when I get back because I don’t wanna see any Snowpacalypses or Snowmageddons (or however you spell them).
Since I’m leaving this week, I’m scrambling to see all my LA friends and clients because once the weather gets nice in NY, I won’t want to leave. I’m amazed by how freaking awesome NYC is when the weather is nice, and how much you miss it when the weather isn’t so nice. I am looking forward to seeing all my NYC friends again, and my line sister will be interning in NYC for the summer. I am also cooking up some personal and professional milestones this season. It will be fun times all around.
Can I tell you how much I love my sorors? I was at a meetup last week and happened to meet a young lady and she turned out to be my soror (and my sands) and now I have a new BFF in LA. Well, okay, BFF is strong, but she’s definitely really cool, a kindred spirit, and I love her and I told her to come visit me in NYC ANYTIME. /end random cheesiness.
There was a time in my life where writing a blog post a day was a bare minimum. These days, not so much. This was just a checkin post because I said I would blog more. I’ve pretty much been working, enjoying LA, and being me. Client work has been flowing, and I am trying to fix up all my websites so I can feel more organized. I do so much work for my clients, and rarely do I do the same things for myself and my own projects. Hopefully I will have some cool updates on this shortly.
I’ve been extra quiet lately, not because I don’t have much to say but because my blog was driving me NUTS for the past 3 months.
How Movable Type 5 Made My Blogging Life Miserable
I was previously on Movable Type 5, but ever since the upgrade, the system was more taxing than it needed to be. The WYSIWYG editor was working and accurate whenever it decided to act right. Many plugins weren’t compatible anymore (not like I used many). Spam was annoying. It became such a huge production to make changes to the site (publishing, editing sidebars), and it got to the point where I didn’t want to be bothered with blogging. Horrible, especially when I’d been tapped to blog for the GRAMMYs, among other things (my GRAMMY wrap-up post is long overdue). It got so bad I was cheating on all of you and Tumbling regularly over on my tumblog.
Migrating to WordPress Isn’t Fun Either
I’ve been using WordPress regularly over at VerySmartBrothas for the past two years, and I have themed WP sites previously. I knew switching to WordPress would make my blogging life easier. Still, I wasn’t looking forward to migrating my content to WP. Sure, the export and import process is simple (for me), but moving to WordPress meant I would have to fight with .htaccess and Apache things that make me want to throw things across the room. I already did this when I upgraded to MT5. Not to mention, my image URLs are all messed up, and I need to fix them.
Sigh.
Under Construction
So, yeah. This theme/layout? Me no likey. I mean, it gets the job done, but it’s not really something I put too much time into today. I am using the Thesis WordPress theme, and I threw some (okay, one) color on it, but that’s all I can do right now. Thesis is a great theme for beginners looking to customize something for themselves, but I need to spend more time reading the documentation if I want to trick it out to something more lovely. Or, I can spend time designing my own theme from scratch. Neither of these options are happening this week, though, so I am Under Construction until further notice. I just needed to break myself from the shackles of MT5.
Back to Blogging!
Now that I can get in and out of blogging easily, I will resume blogging on a semi-normal schedule. I’ve been thinking a lot about what this blog is for and what I should write in it. I’m most accustomed to writing about myself (I was ego-blogging before ego-blogging started), and I have no desire to turn this blog into a tech-only blog. I might move my tech stuff to it’s own blog, or keep it mixed in with everything as usual. Either way, regularity is what I’m looking for at the moment.
I Still Love You SixApart
This isn’t meant to be a SixApart (the makers of MT) bashing post. I have long been a faithful MT user, and MT Pro member. I just can’t use MT5 without going insane on my own blog, nor do I need all of MT5’s community features. I don’t have the patience to wait on their team (or the community) to make some updates to the newest version. I’ll keep hope alive for SixApart, but they seem to be at their best if you’re using their premium or enterprise products.
A while ago I got wind that actor/singer Tyrese Gibson had joined Twitter and was begging people to follow him. I knew this because Tyrese hijacked MC Hammer’s Twitter account and was telling people to follow him. I didn’t pay him any mind because although I like his music, and I think he is very easy on the eyes (I had a fangirl moment when I saw him in a restaurant back in 2004), people who beg for followers really annoy me. Begging for followers is usually a sign that the begger in question doesn’t understand Twitter.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered Tyrese ran the best Twitter contest I have seen in a long time:
He asked his followers to nominate single mothers for a Valentine’s Day date.
1100+ single mothers entered the contest, and he picked 14 of them to be treated to a day spa extravaganza in Beverly Hills.
Not only was the event well-planned, but he did due diligence by taping the event, and putting together a sizzle package on YouTube for everyone to see just how awesome he is.
Peep the video here:
I don’t really know what Tyrese was trying to “sell” here, if anything, but I think this was an awesome execution of a Twitter contest. I’ve been running a few Twitter contests for my clients lately and I’ve found that many contests out there lack creativity. Once they’re over, people forget about the work you’ve put out there running contests, especially if you were attempting to leave a positive (and lasting) brand impression. Sure, the winners have a great time (free prizes), but if the goal is to leave a lasting impression with your audience at large, Twitter contests are low on output. Not to mention–if you’ve ever run a Twitter contest you know there is a whole contingency of people whose sole purpose on Twitter is to enter contests, regardless of what brand you are representing, or what demographic you are trying to reach.
Anyway, Tyrese gets a social media gold star from me (as if he knew that existed, or needed one, ha!). Even though I had no idea he was running this contest, I was able to get some warm fuzzies from this video, I am now more likely to follow him, and I’m likely check out that spa in Beverly Hills (I love spas). Tyrese is now back into my social media good graces. Nice job Tyrese!
Since I am such an avid lover of love songs, each year I pick a theme for my Cupid’s Hunt selection. This year, I decided to pick my favorite love songs by Michael Jackson. [click to continue…]
Last Monday I had the honor of sitting on a panel for the Introduction to Online Communities class for the Online Communities program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. That’s a mouthful. If you’re paying close attention, this is the program where I earned my master’s degree (I was in the 2007 cohort).
The topic for the session was Online Community Tools and Platforms. At the end of the program, all students are given funds to launch their own startup or online community. Back in my day *crotchety old man voice*, we built our startups from scratch: we product developed a concept, hired a developer and designer to create it; we also did all the marketing footwork, etc. We were reinventing the wheel in 12 weeks. It was tough, somewhat miserable, and frustrating. Not because of the work, but because of the time constraints and our naivete. Anyway, in later years the cohorts got smart(er) and started using open source solutions to create their (alpha) startups. Not a bad idea.
The discussion took a few different forms. We discussed “reinventing the wheel” versus using WordPress, Buddypress, Movable Type, Ning, etc. In the end, I tried to make it clear that whatever decision you make, make sure it is an informed decision and make sure it helps you achieve your goal. I have seen people choose a platform like WordPress, and not understand that it requires frequent updates. Sure, WordPress evangelists will tell you to use WP all day everyday, but if you are in a situation where you can’t support frequent upgrades, then WP is not the tool for you.
That being said, I would like to go over a few pros and cons when using Movable Type, WordPress, or Drupal. People ask my opinion on this topic out of curiosity, or due to my line of work, so I thought I would share! [click to continue…]
I am a new media consultant, entrepreneur, and blogger. I'm an Orange County girl at heart (by way of rural New Mexico) and I split my time between NY and LA. Peep the bio for more info.
It’s that time of year again! Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, which means my blog gets lit up with 
