Wordcamp is a two-day event taking place in Kilkenny from 6th-7th March 2009. It’ll take in an introduction to blogging, how to improve your blog and the use of WordPress, and some more advanced hacking of WordPress. Tickets are €40 for both days, available now

Wordcamp Ireland

This is the third of three posts based on my presentation at WordCamp Victoria. You can view all of the slides on Slide Share here.

How to get your message out effectively:

Writing effectively with a clear message will help signal to your readers what your blog is about. If you peak their interest with an enticing headline and offer them something of value, they are more likely to read your post. No mean feat given how hard it is to catch someone’s attention these days.

Here are some suggestions to make sure you get read:

Focus on your reader: Ask yourself, before each and every post, “Will this appeal to my readers? Why should they care? How will they benefit?”

Know what you want to say: Rather than sitting down at the keyboard to immediately craft your post, take a few moments to think about what it is you want to say. That will help you focus and narrow down your topic. Personally I like to put pen to paper and do up a very rough draft long hand. Once I’m at the computer it goes very quickly, since its almost like a second draft. That’s my style – do what works best for you.  I admire those who can just sit down at the computer and write.

Write a good headline: According to Brian Clark of Copyblogger, eight out of ten people will read your headline, but only two out of ten will read your post. He has put together an awesome series of posts on writing killer headlines over on his blog.

Keep it short and simple:  Follow the KISS principle – keeping your posts short and simple, with one idea per post. There’s nothng wrong with a 200 word post, particularly when you’re trying to build up the content on your site.

Be your own editor: Use simple everyday words, and cut out unnecessary words. Instead of “accomplish” use the word “do”; instead of “endeavour”, use “do”; and instead of “utilize”, consider replacing that with “use”

Appearance matters: Layout and white space is just as important online as it is in print publications. Images add interest. Subheadings and highlighted text help readers quickly scan your post.

More resources: I highly recommend checking out Brian Clark of Copyblogger. You’ll find some great posts on plain writing, landing pages, keywords, and headlines. Another resource is Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen. He focuses on – of all things – presentations. The info there will help you with your blog. One example is his post on photo sources.

Photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

This is the second of three posts based on my presentation at WordCamp Victoria. You can view my slides on Slide Share here.

How to identify your niche and find success within it:

Becoming known in your niche gives you what all of us really want: traffic, links, fans, authority, opportunities and contacts. And for some, it’ll even pay the bills!

According to Sonia Simone, Technorati indexes 133 million blogs. By their stats, about 900,000 blog posts get made every 24 hours. Every topic, every theme, and every subject has been exhaustively covered by hundreds of blogs.

So what’s the secret?  One is to specialize. Everyone’s good at something today – why not you? What are your interests? What is your passion? Choose a topic that you’re interested in, and that you can talk about in a unique way.  That’ll give you your angle.

Here are a couple of examples:

Five years ago there were any number of blogs about – you guessed it – blogging.  Darren Rowse launched one as well, and chose as his angle how to make money blogging. He called it Problogger. A few years later Brian Clark launched Copyblogger – a blog he dedicated to producing interesting copy for your blog and online marketing efforts. Both are highly successful blogs, that satisfy different niches.

How do you narrow down your niche? Brian Clark makes a compelling case for doing this through keyword research.

Once you’ve done that you need to work at getting noticed – by the right people. You can do that by:

Keep your reader in mind – ensure that what you write is relevant to your reader. Are you solving a problem, sharing an interesting idea, or offering tips on how they can get something done? Each and every time you post, focus on your reader and ask whether it will be meaningful to them.

Leave comments on other blogs – engage with other bloggers in your niche. Offer your comments and insights in a way that extends the conversation. Most comment systems will prompt you to include your blog or website URL, and that enables others reading your comment to click on your name and visit your blog.

Link to other people’s blogs - a good way to introduce yourself to a fellow blogger is by linking to their blog, and giving them some traffic.  If they track referral sources, they’ll notice you and many will comment back.

Post original content -You don’t have to post regular content all the time, but try to do so on a regular basis. There are lots of ways you can do this. Here’s a good example from Steve Rubel, using Google Trends.

Post as often as you can -The more content you have on your site, the more traffic you’ll get. You can also post links to “popular” and “recent” posts in your sidebar to entice first time visitors to stay and look around.  And because popular post titles tend not to change, if you have posts that you’d like to begin featuring, you can try a variation on this and put up a text widget in your sidebar called “favourite” posts and include links to your favourites. (Thanks for that suggestion to Raincoaster!)

Write for your readers – not for Google – You know the drill. Based on your knowledge of popular keywords, you make sure to include these keywords in your post title, lead sentence, metatags, and several times throughout your post. It’s great for achieving high rankings on Google, but I think you sacrifice the quality of your content, your writing style, and your unique voice. In effect, everything that helps get you noticed by influencers within your niche. Comments and links are also what give you authority.

Enjoy yourself and have fun - If you’re engaged, enthusiastic and excited about your blog, your readers will pick up on that. If you’ve lost interest, they’ll sense that as well. Events such as WordCamp are a great way to meet fellow bloggers and become re-enthused.

Want more inspiration? Two wonderful sources of inspiration for me have been Chris Brogan and Lorelle Van Fossen.

Photo credit: isayx3

Here’s the first of three posts based on the presentation I gave at WordCamp Victoria. You can  view my slides on SlideShare here.

This visual by Mark Smiciklas depicts the challenge we have in making sense of what is going on within the social media space. It points to the need for research strategies that enable us to listen and act on relevant signals in the sea of social media noise.

How to find material that will interest your readers, and organize it so you can access it when you need it:

Read, read, and read. Read posts by other writers who are interested in the same subject as you – whether that be urbanism, productivity, photography  or social media – whatever it is you’re blogging about. Read comments people have submitted. And also seek out different points of view.

You can find other blogs in your subject area through sites such as Alltop, Technorati, Google Blog Search and Loaded Web. (Tip: Some of these sites, such as Alltop and Loaded Web, will list your blog. Not automatic with Alltop, but make them a pitch.)

Subscribe to those blogs you like through a service such as Google Reader. The folks at Google make it super easy to add a subscription, find others you might like, star items, and share items you like with others. Other items such as Google Alerts and Flickr updates can come through your Google Reader account as well, so it’s all in one handy place.

Now that you’re reading your feeds each day, you’ll soon start accumulating some fabulous ideas for future posts. How to store them in a way that’s easy to access later? Set up an account with a social booking site such as Delicious.

Want to dig a bit deeper in the area of research? Check out KD Paine, Charlene Li and Angela Sinickas.  They are all tremendous reseachers and thought leaders.

And for fun, check out CEO Merrill Dubrow’s blog. Dubrow is president and CEO of MARC Research, a 100-person market research firm in Irving, Texas. In addition to standard web metrics, his staff measure the average length of comments (106 words), the total number of comments (1,700 in 18 months), and the number of people who have contributed more than four (115).

In an economy like Phoenix’s, the prospect of a burgeoning and vibrant start-up community might seem unlikely. But the valley’s underground tech community has some advantages.  Entrepreneur and author Pamela Slim says, “There is a real spirit of cooperation and collaboration here.”

The author behind Escape from Cubicle Nation, Pam spoke at the 2009 Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference this past Thursday.  The event was part of Arizona’s GeekWeekAZ.  GeekWeek consisted of a series of conferences focusing on the tech, start-ups and personal publishing communities.

The Project Fidelity team attended almost all of the week’s major offerings covering them for both our blog and cross-posting for The Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship’s site StartUpMedia.org, housed at ASU’s Cronkite School.

• Ignite Phoenix 5 – Open mic night for Phoenix’s creative community, Ignite serves as a platform to share new ideas.  Each of 18 presenters gets five minutes to share inspirational insight.
• Tedx Phoenix – An offshoot of the TED program, Tedx Phoenix brought intellectual and motivational speakers from Arizona together.
• Arizona Entrepreneurship Conference – AZEC09 sought to help foster the spirit Pam Slim mentioned earlier. In it’s forth year running, the conference choose, “Bright Spots in the Recession,” as this year’s theme.
• WordCamp Phoenix – WordPress allows both easy publishing and rapid development. WordCampAZ aimed to put these communities in the same room to foster collaboration on what has become the world’s largest blogging tool.
• PodCamp AZ – With the myriad of options available, self publication hasn’t just become easier, it has become unavoidable. Podcasting is a great way to share ideas and foster relationships with people who care.

All these events underscore and emphasis the point Pam Slim made, there is still life in Phoenix.  More coverage from the Project Fidelity coming soon.

Je reviens du WordCamp NY avec Guillaume. Il est minuit et demie, un dimanche soir. Nous arrivons aux douanes. Il y a un seul guichet ouvert, mais heureusement presque personne. Le douanier, un jeune, commence l’interrogatoire habituel: vous venez d’où, vous êtes partis quand. À la question sur l’objet de notre voyage, Guillaume fait son geek: ”On est allés au WordCamp, une conférence pour des développeurs web sur l’outil WordPress.” Le douanier n’y comprend pas grand chose. Il nous demande ce qu’on fait dans la vie. Là, c’est nous qui ne comprenons pas trop. Presque en choeur, nous répondons: “Ben, on est des développeurs Web.” Il n’aime pas trop ça. Je pense qu’il pense qu’on se moque de lui.

Le douanier: OK. Mais vous travaillez pour qui?
Moi: Je suis à mon compte.
Guillaume: Je travaille pour ma propre compagnie. Ça s’appelle Poste 23.
Le douanier, en pointant vers moi: Alors, c’est quoi, ce que ça dit sur votre chandail?

Je me demande de quoi il parle. Je regarde ce que je porte: une chemise de pompiste avec deux patches: Dick et Male Escort Service. J’y pense même plus quand je la porte. Je lui sors ma réponse classique: “Ah ça, c’est juste un sideline.” Il a l’air moyennement convaincu.

Le douanier: Vous restiez où à New York?
Guillaume: On était à l’hôtel…
Le douanier: Avez-vous un reçu?
Moi: J’ai ma copie de la transaction de carte de crédit.
Le douanier: Parfait. Est-ce que je peux la voir?

Fuck. Il commence à nous soupçonner pour vrai, le petit zélé. Je lui réponds qu’il n’y a pas de problème et je commence à fouiller dans mon sac.

Moi: J’ai mon badge de la conférence ici. Vous voulez le voir?
Le douanier: Oui, s’il-vous-plaît.

Guillaume lui transfère l’objet. Je continue de fouiller.

Le douanier, incrédule: Broche à foin?
Moi: Oui, c’est ma compagnie. (J’ai justement mes cartes d’affaires sous le nez.) Tenez, voici ma carte.
Guillaume (en transférant ma carte au douanier): Attendez, je vais vous donner la mienne, elle fait un peu plus sérieux.
Le douanier: Oui, parce que monsieur Biz, là, c’est un petit comique, lui.

Ça s’arrange pas, notre affaire. En plus, je n’arrive pas à trouver mon reçu.

Moi: Écoutez, je pense que c’est dans un autre sac qui est dans le coffre. Vous voulez que j’aille chercher?
Le douanier: Non, ça va aller. J’imagine que vous vous seriez pas donnés la peine d’inventer tout ça. Vous pouvez passer.
Guillaume: On reprendrait nos passeports, par contre.

WordCamp NYC was awesome. I’ll be at FoWD all day today, but will start catching up on the post-WordCamp chores tomorrow. Also, back to UI stuff!

This past weekend I left with a car full of crazies to head up to Word Camp NYC. I met Tom Woodward for the first time and having spent practically 48 hours with him I feel like I have known him much longer. The two other fools in the car were Serena Epstein and Jim Groom.

Serena and I did a presentation on WordPress as a gateway drug that led to use outside the classroom where we were initially introduced to it. Our presentation was set up as a mock N.A. session where we discussed our use and the “evils” of wordpress. My favorite part of the whole presentation (besides the poster-board slides we used) was the great participation we got from the audience. So thanks to all of you who attended our session and made it so enjoyable!

Here is the audio I recorded from the session. Some of the audience comments are a little hard to hear but, overall I think it came out pretty well:

Lastly, special props to all the CUNY and cool NYC people I met at WordCamp 2009 that made it so enjoyable. You guys rock!

ต้องออกตัวเอี๊ยดไว้ก่อนเลยว่า ผมไม่ได้ไปร่วมงานนี้ครับ ด้วยความที่ช่วงนี้มีธุระที่ต้องจัดการแทบจะทุกเสาร์อาทิตย์ เลยพลาดโอกาสที่จะไปร่วมงานไปอย่างน่าเสียดาย จากครั้งแรกที่เคยจัดไปเมื่อปีที่แล้ว คนมามันเยอะเลย จนล่วงเลยมาถึงครั้งที่สอง ที่ทีมงาน WordCamp Bangkok จัดขึ้นที่มหาวิทยาลัยศรีปทุม ครั้งนี้ก็มีเสียงตอบรับที่ดีเยี่ยมเลยทีเดียว โดยผมแอบดูรูปบรรยากาศงาน Wordcamp Bangkok จากเว็บแล้ว เรียกได้ว่าน่าสนใจทีเดียว ใครที่ไปมา ก็มาเล่าให้ฟังถึงความประทับใจกันด้วยนะครับ แต่ใครที่ไม่ได้ไปเหมือนผม ลองแวะไปชมบรรยากาศงาน ที่นี่ก่อนละกันครับ

So today is day two of WordCamp. This was my first one and I have to say it was definitely a good time. I learned a lot, got to interact with many WordPress “personalities”, and showed off AtD a bit.

I gave two presentations. At yesterday’s 2:30pm session I showed After the Deadline and its features to a packed room. To those of you who made it as far as this blog, good to see you, I hope you stick around.

I also gave a talk at 10pm showing how to add After the Deadline to a web application using jQuery. Those present seemed like a strong jQuery crowd so this was a positive thing. I hope some of you try it out. For those who couldn’t make it (but wanted to) here is the presentation:

As a side note: I just noticed AtD corrects wordcamp to WordCamp. I’m on the ball for you guys

View Full Album

Yesterday my wife and I attended WordPress Wordcamp NY City. It was great being a virtual student at Baruch College in the Garmercy Park section of NYC.

Our son attended The School of Visual Arts from 2004-2008. He lived on East 23rd Street and for us it was like coming home again being at Baruch College up the block

The event was very well done. My hat is off to Jane, you organized a great day for us. Your hard work truly paid off in what was accomplished. The sessions were excellent. Our favorite session was True/Slant what a cool MU blog are they.

More about WordPress Wordcamp NYC event.

Very eager to hear about WordPress 2.9 which Matt will be unveiling today, what a great community the WordPress crowd is

Peace,

Ed & Rosemary Jennings