My Web 2.0 mantra: ease of use, ease of use June 17, 2008

So, I followed Chris Brogan’s advice  on personal branding tactics and set myself up a profile on Technorati to build my ego searches for my blogs. 

Maybe I should not have picked the day I’m scheduled to deploy a new portal to embark on any new social media activities, but I was intrigued by Chris’s list and wanted to start working my way down.  And besides, as anyone knows, the final piddling tasks related to portal deployment always have to do with fixing mundane content management issues (in my case, realphabetizing an entire directory of practitioner biographies) so I needed something else to distract me momentarily besides gripe about my day on Twitter.

I have to say setting up my profile on Technorati has been an absolutely frustrating experience.  I had to verify my email address three times before it would recognize me as a user, and for some reason I cannot fathom, their application has yet to validating my authority for this blog!  Oddly enough, it had no problem validating my Dragonfly Reiki site, even though both of them are on WordPress.  I don’t know if that’s an issue with Technorati or WordPress, but it concerns me. 

I’m a busy woman.  The key to social media for me has to be speed and ease of use.  I should be walked through set-up of my profile first thing.  If I have to go back and hunt around to find my profile to edit it, that’s a bad sign.  If the site doesn’t even recognize me after I’ve validated my identity three time using the code they’ve given me to do so, that’s another bad sign.  I’m more patient than most people but in order for me to sing the gospel about social media to friends, colleagues and the practitioners at my job who use the portals I manage, it has to be quick, easy and seamless. 

Now, back to alphabetizing. 

Left Coast. La-La Land. Whatever it is, we’re going there on vacation June 11, 2008

Yesterday, my husband booked our flight to L.A. for the beginning of July.  The four of us (me, Seth, River and Ahleia) have done a bunch of car trips down to Orange Beach to visit my in-laws but never have the 4 of us gotten on a plane together to fly across the country.  Seth and I have gone on trips (NY, L.A. and India.)  Seth, River and I have gone on trips (only to Orange Beach, though, and never on a plane.)  And Seth, Ahleia and I have gone on trips (San Francisco and NY- not bad for an infant. I should sign her up for SkyMiles.  I want my kid to have frequent flier status, although knowing my luck, she’d get upgraded to First and I’d still be hunkered down in Coach, munching on some stale Biscoff cookies.)  So, this should be interesting. 

River has never been to L.A.  Seth came with me a couple of years ago when I was pregnant with Ahleia and in typical fashion, my father drove us past every major tourist attraction.  WIth him, you have to be careful because if you blink, you just might miss something and if you turn your head too fast, you’re likely to get whiplash as he whizzes past that place or thing you’ve only ever seen before on TV.  So, we’re renting a car this time.  My husband wants to make this a memorable trip for River, so I’m leaving it up to him to plan most of the itinerary, since I’ve seen (or at least driven past) most of the things he wants to do. 

One of the cool things we’re doing is driving up U.S. 1 to Monterey.  I’ve done that drive before (and was even able to get out of the car a few times to admire the absolutely breathtaking scenery) and I think they are going to love it.  I just hope we survive 8 hours in the car with a 15 month old.  She does pretty well for the most part when we do the 6 hour trip down to my in-laws in Orange Beach, AL, but boredom and fussiness do eventually set in.  (Actually, that goes for both kids, but River doesn’t usually resort to wailing.)  I am looking forward to the drive.  And I’m looking forward to the L.A. Galaxy – Chivas game too, so I can get my Beckham on.  What is also cool – and here is social media morphing with real life – is that I’m going to meet 4 friends that I made a couple of years ago on a WebMD pregnancy message board.  The message board sucked and we eventually went off and created our own phpbb board that we still chat on every day.  Our babies were all born within a month or two of each other, and so we’ve bonded through the entire pregnancy experience and become great friends, even though we’ve never actually met.  (The 4 women eventually did all meet each other, since they all live in Orange County.) 

I’ll be talking quite a bit about this family vacation, because it’s a tradition I did not grow up with.  My parents were blue-collar and we didn’t have a lot of money for extras.  I went on one family vacation with my parents when I was 5 and my mother was pregnant with my brother.  We went camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains in VA.  I don’t remember much about the trip other than accidentally sitting on a huge anthill and getting my pants infested with ants.  So, here’s to the first of many memorable family vacations!

Here I am. Finally. June 11, 2008

I admit it, I’m a late entrant into the blogosphere.  Given my natural penchant for electronic communications – email, text messaging, message boards – you would have expected me to have started blogging a long time ago.  I can’t really say why I was reticient for so long, other than perhaps my fear of facing the web equivalent of old-fashioned writer’s block – the empty white “Write Post” box waiting to be filled with something interesting, witty or engaging. 

I do have another blog, which is part of the website for my Reiki business, Dragonfly Reiki, but posts there are infrequent and geared more towards sharing insights gleaned from my Reiki practice.  My intention for this blog is broader than that.  Part of my motivation for this blog is to participate in the Special Libraries Association 9 week challenge to educate myself and become more proficient in using a variety of Web 2.0 technologies.  This is essential for my career as a corporate intranet portal knowledge manager, but also because I think the various ways we can connect with each other, share information/knowledge and build community is exciting.  The corporate enterprise typically has been slow to adopt these technologies, but interest and investment in them is building, so I have some catching up to do. 

Granted, I’ve done OK navigating through the social media/Web 2.0 sphere without even investing that much time or energy.  I’ve had a Classmates profile for years (which is now heating up because my *gasp* high school 20 year reunion is this year) and have had a Facebook profile for some time too.  Also del.icio.us and Twitter and FeedDemon…  I have to thank my husband for this, because his energy for diving into new web technologies far exceeds my own. 

I don’t intend for this blog to be focused on analyzing the social media/Web 2.0 universe. There are plenty of people and sites out there who understand more and do a fine job of disseminating that knowledge.  My blog is intended to focus on my life and the things that are of interest to me, while also testing out all sorts of cool tools and functionality. 

This is gonna be fun.  (For me, at least!)