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“Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows.”

The Creative Monopoly By  - The New York Times, April 23, 2012

The Fat Brains are Gen Yers anywhere between the ages of 20 and 35, also known as “Digital Natives,” born and raised in the digital age. It’s not just their proficiency in technology that distinguishes them, though; it’s also their crazy problem-solving skills, their McGuyver-like resourcefulness, and their 24/7 engagement in their own  cultural experience. More ethnically, racially, and gender diverse than any generation before them, they live at the cutting edge of social innovation and embrace an entrepreneurial lifestyle.

[FORBES: Why You Should Be Networking With People Half Your Age]

Just before the New Year I had the opportunity to meet with JD Lasica, one of the creative minds behind SocialBrite, an affiliation of passionate social media strategists who believe in collaborating to produce positive change. He wrote a fabulous feature story on Vivanista, calling us “One of the terrific new resources for those learning how to host philanthropic fundraisers is Vivanista, a very cool San Francisco startup that offers a wealth of resources around charitable events.”

If you want to learn a little more about what we do at Vivanista and plans for 2011, I encourage you to check it out here or watch the 11-minute interview below:

Vivanista: Living well and doing good from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Everything but your company. Why? No one cares. Where is the you?

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders kicked off the morning at Reno-Tahoe WordCamp on June 12, 2010 with a keynote address: “There Is No Plug-in For Awesome (And the only tool here is you)”.  He stressed the importance of bringing your own voice and passion into the way you project your business or blog. It is not always the way the latest and greatest functionality or plug-in on your site looks, what the tabs say or how they are positioned, but the material and audience in which your site reaches. He validated a great point which many of us try to avoid, and it is stressing “Everything but your company. Why? No one cares. Where is the you?” Sometimes it is as little as stepping back to acknowledge what you bring to the company or blog, which makes it unique.

Lacking slides Mann stressed simplicity and flexibility, without them we stress about the small things that lead up to what really matters. Although I had to laugh at his reasoning which was “Slides are like ski poles. You know who needs poles, children and professionals.” Coming from a professional ski background I would like to opt for slides, but they are by no means a crutch. With heavy emphasis on caring intensely about what you do and what you do different than the competition Mann explained that it is very difficult to be the next TechCrunch, instead your should focus on a niche. This carried very well into my presentation at WordCamp which was on Building a niche community with BuddyPress.

BuddyPress is a social networking platform/ plug-in that works with WordPress to create a community or add one to your content driven website. I gave a brief tour of BuddyPress and what it is like out of the box, how it can be customized, disguised and optimized. Although it is a social networking platform, it’s NOT Facebook, and it is not going to be Facebook. Thus the importance of focusing on a niche and providing elements such as content that Facebook cannot do.

MYTH – build it and they will come…

Be Different, BuddyPress can be leveraged to build your own brand and community. I emphasize the importance of design; people should not know your site is built with BuddyPress.  There are some websites such as Hmag, Irrational Games, GigaOM and Vivanista that do this very nicely. Although design is very important, it is not the only thing to focus on. You cannot just build it and they will come. Providing visitors with something unique, a niche focus, something they will not find elsewhere is how you will captivate and build a community. To validate my point, I Lead by Example and walked people through my companies website Vivanista, a community for philanthropic living and giving. Some of the key customizations we did were to the navigation, profiles, login and widgetized design.

A few other things to keep and grow your user base:

  1. Make it Sticky
  2. Make it Social
  3. Make it Easy

Watch the 20 minute video from WordPress.TV:

View presentation slides:

View more presentations from Annie Vranizan.

Photos by Calvert Photgraphy, www.calvertphotography.com. To see more photos from the event and learn more about WordCamp check out www.renotahoewordcamp.com.

Join me this Saturday June 12th 2010 for a full day of WordPress at the University of Nevada, Reno.

If you asked me a year ago what WordPress was I would have told you it was a blogging platform. Little did I know that I would quickly become a savvy WordPress user and ambassador.  I have a love-hate relationship with WordPress and it comes from the countless hours I have logged playing, hacking, tweaking it and learning along the way. I know too much to be your average user and I know too little to be a developer, but it doesn’t stop me from dabbling in code, testing out new plug-ins and contributing to the WordPress community.

Working closely with Colin Loretz, last fall we built one of the most robust BuddyPress sites, Vivanista.com. Vivanista blends webzine, blog and social networking with an assortment of plug-ings and widgets to engage a niche community of philanthropic women. You could say that I am more than intimately close to Vivanista, in that I spend most my days in the dashboard publishing articles, images, events, managing the community, integrating advertising, social media and optimizing the site design and development. I also run my own blog on WordPress and have set several friends up with there own WordPress sites.

Now less than a year after my introduction to WordPress I am going to be talking about building a community with BuddyPress. I will be discussing the many benefits of using BuddyPress, how it has evolved, which plug-ins I recommend, as well as the trials and tribulations along the way.

What I am going to tell you is that WordPress is a chameleon; it is not just a blogging platform. It is a language, a business tool, content management system, community platform, e-commerce site, full of plugins, waiting to be shaped and designed however you wish it to be. In a geeky kind of way I can say WordPress is a dangerous and fun tool, which can be harnessed to change the world.

I want to extend the opportunity for others to learn about WordPress and how you too can leverage it in your everyday life and business. Join me this Saturday June 12th 2010 for a full day of WordPress at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Just What is WordCamp About?

The Reno-Tahoe WordCamp is an event put on by the community, for the community. Organized by Reno Collective this one day conference brings together casual users and developers from all over the country to learn more about what WordPress has to offer to become even better communicators, designers, developers, journalists and marketers.

For developers and designers, it’s a great opportunity to learn new tips and tricks. For writers and bloggers it’s an informative source for improving copy, increasing search engine optimization, incorporating social media and understanding how your site can be tweaked- and for everyone, it’s fantastic for meeting others who are working in your field. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran on the net or a complete newbie, you can get a lot out of it.

What to Expect?

The event brings together people from non-profits, small business, news organizations, and local agencies, as well as many independent developers and designers. The first 150 attendees will receive a limited run of the Reno-Tahoe WordCamp shirt that was designed for us by Diego Sabogal and printed by Reno Envy. Register here >>

The day will kick off with a keynote from Merlin Mann, There Is No Plugin For Awesome (And the only tool here is you). Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster based in San Francisco. Merlin created 43 Folders, co-hosts You Look Nice Today, appears on MacBreak Weekly, and speaks and consults about things like email, time & attention, and creative work. Through his work in 43Folders Merlin been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time Magazine and has also been tapped to present to tech giants such as Apple, Google and Yahoo.
The day will be broken up into two tracks for Community & Business and Designers & Developers. Sessions on the following topics will be addressed:

  • Designing on WordPress
  • Creating your first WordPress plugin
  • Using WordPress as a marketing tool
  • Running a business on WordPress
  • Freelancing with WordPress
  • Using WordPress as a multimedia platform
  • Creating your own niche social network with WordPress & BuddyPress
  • WordPress within the internet ecosystem

Learn more at www.renotahowordcamp.com

Social Impact, Social Good, Social Media, these were all popular topics of conversation at both the Care National Conference and Summit Series in Washington D.C. last week. The exponential growth of ways to socialize and share information with people in your community, at an event, or across the world allow our society to be more connected, informed and powerful. Through forms of FREE media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube you can extend a conversation, start a movement, raise funds, take a stance and even start a fight.

Many people scoff at these tools, or merely do not take the time to fully understand their potential. Unlike traditional forms of media, these tools allow people to decide what is ‘Popular’; trending topics rise above the noise and can reach far greater viewers in short periods of time. In the Women’s Leadership forum at Summit Series it was mentioned that ‘the influence on an individual is exponential’ and that if these tools are used appropriately one person can be extremely impactful. For example leaders, legislators, nonprofits, individuals and organizations are leveraging social media to create social good.

In a panel on ‘Doing Good in Tough Times’ Malaak Compton-Rock talks about how texts were used to raise funds during the Haiti crisis:

With Twitter, you can follow people and topics and virally spread the word about a great cause. The hashtag (“#”) is a way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic, hashtags allow you to keep all tweets about that topic in a single stream. A hashtag is essentially a topic with a hash symbol (“#”) at the start to identify it, like #CARENCC or #SummitSeries. They are used to coordinate updates during emergencies, campaigns, events and fundraisers. One of the easiest ways to track a hashtags is by using Twitter Search.

During both the Care National Conference and the Summit Series we were able to follow the conversation, capture quotes and follow articles and links that were shared throughout the event. Below we have gathered some of the top tweets we came across while in Washington DC at #CARENCC and #SummitSeries. Check out the Top 25 Tweets and Tweeters on Vivanista.com >>

At the recent Nevada Interactive Media Summit, Colin Loretz and I presented a rapid fire round of the top 50 applications and websites we use to collaborate on projects and run our day-to-day business.

Colin and I have a few things in common not the least being we work together on Vivanista, but we are both entrepreneurs wearing constantly changing hats. Colin is a web developer, designer and recently opened a co-working space and development company of his own. I would consider myself a marketer, but I dabble in code, video, content/publishing, social media and have found some amazing tools to help me along the way. There are so many new tools online that it is hard to keep track – we’ve distilled our favorites into this presentation.

In what seemed to be a quick fifty minutes, Colin and I took turns sharing our favorite fifty applications. We broke things up into relevant categories and took turns explaining what each provided and how we personally use them. We covered everything from collaborating on projects, creating stunning presentations, sharing files effortlessly, monitoring finances, and managing endless to-do lists in the hustle and bustle of our wired lives.

The tools we shared during this session shed light on the many innovative, web-based and even free solutions for organizations and individuals of any size in building a company or non-profit organization, managing a classroom, schoolwork or family life. I have included the slides and a breakdown of each of the applications below.

50 Applications to Fuel Your Business

Project Management

  • Basecamp provides simple project management for you and your clients.
  • ActionMethod is visual way to organize a project into basic steps such as actions, references, events, backburners and more.
  • Harvest provides time tracking, invoicing, expense management and allows you to keep track of your accounts receivable and revenue.

Communication

  • Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users.
  • Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.
  • Campaign Monitor is email marketing software for designers and their clients.
  • iChat is a rich instant messaging application that works with your AIM or MobileMe account and makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using text and video, whether they’re on a Mac or a PC.*

Presentations

  • 280slides lets you create presentations on the web and its features are most comparable to Keynote on the Mac.
  • Slidshare lets you share your presentation files on the web and allows for comments, sharing and embedding on blogs.

Audio/Video

  • ScreenFlow provides all the elements needed to create professional-looking product demonstrations of software applications, including games. $99
  • iMovie Maybe you want to throw together a few video clips. Maybe you have more time and want to fine-tune every edit. Or maybe you just want to flip through clips the way you flip through album covers in iTunes. iMovie lets you do it all — then share it all. $79 for iLife package.
  • Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.
  • Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder you can use Audacity to Record live audio, Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files, Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, and hange the speed or pitch of a recording.

To-do

  • Teux Deux is an application that is as simple as they come. Manage items on a day to day basis and see what is coming up for the week.
  • TaDaList allows you to create to-do lists and share them with others.
  • Toodledo is most complex to-do system listed here but it is the the most appropriate for anyone following the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method.

Surveys & Forms

  • Wufoo is an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. Free version available.
  • SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that enables people of all experience levels to create their own surveys quickly and easily. Free for 10 questions.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

  • Highrise gives you what you need to track your leads, contacts and deals. Highrise prepares you for your next call, email, meeting, pitch or sale.
  • Salesforce is much more robust than Highrise and can quite literally help you run every function of your business online thanks to Apps available on the Salefsorce.com AppExchange. Salesforce gives you a 360-view of your company from leads, accounts & contacts, dollar opportunities, contracts and even allows you to manage documents, customer support and cases.

Google

  • Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
  • Google Calendars Never forget another event. Get event reminders via email or have text messages sent right to your mobile phone.
  • Google Docs Create and edit web-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Store documents online and access them from any computer.
  • Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline.
  • Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, new, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
  • Google Apps for Your Domain-  Help your business reduce IT costs and improve the way employees work together.
  • Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email, free US long distance, low rates on international calls, and many calling.

Publishing

  • WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform but it’s features have grown to make it customizable for building websites that are easy to manage and maintain.
  • ExpressionEngine is also a blogging platform that can be used for web development. Whether you need a blog or a website, ExpressionEngine can help power it and make it easy for users to maintain and publish new content.

Social Media

  • Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.
  • TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
  • Tweetie – twitter client for macs and iPhone.
  • Hoot suite professional online twitter client.

Miscellaneous

  • Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things
  • 1Password is available on the Mac and iPhone. It works with all internet browsers to allow you to save passwords and login information that are protected under a single, secure master password.
  • Readability allows you to simplify content on the web for easier reading. -
  • Bit.ly allows you to shorten web URLs and track the traffic that uses that link.
  • Divvy lets you setup resources and assets to be reserved or scheduled my groups or individuals. For instance, sharing a conference room, video projector or even a person’s time.
  • RescueTime is for the productivity nazis. It tracks what applications you’re using, idle time and more to help you identify where your time is being spent and where you might be able to recover hours worth of productive time in a week.

File Sharing

  • Snagit screen capture sofware allows you to create an image of all or part of what you see you see on your computer monitor.
  • Scribd On Scribd, you can quickly and easily turn nearly any file—including PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel—into a Web document and share it with the world.
  • Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. Show off your favorite photos and videos to the world
  • Acrobat.com is the swiss-army knife of web applications. It is a set of online tools you can use to create and collaboratively edit documents, communicate in real time and simplify working with others.
  • Dropbox makes online backup and file syncing very easy and seamless, across both Mac and PC and even the iPhone.
  • Evernote lets you save your ideas, things you see, and things you like. Then find them all on any computer or device you use.

Finance

  • Mint is a free way to manager your money. It syncs securely with your bank accounts, credit cards and other assets/liabilities so that you can make informed decisions in budgeting, saving and investing. Mint will even help you find money. If it notices that using a different credit card or moving to a different kind of savings account will save or make you more money, it will let you know.
  • Freshbooks allows you to create and manage online invoices.
  • BallPark lets freelancers and companies create online estimates, invoices and centralize conversations with clients all in one place.
  • Invoice Machine is a simple way to create and manage invoices online.

I’ll be presenting ’50 Apps to Fuel Your Business’ at the 2010 Nevada Interactive Media Summit on March 6, 2010, at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Joe Crowley Student Union.

Colin Loretz and I will be presenting a rapid fire round of the top 50 applications and websites you probably didn’t know existed but will help you make sense of your business, and in many cases, your life online. We will cover everything from collaborating on projects, creating stunning presentations, sharing files effortlessly, monitoring your finances, and managing your endless to-do lists in the hustle and bustle of our wired lives.

Presentation Objectives:

  • There are so many new tools online that it is hard to keep track – we’ve distilled them into this presentation
  • Teaching through example, both of us use these applications in running our companies and how the audience might use these tools in their daily life
  • Using tech to automate or improve our work, making life a little easier
  • Attendees will be given a handout with all 50 web apps and their URLs

This session will benefit anyone who uses the web or wishes to use the web to better manage their busy life and even automate some of it. Students to top-level management will find new applications and tools to not only manage a brand, online communications and precious time, but also fuel your business.

Some of the tools we will discuss are SlideShare, Mint, Tweetie, Wufoo, Screenflow, Skype, and Bit.ly.

View Nevada Interactive Media Summit’s program >>

Nevada Interact will bring together business owners, non-profit advocates, publishers, newsmakers, bloggers, podcasters, filmmakers, media, PR and advertising professionals and anyone else interested in interactive media together for hands-on learning, rich discussions, opportunities to meet with local companies working in interactive media and plentiful networking opportunities

Dot your i’s and cross your t’s, but don’t include all your dirty laundry.

Email is such an integral part of our day-to-day lives that we often forget the impending consequence of sending a poorly drafted message.  Do you ever think that sometimes you should not have sent that last email, or maybe you could have left out some of that information? It is important to consider what you write, where it goes, or will go after you send it out. You never know if it may land in a second or third parties hand and how that may affect you.

In the business world email is not only considered a means of communication but an official document. Partnerships, contracts, relationships, deals and hires happen or don’t over e-mail. When you are applying for a new job these days, 99% of the time it is via an e-mail resume submission, continued by follow up e-mails. These messages are initially all a company has to shape their perspective and impression of an individual.  Anything that jumps off the page may greatly impact the opportunity to make it past an early screening. This could be anything from a misspelled word to the disclosure of TMI, too much information.

The e-mail that spurred me to write this post simply made me laugh. An individual applying for an entry-level position within our start-up was found guilty of the above-mentioned sins. After showing initial interest in this candidate, we had arranged to bring them in for an interview, that is until will got her change of salary expectations.  Not only did this individual come back with a salary request that more than doubled first discussed expectations but they also included a detailed expense spreadsheet, of “required” living expenses. Not only was the title “Cost of Livng Worksheet” misspelled, but everything from pet food to dry cleaning expenses were disclosed. The line items that I would like to highlight are those related to personal appearance, totaling $7,800. Last time I checked grooming, dry cleaning and 5K for clothes was not required to live. More importantly a job behind the computer does not require a great deal of attention to at-work appearance.

*Clothing/Salon care related to at-work appearance/professionalism

Clothing Estimate               $4,800 (average)/ Year

Dry Cleaning                                     $900/Year

Grooming (Hair/Nails)         $150/month and $2100/Year

First of all, being the co-founder of a start-up organization we watch our dollars very consciously and this is something everyone should consider before disclosing any financial data to a prospective employer. I commend this person for putting a budget together in the first place, but sharing it opens the door for judgment. I have a hard time understanding the reason for telling us how they are going to spend their paycheck when they say “I believe that the principal value in a job with your company is in the learning and mentoring aspects, and not the paycheck”.

Granted we all send quick notes, e-mail has become an extension of our conversations in day-to-day life. But sometimes its good to think twice and ask yourself if you should really send that email.

A few things to consider before pressing send:

  • Think about how the recipient might judge you on this message, have you provided too little or too much information
  • Did you research what you’re talking about i.e. salary expectations, organizations goals, and other pertinent facts that may be valuable
  • Read your email and make sure to use spell-check

I gave a technology demonstration of Vivanista.com at the November Bay Area WordPress Meetup. Vivanista is built on WordPress and BuddyPress, and utilizes a number of plugins, widgets and a custom theme. Here are the slides from my presentation.

WordPress Meetup – Vivanista Website Demo

Terry Chay, of Automattic Inc. wrote an in depth analysis of the technology applied at Vivanista.com. He highlights both the advantages and a few of the issues.

Check out Vivanista on The Woodwork >>

The-Woodwork-Terry-Chay