Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
[fr] Avez-vous aussi remarqué que plus on attend après avoir écrit son dernier billet sur un blog donné, plus il est difficile d'écrire ce fameux "billet après la pause"?
Have you also noticed that the longer you go without writing a blog post on a particular blog, the harder it is to write that first post “after the break”?
[fr] Going Solo, c'est demain! Une vidéo et deux-trois pensées d'organisatrice.
Gosh. If I learnt one thing in my life, it’s that day go by and dates end up being “tomorrow”, and even “today” at some point. Going Solo is tomorrow — I have to pinch myself regularly to make sure I’m not dreaming.
You can still register online until tonight. Come to the Warm-Up Party this evening. I’m still wondering what to wear, worrying about a DHL package which reached Geneva yesterday morning but still hasn’t made it to my door, preparing to jot down some notes for what I’m going to say as the MC (and a panel moderator!) on the big day, wondering what “unpredictables” are going to crop up today (the last two days have been filled with them, big and small), remembering that I still have a bunch of Going Solo related photos to upload (maybe I’ll test the venue wifi with them)… Well, I’m busy.
And excited.
Thanks to all those of you who supported me these last months. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you.
[fr] Des nouvelles de Going Solo. Plein de nouveau! Mais pas le courage d'écrire en français. Au pire, filez sur la page presse où vous trouverez de la documentation en français au sujet de la conférence.
Gosh, I can’t remember when I posted the last Going Solo update on this blog. The conference is in less than a week! I can’t believe it.
You should really, really, really subscribe to the Going Solo blog to keep up with what’s going on on that front, or sign up for the newsletter if you’d rather get an e-mail every now and again.
Yes, Going Solo finally has a newsletter! And posters! And an agenda, speaker interviews, a bunch of great sponsors and partners (attendees will have a chance to win a FreshBooks Shuttle Bus package, get MOO goodies, and even see men in white. If you’re having trouble keeping track of where to find Going Solo online, this round-up post should help you.
Oh, and we have pre-conference and post-conference events organized, quite a bit of bandwidth at the venue (wifi of course), and we’re all set to film the sessions on the big day.
Phew. What am I missing? Oh yes, we’re going to be able to keep registration open this week (the kind people at the Albatros-Navigation are flexible enough to allow us to do that). I need to write a note about that on the Going Solo blog. And we have a press page where you can download shiny PDFs both in French and English.
Funnily, my stress levels are going down these days. I mean, we’re almost all set, aren’t we? I might bite my tongue for saying that these next days, though…
[fr] J'essaie le plugin seesmic pour mettre de la vidéo dans mes articles. Il paraît qu'on peut laisser aussi des commentaires vidéo!
When I visited Seesmic in San Francisco, Loïc told me they were working on a video comment and posting plugin.
Here I am, trying it out.
{seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/NrZQ4aKmSu_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”My First Seesmic Video Post with the WordPress plugin.”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/0i66jwr6zE”}}}
[fr] Going Solo vise à être une conférence qui non seulement donne de l'inspiration, mais qui enseigne également. Du coup, préparer le programme ne consiste pas simplement à trouver des orateurs pouvant faire des présentations autour d'un thème donné, mais ressemble beaucoup plus à la préparation d'un plan d'études: il y a tant de matière à couvrir, et il faut trouver les bonnes personnes pour le faire.
It was clear to me from the start, when I started imagining Going Solo, that the programme would be built in such a way as to cover a range of topics I thought were relevant. What I didn’t realize is that this is quite different from having a conference/event “theme” and hunting for speakers who have something to say around that theme.
I’ve many times tried to express that although Going Solo is not a workshop or a training session, it is training-like, but I never quite seemed to find a way to explain this clearly. I wanted to say “yes, it’s a conference, but the aim is for people to learn stuff they can use when they walk out.” I think I’ve nailed it now, though: Going Solo is educational more than inspirational.
Most conferences I go to fall in the “inspirational” category. Of course, I learn things there, but mainly, I am inspired, or lifted (if the conference is LIFT). When I planned my Open Stage speech to present Going Solo to the audience at LIFT (watch the video), I wanted it to be inspirational. It’s not a video that teaches you anything, but that inspires you to attend Going Solo (and it did indeed inspire people!)
Even if the conference theme is more technical, and the sessions actually teach you stuff, most often it is a series of related sessions grouped together around a given theme. Reboot is a perfect example of how a theme is used to collect all sorts of contributions.
Not so for Going Solo. Putting together the programme for Going Solo feels much more like being in charge of defining the teaching programme for an academic year (only it’s a day, thank goodness, not a year). At the end of the day, I want the programme to have covered this, that and that. I try to organize the content into sessions, and then I talk with my speakers to see who can cover what.
I’m realizing now that this is the difficult bit — and as a speaker myself, I should have thought of this before. “Speaker topics” do not necessarily match “Steph-defined sessions” — which means I need to go back and reshuffle my sessions (perfectly doable, but it’s more work) to avoid overlaps and important topics slipping through the cracks.
Has anybody had similar experiences? And for any people reading who speak at conferences, if you agree on a topic with the chair and you’re asked to make sure your talk covers aspects x, y and z of the topic, does it make you feel micro-managed? Or is it something that happens regularly?
Partial cross-post from the Going Solo blog. Also on the Going Far blog.
[fr] Google Groups trouve qu'il n'est pas raisonnable de vouloir ajouter plus d'une dizaine de personnes à la fois à une newsletter nouvellement créée.
I’ve used Google Groups to set up a newsletter for Going Solo.
Here it is, with added proof (if needed) of my hopeless lack of design sense.
When I set up the group, I did what most normal newsletter creators would do: went through my contacts to invite those who might be interested in joining. I selected 30 or so people to start with.
My action triggered a flag for review, as I might be a potential spammer:
Your request to invite X new members has been flagged for review by our staff.
In order to protect our members from unsolicited email, Google manually reviews invite requests which meet various criteria. Your request will not be reviewed unless you provide us with more information in the form below. Reviews generally take 1 – 2 business days.
Please provide an explanation for where these new members come from and why they would want to be part of your group. Note that Google takes a very dim view of Spam. The people you invite must know you and be expecting your message. If they complain, you will be banned from our service and your group will be deleted.
Great.
Well, I wrote up an explanation, saying I was setting up this newsletter so that people could stay informed about Going Solo (registration is closing soon btw), and that I was going through my address book to let people know about it.
Anything wrong with that, in your opinion? I think not, and Google obviously didn’t think there was anything wrong either, because they let my invitations go through after a few hours.
BUT.
Now, each time I invite even one single person, my request is flagged.
What a pain! I’m going to be inviting people many times a day over the next week, as I dig out e-mail addresses. And obviously, just announcing the existence of the newsletter is not enough to get people to sign up — ever heard of lower the barrier to entry? If I’m creating this newsletter, it’s because I’m finally coming to my senses (!) and realising that not everybody follows Twitter, subscribes to blogs, hangs out on Facebook or upcoming, and that good ol’ e-mail still has some good days before it when it comes to getting information out to people.
I am really annoyed at Google Groups for making this so difficult. Shouldn’t there be a way for me to get the limit “lifted” for my group, by offering proof I’m not a nasty spammer, but a businesswoman (OMG!) who is very much aware that she will very quickly use up her social capital if she spams her network with irrelevant stuff? And therefore, that I actually need to send out invites to a few hundred people?
Also, look at this form:
Don’t you think that “e-mail addresses” field invites a reasonably large number of addresses?
I went through the help, and it wasn’t very encouraging, but I did learn a few useful things:
So, please. If you have friends working on Google Groups, please draw their attention to this post and issue. It’s a bloody pain in the neck.
Oh yeah — and please sign up for the newsletter. I’m going to have trouble inviting you 😉 — [email protected] also works.