December 2007 Recap [en]

It’s high time for a [December 2007](/archives/2007/12/) Recap. 36 posts, including the [November 2007 Recap](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/november-2007-recap/). In future, I’ll try to do the recap nearer the end of the month. I will.

And I thought November had been busy?!

### Going Solo and Going Far

Let’s get cracking: I’d say one of the major themes of December 2007 was my [announcement of Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/), and a whole bunch of posts I wrote around that. I’ve now [copied the posts](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2008/01/15/websites-for-going-solo-and-going-far/) over to the blogs of both [Going Solo](http://going-solo.net) and [Going Far](http://going-far.com), so I’ll link to them there.

**On the [Going Solo blog](http://going-solo.net):**

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/): the announcement
– [Picking a City for an Event: Lausanne](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/picking-a-city-for-an-event-lausanne/): explaining my decision to hold the event in Lausanne, rather than London, Paris or Berlin
– [Headache: Picking a Date for an Event](http://going-solo.net/2007/12/16/headache-picking-a-date-for-an-event/): where I share some of the pain involved in choosing a date (I actually had to [change it to May 16th](http://going-solo.net/2008/01/10/about-a-date/) later on

For some reason, [Badges at Conferences](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/badges-at-conferences/) didn’t get copied over to the Going Solo blog — but it’s clearly related to this conferency stuff.

**On the [Going Far blog](http://going-far.com):**

These posts are more general musings (most of the time) on the whole “[starting a company](http://going-far.com/2007/11/13/im-starting-a-company/)” thing.

– [News from LeWeb3](http://going-far.com/2007/12/12/news-from-leweb3/): [LeWeb3](http://www.leweb3.com/) (which I maintain should have been called LeWeb4) is where I started talking about Going Solo and approaching possible sponsors — a very important step for me
– [Why Events?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/16/why-events/): an explanation of why I decided to start organizing events in addition to my current work as a consultant and [speaker](http://stephanie-booth.com/en/speaking/)
– [Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My!](http://going-far.com/2007/12/17/advisors-boards-companies-partners-oh-my/): trying to come to grips with the different levels of involvement others may have in your company (still figuring that one out, by the way)
– [Websites and Blogs, Where Does One Start?](http://going-far.com/2007/12/19/websites-and-blogs-where-does-one-start/): yet another post ending in a punctuation mark — worrying about online presence, and finding it kind of ironic as it’s my job to help people with theirs

Here, too, a post which I think I should also have copied over, but which got left behind: [Feeling Like a Born-Again Blogger](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/feeling-like-a-born-again-blogger/).

### WoWiPAD, WPD, and Work-Related Stuff

While on the topic of events, December saw some action in the “get together and do stuff” department: [Website Pro Day (WPD) and World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/). The [second WPD](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/website-pro-day-deuxieme/) *(French post)* was announced and took place on the 28th. [WoWiPAD1 and WPD2 News](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/wowipad1-and-wpd2-news/) was a short announcement/sign-up post.

As a result, I’ve worked a bit on my [professional site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (this month too, actually), and written about trying to map out what I do and how to “advertise” is: [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/) (with a French version: [Qu’est-ce que je fais, au juste?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/quest-ce-que-je-fais-au-juste/).

I also decided to start organizing a blogging crash course. As this targets local people, I’ve blogged about it in French: [Trois heures pour se mettre à bloguer](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/trois-heures-pour-se-mettre-a-bloguer/) (the concept — I’ll be proposing this as a workshop at [the LIFT conference](http://www.liftconference.com/) once I’ve figured how to write it up… tomorrow — deadline is 20th!) and [Qui prendrait des “cours de blog”?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/qui-prendrait-des-cours-de-blog/), my vision of the target audience for this kind of course.

I sent in a talk proposal for BlogTalk 2008 ([BlogTalk 2008 Proposal — Being Multilingual: Blogging in More Than One Language](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogtalk-2008-proposal-being-multilingual-blogging-in-more-than-one-language/)). For the funny story, I had a nasty time booking my flights, then my talk was rejected, then I decided not to go to BlogTalk and started cancelling my flights, then I was invited to come on a panel (which I’ve just agreed to moderate), so I had to un-cancel and rebook a couple of flights. Sigh.

Still in the “work-related” department, as I was booking my flights with [Kayak.com](http://kayak.com), I decided to write up the experience: [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/). This was a chance to share what I’d learnt with my fellow travellers, and in the same time provide a demonstration of what kind of material I might produce during an [experiential marketing campaign](/focus/experiential-marketing/). The very next day, I came upon an article on a French blogger’s site (about some form of blogvertising) which prompted me to give some explanations about the experiential marketing concept in French: [Marketing expérientiel vs. publireportage](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/23/marketing-experientiel-vs-publireportage/). So… two rather long blog posts just before [Christmas](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/christmas/). (There would be another post or two to write about the end of my adventures in organizing travel: sites that don’t take non-US credit cards, for example, or various weird pricing structures and policies you can bump into. But not now. Today, my travels for Feb/March are booked, finally.)

Though it was written early in the month, [Blogs en entreprise, un peu en vrac](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/07/blogs-en-entreprise-un-peu-en-vrac/) *(in French)* also belongs to this pile of “work-like” posts, as it is an explanation of the issues surrounding corporate blogging and what it involves. I actually wrote it for a prospective client at the time.

### WordPress Things

Another major theme for December was **WordPress-related things** (as you can see, I’ve been knee-deep in code):

– [Ridding WordPress Plugins of Template Tags](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/04/ridding-wordpress-plugins-of-template-tags/): a couple of neat tricks to save your plugin users from having to add template tags all over the place
– [WordPress Sandbox Theme Problems](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-sandbox-theme-problems/): not all resolved, I’m afraid
– [Nasty Problem With Basic Bilingual Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/): [resolved](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/nasty-problem-with-basic-bilingual-plugin/#comment-346641), thankfully!
– [WordPress Deaf to Pings](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/wordpress-deaf-to-pings/): seems to have mostly resolved itself, though I do often end up republishing posts 3-4 times to help the pingbacks get through
– [Browser Language Detection and Redirection](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/browser-language-detection-and-redirection/): not strictly WordPress stuff, but useful to anybody with a [multilingual](/focus/multilingual) WordPress site
– [Bunny’s Language Linker: New WordPress Plugin](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/bunnys-language-linker-new-wordpress-plugin/): now also [in the WordPress Plugin Index](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bunnys-language-linker/) — helps create links between equivalent pages on mirror-translated websites.

### The Rest

Now we find ourselves faced with a bunch of posts that don’t seem directly related to one another. My interests are varied, and I must say that I sometimes wonder how anybody else but me would find such a mixture appealing.

Here are some about **Web 2.0-ish related stuff**:

– [Twitter Advertisers and Friend Collectors](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/15/twitter-advertisers-and-friend-collectors/): why I block some people on Twitter
– [Hashtags For My Followees](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/18/hashtags-for-my-followees/): an explanation of hashtags on Twitter
– [Granular Privacy Control (GPC)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/26/granular-privacy-control-gpc/): a thought or two on the Google Reader Shared Items “privacy” non-issue
– [Hoosgot: The Lazyweb is Back!](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/31/hoosgot-the-lazyweb-is-back/): announcing Hoosgot, reincarnation of the Lazyweb

What’s left? [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/), where I express that though I’m glad to have my photo taken, I do consider I have some rights to the resulting photo as it’s a picture of *me*. [Fresh Lime Soda Episodes 8 & 9](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/fresh-lime-soda-episodes-8-9/) (yes, that was bad — episode 10 is waiting on my hard drive to be edited).

And two more posts in French: [Arghl! Du spam par SMS! On fait quoi?](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/arghl-du-spam-par-sms-on-fait-quoi/) — some practical advice on dealing with SMS spam. And last but not least, [Du lavage de linge sale en ligne](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/05/du-lavage-de-linge-sale-en-ligne/), about using blogs to wash dirty linen in public. The dirty linen being, in this case, the fact that one [Christophe Ginisty](http://www.ginisty.com/) CEO of Pointblog (the company which ran the now-defunkt [Pointblog blog](http://www.pointblog.com/)) owes a bunch of people — including me — money for work we did. This has been dragging along for years now (I wrote an article in early 2006 for a magazine that Pointblog was producing).

### Selection

There you are! A [month of blogging](/archives/2007/12/) in just one post! Not feeling up to reading it all?

If you were to read only three posts (sticking to the English ones):

– [Announcing Going Solo](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/14/announcing-going-solo/)
– [Working on my Professional Site](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/28/working-on-my-professional-site/)
– [World Wide Paperwork and Administrivia Day (WoWiPAD) and Website Pro Day (WPD)](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/17/wwpad-wpd/)

Ready for five? Add these two:

– [Being My Own Travel Agent With Kayak](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/22/being-my-own-travel-agent-with-kayak/)
– [Photography: Being the Model](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/12/16/photography-being-the-model/)

Similar Posts:

• Websites and Blogs, Where Does One Start? [en] (2007)
• Bunny's Language Linker: New WordPress Plugin [en] (2007)
• Stephanie's October Conference Tour: Web 2.0 Expo Europe [en] (2008)
• Why Events? [en] (2007)
• Tag-Related Wishlist [en] (2007)
• Le Web 3: Recap [en] (2006)
• My Categories are a Mess [en] (2006)
• Feeling Like a Born-Again Blogger [en] (2007)
• Nasty Problem With Basic Bilingual Plugin [en] (2007)
• Basic Bilingual 0.3 for Multilingual Blogging [en] (2007)