Stephanie Booth's online ramblings
The crow yelled at the cat and flapped its wings. The feline retreated.
The next day, two cats. The crow crowed louder and flapped her wings faster. Her mate swooped down and nipped a kitty tail.
Third day, three felines: not a chance for the outnumbered crows, their babies eaten.
This is a 50-word short story. Read more by me on CTTS or by others too on Facebook.
[fr] Les relations blogueurs: qu'est-ce que c'est, et en quoi est-ce différent des relations presse/publiques? (Je pense qu'il va falloir faire un article là-dessus en français à l'occasion.)
I thought I’d write a post to quickly explain what I view as a particular field in social media: blogger relations. I prefer to view blogger relations as a speciality of community management rather than a speciality in PR, because it has much more to do with human relationships and communities (sometimes very small) than with managing a public image.
Blogger relations is what I call the work I’ve been doing for Web 2.0 Expo Europe, Le Web in Paris, and now Solar Impulse.
Companies and organizations are starting (well, they have been “starting” for the last five years, so some of you might get the feeling this start is dragging along) to realize that there is a population out there in social media that produces content, is very connected, and sometimes pretty influential. I single out bloggers and podcasters because despite all the excitement around Twitter and Facebook, publications in those mediums are too transient. Three weeks later, the tweets and status updates are long gone (Storify might yet change that, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on that service).
Though some online publications are very close in organisation and tone to traditional media, most bloggers and podcasters out there are better not treated as “press”. And they have value to bring that justifies treating them slightly differently from the general public.
Bloggers and podcasters are similar to press in the sense that they produce content. But they are also similar to the general public in the sense that they show interest for something by passion and often in their free time, and not based on the agenda of their employer.
As I see it, blogger relations imply a more “balanced” and “open” relationship between the parties, where it’s possible to lay things clearly on the table. Offer and demand are in my opinion more present in defining the power balance than when dealing with the press. Are bloggers desperate to attend your event or follow your project? You can be selective, and put conditions. Are bloggers and podcasters not yet aware of what you’re doing? You might want to bring slightly more to the table to make it worth the investment for them.
All this, of course, requires one to know what is and is not acceptable in the blogger world. Ask for a blog post, or to display a badge on one’s blog? Should be pretty much OK. Try to exercise editorial control? Not so good.
Maybe some of the above is valid with the press, too. But again, I’d like to stress a big difference between bloggers/podcasters and press: in general, the blogger or podcaster will be coming to you on his free time and of his own accord, whether the journalist will often be sent by his employer or client, on his work time. This changes things.
I like to define two types of situations in blogger relations: floodgates and outreach. The strategy for both of these is quite different: in one case you need to filter through a large number of incoming requests. In the other, you need to reach out to those you want to interest.
I’m planning to blog more on this topic (I’ve wanted to for a long time), but for now I just wanted to lay down some general thoughts.
[en] Info session this Thursday evening for the year-long course on social media and online communities that I co-direct for SAWI.
Bon, alors quand je vous disais que j’étais toute la semaine à Bruxelles avec Solar Impulse, j’ai menti un peu: je fais un saut express à Lausanne jeudi soir pour la séance d’information pour la volée 2011-2012 de la formation que je co-dirige au SAWI.
Il s’agit de la formation de spécialiste en médias sociaux et communautés en ligne, qui a déjà eu lieu l’an dernier (avec grand succès, je me dois d’ajouter!) sous le nom de “spécialiste en management de communautés et médias sociaux”.
Le contenu du cours ne change pas fondamentalement, mis à part les inévitables ajustements d’année en année. Le changement de nom est simplement dû à une volonté de mieux refléter la matière du cours.
Bref, si les médias sociaux vous intéressent, et les communautés en ligne, venez jeudi soir 26 mai à 18h30 à la Maison de la Communication à Lausanne afin d’y poser toutes les questions qui vous passeraient par la tête! (Une autre séance d’information aura lieu le 14 juin.)
[fr] A Bruxelles avec Solar Impulse, gardez un oeil sur leur blog pour me suivre durant cette semaine! Je m'occupe de leur programme blogueurs.
The week ahead is going to be busy: I’m in Brussels with the Solar Impulse team, taking care of their blogger programme and supporting them in their social media use. It’s great fun but a lot of work!
03.2012: photo has sadly been removed from Flickr by the person who uploaded it.
(photo by Delmi Alvarez, who took part in the blogger visit this morning — check it out on Storify 😉)
Keep an eye on the Solar Impulse blog and my Twitter account if you want to stay in the loop. And if you’re a blogger in Brussels, do come and visit us!
News of special interest to my Belgian readers, cross-posted from the Solar Impulse Blog. Thanks for helping spread the word about this blogger programme, time is short (happenings are next week!)
Now that the HB-SIA is safely parked in its hangar in Brussels airport, we’re getting serious about finalizing the details of the blogger programme.
As announced, there are four occasions we can invite you to take part in:
All are still open (I’ll update this post as needed) but be quick, space is limited. So far, we are able to accommodate all those who have contacted us (you’ll be hearing from us soon), so if you want a chance to meet the team and see the plane for real, it’s worth applying.
We’ll of course have stickers and a certain number of booklets about the project (particularly for those of you coming Monday and Saturday).
An extra opportunity we’re throwing in for you is that if you come to one of these four occasions, we would like to invite you to write a guest post on the Solar Impulse blog. No obligation of course, and we’ll set a time limit (upto July 6th), but we think it would be cool if we open up the blog to other bloggers.
Please use this form to apply for the exclusive blogger/podcaster programme.
If you aren’t a blogger or a podcaster, Saturday afternoon will be open to the general public (you’ll have to sign up though). Keep your eyes open for more news on this blog, or sign up as a Friend in our supporter program and we’ll let you know. If you are a “2.0-type” photographer, it’s worth applying too if you make your photos available through Flickr under a creative commons license (meaning, you allow bloggers and other online people to use your photos to illustrate their writings, as long as they credit you, of course).
Our main aim with the blogger programme is to help spread information and enthusiasm about the Solar Impulse project. So when you take part in the programme, we expect you to help us with that by:
What’s next?
If you’re not around to come and see us at Brussels airport, you might still have your chance. Early July (you know how we roll now, we won’t be able to tell you the date until the last moment) the prototype is flying to Paris for Salon le Bourget.
There won’t be much to see at take-off and landing (Paris and Brussels airports are huge, you’ll be better off glued to your screen watching the video stream!) but there will be short in-flight interviews with André (we’re waiting to see how many slots we can secure for bloggers) and probably a press conference upon arrival (to be confirmed). We’re also seeing if it’s possible to give access to the press conference to certain bloggers/podcasters. More soon.
In Paris itself, the plane will normally be available to the public in the afternoons — but it’ll basically be a path around the plane with many many thousands of people streaming by. So we’re thinking of doing something similar to Brussels: a private visit with a small party of bloggers and podcasters one of the mornings, and another discussion table (like in Brussels) with André and Bertrand. The rest of the time, Elâ and I would be available to receive you by appointment. All this is to be confirmed, of course, but like that you know what we’re planning!
I’m also busy thinking about introducing an “official Solar Impulse blogger” status. It’s still pretty fuzzy for me (so suggestions welcome!) but it would basically entail a certain number of privileges and requirements for the bloggers/podcasters in question.
The article was originally published a few days ago on the Solar Impulse blog — a project I’m working on. See the original article.
Are you a blogger or a podcaster? Are you excited about the Solar Impulse project? We have news for you.
As you might have seen if you’re following us on Twitter or Facebook, I (Stephanie Booth aka @stephtara) am currently working with the Solar Impulse team to set up special access and events around the project for bloggers and podcasters.
So, now that we’re excitedly waiting to be able to take off for our flight to Brussels (no kidding: we’re holding our breath every day, just waiting for the weather to cooperate fully), I can finally give you some news about what we’re planning.
Update 17.05.2011: this article was published on the Solar Impulse blog before the flight to Brussels, but it has now taken place successfully!
First of all, two words of caution:
That being said, please use this form to let us know if you’re interested in taking part in our blogger programme. You can also simply sign up for the blogger announcement list, which will let you know about anything we plan specifically for bloggers and podcasters.
Current details on what we’re planning can be found below. We’ll be in touch with more as we finalize things, as well as confirmation — or, depending on the success of the blogger programme… more information about the selection process!
For the flight
The whole flight can be followed live on the Solar Impulse website and can also be followed on your smartphone (download the app for iPhone or Android). We have a small number of slots available during the flight if you would like to interview André while he’s in the air (ask him what it feels like to be outside Swiss borders with Solar Impulse!).
Update: departure and landing events are full, unfortunately!
It is also possible for us to invite a few people to the take-off, but as I mentioned, it will be on very short notice. We know it will be on the morning of the day of the flight, though. So, if you’re not far from Payerne and think you can make it for take-off around 8am if we warn you the afternoon before, try your luck!
There is a landing event in Brussels in the evening (around 8pm). Obviously we’ll have a little more notice than for take-off, but it’s still not much. We have a handful of invitations to that event for bloggers and podcasters. (By the way: even if you’re not a blogger, Brussels Airport are inviting 30 of their followers on Facebook and Twitter to be their guests at the landing — follow them for more information on that!)
The Week in Brussels (23-29 May)
During the time the Solar Impulse airplane will be in Brussels (during Green Week!), there are four occasions on which we can invite you — two of which will be open only to bloggers/podcasters (the other two are events which are open to a part of the public, but you’ll be able to attend as our guests).
First of all, a chance to see the plane in its hangar before everything starts — Elâ and I will be your hosts. That will be on Monday 23.05 morning, probably 9-11 (but we’ll confirm the exact time once it gets closer). This will be an opportunity to meet up, get to know fellow bloggers, chat about the project, photograph the plane, etc. The only people there will be bloggers and podcasters (and maybe some photographers!)
The second “blogger exclusive” event will take place on Saturday 28.05 morning, and it will be a discussion roundtable with André and Bertrand. Breakfast included! As we want to keep this conversation “human-sized”, the number of spots for this event is quite limited.
On Tuesday evening, there is the EUFORES/EREC cocktail event. About 300 people will be invited (political and economical spheres), and we have a certain number of passes for bloggers.
Wednesday evening is the side event Solar Impulse is hosting for Green Week. Again, a chance to see the plane and a presentation (we’re expecting about 700 people that evening and the European Commissioner for Environment Janez Potočnik will be speaking).
And also…
We aim to bring a community of bloggers together around the Solar Impulse project, beyond this first trip outside Swiss borders (next stop: Paris, more details vers soon, and who know what after that!) — at some point, we’ll define criteria for an “official blogger” status with visibility on our website.
We’re looking forward to meeting you, reading you, listening to you… and answering your questions about the project! If you have any other ideas, don’t hesitate to let us know using the “Anything to add?” field of the blogger programme form.
[en] Solar impulse is taking off tomorrow for Brussels, yay! The blogger programme is taking shape too, so if you're a blogger or a podcaster check out what we have in store (you can come for take-off or landing, as well as four different events during the week the plane will be in Brussels).
On est bientôt au bout du suspense de la semaine écoulée! Solar Impulse a feu vert pour décoller demain matin (8h!!) à destination de Bruxelles. Moment historique!
Vous pourrez suivre le tout en direct depuis le site ou votre smartphone.
Et en plus de ça, notre programme spécial pour blogueurs et podcasteurs prend forme, avec des invitations pour le décollage et l’atterrissage, ainsi qu’à quatre événements durant la semaine à Bruxelles (deux sont exclusivement réservés aux blogueurs/podcasteurs, dont une table ronde de discussion avec p’tit déj sous les ailes de l’avion, en compagnie de Bertrand et André).
Si vous voulez y prendre part, jetez-vous sur le formulaire d’inscription, le temps court et les places sont limitées!
[en] Lise Cardinal invited me to be her guest writer this month -- hence an article (in French) on how and when one can negociate online, as opposed to face-to-face.
Je suis l’invitée du mois chez Lise Cardinal, avec un article intitulé “Mener et clore une négociation en ligne“.
Si vous ne connaissez pas cette grande dame du réseautage responsable francophone, avec qui j’ai eu la chance de partager une croque le mois passé lors de mon séjour à Montréal, je vous invite à y remédier de ce pas!
[fr] Solar Impulse a un nouveau blog, turbinant fièrement sous WordPress!
Great news! You’ve heard I’m working with Solar Impulse these days — one of the first results of our work together is a shiny new blog running on WordPress. We’ve imported all the articles from the existing home-made blogging platform, and installed WPML to make it all multilingual, as their articles are translated into French, English and German.
The whole thing went pretty smoothly thanks to all the people involved!
[fr] Un pas de plus sur le chemin du deuil, alors que je m'apprête à éparpiller les cendres de Bagha dans le jardin où il passait ses journées. Tentative un peu laborieuse d'identifier (et de trier) ce qui dans la douleur de la perte de mon chat est proprement la douleur de sa mort, et ce qui est simplement la douleur de la solitude retrouvée.
I started writing this months ago, not long after Bagha died. In India, to be precise. As a way to help me come to terms with his loss, I spent some time trying to write down what made him special for me. What is it exactly that I’m grieving, through him?
I actually tried to blog this once before, and that ended up being the article “Sorting Through Grief“. Like all painful things, it’s tempting to postpone this kind of exercise — but now that I’m preparing to take Bagha’s ashes out of the back of my cupboard to scatter them in the garden he loved, I feel it is time to pick up this list again. I need to move forward. These last weeks, or maybe months, I’ve slipped into a not-too-uncomfortable limbo somewhere along the road of grief. There was a little sideroad somewhere with a bench, and I sat down.
It’s time to start walking again.
What follows is a little raw. It’s also not “perfect” — meaning that I’m aware I’m failing at sorting through some of the things I was hoping to sort through while writing this. That’s the whole point, I guess. Otherwise I would just sail “happily” through grief, if it wasn’t that difficult for me.
So, what made Bagha such a special cat for me? Quoting from my previous post, here’s what I’m trying to disentangle:
- what it means for me to now be living completely alone (ie, “petless” => by extension, what having a pet — any pet — adds to my life)
- what made Bagha special, as compared to other cats (his personal caracteristics, pretty objectively)
- what made Bagha special for me, in terms of the relationship we had and what he meant to me
I’ll start by setting aside the obvious: what kind of cat Bagha was, outside of the relationship I had with him.
Physically:
And also:
Character-wise:
Things he did (I’m aware we’re in the anecdotal department here):
How he was with me, bearing in mind that this is pretty standard cat-behaviour:
More about his behaviour and interactions with me and other humans, which is maybe a little less “cat-standard”, but not yet the stuff that made my relationship with him so special:
Here we are, now. The cat-companion. This is what the emptiness of his absence is made of.
Trying to rise above the mundane details of daily cohabitation (even if they’re important), here are some of the deeper roles Bagha played for me:
Of these, I guess the fact he kept me company and was happy to see me are more pet-generic than Bagha-specific.
But the role he played in helping me find my place in my neighbourhood, the connexion to India and Aleika, and the ten years of my life that he saw me through — those are things that are uniquely linked to Bagha. No other cat will ever be able to give me that again. He was a living, breathing, purring witness to these things, no lost forever. I carry those years and that part of my life completely alone, now.
Along the same lines, here are two more things I’d like to add:
Eclau will have other cats, and be a “special” coworking space in that respect in the future. Salem, my upstairs neighbour’s cat, has already taken quarters on the couch, and will probably soon have his own page on the eclau website. Some time next year, I’ll be ready to have cats again, and they’ll come to eclau too. It will always be a kitty-friendly coworking space — but Bagha was the first, and his constant presence in the office was soothing for those who worked there.
The fact that quite a few of my friends cat-sat at some point or another when I was travelling over the last ten years made him a connexion between me and them — connexion which is now gone, like some of those friendships. His absence makes their pastness a little more present.
On a more emotional level:
These are things I learned for life because he was my pet, and will treasure for ever. His legacy in me. Traces of his life that his death cannot erase, and which — I believe — make me a better person.
I believe there is no meaning in the world other than the meaning we put in it, consciously or not. Beyond the meaninglessness of life and death, we choose to make sense of our lives so that we can keep on growing.
Maybe Bagha’s biggest gift to me, beyond the ten years of precious companionship he gave me, is in his death. I got to say good-bye. Not at the moment of my choosing, of course — death rarely gives us that — but did get to say good-bye properly. I am saying good-bye.
So here’s the meaning I choose and which makes perfect sense for my life, almost as if it were provided by some intention bigger than and beyond me:
Bagha let me love him for a long time and with all my heart, so that I could learn to love and grieve properly.
Amongst all this, I wonder, what is just the pain of finding myself “alone”, or catless? What does it mean to me to have a cat? I’ve tried to break it down into “plus side” and “minus side”, because part of the grieving process is also greeting the new good things in my life brought about by this loss (I have a blog post draft sitting in WordPress titled “The Bittersweet Freedom of Catlessness” — I will write it someday).
Having a cat means:
But it also means:
The pain of losing Bagha is still very present, nearly five months after his death. There is still a terrible pit of sadness in my heart, but it doesn’t overflow with tears anymore when I don’t want it to.
I sometimes try to imagine my future cats, who are maybe not even born yet — I fear that I will not love them as much as I loved Bagha, or that they will not be quite so extraordinary, and I know that I still need to spend some time walking down that road.
