Steph Booth: Not Running for Parliament! [en]

[fr] A la lumière des récents événements, il ne m'est plus possible de rester dans la course pour le Parlement britannique... Article en Anglais pour toucher l'électorat un maximum.

It seems that my attempts to subvert British democracy by running in the forthcoming parliamentary elections are starting to be hard to keep under wraps, despite my careful use of a wig and face mask for public appearances. As I will be travelling to Leeds on Sunday, and in the light of recent controversy, I would like to put to rest the question of my participation in the elections.

I think it is quite clear now that given the current circumstances and the facts that have come to light, I cannot run for MP. My lack of involvement in local Calder Valley politics is starting to be hard to camouflage, and the fact that I have my main residence abroad is clearly an issue for many.

I deeply regret this, though, for had I stood a chance in this election, free bandwidth, Twitter accounts, and Swiss chocolate for all would have become a reality, as well as “change that we can believe in”. My meteoric rise to fame in the recent weeks, however, has convinced me to leave the Labour party behind and put my efforts into the creation of a proper Pirate Party in the United Kingdom.

As you are now most certainly aware, it is the discovery of my secret blog by an astute member of the Hebden Bridge Web Forum which has set all this in motion. I would like to assure those of you who know me as a social media strategist and consultant that my writings on Climb to the Stars will not cease, even though they have been judged pretty harshly:

Stephanie Booth’s blog will on its own cause plenty of people to doubt her fitness for purpose as a prospective MP. Big chunks of it are in French and most of the rest is geeky drivel about her phone, computer, Twitter et al. No local issues, or much at all outside herself. Hardly evidence of a shrewd political mind keen to grapple with the economic and social problems of the Upper Valley.

Graham Barker on Hebden Bridge Web Forum 2009

The geeky drivel which has entertained and enlightened you over the past nine years will be the backbone upon which I will build the future of my political career, and I trust that all of my supporters will follow me on this new path. In the meantime, if any of my fellow candidates would like to benefit from my expertise in social media, now that I am out of the race, please feel free to get in touch.

Disclaimer: the other Steph Booth is not a social media consultant (but at least she’s using WordPress). No hard feelings, but I’ll be very upset if she gets her Wikipedia page before I do. Many thanks to Suw for drawing my attention to this issue, and for her editorial assistance in preparing this declaration. She and her husband Kevin have already been hired as the official speechwriters for my next campaign.

Feedly: More Than a Newsreader, Maybe Your Search Engine of Tomorrow? [en]

A bit over a year ago, I switched from Google Reader to Feedly. I have a troubled history with newsreaders: I tend to not use them, partly because I don’t really read blogs. But I used Google Reader for some time, and then Feedly. I really like Feedly. Really. (Plus, it saved 4 months of posts for CTTS after the dropped database disaster.)

All this to say that for many months, I have not really opened Feedly, and I feel kind of sad/bad about it. Twitter and Tumblr are my main sources of “new information”, and I’d love to find a way to use Feedly in a way that works for me. But it just doesn’t seem to happen.

A couple of weeks back, I saw this tweet from Ewan:

Twitter _ Ewan McIntosh: Over the hols I managed to ...

He says that he has sorted his feeds into “30 must-read-daily RSS feeds, with the other 2000 sitting behind as personal search engine”.

Whee! For some time now, I’ve been convinced that the future lies with allowing search in subsets of the web. There’s too much stuff out there, right? Also, in this era of partial attention (which I don’t consider to be a bad thing, in the “keeping a distracted eye on” sense), you often end up trying to “refind” something you know you’ve seen (but where?) — just like I had to dig out Ewan’s tweet ten days after I’d seen it in passing.

That’s why I like Lijit, for example (I’ve put the search box back here on CTTS, by the way): it allows me or my readers to do a search on “my stuff”, including CTTS, Digital Crumble, Twitter, del.icio.us… Sometimes I know I’ve said something, but I can’t for the life of me remember where (see this? having to search your own words…)

Feedly is pretty good at allowing you to search all the stuff you’ve subscribed to:

feedly | explore facebook

It offers a mix of a little bit of generally popular stuff with “your sources”. I like that. So, I like Ewan’s idea of feed subscription as “add this to my search sources” rather than “oooh, I’m going to read this every day”.

I have to say I’m interested in hearing about how you use Feedly or Google Reader (particularly the social aspects) if you’re not a “religious-daily” newsreader enthusiast. There has to be something between “keeping up with my feeds” and “never opening my feedreader”.

Life Comes in Bursts [en]

A few weeks ago, it looked like I had time on my hands. Things have accelerated recently (including a series of disruptive personal and professional issues, all over the course of a couple of weeks) and I’m now looking at a very busy week before I head off to Leeds next Sunday (not tomorrow, Sunday 10th).

I’m working on a long article in French around “Piracy is not Theft“, and also an English version of my article on care of indoor cats for Kits and Mortar, which partly explains the silence here these last two weeks.

Do you also notice this in your lives? I know all about the “feast and famine” cycle for the freelancer, but I’ve found this to be true (for me) in almost all departments. Nothing on the week-end for weeks, and suddenly 4 things in one. Everything is fine for ages, and suddenly 3-4 nasty pieces of news over a few weeks. Work goes smoothly, and then issues start coming up with a bunch of clients all at the same time.

I understood years ago that imbalance is the source of life. Oscillating chemical reactions are what make our hearts beat and what keep us breathing. Life is never stable, at all levels. So I’ve got better at dealing with these “when it rains, it pours” phases… but still, isn’t it annoying sometimes?

Une série de dates [fr]

[en] A few dates for local events around eclau.

Ce vendredi, 24 avril, c’est Backup Awareness Day. Publiez un article sur votre blog pour encourager vos lecteurs à faire leurs sauvegardes, aidez vos amis à le faire, et faites vos propres sauvegardes (ordinateur + sites!).

Vendredi 1er mai: Bloggy Friday à 20h, comme d’hab! (Je ne serai peut-être pas là, mais qu’à cela ne tienne…)

Lundi 4 mai: Website Pro Day 4 à l’eclau. On se retrouve dans un même espace physique pour une même mission: se consacrer à la mise à jour ou au dépoussiérage de notre site web professionel (ou de notre présence en ligne professionnelle). Inscrivez-vous ici sur Facebook.

Vendredi 15 mai: P’tit déj de l’eclau, ouvert à tous, il suffit de s’annoncer.

Mardi 16 juin: prochain apéro de l’eclau, notez déjà la date! (Apéro dînatoire, dès 18h.)

Today is Backup Awareness Day! [en]

Two months ago, on February 24th, I hit the wrong “Drop” button in PhpMyAdmin, resulting in the immediate deletion of the blog you’re reading. I didn’t know when I had last backed it up.

The story ends well, though it cost me (and others) many hours (days, actually) of work to get the whole of Climb to the Stars back online again.

I’ve always been careless about backups. Like many of you, probably. We can afford to be careless because accidents don’t happen very often, and as with Black Swans, we are under the mistaken belief that having been safe in the past will keep us safe in the future. Not so. As I like to repeat, the first time a disaster happens, well, it had never happened till then.

So, I’ve decided to declare the 24th of each month “Backup Awareness Day”. Here’s what it’s about:

  • Back up your files.
  • Back up your website.
  • Blog about the importance of backing up (sharing tips, stories, advice).
  • Tell your friends to back up.
  • Help your friends back up.
  • Put in place automatic backup systems.

Bottom-line: decrease the number of people who never back up, or back up so infrequently they’ll be in a real mess if things go wrong.

Now, perfectionism is the biggest enemy to getting things done. Backup Awareness Day does not mean that you have to do all this. Here are a few ideas to get your started (better a bad backup than no backup at all):

  • If Time Machine (or any other regular backup system you use for your computer) has been telling you it hasn’t done a backup in ages, stop what you’re doing right now and plug it in.
  • If you use WordPress, when was the last time you went to Tools > Export to make a quick backup? It’s not the best way to do it, but in my case, it saved CTTS.
  • Do you use something like Mozy to have a remote backup of your most important files? Time to sign up, maybe.
  • Are you working on important documents that exist only on your computer, which is never backed up? At the minimum, pick up a thumb drive and copy them onto it — or send yourself an e-mail with the files as attachment, if your e-mail is stored outside your computer (Gmail, for example).
  • Do you have an automatic backup set up for your database or website? Set some time aside on Backup Awareness Day to figure out cron.
  • When did you make the last dump of your MySQL database? Head over to PhpMyAdmin, or the command line (it’s mysqldump --opt -u user -p databasename > my-dirty-backup.sql)
  • Do you have the backup thing all figured out? Write a post for your readers with a few tips or tutorials to help them along. (Tag your posts “backupawarenessday” — I thought about “BAD” but that wasn’t really optimal ;-))

I’m hoping to develop the concept more over the coming months. If you have ideas, get in touch, and take note of Backup Awareness Day for the month of May: Sunday 24th!

(Now stop reading and go do a few backups.)

Prochain Website Pro Day: fixons la date! [fr]

[en] I've created a poll to help determine the next Website Pro Day -- a day where we meet up, and set aside time to work on our professional sites. Even if you're not in Lausanne, you can take part: work remotely or organise a local hub!

Mise à jour: ce sera le 4 mai!

An Afternoon in San Francisco 85 Après WPD1, WPD2, WPD3 — il est temps de penser à WPD4! Si vous êtes intéressés, vous avez votre mot à dire pour fixer la date…

WPD? Website Pro Day:

Si vous êtes un peu comme moi (consultant/indépendant dans le domaine du web) vous avez probablement quelque part un site professionnel qui erre, l’âme en peine, attendant depuis une année qu’on veuille bien s’occuper de lui.

Eh oui, comme on dit, c’est les cordonniers les plus mal chaussés, et les professionnels de la communication web qui ont les sites-vitrine les moins à jour. Pas pour rien qu’on recommande le blog, c’est beaucoup plus facile à entretenir, comme format.

Donc, pour la quatrième fois, on va remettre ça: prendre une journée, la bloquer, lui mettre des pare-feu, et la consacrer à la remise en ordre de notre présence professionnelle en ligne. Pour les Lausannois, je vous invite à venir le faire à l’eclau!

Si la formule vous paraît convenir, prenez donc une minute pour noter dans ce doodle vos disponibilités. Je communiquerai prochainement la date retenue!

Nombre minimum de participants: 2 🙂

I'm Going to Write an eBook [en]

For some time now, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an eBook (well, more precisely, of starting to write eBooks in general). Now that my life is un-hectic and a little under control (fingers crossed, let’s make it last) I’ve decided to get to work on this project.

First, obviously, I need something to write about. My general problem rears its ugly head again here: I’m not sure what to choose (too much choice often turns into “no ideas”).

I’ve used the poll below to jot down some ideas that I could imagine writing a short eBook about.

– My survival guide to starting to blog
– Utiliser WordPress.com pour créer son site très simplement
– Freelancing: lessons learned
– Some advice for first-time conference organisers
– De l’usage sage de Facebook
– Adolescents sur internet: des chiffres, quelques principes, pas de panique!
– My life improvement tricks
– …

I’m open to other ideas, of course, but please use the poll below to let me know what you think would be the best pick? What would you want to read? What would you share with your friends? What seems most useful?

Thanks a lot for your participation and help!

How I Get Organized [en]

[fr] Comment je m'organise, quels outils et méthodes me conviennent. Ces temps, un doux mélange de GTD et de FlyLady, avec des petites cartes éparpillées sur mon bureau pour garder en vue mes tâches prochaines, une minuterie réglée sur 15 minutes pour les gros projets ou les choses qui n'avancent pas, Buxfer pour mes finances et une certaine régularité dans mon rythme de vie.

index cards 2.0 These days, for the first time in a long time, I feel on top of things. I’ve caught up with almost all the backlog I accumulated by being sick for a month and deleting my blog by mistake. So, I thought I’d jot down some notes on how I get organized.

To my shame, I’ve never 100% implemented GTD (particularly the daily/weekly reviews), but reading the book and putting one or two systems in place has been very helpful to me. Over the last two years, I’ve used index cards (very briefly), mindmaps, iGTD, Things, more mindmaps, notebooks, and currently, more index cards. And Evernote. Here are a few words about each method.

  • index cards, version 1: when I started implementing GTD and read the book in 2006, I put all my stuff on index cards and pinned them on cork boards. It didn’t last long, I think it was just physically too cumbersome.
  • iGTD: iGTD was nice, and I used it for quite some time. I had a hard time figuring out my contexts (and sub-contexts). I had an eye-opening moment when I realised that planning tasts in project mode was really helpful (for Going Solo, for example).
  • notebooks: when things became too stressful before Going Solo, I took a notebook and listed all the stuff I needed to take care of on a page. When things were done, I crossed them out. When new things were added, I added them. When the page was too messy, I copied over what was left of the list to a clean page. This worked really really well for me — I still do it at times.
  • Things: I really liked Things. Compared to iGTD, it didn’t suffer from feature creep. I liked the way it organised things by tags. But for some reason (maybe because it’s an application on the computer?) I stopped using it (again, when things got too “urgent” in my life — after SoloCamp last autumn).
  • mindmaps: I used mindmaps at two points in my life, and one was actually before reading GTD. I like the fact that I can organise my tasks in “sectors”, and fold away branches I’m not concentrating on right now. One thing I would tend to do with my mind map is have a branch called “next” to help me focus on immediate stuff.
  • index cards 2.0: what’s been working for me these last few weeks is tiny index cards on which I write stuff I mustn’t forget or need to take care of. I put these on my desk (because I now work at my desk, a big change from the last years). And on my desk, I can pull out the 3-6 things I’m going to do today (some rocks, some pebbles), and basically spread them out and group them any way I like (it’s often quite intuitive rather than officially organised — though the separation between “now” and “later” stands).
  • Evernote: I use Evernote for some of my lists, which tended up to clutter up any kind of system I used to keep track of all my next actions: books to buy, films to see, shopping lists. I also use Evernote to capture stuff I need to add to my desk of index cards.

All these tools work for me, to varying extents, and in varying situations. The system I use now (index cards 2.0, evernote, and some notebook-lists) works well for “immediate” stuff, but it’s missing someday/maybe items.

Now, aside from the tools, here are some elements of my method — some combination of GTD and FlyLady. Here are my main take-aways:

  • thinking in terms of next actions has really helped me differentiate between projects and to-do items (GTD)
  • having an inbox on my desk (a big big basket) to collect incoming stuff and an A-Z storage system with hanging folders (GTD)
  • separating “processing time” from actual “doing time” (GTD again)
  • using the power of 15 minutes (a day! with a timer!) to make progress on daunting projects or stuff I just can’t get started on (cleaning the flat, processing the GTD-inbox to zero, stuff I’m so behind on I can’t even think of it) (FlyLady)
  • putting in place routines to give some structure to my days (an office and alarms on my iPhone help) — including not working all the time! (FlyLady)

Another element I’m really proud of is that I finally have all my finances under control. Last autumn, things were looking pretty grim, between the state of my bank account, the number of bills I had to pay, and no work lined up. My brother patiently helped me keep my head out of water (“so, here’s what’ll come in, in which bills it’ll pay”) during the end of last year, and when eclau opened, I started keeping track of all income and expenses related to it all by myself (a Google spreadsheet can do wonders to get started). Early this year, I opened a Buxfer account and am using it to track all my income and expenses (professional and personal). The wonderful thing about Buxfer is that they have an iPhone-ready site, so I can log my expenses literally the minute I spend the money. This means I’m never (or rarely) behind in doing my accounting.

I think this shows that one should never be afraid to ask for help in getting organised or getting some parts of one’s life under control — and I’d put buddy-working under that same heading. It’s often much easier to do things with other people’s company and support, rather than try to do everything alone.