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Blogging will be sporadic for the rest of the week because I’m flying up to Wellington tomorrow for Webstock 2008 - New Zealand’s premier web conference. This will be my first Webstock and I’m absolutely thrilled to be going as I’ve heard great things from previous participants and the program rocks! I’m hoping to do some live blogging of the sessions both here and on the SiteProNews blog, but it all depends how dependable the WiFi connections are in the sessions and my hotel room.
A highlight of the Conference for me will be to finally meet Jill Whalen in person, after nearly 8 years of communicating online! Jill is giving a workshop and a conference session but we hope to hang out and maybe catch a meal together at some stage. Another highlight will be Kathy Sierra’s presentation which will close the conference, as well as some of the fun sessions the Webstock crew have got planned, such as Powerpoint Karaoke Idol and the 8 x 5 session.
If you’re coming along to the event, make sure you say hi!
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I’m too tired tonight to tackle a Q and A, so I thought I’d mention an interesting project I saw advertised on TV today.
Good Books New Zealand is a new not-for-profit startup that is trying to fight poverty in a very unique way. They call themselves the online bookstore with a conscience, because they plan to donate 100 percent of profits from their book sales to Oxfam. Here’s a blurb from their site:
“Every time you buy a book from Goodbooks - any book - we contribute all profits to Oxfam to help fight its global battle against poverty and social injustice. There is no extra cost to you. We do not mark up our books to cover this contribution; our prices remain among the lowest you will find; delivery worldwide is completely free, and with over two million titles in stock our range is one of the largest you will find.”
Terrific cause and great idea! I don’t know how they are going to fund the business side of things, but I’ll be interested to see where it goes from here. They ship books worldwide for free, so buy a book and fight poverty.
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So I’m finally back in the big blog chair after a week and a half of packing hell and another week and a half of gluttony and laziness.
Picture me, feet up in front of our 42 inch plasma TV, a glass of New Zealand Pinot Noir in one hand and a cheese platter in the other while my husband caters to my every whim. Ok, I made up that last bit.
Believe me though when I say I earned that rest! I hadn’t realized that packing up an entire house and taking care of a 3 year old on my own would be so exhausting! 30 boxes, 4 paintings, 2 printers, 1 electric piano and a desk later, our shipment of personal effects is halfway across the Tasman Sea on a cargo ship from Australia to New Zealand.
My husband Jerry got the easy part - he arrived here in New Zealand a couple of weeks ago to find us an appropriate home/office. But it was worth it. The house he found us is amazing and has the most glorious views over Lyttelton Harbour. We are only 30 minutes drive from bustling Christchurch and 5 minutes from our dearest friends and favorite pub. We haven’t lived here since 2004 and we are so thrilled to be back.
Meanwhile, the subscribers and questions for this blog have been rolling in, so I have a huge backlog of FAQs to wade through. Plus in mid January, the first Google PageRank score was revealed for this domain - a PageRank 5! Not bad for a site that’s only been live for about 2 months eh? I thank social media marketing for that particular coup. Advertisers seem to have come out of the woodwork since my PageRank score was revealed and I’m happy to say our advertising slots are sold out for February.
So all in all, 2008 is looking pretty sweet. Hope you have all had a terrific start to your own 2008. So enough personal chatter. Now it’s time for me to get back into my daily blogging routine. I know many of you have been waiting patiently for FAQs and regular features such as Dumbass of the Week and Industry Flashbacks so I’ll get stuck straight in. It’s great to be back!
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Hi gang
Just wanted to let you know that due to a relocation overseas, I am taking a break from posting on this blog. We are moving back to our beloved Banks Peninsula near Christchurch, New Zealand and I am up to my ears in boxes right now.
Thanks for your patience and look out for my next post in about 2 weeks.
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I finally get it. I’ve seen the light and I’ve become a born-again social media whore!
I was starting to despair that I’d never see much benefit from social media, despite my consistent participation within the Sphinn community and my few attempts at Digg and Del.icio.us. But this morning changed all that. You see, this morning, somebody found my blog post Dumbass of the Week: the Call Center Cow and decided to Stumble It.
I’m not sure what they call it on StumbleUpon when a post goes hot or becomes popular, but it must have made front page or something because this blog went from 480 visitors yesterday to 25,321 today - I kid you not! That’s three times my traffic for the whole of December in a SINGLE DAY. 24,480 of those visits were from StumbleUpon. Even my feed subscriber list increased by 120 - the most new subscribers I’ve ever had in a single day.
The resulting traffic exceeded my server’s bandwidth limit and shut down my site, but luckily I noticed within a few minutes and managed to double my bandwidth allowance to cope with the gridlock. I still don’t know who stumbled my post but THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! My faith in social media has been restored and I’ve been given fresh incentive for blogging.
Praise the lord blog and pass the keyboard!
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