Girl Geek Dinner's Blog Challenge

It has been talked about for a few months, idea's floating around between emails and Twitter and now it's finally here! The Winnipeg Girl Geek Blog Challenge!

For those who don't know a blog challenge is just a community of like minded people that encourage, comment and give feedback to fellow bloggers. Since this is focused on local girl geeks I am very excited to get to know all of the other techy ladies that are out there.

This week's challenge: Reasons for Blogging.

I have several reasons for blogging. I find it a great way to record my thoughts and feelings on any given day and revisit them. Whether it is a personal post, business related of a review of an event or equipment it is a great way to keep track of and REMEMBER what was happening in my life at that time.

Another reason I blog is with my small business Smash-Art-Graphic Design, Web and Print it is one of my missions to remain 'transparent' to my clients. Meaning that I am open and honest about my business and my life, there is nothing hidden up these sleeves!

The most important reason I am blogging right now is to create a community with other like minded people to share experiences, resources and support. I know from working on my own in a home office it can become a very lonely profession. Also I do not know any other female PHP wizards, do you?

So cheers to the Winnipeg Girl Geek Blog Challenge! Let's get this party started!

NMM SEO Training Review

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend New Media Manitoba's 'Master Search Engine Optimization' seminar today with speaker Drew Bischof.

To start off I just wanted to say how AWESOME New Media Manitoba is (in general and...) for bringing such a capable and captivating speaker to us lowly Winnipeg tech gurus, Drew Bischof. New Media Manitoba constantly out does itself in supplying our Provence with a solid place to learn, network and grow as a community on the cutting edge of new media and technology. Drew and his Mentor Perry Marcial are the ones doing the cutting in the SEO world these days.

Drew is from Texas and braved the streets of our fine (and freezing city) to teach a room full of developers more about SEO. Now everyone I'm sure has an idea of what SEO really is and there are different theories and best practices scattered all over the net

The group that was there of had a wide age range, knowledge base and reasons for using SEO. Drew managed to prepare for this variety of knowledge hungry gurus and run a successful full day teaching session where I am sure everyone took something useful away. I know I have a new bag full of tricks from him. His way of enageing the audience and casual speaking really connected to the room, he didn't just read off his slides (thank goodness) or give any real 'text book' answers to what SEO /should/ be. Drew handed us tested facts.

Facts? On the internet? No way!

Way. Get to know the experts in what you are researching no matter what it is online, odds are very high that they have tried and tested the things you were vaguely thinking about doing. Saves you the time and trouble. But how to know who is the experts and what is misinformation?

His way of talking casually and sometimes going off in tangents was still interesting and entertaining enough to keep me fully engaged in what he was saying. Now this is an accomplishment in itself as my college instructors will attest to that keeping the attention of a generation y mind for any length of time is difficult if not impossible.

The main things he insisted needed to be done to better organic SEO are things that I have already heard from from this source or that. He just confirmed it to me that these techniques have been tested and are the way SEO and Google (the SEO god) are evolving. Your site has to be part of this wonderful web connections and need to evolve with it too to survive.

An example is anchor text. Anchor text was first brought to my attention in Web Development 1.0 at RRC. NEVER use the work 'click here' for a link. ALWAYS use a word or words that describe the link as the link. Make sense? No? I can explain it more to you if you contact me.

Example: Instead of writing 'To read about Smashley's awesome blog post click here.' It would be 'Please Read Smashley's Awesome Blog Post.'

It's something I do naturally now but not all people do and it drastically effects SEO.

However, on the flip side I have also come across other "best practices" that according to Drew (who understands the Google search algorithms) are totally baloney.

Thank you for making the what could be considered a very dry topic a great and educational presentation and for not lulling me to sleep and drool drips into my laptop keyboard, really saved me embarrassment in front of colleagues.

An added plus of the day was meeting face to face a twitter contact I had made a few months ago Lori Dyck of Wildfire. Another GIRL GEEK! I feel I instantly connect on several levels with geeky girls and had a great chat with Lori about new experiences and owning your own business and of course girly stuff (yes... like babies and puppies).

Another great contact David Wowchuk from Artisan Media.ca. A friendly hello that turned into a very educational (for me) discussion on truth, transparency and just 'being real' with clients and advertising. He has been in the design biz for over 14 years and the transparent and truthful talk has benefited him greatly. Great to know that this 'no smoke and mirrors' business practice really works. He recommended a book called All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin.

Also at these workshops I find I get the most inspired and energized from not just from the speakers but from the other participants. Today I had some great ideas to implement on some of my projects and decided to follow through on a few ideas that I was humming and hawing about. Like the decision to finally vlog and use video as a way to really connect with people online.

In the end I just want to connect relevant information to you, the user.

Food was great and healthy, the 'plastic' cups where made from corn actually and biodegradable made by a company called Eco Products, who has a FANTASTIC website. Something I had read about but never seen till now, way to go NMM. Also I always enjoy Kevin Hatnik whom I've dubbed the Dumbledore of the new media tech wizards and his ability to articulately satire everyday life for a few shared laughs.

WEC Tech Café

Women's Enterprise Center Tech Café notes and thoughts.

First of all before I started blogging this I had to find out/remember how to type a é on a Mac. And that got me thinking... This is a process I do perhaps a hundred times a day. I have a question, open Google.com, write key words or sometimes the literal question into the little box, hit enter and BAM! Answers.

I think as a generation Y person and having grown up on the internet or being 'plugged in' this is the most natural and easiest thing to do immediately.

Yet not all people think this way...

Why when we have this amazing, self sustaining and expanding wealth of knowledge and human experience people not take more take advantage of it? It doesn't come naturally to those people who grew up without it.

Women's Enterprise Center's first Tech Café at the Delta Inn, Winnipeg was this morning and it was a FANTASTIC event; mainly because of the key note speaker Nelly Yusupova.

Her talk was interactive, informative, energetic and inspiring. Using 'the accelerated learning technique' Nelly helped a room full of local business owners like myself, identify goals and issues in their own company by having them list and discuss it directly to another person. Having a list of goals/issues in pen and paper in front of you makes it so much more easier to become active in fining solutions to help reach those specific goals and solve those issues. Great way to really connect and make it personal talk by tying it into my own business needs. **NTS** I will have to remember this when I do workshops in the future.

Then came the part where the group needed to learn about technology. I felt the whole room tense. I'm sure everyone's brain just started going 'okay... I need this... everyone's on this twitter thing... I somewhat understand it... but not really.... I don't know enough about the internet as a whole to make a technology plan.' OK STOP! Deep breath!

New media and technology helping excel business is not a new concept. It's the whole reason for the industrial revolution when you really think about it. We are now in, and have been in for a few years a technological revolution.

Now more then ever technology is cost effective, easy to use, and accessible. Because it is so simple for people(and lazy me) to hop online and ask google a question, I'm going to do it! Time and time again. Bottom line, if you have a business, service, association, community of any kind you need to be on the internet providing those answers.

So you need a technology plan.

Now because my business Smash-Art.com is a new media company I have a technology plan. It was easy for me to follow along and absorb all the information Nelly had on how to prepare and take the next steps. I don't think it was as easy for everyone there. Which is great! Because I want to help business owners with that.

The rest of the day had a great concept, you could sign up for one on one sit down time with some larger tech companies in the city. They also had a short period of time to present to the crowd between these meetings. I stepped out after only a few presentations with reading material but it felt to me that their talks were very high level about their tech company in general. Informative yet dry IMHO.

The food was good, the company was pleasant and for myself having the opportunity to speak directly with Nelly for a few minutes just made the day SMASHING. I got to pick her brain and talk about Winnipeg Girl Geeks. Please check out her website: DigitalWoman.com and bio because she's an amazing tech guru and someone I definitely want to aspire to be like in this industry.

Wordpress Walkthrough

Hello All!

I recently taught a Wordpress walkthrough for Girl Geek Dinners Winnipeg at RRC. It was fantastic and my students where totally awesome! You know who you are!!

Since I am such a nice person I am sharing my tutorial with you. This tutorial is for basic setup configuration and design for the free Wordpress.com platform as well as the 'host it yourself' version of Wordpress.org.

Here are my intro notes about me:


And the Tutorial, as this was a demo the notes are very simple.

Smashley is Teaching Wordpress

Hello my fellow Girl Geeks (or relation to GG)!

On October 12th I will be running a 3 hour workshop on Wordpress. Those in attendance will learn how to set up their Free Wordpress Blog, edit and customize the look! People of all internet learning levels welcome!

Check out the link on Girl Geek Dinners Winnipeg.

Hope to see you all there!

Tata for now my lovelies!

Smashley

Engaged!

Did you hear? I am getting Married! You might have heard because I have shouted it from basically every platform I know of except my roof.




My man is very romantic. When he finished building our new shed in the backyard he called me out there in the morning to 'check it out'. I thought it was a little odd, since I was working and he very rarely bothers me while I am working (good man) and I had seen the progress of the shed being built. I went anyway and he LOCKED ME IN THE SHED! It wasn't for very long but long enough to say 'enough joking around let me out' in my very stern 'not playing' voice. When he did open it up he was holding a small black box and told me (what I remember of the speech) how much he loves me, how much he wants to spend the rest of his life with me and how he wanted everything to be just perfect for the proposal. However since nothing can ever be completely perfect he decided today was the day. Finally! We have lived together for 2 years and have been inseparable for 3.

I can't wait to start the wedding planning. Destination wedding here I come. Please let me know if you know a good vacation wedding planner!

Defying Gravity

Again another musical rendition of my state of mind:

Rock version of course.
"Time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap..."

A lot of great projects popping up this week as well as keeping up with the old ones. Busy busy, I love it.

I went to my first Secret Handshake - The Winnipeg Creative Society Meetup this week and it was a lot of fun and very interesting. I am still getting over my own shyness when it comes to networking events but booze and practice helps. Let me know if you have any tips!

I had my photograph taken by Stephen Gray and the At First Sight Crew in their 'photobooth' at the meetup. Great idea but the lights really heated up the place, I felt bad for the few who sported the suits. I have been following the work of At First Sight photography and videography work for over the past year and I am just blown away by their overall creative visions and quality of work. They also have amazing equipment that makes me a little jealous. I am a video gear junkie honestly. So check out their amazing work.



I also want to congratulate Nichole Glaw for Art Land Inc's new web design! Looks great and I can't wait to start teaching in a few weeks.




New Media Manitoba, a group I am involved with in the city just launched a new page with a directory. A fantastic way to keep in touch with colleges and the new media industry itself. As I already told Kevin Hnatiuk, the Executive Director, in a personal email:

"You are like the Dumbledore of all us new media magic makers! So keep up the amazing work! The community you are helping build in invaluable."

In honor of that thought I just made this cool yet slightly creepy creation.



Smash-Art is now listed as a business in the New Media Manitoba Directory. If you have a new media business please join up, it really is a fantastic community.

So as I wrap up this work week and look to what is on my plate for next week, a 8 page fashion catalog design and print, a new brand and logo concept, two joomla website designs, a zen cart design and a drupal website design. I can handle this no problem. BRING IT.