the world of the welch
Google Analytics – orlandopumpers.com, originally uploaded by funkeemunkeeland.
When checking my neglected Insulin Pumpers support group site’s analytics I found two types of pump searches hung around for more than a minute. The first a no brainer but I wonder what kept the second around. Maybe a search by a porn looking diabetic?
This is my wrap up post for the BlogOrlando3 experience. I took notes for the morning and afternoon sessions [some links too] and this was the second year I hit the blog love joy fest [last year's notes].
Best Location
Room 301 had the comfiest chairs by far. The rest were classroom desk or ancient theater seats. Should of just camped there.
Best Line Overheard
“What exactly IS a blog?”
Probably said by the dozen or so mid-level company types that were dispatched to find out how to do this blog thing and were feverishly writing masses of notes on 5 x 7 note cards, transcribing every semi-technical term or acronym tossed out. Often bewildered looks transformed into resignation that this was a lot of stuff and then just sat back and enjoyed. Usually after lunch as the blood had rushed from their brains and finger tips to the their pita filled belly.
Best Line Said By a Presenter
“You know, I spent 10 years in IT, you’d think I know how to work the projector”
Said by Sarah Perez as the projector began to spaz on her. In her defense it took a couple of people to make it work.
Best Line Said in a Discussion
“Smoking pot will teach you teamwork.”
Said as a refute to the notion that video games were said to teach that plus more in a recent study. More a complaint [eventually] on how little kids spend doing real things. I don’t know if my “teams” were all that good, seemeda little sluggish.
Best Conversation
Traditional Media and the Web
What could have been bitter bitching about how disconnected the old guys are and how they are so not getting it turned out to be a great insight into how to turn the large barge around and the obstacles in doing so. From the Weekly’s arcane in-house written code, the Sentinel’s patchwork front page to Popular Science’s lucky choice for drupal by the nerds that lead and not necessarily do. Some of the victories and future choices were laid out conversationally and in a way for a not-so-nerd like me could follow. It also lent it self the best non-tech trick of the day below.
Best Tech Trick
While this isn’t primarily an in depth tech conference, more of a conversation, there were some tech niftiness. I know that nerds that are more nerdy than me would not find this earth-shattering, it is the one item I took back and will use it. Eric Marden’s little demo [Advanced WordPressThemes] of how nifty K2 is as a WordPress theme that can be modded up. It has turned into a powerful little theme that can be easily tricked out in several different ways in the included features as well as an easily monkeyed css.
Best Non Tech Trick
It does involve tech in the way of that it deals with comments on blogs and such, but it is decisively non-tech in the approach. Ian Monroe spoke about “devoweling” the nasty comments. That way you are not really censoring [completely] it can still be read with some effort but the flamer is nonetheless nullified. Seems to be a bit labor intensive but could be quite satisfying. Gddmn fckng flmrs pss m th fck ff, wsh thy wld crwl t f thr mm’s bsmnt nd sart wpng thr wn sss, bnch f psss.
Best Pic [I took]
Ryan was brining up sites as they talked up about. Sentinel was leading off with more Caylee Anthony crap. I thought it funny that that was the shining example of the noble, local newspaper [aka the real news].
Best Pic [That Someone Else Took]
Tech Advanced by Judson Collier
I love the irony in the marker written announcement for the advanced tech track. More great ones in the BlogOrlando Flickr group.
And I think this just sums up BlogOrlando3 the best:
BlogOrlando 2008 — Silly Putty from Judson on Vimeo.
Be sure to check out what everyone else is writing [Blogorlando, Technorati, Google blog search]
And just in case Alex still needs ponies.
Here are the BlogOrlando afternoon sessions:
Beyond Google
Leah Jones – http://www.edelman.com/ – http://www.slideshare.net/leahjones/search-for-roi
using search to monitor the conversation about your company/product
- find conversations that you have missed/did not know about/ another angle
Don’t stick with just google
- trend calednar from blogpuls
- icerocket use for measuring
- technorati is [like] today – s.technorati.com is the old good one
- boards and forums are still REALLY IMPROTANT for many brands, think of the reasons why people join: specific interest, trust, community, information from thoseshare the previous
- see what people are taking photos of in relation
- social networks, check the niche groups for social stuff, search for the “[insert niche group] myspace”
- search twitter for things mentioned in passing
Boolean search – use it – makes the search more specific to inclusion or exclusion of related terms
Almost all search engines that will give an rss feed for search results [cool]
New New Media
Sarah Perez – http://readwriteweb.com/
Over bookmarking [hmm, you can search it, yours and others plus blogging the post make it niftier]
Google custom search engine
Snackr.net [adobe air app]
Scan the rss for the interest, keep folder for ideas, develop technique to move through the masses of info [crap] can spend hours of reading if fall into reading each story
Lots of contact from PR, PR trys to drive content and wrap you up in the excitement, blinding you into the “way, cool goodenss” of their products.
Traditional Media and The Web
Danny Sanchez – http://www.orlandosentinel.com/ – http://journalistopia.com/
Ryan Price – http://bonniercorp.com/ – http://popsci.com – http://ryanpricemedia.com/
Eric Marden – http://bonniercorp.com/ -http://popsci.com – http://xentek.net/
Ian Monroe – http://orlandoweekly.com/
Moving traditional media onto the web
- added normal social stuff, bookmarking, rating, commenting etc
- new is flickr pool added
predictions exchange http://ppx.popsci.com
- like and intrade type for news items
- interesting to see what the reader and users is driving interest is the stocks
web and print not totally equal at popsci
- ad on print is worth 7 figure while web is 1/4 mill
- similar in Weekly
- ad people push the 2 differently
- misconception that internet ad is not as effective
- once was value added concept, moving to different
- 2 types of users utilizing the site, some overlap
- reach past the geographic area with dining data base, 3rd of the [weekly] site usages
- scaling issue with print, only so many copies
popsci is more of web only
- but that is what traditional media is good at, content creation
- afraid to devalue print content
- their market is nailed
Very targeted website
- 5 posts
- quantify
- Weekly has all print on site plus some blogs
Ways to use he site to put new content together
- connect the two, cms for online and push to print
- put events out into the cloud not lost in the print
Maybe good to separate
- OS has 20% overlap
- Users have frustration when crossover, broken up different
Free up old content
- compare the new ad content vs the subscription
- archives after 30 days
- url changes when in archive, have to hand manage and keep active
Zell drama
- new owner focused on revenue
- editorial has remain the same
- cuts have changed total coverage not refocus the story
Weekly is part of larger division
- some decisions made universal
- input is sought by management from local issues
Channel for large media
- legacy code creates inertia
- misses out the new ways or means
- don’t know what thy want: homegrown, open source, proprietary
- flip side: can have scale issues if go renegade or unknowledged
- bad decisions of development can haunt
use the little tools that allow you get what you need and work with what you got
- nobody picked the cms
pay attention to how the site will actually be used rather than how you want it to be used
- usability studies
profiling the reader to the ads
- Weekly it is an upsell
- companion positioning – sponsored article on popsci.com
- content and ad management system cross paths at rendering only
Comments from Users
- Devoweling harsh comment
- managed on bonnier
- hard for traditional editorial to handle the wild wild west
- OS will kill the comments if way too touchy
orlando scene
groups
florida creatives
barcamp orlando/ tampa/ chaos
doterati
likemind
digital media alliance florida
colab / coworking
ucf incubator program
user groups
upcoming events
convergence
create chaos
ignite orlando
the knowledge shop [lab for hire]
florida creative wiki has:
Why We Blog
Erik Hersman – http://afrigadget.com – http://www.ushahildi.com – http://www.whiteafrican.com
Afrigadget is one Times Top 50 sites
Ushahildi about crowd sourcing news from citizens in realtime.
Blog for changing the world. It doesn’t have to exist in a bubble or vacuum. His success shows that local grown is possible. Think local, act local is something that I feel has been talked at the conference. Meet those that are doing, then go back and do. FL Creatives is great start.
The notice gained from a small blog can bring bigger items to other works and jobs. Case in point is the realty startup, Eppraisal, used the blog to gather the attention while it was sucked up by Zillow. Became a success by clear, concise and dependable advocacy and content. The handmade plane and bike motor featured on Afrigadget is other examples of how the world can connect.
BlogOrlando is back and I am at it for the second year. It is the 3rd year for BlogOrlando. Crowds are big and the speaker list is really diverse. Hard choices this year. I am going to miss something good this time around.
Here are the notes and pics from the sessions I have been to so far:
Keynote
Jake McKee – http://www.communityguy.com
Community builds better business, communication with customer to lead the model/product. support what is already there, encourage the fan(atic).
Lego was closed wall institution that viewed all costumer conversation as unsolicited. Forced meetings through tenacity and support of immediate management. Show not tell. Get those that holdout to see what is going on. Got CEO to see massive displays of Lego builds that were attracting huge foot traffic. Also support communities that have grown organically, engage. Use those instead of squashing out that business or reinventing the wheel. Support with product, info or money, still cheaper than making your own.
Based on these new conversations products were retooled to give what not the gross quantity of customer wanted but what the most profitable customer wanted driving all sales up as it refocused the line to what made it good while adding a high end, high profit market that drilled in to the fanatic market that was giving the feedback. Win-Win for both
Big takeaway is that community (fans) can be harnessed to drive the model, tell you what is right/wrong, lead you to the customer base that is hidden but powerful and create organic loyalty
used to have 4hrs of unscheduled playtime – now 15 mins
Raising Digital Children
David Parmet – http://www.parmet.net/pr/
kids do:
3.5 hours of games
16.5 hours of tv
5.5 hours of online
- we are not in jobs that were in existence when we were in HS
- we are not educating for the jobs of tomorrow let alone today
critical thinking is the need, question is how is technology to be used?
Guidelines [from David]:
- turn off the damned tv
- leave the iPhone at home
- keep track of what you are doing
- give them freedom but don’t be afraid to keep an idea on what they are doing
- block the sites at the router/ envelope of passwords for emergency
http://delicious.com/dparment/homeschooling
WordPress Advanced
Mark Jaquith – http://markjaquith.com/
Scaling
WP Super Cache
WP can handle 10 request per second this handle (millions)
WP Cache
not as actively maintained
Subversion
FTP sucks to maintain new WP versions. Use it to pull down the new version directly to the server
http:svn.auttomatic.com/wordpress – add the commands to direct it – /branches/[version#]
search “svn redbean”
can move your user changed files into suberversion to keep a clean install WP in folder
has blame feature to tell who changed what line when
Advanced URL techniques
http://example.com[...]/postname
/feed [put this at end of url for creation of feed item for variable urls]
feed?paged=2
?cat=3,-4 [show only the chosen category, - excludes cat]
?s=foo [searchs for mention of "foo"]
Advanced Worpress Themes
Eric Marden http://www.Xentek.net/
K2 theme as base
easily build one from that as a base for client and make function fast
built in goodies: advance navigation, seo value built in, archives with tags, calendar etc
switchable stylesheets within admin, allows to maintain theme base and modify theme without changing the base code
header no uses the same upload structure as any othe uploaded file
drag and drop widget for sidebars manager for k2, same controls but easier to user, manage sidebars as per page [very cool]
uses cssedit [cool program for making css edits easy, can hilight selected section in page by selecting either the css style or the actual place on page]
** padding problem for odd colored spaces that are not selectable in cssedit**
firebug – the inspector will find the issue
hint – dont do a big clickable logo, not over fancy
- 3 browser test – good semantic code, validates in all
- date built into the body class = , can then use date based changes i.e header change
edit links at widgets take you to the sidebar manager
move sidebar to the bottom [clear: both, width: 100%]
rounded corners:
-moz-border-radius: 13px
-webkit-border-radius: 13px
use template files to mod design with out messing with the actual WP php call files
checkout sandbox
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