virtualDavis

Smile! I'm blogging you... (image of and by virtualDavis)

I remember seeing a t-shirt for sale once that said, “I’m blogging this.” Nothing more. Just a black t-shirt with bold white lettering across the front. I’m blogging this!

I should have bought it. It would make people laugh. People who know me. Especially the ones who don’t quite get it. Blogging, I mean.

But I didn’t buy it. I liked the idea, but I wanted to edit the message slightly as follows:

Smile! I’m blogging you…

On the one hand, it’s humorous, and on the other it’s an increasingly relevant disclaimer. The “fine print”. Not just for me, but for all bloggers. All journalists, storytellers, writers, artists, etc.

What do I mean by relevant? We are photographing and video recording and quoting each other around the clock nowadays. Look at the ubiquity of blogging, micro blogging, YouTubing, Facebook-ing and Google Plus-ing. We are busy documenting our lives as well as anyone else who flits across our paths.

I walked down Madison Avenue this evening as a man filmed all of us. Not a news reporter, but a plain clothed civilian. John Doe. Or Juan Sanchez… Why was he filming us? What will he do with our stolen souls? Thievery! Or not…

Smile! I’m blogging you…

One of my favorite English language writers, Michael Ondaatje, returns again and again to the theme of thievery in his writing. It’s a large part of storytelling. I suspect many writers, artists, etc. ponder the idea.

I prefer to think of storytellers as borrowers, not kleptomaniacs. We borrow characters, scenes and plots. We borrow the smell of bacon cooking three doors down, the sound of a cello being practiced (badly) somewhere on the other side of an overgrown juniper hedge.

Vicente Huidobro (image via Wikipedia)

Not all writers admit that they are recyclers, borrowers or thieves. Chilean poet Vicente Huidobrodeclared, “The poet is a little God.” He aspired to invent worlds of words out of thin air and ambition. I invite you to evaluate his success.

With the advent of widespread social media it’s easier and more enticing than ever to collect and curate the perfect pair of eyebrows, the seemy backstory, the unpredictable twist of fate, the melodic denouement peppered with the fragrance of jasmine and fireworks on a summer evening… All from the comfort of our own desktops. Or smart phones. The 21st century storyteller is everywhere you are.

Of course, flanerie still serves the storyteller well, but his boulevards have been extended exponentially. I am an unabashed flaneur, but not just in the Baudelarian sense. I’m an urban flaneur, but I’m also a rural flaneur. I’m a café and sidewalk flaneur, but I’m also a digital flaneur. And I’m collecting and curating 24×7 (to the occasional regret of my bride and friends, I hesitate to add.)

I apologize. I understand that not everyone wants to be onstage all the time. Not everyone wants to have their almost lofty soufflé or their offkey arias recorded for posterity. I get it. I’m with you.

But, I can’t resist. You’re interesting. Not just your eyebrows and your bacon and your cello practice and your seemy backstory and your perennially deflated soufflé and your upside down melodies. You.

But rest assured that mine is an imperfect lens, a distorted microphone. I won’t steel your soul. I promise. I can’t. It’s yours as long as you choose to nourish it. I will borrow liberally, borrow, not steel, and I’ll do so with a sometimes distorted, always playful filter.

Will you lend me the mischievous glimmer in your eye when I ask you what you want for Christmas? Will you lend me the fierce gate, knees high, hips restrained, stride impossibly long that I remember from the first time I watched you walk toward your airplane when heading back to New York City from Paris? Will you lend me your hurt and confusion and quirks and dreams?

I’ll do my best never to betray you, and I’ll always resist your soul.

I promise.

Wildebeest Migration, Serengeti National Park, Tanzania (Image by Marc Veraart via Flickr)

Welcome to the future. virtualDavis is migrating.

Unlike the annual wildebeest migrations across the Serengeti, Masai Mara and Liuwa Plain, it’s been almost a decade since my last migration, and I’m not searching for greener pastures. Not literally, at least. I’m not abandoning my URL, but I am transitioning the site from Drupal to WordPress in order to standardize and simplify daily blogging. I am still (and will continue to be) an outspoken Drupal enthusiast and advocate. Organizations and individuals building websites with sophisticated CMS should at least consider Drupal. If they don’t they obviously have time and money to waste. Let them waste it. It will help buoy the economy. I continue to use Drupal for sites that I maintain and/or develop, and I intend to for a long time. Drupal is to website developers what Creative Commons is to content creators. Times ten. Or a hundred!

So why am I switching to WordPress? If Drupal is the CMS Holy Grail, I’ve come to believe that WordPress is the blogging holy grail. It is intuitive, easy to use and teach others to use, incredibly well supported and for all practical purposes it has become the “Dixie cup” of blogging software. I do wish that it offered a bit more robust, non-blogging CMS potential, but for my current needs (blogging across multiple domains), consolidating my interface to a single, effective platform offers me a major value.

It will take some time to make the transition, so until further notice I encourage you to stick with my regular domain where I’ll keep a link posted to the temporary site. Once I complete the migration from Drupal to WordPress, I’ll shift the new site to the old URL. Until then, thanks for your patience. Heck, thanks for following my blog in the first place!

FYI: If you’re looking for current happenings, you might want to check out virtualDavis on Twitter, virtualDavis on Facebook or virtualDavis on Google+. Or drop a note!

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If in doubt about the social media revolution, just watch this sequence of three video presentations. Pay attention to the statistics; watch the revolution evolving in real time as the social media juggernaut sweeps the globe.

The social media revolution is
mushrooming while you sleep!

The next three videos are based upon Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman. This first,Social Media Revolution, asks if social media is a fad that can be waited out, a fad that can be ignored, a fad no less or more important than any other.

Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution? This video details out social media facts and figures that are hard to ignore. This video is produced by the author of Socialnomicshttp://www.socialnomics.com

Take a look!

If the music distracts you or wakes up your parents, mute the volume. But watch. Read. Wake up!

The social media revolution doesn’t sleep. Ever. And while you’re dozing off, it’s already evolved. The next video, Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh), updates the social media and mobile media statistics.

Ready for Social Media Revolution 3? This longer, more powerful video was produced in June 2011. Also “based on #1 International Best Selling Socialnomics by Erik Qualman this is the latest in the most watch social media series in the world.”

‪So, what do you think? Still plan to wait out this annoying social media fad? Still hope to ignore it? Good luck!

Related articles

• The Three Faces of the Social Revolution: Media, Marketing, and Service (kellblog.com)
• Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business (amazon.com)
• Watch: Socialnomics’ Social Media Revolution Gets Updated For 2011 (socialtimes.com)
• Social media is now more popular than online porn(digitaltrends.com)

Post your most important social media content consistently at similar times all week long. Or not…

How about Thursday and/or Friday? Eureka!

According to Mashable’s Todd Wasserman “the end of the work week is the best time to get traction on status updates and tweets.” (Why Users Are More Engaged With Social Media on Fridays) I’ve often found this to be true, though I’ve been unable to ascertain exactly why. Buddy Media dove into 200+ Facebook users habits over two weeks and discovered that Thursday is actually the most engaged day of the week. However, Twitter’s Adam Bain (Chief Revenue Officer) touts Friday’s as the most engaged among the tweet-set. So the two biggest social media hubs agree that end-of-week is the time of maximum engagement. Why?

People are heading into the weekend so they’re thinking about things besides work. They’re mentally checking out and transitioning to the weekend. (Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group)

It’s a matter of people finally pushing past the work week and coasting toward the weekend, picking their head up a bit to see what’s going on and what their friends are up to. (Rick Liebling, Coyne PR)

I call it ‘contra-competitive timing‘. As the overall activity seems to slow down from the hustle and bustle of the week, readers can give each tweet more attention because there are fewer other tweets fighting for it. (Dan Zarrella, HubSpot)

Of course, now that the social web is aflutter about this hot news, I haven’t any doubt that marketers and spin doctors are going to begin swamping us on Thursday and Friday now. So, maybe next week or the week after we’ll see a shift away from the inevitable spamfest toward Saturday? Monday? Wednesday? Reductio ad absurdum.

Which leads to the question, how will we filter the noise?

I’ve come to see book bloggers as indispensable to authors, especially first-time authors.

~ Miriam Gershow

When Miriam Gershow (@miriamgershow) published her novel The Local News she landed coveted reviews in The New York Times, Marie Claire andLadies Home Journal. Home Run! Or not…

It turns out that even a top drawer print run and allstar mainstream media buzz, the job still fell to her to keep the novel visible and selling. And she did, due in part to her discovery that book bloggers are an essential (and friendly) ally.

One of the most surprising things about book publishing is that after the initial fanfare and reviews and readings… there is almost a deafening silence… suddenly it was my responsibility to keep the buzz going. (Guide to Literary Agents)

For Gershow, and for an ever-increasing parade of authors, the blogosphere and its social media cousins offer affordable word of mouth relationships directly with readers. As the data maelstrom grows louder and more overwhelming, more and more readers are tuning out. Traditional marketing channels are less effective than they used to be. But bloggers invest themselves day after day in cultivating a loyal readership. Blogger recommendations are respected, trusted and acted upon.

I do know that when a book is talked about in the blogosphere—especially by the insatiable bloggers with their insatiable readership—it keeps that book alive in the public consciousness.

Besides, authors have far greater accessibility to bloggers than they do to mainstream media outlets. So time and effort invested in courting bloggers is far more likely to pay off. But that’s not all, Gershow confides. Writers need book bloggers for their delicious soul food!

And… bloggers are good for the writer’s soul… They remind me that what I’m doing matters. And for that alone, they are worth their weight in books.

Yesterday afternoon at Writer’s Digest Conference 2011 was a game-changer for most participants, indeed for everyone that I’ve spoken to so far. Top notch presenters packing our heads and To Do lists with critical advice. And then the much anticipated opportunity to pitch our manuscripts to multiple literary agents while the coaching is still fresh. Exhilarating, empowering, humbling, encouraging, exhausting…

It was an intense two hours. Personally, the Pitch Slam offered some of the most important feedback and inspiration in my writing experience. Smart, attentive agents telling me what I can do, must do, will do. A road map. And opportunities. Whether or not agents expressed interest in your manuscript, their feedback was priceless. An opportunity to learn how to proceed.

I had fascinating conversations with other writers last night about what they gained from the experience. Even those who were disappointed not to have received as much interest as they’d hoped were grateful for the guidance and feedback they received. Many others were practically giddy with fresh encouragement and hope kindled by the interest of literary agents.

The positive vibe continued this morning, the final day of Writer’s Digest Conference 2011. Here are the offerings:

• How to Use Social Media to Get Noticed and Sell Your Work: Dan Blank, Brent Sampson, Kate Rados, Moriah Jovan, and Guy Gonzalez as moderator on a panel on using social media effectively to build your platform
• Writers and Mobile Apps: The Big Opportunity: Question of the Day creator Al Katkowsky on the mobile app opportunity for writers.
• Showing & Telling: The old adage, “Show, don’t tell” is wrong. Find out why from an experienced novelist, Laurie Alberts.
• The Kindle Publishing Workshop: This is a detailed and technical walk-through of how to get your work on the Kindle (without a publisher) presented by April Hamilton.
• Book or Bestseller: Which Will You Choose?: Patricia V. Davis on working with agent, publishers and booksellers to build your writing career.
• The Writer’s Compass: Using Story Maps to Build Better Fiction: Nancy Ellen Dodd on story mapping.
• Revision: Learn How to Love It: Only James Scott Bell could turn a thing that most writers hate into something that you can attack with confidence—and yes, even a bit of love.
• Successfully Promoting Your Book: Kevin Smokler, Brent Sampson, Kate Rados as moderator present this panel full of personality, wit, and damn good advice.
• Success Strategies and Systems for Writing & Selling More: The lovely and inspiring (and productive!) Sage Cohen offers 10 ways to exponentially increase the results and rewards of your writing life.
• Creating a Backstory: How and Why It Can Make or Break Your Novel: Hallie Ephron tells us how to use backstory to make a reader care about a character (rather than slow down the story).
• Blogging as a Platform and Publicity Machine: Dan Blank on blogging to build your platform.
• The More Things Change… (Benjamin LeRoy)

What follows is a beta mashup from Sunday morning’s sessions. I’m curating digital artifacts from Twitter, blogs, etc. to tell the digital story of Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, but I’m sure to miss great content. Please tweet me (@virtualDavis) or contact me directly with links to great tweets, blog posts, videos, etc. so that I can add them. Thanks!

http://storify.com/virtualdavis/wdc11sunday

Related articles

• Buzz: Writer’s Digest Conference 2011 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #1 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #2 (virtualdavis.com)
• Writer’s Digest Conference 2011, Part #3 (virtualdavis.com)
• My Best Advice for Writers From 2011 (janefriedman.com)
• Writer’s Digest Launches Self-Publishing Division (prweb.com)

The image above was generated via Curate.Us one of the many innovative curating tools sprouting up lately. My current fav among the free online curating tools is Storify, co-founded by Burt Herman and Xavier Damman. Check out “My Storify Meta Story“, a still-evolving assessment and chronicle of my experiences with this powerful, user-friendly curating tool. In addition to an in-depth look at Storify, videos of Herman and Damman, and Twitter exchanges with Damman, I’ve included a look at some of the main competitors in the curation space including Curated.by, BagtheWeb, Scoop.it, Pearltrees and Keepstream.

Every day there’s more evidence that curating social media will take center stage in 2011. As more and more social media adopters share content, filtering and curating this avalanche of information has become critical.What curating tools do you favor?

Hangover remedies shared by @SandraOldfield

“I do hereby firmly resolve…” Each year as a child I wrote these words on New Years Eve. There was an uncomfortable gravitas that came with putting my resolutions down on paper, sitting in the living room with my parents, my brother, my sister, knowing full well that we would all be expected to share our resolutions aloud. Knowing full well that some of my inked goals were not new, were repeats from a year prior (and perhaps the year before that and so on.) In other words, some new years resolutions represented failures. By reaffirming that I would undertake what I had failed required humility and honesty. It also created optimism and hope. I had failed, but now I would succeed.

“I do firmly resolve…” That’s powerful language. A powerful act.

As an adult the gravitas diminished. Over time I abandoned much of the soul searching and honesty of defining and sharing specific, personal, intentional, meaningful resolutions. Toasts and lighthearted bravado eclipsed reflection and goal setting. Champagne, dancing, singing, hugs and kisses and thumps on the back. Each year I still try to jot down a few goals in my Blackberry to refer to over the course of a year, but the ritual of my childhood definitely lapsed.

Until this morning. I awoke knowing that something was missing. It was time to plant my keister at the honesty table for a little tough love. Did I rock 2010 the way I could have? Did I seize the most important opportunities? Did I achieve or significantly progress toward my goals? Have some of my goals changed? Is it time to weed out longstanding ambitions that perhaps no longer matter and replace them with new ones that do?

Before long my reflection yielded to hopes and plans for the new year. I scrawled out two pages of changes, improvements, goals and accomplishments for 2011, and then I massaged them into a prioritized, categorized layout. An action plan.

I felt pretty good.

But it’s easy to feel good writing lists, dreaming of what we want to achieve. Easy and often fleeting. The gravitas was still missing. The accountability. The humility and honesty that resulted from speaking my resolutions aloud as a boy. From owning and sharing and responding to questions and making a public commitment. “I do firmly resolve…”

Having dropped my parents off at the airport yesterday afternoon to fly home to Chicago, and since my siblings are far, far away, the tried and true ingredients for resolution gravitas were absent. Time for new ingredients. Time for reinvention!

Here’s what I’ve decided. I’m going to share a few resolutions with you to see if there’s gravitas to be had. To see if forging a compact with my virtual family can help me keep my 2011 resolutions. Don’t worry, I’m not going to swamp you with two pages of “Take the dog on more adventures” and “Share better wine with more friends” and “Go fly fishing!”

Like everyone else, I’ve pledged to supersize my fitness regimens. Yes, both of them!

Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness. (This Year, Change Your Mind)

Now that the holidays are fading in the rearview mirror, I’ll be more successful at dealing with the decadent dining dilemma: downsize, downsize, downsize! There are work resolutions (Drupal, Drupal, Drupal) and personal resolutions (gardening, orcharding and timely thank you notes) too, but it’s my bookish resolutions that I need to affirm publicly (“One thing only needs your attention…“) so that you can bust my chops when I get distracted, discouraged and/or delusional.

That’s right. Part of effective New Years Resolutioning is going on the record and proclaiming your goals openly so that others can help you monitor your progress and ultimately succeed. You in? Thanks.

My #1 resolution for 2011 is to deliver Rosslyn Redux to its audience:

• to publish the print memoir and the ebook;
• to record and distribute the audio book;
• to publish the video series;
• to perform the one-man show;
• and to share my quixotic publishing adventure with you as I move toward my goal.

Whiplash? Thwappp! It’s real. It’s happening. It’s now. And I’m going to take you along for the ride via twitter, video, blogging, storify and [hopefully soon] broadcastr. A glimpse inside the adventure of a newbie writer courting a publishing industry doing the funky chicken in time lapse animation. You with me? Hang in there. Things are liable to get even more confusing in the months ahead, but we’ll muddle through. And laugh at ourselves plenty along the way.

Did you read 37 literary resolutions for 2011? I liked Janet Fitch’s marginalia ambitions:

My book-related resolution for 2011: To converse more with my books. To write in the margins. (37 literary resolutions for 2011. What’s yours?)

As I plunge head over heels into an exotic publishing adventure, I’m going to chronicle the conversations along the way. I’m going to write in the margins. And I’m going to share my marginalia with you. In fact, I’ve already started… I hope you’ll help keep me honest, focused and determined. And I hope you’ll bust my chops when I get distracted, discouraged and/or delusional. Thank you!

I do hereby firmly resolve to publish Rosslyn Redux in multiple formats and to share my experiences over the next year while moving toward this goal. Gravitas!

Related articles

• Remembering and Recounting (rosslynredux.com)
• How do you determine New Year’s resolutions? (laurieanichols.wordpress.com)

The greatest benefit of social media for indie authors is the chance to make and build connections with other authors, readers and publishing industry professionals. The quality of these connections (how consistent, how useful, how deep, how much trust. how good is your actual product/book/service?) will determine how many of your social media pals actually “convert” i.e. buy your book, interview you, review your book, give you a contract, share your posts etc.

This where your advantage lies because you, one man/woman writing publishing phenom that you are, can build deeper connections than the Stephen King’s and Susan Collins of this world.  Success and popularity can often decrease the depth of social media connections simply by dint of the numbers involved. Elite twitterati like Neil Gaiman and Paul Coehlo have mostly one way relationships with their followers because they can’t afford to read what all those followers have to say in turn.You don’t have that problem. (penswithcojones.com)