It's all about chunking. . .

When I first went to start my adventure with 23 things, I admit it was pushed back, A LOT. I was so concerned with finishing the entire project that the task became a bit overwhelming. However, this morning on my way into work I was listening to Tony Robbins and I really took what he was saying to heart. He was talking about rationalizing and the "stories" we tell ourselves for why we don't accomplish things. One of the stories I discovered that I have been telling myself was that this task was overwhelming or that I didn't have the time.

I am a over-achiever by nature, I believe everyone at RMD is, and felt that if I was going to catch-up with 23 things I would need to catch-up on all weeks, all at once. But this morning taught me something different. What about just starting? Making the first movement, and breaking the project down into more manageable pieces or chunks. This is definitely something I have learned time and again at RMD.

I believe that each and every member of the RMD team has taught me how to be a smarter, sharper, more creative and passionate problem-solver in the professional world. They have helped me gain and improve on a whole plethora of skills and I truly could not ask for a better working environment. Not only does every person at RMD help me to grow professionally, they also help me to grow personally. This is through encouragement of "listening in" in the mornings to influential and motivational people like Tony Robbins, at Mojo meetings when team members are rewarded for hard work with "attitudes of gratitude" or "smile awards" and through our running club.

I could go on about all RMD has taught me, but I'd rather keep delivering it to this blog in chunks, as Tony suggests for completing my tasks. . .stay tuned.

MES

Week 5, Tagging and Folksonomies

I'm just going to talk about tagging and folksonomies for a bit. Tagging and folksonomy is part of an overarching 'goal' to create accurate metadata by brute force. Think of it as a neural network of information categorization. We all interpret information differently; while one person may tag a website or page as 'technology' another person may tag it as 'pseudo-science' depending on their point of view. The theory goes, reality as determined by the massive public will create order from chaos and correct categories by popular choice. I think the fallacies in such an idea are fairly self-evident but it certainly does a better job of ordering information than manually doing it.

How tagging, folksonomy, and metadata works is this: Say I show 10,000 people a picture of a flower and ask them to 'tag' it, with as many tags as they want. Chances are it's going to end up with 9,900 tags of 'flower', and if the flower is red, then probably 4,000 tags of the word 'red'; if it's a rose, you'd get tags of 'rose' and for the horticulturalists out there who know it's exact species name. Some nerdy horticulturalist might even tag it the full series: Plantae Magnolioptea Magnoliopseta Rosales Rosaceae Rosoideae Rosa. What you end up with is a array of tags with the most popular one (flower, rose) with less popular ones (beautiful, Rosoideae). This creates metadata, which allows search programs to find what you're looking for more accurately than by just showing you all images of flowers. If you for example searched for 'beautiful red roses', the search engine could search for the most significantly tagged photos with the tags 'beautiful, red, and roses' first. Without this, searches would have no choice but to simply display all pictures with those descriptions in an arbitrary non-organic list order.

In a strange way, tagging and folksonomy has some similarities to how we as humans learn. People learn through repetition of information. People for example can identify the sound of a keyboard going click-clack because they've heard it so many times. And then they know it's probably connected to a computer; and that a person is probably writing something on a computer. We connect this sound with tags like 'keyboard', 'computer', and 'writing' with less popular tags like 'paper', 'exam', and 'microsoft word'. By these personal tags, we might make an assumption just by hearing the sound that 'Someone is typing on a keyboard connected to a computer and they might be writing a paper on microsoft word'. Just like in the webworld, less popular metatags are more subjective, less accurate, and therefore less important.

In a weird way, this is how the internet and information is learning about us.

ZF

Week 3, RSS Feeds

One of my favorite advertising blogs is http://www.adverblog.com ; it's an interactive advertising blog. But pretty much every major website that's updated on a regular basis seems to have a rss feed. I know this is because many major tech websites have become blog style websites (examples : io9, kotaku, engadget, coolhunter) Blogs by their very nature are only successful when regularly updates with news and information. That's why RSS makes sense; it's like having a news ticker you'd see at the bottom of CNN on TV but in your life constantly. On the downside, if there's anything to complain about the innundation of media into our lives, RSS would certainly be a culprit.

ZF

Week 2, Flickr

One of the Flickr mash-up applications I found and still use is called CoolIris. It's a firefox plugin that gives flickr and other sites (including facebook) a really slick interface for viewing and browsing photos. There's another website that's a flickr mashup - it's named 'alwaysawesome' or something like that (I can't remember) but it just has this huge unending map of the most interesting photos on flickr; they always tend to be the most interesting artistically so I don't know exactly what the criteria is for putting them up.

ZF

Mashable Media Tools

If you are a pitcher you have to check out this site: www.mashable.com

Sign up for HARO if you haven't already. Lesley shared this resource with me and I've had a few hits from pitching these reporters!

Also, very intrigued by Pitch Engine, we need to find ways of using social media news release and this is a great tool! I will dig in more this week and report back. 

Which tool is your favorite?

KP

RSS Feeds

You know, I've had a free subscription to a feed in the past, but have never used it.  RMD ... does anyone actively use the feed?  

The blog I found that is interesting (a top 100) covers everything food.  That would be good for us to follow ... for content, inspiration, see what's being written/said about food, etc.

Tweet Tweet

Hi Team,

This week I played around with Twitter. I've been "following" members of the media, PR professionals and even some of our clients! It's a great way to keep in the know on what's hot forother people in the industry. I was having some trouble finding more members of the media, but did you see the list of journalists on twitter the top 10 social media tools?! Problem solved! Verdict is still out on whether Twitter will improve pitching--will update in a few weeks, but so far, I love it!

LAW

Your Pitch Sucks.com

Hi Team! I cannot wait to submit a pitch! This is so great...I'm interested to get feedback from other PR folks...I'll let you know how I do. I've got to think it over though, I don't want to submit a bad pitch...what a GREAT way to keep PR folks on their toes!
AV

Blog-li-ness

Hi Team,
OK, so even though I know Bloglines is pronounced blog-lines, I still think it looks like Blog-li-ness...and I've had an account for a long time...but I don't use it. Call me a "negative Nelly" if you want...but I feel like there is so much to keep up on, it's hard to remember to log in. I also get Google Alerts, so a lot of the time, I'm alerted when my fave blogs are updated--make sense?

The world is so full of so many different things to log into...there's hotmail, gmail, facebook, my space, plus keeping up with what's happening on CNN, the Dispatch and local TV... I just don't see myself logging in to Blonglines regularly....sorry! But it was nice to have a reminder that it is still out there. :)
AV

RSS Feeds

Hi Team!

I just finished setting up my own Bloglines account, and as Kari said, it was much easier than I  thought it would be! Actually, I am kind of excited to start using this tool to get the latest news as it is posted and continue reading. 

I signed up for a couple of feeds including The Official Google Blog, The Food Section and PRWeek. More to come, but this is going to give me a good start on my reading for the week!

JLS

Flickr For Our Clients!

Hi Team!

Personally, I love The Food Network. I watch it every weekend and use it to find new recipes to add to my "Try This" list. One of the reasons I love it though, is because when I find them creating a recipe that sounds good to me, I am able to watch them create it and then I can imitate them later in my own kitchen.

After checking out Flickr, here is one way that I think we can use Flickr to benefit our clients, specifically our food clients. I'm going to use Dei Fratelli as an example. On the recipes page, underneath each recipe, we could post a link to our account on Flickr where we post videos of Chef Otto demonstrating how to make the recipes we have on the site. This would get consumers involved even more so with Chef Otto and the "personality" of the Dei Fratelli brand.

This could help increase sign ups for the On the Vine newsletter as well, as visitors to the Dei Fratelli site would need to sign up for the newsletter in order to be considered a "Friend" on Flickr and be able to watch the videos of Chef Otto demonstrating how to create the recipes. 

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks,

JLS

Growing Pains...And Learning From Them

Growing pains. In my year here at RMD I have experienced quite a few of these (as I'm sure many of you have), but while they have been VERY painful at times, I am so thankful for all of them. Experiencing these pains reminds me that I am constantly learning and growing into a better, and more polished professional. 

While I have many to thank for helping/coaching me through these experiences, one person who has really nurtured me and been there from the start is Kari. Beginning all the way back when I started my internship at RMD, Kari has always been there to teach me, listen to me, nurture me and guide me through my professional growth. She has always been a great role model and example of the type of professional that I strive to be, and always reminds me that while the growing pains hurt now, they are great lessons that I will carry with me through the rest of my life. 

Thanks Kari!

JLS

I thought this would be scary and it wasn't!

After signing up for my own Bloglines account, I found out how easy it was to choose blogs and news feeds to subscribe to! I chose to sign up for The Food Section, USA Today, top stories, Wired.com and The Official Google blog. Unfortunately the site is experiencing some problems so I will need to go back.

This got me thinking: How do companies get listed on Bloglines.com?

RSS is a function I've always needed to understand better. News services, databases and blogs are typically RSS enabled.


Learning is empowering! I can't wait to learn more!

KP