Archive for the ‘Guest bloggers’ Category

What do you do?

When someone asks that question to most people, the response is simple: they do what they are paid to do…their J-O-B. But, for a small group of people, what they do and what they get paid to do are two very different things. A growing trend has formed, people who have a day job that pays their bills, and a secondary job, one that they are passionate about but doesn’t make them much (or any) money.

The following 3 women all have real jobs, they all work very hard in their companies but all have a passion for something else. They want to do something bigger than just work in an office…

In order to learn more about them, and what they do vs what they are paid for, I interviewed each one. Below are their answers, straight from them, about what they do, why they do it and what they hope for in the future…

Kristin Ausk, Meringue Bakeshop

1. When did you first realize that you loved to bake? I was going through some really stressful times 5 years ago. I’d just gotten married, moved to a new city away from all my friends and family, changed jobs, bought a house, became a landlord, and I was becoming overwhelmed by it all. I found that baking gave me an opportunity to forget my stresses and just be in the moment while I was mixing and testing and tasting recipes. It helped relieve some of my stress and I felt really relaxed and comfortable in the kitchen. And the best part was being able to share my creations with others. I loved the way it made me feel to make someone happy even for just a moment.
2. When did you decide to turn it into a business? I decided to turn it into a business when I started getting asked by coworkers, friends and family if I could bake them cupcakes and cakes for their personal events. I started to get more serious about my baking – recipe testing, learning more about the chemistry of the ingredients, started to look at what I was doing from a business perspective. I also really enjoyed knowing that my little creations were helping to make someones day even more special.
3. What has been the biggest frustration with your business? The biggest frustration hands down has to be finding a county approved commercial kitchen to use that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Los Angeles has a great program called Chef’s Kitchens were small businesses can rent out kitchens based on their needs -hourly, weekly or monthly. I found that there is nothing like that in Orange County. It’s a shame too because I get so many emails from other people like me in Orange County wanting to move their home kitchen hobby into an official business. Candy, cake pops, cakes, homemade jams, salsas, snack mixes. All this opportunity for new small food businesses in Orange County (and nationally really if you consider online food sales) and we can’t find a space to make our businesses grow.
4. What is the biggest accomplishment? Hmm…. can I say it hasn’t happened yet? I recently decided to participate in the LA Cupcake Challenge, Feb 20 at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood. It’s a daunting task but I think it will be really fun and a great opportunity for me and my business. I will be competing against some other great cupcake bakeries and other smaller custom cupcakeries from Orange County and LA County. They are expecting to get over 550 attendees with media from OC Register, Orange Coast Magazine, OC Weekly, LA Weekly, LA Times, Metromix, LA.com, Eater LA, Foodbuzz, Flavorpill, Gayot, about two dozen food bloggers and possibly KTLA. I think it is going to be a real challenge for me to pull this off but well worth it in the end. Definitely using some of my vacation days for this one! If I can pull this off, that will definitely be my biggest accomplishment to date.
5. What do you do IRL, and when can you imagine doing this more full time? My day job consists of me sitting at a computer in an office working on SEO, SEM, our company websites (4), doing research, and email marketing for my company and our franchises. I am a Marketing Manager. In a perfect world, I’d be able to run Meringue Bake Shop full-time within the next year but in reality, that isn’t going to happen. My current job is just too lucrative for me to give up at this time, in this economy. I’d love to be able to work par- time so that I could participate in local farmers markets but again, not going to happen. Do I think I would succeed as a store front? Yes, definitely. But I don’t have the financial backing that I would need to make that dream into a reality right now.
6. What else can you tell us about Meringue Bakeshop? I know that there is a lot of buzz out there about cupcakes and how it’s just a fade. And quite a few people open up shops just because, it’s the latest trend. I am not that person. I truly love baking, whether it’s cupcakes, cookies, cakes, muffins, bars, biscotti, pies, etc. I like working with my hands, the sound of the mixer, the smell of the ingredients. I strive to make Meringue Bake Shop that place you come to for all the great moments in your life – your graduation, your wedding, get that great client in your business, birthdays, your baby shower, then baby’s first birthday. That is what I love about baking the most – sharing these moments with you. When I open a store front, I want to be that neighborhood business, a business that is involved in the community and knows their customers. I know someday it will happen. That is why I chose to name by business Bake Shop, which I know can be confusing for some people because I don’t have a store front. But I am a forward thinker see?

B the Gossip Girl

1. Why did you decide to start the site? I hadn’t been able to find a site that supported community amongst women, while still embracing the feminine. I wanted a site where women could go to detox and let their hair down a little bit. That’s what Gossip Girl B offers, a place where no topic is off limits. Gossip Girl B provide an environment where women can have fun, laugh, while supporting each other. So often I think women forget we are on the same team, we are always competing with one another. Gossip Girl B provides the best girl talk you will find online, you can compare it to having drinks or coffee with your best gal pals.
2. What has been the most powerful article you have written? I have a section called on my mind and it’s my own personal soap box. I try not to stand on it too often, but it does happen from time to time. Hula Dancer Pilgrim Girl was an article that really got me to thinking. The woman I wrote the article about inspired me in a way that no one had in a long time. She made me stop an evaluate how serious we take our lives and how much fun we are really missing out on.
3. What about email you have received? E-mails can get pretty interesting. My favorites are the ones where I get asked out on dates. I get about 20 of those a week from people across the country. It’s sweet and I always reply with a very gracious, thanks but no thanks. I would say the “love letter” type e-mails have picked up since I started writing The Dating Diaries and everyone knows I’m back in the land of the singles. I do love to travel so who knows, maybe if I happen to be in the area of one of my “love letter” e-mails I will taken them up on their offer for dinner. Love in the blogosphere, now wouldn’t that make for a good article.
4. What do you do IRL, and when can you imagine doing this more full time? In real life, I’m a writer. It’s a little more cut and dry, press release and web content, stuff like that. It pays for my shoe fetish, but doesn’t really light that fire in my belly. I also just finished a novel that I’m wrapping up with edits. Fingers crossed I will be able to find and agent who believes in it as much as I do. Gossip Girl B however is where my heart is. It started out as a hobby and has grown into a passion. If my projections work out within the next year and a half the blog will be a more full time gig.
5. What else can you tell us about B the Gossip Girl? I’m simply a 25 year old woman with a dream and I want to get there in fabulous shoes. I drag my laptop and camera with me everywhere I go, but most of my writing is done from the comfort of my sofa with my long haired Chihuahua, Edward, on my lap. Everything to me is a potential blog or storyline, so it makes life even more interesting. Everyone in my life knows the disclaimer, if you are around me there is a very real chance you are going to get blogged about. I am who I am and I never make apologies for that, and that’s the exact philosophy I want my readers to have. I live my life, I make mistakes, and I keep learning every single day. If at the end of the day while I’m lying in bed I can say I learned something or I’m a better person, then the days events no matter how hard were worth it.

Trish Forant, eMailourMiliatary

1. Why did you decide to start eMailOurMilitary? I was working a mundane job in IT and 9/11 made me take a hard look at myself and ask “what difference am I making in the world?” “What legacy would I leave behind if I died today?” “Who have I REALLY helped?” I wanted to do something to help after 9/11 but like many people I had to work full-time so flying to NY and volunteering wasn’t an option. When I heard the DoD canceled the “Any Service Member” mail program due to force protection concerns, I knew I could step in and fill the void. It was perfect for anyone who wanted to more but couldn’t spend hours volunteering.
2. What has been the most powerful thing you have seen happen because of the site? The building of a community that doesn’t take party affiliation, race, religion, nationality or logistics into account. I’ve seen our community band together to help wounded warriors, veterans in need, and active duty military far from home.
3. What has been the toughest thing about this site/passion? Disconnecting can be really tough. My heart breaks each time I see the statistics on how many of our service members aren’t making it home or are coming home physically and mentally wounded for life.
4. What do you do IRL, and can you imagine making a profit from eMailOurMilitary? I don’t know what the future holds financially for eMail Our Military but I haven’t taken a paycheck in 9 years so I’m sure I would start now. When I’m not in the eMOM office I’m working my social media mojo as a social media consultant and of course, I’m a full-time mom to a 4 and 5 year old. (I also have one totally cool 20 year old too!)
5. What else can you tell us about eMailOurMilitary? eMail Our Military makes it easy for anyone who wants to support the troops to do so from the comfort of their computer chair. We’re always looking for service members who are in need of support and civilians to support them.

I want to say a big thank you to these women for their time and answers! After talking with each of them and learning more about what they do, I learned something very important – if you love something enough, a paycheck doesn’t matter as much…

Do you do something for the pure passion? Share your story in the comments as well!

Yesterday, I started my 7 sins of creativity and writing with lust. Today, we are on to sin #2, Gluttony.

Gluttony is traditionally defined as over-eating (either in amount of food or amount spent on food). In modern times, it has become more vague, and can be used to define anything done to an extreme. For example, a writer who writes too often and never gives the floor to someone else would be considered a gluttonous writer. Or one who writes about themselves all the time, and never shares the stories of other amazing individuals. So that I don’t fall into this category , I would like to share an incredible view on creativity from Brad Marley, a PR professional who shares his thoughts on his work, his life and anything else that pops into his brain on his blog at BradMarley.com. He has become a virtual friend via twitter and our blogs, and hopefully I will get a chance to meet him soon. So thanks Brad, for saving me from being a glutton, and for sharing your thoughts with my readers!

Creativity is Terrifying

Some of us are born with the ability to create things that others are willing to pay to experience.

Most of us are not.

If you’re one of the few that emerged from the womb a creativity prodigy, you can stop reading this blog post right now. Go ruin an iconic image with technology, or something.

Oh, good – everyone is still here. Let’s continue.

In public relations – where every company with a job opening is looking for creative individuals – it’s no different.

Rare is the opportunity when we actually put our creative chops to use.

We like to gather in conference rooms and brainstorm the craziest, most outlandish ideas for our client’s product roll-out…then bury them in a PowerPoint deck that the client never sees.

Why?

Because these creative ideas truly terrify us.

If they don’t stick, we look and aloof and careless; that little exposed part of our soul shrivels up and dies. Creating the ‘World’s Largest Rolodex’ seemed cutting edge among our peers, but put it in front of the CEO of a company?

No way.

And it’s like that in all walks of creativity.

The greatest idea you have ever compiled carries no resemblance to the end product. What seemed so clear and concise in your brain comes out looking like a Rorschach symbol. Your audience shares looks of confusion. Their casual indifference might as well be punches to the face. At least then the physical bruises would distract everyone from the mental anguish.

From there, creativity is off-limits. Everything you produce – from your best friend’s wedding speech to the eulogy at your grandfather’s funeral – is straight vanilla. Your wardrobe consists entirely of muted tones.

The world is a drab place. The sun never shines.

You eat nothing but Oreo cookies.

But then, one morning, you wake up to birds chirping and a shining sun.

It – this world where people make up stories and draw characters in costumes for a living – suddenly becomes so clear and obvious.

Creative people are crazy.

And you long to associate yourself with them.

Hello to all the readers of Wright Creativity! I would like to introduce you to Kyle Reddoch, the new weekly web/code guru. He will be writing weekly post to help my readers on the more technical side. He is not only a great resource, but a good friend who I rely on for all my coding work. Enjoy (and check out his bio at the end of the post)!

The first step in getting your website up and running is picking your domain name. You want to pick the right one that best portrays your business, industry, or relevat to what your website is.

Company Website

You first will want to try seeing if your company’s name is available as a domain name. If so, great then you are on the way. If not, you will have to do a little more research. What does your business provide? What is your industry? For example, my company does web design, hosting, maintenance, domain registration, etc. everything a person will need to get a website up and running. Now, luckily my business name was available as a domain name! I currently have registered; www.theeverydaywebexpert.com and www.kylereddoch.com, both of which goes to my company’s website.

Let’s say that my company’s name wasn’t available. What would I do? Well I would have to look to what my company does. Maybe even the region where my company is located, or town. I would then put all those together and find the right domain. Here are some possible domains that I could use for my industry:

• www.yourtexaswebexpert.com
• www.texaswebexpert.com
• www.mywebsiteexpert.com

Just take some time to search available domains and find the right one that fits your company.

Personal Website / Blog

If you are creating a website for personal use or a blog, you might want to go a different route to decide your domain name. For personal websites or blogs, you can have your name as the domain name. For instance, www.kylereddoch.com is a great one for me . You can also have a domain name that suits what the purpose of the website or blog is about.

You want to make the domain name easy to remember though. You don’t ever want a person trying to remember your domain name…because in all reality, they won’t.

There are thousands of possibilities for domain names out there, you just have to find the RIGHT one!

Kyle Reddoch is the Owner of The Everyday Web Expert, a full service web design firm located in Amarillo, TX. He is also a featured writer on many blogs. He loves every minute of his life with his wonderful wife and two kids at their home in Amarillo.

I have been following Ori (@couchsurfingori) for awhile on twitter and then we connected through our blogs. I thought his stories and his travels were unbelievable interesting, and very creative (plus, he is pretty hysterical!). I also thought my readers would love to hear about what he is doing and why. So, a few days ago, I asked if he would guest post about his experiences traveling the country on couches. After we chatted on the phone, he decided to share via video (and has required that I create a video soon too, watch the 12 minutes mark,…argh!). The video is long, but well worth the watch. And not just because he created it for me.

But most importantly – watch this video and think about what it can teach you, or what you can learn from it. For me, it has given me a lot of motivation to keep doing my freelance work, because I love it and want to!

Anyway, here is Ori’s story:

*favorite moments are at .33 seconds (really Ori? A tiger? lol), 6.22 minutes (answering the phone? Well…if it leads to another amazing story, why not!) and lastly, 10.30 minutes (because not everything is hunky-dory, you’ve gotta have the bad too.)

And hopefully next time he is in Southern Cali, he can surf my couch!

Today at work, I got a card in the mail that blew my mind. One of the people that followed me, @Enthusem, sent me this card instead of a silly auto-dm. Not only was it delivered in a pretty cool envelope, it definitely caught my attention. I honestly hadn’t realized I was even following @enthusem (sorry Steve) but once I got this card, I took a look. Basically, it is a customized card with my actual name (not my twitter name), addressed directly to me, that introduces Steve and his business, Enthusem Cards. His goal, as you can see from his twitter profile, is to prove that postal mail has a place in social networks. Inside of the card was a note to me that asked for my review of his site (as it is still in Beta) and I wold get a few free credits to send out similar cards as a thank you for my review. But it didn’t sound like he sent it to everyone, as it was personalized for me, included notes about how I use twitter and was not just a generic ‘check this out’. Now, I am not a fan of junk mail, but his product wasn’t junk mail. It was so well put together, and so creative, that I had to ask him more about it.

The following is Steve’s explanation of Enthusem, how it came to be and where it is headed in the next year:

About five years ago, I developed a system for creating and managing personalized URLs (PURLS) and personalized microsites to tie direct mail programs to online content. That system – prospectLINKS was a great tool for larger companies who wanted to tie large volume direct mail campaigns into personalized online content. It was one of the very first commercial PURL platforms and I had a blast developing it but I accepted an offer from Printable Technologies and sold it in Jan of 2007.

After selling prospectLINKS, I had too much time on my hands. I began thinking a lot about the future of printed mail and how it was being changed by all of the cool stuff that was happening online. Although a lot of people were saying that direct mail was falling out of favor I couldn’t help thinking that it was just being done in a way that didn’t sync with the way things were changing in our super connected, ultra aware world. For example, most direct mail is still done the same way it’s been done for decades. You get a giant list of people and you mail a gazillion pieces of hopefully relevant but never personal mailers to them. Sure mailers these days can look more personal but for the most part people are way too smart to believe that any of those message were truly intended just for them. The other thing that was bugging me was that everyone in the direct mail industry was using the term “one-to-one” but that was never really the case – it’s never one-to-one if you’re mailing to a list, no matter how many data fields you merge into the message.

About the same time I was obsessing over the non one-to-one reality in direct mail, I started getting into the social networking stuff. There was such a contrast; online it seemed people loved connecting and communicating with other while most direct mail was considered a waste (and rightfully so) or just plain junk.

Then one day I was talking to someone who was telling me about a greeting card they’d gotten from a friend. She was noticeably enthused (I had to know I’d use that word someplace ) about getting that card. But, she mentioned that it seemed like people don’t send personal written communications anymore but that it used to be a lot more common. At first I wondered why and then it hit me, people hadn’t stopped sending truly personal communications they’d just moved them online.

That’s when I really started obsessing over the question that we’re trying to answer with enthusem. That question – is there a place for printed communications in the world of social networking? I thought the answer was yes but I couldn’t find anyone who’d linked the two so I thought it fun and challenging to try.

We got a small team together (four people initially) and we made enthusem our full time focus – that was sometime in later 2007 (I think, exact dates should be on our blog). We got a very early (and very buggy) version up and running in February of 2008 but most of the early beta testers said it was mildly cool and some even said it stunk. So, we scrapped the first version and decided to rebuild everything from the ground up and we released the second beta version (the current version) in June of 2008. This release got much better marks from our beta users and so we rolled with it.

Since then we’re gotten thousands of new users and on busy days we mail upwards of 10,000 cards. The original thinking was that it was going to be a business tool that would allow any size company (even a company of one) send truly personal direct mailers that link back to online content. We’ve got a lot of business users but we also have a lot of people sending personal cards. For example, baby announcements with a picture of the baby on the front and a link to a YouTube video of their new bundle of joy.

We also started using enthusem to contact people we follow on twitter and other social networks. I don’t really know where enthusem will take us at this point because it’s too soon to know if it really will be something that tons of people like and use. So, until then we’re just having a lot of fun developing it and we cross paths with some of the really smart people out there who might have an idea(s) on how enthusem should evolve. We’ve already receive a ton of great suggestions like making it simple to add personal video attachments, which we’re working on and making the API’s open which is also in the works. Our next major release is about to go into live BETA in the next 30-45 days and a lot of our users will see some of the stuff they’ve been suggesting so to some degree it’s taking on a life of its own.

I definitely think that Steve has a great idea and I am interested to see what happens in the future! If you are interested in finding out more from him, you can reach him at steve(at)enthusem.com…and tell him I sent you

A couple weeks ago I found @madefromdolly on twitter. I loved the shirts – and the idea. After searching the site, I found that the creator was @jwright and that the shirts were just the tip of his creative iceberg. So, I couldn’t help but ask him to guest post on my blog and talk about how he is using his creativity and twitter to improve his business(es). Thank goodness, he couldn’t say no to someone with his last name! Anyway, take it away Jamie…

Congratulations, you got a Twitter account for your business because you heard on this inter-webs that it was the new cool and hip thing to do. Now what?

My name is Jamie Wright and I use Twitter as a tool for all of my businesses. I am president of a small consulting firm for software development. I am planning on releasing my own software product soon and I have a Twitter account detailing all of the steps we are going through with the product. I have also been a huge fan of t-shirts which influenced me to start a clothing company. I use Twitter for this business as well to help with customer relationships and get feedback from a community.

I have found that Twitter is an exceptional tool to use for your business and I want to share four tips and ideas I have learned along the way.

1.) Transparency builds your business

Most people don’t know why your business should be on Twitter, hell, most people don’t know what Twitter is all about. How many times do you hear “why do I care when someone is making a sandwich?”. I guess it depends on if you are going to learn anything from that sandwich. Will you learn about a different meat or topping you have never tried of on a sandwich? Will it give you happiness if you now have a better sandwich as a result? Who knows and that is the point.

I recently started a Morale Twitter account in order to be transparent about building a software product. I want to share each step along the way in small, bite size chunks. Twitter is the perfect tool and I have gotten a lot more traffic to the Morale site as a result of this transparency. A bigger advantage of this transparency is the fact that I have gotten responses from other developers letting me know that there are better ways to do various development tasks. I have learned a lot from my community.

Transparency can allow you to learn about your community and your community to learn about you and your business.

2.) Content is King

Twitter is not about tricks and traps on getting a bunch of followers. Just because someone follows you doesn’t mean that they are listening. It’s all about the content. You have to have the content that people care about. Just announcing something and hoping people will show up is what magazines and newspapers do. We all know what is happening to magazines and newspapers now a days. If all you do is broadcast, there is no interaction between your community and you because your community does not care with what you have to say. The method to gather this information is to post useful and relevant information for your audience, listen to the feedback, and be patient. If your content is good, they will come.

3.) It’s just a tool

Twitter and other social networks are just tools and it is really all about content that you provide within these tools. If the community is actively asking or looking for something and your business can help then that can result in a quick sale and probably a a long term customer. My Made from Dolly Twitter account often announces sales via coupon codes . I get some response to these but not much. When I do a search via search.twitter.com and I hear someone say that they are “almost going to consider” one of our products, I send them a coupon code and it is almost always a sale . I think this is because it is some money saved for them but it is also equally knowing that someone is listening to them in the community.

You have to be involved in your community and Twitter is just a tool to allow that to happen on a massive scale.

4.) Customers may not always be right but they can let a lot of people know how they feel anyway

How many people could you tell a few years ago that the service at your local cable company sucked? Ten? Fifty if you knew a lot of people and talked a lot? Today it is thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands. Just broadcast this on Twitter and people will get your message. This can be very detrimental and/or helpful to companies. It’s important to search Twitter and watch what the community is saying about you and your business. You need to search EVERY SINGLE DAY. F*** that, search several times a day to see what people are saying. If they are saying good stuff, thank them and let them know you are listening. If they are saying something bad, make sure you acknowledge it and state your side. It is important to catch these little conversations as soon as they happen. If you wait even a few hours, they may get stale and will be considered an out of date conversation. It’s hard to talk with everyone at the water cooler if they are already back in their cubicles.

We recently refunded several users money for our shirt at Made from Dolly because of a mess up in our ordering system. The printer did not know the orders existed for several days and they were not printed on time. When I see this error, I immediately issued a refund and we still printed and shipped their shirts to them. I searched Twitter before this happened to see if I could address any of the users who may have complained. I did not find any results from that search but the good thing is that now we have addressed it and even made the mess up public. Who knows, there may be a nice response to that gesture.

It’s important to know that now, the whole world has the ability to watch your customer service and it leaves your reputation more vulnerable. Make sure you realize that and take the appropriate actions.

Those are some Twitter thoughts and ideas I have learned along my journey. If you have any ideas, thoughts, or complaints, please leave your comments here cause I also search the blogs for reactions to my businesses. I hope you are doing the same.

I spent last night at Steelhead Brewery in Irvine attending the Sierra Nevada 4 course beer tasting and food pairing event. There were approximately 30 guests, who were treated to a brief history of Sierra Nevada by one of the original brothers who started the company 29 years ago (while enjoying 4 of their best beers) and awesome food courtesy of Steelhead. Not only was the food and beer incredible, but the collaboration of the two got my creativity flowing.

Being the person I am, I grabbed  Jason (one of the Sierra Nevada Rep’s) and Danny (the manager at Steelhead) and asked them a few questions. We talked about both businesses individually as well as the logical pairing of one Brewery with the restaurant. Danny explained, “This was our fourth Beer Dinner that we have successfully enjoyed over the last 2 years. Previous Beer Dinners featured Sparen Brewery, Firestone Brewery and Stone Brewery. All were very tasty and FULL of fun. We always try to select brewery’s that have flavorful and unique beers so that our Head Chef, Javier Reynoso, can be creative as possible with the menu.” With that in mind, here was the incredible menu from the evening

Course 1: Mixed green salad topped with warm salmon, tossed in a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale infused vinaigrette. Served with a cold bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Course 2: Sierra Nevada ESB (Early Spring Brew) and a hot bowl of chili, with chunks of sirloin beef. The chili sauce was made with the ESB as well.

Course 3: New York steak served with mixed veggies, mashed potatoes and a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale based dipping sauce, and a bottle of the Celebration Ale.

Course 4: Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale, in the glass. Ice cream topped with chocolate sauce (infused with Bigfoot), candied pears and bread pudding.

Jason gave me a little more detail about Sierra Nevada: “We are more than just what you can read on our about us page, we are a family. The business was started and is still run by the same guys. Yes, they love that the business has grown, but they don’t let it go to their heads. The owners love the opportunity to tell people more about their operations. The brewery now boasts one of the largest fuel cell installations in the United States. It produces at the lowest, 97% of the power used by our operation, and at it’s the peak, our surplus electrical energy will be available to help supply the overloaded California power grid during peak power usage periods. It’s our goal to make sure that we produce great beer, without being an imposition on the environment.”

Finally, When I asked them about why they did this event, they were both quick to answer, “It just made sense”. I have to agree, it certainly did.

There are so many businesses that would go hand in hand, but rarely get the opportunity to meet. This event was not only great for the restaurant, but it gave us all a look into Sierra Nevada by one of the owners, an opportunity rarely given by most breweries. I hadn’t drank Sierra Nevada much prior to the tasting, but after having it paired properly and taught a bit about it – I have found my new favorite beer to buy, the Sierra Nevada ESB.

What type of business could you collaborate with to create promotion for both of you?

One of the people that I follow on twitter, @briguyblock, wanted to talk about his year – the good, the bad and the crazy. But, has not fully immersed himself in the world of blogging and asked for a bit of help. Since I believe wholly in the creativity of the individual, I couldn’t say no. Plus, his story is worth telling. So, Happy New Year Brian – and here’s his story:

I won’t give you my life story, but I started out the year at the bottom of the work totem pole, as a boyfriend, a social media enthusiast and a grandson.

Going in chronological order, I began the year by proposing to my girlfriend. Later that night we were officially engaged. Facebook said so. We spend the next several months planning the wedding which would take place almost two years from the engagement. It was a long engagement, but a good way to keep someone close.

Since then and throughout the year my family was blessed with five new little cousins. All were chubby with 50 toes and 50 fingers.

I also spent this time to try and build myself in the social media community. Meeting great people and mixing with other like-minded professionals was addicting.

This had carried me through most of the year till August. Then things went sour.

My great uncle passed away. He had been sick for a while, but it was still a major shock that knocked our family down hard. He was loved so much. There’s a short list of men in my life who I feel everyone can learn something from to live a better life. He was one of them.

My fiance left me in late September. I had been searching for her birthday gift the last night she asked to meet . She had some personal reasons for not being able to continue on with me. It was definitely a mistake, but unfortunately it was a necessary step on her part.

In October, I was finally promoted to Account Executive. That was great. This gave me a stronger direction for my career as a social media promoter and PR professional. In fact other people had noticed me too and asked me to step up to take part in greater social media activities. This helped some to get me out of a depression I had been in, but not for long.

In November, I was asked to take care of an event that had been planned three weeks later than it should have and allowed me that same amount of time to put it together. Throwing all disregard into the wind for how I usually like to treat projects and the people who I work with outside of the company, I began pulling strings and my hair to get this project accomplished. It was one of those 60 hour a week, constant pressure from the boss projects that take up your time and make you late for everything in your life.

The day before the event, my mom called me to tell me my grandfather had passed away. He is one of other men on the short list I mentioned earlier. I can’t begin to tell you who he was and what he did that made him special, suffice it to say that a sanctuary that probably held around 600 people was filled to standing room only. He was survived by 8 children (including spouses), 15 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren and one loving wife.

We all have bad years and good years. This has been both and one too important to let it just be a passing 365 days that happened. I’ll keep this one close to me.

Believe it or not, that was the short version of my year. I might have been able to summarize it better had I simply said that, “in 2008, I learned the difference between a toast and a drink, a pink-ribbon scar and a wound, and the strength to hope for the best and the strength to make it happen.”

I recently got a chance to check out one of the newest twitter apps – Twollo – as well as speak with the creator, Paul Kinlan. He and I took our conversation out of the 140 character atmosphere, and chatted via email. I asked him a few questions about why he created twollo, the goal of the site and where he saw it going. Below is the information he gave me about his new site:

KW: Why did you start Twollo?

PK: I started Twollo because I needed to expand the twitter network that I was in. I was getting to the point where I was getting bored ( for want of a better word) and I knew that there must be thousands of user out there with interests that are similar to mine. I am a big fan of automation so I thought I should create a service that follows people for me whilst i am a sleep, at work etc.

I did some “Market research” and didn’t find anything that could do what I wanted. Obviously I am not good at Market research because there is a service with nearly exactly the same name doing a similar thing (but it costs money for the comparative service).

KW: So what were you doing beforetwollo?

PK: I run a company called topicala ltd (it is just me) that was originally based around a simple meta search engine at www.topicala.com after experiencing scalability problems I investigated the Google App Engine and have now developed lots of services on this; mainly www.eweri.com, www.atopical.com, www.thecompanything.com, www.thetopicthing.com, some others I can’t mention yet and now www.Twollo.com

KW: Where do you see this site going? and do you plan on making any big changes to it overall?

PK: Twollo itself is not very complex, the suggestion engine is very simple and I plan to keep it that way. One of the places that I see twollo going is that I now have a lot of information with regards to the interests of twitter/twollo users so the future will be less about mining twitter for data and more about connecting users through twollo directly.

Twollo is all about finding and following the conversations about which you are interested, and from that perspective I am the same I want twollo to grow and the only way that this can happen is if I am very active in conversation about twollo, which is why I am quite vocal on twitter at the moment.
Paul continued to say that he is always open for suggestions – and the best way to find out what is going on with Twollo is to follow him @twollo

For those of you who haven’t checked it out – here is my brief review of the site (both the good and the bad). Feel free to let me know what you thought as well!

1. The site is well organized and it is easy to see what is going on and the users it is finding for you. But, the UI could be a little wider, and possibly customizable for the user.

2. The name is quite cute – and fairly easy to remember (although there are about a million Tw— sites out there now…). The logo is great but I wonder about the rights to use the twitter bird?

3. It definitely gives you some quality people to follow – I have found some great new people in the niches that I am interested in. But, I would love to see a prequalification that he tweeters have made at least 100 updates and have 15 followers themselves. This might help eliminate a few of the spammers.

4. You get to fully customize your results, as narrow or as broad as you would like. I chose creative marketing as my tag, as well as my own twitter name – @kirstenwright, and the common misspelling -@kRistenwright (it helps as I missed a few new people who had responded to earlier tweets of mine)

5. As far as the autofollow – you can set it to find 10, 20, 50, etc people each day. If you set it low, the number of new followers really isn’t too much to check.

Overall – definitely worth checking out. You’ll never know who you meet until you try it

Finally, thanks to Paul Kinlan for his time.

Matt and Craig (or @mmWine and @binendswine for my twitter friends) have an incredible noses for wine! Matt has been helping Craig (who has a store in Braintree) to promote a great concept of a live wine tasting via Twitter. I think that this has to be one of the most creative ideas I have heard in a while, and felt that it needed to be shared. Unfortunately both are super busy since the next event is tonight, so I couldn’t request an entirely new post about it – so I am re-posting Matt’s tweet from yesterday. My goal is to get a winery sponsor for Southern California and get a tasting that is actually live here soon…if you know of one that might be interested, let me know. So…onto Matt’s post about Twitter Taste Live, tonight!

I am really stoked about Thursday October 23rd and the Twitter Taste Live event which starts at 7pm EST. It’s organized and hosted by twitter friend Craig D from Bin Ends Wine, and I am so glad I’m participating in this one. This is “Twitter Pack #4“, a selection of wines from Steele Wines. I have had their Chardonnay before, but none of their other selections, so this is a great event for me.  We’re going to be enjoying:

2006 Shooting Star Aligote (WA)
2006 Steele Pinot Blanc
2006 Steele Chardonnay
2006 Shooting Star Blue Franc (WA)
2006 Steele Pinot Noir (Carneros)
2006 Steele Zinfandel (Pacini Ranch)

If you have not already ordered your tasting pack from Bin Ends Wine, all hope is not lost.  You can find out where it’s available by using a search engine like Vinquire, and see if you can get some today. Perhaps your local wine store has some, if not all, of the selections in stock. Of course, I am sure you can have it over night shipped from  Bin Ends Wine as well!

A few final comments about Twitter Taste Live so YOU can join the fun.  First of all, make sure you hit up Twitter Search and search for keyword #TTL.  Each of the people participating in the live wine tasting will add #TTL to our tweets to make them easily searchable.  Second of all, please go sign up on Twitter Taste Live so you can be connected with other wine drinkers from around the world. Finally, when you do sign up with Twitter Taste Live, be sure to say that “matt-mmwine” referred you in your profile. Whichever wine blogger adds the most people to the goal of 400 members will win wine they can review on the website. That will help me review more wines for you. WIN/WIN/WINE!

I will be tweeting my experiences with the wine, as well as streaming live on Ustream.tv where you can see video (and audio, lord willing) of me sitting there, wine in hand, enjoying! I believe you can chat live with me, and of course, tweet live as well!  I sincerely hope you’ll join in the fun!  It’ll probably go 2+ hours, so even if you’re West Coast, you can enjoy with us!

Thanks Matt and Craig!