Stephanie Booth's blog

You may or may not know that I co-direct a year-long course on social media and online communities. There are still a few places left, but be quick -- registration closes on Friday and the course starts on September 21st. I think this might be of interest to some of you in the Lift community.

The course is in Lausanne and in French. It's 20 days between September and May (5 4-day modules) and includes doing a personal project on a real-life case for the exam.

Participants leave the course with a solid grounding in all things social media, equipped to take informed strategic decisions, plan social-media related projects, and also be active "in the field". We cover social media marketing, community management, online communication strategy, and also practical use of social media tools like blogs, google docs, facebook, twitter... and probably Google+ this year ;-)

The course is aimed at a diverse audience: communication managers in big or small companies, marketing agencies, web people who want to move to social media, consultants, journalists, non-profits, schools... One of the great assets of the course is the network the students leave with, which ensures that they are connected enough within the field (and with a whole class of peers) to stay on top of things once the course is over.

Here's some online information about the course

I’m writing this note at Laurent’s request (he sounds a bit swamped right now) to give you some info about the missing videos.

A few of us Open Stage speakers have been wondering why our videos weren’t online. Let me state first that it is not a conspiracy of some kind or an indication that community-chosen presentations might be less regarded than “invited speakers”. If you look at the videos on nouvo.ch, you’ll see that Kevin Marks is the last recorded speakers — all those after him are missing too.

I’ve asked Laurent about this (believe me, he’s heard about it enough) and what has happened is that some talks were not edited live — so it seems it’s a bit of a struggle to get it done / retrieve them / put them online. We unfortunately don’t know when they’ll be available. I trust, however, that the recordings are safe and will not be lost.

This kind of situation is really annoying. As a speaker, who was relying upon this video, I feel extremely frustrated — and also a bit mad at myself, because knowing how important this recording was for me, I should have planned for a fail-safe and got somebody to do some dirty shooting “just in case”.

As a conference organiser, I dread that I’ll find myself in this situation at some point — it’s almost inevitable. When you announce something, even if it’s something that you’re giving graciously, people come to expect it and rely on it. And when things go wrong and it doesn’t happen the way they hoped, they react badly (me included) — when they probably wouldn’t have said anything in the first place if they hadn’t been expecting it.

I know Laurent feels bad about this, and they’re doing what they can to find a solution — amongst the myriad of other post-LIFT things they need to deal with.

Cross-posted to CTTS.

Here’s some news: registration is now open for the event Going Solo which will take place in Lausanne on May 16th.

(I gave an open stage speech Thursday morning telling the story of how I came to organize such an event.)

I initially wanted to give LIFT attendees a special discount, but ended up doing more than that: why limit this to our community, when it is possible to spread the LIFT spirit to everyone?

Therefore, during this first week of registration (until Sunday), Going Solo will be 100 CHF less for everybody: 300CHF instead of the 400CHF early bird price. Don’t miss it, and register right away!

I’ve written my first post-LIFT08 blog posts. Here they are:

• My LIFT08 Recap, where I go through my impressions of these three days, stream-of-consciousness-like — missing a lot in the process, how could I not talk about my workshop?
• From LIFT06 to LIFT08, evolution of the lifter I am.

I’ve also announced the pricing for Going Solo and will be opening registration tonight (it’s ready, actually, I’m just a bit afraid of taking the plunge — maybe I need a guinea-pig or two amongst those of you who already want to register?). Going Solo also now has a Twitter account which you should follow if you want to be sure not to miss anything.

More posts coming… as I can publish them (and still impatient to have my open stage video somewhere! ;-))

So, where do I blog? I'm live-blogging on my blog Climb to the Stars. I also posted a "pre-transcript" of my Open Stage talk (where's the video, btw? did I misunderstand that we were being filmed?). But should I have posted it here? I hesitated.

What are your thoughts on cross-posting?

I have to say I'm already struggling about whether to post certain things on my blog or on the Going Solo blog blog.

I want to write a few words about my workshop yesterday (it went well despite the small number of laptops present for a practical "learn to actually blog" thing), and the one I attended. What's the best place to blog about this? I like to collect all I write on CTTS, so I have a tendancy to want to cross-post if I blog elsewhere.

Anybody else facing the same problems? How do you deal with this?

This is something I’ve wanted to do for some time now, and I’m happy to kick it off at LIFT: provide a crash-course in blogging for non-bloggers.

I know many people attending LIFT are already seasoned bloggers like myself. Most people reading this post probably are. I wanted to offer something to those who are not so immersed in the web as us.

So, basically, this is a three-hour workshop to open a blog (from scratch, I plan to use Wordpress.com), twiddle the basic settings, learn how to publish, and talk about blogging. I’m always amazed that though the media now sing “blog, blog, blog” in every publication, many people haven’t really had a chance to get near one and see how technically easy publication is.

So, if you know anybody who is going to LIFT and isn’t (yet) a blogger… send them to my workshop ;-)

Quoting from the workshop description, here’s the stuff it’ll cover:

First, on the “blogging technique” side:

• opening your blog
• discovering the various options and settings offered by the blogging tool
• how to publish a post or a page
• linking to blog posts or websites
• organizing one’s content with tags and categories
• managing comments
• choosing a design for your blog and managing sidebar content

Second, on the “blogging culture” side, we might talk about:

• blogs vs. “normal websites”
• different uses of blogs (personal, corporate…)
• dealing with openness and conversation in a public space (negative comments…)
• blogging etiquette and ethics
• reading other people and how to promote one’s blog
• other “Web 2.0” tools to use in relation with your blog