A quick intro to twitter.com for Newbies

Twitter is what some term, a micro-blogging platform. It’s also a multi-user micro-blogging platform. Micro-blogging? It’s like the sms of the blogging world, where you only have 140 characters to convey a message to the other twitter users who have decided to follow your feed. Have a look at this excellent video explanation called Twitter in Plain English developed by commoncraft.com. This video explains the entry level understanding of twitter though, so if you’re a twitter power user you’ll be digging much deeper than sharing your breakfast with your followers.

Ways twitter can Benefit you

So what’s the real craze about twitter then? Surely there’s nothing special about being able to update your status with 140 characters?

Take a quick step back and hear me out. Twitter is anything but simple status updates, even though at a glance it may seem that way. The thing which makes twitter 100 times more beneficial than facebook is relevance. On twitter you follow those who are sharing information you find valuable, people who share interesting links, who pose challenging questions and who answer many of your braintwisters as well. Twitter can be much more of a Collaborative Networking tool than a social networking tool, which is where the real value add lies. A few benefits of using twitter to stay in touch with your industry or niche:

• Network with those you aspire towards
• Learn from those in the know
• Conduct Twitter Polls
• Distribute links to your posts and projects
• Find Business Partners & Clients
• Be notified about the latest industry trends
• Get the news while it’s still fresh

Of course twitter could end up being a purely social thing for you if that’s what you’re interested in, but those who benefit from twitter the most, and who are probably the most active are using it for a completely different purpose than sending cute cuddly messages to their college friends.

Who to follow

This is truly the crux of the matter. Having a good follow strategy is where it all starts. It’s the difference between reading about people’s breakfast and the latest industry specific trends. Unlike facebook, you can follow just about anybody on twitter, including some really well known personalities within your niche. People who you may never get to accept a facebook friend invitation from. This doesn’t mean you can become a cyber-stalker as you may be blocked very quickly. The beauty of following the professionals or gurus is that you get an insight into what some of the top people in your niche are thinking, reading, learning, asking etc etc.

Some tips on choosing who to follow

• Shared topics of interest
• Post frequency matching your preference
• Full profile so you know they’re legit
• High percentage of valuable tweets
• Uniqueness in tweets
• High percentage of value adding tweets
• No Spam or hard selling(unless you’re buying)

I’ve found I’ve benefited hugely by following & conversing with some of the top names in the Web Design & WordPress spaces, something I may not have been able to achieve on pretty much any other “social” network.

Check them out before you follow

A Great tool to help with your following strategy is Foller.me which I wrote about a short while ago when it was launch by @kovshenin, a Russian tweeter I’ve become twitter friends with recently. It helps you see what your potential followee is tweeting about through keywords of their most tweeted topics as well as being able to see their geographical breakdown of their own followers. All this at a glance.

You’d want to make sure that the person you’re planning on following is tweeting down your alley way so to speak. Checking out their recent tweets on their actual twitter page or by using one of the many twitter follow management tools like www.tweepular.com, to get a quick glance at what the potential tweep is tweeting about.

Who not to follow

Don’t be tempted to follow every tom dick or twarry who follows you. You’ll soon find out that there are a few twitter spammers out there, as well as people who are only interested in telling everyone else how great they are. Be selective but don’t be a snob either. You’ll be surprised what people have to offer if you give them a chance on twitter.

Don’t be tempted into the many scaly, “get loads of followers” applications & programs which are popping up all over the place. With twitter it’s less about quantity and more about quality. You can benefit tons from only 10 people and waste your time on the rest. Of course more quality wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Sometimes checking out the twitter profile will show up a fake or spammy tweeter immediately. I don’t follow tweeps without avatars as a standard, it means they couldn’t really be bothered yet, so they’re probably still wet behind their twitter ears. I’m also suspicious of tweeters who have little or no profile info on their twitter page.

Do’s & Don’ts

Try not to

• Rant too much
• argue
• insult
• be obsessive about topics in an irritating way
• sell products without adding value
• just take and not give
• Twitter is not for long conversations!
• I tend to unfollow people who use profanity.

Try to always

• Be nice
• Share and generally be of benefit
• ask questions
• answer questions
• give advice
• introduce people
• post great links

There is such a thing as Twitter Karma. I’ve found solutions to major problems have come many times from tweeps who I’ve just helped on twitter.

Twitter Apps Galore

There are more twitter apps than the amount of tweets I’ve ever posted, and I’m quite a frequent tweeter if I must say so myself. Check out this monster list of apps and tools on the Twitter Fan Wiki. They’ve now organised these based on platform and type and the list is constantly growing. Twitter apps range from plain and simple tweeting tools, to follower management apps, even twitter games as well as a few really cool alternative uses for twitter. I’ve just received a test version of something called #tweem which is being developed by @netizensmedia which is a WordPress theme built just to create a custom twitter home. I hope to integrate it into my own theme once it’s ready for public release.

Twitter apps On your Desktop

TweetDeck – My first choice for managing my main twitter account/s (open source). It now also has facebook status updates, an iPhone version, twitter searching, twitter trends and loads of other twitter power user features.

Twitterific -  Low cost elegant solution for desktop, iPhone & iPod touch

Twhirl – A little lighter but feature rich, built by Seesmic and connects to loads of different online services

Seesmic Desktop – for Multiple Twitter accounts as well as Facebook in one place, very similar to Tweetdeck but just not quite there yet.

I’ll be posting more about non-desktop twitter apps, plugins & services in part 2 of this series on twitter.

Integrating Twitter with your other online spaces

Integration is the way the web is moving currently. To get the most out of the many tools and services you use and subscribe to in the digital age, they need to interact with each other in ways that bring out the best in all of them. You also don’t want to be spreading yourself too thin by blogging on one space and tweeting in another, while adding content and connections in yet another. By having separate, disconnected social/collaborative spaces, you fragment your focus and your time considerably. Integrating these entities helps keep a consistent flow going, no matter which online space you’re occupying.

On your site

If you have your own website or blog a great idea would be to insert a widget or plugin to pull some of your latest twitter posts in. This could be as simple as the single most latest tweet. Accompanied by a follow me link it’s a good way of building your following. Some twitter savvy peeps have taken twitter integration to the next level with like Jaan Orvet of Noded with his site www.sharpenr.net which is split half way between his tweets 7 his blog posts.

There’s also your twitter favorites, which lists your tweets you’ve labeled as favorites and can be fed into your site through a widget as well. This is a great way to share what you deem to be only the most valuable twitter content with your website’s visitors. I haven’t done this on my own site yet as I’m due for a complete overhaul of my site but it’s very much in the pipeline.

To give your followers a punt you could also embed a list of your followers which displays their avatars or their twitter usernames. Go on, give something back!

Get your twitter name out there

Lastly make sure wherever you are online or off that you’re always sharing your twitter username. Besides placing links on your site, make sure your little birdie is also found on your:

• other social network profiles
• Your IM profiles
• comments you make on blogs & forums
• email signature
• T-shirts
• hey why not even your business card.

I know of some entrepreneurs looking into developing twitter stickers for laptops and even cars, so get your twitter name out there tweeple.

More than just characters – Sharing Pictures & Videos on Twitter

Links

Sharing Links on twitter can sometimes be a bit of a probem when you’re linking to dynamically created links which are really long. This is where the link shortening services step in. Many of the desktop applications have built in link shorteners. Tiny URL is one of the better known url shortening services currently available.

Pictures

Of course there are times you’d want to post more than just 140 characters, or even more than just characters for that matter. The most well known of the picture posting twitter services is Twitpic which allows quick posting up of pics for your followers to check out. This could be used in a collaborative manner to brainstorm ideas and discuss designs or other project imagery as well.

Videos

Twit Vid is a video posting service which allows you to either upload a video, email one or record one directly from your webcam. It’s serves to cut down the time it takes to upload to another video service making posting of video content via twitter way quicker. Voicemail anyone? Another such service is 12 Seconds which also integrates with Facebook.

And for documents, there’s twitdoc.

Follow Management Apps & Services

Keeping control of your followers and who you’re following can become a really tedious task, and the standard twitter homepage doesn’t make this any easier. Thankfully some really clever twitter nerd have created a range of tools to help us wade through the crowds to find the best tweeps to follow. Foller.me is one of these gems which I mentioned a little earlier on in this post.

Tweepular is another services which pulls some interesting info about who’s following you and who you’re following so you can keep your twitter neighbourhood in check.

You may also be interested to know who unfollows you, so you can keep yourself in check and stay relavent to your followers. Sign up with Use Qwitter be notified when someone unfollows you.

Topify is a service which enhances your twitter follow notifications so you get a little more detail about the person who has just followed you and can make a quick decision whether to return the favour.

So that’s it for part 1 of my twitter power user series, this was a bit of an introduction so hopefull the next few parts will focus a little more on specific areas individually and with more detail. I’m interested to know:

• what you think of twitter?
• do you use twitter?
• how do you use it?
• what’s your favourite twitter application or service?

If you’re interested in diving deep into the world of twitter, Mashable has a mega list of twitter tips, guides, tutorials and other helpful bits to get you going.

I’d love to tweet you some time so follow me @nomadone.

To Follow or not to follow, that’s a good question

One really frustrating part of keeping your account updated with relevant tweeps(twitter peeps) is having to scratch through their tweets and see whether it meets with your criteria.

Enter onto the scene http://foller.me

A really cool Russian guy I’ve recently been following on twitter is @kovshenin, has released an extremely useful little twitter app which allows you to quickly have a look see what your prospective followee has been tweeting about so you know whether to add them to your list. I always hate having to follow and then unfollow soon after when I realize @so&so just isn’t tweeting down my alleyway.

Here’s how Foller.me works

Foller.me is a Twitter service that can provide you with the most detailed information about a specific Twitter user in the least amount of time! Here’s how it works.

You input a Twitter name into the searchbox and hit enter. Foller.me gets access to the profile of that user via the Twitter API, scans all the public info and the latest 200 tweets!

You can decide within a few seconds whether to follow back, making it super easy to build a realy solid twitter network without all the hassle of being a private investigator. I’ll call it “The Sherlock Holmes of the twittersphere”. Give it a whirl, I’ve tried it a few times and you’ll be surprized what you find out about certainer tweeps! I’ve even ran it on myself just to see what I’m interested in – LOL.

Here’s what I look like in twitterspeak -

To be honest I’m not very impressed although I suppose things are still in development, the features available are currently not very usable. For example the widget I used in this site, which allows friends to connect with me on my site and invite others to do so, only allows me to see one or 2 profile links and doesn’t really allow me much interaction with the person who signed up as my friend. Maybe someone needs to develop a wordpress-friendconnect plugin to integrate some of the functionality.

I admit I haven’t spent an awful amount of time going through the limited documentation, but so far it seems very raw and nothing to write home about, though I do love getting some additional little functional elements to play around with and spice up my site with.

We’ll see what the community comes up with once the serious developers start throwing their social dev weight at this thing. As a non-hardcore-developer I can only but wait for now and throw in my 2 cents worth. How about you register as a friend and tell me if you found the process easy or valuable at all.

The promise of Open Social seems to be working it’s way towards something but I don’t think it’s fully arrived yet. Next I think we’ll try Facebook connect and see how it compares.

I signed up on the network a while back in the testing phase but only really started using it in the last few days and I have to say, Linkedin needs to take note of some of the features in Salambc.com’s network. Salambc’s profile’s work alot more like a facebook and creating and joining groups is alot easier than Linkedin.

They’re described themselves in the following manner:

The Salam Business Club is the world’s first social business network especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world with members from 170 countries around the world. Join the hottest Internet startup and find old friends, colleagues, valuable business contacts and new markets for your products. Extend your network and connect with decision makers, freelancers, entrepreneurs and the managers of the future.

I’d love to know if their backend is custom built or running on an open-source platform. Have a squiz at Salambc.com and sign up if ur interested in networking with Muslim/Arab Friendly business professionals.

An aquantance of mine criticised the special focus of this social network saying no social networks should be specifically for certain groups. I had to dissagree, as  person with a specific set of values and ethics, I’m interested in networking with others who share my values and on a business level I’d like to network with other business people who appreciate that there are certain types of business practices I cannot promote, joining Salambc gives me this opportunity.

Salambc is not exclusive though and even though it encourages doing business in an islamically acceptable manner, it invites all interested to join. If you do join though, know that there are rules to any game, so promoting business which does not conform with Islamic Business rules is not allowed, those being interest based financial services, gambling, alcohol, anything of an adult(XXX) nature or any unhealthy products or services.

I take my hat off to theses guys and wish them every success going forward.

I think the tagline says it all, “the best ideas get paid”. So what is this all about then? The website www.ideabounty.com says it short and sweat:

Clients: Get thousands of minds thinking about your brief and only pay for what you use.

Creatives: Get paid for your best ideas with no long term commitment from you.

Crowdsourcing is a growing scene which is maturing of late, but locally we are yet to tap into the vast intellectual and creative ocean out there. I’ve had the idea of an ideas network for a while, like many I suppose, and though mine has a slightly different spin on it, it’s encouraging, though not surprising, to see a company of Quirk’s stature venturing into this kind of territory.

I’ve just registered, check it out and see what you think.

Global issues like poverty are extremely complex. There is no simple,
clear answer. By asking thousands of different people to give their
viewpoints and opinions, Blog Action Day creates an extraordinary lens
through which to view these issues. Each blogger brings their own
perspective and ideas. Each blogger posts relating to their own blog
topic. And each blogger engages their audience differently.

Blog Action Day 08 aims to focus the lens on the issue of poverty and change the conversation on the web on one specific day. The idea is to stimulate discussion, debate and hopefully come out with some solutions to tackling Poverty woldwide.

Bloggers are playing an increasingly important role in tackling social issues through awareness campaigns and by influencing activism. This year’s blog action day has taken the effort a step up by providing resources for bloggers to understand the issues which contribute to poverty.

If you’re interested in participating in this event you can register your blog to notify the site that you will be participating. The next step would be to work on your personal part of blog action day by writing a post/s, creating a podcast or video cast, and then posting these on 15 October 2008.

Some Big web 2.0 names ave gotten behind the event this year including Tech Crunch & Read Write Web so make sure you join the effort to tackle Global Poverty blogger style.

At the same time, in your local setting don’t forget to make the life of a poor person easier in whatever way you can by feeding, clothing or facilitating ife for them in some way.

Saying Hi makes all the difference

One of the lessons I learnt from Shane is that adding some meaningful value by being genuinely involved leads to meaningful developments, while being superficial and just chatting to be cool really gets you nowhere. Bloggers who should really be great at genuine dialogue, are guilty quite often of just being chatty for the cameras.

Add value and become a star

Due to that little step of Shane saying Hi and sharing some thoughts, led to us meeting and chatting about a business idea I have been working on and getting some great advice from him. It also lead to me finding out about the Heavy Chef Session run by World Wide Creative and attending their User Experience Design presentation. A whole series of events which I have benefited from. Shane probably has no idea how saying hi has affected me and place him in my list of respected individuals. He’s someone who walks his talk.

Here’s his post on Ten Excellent Networking Tips, which was inspired by the original post Ten Excellent Networking Tips.

For starters the turnout and involvement was much better than meetup#1, though there are a few critical aspects of the meetup we now need to discuss going forward to make it something of real substance. Anyone interested in the attending the next one give me a shout. We’ll be putting together a planning team soon.

Those who made it this time around were in no order of priority: ChrisM, Callum Macdonald, Henk Kleynhans, Adii, Foxini, Sarah, Selim Kagee, Nadah, Jamaal, Francois Raubenheimer, rafiq, Foxinni, Stelio, Johann Botha, Kilian Hagemann, Miguel, Frans Kuipers, Joe(amobia),

At the meet Callum did a sterling job of drumming up excitement and getting people interacting. Well, errr, he tried his best and though there was a slow start we got a few sessions onto the white board for people to vote on. People were interested in chatting about WordPress MU, Using wordpress for social networks, Drupal comparison, Why wordpress, WordPress security, Plugins, WordPress 2.5

There was a range of people at different levels of wordpress knowledge and experience so it was a bit tricky, I’d pitch myself in the middle somewhere between the complete newbies and the ultra wordpress geeks like Callum.

I was particularly impressed by the way Nadah of work online, a complete wordpress newbie and sceptic from the first meetup, has quickly become a total enthusiast. She admits becoming somewhat of a blog junkie of late.

Comparing Blogger, Moveable Type & WordPress, by Henk

Henk hit us with an awesome session taking a critical look at 3 different blogging platforms and questioning the pros and cons of each. From where I’m standing wordpress comes out tops, though the others may have a point or 2 over wordpress on different levels. Henk currently runs at least 1 blog on wordpress, blogger and moveable type.

I personally get a yucky feeling whenever I am faced with a blogger based blog and tend to stay away from them as much as possible. It has to have something to do with the fact that I’m a designer and a sucker for pretty looking things which blogger does not facilittate very well.

I’m hoping we can get the PPT Henk put together to show you all, will have to ask him nicely.

What’s your fav plugin

The session broke out into a plugin show & tell with a few of us sharing plugin ideas and asking about plugins we’ve been wanting to get out hands on. I was off on a tangent about a plugin which allows you to manage sidebar content out of a specific post category or page though I don’t think I got my point across very well. We discussed some issues surrounding cache plugins including my recent disaster with WP Super cache and hope to get a recommended plugins list going. Chris recommended php speedy to help imrpove performance for high traffic sites.

WordPress Security Issues

One of the more technically focussed topics which were discussed was security. The concerns were voiced by those who are managing and hosting multiple installations of wordpress for clients or organisations. WordPress is known to be exploitable and there have been cases wherewell known sites have been hacked into and even hijacked completely. The discussion centred around updatability of multiple installs as well and the guys through a few suggestions around including working off the SVN codebase.

The guys lost a few of of us along the way when they veered into ultra-geek mode.

So what is really different about WordPress 2.5

Admin Interface Re-design

The admin area of wordpress has seen a significant overhaul, not so much in functionality as far as I can tell, but in terms of the user-interface and design with a few added extras. Here’s hoping it works faster than the existing one as I find one of the issues is the loading time with my limited bandwidth. I logged into the 2.5 demo site and poked around a little taking a few pics.

Here’s a few screens of the admin interface

The dashboard is not customizable/widget based which means you can very much personalised your admin area ased on your own preferred usage. WordPress has been working with Happy Cog to give wordpress a re-design which will hopefully very much improve its usability. Any usability changes improvements to wordpress will take it from good to Great I think. Also with the involvement of Jeffrey Zeldman I feel alot more confident the new solution will solve many problems. I agree fully with their reasoning behind the dashboard redesign:

The Dashboard’s most important role is to inform quickly and get you to where you’re headed in the admin. In interviewing users, we found that most of you ignore the Dashboard entirely — its useful information being mostly hidden in an overly complex design.

http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/25-sneak-peek/

The Admin Navigation menu

Very much more simplified which will hopefully reduce the confusion first timers experience and should make homing in on specific tasks a little more straightforward. I Particularly appreciate the little touches of detail which gives you an idea of activity at a glance like the comments bubble in the screenshot below.

Posting Interface upgraded

Because of the clunkiness of the wordpress post writing interface I’ve moved over to posting through Windows Live Writer, though I have found the code it generates to be a little messy. I still like it for the speed at which I can get a post together along with images and formatting. I hope with the new wysiwig editor interface things will happen alot faster for those of us accessing the web on South African speeds.

Moving in the direction of a full CMS

Something else which has become more important for wordpress is being able to order the display of your content in ways which suites you. 2 new tags is_front_page() & the core feature which allows you to randomly order posts allows for more flexibility in determining what shows up where.

There’s also a new media library which will among other things give you the ability to upload more than 1 file at the same time, something I know I’m definitely going to be much happier with.

The get_avatar() tag, which is something I think will play a greater role on blogs and other social networking sites as people increasingly connect randomly via the sites they visit. I’m definitely looking forward to integrating avatars into my site soon as this was part of my initial plan but the time needed to integrate them into the code meant I ditched it while I was re-developing. I love to know who’s visiting, who’s commenting and generally who’s out there.

The addition of buddypress into the wordpress family is another promising development and one I can’t wait to hti the ground with. As we know a website is nto just a website anymroe but a platform for conversation & community and even blogging as we know it is set to evolve further along those lines.

I cannot wait for the new Buddy Press plugins are released. This new feature supports the concept of multiple niche social networks across the web. While sites like Ning attempt to cater to this, the reality is that websites will continue to exist as standalone entities. As such, the new Buddy Press plugins will enable users to communicate within any blog that they find interesting.

http://www.socialtimes.com/2007/11/buddy-press-turns-wordpress-into-social-network/

All in all I just can’t wait for a stable version of wordpress 2.5 to hatch from the incubator now. C’mon guys, let us know what’s happening.

What do the rest of you think of the logo?

Grab the badge below or paste the code into your sidebar to let others know you’ll be there and to encourage more to join us!

<a href=”http://wpcapetown.wordpress.com” title=”Wordpress Cape Town Meetup March 26 2008″><img src=”http://www.nomad-one.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/wpmeetup-button.gif” alt=”Wordpress Meetup Cape Town March 26 2008″ border=”0″ /></a>

I have to say thanks to all of you out there who have been keeping in touch and being great support. This buzzy period comes after month of struggle and difficulty and I’ve seen times of major doubt and disillusionment. My sites traffic has seen a huge spike, some nominations for a few awards and some prizes coming my way from others.

It makes me think of a verse from the Quran which goes something like: “Truely, After Difficulty comes ease, After difficulty comes ease.”

The thing is, this is only just the beginning for me. I look forward to building a great network, upping my game in the blogosphere, building a great business and solving some key problems for business and society along the way.

Open Coffee was a huge success today with a great turnout. As usual Henk Kleynhans of Skyrove was there topping us up with free skyrove credits which we are all grateful for. Thanks a ton Henk! I finally chatted with Eric Edelstein briefly. Eric is the original organiser of the Open Coffee Cape Town Meet up.

I also met up with the guys(Kilian & Nico) from Red Button and chatted briefly about their businesses development, cool things coming from their side regarding wireless hotspots. You can become a Red Button affiliate and earn some cash by recommending a venue which needs a hotspot. I think Red button could learn a thing or 2 from Skyrove’s event sponsorship approach.
Callum Macdonald was around doing his regular Scottishly nomadic thing and promoting the wordpress meetup which has shifted to Wednesday 26 March due to the easter weekend.

I had a very interesting Interaction with Frans Kuipers who I met at the first Open Coffee I attended last month. Frans is an open source enthusiast and a Drupal developer. We spoke about the problem Open Source seems to have with getting rapid uptake of it’s programmes and platforms in the general public. From my perspective it has to do with 1. Usability and 2. Communication and Marketing. Some areas programmers & developers don’t always have a tight handle on

I also met Andre from Biz-community and a guy from Joyent who’s name I forget because his business card was a Joyent Logo on a sticker. A few others who I chatted with briefly were Scott Hayes(Encyclomedia), Michelle Matthews(Writer & Publishing Consultant) and Will Gubb(Wired Communications).

Myself & Callum spent a bit of time trying to convince one of the above that wordpress is better for blogging than Joomla, I won’t mention who.

I had to rush off after receiving a call for an urgent proposal, hold thumbs for me, it’s a nice big one. I spent the following few hours in Kauai recovering from the coffee scrabbling down a proposal just before the sun went down.

All in all, another productive day of networking, doing business and sharing of ideas.

This is the start of my nomadic BLOGUMENTARY, a journey through the world of the web, creative thinking, social networking, business strategy and personal self discovery.

On this digital journey I aim to take myself from amateur blogger / professional web designer with little direction, to what I always envisioned myself to be. I aim to become an agent of positive change and innovation, and to find true meaning and purpose to what I do.

How do I plan to do this you may be asking yourself?

I’m still in the process of figuring all the steps out and plotting my course ahead. I know coming out with this self challenge is a brave move, one I could very possibly be very sorry for if I don’t keep up with the challenge, or fail to achieve the goals I set.

Therein lies the secret. I plan to drag you all along on this journey, get your feedback, give you advice and ask for some as well. I might even involve a few of the Guru’s out there to help make this journey an action packed adventure, which we can all benefit from.

I hope to cover everything from the initial idea / vision phase, on to a little bit of a business plan with clear goals. I will be developing a strategy including the steps which I will need to take to achieve certain goals.

What will I be sharing with You

• my Brand building endeavours and the lessons I learn
• selecting & shaping my niche
• the technologies & methodologies I will be using
• the tutorials, tips & advice which shape my decisions
• my favourite resources & influences
• The tools I use to make my tasks easier

Sharing the Experience

I’ll be sharing the troubles I encounter along the way, the feelings of failure if any(I’m sure there will be), the stumbling blocks & challenges faced and the stresses I experience.

Sharing the successes, stats, milestones & profits

Any success achieved along this perilous journey will be shared with all of you. I’ll let you now when I earn my first paycheck, which I hope will be soon, in fact I desperately need it to be soon. I’ll tell you about what this project does to my web stats and when I’ve made a major breakthrough in learning or self development.

What do I want from YOU

the visitors to this site have pretty much kept their identities to themselves for their own specific reasons. I hope this will change.

Involvement. I hope you will share this journey with me. To this point the visitors to this site have pretty much kept their identities to themselves for their own specific reasons. I hope this will change and that you will start to engage with me and get to know me as well as help me to get to know you better.

Feedback. I’d like to know what you think about what I have to say, about the decisions I’ll make and the advice I’ll be giving. I plan to put in place a few incentives if and when I am able to make it worth your while to get involved. I started with a little experiment in the form of the Logo Design Q & A competition which I ran recently.

Inspiration & Advice. We can never achieve much on our own. We achieve things by learning from others and benefiting from others, and then by sharing this with others. I hope we can develop a mutually beneficial relationship where we influence each other and inspire each other to achieve great things. Where there are areas which you could help me I’ll appreciate it and if there’s anything I could do for you I hope to be able to help as well.

So where do we Start?

Well we kind of have started already. I’ve met some great people already and have a few of you subscribe to my RSS feed. I’ve just crossed the 4000 hits mark since starting out blogging more seriously a few short months ago and have a few more RSS subscribers but have no idea who they are.

I’ve just completed negotiations with a few parties to get into my own office space and have just moved in. I’m also in the process of re-designing my website to empower me on this journey.

I’ve gotten started on a few post series and have some great ideas for interesting and value adding content to help you guys out there with your journeys.

What I’d like to know from you guys is this:

Who are you all out there?

What Can I do for you?

Do you have any advice for me in getting started?

• Who are you out there?
• What do you guys do for a living?
• What can I do for you out there?
• What would you like to see on this site?
• What would you like to hear about?
• How can I empower you all to excel in what you do?
• How do we develop a platform or community which can be a springboard for us all to achieve something good?
• Do you have any advice for me in getting started?

Lets start talking and start something meaningful!