All posts by Dawn

newsletter

Announcing The Fast Wonder Newsletter

I’ve decided to start doing a monthly newsletter with announcements, updates, and content related to the topics that I discuss here on this blog: online communities, social media, and more. This is a good way to get my content if you can’t keep up with my RSS feed and want to get a monthly summary.

You can subscribe or read past editions (once I have a past edition) on the newsletter page.

Every email will contain a link to unsubscribe. I know that interests change and many people prefer to receive content via RSS, instead of email, so I will never be offended by people choosing to unsubscribe.

I plan to release these newsletters about once a month starting on Tuesday, March 10. Please feel free to send me feedback or suggestions for what you would like to see in future newsletters.

For the geeks among us, I’ll be using Campaign Monitor to manage my newsletter. So far, the experience has been really positive. The templates took a little time to set up, but I’m not a designer by any means, and I was still able to figure it out and come up with a simple, decent-looking template. The software manages subscribes / unsubscribes, forwarding to a friend, web versions, html / plain text, etc. so I don’t have to deal with the hassles of managing email lists. It’s also ridiculously cheap at $5 plus $0.01 per subscriber for each newsletter.

elsewhere

Blogging Elsewhere

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Here is this week’s summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs:

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily

Shizzow

Social Computing Magazine
These are republished articles originally appearing here on Fast Wonder (with my permission).

If you want a feed of all of my blog posts across multiple sites, you can also subscribe to my über feed.

shared links

Recent Links

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Here are a few interesting things from this week that I wanted to share …

Troublemakers, trolls and a very trying week « Online Community Strategist

FeverBee: A Stranger In A Big City

Shizzow’s Social Location Service Marries ‘Where’ with ‘What’ | Epicenter from Wired.com

Fly away! Be free! Shizzow launches from Portland nest in preparation for SXSW Interactive » Silicon Florist

It’s Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine

You can find my links on Delicious.

shizzow

Shizzow Public Launch

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As the community evangelist for Shizzow, I am really excited to announce the public launch of Shizzow! Ryan, Mark and I have been working our butts off on this application in addition to all of our “real” work (jobs that pay the bills – consulting, in my case). We planned this launch right before SXSW to give people a week or so to play around with it, but I think that people will really be able to see it’s usefulness when a few thousand geeks descend on Austin next week.

In addition to the public launch, we are also opening our API up for public beta testing. We’ve had some developers working on it for the past couple of months, so we even have some alpha applications starting to hit the streets for testing.

I’ve covered the details of the launch over on the Shizzow blog, so please feel free to visit Shizzow to read the rest of the launch details.

Don’t forget that we will be talking about Shizzow and SXSW on Friday at Beer and Blog and again on Strange Love Live!

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts:

eBook

Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy (an eBook)

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Many of you have heard me mention the elusive eBook that I’ve been working on for many, many months. Well, I finally kicked it into high gear this week to finish it!

Companies and CommunitiesCompanies and Communities is focused on helping your company get real business value out of participating in online communities and social media. This 80 page eBook contains practical advice and suggestions for how companies can engage with online communities and social media sites. It is available as a PDF download for $19.99.

The eBook includes:

  • Guiding Principles
  • Blogs and Blogging
  • Twitter
  • Social Networks (Facebook and MySpace)
  • Custom Corporate Communities
  • Community Management
  • and more

If you want a glimpse before you purchase, you can download an eighteen page excerpt, which contains the full table of contents and a few select sections from the 80 page eBook.

shizzow

Strange Love Live and Shizzow

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The entire Shizzow team, including yours truly, will be lounging on the Strange Love Live couch for the podcast this Friday evening (March 6th) around 10pm. We will be talking about some new happenings on Shizzow with a focus on our plans for attending SXSW and how you can use Shizzow to find the best parties and sessions as well as getting together for meals with friends. We’ll also be giving some general tips for attending SXSW for any newbies in the audience.

I encourage you to tune into the live video stream and chat room at 10pm on Friday, but don’t worry, you can download the audio podcast later if you miss the live version.

We’ll also be at Beer and Blog prior to the Strange Love Live appearance for more talk about SXSW.

sxsw

Win a SXSW Badge Upgrade at the PDX Pre-SXSW Party

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Good news for those of you coming to the PDX Pre-SXSW Party Part Two: The Unofficial Version!

I talked to Hugh Forrest at sxsw, and he has offered a free upgrade from an Interactive badge to a Gold badge for one lucky winner! Basically, this means that you get to attend the film tracks and screenings in addition to the interactive program.

Here’s how you can win:

  • You must have already purchased a sxsw interactive badge.
  • You must attend the PDX Pre-SXSW Party Part Two: The Unofficial Version this Friday (details below).
  • You must put your business card or piece of paper into the hat (or bucket or whatever container I can find).
  • You must be there when we draw the random name at 6pm.
  • There can be only one (winner).
  • I’ll put the winner in touch with Hugh Forrest to receive the upgrade.

If you missed my earlier post about the party, here’s what you need to know:

Since this is a community organized event, you’ll be buying your own drinks, but it will be just as fun! We’ll be pairing up with Portland Beer and Blog for this event, and it will be a great opportunity to chat with others about sxsw. We can find out who else is going and talk about ways to stay in touch at the event. If you are new to sxsw, you can get some tips from the experienced attendees.

Quite a few of us are planning to use Shizzow to keep in touch at the event to find the best sessions and the best parties. We even have a few things specific to sxsw that we plan to roll out prior to the event. If you want an invite to Shizzow, you can ping the community evangelist for Shizzow (me) by emailing me at the email address right there in the sidebar of this blog.

The Details:
Friday March 6, 2009 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub
928 SE 9th Ave, Portland, Oregon 97214
RSVP on Upcoming

elsewhere

Blogging Elsewhere

Here is this week’s summary of links to my posts appearing on other blogs:

GigaOM’s WebWorkerDaily

Shizzow

Business Leader NW

If you want a feed of all of my blog posts across multiple sites, you can also subscribe to my über feed.

General, shared links

Recent Links

Here are a few interesting things from this week that I wanted to share …

Future of White Boys’ Clubs Redux #fowaspeak | FactoryCity

Conference and hotel registration is now open! – Open Source Bridge

Knowing the Economic Environment of Your Business and Customers at Business of Business – byBarrett

JumpBox Official Blog » Introducing SnapLogic for Data Integration

Baron Landscape’s Broken Hours » Online Community Management Roundtable at the BLNW ‘09 Blog Pavilion, with Dawn Foster and Marshall Kirkpatrick

RSS: Boost Your RSS Efficiency

You can find my links on Delicious.

FastWonderPodcast

Online Community Podcast: Dawn Foster, Marshall Kirkpatrick and Alex Williams

If you missed the discussion that Marshall Kirkpatrick, Alex H. Williams, and I had in the Blogger Pavilion at the Business Leader NW conference yesterday, you can still listen to the conversation thanks to Luke Lefner of Broken Hours. You can visit his blog post about the discussion to learn more.

Podcast: Download

Related Fast Wonder Blog posts: