This news is from the hasn’t this already happened before department?  Also, from the I can’t believe it took this long department. Via the Washington Post.

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang will step down, the company announced last night, as the once-highflying Internet portal struggles to steady itself in the turbulent environment for Web media.

Yahoo! should be one of the coolest brands on the block.  With Flickr and del.icio.us, Yahoo really should be #2 — and it could be #1 if it would stop with the self-loathing — and it is not. Why?  Because Yahoo isn’t nearly shameless enough to survive in the 2008 Internet.  It is no longer the world of wizened Unix gurus who would easily define what is and isn’t couth on the Internet. Yahoo! is stuck in the days when it was uncool to splash your own brand on the brands you own (so is AOL); Yahoo! is stuck in the Internet of the 90s, an Internet wherein being good enough was good enough.

If Yahoo! was trying not to become gauche or become an ugly American in the Europe of the Internet, then it was successful! Yahoo! has become irrelevant. At least people hate Microsoft & AOL. Hell, I have nothing at all to say about Yahoo! except I adore del.icio.us and Flickr.  How could the owner of two of the Internet’s coolest properties never be able to harnest the gravity of these two major celestial bodies and slingshot themselves into #1?

Maybe there is too much modesty, not enough braggadocio, in the halls of Yahoo!  Maybe if you look closely, Yahoo! is the company that does no harm and does no evil.  Maybe the company who’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” is actually pretty shameless and far from modest. Maybe on the modern Internet (and in modern business) it is more important to say you’re doing good, being good, and being modest than it is to actually be modest.

Yahoo!, Yahoo!, Yahoo! please try your darnedest to spend more time sharing yourself with the world and less time being the best of the good citizens.  Google is absolutely shameless when it comes to all the good work they’re doing.  They are not keeping their religion to themselves, they’re not praying quietly to themselves in a bare cell, away from prying eyes!  Google is on the soapbox!  Google is bragging!  Google is sharing the Holy Spirit with the world!

If you keep on slipping those alms into the alms box of Internet Good Works by dark of night you will actually become irrelevant.  Nobody is against you but nobody is for you, either. Nobody cares.

What’s worse, I don’t think enough people even really think much about Flickr and del.icio.us being Yahoo! properties.

Yes, you make folks become Yahoo! members, but that’s not enough. In DC and Virginia, everyone has a Safeway card but nobody like to shop at Safeway — it’s only because Safeway makes it super-easy to become a member.  There is no brand loyalty, there is no passion behind the brand (OK, OK, Safeway Select pasta sauce is awesome — it is like Safeway’s Flickr), even if everyone has a Safeway scan card on their key ring.

Anyway, Yahoo!, I am so sorry for the rant.  Oh, also, why is it that all of my geeky friends in the Zope and Python world all want to work for Google and not for Yahoo!?  How come all of my PHP and MySQL friends ache to work for Google and not for Yahoo!  How pissed you must be to suffer that Google drank your milkshake.  They took you toys!  You, Yahoo!, where supposed to be that success story!  I mean, you were the first search engine, after all!  You were the first directory, right?

Well, it is time to get off your pity pot, kick Jerry to the curb, and again become the Yahoo! I have known you since 1994 and have loved you (although I have not used your email address since Gmail came out, sorry) and I really want you to get you some smarts.  Give me a call at +1 (202) 352-5051 or +49 (0)151 52579077 — I would be more than happy to try to help you turn this ship around!

Viel Glück

Career
After Fey graduated from drama school at the University of Virginia in 1992, she moved to Chicago, getting a day job at a residential YMCA to take night classes at The Second City. She made what she later described as an “amateurish” attempt at stand-up comedy, and learned that the key to improvisation was to “focus entirely on your partner. You take what they’re giving you and use it to build a scene.”

By 1994 she was invited to join the cast of The Second City, where she performed in the Jeff Award-winning revue Paradigm Lost. She is also a veteran of The ImprovOlympic.

Saturday Night Live

With then-head writer Adam McKay’s help, Fey became a writer for NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1997. By 1999, Fey was SNL’s first female head writer, a milestone she downplays by pointing out that the show has had few head writers.

As co-head writer of SNL’s 25th anniversary special, Fey won a 2001 Writers Guild of America Award; she and the writing staff also won a 2002 Emmy Award for their work on the show.

In September 2005, she went on maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond. Her Weekend Update role was covered by Horatio Sanz for several weeks before her return to the show on October 22, 2005, noting:

“I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement.”
Fey confirmed during a July 2006 Tonight Show appearance that she would not be returning to SNL for its 2006-7 season.

SNL sketches
Some recurring sketches written by Fey include:

Parodies of Live with Regis and Kelly and The View
The Girl with No Gaydar, cowritten by Rachel Dratch
Boston Teens, cowritten by Dratch

She is also credited with:

Colonel Angus, portrayed by Christopher Walken in a sketch filled with word play on the colonel’s name
Mom Jeans commercial
“Talkin ‘Bout ‘Ginas” (Parody of The Vagina Monologues)

Weekend Update
In 2000, Fey and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL’s Weekend Update, a pairing that ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. (Fey also was co-writer of the Weekend Update segment). Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update.

Celebrity impressions
Barbara Pierce Bush
Bea Arthur
Janice Dickinson
Kathleen Willey
Mary Ann Mobley
Paris Hilton
Paula Zahn
Vanna White

30 Rock
Fey developed a situation comedy, 30 Rock, for NBC’s fall 2006 schedule.. The show is produced by NBC and Broadway Video, with Lorne Michaels and two former producers of The Tracy Morgan Show, David Miner, who is also her manager at 3 Arts, and Joann Alfano. She also writes and stars in the sitcom, said to be based on her experiences at SNL. The show’s title is a reference to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where SNL is produced.

Similarities between 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip led to speculation that only one of the two shows would be picked up. Alec Baldwin, who played the network executive in the 30 Rock pilot, said “I’d be stunned if NBC picked up both shows. And ours has the tougher task, as a comedy, because if it’s not funny, that’s it.” Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, was supportive of Fey, describing it as a “high-class problem”:

I just can’t imagine the audience would look at both shows, choose one and cancel the other out. In some ways, why is it any different than when there have been three or four cop shows on any schedule, or Scrubs and ER, which are totally very different?

Evidence of the overlapping subject matter between the shows (as well as the conflict between them) is the fact that Aaron Sorkin, the creator of Studio 60, asked Lorne Michaels to allow him to observe SNL for a week, a request Michaels denied.

It’s just bad luck for me that in my first attempt at prime time I’m going up against the most powerful writer on television. I was joking that this would be the best pilot ever aired on Trio. And then Trio got cancelled.

In spite of the overlap in subject matter, it was announced on May 15, 2006, that NBC had picked up both shows.

The show debuted to mostly positive reviews, however ratings its original timeslot on Wednesdays at 8 PM were weak. Rather than cancel the show, NBC moved the show into a revamped Thursday Must See TV comedy lineup at the end of November sweeps. After its first episode in its new Thursday 9:30 PM timeslot on November 30, 2006, the network picked up the show for the entire season

Other work
She partnered with fellow cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and the Chicago Improv Festival. Lorne Michaels saw her at one of the performances, which led to her becoming the co-anchor of SNL’s Weekend Update.

She also appeared in Martin & Orloff, a surreal comedy which premiered at Austin’s SXSW.

Fey wrote the script and co-starred in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey’s high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (ISBN 0-609-60945-9) by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other present and past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.

As of April 2006, Fey is working on a script for a Paramount Pictures film by the name of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill that is said to be based loosely on the true story of a Hasidic rock musician.

Personal life
Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia to a Greek American mother and a father of German and Scottish descent. Her brother, Peter, remembers a drawing she did when she was about seven: it showed people holding hands, walking down the street with wedges of Swiss cheese. The caption read, “What a friend we have in cheeses!”

Fey was exposed to comedy early, saying:

“I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones, though, which my dad hated because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age.”

Her dream to entertain first was at Philadelphia Phillies baseball games, as she wanted to become a ball girl.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School; by middle school she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent study project on the subject in eighth grade. She graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1988.

Tina Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met before their jobs on SNL and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001 . They have a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond who was born on September 10, 2005.

I am soon to be the proud owner of a male four-horned chameleon (Chameleo quadracornis) that I ordered today along with a deluxe chameleon care package from the gang at Reptile Depot. They call it a “quad.” His name is Spike since he will develop four horns on his head.

Reptile Depot is sending the ficus et al first and then when I am all set up with my aluminum screen cage, moss, island hood, 5.0 UVB bulb, basking light, automatic spray bottle, miner-all, ceramic dome, dripper, thermometer and live ficus tree, they will send Spike along to my open arms.

When a man buys an exotic lizard it means that he really and truly is not looking for a girlfriend. I mentioned that to the guy at Reptile Depot and he said, “yeah, man, chicks don’t dig chameleons.” It could have been worse, I could have ordered a python.

Well, you know what they say, it is a slippery slope when it comes to owning reptiles. To be honest, the creepiest thing will be that I will need to keep crickets and other nasty insects in order to feed Spike.

The bugs make it creepy. Creepier.

So, I have been trying to update my resume and keep it up-to-date. Let me know if there are any embarrassing errors, oversights, or mistakes.

MISSION

My passion is to use my experience and expertise in online community outreach and advocacy to promote and protect client online brands using my years of blogging, SEO, PR, marketing, and CGM professional experience.

PROFILE

I am an expert in online outreach, advocacy and marketing with over 10 years of online experience. My experience focuses on web strategy, including SEO strategy, technology strategy, and online marketing strategy. My skills include:

- Analyst: business intelligence, analysis and synthesis, futurist, case studies, industry predictions
- Blogger: online outreach, advocacy, conversation, and messaging, blogger relations
- Technologist: expertise in community technologies, blogs, wikis, message boards
- Salesman: entrepreneurial nature with a very strong business network and personal relationships
- Marketer: Over three years of online buzz marketing, online buzz marketing, and online word-of-mouth marketing
- Producer: experience in designing and developing hardware and software solutions
- Strategist: design, develop, and implement web strategies and marketing plans to reach online consumers and
- Promoter: online brand promotion, virals, organic SEO (search engine optimization), and paid advertising (SEM)
- Protector: online brand protection, defensive SEO, online crisis response, and online brand management
- Teacher: Blogging instructor, guest lecturer, and online teacher since 1996

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Independent Web Strategies Consultant — 8/2006-Present
- On-site training, briefing, and client pitching as online buzz marketing and SEO expert
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, focusing on both brand promotion and protection in search
- Online Buzz Marketing, Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing, and Online Viral Marketing expert
- Consulting and guiding PR and Marketing firms in their creation of Online Marketing practices
- Web Strategy document commissioned by Diversion Media for Travelistic launch
- Web Strategy document commissioned by Friendster
- Word of Mouth campaign commissioned by HostNuke for EggDisk file storage service
- Online buzz marketing proposal commissioned by Red Bricks Media for their client use

Senior RSS Consultant, Hinchcliffe & Company — 1/2007-Present
- RSS strategy, development, and deployment for fortune 500 financial company
- Web widget and gadget research, development and deployment for Google Personalized Homepage
- Case studies of Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google, Dodgeball, Helio, Revver, Vox, You Tube, digg, Second Life

Consultant, Internet Analyst, Comteg — 12/2006-Present
- Research and analysis of web2.0 business and technology landscape
- Business intelligence and analysis of web2.0 business strategies
- Case studies of Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google, Dodgeball, Helio, Revver, Vox, You Tube, digg, Second Life
- Analysis and synthesis of Google’s overall and future strategy
- web2.0 and the long tail analysis and case studies

Consultant, Blog Production and Strategy, BoldMouth — 8/2006-11/2006
- Blog strategy and planning for high-traffic, high-profile blog relaunch
- Customized Moveable Type installation on CentOS dedicated server
- Transition from TypePad to newest Movable Type 3.31 install
- Monetization of blog, including BlogAds and Google AdSense placement
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of blog

Senior Account Supervisor, Online Advocacy, Edelman — 5/2006-8/2006
- Client contact for Wal-Mart’s innovative blog outreach campaign, including prospecting and messaging
- Spearheaded Working Families for Wal-Mart blog, newsletter, and activation list
- Developed online word of mouth outreach for Taylor Hicks webcast from Wal-Mart shareholder’s meeting
- Co-produced Exposing the Paid Critics blog for Working Families for Wal-Mart
- Co-produced successful online advocacy proposals to GE, Nissan, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and Wal-Mart Realty
- Designed and developed opt-in membership Email and messaging campaigns

Technology Strategist, New Media Strategies, Inc. — 9/2003-5/2006
- Developed online word-of-mouth marketing strategy and tactics used on Usenet, message boards, social networks, and blogs
- Developed online advocacy and outreach campaigns for clients’ products, services, and message
- Produced internal and client protective and promotional SEO campaigns and search strategy to highlight positive online conversation and suppress negative conversation on popular search engines
- Developed in-house expertise on blogging, new media, podcasting, technology, citizen journalism, and CGM, including training, teaching, and the development of blogging and online marketing strategy
- Developed, deployed, and launched client and internal corporate blogs, marketing blogs, vertical industry blogs, PR blogs, promotional blogs, public affairs blogs, social networks, and podcasts, including Club TomTom, New Media Sense, Extreme Mortman, and others.
- Managed online advertising campaigns using Yahoo and Google contextual ads
- Client service work included Sci-Fi Channel (Mad Mad House, Tripping the Rift, Battlestar Galactica), Buena Vista (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA (UXO, Sim-City Online), RCA (American Idol CD), and NBC (Revelations), etc . . .

Director of Sales, eResources, LLC — 9/2002-9/2003
- Managed sales force and new business for the ITonDemand™ and the eResources Content Management System products

Senior Web Developer, National Legal Aid & Defender Association — 2/2002 – 9/2002
- Developed Web applications and content management system (CMS) developer using Zope, Python, and MySQL

Managing Director, beehive North America — 7/2000-2/2002
- President, co-owner, and co-founder of beehive North America, the North American office of Berlin-based beehive elektronische medien GmbH
- Sold and marketed software Zope application development training and services
- Clients included College of Exploration, The Nature Conservancy, and Space Telescope Science, and Pfizer Global Research and Development (PGRD)

Online Community Builder, Caucus Systems, Inc. — 7/1999-6/2000
- Online community, online conference, and online event facilitator and host
- Linux/Unix system administrator (LAMP SA)

Senior Information Engineer, FCBS — 12/1997-7/1999
- On-site consultant for US Department of Treasury Chief Information Office (CIO)
- Core duties included HTML, scripting (Perl, SSI), programming, graphic design, management, development, and deployment of the CIO Intranet and public website

Teacher, Education for the Arts (EFA), KRESA — 11/1996-6/1998
- High school teacher of the first fully accredited virtual online high school creative writing course for Kalamazoo, MI, Public Schools arts magnet program

Software Engineer, Proxicom, Inc. (Proxima in 1996) — 1/1996-8/1996
- Internet web application developer for the seminal web application company
Technical and Customer Support, Picture Network International (PNI) — 7/1993-8/1995
- Help desk for Industry’s second dial-up online stock photo agency
- Start-up funded and supported by SRA and Tribune Media Company

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

Blogging Instructor, The Writer’s Center — 2/2006-Present

Blogger, Because the Medium is the Message — 1999-Present

Stock Photographer, Pacific Stock — 1990-Present

Stock Photographer, Corbis — 1990-2004

Guest Lecturer on Public Affairs Blogging, SIPA, Columbia University — 10/15/1005

Emergent Technologies Advisor, Communications Advisory Board, Urban Institute

Participant Member, Moderator and Speaker, Renaissance Weekends, Renaissance Institute

Partner of Counsel, Haft, Harrison & Wolfson, Inc.

Associate, Howard Rheingold Associates

Founder and Organizer, DC Zope Python User Group (ZPUG)

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

The George Washington University, Washington, DC
- BA, American Literature, Minor Creative Writing, 1993

University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, HI
- Intensive course work, French, 1992

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
- Junior year abroad, English and American Studies (EAS), 1990-1991

I finished updating my resume this morning. Thanks to Janna, Di, Stephanie, Tiff, and Mark for all of your help.

MISSION
My passion is to use my experience and expertise in online community outreach and advocacy to promote and protect client online brands using my years of blogging, SEO, PR, marketing, and CGM professional experience.

PROFILE
I am an expert in online outreach, advocacy and marketing with over 23 years of online experience. My experience focuses on web strategy, including SEO strategy, technology strategy, and online marketing strategy. My skills include:
- Blogger: online outreach, advocacy, conversation, and messaging, blogger relations
- Technologist: expertise in community technologies, blogs, wikis, message boards
- Producer: experience in designing and developing hardware and software solutions
- Strategist: design, develop, and implement strategies to reach online consumers
- Promoter: online brand promotion, virals, organic SEO (search engine optimization), and paid advertising
- Protector: online brand protection, defensive SEO, online crisis response
- Teacher: Blogging instructor, guest lecturer, and online teacher since 1996

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Consultant, Blog Production and Strategy, BoldMouth — 8/2006-12/2006 http://www.blogmouth.com
- Blog strategy and planning for high-traffic, high-profile blog relaunch
- Customized Moveable Type installation on CentOS dedicated server
- Transition from TypePad to newest Movable Type 3.31 install
- Monetization of blog, including BlogAds and Google AdSense placement
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of blog

Instructor, The Writer’s Center — 2/2006-Present — http://www.writer.org
- Instructional courses on blogging, from introduction to advanced techniques
- Marketing, promotional, and SEO strategies for writers and business people
- www.appliedblogging.org developed to support blogging students

Blogger and Blogging Consultant, Freelance — 1999-Present http://www.chrisabraham.com
- Active blogger since 1999

Stock Photographer, Pacific Stock — 1990-Present http://www.pacificstock.com
- Contract stock photographer

Senior Account Supervisor, Interactive, Online Advocacy, Edelman — 5/2006-8/2006 http://www.edelman.com
- Direct client contact for Wal-Mart’s innovative blog outreach campaign, including prospecting and messaging
- Spearheaded Working Families for Wal-Mart blog, newsletter, and activation list
- Developed online word of mouth outreach for Taylor Hicks webcast from Wal-Mart shareholder’s meeting
- Co-produced “Exposing the Paid Critics” website for Working Families for Wal-Mart
- Co-produced successful online advocacy proposals to GE, Nissan, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute, and Wal-Mart Realty
- Designed and developed opt-in membership Email and messaging campaigns

Technology Strategist, New Media Strategies, Inc. — 9/2003-5/2006 http://www.newmediastrategies.net
- Developed online word-of-mouth marketing strategy and tactics used on Usenet, message boards, social networks, and blogs
- Developed online advocacy and outreach campaigns for clients’ products, services, and message
- Produced internal and client protective and promotional SEO campaigns and search strategy to highlight positive online conversation and supress negative conversation on popular search engines
- Developed in-house expertise on blogging, new media, podcasting, technology, citizen journalism, and CGM, including training, teaching, and the development of blogging and online marketing strategy
- Developed, deployed, and launched client and internal corporate blogs, marketing blogs, vertical industry blogs, PR blogs, promotional blogs, public affairs blogs, social networks, and podcasts
- Managed online advertising campaigns using Yahoo and Google contextual ads

Radio Panelist, “Do You Trust the Media,” BBC World Have Your Say — 5/3/2006 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2006/05/do_you_trust_the_media_your_co.html
- Radio expert on online media, citizen journalism and citizen generated media (CGM)
- Broadcast worldwide and in the US on NPR

Guest Lecturer, SIPA, Columbia University — 10/15/1005 http://sipa.columbia.edu/
- Lectured on blogging and viral marketing strategies for public affairs
- School of International and Public Affairs

Professional Stock Photographer, Corbis — 1990-2004 http://www.corbis.com
- Contract stock photographer

Director of Sales, eResources, LLC — 9/2002-9/2003 http://www.eresources.com
- Managed sales force and new business for the ITonDemand™ and the eResources Content Management System products

Senior Web Developer, National Legal Aid & Defender Association — 2/2002 – 9/2002 http://www.nlada.org
- Developed Web applications and content management system (CMS) developer using Zope, Python, and MySQL

Managing Director, beehive North America — 7/2000 – 2/2002
- President, co-owner, and co-founder of beehive North America, the North American office of Berlin-based beehive elektronische medien GmbH
- Sold and marketed software Zope application development training and services
- Clients included College of Exploration, The Nature Conservancy, and Space Telescope Science, and Pfizer Global Research and Development (PGRD)

Online Community Builder, Caucus Systems, Inc. — 7/1999 – 6/2000 http://www.caucus.com
- Online community, online conference, and online event facilitator and host
- Linux/Unix system administrator (LAMP SA)

Senior Information Engineer, FCBS — 12/1997 – 7/1999 http://www.fcbs.com
- On-site consultant for US Department of Treasury Chief Information Office (CIO)
- Core duties included HTML, scripting (Perl, SSI), programming, graphic design, management, development, and deployment of the CIO Intranet and public website

Teacher, Education for the Arts (EFA), KRESA — 8/1996-6/1998 http://www.kresa.org/
- High school teacher of the first fully accredited virtual online high school creative writing course for Kalamazoo, MI, Public Schools arts magnet program
Software Engineer, Proxicom, Inc. (Proxima in 1996) — 1/1996-8/1996
- Internet web application developer for the seminal web application company
Technical and Customer Support, Picture Network International (PNI) — 7/1993-8/1995
- Help desk for Industry’s second dial-up online stock photo agency
- Start-up funded and supported by SRA and Tribune Media Company

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
Emergent Technologies Advisor, Communications Advisory Board, Urban Institute. http://www.urban.org

Participant Member, Moderator and Speaker, Renaissance Weekends, Renaissance Institute http://www.renaissanceweekend.org

Partner of Counsel, Haft, Harrison & Wolfson, Inc.

Associate, Howard Rheingold Associates http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/team.html

Founder and Organizer, DC Zope Python User Group (ZPUG) http://www.zpug.org

EDUCATION AND TRAINING
The George Washington University, Washington, DC http://www.gwu.edu
- BA, American Literature, Minor Creative Writing, 1993

University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus, Honolulu, HI http://www.hawaii.edu
- Intensive course work, French, 1992

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK http://www.uea.ac.uk
- Junior year abroad, English and American Studies (EAS), 1990-1991

I hope that the following article is a good first step towards deciding if blogging is the best investment of your time, energy, resources, and message.

I have been participating in online virtual communities since I bought my first 300 baud modem back in 1983 and logged into my first Honolulu BBS. In the last 22-years, I have been a member of many different virtual communities, including discussion forums, USENET newsgroups, Wikis, and of course blogs. There are some important things to consider before you decide to use blogging — or any sort of online communication — as a way to convey your company’s brand and message.

Effective PR Blogging

How to develop an effective public relations (PR) blog strategy for your company or organization.

For-profit companies and the modern incarnation of the traditional University have a lot in common. Universities have been using viral, buzz, and word-of-mouth marketing for years: their students, their professors, and especially their alumni networks. It is little wonder why MIT and Yale offer future Presidents lifetime free email addresses in the form of alum.mit.edu, and aya.yale.edu — because when smart people share valuable information, people want to know where that person went and where that person works.

It is very likely that your business can benefit in a similar fashion by setting the best and brightest in your company free to create goodwill for your firm and spread your name in the community. If properly utilized, these ambassadors can have a significant impact on the image and standing of your company, so they should be carefully chosen, loyal, invested team players. At present, the best tool for this job is the weblog, better known as “blogs”. In the article below, I will try to give an overview of the use and impact of blogs, and to provide a history and contextualization of blogs, so you can better decide if and how you would like to implement this powerful tool.

Years ago, I served as Managing Director of beehive North America, a software company that developed web applications using a Python-based programming platform called Zope. In order to see where interest lay, I started the Zope Python User Group (ZPUG) and a personal blog that featured my day-to-day while also being the only place where photos, information, and meeting minutes for the User Group could be found. I quickly realized that it is possible to shamelessly promote yourself, your wares, your company, and your services if you are perceived as giving way more than you get.

In my case, I used my personal blog to cover monthly ZPUG meetings, how my travels to Germany to visit my parent company went, and how cool it was to train Zope to the gang at Pfizer, Johns Hopkins, and the Nature Conservancy. I talked about working on new e-Books and developing new components for our Enterprise-level content management suite of applications that we were developing for major Berlin banks.

Since it wasn’t a corporate blog proper and served as my personal home page, I could easily discuss everything that was happening to me, including recipes, pet stories, travel experiences, and lots and lots of work. Since I spent over half my waking hours working, I spent a lot of time blogging about beehive NA, its parent company beehive GmbH, ZPUG, and Zope and Python in general. And since the software is Open Source and constantly evolving and maturing, my blog became a valuable resource to find more Zope answers, Zope help, Zope information, Zope training, and Zope developers. And that trainer and that developer would usually be beehive NA or beehive GmbH.

Like I said before, Universities have been doing this kind of viral and buzz marketing for centuries. And since Universities openly and readily share their scholarship, no matter how shameless the pomp of their titles, they and their hallowed Academies most certainly offer back much more than they are perceived as taking. And yet they are not paupers. Universities control endowments in the billions of dollars and command princely sums for the privilege of study. This is a shrewd business in which prestige, altruism, collaboration, brain trust, and purity of thought result in a self-promotional carte blanche that only finds its equal in organized religion. There is nothing even close in the commercial world.

Most of the early tech companies and early adopters of the Internet circa 1992 were former academics. The first thing these academics did when they moved from the Ivory Tower to a suite of offices was to get back into the USENET newsgroups they frequented during their research days. In truth the only notable difference in their discourse was in the signature file at the end of every posting. Instead of an .EDU address, the posters transitioned their emails to .COM. These were the pre-SPAM days when it was okay to have your plain text email address in a public posting. Everybody had their real email in their revealing signature at the bottom of every posting. This signature said a lot about you. It lent legitimacy to your words and allowed you to be the expert. If your media.mit.edu email address worked, then you were in fact who you said you were.

There isn’t a better form of word of mouth marketing than having the name of your company associated with brilliance. Universities have known this for years and it has become institutionalized in the axiom, publish or perish. Whether a professional journal, a conference, academic paper, the essay, or in postings on USENET, the reputation of an academic and the academy can hinge on the prestige associated with good PR. And in the academic environment, content is king.

USENET used to be exclusive and it wasn’t until well into the 90s when gateways opened up to AOL and other ISPs to USENET, followed closely by spammer, spiders, and bots. Forced into exile by bozos, baiters, flamers, and newbies, USENET became Balkanized. A brain drain into more exclusive communities ensued. One of the earliest homes for the alpha male techie was Slashdot, which launched in 1997 and is a prototype for the modern blog with Dave Winer’s Scripting News being one of the earliest. Both of these sites were highly technical with strong academic influences.

Until 1999, one might find some important vestige of USENET in a personal web site or in a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) but these were publications and not open for debate and collaboration in the same culture of open sharing found in the Newsgroups. In the late 90s, web logging (blogging) became a viable option for savvy users and early adopters. Blogs allowed easy daily postings and associated threaded discussions and XML-based Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

Blogging articles – whether personal, technical, or professional – with the ability to accept reader comments and be able to track visitors has become a major force in the media in the last few years, arguably influencing the 2004 U.S. Presidential election. Not only were people interesting in learning what other people were thinking real time, but people were eager to talk back and get involved in dynamic debates over issues as they happened.

RSS has become very simple and widely adopted in recent years. The reading of online content via RSS client software allows online readers to dispense with their Favorites and Bookmarks and read online news, journalism, journaling, papers, search engines, and magazines in the same way we now read email.

Most consumers ignore corporate sites as sales pitch and propaganda. Not so if you allow your employees to speak for you. Talk not only about the cool new project and hot new services, but everything else. If you hire smart, if you trust your employees, if you walk the talk, then there is nothing to worry about. And people really enjoy listening to employees discuss their day-to-day. Consumers want to know your company’s eye color and they only way they’ll find out is by getting to your you through your employees.

It is similar to visiting campus before applying to college. You want to stop a couple students (or talk to a couple alumni) and ask them about their experience. People love gossip and people adore getting the inside scoop because everybody likes dirty laundry and everybody loves being let in on a secret. What this comes down to is that people demand to be entertained and nothing gives back more than feeling like an insider.

If I were to recommend blog-building to a .COM enterprise, it would have to be at this level: invite your brightest to blog just outside the umbrella of the company with your blessing. There are some important ground rules: the employee needs to feel comfortable and not micromanaged otherwise the blog will not be perceived as honest. People can tell when their being duped; additionally, it is essential that there is trust there on both sides; finally, it is important to find the employee who really wants to do this, otherwise the blog will fall to disrepair.

It takes such a leap of faith to convince the corporate lawyers to loosen their grip on blogging employees. And, as the number of bloggers who get canned by their employer for blogging, increases, people are going to become more covert about it. They go underground. They are blogging already anyway. Why not allow them to blog fully, blog freely, and share with the rest of the world the proud fact they spend half of all their waking hours working for you, your company, and fulfilling your vision?

©2004 Christopher James Abraham

OBJECTIVE – To offer IT, e-Commerce, Content Management and Internet solutions to practices, businesses, organizations, foundations, and the government.

RÉSUMÉ for CHRIS ABRAHAM

PO Box 15163 Washington, DC 20003-0163, US, +1 202-352-5051 chris@zdev.com

OBJECTIVE
To offer IT, e-Commerce, Content Management and Internet solutions to practices, businesses, organizations, foundations, and the government.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Web Developer, National Legal Aid & Defender Association 3/02 – 10/02
Web applications and content management system (CMS) developer. Sole developer of front- and back-end using Zope, Python, and MySQL. NLADA offers its members and community a portal resource; site is designed to be managed, edited, and contributed to by laymen and casual users.

Trainer, e-Yrless, Inc / IP Security, Inc. 9/01 – 3/02
Trainer for Secret Agent 5 encryption program. Trained the IT team of the Organization of American States.

Managing Director & Zope Trainer, beehive North America 4/01 – 2/02
President and part owner of beehive North America, the North American office of beehive elektronische medien GmbH. Developed, organized, and taught courses on Zope, including courses on DTML and ZClass. Trainer and Corporate Trainer for Zope, with courses on DTML and Zclass. Sold and marketed application development training and services for German development teams. Clients include College of Exploration, The Nature Conservancy, and Space Telescope Science, and Pfizer Global Research and Development (PGRD).

Freelance Internet, Web and Technology Consultant 7/00 – 4/01
Client list includes: Emergo (Internet2 project), HHW, Inc., Proprietary Media, Rheingold Associates, CubaGo.com, David Michael, The Meta Network, Primedia, AAUAP, and Shadow Conventions 2000, Democracy over Dollars, Common Cause, Agapi Stassinopoulos, Kiwi White, and Saint James’ Episcopal Church.

Project/Content Manager, Caucus Systems, Inc. 7/99 – 6/00
Employee of the Technical Team of Caucus Systems, Inc. Develop Events and Projects for Caucus using the Caucus conferencing application as installed on Red Hat Linux and Solaris servers. Virtual Events were developed for external and internal clients.

Senior Information Engineer, US Department of Treasury CIO 12/97 – 7/99
Contractor to the Treasury Department through FC Business Systems. Management for both the Public Internet and the Treasury Intranet. Research, Development, and Redesign of the CIO’s intranet.

Creative Writing Instructor, Online Creative Writing Course 1996 – 1997
Taught first accredited online public High School course for Kalamazoo public school online, Education for the Arts (EFA).

Freelance Technology & Integration Consultant 1997
Systems Integration, LAN/WAN Management & Technical Support in association with HireKnowledge, MetaSystems Design Group, Urban Design Group, Education for the Arts: Creative Writers on the Net, In Touch Designs, Inc., National Audubon Society, and others. Focused on Web Development, Macintosh systems integration and LAN/WAN support.

Software Engineer, Proxicom, Inc 1996
Wrote code and assisted development for commercial websites including United Press Syndicate’s News of the Weird Page, Amtrak’s Home Page, Owens-Corning Home Page, and PAWS’ Garfield Home Page.

Technical & Customer Support for Picture Network International 1993-1995
PNI, Inc., is now Publishers Depot, Inc. Responsibilities included support for Macintosh as well as light Unix-based Sun SPARC network administration, maintenance of a bank of dial-in modems, as well as working as assistant manager to the Fair Lake image center.

SKILLS

Consulting Services:
New and emergent technologies; content management systems (CMS): design, selection, architecture, development, and training; Webmail technologies; Document management and document handling; wireless technologies (wi-fi, cellular, digital, GSM, etc); open source solutions (as a server, web, file, printing, backup, and desktop solution); virtual community and collaborative working (travel solutions, project management solutions, creative solutions for working together); internet publishing, promotion, advertising, and marketing; white paper and technology and internet technical writer, speaker, and training with a focus on translating Geek.

Web Development:
Expertise in Content Management Solutions (CMS). CMF, Plone, PostNuke, PHP-Nuke, PHProjekt, PHPGroupWare, phpBB, phpWebsite, Greymatter, and Movable Type, etc. Advanced experience with production use of Slashcode, Nuke code, CMF/Plone, and bulletin board systems (bbs). PHP, ZOPE, APACHE, FTP, SMTP, Sendmail, Cyrus, POP3, IMAP, Cron, Pico, Pine, PGP (and Gnu), ssh, ksh, bash, rsync, wget, scp, cvs, DNS/Bind, Lynx, MySQL, PHP and Zope-based

Internet Standards and Protocols:
DHTML: HTML, CSS, JavaScript,; XHTML, XML, HTTP, CGI, Perl, Python, Zope Page Templates (ZPT), RSS,

Client-Side:
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Allaire Homesite, BBEdit, HTML Tidy, Photoshop, vi, vim, mutt, TextPad, emacs, SimpleText, NotePad, pico, Front Page, KPT, ULEAD PhotoImpact, Fireworks, Secret Agent 5

Client & Server Systems:
Redhat Linux 5.2-7.3, FreeBSD, Solaris, BSD, OSX, :
* Root access to over 7 boxes: beehive GmbH, tmn.com, Caucus, Kaivo, NLADA, LSTech.
* Junior System Admin, Caucus Systems.
* Experience choosing, installing, and training Red Hat as Desktop and Server solution.
* Experience in KDE and GNOME, including Ximian Desktop..
* LAN/WAN Integration experience.
* Expert in Install, Debug, Configuration, Integration.
* Experience in Linux/Unix/OS9.1/FreeBSD aids understanding of OSX.
* Experience in Imaging, Scanning, Editing, Office on Mac.

Business Applications:

Microsoft Office:
* Extensive experience through Office X on the Mac and Office XP on Windows 2000 Pro.

Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Gecko experience; Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarOffice, Nisus Writer, Quicken, QuickBooks, NetLedger

EDUCATION

Zope Corporation, Fredericksburg, VA
Zope Training, 2001

The George Washington University , Washington, DC
BA, American Literature, Minor Creative Writing 1993

University of Hawaii at Manoa , Honolulu, Hawaii
French, 1991-1992

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
English and American Literature, 1990-1991

Chaminade University, Honolulu, Hawaii, US
Philosophy, 1988

ASSOCIATIONS

Member, Urban Institute Communications Advisory Board.
Appointed, June 2002

Member Participant, Renaissance Weekend
Regular attendee since New Years 2001; active moderator and speaker. Charleston, Winter 2001; Oxford, UK, Summer 2002.

Associate, Haft, Harrison & Wolfson, Inc.
Technologist

Associate, Howard Rheingold Associates
Technology, Internet, and Virtual Community Expertise

Founder and Organizer, DC Zope Python User Group
Founded and run monthly meetings for the Zope and Python community

Webmaster and Vestry Member, Saint James’ Episcopal Church
Webwright since 2000; Vestry member since 2001.

LANGUAGES
French

References available upon request

Image via Wikipedia

Thanks to Michael McLay and GWU, we have a place, a time, and a date for the next Zope Python User Group Meeting. The next ZPug will meet on Saturday, 21 September, 2002, at the Tompkins Hall of Engineering on the GW campus. Rejoice!Michael McLay wrote in a recent email:

I confirmed with Tony Stanco that we will have a room available at GWU on September 21st for the ZPUG meeting. The meeting room is in Tompkins Hall of Engineering on 23nd St. A campus map is also available. We can have the room every month on the third Saturday. Tony said if we only use it every other month that the PerlMongers will be using it on the alternate months. (I’m not making this up) Perhaps the move to Saturday morning will have a positive effect on the regularity of our meetings. The Tompkins Hall building is a few blocks from the Kennedy Center and from the Georgetown. If the weather cooperates this would be a great family outing opportunity.

Are there any volunteers to give a status report on the development of Zope3 or Python 2.3? If not, then perhaps a line up of mini-talks would be interesting. Please suggest a python package or module that you found particularly useful and prepare a few slides that describe it’s use and benefits.

I can give a presentation on the PyGtk 2.0 GUI package. James Henstridge has done an incredible amount of work on automating the generation of C code wrappers for the Gtk+ 2.0 and Gnome libraries. The 2.0 release of this package takes avantage of the new features of the C API for Python 2.2. The Gtk wrapper written in Python is gone. The entire GUI module is written in C.

I’ve recently spent some time trying to use ZSI to implement SOAP, in conjunction with the PyGtk GUI interface. Unfortunately ZSI was designed with httplib, which does not share a mainloop well with the Threading module, so I tried replacing httplib in ZSI with asyncore. That was an interested several days effort. Finally I decided to make life much easy on myself so I switched to Pyro instead of SOAP. Harmony has been restored to the Universe. Picking the right tool for the job can save lots of effort.

Another topic for discussion is the upcoming Open Source for E-Government Conference. I been asked to give a presentation at the Conference. I’m interested in gathering examples of government use of Open Source software (Python in particular).

Volunteers for other subjects? And please don’t be shy. about suggesting alternatives. (Chris, I hope you don’t mind my jumping in with a proposal for the meeting.) I’m just trying to get the ball moving again. Hopefully some more interesting subject will be proposed and I can postpone my contribution until October.

Well, Mark Pratt, the Managing Director of beehive GmbH and I, Managing Director of beehive North America, are men about town.

Mark is visiting for some cool meetings we have with some brainstorming session as well as some proper meetings with proper clients and potential clients and partners.

We will be meeting up with our sweet banker at Riggs and then on Wednesday, we will be hanging out with the coolest cats in the Metro Area: the Zope, Python, and Linux community in Washington, bringing together the ZPug and DCLUG!

So, what a fun week I have had, am having, and shall have! Two bees know two bees! A meeting of the bees.