Authentic Blogging to sponsor Widgety Goodness prize

We have been involved recently with helping create Widgety Goodness UK 07, Europe’s first Widget conference, in Brighton at the Corn Exchange tomorrow.

Anyone participating in the WGUK07 Social Network will now have a chance to give their blog a boost.

Authentic Blogging has sponsored the event with a coaching session for two bloggers captured in the feed into the network on the day.

For those that aren’t up with this stuff yet, it’s really quite neat. Backnetwork provides a platform for social networks to build in the lead up to a conference or event, on the day and for some months afterwards. Delegates join with speakers, sponsors, media and organisers to answer each other’s questions and help set the focus for the event. During and after, they chat, think and debrief to make even more sense of what’s going on and move things forward in their worlds.

We’ve been facilitating this space since its inception.

So Graeme and I thought it would be nice to give something to the community of Widgety folk by sponsoring the prize for “Most Indepth Blog Post on the Day”.

Delegates will have their laptops there and, believe it or not, be tapping away to share what’s happening for them. To document and reflect. To download, store and retain it all in their “external memory drives” ie. their blogs.

…and propping up the bar at the After Party later on.. and chewing each other’s ear’s off no doubt.

It’s going to be a great day.

Good on you Ivan, Emm, Zoe, Kris, all the sponsors and speakers and punters for bringing it together. Can’t wait to share more about the wonders of widgets.

Initial Feedback to Blogging Courses

I found a moment to put together a list of all the positive messages you have sent in via email and text during the first three weeks of the beginners blogging course.

These are all totally unsolicited. Imagine what we might hear if we asked? (There will be a proper evaluation of the course later on.)

All I can say is, it’s been a pleasure. You are great people to work with!

There is of course much room for growth. As the tag line reads on my other blog – “Learning – It’s about the journey.”

- Libby

“… participating in your Academic Blogging course is the most thought-provoking and stimulating process I’ve engaged in academically for a long time! It’s dawning on me how blogging could, if I choose, profoundly change the way I do my research work, connect with others in my field and beyond, and go about the whole business of creating ‘knowledge’.”

“I just keep wanting to let you know how much joy and excitement and hope you’ve put back into my life.”

“I feel quite excited about the journey we have embarked upon. Still not sure what i will do with my blog but i am trusting the process.”

“What an amazing group of people you’ve brought together… what a power house and how brilliantly you are bringing us out – thank you.”

“thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn’t expect to be feeling quite so inspired and empowered by my first blogging session. I feel seen and encouraged to open into all of me and offer it out to the world.”

“thanks for a great session…. I can see us having a reunion in ten years time remembering where it all started….”

“Many thanks Libby for getting us all off to a great start.”

“I’m starting to realise from what you’ve been saying is write what you love and the money will come – probably in mysterious ways.”

“Enjoyed yesterday and found it very useful.”

“I’m really enjoying the course.”

“It was a great session, thank you Libby – and thanks to the rest of you for coming at the subject from such differing stances. “

Blogging your way to wealth

We have a very holistic approach to blogging here. But that doesn’t mean we don’t like money! As a wonderful Buddhist monk called Geshe Michael Roach (who was also a New York diamond broker) once said to a group of business students I was teaching:

I’ll show you how to make money. Lots of money. But you might like to think about how you make it…. and how you spend it.

Another Buddhist friend of ours, Andrew Black, is one of the world’s top poker players. Highly skilled and impenetrable he is too. Also very mindful of how he makes it, and how he spends it. A very interesting story about “The Monk” by writer Val Blomfield’s son Vishnapani here ;-)

Now where was I… oh yes, making moolah.

Here’s a good blog to help you make it. We’re all for it. Spread it around.

Rookie Millionaire.

See also the entry on Yaro Starak. There will be loads more on this blog re: SEO, analytics and the like. But what we are really keen to contribute is dialogue around the bigger stuff too.

At what price authenticity and human becoming? Let’s walk the middle path, and die happy with how we made it, and how we spent it.

I love hearing Gra talk about all this. He’s amazing. Gra – please can we have one of your thoughtful posts on why SEO’s gaming Google isn’t quite as cool as some might think it is?

I’m going to get Geshe Michael Roach’s book The Diamond Cutter at last (he gave me the first chapter years ago) and keep exploring.

I’m really keen to integrate my authentic self through the path of blogging and connect with lovely folk who want to share the journey.

If money be a side effect of this process, then so be it.

 

Write like you talk

Two of us sat there yesterday in the midst of the Meme Mamma’s Monday group, listening to Lucy West talk her Journey Work talk. She really knows her stuff. I hope to tell you a little more about each of the founding course participants when they give me the okay.

Sarah and I said, just blog the way you talk. She was right on it. Clear, coherent, flowing, passionate and highly engaging.

I found this post at the legendary Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users.

Conversational writing kicks formal writing’s ass

Okay, she’s American, and proud of it. That aside Kathy says a whole lot about writing style in the new online paradigm and many other worlds besides.

Hope it helps you talk your talk, and connect with others who share your passions.

This is also a grand example of a blog that PASSIONATELY engages the audience. Wow, look at the comments and discussion on this one post alone. She has been around for a long time, blogging, publishing, speaking out publically and has at times been highly controversial. My guess is, Kathy has always been pretty Authentic. She is who she is. She takes risks.