Lesly Simmons

Earlier this year I turned ignored not one, or two, but three invitations to join Pinterest (I now know what a sin this is. Please forgive me). I was busy with a project and didn’t want to get caught up in a new social network that I kept hearing was the most awesome time-suck of 2011. But after months of my good friend starting tons of emails and chats with “I found the most awesome thing on Pinterest,” I took the plunge and joined. Its a good thing I waited because I have easily spent more time there than any other site (well, maybe second to Facebook) than any other site all year.

At first glance Pinterest seems all weddings and babies, but there is a great deal of depth to the collections if you spend some time curating your follows. After about a month on the site I have some tips that have improved my experience and helped me discover some unique goodies (diet coke brownies, anyone?) Perhaps they can be helpful to you too!

1. DO check out the everything section. If you’re only looking at what the people you follow pin, you’re missing out on some cool stuff. This is where a selection of all pin categories ends up, and you’re guaranteed to find some things you like and want to see more of, or add to your own boards.
2. DON’T follow every board someone creates–unless you want to. I realized this with Luxe Finds, which pins tons of gorgeous items for home and lifestyle. They also have some sweet wedding boards, but since I’m already married, I unfollowed all their wedding boards. I still get the benefit of their beautiful pins in decor and food, which are things I’m interested in these days.
3. DO add categories for your boards. It makes it easier for people to find them and your pins won’t come up otherwise. You can also categorize other folks’ boards if they haven’t done it yet. Its the nice thing to do
4. DON’T add your boards to the totally wrong category PLEASE–one of my Pinterest pet peeves is seeing completely wrong things like DamnYouAutoCorrect.com texts in architecture. Those are funny but in the wrong place! (Hey Pinterest team, if you want to recruit users as community moderators I’m guessing you’d have no problem finding willing candidates like me to do it!)
5. DO have fun with it. At the end of the day this is about sharing things you find interesting, no matter what they are. Don’t have a category? Just throw it on a random board and call it a day. I have a board called “Why Not” with everything from balloons to tech to dressing.

Lesly and I both had the great fortune of attending Facebook’s annual f8 Developer’s Conference a few weeks back in downtown San Francisco. I was working the conference as one of their presentation designers, and had developed several Keynote presentations for breakout sessions, and Lesly was covering the event for a few blogs. Every year, Facebook announces something big at this conference, and this year didn’t disappoint with the announcement of Timeline.

Now, your Facebook page appears as a virtual scrapbook, chronicling your entire life on a single timeline. So if you upload, say a picture of your first bike ride, it appears as a life event on your timeline. Maybe you put up your first date with your spouse, or a photo of the birth of your child. These events, along with every other status update you’ve ever put up on Facebook, appear on your timeline. Very cool!

Also cool, was SNL alum Andy Samberg coming out at as Mark Zuckerberg for Zuckerberg’s keynote speech. The crowd didn’t quite know what to make of it at first, but it was hilarious.

Everything in consulting is focused around getting clients, securing contracts, and at the end of the day getting paid. There’s little to no advice out there about what to do when the project ends and both sides go there separate ways, but I would venture to say how you end is almost more important than how you start, and can cement your reputation with your client regardless of how the scope of your project went. Here’s a few Do’s and Dont’s on bringing a project to a successful end.

1. DON’T take it personal. You aren’t being laid off or fired–remember you’re a consultant and were brought on to do a specific project or handle responsibilities up to a certain point. So when the time comes to wrap it up, remember that.
2. DO overshare. Even if the client isn’t asking for a final wrap up report, give one anyway. Its good practice and forces you to download all the information and intelligence you’ve gathered during the project. In my case I looked back at every email, compiled every useful link and pulled together a comprehensive report of my activities. They weren’t expecting to get anything so detailed and loved it.
3. DON’T linger. When the project ends, hand it off and move on. It might be your baby or something you built from the ground up, but in the end it belongs to the client. So disconnect it from your social accounts (so you don’t send an errant tweet from one client on another client’s account like I did once a while back–oops!), transition all the usernames and passwords, and let any other people involved know you are moving off the project and who their new POC will be if you have one.
4. DO make yourself available. If there are questions when you’re done, be willing to answer or provide help within reason. Which leads to:
5. DON’T get taken advantage of. If you find yourself being asked to do more work on the project (other than answering a quick question or two) feel confident enough to object unless there are new terms put in place.

I know there are other things one can do to nicely wrap up a project, but I’ve found these are great ways to keep the relationship open–you never know when a happy client will want more of your hard work, and if the last thing you’ve left them with is a great summation of your most recent work to jog their memory, you’ll likely be top of mind when a new project comes along.

I’m still reeling so much from the awesomeness that was last week’s WordCamp that it’s taken me a while to process it all. I already love WordPress as a blogging platform, a content management system because it’s just so easy to use. In less than an hour I’ve trained the most technology-ignorant or averse audiences to use it, including a group of public health leaders from central Africa who needed to share information on medical supply deliveries with a fleet of bicyclists.

So, it’s been like a holy grail to get to a WordCamp-every time one was near in DC, I missed it and now that I live in SF there was no way I’d not be there. I even passed up a trip to China with the Georgetown men’s basketball team. There were no brawls at WCSF, but there was a pie eating contest!

My biggest takeaways from the weekend?

• Responsive web design (peep these examples) is going to change the experience of both coders/designers, and of the people consuming content across devices. And its easy to accomplish in WordPress.
• Start using version control ASAP–I deal in content and I can see the value for myself going through multiple changes in a document with a client, and for Jole who may make a hundred tweaks to a design based on often-nebulous client feedback (“Can you make this bigger? Can this be more orange?”). We’ve both been asked to revert to an element of something done previously, and having a bunch of documents titled V.1, V.2, V.3 and so on isn’t going to cut it. I love the look of Kaleidescope, and it came with great recommendations.
• I’m going to be so much more prolific now that I have more options for posting, from varying post types to Press This. Even if I don’t have time to write a long post, I can still get something up. Within my well crafted content strategy, of course

The downside of the weekend? Some jerk snagged my iPad charger while I was engrossed in Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word speech. But, it even that had a silver lining as it introduced me to the founder of a local blog I read all the time–SF FunCheap–and he turned out to be a really cool guy. So much was made of the WordPress community at this event, and I got to glimpse that. I’m looking forward to 2012 already!

Wow. I’ve never done so much work in such a short amount of time.

Digital District (a team consisting of me and my lovely wife Lesly Simmons), was lucky enough to be the design and marketing team for The 2011 National Association of Black Professionals (NABJ) Convention and Job fair, which just wrapped up last weekend in Philadelphia, PA. With over 3,000 attendees, this year’s conference was one of the biggest they’ve ever done. Lesly and I were responsible for the direct mail piece (mailing to over 6,000 members), the full 108 page conference guide, pocket guide, event flyers, ads, the Salute to Excellence program guide, the logo for the 2012 Convention, and a few other things. It was a ton of work, but our two person team got everything done on time. We took care of all of the printing, the direct mail, the delivery of materials, and I even hand delivered flyers and placed them on seats before a big sports award program. We did it all. In a very short amount of time.

It just goes to show that a small team with big experience can do almost anything!

Will PR people ever get it right? Will reporters stop being so mean and take calls? Can’t we all just get get along?
Last week the San Francisco PR Summit Conference at the St. Regis in Soma, tackled these questions in the world of social media and tech writing. A few highlights:

All Things D editor Kara Swisher talked candidly (the only way she ever does) about the editorial focus of the site, and her thoughts on some of the rumormongering among tech blogs. The big takeaway for PR pros, she shared that the site will increase it’s product coverage in the near future. So get your pitches ready!

Speaking of pitching, its sad to hear the same advice repeated over, but it seems like some PR pros still haven’t figured out the art of the targeted pitch, at least according to the five bloggers on one of the afternoon panels. The group covering publications including Wired and the San Francisco Chronicle reminded listeners that the “spray and pray” method of pitching still doesn’t work. What has a better chance of success? Pitch via email with a succinct subject line and a brief overview of the event/issue/news in the body, don’t call after you email to see if your message arrived (don’t ever do that, honestly. Everyone hates it, not just reporters,) and dont send gifts if and when your pitch makes it into a story. Thats just weird.

Social media strategist Eric Schwartzman made my day during his keynote when he bigged up Google Reader as one of the best tools to monitor industry news (I couldn’t agree more). He called digital illiteracy the biggest hindrance to successful social media implementation in business, and since I’m currently dealing with some serious DI with a client, I asked how to fight it. His advice is to get hands on, so even if they don’t fully embrace social media engagement, they understand why I am AND have realistic expectations of the results.

I’ve gone to a number of conferences recently for free and felt like they were a waste, so I’m excited that this one I paid for was both cheap and useful. The summit will travel to a few other cities this fall, so I highly recommend it if it comes to your city.

Today Digital District client the National Association of Black Journalists announced their 2012 convention will be held in New Orleans. Our team designed the convention logo, which was unveiled today along with the new city. Check out the artwork and the press release below.

NABJ Convention 2012: New Orleans Announced as Host City

NABJ Returns to Crescent City for first time in nearly 30 Years

WASHINGTON, DC (July 28, 2011)-Today the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that its 2012 Convention & Career Fair will be held in New Orleans, La., June 20-24, 2012.

San Diego Bay

Åse Margrethe Hansen Ink drawing. Private, Oslo

I need all of these cards :)

Mark Demsteader. Beautiful.

Pillow

The Maldives

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by Maja Ruznic

push through challenging times

At the beach

Hard to do, but I'm trying

my motto

poster

More big hair Adele

cabbage wedges

Privet House of Warren, Conn. at Target//March 2012

Cos Bar of Aspen, Colo. at Target//March 2012

Polka Dog Bakery of Boston at Target//March 2012

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French Alps

Josie Natori for Target//Jan. 2012

Josie Natori for Target//Jan. 2012

Miss you girl...

Miss you girl...

Jay-Z