Blog Under Construction Live

I’m doing something some would say one should never do. I’m redesigning this blog while it is live.

I’ve been working on all sorts of new stuff, which I have been talking about for a long time, but nothing much is showing yet. It would probably be wise to work behind the scenes, get everything working and looking just right. It would just take forever before anything shifted. Instead I am going to pick away at it and slowly morph the site into its new form.

Am I insane?

Maybe. But the approach serves two purposes. First it keeps me focused on the next step rather than being overwhelmed by the scope of the whole project. Second, it forces me to let go of perfectionism. I’m not particularly good at achieving perfection, so I might as well just throw all caution to the wind.

Shall we play find the changes?

Think of it as a game. See if you notice anything different. Or as compassion training, become curious. Of course if you read in a RSS reader or on email or Facebook, you won’t see much right away since the changes will be mostly to the theme itself. But you may have noticed I am diversifying the content, shifting its focus. Lots more to come. Hope you can be patient with the mess!

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Restarting a neglected blog

It starts out innocently enough. Too many things to do. The thought that the blog can wait. The weeks go by. Then it becomes months. The longer the time goes, the easier it is to forget. Or ignore. Depending on the day. Just don’t look.

Victoria Brouhard ran into a similar blogging delay and offered some questions in her post,  When the Thing Becomes Too Important

So what had happened?

What rules are you trying to follow?

What are you trying to avoid?

What’s the kernel of truth in the fear?

How can you take some of the importance out of writing a post?

In the interest of actually breaking through and posting, I will answer her questions, then hit that publish button. Ready?

So what had happened?

We added an operations person to VisualsSpeak. An organized, business and detail oriented person to help strip down and rebuild the core business model. To come in and take the idea we’ve been working on and put the structure under it to support a different level of business. So now we have two artists and one business person. Two focused on big picture concepts and one how are you going to make it happen.

It’s exactly what we have needed for a long time. But it hasn’t been easy. Exhausting. Watching everything we did to the best of our ability get broken down, much of which got thrown out. Having to look deeply at entrenched behaviors that are getting in our way. Having to re-guess what might work. Change management in all its grueling finest.

What rules are you trying to follow?

That I’m supposed to offer something to my readers, something spectacular, insightful, full of wisdom. Certainly not whining about the agony of change. Or reciting the litany of things I was struggling with on a daily basis. Or admitting the vast list of really bad habits I have developed to attempt to keep my head above water.  It took all I had emotionally to get through the process, there was nothing left to allow me to take the risk of posting anything online.

What are you trying to avoid?

I discovered a limit on my ability to be transparent. A line beyond which a fragility cut off words. I wanted to paint, and couldn’t find the time. Or more truthfully, allow myself the time. The visual is the doorway to a well of emotion. I didn’t think I could process any more.

What’s the kernel of truth in the fear?

The professional is personal. No matter how much I try to manage the edges, they bleed together and affect each other. And I have limits and boundaries that keep it all in check.

How can you take some of the importance out of writing a post?

I’m declaring just posting, the act of sticking something up is enough for now. Maybe someday I’ll be profound, but in the meantime, I’m just going to start sharing as feels right. Not trying to be more than the person trying to do the right thing. Working on accepting my limitations. Trying to make a difference somehow.

Now, pressing that publish button.

Seeing color differently

Kevin Jones was stuck in an all day meeting, twittering on his iphone. I tweeted back that he should be playing iphone games. Long story short, I suggested one of my favorites for boring meetings and classes, Trism. He tweeted back, what about something not about color?

I forgot. He doesn’t see color the same as I do. And I realized all the games I like to play are based on color. What does this really mean? I went over to Vischeck, a tool that enables me to see things like he does.

Kevin, as you would say— I cry.

Learning from web attacks

Nuke that website!

It all started with a colleague saying she got a strange notice when she visited our VisualsSpeak website. Then she called her web guy, who came and cleaned something off her computer. That’s how the summer started. I upgraded the software on the backend and did everything I knew how to do.

Have you noticed how vague this is? So now you know how it has felt.

While I was totally occupied with learning how to communicate over technology across cultures, Google sends me an email. Is it real? Or is it another phishing scheme? It sounded pretty dire:

We recently discovered that some of your pages can cause users to be
infected with malicious software. We have begun showing a warning page
to users who visit these pages by clicking a search result on Google.com.

and it goes on

If your site was compromised, it’s important to not only remove the
malicious (and usually hidden) content from your pages, but to also
identify and fix the vulnerability. We suggest contacting your hosting
provider if you are unsure of how to proceed

Hidden content on a WordPress site. Great. I know there is a database involved somewhere? So into the other side of the tech world. A place where they speak in tongues and letters. Since Google suggested contacting our host, we sent an email off to Bluehost. Their response?

The content of your site is your responsibility. We do not provide support for coding, development, or design. If your site has been hacked, you will need to consult a developer to resolve the issue.

Any hints? What kind of developer? Developer of what? We have no context. What do you type into Google to find such a person? What do you ask them for?

We are getting emails from our customers and collegues. Some people can get on the site, others are getting dire warnings about their computers being destroyed by our site. Not so good for PR.

Back to Bluehost. Do they know any developers? Yes, they refer us to edynamo.com Let’s just say they took our money and after 18 days have done nothing. Not happy.

Desperate acts come from not knowing what else to do.

Today we are just ripping down the whole site. Having Bluehost remove it completely from their servers.  It will take down all our email and everything else. And we’ll start over.  Then we’ll have to convince Google we have it taken care of so they remove the dire warnings from our site.

Biggest lessons?

• people who are not experts in what you do don’t know the language you speak
• search is great, but useless if you don’t know what to enter
• there are a lot of different kind of developers, I still can’t tell them apart
• there is a huge gulf between the tech side and the user side of technology
• being a fairly savvy user means nothing when there is another kind of problem
• never take a customers money if you can’t deliver (this one is a review  for edynamo.com – NOT recommended)
• we should try to meet people who understand how to fix viruses, malware, trojans, worms etc

How do customers talk about the problems they are trying to solve?

Never once during this period did I say I was concerned about a malware injection attack. If that is even what I should have been concerned about. And when I googled malware, I got sites on how to remove it from my computer not my website. I never figured out what would get the results I needed. I did get pages of what I think were code? With instructions that made no sense at all to me.

What did I say? At least the things that are fit for print:

• My site is a mess and I don’t know why.
• Malware, what do I do?
• What do I do with a broken blog?
• Help, I’m infecting my customers!

Important

If you have visited our VisualsSpeak website this summer and do not have up to date virus software installed on your computer, you should run some kind of checker/detector program. I’d like to be able to guide you to resources, but honestly I still don’t understand this whole thing. Perhaps someone who does will leave some resouces in the comments?

Comment Challenge Week 2

I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding my weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.

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Day 8: Comment outside nicheIn order to comment outside my niche, I would have to have a niche. I write in an obscure area, and see my roles as varied, so my blog reader is full of a diverse range of topics. Good thing, it made it easy to complete this task, since it is already something I regularly do.

Day 9: Should we comment on blogs?

The thing I most appreciate about blogs is the diversity of approaches. If a blog is new, I recognize that someone may have not decided how they want to approach the blogosphere, but for a more mature blog, it seems reasonable that a blogger may make a variety of choices for reasons that are individual.

Day 10: Comment Audit

This day asked us to look at how our blogs might affect whether we get comments. Over the course of this blog, I think I have done everything on the list that might deter people. I still struggle over voice, who I am talking to, who I want to talk to, and who might care about what I have to say. Of course, this reflects some of my own confusion about the direction my business in general is moving. It’s an ongoing action research project. I try things, watch how they go, and redesign.

Day 11: Comment Policy

I have a bunch of redesign I am working on behind the scenes, so a comment policy will be added to it. I was particularly taken by Kevin’s concept, where he extends an invitation. So much more appealing to me than a policy per se.

Day 12: Comment Friendly?

Since this is a business blog, I do not feel comfortable taking moderation off for first time commentors. I have caught enough objectionable comments to feel comfortable with this.

Day 13: Post using comments

Since the comment challenge began, I have been writing posts based on reader comments or requests. It started with a comment on Sue Waters blog from Christy Tucker about her new blog header, and I responded with Does my header make my blog look fat? . Jabiz Raisdana asked about his headers on that post, so I wrote, What makes these blog headers effective? Then I got an email from Fred Deutsch so I wrote What to do with a visually noisy blog and Suggestions for a visually noisy blog.

I have enjoyed writing these posts since it has provided me concrete examples of visual patterns to demonstrate how they affect what we do online. I can’t do it all of the time, and it might be very boring after a while, but I hope it has been helpful to readers and the blog owners alike.

Day 14: Turn blog over to readers

Ok, so have you found the series on blog headers and patterns helpful? Interesting? What could I do to be more helpful? Any opinions, I’d love to hear them.

Week 1: Comment reflections

I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding a weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.

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A group of bloggers from around the world have accepted the challenge to do something every day in May to become a better commenter on other blogs. Since I did another challenge last year with two of the organizers, I decided to join them. First, there are over a hundred blogs participating. The group in the last challenge was 14, so we got to know each other. It’s much harder to keep track of who is who this time. There are also networks of bloggers who have joined, and I’m noticing that it is harder to comment when it seems like all the other people in the comment string already know each other. Something to be aware of when I engage with my readers, or on blogs where I know others. What can I do to create a welcoming environment?

• Day 1- Commenting self-audit

Commenting has always been somewhat sporadic for me. In phases. I read over 150 blogs, most of which I read the majority of the posts, so that alone is a major time commitment. I find when I am short on time, I skip the commenting. I’m also noticing I gather insights across the blogs I read, often making connections between tidbits that mash up with pieces offline. So the responses I find emerging don’t make sense attached to one place.If I knew ahead of time which tidbits were going to align, I might be able to write the type of posts rich with links that Sue Waters, Michele Martin, and Beth Kanter are so brilliant at doing. I seem to have a more retroactive thought alignment process rather than the anticipatory ones others seem to have that know what they might need and bookmark it for later.

• Day 2- Comment on a new blog

This was easy. The comment challenge is full of blogs that are new to me. Since I train adults, I don’t follow K-12 blogs as a general rule, and the group has a lot of them. It’s been fun to explore them, they certainly have a different flavor. Not quite sure how to add value to the conversations on them yet. Instead I find myself telling those who are expressing anxiety about being behind that it’s OK. I guess I’m trying to find a common ground to share.

• Day 3- Set up comment tracking

Like so many other things I discover on these challenges, the tracking software is a matter of strategizing how I am going to change the patterns of how I engage with daily practices. I center my online life around Google Reader and Mail, so things that integrate easily are the ones that I can adopt quickly. I have installed both co.mment and cocomment, but certainly have not fully adapted to them. And so far, I have found the RSS feeds from these tools to be confusing. Especially with so many similar conversations occurring across multiple blogs.

• Day 4- ask a question in a comment

This is something I do with some regularity. What is interesting to me is how often bloggers ignore the questions I ask. Now I can understand if I ask another commenter a question that they may not see it. But as bloggers, we often get multiple notifications of comments. And I’m not talking just about the blogs with a huge amount of traffic. Leaves me wondering if it is the type of questions I ask, or the type of bloggers I’m asking.

• Day 5- comment on a post I don’t agree with

By far the hardest task for me. This is totally contrary to my online behavior, and has sparked some of the deepest reflection. Offline, I certainly have no problem disagreeing with others. I suspect there are people around me who would say I voice my disagreement too much. So why is it so different for me online? I still haven’t figured it out, and I still haven’t disagreed.

• Day 6 – engage with other commenters

It’s been nice to see the engagement with other commenters on the challenge. I have found it difficult to do this in the past. I read all/most of the comments on a post before I comment, and often try to engage with others. It’s almost like there are unspoken norms that develop on certain blogs. My favorites are the ones where the blogger and the readers talk freely and back and forth. I wonder what it takes to foster that norm?

• Day 7 – 3 Learnings

The three things that jump out to me from the first week:

1. Dedicated commenting takes an organized system to stay manageable
2. I really don’t like the idea of disagreeing online
3. There is a gap between what I like and what I am (not) creating on my own blog

Catching up with the 31day challenge

August was the month for the 31days to a better blog challenge. Only there weren’t enough hours in the day to get 31days of tasks done with all of the other things in my life. So, I have extended into September, and it may take even longer.

It’s not that I haven’t been working on this every day. Blogging is pretty simple to do, but very difficult to do well. All of the little details that make a difference collectively take time. Commenting, for example, can be really important to building community. In order to comment effectively, you have to read and think about the blog you are commenting on. Takes time. And when you are reading a wide variety of blogs, there are endless links to follow and interesting paths to run off on. Soon enough, one cat is sitting on the keyboard reminding me her food is a higher priority while the others are trying cute, leg rubbing and other assorted tactics. They are pretty hard to resist.
Read more »

Learning about blogging on my bike

I have been participating in the 31 days to a better blog challenge for 28 days, and I must say I will be sad when it ends. Not because I don’t have enough things to do to finish said challenge, as a matter of fact, it will probably take me more than another 31 days to do it. No, it’s the community of people who have formed around it. All slogging through a similar experience in very different ways. It’s been great journeying with you, and I hope it goes forward in some new form.

It’s hard to even isolate the daily tasks anymore, so I’m taking a new tack, and bringing forward a new type of reflection. At the beginning of the summer, I attended a workshop with Rita Bailey, during which we came up with an example to apply the learning. The result of which was me getting a new bike. This is the bike I rode in the Providence Bridge Pedal where I learned about Spontaneous Stereotyping and Storytelling. So I’ve been off riding again, this time on a 21 mile trail created on an old railroad bed. I learned a bit about training, and a realized a few things about blogging too. Read more »

31 day blogging challenge: Day 15 – 20

Creative ways to manage challenge overload.

The challenge continues, and it continues to be challenging. The crew is getting creative in finding ways to get the TASK COMPLETED, Done , Progress = Completed Read more »

31 days blogging challenge: Days 11- 14

The blogging challenge continues. It is getting harder and harder to execute the cumulative suggestions, keep up with all the other participants, keep commenting on their work, and execute all the ideas fostered by seeing what they are all doing. Especially multiplied by two blogs. And run a start-up business alongside my volunteer board work. I am still fully engaged, I am just having a hard time getting to everything. I am enjoying learning about all sorts of new things through the regular posts the challenge participants are writing beyond the challenge posts themselves. Read more »

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