My Class 'How to Blog & Why You Should'

(visit the DigiSo.org information page)

As part of my involvement with DigiSo – West Virginia’s first co-working digital space, I’m holding a workshop tomorrow.

“How to Cover an Event Online, and Why You Should”

Being good at this can help you get a job in new media journalism.

I’m from Toronto, Canada, my country’s largest tech and new media city, and I’d argue, one of the most social media savvy cities in North America.  Like I said during my Ignite presentation here a few months back, “I’m not trying to be a jerk, but I’m a few years ahead you of guys”.

It’s all trickling down to you here, the new online way, and I’d like to show you how to turn that into a paying job.  It can be done, it takes time and hard work, and it’s ridiculously fun.

We’re going to cover Hack3rCon, the state’s premiere online security conference.  But really, you can use the skills you’ll learn at any event.  I’ll show you how to cover an event, from start to finish, share my tricks, and mistakes.

I’ve set up a press room for us. When you arrive at the Ramada Inn in downtown Charleston, find the Clendenin Room.

Itinerary

11am – 12pm – Meet in press room, establish your plan of attack

12pm – 2pm – Field work – out to the conference floor, documenting, interivewing, gathering content for your story. Also, you’ll be live covering the event via Twitter / Foursquare / Viddy / etc.

2pm – 3pm – Return to press room, publish your story, and market your work

What You’ll Need to Bring

– laptop

– camera

– phone

– pen & paper

– your blog (if you have one)

– if you don’t yet have a Twitter account, set one up

– familiarize yourself with the event – here’s the website, the Twitter account @Hack3rCon, and the hashtag – #Hack3rCon

Why Am I Doing This?

There’s 3 answers:

1 – Many, many people over the years have taken the time to answer my questions, over coffee or the phone, and helped me navigate and get to where I am today.  There’s no way I’d be where I am today without them.  Now it’s my turn.

2 – This is fun for me.  I saved these tweets from May:

Back home, it’s different than it used to be.  It’s not as new and shiny, it lost some luster, that’s the way things go, right?  But you guys are just gearing up and taking off, so I get to re-live it all once again!

3 – I like you West Virginians.  You remind me of my country’s Newfoundlanders.  That’s maybe the biggest compliment a Canadian could give you ;)

Any question, send me an email, and looking forward to meeting you guys tomorrow.

Keri

All PowerPoint All Day

I’ve never had slides for when I spoke. Had to remedy that today.

My thinking is this: if you have to have slides playing during your speech, you mustn’t be very engaging, and have already lost the game.

Took way longer to make than I thought it would. I’ve got 20 slides here, and a new respect for PowerPoint presentations. Some have over 100.

Back and forth between all hard drives… I have created 3 terabytes of content over the years, boom boom.

Then I practiced my presentation in this little simulator I set up, ha.

This is great, I now have a 5 minute presentation that I can easily and quickly modify for any audience.

Maybe my favourite slide.

Second favourite.

Then I conked out.

 

 

New Destination Reached Hi from WV

Drove and drove and 500 miles 9 hours and dull.

So many easy jokes about this town’s name.

Unpacked and plugged back in.

Always use a surge-protected power bar.

Don’t plug $000s into the wall without protection.

Then I cleaned out my fannypack. Even lint rollered the inside.

I’ll let you peek inside.

I have internet again oh thank you oh man the last two weeks were tough.

Have much to catch you up on, my security show is slowly kicking off – Smarten Up, Internet, my food blog will launch later this week, and how did Easter arrive so fast this year??

TTYT