Happy (late) sunday #SMCSFblog - Day10

Up date: so sad it got stuck in my phone and I saw it just now... it's yesterday's post!

Google+ and what else? #SMCSFblog - Day9

Gosh I have to confess enventhough it's not thursday (the day to confess things in France on Twitter, the hastag is jeudiconfession. this will be saturdayconfession!)

I confess... I'm not very keen on Google+.
I don't feel it user friendly, at least it isn't Jussonline friendly.
Okay we can share articles, posts, images, build circles, meet people, excahnge info, tipcs, network and so on.
But I don't feel like.

I do this through Twitter, Facebook and other LinkedIn. My little brain doesn't get to G+.

One point to this is that I don't want to give this also to Mr Google.
Yeah he has my emails accounts, my blogs, my old and first social network - RIP Orkut. I didn't close my account there I couldn't, I left a message saying that people could find me on FB. Now 90% my Orkut friends are on FB. I suppose Orkut is closed now.
What happenned to the 10% left? they stopped social media? Were kidnapped by aliens?

Mr Google have also my documents, my agenda, some events I take part, he gives me some books and knows the translations I ask him to do for me.
I'm resisting to not give him another network.

Resisting, resisting... not very strongly I must confess.

This is the moment of a new confession overlaping the first confession.
Oh boy what is going through my brains lately?

As I'm taking part to this new 30-day blog challenge again I saw that some people from Social Media Club South Florida are using actively their G+ account.
Because of this I activated my profile with my main email address.
There's no point in doing this, if I did it for them they know my by other names/nicknames, my main email address isn't the one I use to blog, tweet or facebookaround.
Gee I'm nuts.

I confess that I did activate another G+ profile too in order to share the articles I write on my other blog about Paris (my personal marketing stuff). It's the one in portuguese, but I'm sure Mr Google will be more than happy to translate it to you english speakers (or any other language). I think I'll even put back the translation feature that I deleted 1 or 2 years ago.)

G+ or not G+?
In order to really decide I like it or not I must use it a little bit.
But I don't want to use. But I'm using.

(Rha! It's normal! I'm girl! We change our minds all day long! ;-)
Next post!

Routine or not routine? #SMCSFblog - Day8

Routine or not routine was a subject we discussed during my yôga classes this week.

I take these classes in a tiny little place, I'm sure it's the only yôga school in a parisian "cave"! Well basement of an old parisian building.

These last months I'm always at the same side, always on the right, I can be close to the teacher or behind someone, but always on this side.
Before the class stared I told the teacher that I was changing sides because I was always at the same side, it is good to change things from time to time.
We then talked about life, routine in our lives, people who do the always the same thing at the same time, take the same path/way to go to places.
I like to change from time to time I feel better. Even in my life it is good to change - furniture from it's place, change the curtains, change home, why note change the country in which I'm living! I've done this before. Twice!

When you do things always the same way they can become automatic and you may not pay attention anymore to them anymore. It is ok to do things automatically like driving. You don't ask yourself questions like "now I'll accelerate", "now I'll look at the mirror"....
However it is good to change things so you are aware of what you are doing and are more concious of what you are doing.
On this case, yôga class, as I've been always practising on the same side I got used with a porch, I can open my arms wide open to do some yôga postures without any problem, no limits!

So before my colleagues arrived I changed sides and went to the left side, close to the wall - watch out your hands! It's 17th century or so stones on the wall! Ouch!
In general we are placed for the class according to our seniority in the practise and to balance male and female energy.
To better organize those present on that day I had to... go back to my usual side for the organization of that class.
The teacher and I laughed of course and I said that I'd try next time

So I went back to the right side, the one close to the little side porch on the picture (not my pic, I got from the school's website).
I was quite happy then.

But yesterday was next time.

I choose again the other side of the room, the left side. As it was the same teacher he remembered what we had discussed two days earlier.
Then he noticed the guy in the left side is always there. He doesn't seem ready yet to try to be placed somewhere else in the class. We talked again with the other people about this. 3 didn't say much and one toally agreed with us it is so good to change things even the way you take to go to the supermarket, sometimes you change and it is longer, so what? You can discover/see different things!

I could stay on the left. And I kept all my skin, no bit of skin went to the stonewall by me.
Yay!

Living online #SMCSFblog - Day7

This morning after a visio conf with a private institution for personal reasons I went on my search for online courses of marketing - I want to improve some skills.

I realized that I live a lot online.

Well I knew that before this morning but it struck there right in the middle of my poor lazy head that not only I spend a lot of time online for networking sometimes to work and now I'm also getting online for personal issues (other than talking to mom) and I'm trying to become an online student.

Online courses are the solution for people like me who don't have the possibility to go to a university/school get some extra courses , short courses, I'm not talking about getting a degree.

The offer has yet to improve. Or the gogos schools should improve their SEO because I don't find a lot. I mean I find some courses but there are a bunch out there that don't seem to be serious enough and don't encourage me to put my money on it.

Living online. Everyday I have (live!) my share of online activity. Follow some people on Twitter (and events, today I followed 2, exchange recipes - yeah last night, with a virtual friends who lives in California), catch up with friends on Facebook , look at nice pics on Instagram, dream of other nice pics on Pinterest, log on blogger to post a note....

Rich online life sied by side with my offline life (I do have one IRL :-)

But I haven't found some little courses on marketing. If anyone have an idea....

Mind mapping my ideas #SMCSFblog - Day6

It's been almost é years that I started mind mapping.
I'm a mapper. A baby mapper though I'm not yet a all time mapper.

It is very useful to take notes during a conference as sometimes the speakers doesn't do a linear speech. Or to build a map for a conference with different speakers. Then each speaker is a topic.

Two images of a conf I went. I kept a diferent color for each speaker.
The first image is the map of the whole conference.





On the second image I opened the subtopics of the "red" speaker.
You can click on the images to enlarge.
 (It's all in french. It's not my best map.)


With the map you can easily put together the ideas.
I like mind mapping too because it is definatly like my ideas: they're aren't linear I go forth and backwards and  taking notes like this allows me to give some space to an idea that appeared later on my thinking.
I started mapping for work too. Like there is a certain number of tasks to do and as you go on doing them you find/discover/think of other tasks to do.
It's useful to follow my team too - each one has their topic and their tasks are the subtopics. And it goes growing bigger and bigger and bigger.

I'm not an expert yet I hope I'll become soon.
I've tried some tools MindJet, MindMaster, SimpleMind... don't have my favorite.

Do you map? Which is your tool?

There's no age to go skyping around #SMCSFblog - Day5

I wrote this last year about my mom.

We've been skyping since then. She is even learning a little bit about solving her techie problems - someone has to help her online (my brother is the usual hotliner, by phone or in person).

We chat online very often, whe chats with me who is overseas, with my brother and his family who are 150km away from her.

As any mom she always caught us doing something we may have said we were not doing. Like when you say you weren't online she will say yes you were - your Skype was online.
Well yes, my account was but it doesn't mean I was there... no way to convince her that my account and me libe our lives separetely (and should we anyway?).

I adore talk to her. It's much better than the phone era. You can show things and not only describe things.
When she buys something, knits something she can show it to me. I can do the same.

The other day she was like a ad-girl telling me the great benefits she is getting from a french body lotion.
(You know the receipe is different from the products made in Brazil as the american products are different as the asian are...)

She will kill me if she ever sees this pic online....

Mom isn't at all on social media, email and skype is enough for her. Google to look for things that interest her, some sites that she goes often.

Last year with my partner we showed our adorable neighbor how to take a picture with an iPhone.
She found it really funny and made us wear hats and take different pictures and show her. She laughed so hard that I got worried she get an attack or something.
This neighbor is today 84 yo.

It's really nice to show tehcnology to open mind old people. They ask interesting questions and sometimes see what you haven't seen. And can have a real good time laughing from their young neighbors (us!) who thing they are showing THE tehcnology - she was just laughing about our stupid faces with her old hats.
Can't show the pictures we deleted all, we didn't keep any for the record!

On the other hand still about Skype it is totally difficult almost impossible to get my teenager niece online.
This 18 yo seem not interested in skyping with old people.
Yeah you have to focus on the conversation. It's much easier to get her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, anywhere but on skype.

So there's no age to skype but when it comes to focus on the conversation some people may need another media to saty focused.

Picturing on social media #personalbranding #SMCSFblog - Day4

I'm an instagramer. Here.

I started ages ago on Fotolog. Then moved on to Flickr.

The account pn Fotolog is completely dead. I used long before I found my online nickname which I use a lot everywhere.
On Flickr I had the pro account, went back to normal account. Pictures are still there. Account may dying little by little.
Unless I wake up one of these days and start publishing there again (before the account is killed by the platform owners).

Instagram is a cool platform. I make most use of my smartphone. Always.
On another blog I write about Paris and what to do round here - have to get to speed cruise there. I'll be there soon.

So on my Instagram account I publish in general pictures of Paris, things I've seen round the city, places I've been to, food. It's not exclusively about Paris but it is 80% about it.

This account contributes to my personal branding plans and willness on writing about this lovely city I live in. There are tons of things to see, do and eat here that even if half of the parisians wrote about the city there still be some place for other people! What attracts our attention is so personal!

A brand can also use this platform for business matters.
It can be used in many ways like showing people working (not my preferred use but have seen this before), the offices, or show an original angle of the brand. Or be useful for contests.

A few weeeks ago I won one of the prizes during the launching campaign of an all on line french bank. You had to publish (or re-publish) a photo with a blue sky and a jury would choose the three best pictures of the day.
The constest run for a few days, the prize was some discount on a online shop (hey I still have tu use my discount code! must not forget). The prize was not much for each winner (but the band had to cash out some euros) but it was profitable for the bank's notoriety.
It was good to me because I got on notoriety as well. And it was useful as well as it was a picture of a bluesky in Paris.

The buzz around the contest made the rest - for the brand.

I sure had fun taking part as like some many other people I'm a geeky-picture-taker-never-going-out-without-my-iphone - I submitted 2 or 3 pics.

Now let me go develop my notoriety, I'll be back in a while.

IRL social media meeting? #SMCSFblog - Day3

I'm not a person of routine. I like when things change.
I'm used to some routine like going to places, doing some things, eating some special things.

(Leave the incoherence aside please.)

As many sundays as I can I go for a coffee after lunch at a café-brasserie near my home sweet home.
The sunday routine is in fact go to the market in the morning (I'll write about it another day), have lunch after cooking whatever we decided to buy for lunch and in order to avoid sunday siesta we go out for a coffee.
We go chez Thierry. No it's not the name of the brasserie but it is his place.
In general we sit at the counter, the best place to be if you want to know what is going.

Thierry knows us. When we go in, we get our Bonjour Monsieur Madame, deux petits cafés?
And voilà. We are part of the brasserie's landscape. 

I sit by the counter. I get my iPhone from my pocket and do my check-in - hey I must maintain may mayor position! I lost my mayorship once, I was on holidays and someone check-in more than I did. I got it back.

I published the first picture of the place on foursquare, our coffees half gone.

Now other people have published theirs, even showing theirs faces. someone published a photo showing Thierry. Nice guy.

I check through a social media. Being there on sunday is also checking in real life social network. When we don't come for a while the boss ask if we've been away.

This is one of our social activity on sundays. Sitting there and seeing people coming and going, chatting with the boss, le patron.

Every sunday we check what is going around. We don't really talk between us, those who are sitting at the bar, but we acknowledge our presence. From time to time there is a topic that arouses everybody and we end up having a 5-10 minutes chat on the counter.

For instance during the demonstrations for the marriage for all we talked a little bit. An old man said that he went to show that he didn't agree with this law. He said that he didn't care really, people can get married with whoever they want. It's just that since he was young he always protests against the governement, no matter the subject. Always against. This is his principle. Then get a beer aftewards.

We listen to the conversations around us. It's kind of real life tweets.

Two people are talking about the soccer championship and that nights match at the nearby stadium (where are close to the parisian soccer team stadium).
The retired politician tlaks to Thierry, about the weather, TV, public work on the roads.
The retired diplomat is just there, sometimes he has lunch in the restaurant room, smetimes he stays at the bar, and have something his appetite is looking for. Last time we sa him by our side he was having fries, charcuterie and pickles. I don't think his doctor would agrred with this... He nods his head from time to time when I think he is hearing the conversation. As if he was hitting the button like...
The butcher is always there with his second and sometimes his wife, having his beer and fries. Thierry gives him his order for the weekly meat. And that it. they write it inside their heads, not on paper. It must be like this for years.
The round the corner florist, once a week he puts a new fresh bouquet on by the cashier. He enters, says "hello all", put the new flowers in the water, says "goodbye all" and leaves.

We chat about our personal matters, we recognize the passers by, we pay, we leave - we have finished our coffee long ago. 

And then sunday goes by.

Digital backpack? #SMCSFblog Day2

I read this article today - http://slate.me/17wLw1P - interesting reading about one or two straps backpacking at school.

I personnnaly grew up with one strap as two were for others, not cool or sports people (so, when I was in my sports phase when I used to play volleyball a lot I'd wear two straps.

At the end of the article I started wondering about the digital natives.

Other than this switch from one to two occuring some time ago nowadays they must use two straps. They need their hands free for their portable consoles, tablets and other portable devices.

And grown ups like us will use two straps too, smartphones, tablets and other devices while our laptop is in the backpack.

And you ? One or two?

Couple of tips on #personalbranding #SMCSFblog Day1

As first post of this 30 day series of post I though about personal branding.

From time to time some people cross our path and we end up talking about blogs, social media, what is all about it.
Often these people have accounts but they don't use because they don't know what to talk about.
A couple of weeks ago I took part in a conversation about this, what to do with my twitter account?

If you are one of these people you can use your account for anything.

You can tell your life if you want.

However I think it's more interesting if you talk about topics that interest you.

More over on this digital period in the world publishing you start taking care of your presence online.

So a few tips to start tweeting.

You're not in the digital business but you find twitter interesting and don't know what to do (I'm repeating myself.... Lazy brains?).

You're a specialist in a field let's say sciences. You don't want (and maybe shouldn't!) talk about your work.

You can talk about your field in general! You can read articles online and publish the link (use bitly or any other tool to shrink it) and a little comment about what you read - " interesting point of view" "original angle for this subject" etc.

Retweet interesting tweets from your TL.

Make sure you follow people of your field.

Publish regularly, if you can once a day. It's a tweet, it's not long writing.

Doing so in a few time you maybe seen as an specialist of your field. People interested by the same topics will start "hearing" you.

On top of that if your company is going through a digital transformation they will certainly notice you and you could even start doing something else inside your company. New job without changing company.

So stop thinking what to do, start doing it!

I'm in again #SMCSF #bloggingcontest

I'm in again. The blogging contest organized by the Social Media Club South Florida.

The prize?

The pleasure of blogging every day during a month starting on November 1st.

Gosh!

If I hadn't enough stuff to do....

I'm even considering in using this contest to take part on NaNoWriMo.

You know write a 50.000 words novel during the month of november.

I'm mad if I do.

50.000 words!

I still have some days to decide.

We'll see.

Why are you so mean to me?

I'm always with you. You're with me.

You're my eyes souvenirs. You're my ears  sometimes. I listen to you what you sing to me everyday (almost!).

But you had a... mid-life crisis?

First you lost all the names but kept the numbers.

I have a whole bunch of textos where there's no one but numbers. My friends became numbers. + something

No one knows how come some names came back, others got lost for ever (apparently).

I got used to live with half addressbook, I was planning to get all the others back.

Then the unthinkable happened. Then some freezing moments happenned again last week-end and.... Names have gone again. The few I had recovered are gone again.

Again.

What do I have to do with you temperamental iPhone ????

Any of you out there knows why my iPhone 4 iOS 5.1.1 is doing this to me?

Is it a sign to:

- upgrade to iOS 6?

- upgrade to iPhone 5?

- leave iPhone world? 

*sight

I'm spinning around...

So here I'm again. Still alive and around.

Or alive and kicking as the song says.

Old song. Song for dinosaurs. 35 yo and older dinos.

As I wrote ages ago I'm working on some personal projects. On top of my pro life.

Days are therefore long.

But still not quite.

I started a project and it already died.

Why?

It was a blog which subject was very interesting. But to make it work I'd need help. And for the time being I don't have help. I don't want to need help now.

So exit.

I re-re-re-started another project. About Paris. From inside Paris. Paris from within.

I'm thrilled about it. But I need time. And sometimes inspiration.

Maybe I shouldn't stop thinking that I need this or that and just do it (it's a baseline but it means what it means)..

Let's go.

Challenge: post a post on this other blog once a week. 

Then increase the pace.

Must get things started.

Une nuit avec Edward

Pas n'importe quel Edward! Edward, Hopper.

Je suis l'une des quelques 40-50 milles (ou plus!) personnes qui se sont dépêchées au Grand Palais ce week end, dans la nuit, pour voir l'expo Hopper.

Depuis l'annonce de l'expo je voulais aller la voir, mais j'ai traîné pour acheter les tickets.

Une expo la nuit c'est pas mal, mais il y avait trop de monde (j'ai fait 2h de queue, entrée à 2h30, sortie un peu avant 5h du matin).
La bonne heure est arriver vers 4h30-5h. Il y a très peu de monde qui attend pour rentrer, je pense que c'est plus tranquille pour voir les oeuvres.

J'ai été déçue par la mise en scène, je n'ai pas aimé la couleur des murs, mais ça passe encore. Je pense qu'on aurait pu jouer plus avec la lumière des salles afin de mettre les tableaux en valeur et donner la juste valeur au travail sur la lumière des tableaux de Hopper.
Mais passons.

Je n'ai jamais vu autant d'oeuvres de ce même peintre réunies dans le même endroit. Rien de surprenant pour une expo-retrospective!

Et là, bam! Je suis étonnée par le fait que certains des tableaux montraient des scènes en nous mettant un peu comme des voyeurs. Ses cadres originaux et modernes pour l'époque nous ont mis parfois dans la pièce avec les personnages ou à l'extérieur des fenêtres, et nous donnait le loisir d'observer ces personnes là sans être observés.

Rassurons-nous, son voyeurisme était connu de ses compatriotes et autres amateurs (mateurs?) d'art, Hitchcock s'y est inspiré pour quelques scènes de film.

J'ai découvert ses gravures, j'ai apprécié voir l'évolution de sa peinture, les influences qu'il a eu.
Belle  expo. Bel hommage.

Where have I been since mid-november...

A few weeks ago I lived an intense month as I took part on the #SMCSFBlogOff contest.

It was a rough month, I felt like publishing all day long, all the time, anything. But practically I couldn't blog that often as I didn't and wouldn't have that much interesting stuff to publish . Or the needed time to spend my days posting here.

However there was some positive effect. I mean the fact that I published during 30 days in a row made me feel that I can publish anything if I want to. It made me feel that I could do anything if I really wanted to do.

I took some blogging projects out of the drawer and... started publishing. as simple as that.

I got this first project on rail a couple of week ago. I set up a plain simple blog,  gathered the first informations that I wanted to post and started posting in order to force me to continue gathering information.

It is also helping me to build a new vision of the use of social media and personal branding. Even if these subjects have nothing to do with the main topic of this new blog (beauty, history of Rio de Janeiro and maybe some footbal, I mean soccer for dummies like me).

More to come soon!

I spy Smith m'y little eye....

I noticed a couple of days, weeks ago, that I may have a geeky neighbour.

I wonder if he is working, playing a game or simply twitting or blogging!

He always sits there and stare at his screen....

Maybe HE knows that I blog and he follows me!

If so.... Hi neighbour!

Lire l'amour

Je viens de commencer la lecture du livre Une histoire des romans d'amour de Pierre Lepape.
Je dois être dans une période romantique. Ou plutôt dans une période envie de lire sur les histoires romantiques.
Mais si ça se trouve ce n'est pas si romantique que ça.
Voyons voir. Ou allons le lire.

#SMCSFBlogOff - I'm shocked! Definately!

I just learned that yesterday was the last day of the contest!
I wrote yesterday's post with a feeling I still have one more to go and then... it all had gone!

Amazing.

I can say that I'm proud of myself, I managed to post at least one post a day. A had somedays which I felt like a compulsory blogger with 2 or 3 post in a row (or with a couple of hours between them).

I discovered some nice interesting awesome people. It made me wish go meet everybody in Miami or nearby! Yup, you're guyas are all definately more intersting than Magic Mike.
Ok ok I'll stop talking about him... hehehe.
I know, he'll get old one day and will get all wrinkled his muscles will fall as well as his derrière. 
Hopefully this will happen when I will be far far from tv and movie screens.

Anyway, it happens as I science said it would happen repeating something everyday creates an habit and you will get used to it. Someone told me once that we have to repeat 24 times. I read somewhere that 21 is enough. I repeated - posting posts - 30 times. So I did got used to posting!

I'm glad it has finished though, today I didn't have a special post to publish, nothing serious and even no special #nutspost.

#SMCSFBlogOff - I missed my birthday!!!

Can you believe that this humble blog completed 9 years old!!

My first post was on November 1st 2003.

Oh wow!

I explained here how it all started. And it is still going on.

Please please please Blogger continue upgrading and going upwards so I don't feel like changing platforms. I'm kind of attached to you, you're an old friend!

#SMCSFBlogOff - The more you blog the more you want to blog?

Right or wrong sentence?

I can't say if it is right or wrong or if it works for everyone.

What I can say is that it kind of works for me.

We aren't finished yet we still have a couple of days to go. 

NB1: A question to #SMCSFBlogOff people: when do we finish? On the 7th or on the 8th?? I'd say the 7th so... tomorrow???

So we aren't finished yet but I'm already getting to some conclusions:

- forcing myself to blog here was a good thing it go me on the blog-rails again

- it is very hard to blog everyday but if I did it so far it means that I can blog at least once a week. This blog should never be abandoned again!

- I got used to post in english! My few readers in french will excuse me if from time to time I post in english?

- I decided to launch another blogging project, I'm still thinking of it but this contest opened my appetite

- during this period I tweeted less but as the blogging stuf I could tweet more, couldn't I? It's so easy, 140 signs...

- I definately continued instagramming everyday.

So the more I blogged the more I want to blog.

I don't know about you but I'm feeling like a conqueror from the middle ages! 

The territory I conquered is mine! All mine! 

It's the wicked wide web!!

NB2: The post started right but became a #nutspost didn't it?