Schux

“I have no friends” – A practical hands on social media workshop

Rosie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:12:07 +0000

When: 11th of March, 7 – 9pm at Lewes Werks

Cost: £20 + VAT for cowerkers, £25 + VAT for everyone else

Presented by Rosie Sherry and Emma Wallace

Introduction

A 2 hour hands on and practical guide to using the web.

You’ve signed up to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. You have a website. But what next?

Aimed at individuals and small businesses, this workshop will look at practical things you can do to help you start making friends and connections on the web.

Lets face it, friends are good for business.

Contents

We will look at your websites and your online presence and discuss ideas and ways of becoming social on the web with a strong focus on building and promoting your business. There is no power point presentation. We will be armed with a projector (and laptops if you can bring one) to show you step by step how to make friends

If you would like your own website/situation to be discussed do let us know before hand.

Email questions to rosie[at]schux.com

Blogging with Wordpress whilst using delicious

Rosie — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:19:52 +0000

Some things are made easy with Wordpress.

Unschool.me has been a bit of a side project. Just a blog to capture notes and buzz at the moment.

I had started to collect information on things related to unschool.me on delicious by tagging them with ‘unschool‘. Through an RSS widget they would then update automatically on the right hand column. However, I felt that this information wasn’t being noticed when I think it would be interesting to the visitors of the site.

I came across a nice little Wordpress Plugin called FeedWordpress which aggregates (pulls in) RSS feeds as blog posts. Because I use delicious all the time to tag all the information I was finding I thought it would be ideal to pull in my delicious unschool feed.

So, in a nutshell, my ‘Buzz‘ blog posts on unschool.me are powered by Wordpress and delicious. All it takes from my side is to find a web page I would like to comment on. Tag it (through the delicious Firefox add on). Add a comment if need be. Click Save. It then automatically updates my unschool.me Wordpress site.

Simple, but cool.

Got a business? Need the social web?

Rosie — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:55:16 +0000

Schux are collaborating with Egg Box Marketing to bring a lovely, practical and down to earth series of workshops for using the social web for your own business benefit.

It’s called Doing Business on the Social Web. First event is on the 24th of September at Lewes Werks.

Empty forums are a no-no

Rosie — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:31:30 +0000

There are certain things that should be done before officially launching a community. One of the most basic things is to not launch with a ghost community – ie – where there is no visible activity. This will not give people the confidence to join.

I’m not sure how long Virgin Money Giving has been around, but they have a forum that is completely dead.

There are some simple actions that can be taken here, like:

staff or community managers could start off some conversations to lead by good example
if it’s a paid membership (which it looks like in this case) why not recruit some founding members and give them an incentive to participate – like free access
the forum looks a bit daunting with so many options. Usually it’s best to start with a small amount of forum categories and add to them if there is a need as the community grows
is a forum even necessary at this stage, would something else be more suitable – like a blog?

(Thanks to Steve Bridger)

Flash Mob Testing

Mark — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:09:42 +0000

Finally, an easy way to professionally test your site.

Save time and money with crowd-sourced web testing… get started now!

Software Testing Club

Mark — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:06:47 +0000

The Software Testing Club is a community of professional software testers. Founded in 2007 by Schux it now has over 5,000 members and has become a thriving source of conversation and inspiration.

Old models can come back

Mark — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:55:01 +0000

It’s interesting to read that Dave Eggers is enthusiastic about print making a come back.

As long as newspapers offer less each day- less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos- then they’re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. – gawker

It’s interesting because there is so much for free out there. It has fast become the norm. But how good is free really?

Free almost naturally loses the quality that we once upon a time expected. Everything is rushed. The competition is tough. It’s about being first, not the best. Just like Dave talks about a different experience for printed newspapers. I’d like to see different and better experiences online.

All the things that I desire for aren’t available because everyone seems to be trying to cater for an audience of thousands and millions. I want them to cater for me. Mostly me and perhaps some others

It would be nice if we all knew each other a bit better. Put a face to the avatars, but more importantly know the personality behind these people communicating on the web and to have some kind of trust with them.

Photo credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drb62/2054107736/

Lewes Werks

Rosie — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:47:19 +0000

Lewes Werks is a social and collaborative workspace in Lewes, East Sussex.

Copycats

Mark — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:53:20 +0000

My younger son (aged 4) is such a copycat. He looks up to his older brother (aged 5) in adoration and will often mimic his every word and move.

You may think this copycat syndrome is just for kids. It is clearly not. It’s visible all around the social web.

It’s not a bad thing to adopt what others are doing, but only if it is suitable for your context.

Organisations quickly jump up to create a Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, etc presence. They happily link into them and shout about how ‘socially aware they are with the web’, but upon quick invesitigation there is nothing worth the effort to look into further.

If you create a Twitter account that you widely promote be sure you Tweet.

If you create a YouTube account be sure you have some kind of video to post.

You catch my drift.

You will look worse if you maintain a dead social media account, so why not focus on what you know you can deliver?

Think before you copy

Shepherding Passionate Communities

Rosie — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:47:28 +0000

Heather Champ, Director of Community for Flickr, shares her experiences in shepherding passionate communities at HICK Tech 2008 in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. In this keynote presentation Ms. Champ shows you how Flickr has learned their most valuable lessons: Own it; Don’t wait; Change is hard; Avoid creating super-villains; and Embrace chaos