But is Twitter Useful?

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One of the people that Gorgeous and I connected with in Chicago this past weekend was Christine Kane. It probably didn’t hurt that the three of us were all seated in close proximity to a very wild and obnoxious three year old on the same flight into Chicago. That got diverted to Columbus for more fuel after holding too long for bad weather.

But that’s a story for another time.

I also had the pleasure of sitting at the same table as Christine at the conference. As speakers like Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, and Terry Starbucker were talking about the people in the room who were using Twitter to communicate with one another (and with folks half a world away) during the conference, Christine would ask the rest of us questions on the side.

They ranged from the basic to the technical, for example…

• What’s the point? to interact with others
• Why would you bother? because I like people
• Can everyone see what I tweet @ someone? Oh, yeah
• How does the direct message thing work? “d your_friends_twittername” and they’ll get a private message

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Down to Business at SOBCon08

Gorgeous and I spent this past weekend at SOBCon in Chicago. It was a tremendous weekend for the both of us.

This years event kept some of the best parts of SOBCon07 and yet was quite different in at least one key element, that of focus. Last year SOBCon was all about community with a little bit of marketing thrown in.

All About Business

This time around SOBCon was all about business. Sure there were several bloggers in the room whose focus was not on making money with their blogs. But having just made the break from corporate life to the entrepreneur world this year, Gorgeous and I were definately focused on business while we were in Chicago.

And we weren’t disappointed.

Still Made Connections

Just like last year we made new connections which will likely produce valuable exchanges to help mutually propel our various businesses forward.

It is interesting to me that the people I made strongest connection with were not the same folks that I set out to get to know. Because I set out with that intentionality I still met the people and started the relationships that may potentially be catalysts for growth in my business. Those connections were just with unexpected people is all. Read more

Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!

Have you ever felt the need to get away from it all?

Have you ever had to chose whether to take some time away or keep pressing on?

Which way did you decide to go?

What happened as a result?

HighCallingBlogs Group Writing Project

This month we’re hosting the HighCallingBlogs Group Writing project here at SuccessCREEations, Inc.

We’re going to take the next few weeks to share some of we learned learned from a time when we decided to get away for a while, or from a time when we decided not to get away (but maybe we thought we should have).

Win Your Own Retreat

Laity Lodge is sponsoring the Group Writing Project this month. That means they are doing 3 things for those who decide to enter a blog post.

• 50% OFF FOR YOU - selected retreats for any participant in this group writing project. (You don’t have to be a member of HighCallingBlogs.com, but we hope you’ll consider it.)
• 25% OFF FOR YOUR READERS – Anyone who reads your blog can register for 25% off. When they call to register, they need to ask for “the HighCallingBlogs.com discount.”
• A FREE RETREAT - On Friday, May 9, at noon Central Time, we’re going to put the names of this Group Writing Project’s participants in a hat and draw one out. The winner gets a free retreat for a married couple or an individual. Marcus will announce the winners that afternoon

How to Enter

To enter for your chance to win, or to just participate in the writing project you need to do three things:

1. Write up a blog post on the importance of retreat
2. Link to the sponsor, Laity Lodge
3. And also link to this post so I know to include your post in the list of submissions that will be accumulating right here.

We’ll also post a link to your post over at HighCallingBlogs.com!

Update: Mark pulled a winner for the free retreat! Check out the video to see who one. But just because the winner has been chosen doesn’t mean that the project is over because we can all still be winners. Remember you can still get 50% off of selected retreats just for submitting your blog post to this group writing project and your readers can still get 25% off. So if you’re like me and haven’t submitted a post yet, there’s still time to be included. Keep writing!

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Brand New Design

If you are a feed subscriber you might not know. But we’ve just launched the redesigned SuccessCREEations, Inc. website. There are still some bugs to work out yet and now I’m in the same boat that my clients often find themselves, a new website just begging to be filled with content.

Upgrading WordPress

The first thing I did was to bring the back end up to date with the latest version of WordPress. SuccessCREEations, Inc. had long been in that classic situation where, “the cobbler’s kids got no shoes.” There was so much work to do for clients and their sites that our own site was, ahem, a few versions back.

I gotta say that the completely redesigned WordPress 2.5 dashboard is very nice to work with. It is different, for sure, and takes a bit of getting used to.

But it took far less time to adjust than I expected, especially considering that I’ve been using WordPress for going on three years now. In fact, after spending less than a day with the new version I went back to the old version and was already forgetting where things were in the old menus.

The new dashboard design is that much better.

Screen Shots

The most obvious change is of course the new look. For you feed readers, here’s a screen shot of the new design.
I had developed the new SuccessCREEations, Inc. logo a while back with the idea of using it as a starting point for a new look to the site. I pulled the gold in the compass rose points and the blue/purple from the logo and used those colors as the starting point. Read more