I made this banner last year (no WAY Discovery would sanction this, I’m sure) but I would like to use it again this year in honor of the week of August 2nd.
What happens on August 2nd?
I <3 Shark Week.
I don’t even know why, either. I barely like TV at all as it is. But Shark Week is something special.
Was thinking about putting the embed code here if anyone is interested in grabbing that graphic. Should I?
Ok, ordinarily I sadly don’t join in the fun of blogger group activities (notice I’ve never joined a Carnival or a Blog Swap – which I love to read, incidentally). I just have a feeling that considering the industry in which I work, I should keep this net identity with cards held close.
But LiLu‘s little TMI Thursday game is actually a perfect vehicle for the story that’s been percolating in my head for a while.
Blahblahexcusesblahblah let’s get to it already!
Ok, then!
My last roommate was a porn star.
No, seriously. She was signed with Vivid Entertainment Group and no, I’m not going to link you to her.
No, I am not a father yet. Thank goodness. That would come as a shock to both you and me.
One of my coworkers just recently had an adorable baby boy, and while writing the congratulatory email, I instinctively greeted the child like I would in real life. In person, I’m inclined to say, “Why, hello, little guy! How are you liking earth?” (note: I like to talk to children like I talk to adults. I don’t use baby voices no matter how cute the kid because I don’t want to come off as condescending. Kids probably don’t sense that, but you never know, kids are smarter than you think.) But my life on the internet is starting to show evidence of taking over my subconscious, and during the writing of the congratulatory email, I almost used “@” to convey talking directly to the baby. This habit isn’t always exclusive to Twitter, either, because I use @’s to draw attention to different people in an email thread addressed to multiple users.
I just kind of assumed that the baby was another user on the email thread, and had to correct myself.
So the point of this leads to my new question for those of you who already are or might eventually become parents of children in the future:
Is it a parents’ responsibility to reserve an email address for their kid?
Think about it. After the child gets tired of their username they use on, say, Xbox LIVE, they’ll probably want to use a legitimate email address for interaction with the real world relationships personal and professional alike, using the firstname.surname@gmail.com format (or maybe your baby will be a Yahoo! user, who knows?). It might be a good measure to squat on that address for them lest someone else do it first. Plus, life on the internet is already integral to modern living, and it might behoove you to take an initiative to involve yourself in what is indisputably going to be a part of your child’s world.
Or maybe an email address is the responsibility everyone has to take upon themselves.
I dunno, I’m not a parent.
What does everyone think?
The Kick Start
I drank too much coffee this morning.
But this turned out to be a good thing;
it’s better to rifle through
lots of initial Monday morning work with the jitters
than to have to deal with the work
with the post-lunch food coma.
-nicopolitan
Had my paternal grandmother been alive today, she’d be 96. I still keep her in mind since I named my acoustic guitar after her. The name “Lillian” is written in my best cursive on the back of the guitar’s headstock to remind me when I play guitar and sing along, that I should mean it.
I’m also pretty sure it’s thanks to her that I have a thing for Cymbidium Orchids.
Happy birthday, Mama Ling.
You’re still missed.
Sometimes when I am doing field research at work, I stumble upon some items of real curiosity.
Take, for instance, the site MyBookFace.net. No, I will not be so kind as to link that because I believe this site has ‘fail’ scrawled all over its 60% quality JPGs. At first glance, it seems this domain is striving to ride on the coattails of its namesakes, MySpace and Facebook, but the only thing it is likely doing is reeling in those that are unfamiliar with social networking. Even the name is a glaring attempt to obscure social networking for the uninitiated.
Don’t even get me started on the aesthetics and lack thereof. But nice logo. [/sarcasm]
If you’re curious about who exactly are the social networking uninitiated, you can check out the Quantcast data revealing that affluent, educated males over the age of 35, with children, are the target market.
I would peg “parents” as their target suckers, but we all know that mombloggers are some of the most net savvy people in the web. And it isn’t unheard of for business professionals of the target age demographic to head over to LinkedIn, female and male alike.
Essentially, their real target demographics are probably those who are just slightly out of touch — or at least out of touch enough so that they’d butcher the household names of MySpace and/or Facebook and go to this network.
It claims to be the “friendly” alternative to MySpace and Facebook, but really isn’t the gripe we usually have about MySpace and Facebook is that they’re exorbitantly friendly? They are social networks, after all.
Ok, so maybe mybookface can be friendlier than the two social networking behemoths. I am yet to find evidence to support this, but I’ll give them the benefit if of the doubt.
What I would really like to draw to your attention is the main splash page graphic:
Okay. mybookface is trying to tell us 3 things:
…
Did anyone *facepalm* yet?
Why, yes, @erinichristine, I believe that you are!
A lot of people I know do, in fact, have the hustle to figure out this kind of lifestyle. But at the same time, a lot of us sometimes get so caught up in doing the actual work that we forget some of the main tenets to make sure the process moves smoothly. Yes, even those of us who have been doing this for years. But when you explain the “formal” steps to the uninitiated, you remember, “Oh, yeah! That’s how it goes.” And it’s always good to get a reminder.
The initial task is a simple one: network, network, network. Don’t delete ANY numbers you might save on your phone. Be socially extroverted. Respond to emails. Your portfolio doesn’t have to be done (though it does help), you just have to know what you can do.
That leads to the next sub-step: Capabilities. Once you have someone interested in what you can do, be sure to explain to them what is possible from your end of things. You don’t want a client requesting something way outlandish from the get-go, even though that’s what you’re going to shoot for (you overachiever, you). If they really need something you can’t do like Flash, consider cutting one of your buddies in on the deal. Don’t say “that’s not in my skillset”, just say “yes, I know someone that can do that.” Because chances are, you do.
Once you and your respective clients know what are your services to be rendered, you need to send everyone something that is called an SOW. A Statement of Work contains the timelines, milestones, services, overhead, and bottom-line costs to hire you for the job. These sometimes go through a number of drafts before everyone settles on an agreement, but it’s important to be meticulous about this because this is essentially your contract, and yes, that includes signatures.
As a useful note, an SOW guarantees that you don’t have to do anymore than you are asked to do. Being asked to do something outside of the scope of work warrants an additional fee. I know from experience that sometimes I take this for granted and have been ROYALLY SCREWED for not calculating for additional work in the first place. So, please, do this before setting to any kind of work.
And now… to work!
Do what you promised to do, but when you report in, try to translate what you’re doing into plain English for your client. Use metaphors and analogies to explain technical processes, use figures and graphs where applicable. They don’t need to know the step-by-step process, they just need to know what they’re spending their money on.
Ok! All done? All the revisions are cleared the approval process?
Ok. It’s time to get paid.
I hope you logged your hours because now is the time you tabulate them. If you negotiated a flat fee per service (which is my style, personally) then you need to match those services against timelines. If you agreed on an hourly / daily rate, you’ll need to tabulate all of this.
It’s also polite to include a postmortem report for everything that happened during the execution period, and the results that ensued.
“But what does invoicing look like?” Well, I’m not going to send you one of my own invoices, but you might want to consider using a free invoicing service like Curdbee or Billing Boss if you’re unsure about how to invoice properly. Ah, to live in the future.
“How much should I charge?” It’s different for everyone, really. Chat up your fellow freelancers and see what they charge for their services. Don’t undercut them too harshly because you don’t want to be working for peanuts. Unless you’ve found some sort of peanut-barter-black-market. (Heh. “Peanut barter”…)
“How do I find new business contacts?” …Oh, I dunno, the internet is a good place to start. But also, and not surprisingly, going out for drinks for various reasons. You don’t even need to drink, you just have to be social. You’d be surprised how many people have pet projects swimming around in their heads. These ideas gain buoyancy from alcohol, for some reason. It’s either that, or my industry is saturated with very industrious drunks.
Small Favors
You’re reading this.
At least your internet is working, right?
-nicopolitan
I had a coworker who used to joke around with me about Asian and Pacific Islander culture because those were our respective roots. Since our jobs involved internet research, this naturally lead to accruing a wealth of great blogs from and about said cultures.
And then we found this site. So, like any good netizen, I decided to accept the challenge. It turned out to actually be kinda fun!
Here goes nothing:
Every once in a while, we are told that to focus is lend to moving forward.
In the onset of July 14th, 2009, I am going to attempt to do this in order to learn something. Let’s see if it works.
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