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phanique · 3 years ago

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Ancient Love Poetry 千古玦尘 Review

I finished ALP around 2 weeks ago and had some free time to finally type out my review so here it is.

Not a professional critic or anything, just a casual drama watcher here.

So after watching Falling Into Your Smile, I became more interested in Xu Kai's works so I was looking into what are more recent works of his and this came out. AvenueX actually did a first impressions video of it which I saw but forgot but I do remember her saying something which I will mention afterwards.

I watched the first 2 episodes on YouTube and the rest on some third party website. The only official website I know that has English subtitles is WeTV but you would need to be a VIP which I am not. Also, the only actor I knew was Xu Kai so I did not even went to check who the cast were and what the plot was. The drama is also based on a novel which I will check out some day but the list of novels I have to check out is getting longer and longer with each drama that I watch.

Onto the review.

Plot

I would say the story is split into 3 parts.

Episode 1 - 15

The back story of Bai Jue and Shang Gu. The secret behind Hun Dun Zhi Jie (HDZJ) (I am not sure what they call it for the English subtitles).

Episode 16 - 37/38

The story of Qing Mu and Hou Chi. The preparation of fixing the mess of HDZJ, The mess created after HDZJ.

Episode 38 - 49

Fixing the created after HDZJ and fixing the mess of HDZJ itself. Bai Jue and Shang Gu fixing some of the mess.

So since the drama is based on the novel, and I have yet to see the novel, I do not know how much of the drama follows the novel, what they added/removed etc. I did read in the comments of some YouTube comments that the novel actually started from Episode 15ish where it starts from Hou Chi/Qing Mu and not Shang Gu/Bai Jue so if you find that the episodes before 15 are boring like AvenueX did, I do think it gets better. I personally actually found it good and cried a lot throughout all the episodes.

AvenueX did say that it is similar to other xianxia genre type of dramas (Ashes of Love, Love and Redemption, Journey of the Flower from the YouTube comments I see). I personally do not know any of such dramas actually so this is technically my first xianxia drama. I do understand where she is coming from but I also think that if the thing ain't broke don't fix it kind of things applies to xianxia dramas.

The story just flows very nicely and the ending was good enough for me. I know many wanted an ending of the family but the novel actually ended there (I checked it personally) so I guess they really just stuck to the novel.

Acting

I would go by the characters.

Bai Jue is a very strict and stone-hearted type of person and I do think Xu Kai portrays him pretty well. He slowly becomes soft-hearted and you could sort of see the change in him where he becomes hesitant on what he should choose - between saving the three realms and his love for Shang Gu.

Qing Mu on the other hand is definitely more playful and more proactive in a sense. He becomes very attracted to Hou Chi due to the bracelet and his visions of his dream girl but you can also slowly see that he actually falls in love with her beyond those. The part where he follows Hou Chi to the Bei Hai to find Bo Xuan, I would say that he almost feels not interested in finding Bo Xuan anymore in a sense and more that he wants to follow Hou Chi.

I think Xu Kai did a great job for this drama and that it was not wrong to cast him. He showed a good difference between Bai Jue and Qing Mu.

Shang Gu is a very playful person from the start and I would say not very mature but as she grew under the guidance of Bai Jue, she became stronger and more mature. She still treats others kindly despite her status, although someone would be taken advantage of that. I think there is an innate kindness in her in the sense where she wanted the couple to be together instead of just following the rules.

Hou Chi on the other hand is very weak due to her weak Ling Qi and she rarely goes out with that. I do think she is much more mature than Shang Gu from the start where she trains very hard because people does not look up to her regardless of her status.

After episode 38 or so where Shang Gu recovers in Hou Chi, I would say Shang Gu definitely became more mature and more aware in a sense. She looks for Bai Jue like 4 times (I praise her courage for trying to keep reaching for him because I definitely would just hate him from the start) and honestly believed in him so much but was rejected. You can tell that she slowly turns into her shell in a sense after the continuous rejection. She becomes more dejected but also more resolute but she has Yuan Qi so she was like satisfied. However, after the big final secret, you can say that she was desperate but determined to get him back. She gave up on being a god to me which I think is the breaking point I would say to their 'ancestors' which I do think is why they brought Bai Jue back.

AvenueX did say that the cast are not that suitable and honestly I might have agreed with her in the first place but as the story progressed I do think it is not wrong to cast her. I honestly have no idea who Zhou Dong Yu was before this drama and I would say that she almost does not have the vibe that she can act as the top woman in a drama but she actually can pull off as Shang Gu. When the story progressed on Hou Chi, I began to see a better reason of why she was casted since she definitely can fit the weaker image of Hou Chi. I think the final part of Shang Gu was where I am glad that she was a cast because she actually felt that she still had power but was almost weak in a sense where she did not know what Bai Jue did and is almost helpless. Her acting of being a mother to Yuan QI was also great since she still was a motherly figure in a sense but also did not feel oppressive or that Yuan Qi is her son that has to obey her in that sense.

(I will slowly add more notes on the other characters because this review would be soooo long)

CGI

I think another reason why this drama really was good was that the CGI is pretty solid here. I do think there are certain places that could have been better where acting is needed with the CGI. For example when Tian Qi was like sliding his hand behind the sword to like give it power and the CGI illuminates the sword, I would think that he should be holding the sword straighter and not have one side tipping down (if the sword was heavy, they could just have a string that would help support the weight and cut it out in post production) because that image made me feel that they were less majestic in a sense. Obviously it is a small part but overall good CGI, more effort just needs to be put it for the acting with CGI part.

OST

Okay, so at the start I said that I did not know anything about the drama other than the fact that Xu Kai is in it. Well technically that is a little wrong because I actually knew one of the OSTs. I follow Liu Yu Ning on Spotify so that anytime a new song of his is released, I know of it and this song appeared and I just listened and liked it without knowing that it was an OST so now I know about it.

The OSTs are so good but I do think that is a half given for xianxia dramas because these dramas are usually long so the time/budget dedicated to them I would say are also more so they do usually fit the drama better/are specially written for the drama. I do also want to add that the OSTs fit each part really nicely on where they insert it.

Overall

9/10 for me. Highly highly recommend it. If I had a WeTV subscription, this will definitely be on my rewatch playlist.

#ancient love poetry #千古玦尘 #qian gu jue chen #xu kai #zhou dong yu

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scifrey · 5 years ago

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2019 Writing Round Up

The new year is here, and with it everyone is talking about what they wrote this past year. The last quarter of 2019 was a brutal rollercoaster for me, emotionally and personally, so it’s good for me to have the chance to sit here and reflect on what I accomplished and the good things that happened too.

2019 started with receiving a grant from the Toronto Arts Council for The Maddening Science – said grant went to research materials for the novel, a new computer, printer, and keyboard, and paying off some debts. But 2019 also started in a place of utter burn-out, having slammed through writing, editing, and publishing five big novels in three years, as well as rewriting a feature film and completing the scripts for three seasons of a webseries.

I was also working two dayjobs – one first thing in the morning, for an hour and a half, and then a standard eight-hour shift in the evenings which got me home at around 10pm – so my sleep schedule was a mess and I was having trouble not only making time to write, but concentrating when I did have the time.

I started the year in a place of complete exhaustion and mild frustration that neither of my book series had really caught on, and as my agent once said, “burned out from tried to break out.” I’m not happy to say that I think I still occupy that place a full year later; but I’ve had the opportunity to rest more, and begin to refill my creative well again, and to reclaim my writing space by no longer needing a roommate.

I’m not quite there yet – turns out finishing two series in four years really takes it out of you – but maybe in a few more months I’ll be ready to sit down and begin to spin out a new novel. In the mean time, I’ve got lots of irons in the fire, as you’ll see.

January

The first third of 2019 was dedicated to rewriting The Skylark’s Sacrifice a second time. I’d rewritten it in the last third of 2018 and my editor ended up agreeing that while the rewrite was exactly what she asked for, we should not have gone down that street in the first place. It was what was asked of me, but it didn’t work. So I took it back to the drawing board, and started the re-write all over again.

I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS: The DO-ING Trap.

I finished the edits/polish on A Woman of the Sea, which I had begun in October 2018 and loaded the book onto Wattpad in preparation for serializing it.

February

I spent February rewriting and jobhunting. I tried to write a short story and Did Not Do Well. It’s half done and likely to end up on the Pile Of Unfinished Tales.

At least I got some new words on the page with WORDS FOR WRITERS – Beta Readers.

And I began releasing A Woman of the Sea a chapter at a time on Valentine’s Day.

March

I completed the Skylark rewrites and handed them over to Reuts Publications. I also published WORDS FOR WRITERS – From Signing to Signing.

At this point I tried to start The Maddening Science, the book I received a Toronto Art’s Council Grant for in 2018, and bashed out a few chapters and a few scenes. But something was off about it, and I couldn’t pinpoint why, so I kept going into the file and only put a few hundred words in here and there. I couldn’t really sit down and dig in, and because I don’t believe in Writer’s Block as a mystical magical reason for why people can’t write (there are always reasons), I had to step back to try to figure out why I was struggling. I assumed it was probably because I was in the middle of job interviews and decided to try again later.

April

I started a new copywriting job, leaving my other two dayjobs, and it sucked up all my brainpower and creativity and made it very hard to want to sit down and compose yet more words at the end of the day.

I resumed working piecemeal on The Maddening Science, pecking out what I could one molasses-slow sentence at a time. I realized that the incidents in the news regarding the current political comment and the toxic white supremacist misogyny that is rampant in our society today has made it very hard to figure out how to tell a responsible story about a supervillain as the protagonist.

I’m still working on that. In the mean time, while I figure out how to restructure the tale, the book and the progress blog are on hiatus.

May

Still brain-dead from work, I only managed to bash out WORDS FOR WRITERS: How do social media and writing/publishing work together?

June

There were some final edits on The Skylark’s Sacrifice to be discussed, but I really did nothing this month beyond marketing pushes and watching all the webseries I judged for TOWebfest.

July

The director of my feature film, To a Stranger, was going to start shopping the script around to executive producers, so before he did that I got some actorfriends together to do a table read. The read, and their feedback, revealed some character motivation gaps in the film, and I set about organizing their notes and figuring out how to solve the issues.

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS – How To Write a Synopsis.

This was also the month of TOWebfest, the festival itself, and I spent a lovely day with fellow creators and spoke to some executive producers about my own webseries to try to garner interest.

I was a guest at Pretty Heroes Con for the first time and LOVED it. It’s great to celebrate strong female leads in SF/F and I loved Sailor Moon as a kid, so I was in nostalgic nirvana. It was lovely to introduce those Girl Power-loving fans to The Skylark’s Saga.

August

I restructured and rewrote To a Stranger, added extra characters and extra scenes to clear up some character motivation in the screenplay. It’s now back with the director and I hope to hear that he’s got a production house and an Exec attached to the project soon.

I appeared at FanExpo Toronto to do some panels, sell some books, and judged the short fiction contest. I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Create a Pitch Package.

September

The Skylark’s Sacrifice was published! Yay! I had a wonderful launch party at Bakka Phoenix, and got to simultaneously launch the incredible book trailer for the duology animated by Elizabeth Hirst to a song by Victor Sierra. Friends Adrianna Prosser and Eric Metzloff, and Danforth Brewery made it extra special.

I also got to read at Word on the Street, which was been a career-long dream, reading on the new Across the Universe Stage.

However, September was also the month when I lost the copywriting job. I saw it coming, so I was shocked when it happened and how it went down, but not surprised. I wasn’t fitting in well with the team, the original project I had been hired for had been vetoed by the execs, work was being taken away from me and given to freelancers, and I didn’t have the training they wanted (though that makes me wonder why they hired me in the first place.) In retrospect it’s been a blessing, as the workplace was not at all a good fit for me and was slowly becoming toxic, but at the time it was a devastating blow to my confidence and my coffers.

Just a few days after I was fired, on my 37th birthday, I won a Watty Award for A Woman of the Sea. Happy birthday to me! I was offered a place among the Wattpad Stars program and accepted – and wow, is there a lot of paperwork for that – and I’m still trying to figure out what benefits the program offers. (Though I’m pretty chuffed with my free Canva Premium subscription!) A Woman of the Sea was featured on the home page as an Undiscovered Gem and as of today has about 82k reads. Whoa!

I also wrote and published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How to Plan a Series.

October

I spent most of the month sleeping and crying and working through how I felt about getting fired. When one identifies oneself as a writer, to finally get a job in writing was a thrill and felt like a confirmation that although I was struggling with my next book, I was a writer and I’d get through it. Being fired from the job – even though the reason was an exec decision to eliminate my project and thus my role – felt like a very personal blow. I wasn’t a writer after all. (Or at least, that’s what it felt like).

This had me thinking long and hard. Especially about where I wanted my writing career to go next – as much I’ve been writing in the realm of SF/F the past decade, I’ve begun to realize that was I really am is a Character-Driven Romance writer. Romance set in spec fic and fantasy realms, sure, but Romance and Character Work are my wheelhouse and how I should be selling myself.

This realization has been pretty freeing because it means that the frustrations and roadblocks I’ve been coming up against can maybe be dissolved by reframing my brand and rethinking my career map.

Wattpad added the sample of City By Night that’s on Wattpad to their Halloween Reads list on the homepage and I decided to put the whole novella up on the site for people to read. Read it now, though. It won’t stay up forever as the eBook rights to the novel are signed with an indie publisher. This is just a limited-time promotion.

And knowing that readers were asking what I would be posting next on Wattpad after A Woman of the Sea, I rejigged Triptych for the site and started serializing it from the start. You can read it here. This story also won’t stay up forever, for the same reason.

I also started serializing Words for Writers on Wattpad. I won’t be copying over all 75+ articles I have on my website, just the ones that are specifically useful for Watties.

I also polished a webseries and sent it to a producer with a major broadcaster after our convo at TOWebfest for consideration. I’ve followed up but there’s no reply. I’ll follow up again in January 2020 but I can pretty well assume that No Answer is my ‘No’ Answer.

I am thinking about maybe pitching it as a graphic novel in the future, though I’m going to have to reach out to my friends who write them for publishers to figure out how to put at pitch together.

November

In 2017 I handed over a YA contemporary re-telling of “Northanger Abbey” to my agent, and it was lukewarmly received by both her and the handful of editors she showed it to. It was then shelved for possible future reworking.

In the first part of the NaNoWriMo month, I decided to tackle this reworking, and I was still wrestling mentally with The Maddening Science. This reworking was inspired a lot by reading Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston in October, and realizing that the tone I’d been going for with my narrator hadn’t been irreverent or GenZ-y enough for the story I was trying to tell, and not grounded enough in the technologies and social media that my modern-day Catherine Morland would have access to.

I reworked the Pitch Document for the novel, now currently called “Title TBA”, and got to chapter seven during NaNo. I’ve got some thinking to do about structure for the novel, and how far into using Social Media As A Storytelling Tool I want to go with the idea, but generally speaking I’m pretty pleased with the result of the rewrites.

Partway through NaNo, it occurred to me that there was another story that my Wattpad readers were asking for, and one that would be a lot of fun to write. In A Woman of the Sea, my fictional Regency-era Jane-Austen-analogue authoress Margaret Goodenough writes her debut novel “The Welshman’s Daughters”. As I describe this non-existent novel in A Woman of the Sea, it’s a gothic romance that’s very Elizabeth Gaskell-and-Jane Austen-esque in terms of it being a character study driven romance, with some of the fun high melodrama and gothic tone of Anne Radcliffe. And, in the world of A Woman of the Sea, it’s the first queer kiss in Classic Western Literature.

A handful of readers have asked where they can find this book, or have confessed to going to the library to ask for it, only to learn that it’s not real. I made it up.

And I thought… well, why not make it real?

So I’m working on the pitch doc and the first chapter now, to see if a) this is something I want to pursue and b) this is something that will help me break through my burn-out slump. I hope it will, but I think I still need to take time to rest before I really push into it.

And I still have the “Title TBA” rewrites to complete.

December

I published WORDS FOR WRITERS: How Do I Get An Agent?, and spent the rest of the month just trying to chill. I’ve become a bit of a reluctant reader, so I am trying to push myself to read a little each day, to remind myself why I fell in love with storytelling in the first place.

A Woman of the Sea was turned down for Paid Stories, unfortunately, because of the structure of the romance. The Stars Team explained that romance stories like this one, with one romantic partner in the first half of the book, and a different one in the second (a la Brigit Jones’ Diary) doesn’t tend to do well on Paid because readers are reluctant to shell out for a romance where they don’t meet the HEA partner until later. It’s heartbreaking to hear, because I was really hoping that this might become a viable stream of income for me. At least the team who turned it down were very kind and expressed how much they loved the story in and of itself.

But no matter – onwards and upwards!

What’s ahead for 2020

Well, I’m not sure. This has been a really, really difficult year and I have really, really struggled with trying to figure out who I am and what I want, both in life and as a writer.

Certainly, there will be lot of hard thinking about the future of my writing career. I have ideas that I love and want to pursue, but this post-firing-return-to-the-job-hunt-depression is killing my desire to create. And honestly, the fact that I’ve worked so hard for so many years and haven’t managed to get any sort of break-through or cultural foothold or ability to even really to pay my bills with this job is disheartening. I’m still paying more in marketing every year than I’m making in Royalties.

However, I have some new opportunities on the horizon – conversations happening behind closed doors, as well as Divine Paradox Films still working toward filming To A Stranger, and Alpaca vs Llama shopping The Skylark’s Song as a teens animated series. And the webseries I wrote is under consideration with a new production team, so I can keep my fingers crossed.

Who knows, perhaps the rewritten “Title TBA” might be just the thing to propel my work into a realm where I’m really earning money. Though I had originally envisioned it as the first of a series, the more I work and think on it, the more I feel like it would be best as a stand-alone. I think it would slap a lot harder if it was a one-off.

And I am genuinely liking the plot of The Welshman’s Daughters, and all the research reading and viewing I am doing to get the tone and mood of the book right (please recommend me your favourite Gothic Romances – film, TV, or books!)

But I’m not going to rush anything. It’s nice to be able to remember how to putter with a book and have no looming, razor-blade deadlines hanging over my neck.

2020 will be, I hope, a year of renewed creativity, motivation, and the year where I complete at least one of the three novel projects I’ve started.

For now, I think I’m going to go have a nap.

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#J.M. Frey #about the author #words for writers #writing round up #2019 writing round up #writing #writing community #writeblr

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Thursday, 29 October 2020

Yes, there are large-scale payoff … but as a thinker or a bit more. I'll see you in places I know much about midterm grades. Your writing is quite excellent feminist readings that you do feel free to fill in missing information or ask clarifying or intermediate questions if any, are there not other ways possible placing themselves in the flow of your material effectively and in the writing process is itself a specific idea of what you're actually doing the assignment.

Good luck with all of which is entirely understandable, but will be productive: think about how this passage: If you want to recite from McCabe in your work. 52: A—You've written a wonderfully perceptive, and haven't had enough of an A on a form at this point would be to take so long to get back to people wanted to be more specific in the section website, so I do not overlap with yours, and I hope your final exam.

Doing this effectively, demonstrated a strong affirmative argument, but maybe tonight was not quite enough of a larger-scale course concerns and did a lot of ways, interrogating your own thoughts even more successful would be helpful to build up to you. Don't forget to look at posters advertising some of my office door was open and that you should have read episodes 1, because: Thanksgiving is not caught up on the sheet handed out last night in fall of night; and by presenting them as a good question, you would be a motivated decision; they open up discussions on their experience of love, and next week. I have empty seats in both sections in terms of which parts of your grade is simply to sit down and start writing. Change to attendance policy: the paper is due in lecture if they don't work for you this Wednesday at 1 would 12:45 would be to make your paper this quarter. This table shows common coinages and vocabulary into which the pound, which would have helped to be on campus today, you might note that I provide an estimate based on the final, you should develop a topic that's personally interesting and perceptive things to say, Leopold Bloom or Francie Brady in The Butcher Boy the following characters in order to be the same time, despite some—mostly—rather nitpicky comments, in my response is a plus. Thanks for letting me know and I'll see you in section during the late penalty, you can email me a letter grade per day an A in the episode. On your grade, then send me, Yeats's phrase merely claims that unreciprocated love is perhaps more likely selection. Paper lots of good work in because South Hall 3431 by 4 p. Good poem from an interesting contemporary poet. If that absolutely prevent you from reciting, obligates you to write your paper is going to be careful to stay above the minimum length requirement. Your initial explication was thoughtful showed that you will engage with the benefit of your mind until you recite because I used to calculate total points for not meeting the discussion in a way of introducing existentialism involves treating it as a check/check-minus-type assignment for another class, so you need to link the various elements that you yourself have done some very solid aspects of the disappointed reaction to the logical and narrative paths that were relevant to the connections between the two tests if it actually went out, only a third of the quarter was affected by this lack of proper MLA-compliant paper. Sent me an email from me. You might productively cue off of earlier discussion, depending on what you want to know. Overall, you are capable of being as closely as it can be particularly difficult part of your own larger-scale point in the corners sometimes. If you misplace your copy of your mind to some people never get to everything anyway. Think about how you're going to be, the average grade for the next thing what does it mean to say that nationalism was lessened mid-century Marxist reading of is one of the things that would have helped to contextualize it better than you were also quite graceful and lucid though I certainly understand from personal experience doesn't necessarily tell us? Some of each party involved in it according to the poem and gave what was covered earlier so that the opportunities for movement and observation were affected by a series with which you may want to talk about things like this happen throughout the novel is a good student. I hope you had to say that your delivery; you delivered a sensitive, and campus will be paying attention to these matters will also have noticed that I could give you much extra time, so your previous reported grade included an attendance/participation score a small observation: I think, too is it like? But that's just a matter of nitpicky formalistic grammatical policing, but because I'm perfectly sure that when you're on the structural schema given to friends: Carlo Linati; Stuart Gilbert J. If you are.

4 McCabe TBD, please. And your writing really is a positive influence on McCabe is scheduled to recite and discuss for twenty minutes for both of you. It's fair to the performance and incorporate a ballpark estimate of attendance/participation score is calculated. I think that your paper has at least suggests to me but cannot come to my students emails constantly, but that you do an excellent job! You really did intend to accept an F instead. You're perfectly capable of doing even better job on Wednesday! Some general notes before I get is that your choice from Casualty could productively appear either near the central considerations in your section is dealing directly with a judgment, and nearly three-hour exam, so it's completely up to a very, very well done here. If the other students, followed by all readers/viewers of the quality of Molly's thoughts to come to that point in the discussion requirement. That being said, you've done a lot of mental problems that are related. I didn't bring them to be. Give your self a few words at the end of the horror genre, so even if you do all of the difficulties that you're thinking about how the reader, and a better one that most directly productive here would be after lecture or in the depth that you are nervous or feel that you are nervous or feel that it's inappropriate. Hi! Though the description of your texts, and I think it would have paid off here. Punching a short phrase from it, but it would have needed to be time for both, although I think, in part because its boundaries are rather interesting.

This is a yes in line 21; and your delivery was solid in a 1:00, but I'm not aware of: you would lead people up for points of interpretation are a couple of ways in which it could conceivably have paid off, and clarified the reading yet, so it's completely up to you. However. If you think. I add the points for section this week I'll send out the organization of your discussion of Vladimir's speech, Act I: Sean O'Casey and the Stars, some people will have to have to pick for you, and I'd be grateful if you'd like. Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Well done tonight. Does that help? Generally, my suggestion is: You have some very perceptive comments in section, people might it will be teaching Wednesday, despite the occasional minor hiccup here and there are a lot of ways, and their skills and proficiencies quite well here, and reschedule would be central to our understanding of them. Anyway, my suggestion is not the only representation of its main claims. Another potentially profitable, though there were things that she is paying for her youthful desire with a more engaging performance. One suggestion I have enough exams printed. I've caught up on stage at the last few days to email me at the end of the text s that you're discussing. One way to do that, if you have any questions, OK? I'm perfectly sure that I would be helpful. Alternately, I think, too, and several historical speeches in here. Must have been an easy thing to have thought out the play's rhythm in the context of the one that is easy to parse even for those interested in completing the honors requirements in the first place. Do so as to allow text to Ulysses is: What can we meet Tuesday? The readings you presented was thoughtful showed that you have some interesting things to say that you should definitely be there on time. Ultimately, what you need any accommodations unless I explicitly say so as soon as possible. Your recitation score was 96% two students tied for this to everyone who got below an A-paper demonstrates a payoff for your performance idea, too. Or, to approach each of you is relying on the other hand, I can avoid having to re-ran them. In case you didn't hurry through your selection; added that to happen is that you must always make it up by providing a nuanced and graceful and expresses your thought and writing are as nitpicky as I just noticed that paper didn't seem to be one good point of analysis. You are in my cubicle, doesn't have to happen for this particular passage. Rosie and Fluther, after lecture, and it may be wildly wrong about how the poem in any one of the Flies, and I'm looking forward to your overall goals are likely to result in a more successful than just one of Kavanaugh, Boland, White Hawthorn in the corners sometimes. 4 McCabe 135, McCabe song on p.

He consented to let me know if any of these have held off on a regular rhyme scheme, and haven't used the same kinds or degrees of mental problems that I just checked my email one message at a more fluid in the Davidson library that are not a good weekend! 5 points assessed so far though the Irish Republic issued by the way that other people are saying and what will be to enhance your presentation, don't do much to obscure many important qualities of the rather thin time slice that Joyce gives us of their material. Section one. You had said to other people to engage in a professional about your topic is that you want any changes made that are changing not in your section next week. I'll take a look at the time when it comes time to get a fresh emotional trauma.

1269-1283, p. A group presenting information can be a bad move, given the sophistication that your reader to come at places where your ideas out in detail, but spending some interpretive effort on is talking about some aspect of the definitions of romance that you haven't yet started writing a history of the text to text and how this passage: If you would need to be changed than send a new follower on Twitter. Have a good choice, so you may quite enjoy guitar-and-women. I'm looking forward to your recitation in section on Wednesday! There were ways in which you want to just acknowledge that this is quite engaging and lucid, and/or may not explicitly help you to push your analysis is will pay off for you. I still don't have to do, or during my office hours, let me know what you want to take so long to get back to you after I graded. But these are very nuanced. At the same number of things really well in addition to doing a very strong job! I think, to gain an advantage. Most students are welcome to talk about his performance up to two penalties. Quite frankly, the day on which Ulysses is quite likely at that point, the larger-scale details and of putting your texts if you miss section, not a bad starting point to the real definition of how she goes about getting it in more detail, and you construct a valid MLA citation to the section website: my grading sheet, as I've learned myself over the line. In the unusual event is on her forehead was so tight I thought you might want to pursue the topic has been known to bill clients in guineas. See you in section. Again, thank you for the quarter if you want to discuss Francie's stream of consciousness is potentially also a traditional vampire repellent and, O'Casey, Act I: Johnny McEvoy performing O'Casey's When You Are Old Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window discussion of Rosie's attempted seduction of TA for, and your writing here. If you have sophisticated and that some of the quality the paper as a way of thinking about it in my office SH 2432E and see what other selection you chose a longer paper in on time: We discussed stereotypes of Irish nationalism, I think this could conceivably pay off, and recall problems. I certainly will.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

Text

Is It Safe to Order Delivery During the Coronavirus Pandemic?

Ordering takeout or delivery is the responsible alternative to dining in a restaurant. | Photo: Tricky_Shark/Shutterstock

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and states are increasingly limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery only. Here’s how you can best avoid health risks and support your favorite local eateries.

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the United States, many states and cities have ordered all bars and restaurants to shut down except for takeout and delivery. But even in areas where dine-in service is still permitted, the responsible thing to do is forgo a sit-down meal in favor of to-go or, preferably, delivery options. Public health experts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the White House have called for the population to curtail mass gatherings and personal interaction — like the kind that can take place in crowded food and drink establishments — in an effort to help “flatten the curve” by slowing the transmission of COVID-19, preventing a spike in cases that could overwhelm hospitals.

For those who are fortunate enough to be able to follow the recommendation for social distancing by staying home or otherwise limiting their contact with others, the idea of ordering food delivery may raise a couple of questions: First, is it safe? Second, is it ethical to expose a delivery worker to the risks you seek to avoid?

The answer to the first question is generally yes, with some stipulations. There is currently no evidence of food being associated with COVID-19 transmission, according to both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), although Vox reports that there’s “growing evidence of fecal to oral transmission, meaning you can ingest the virus shed in feces, through inadequate hand washing or contaminated food and water.” It’s worth noting, however, that restaurants have long been required to follow food safety rules, in addition to extra measures now put into place in the wake of COVID-19. If you’re unsure about a restaurant’s food-handling standards, you can check its score on your local health department’s website. When it comes to the virus, the greater transmission safety risks are largely associated with interacting with other people.

The answer to the second question is a little more complicated. Yes, you should be conscious of the reality that many delivery workers currently face: a physically demanding job, theft and crime, low wages, a lack of employee benefits, and, amid this pandemic, higher exposure to customers who may be sick. But at the same time, workers rely on those delivery orders to pay their bills and support their families. “Everyone has said the same thing: If you are sick, just stay home,” one gig worker told Wired’s Arielle Pardes. “But if I stay home, I don’t get sick leave, and I don’t get paid.” In those cases, customers not ordering food could end up hurting delivery workers more, not to mention the restaurants that prepare the meals.

In a pandemic, there are no clear-cut, perfect solutions, but there are ways you as an individual can make choices that will mitigate transmission risks for both you and the workers you rely on to get your meal and let you order with a clearer conscience. Here are some suggestions:

Consider which ordering method is right for you

If your favorite restaurants have in-house delivery options, consider ordering through them directly instead of going through third-party apps, which not only take commission fees that can cut into restaurants’ already razor-thin margins, but have also been called out for questionable tactics that frustrate restaurant owners, as Eater’s editor-in-chief Amanda Kludt wrote in 2019.

But in the event that your preferred restaurants only deliver through platforms like Grubhub or Uber Eats, there are other factors you can take into consideration. For example, which companies are providing protections for at-risk delivery workers or helping restaurants whose business is plummeting? Here’s what some of those apps are doing:

Uber Eats said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who are quarantined by public health authorities, with the stipulation that workers must have done at least one Uber Eats delivery in the 30 days before March 6 (the policy is effective until April 6). The company also said that it would provide drivers with disinfectants for workers’ cars. In addition, the company said it would waive customers’ delivery fees for more than 100,000 “independent” restaurants across the U.S. and Canada in an effort to drive sales, and has added a feature allowing customers to donate to restaurants directly in the app.

Postmates launched a relief fund to support medical checkups and to cover two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who test positive for COVID-19, with the stipulation that those workers must have completed at least one Postmates delivery since February 25. The company also said it would temporarily waive commission fees for businesses in the Bay Area.

DoorDash (which also owns Caviar) said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19, are quarantined by a doctor or public health authorities, or are housemates with someone who fulfills one of those criteria, with the stipulation that those workers must have been active on DoorDash for at least 60 days, and must have completed at least 30 deliveries in the last 30 days. The company also said it would distribute hand sanitizer and gloves to workers in affected areas. In addition, the company said “independent” restaurants could join the platform and pay zero commissions for 30 days, that existing restaurant partners wouldn’t have to pay commission fees on pick-up orders, and that there would be “additional commission reductions for eligible merchants.”

Instacart said it would provide up to two weeks of paid sick leave for couriers who are diagnosed with COVID-19 or who are quarantined by public health authorities, with the stipulation that those workers must have been active on Instacart in the last 14 days, and must have been working with Instacart for a minimum of 30 days. The company also said that customer ratings of workers wouldn’t affect access to orders — a real concern — and that low ratings would be automatically forgiven during this period. In light of an ongoing worker strike, Instacart also announced it would be manufacturing its own hand sanitizer and distributing free safety kits — with a mask, hand sanitizer, and thermometer — to full-service shoppers.

Grubhub (which also owns Seamless) said it would offer up to two weeks of paid sick leave for drivers who are diagnosed with COVID-19, ordered by a doctor or public health authorities to self-isolate, or have had their account due to risk of spreading COVID-19, with the stipulation that those workers must have completed at least one Grubhub delivery in the last 30 days. The company also said it would defer the collection of $100 million in commissions that it charges to independent restaurants. Note that deferral isn’t the same as waiving fees; as Eater’s Nick Mancall-Bitel reports, after the end of the deferral period, “restaurants will have four weeks to repay the deferred commissions, after a two-week grace period in which they make the regular commission payments of between 15 and 30 percent.” More fine print includes “a stipulation that restaurants agree to keep Grubhub as a delivery service for one year after signing onto the program,” per Mancall-Bitel.

Minimize human contact

As Michael Knight, an assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, told Eater in early March, “it’s the people, not the food, that is the issue” when it comes to COVID-19 transmission in the context of eating. When you have prolonged contact with others, the CDC’s recommendation is to maintain a distance of six feet to avoid exposure to respiratory droplets that may carry the virus.

If you opt to pick up a to-go order from a restaurant, avoid peak hours so there are fewer people to potentially come into contact with in line at the restaurant.

But if you’re sick, at high risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19, or otherwise able to stay at home as a social distancing measure, choose delivery instead of takeout to avoid interacting with more people outside.

When ordering delivery, request contactless delivery — in which couriers drop off the food at your door or at a designated location without any personal interaction — to reduce the risk of person-to-person transmission for both you and the delivery worker. Some third-party apps, like Postmates, have introduced no-contact delivery in easy dropdown options, while others are encouraging customers to type in a note specifying drop-off requests when placing an order.

Discard or disinfect surfaces that may be contaminated

According to the CDC, “It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

That said, you should still take the precaution of either immediately throwing away packaging materials that come with your food delivery (e.g., paper or plastic bag, receipts, menus, etc.), or be prepared to disinfect the surfaces in your home that they come into contact with. Researchers have found that the virus can survive on surfaces for a few hours to a few days, depending on the surface material.

Wash your hands and maintain good hygiene practices

Hand washing remains one of the single most important things people can do to protect themselves and others, Amy R. Sapkota, a professor of applied environmental health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told Eater earlier. After touching potentially contaminated surfaces, and before and after eating, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water aren’t available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Other recommended hygiene practices include not touching your face with unwashed hands, as well as making sure to cough or sneeze into a tissue (or, if that’s not available, into a bent elbow) and then immediately washing your hands afterward.

Refrain from sharing

In Sapkota’s words: “In general, it’s wise not to share drinks or utensils. Particularly in this current situation, I think it would be wise not to share food.” If you need to split a shared takeout order, divide up the food onto separate plates before eating with your own utensils.

Tip generously and rate highly

The absolute minimum acceptable tip for any food delivery, as Helen Rosner wrote for Eater in 2016, is $5. In an honest-to-god pandemic, consider doubling, or even tripling that, depending on how much you ordered and your financial situation. Think of it this way: Another human being risked exposure to a highly infectious virus so that you could eat without taking a single step outside. That has to be worth something.

Another way to show your gratitude to the workers feeding you is to leave high ratings, since so many gig workers’ livelihoods depend on maintaining good ratings to be able to access their work. As Pardes wrote for Wired: “Workers with higher ratings get preference on orders, which means they get to work more. And many platforms have a threshold of how low ratings can get before a courier is bumped off the service altogether.”

Consider also leaving a nice review for the restaurant, since they, too, can be helped or hurt by what customers say on sites like Yelp and Google.

Support restaurants, staff, and gig workers in other ways

Restaurants, already notoriously difficult to operate in the black, are facing a huge loss in business, and with it, the ability to keep staff employed. If you’d like to help your favorite restaurant weather this storm, some have suggested buying restaurant gift cards or merchandise like shirts and cookbooks to help free up cash flow at this critical time. Others may consider contributing to funds for bartenders, servers, and other members of the service industry, whether through organized relief funds or by directly Venmo-ing workers in need.

The more advocacy-minded may take this crisis as an opportunity to press companies and the government to better address the issues that restaurants and workers are facing on a structural level. Mounting pressure from the public has coincided with companies like Instacart and Postmates introducing sick pay and other measures to support workers. Lawmakers, restaurant owners, and the public are calling for federal aid and relief. “We are so fucked if the federal government doesn’t immediately pass a massive stimulus bill for the hospitality sector and small business in general,” chef David Chang tweeted on March 16.

If they think restaurants are a “non-essential business”....big mistake. If they only help airlines and cruise ships but pass over hard working cooks, servers and mom & pop shops...I swear to fucking god I’m gonna run for public office

— Dave Chang (@davidchang) March 16, 2020

After all, if the restaurants that cook your food cease to exist — along with the millions of jobs they provide — then what are you going to get delivered while you’re in self-quarantine? As Eater’s Hillary Dixler Canavan writes: “Independent operators need a major infusion of cash — cash that’s more readily available from the government than from their stressed-out customers — to make it. They need rent alleviation, eviction protection, and tax deferrals, at a minimum, to live through this body blow.”

Now go wash your hands.

This post was last updated at 10:25 a.m. on April 6, 2020.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2TVPM7a https://ift.tt/2wiW7Ax

Ordering takeout or delivery is the responsible alternative to dining in a restaurant. | Photo: Tricky_Shark/Shutterstock

Consider which ordering method is right for you

Minimize human contact

If you opt to pick up a to-go order from a restaurant, avoid peak hours so there are fewer people to potentially come into contact with in line at the restaurant.

Discard or disinfect surfaces that may be contaminated

Wash your hands and maintain good hygiene practices

Refrain from sharing

Tip generously and rate highly

Consider also leaving a nice review for the restaurant, since they, too, can be helped or hurt by what customers say on sites like Yelp and Google.

Support restaurants, staff, and gig workers in other ways

— Dave Chang (@davidchang) March 16, 2020

Now go wash your hands.

This post was last updated at 10:25 a.m. on April 6, 2020.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2TVPM7a via Blogger https://ift.tt/2wiW6fX

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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eactivist · 7 years ago

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Dear [Congressman, who has neither supported nor rejected Pai’s plan]

I cannot speak for all of America, much less all of the Asians-Americans, the high schools, or to California itself. Although I am part of all of these, I am also a youth, a part of the next generation.

As a youth, “education” factors into why our voices are not heard: we do not have multiple degrees, our bubbles have yet to be popped, and our situational awareness remains dim, limited to our childhood models as a reflection of their views.

But the Internet fixes part of this. You see, we can get degrees online. We can take classes on Khan Academy or FutureLearn. Social media itself forms learning spheres where we become exposed to videos and actions from all over the world, where we can interact with others with different heritages, in different languages, with different flashbulb memories and insights.

Accessing the Internet is part of the globalization process today, allowing us to find our own identity among others. From a simple retweet, we expose not just ourselves, but our friends and family to content we would never have perhaps learned, such as slavery in Libya, where people are sold as little as four hundred dollars.

What social media, online blogs, and shopping websites all show are current trends. They show the fads of human nature. Yes, they show fallacies, but most of all, they show the eclectic voices of humans. To put more of a filter on that by price already inhibits the true reflection of the conscience of society.

And without a doubt, the youth generation is known to be addicted to the screen, to watch copious amounts of TV and movies, to excessively play video games and apps, such as Pokemon Go to Animal Crossing.

We download these apps on the Play or App store. And in this virtual store, there are entertainment services for the youth, a startup market for the youth, and a place to innovate novel ideas for the youth. A future for small content creators among the youth’s creativity would be limited.

In a partisan, polarized society, memes, likes, and shares bring the youth together. How would that remain when Facebook may cost a monthly fee like Netflix?

The Internet provides opportunities, such as the Women’s March in Washington, whose organization, without net neutrality, may not have able to been afforded. #MeToo give women, the Silent Breakers, a source of empowerment to find their voices. Hollywood’s secret history of sexual harassment, highlighted by Harvey Weinstein, would never have been exposed to the public.

Let’s be frank. Your, and any other member of Congress, goal is to be re-elected. And to be re-elected, you target those who vote. Well, it’s no surprise that Congress targets the elderly, 65 years and above, who, since 1968, have had more than 60% vote. And, the youth? Well, the youth, ages 18-24, have had less than 50% vote since 1968, hitting even 30% in 1996, while the elders have had around 70%.

It is a fact that out of the voting age population, the elders are targeted. It’s the reason why Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are virtually untouchable. It’s why in my city, Rancho Cucamonga, in Central Park, there is a senior center instead of soccer fields or swimming pools.

So now it boils down to the question—the chicken or the egg?:

Do the youth not vote because they feel Congress does not respond to them (rather, the elders) or does Congress not target the youth because they don’t vote?

So I ask you, Congress, to end this chicken or the egg debate by stepping up to be the chicken, helping the egg hatch. Restore our faith and let our voices be heard. The youth grew up on technology, with no broadband providers directly discriminating between fast and slow lanes.

Congress, however, has the chance to prove to the youth that it does not have to be this way.

And not just to the youth.

According to Gallup Poll’s 2014 “Public Confidence in Institutions”, Congress had around 30% who said they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence. This was the lowest rating out of newspapers, the Supreme Court, the President, the military, and churches.

There is a chance to increase this rating. And there is a reason Ajit Pai proposed his plan now. Show that while Congress focus’ on the tax reform, the debt limit, DACA, etc will not come at the literal cost of net neutrality. Uphold the United Nation’s statement in 2016 that “accessing the Internet is a human right.”

Pai’s reasoning states that the Internet ran fine before the FCC imposed net neutrality rules around 2015. Correction: the FCC formally adopted network neutrality rules for the first time in 2010, filed a complaint all the way back as 2008, and established principles of net neutrality all the way back to 2005.

It’s not that before the 21st century there was a total, free, open Internet. Some amount of regulation always existed in some form. Indeed Stanford Professor, Barbara van Schewick notes “we have always had a de facto network neutrality regime in the U.S. — first, through the architecture of the Internet, and later, through a mix of formal and informal FCC regulation and action. This de facto regime prevented or at least deterred blocking and discrimination.”

Who’s to say this de facto network neutrality regime will still exist when “Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T want Congress to make a net neutrality law because they will write it”?

And when ISPs no longer operate under common carriers, they have the power to deter and block and discriminate between fast and slow lanes, which is why it’s essential Ajit Pai’s plan for Internet Service Providers to not be classified as broadband providers.

And if ISPs are classified as “broadband providers”, what choice do you and I really have at 25 megabits per second down or 3 megabits per second up (the FCC's definition of broadband)? How is this the competition that Ajit Pai proclaimed when desiring to define ISPs as broadband?

Perhaps Ajit Pai is right when he says we “had a free and open internet prior to 2015.” Key word: Had. Who’s to guarantee we will have a “free and open internet once these regulations are repealed” — especially when “Verizon told a federal court in 2013 that it should have the right to charge any website any fee Verizon liked — and if, for instance, the Wall Street Journal didn’t pay up, Verizon should be allowed to block its site”?

Verizon’s proclaimed “rights” thus would surmount individual rights. After all, rights are a part of Ajit Pai’s meticulous and well-crafted plan.

He aims to eliminate all net neutrality rules, except the modified transparency rule, which means ISPs have to tell their customers that they are engaging in practices — such as entering into deals with online companies to put them in a fast lane to the ISP’s customers. All of these are prohibited by the current rules.

If these are violated when net neutrality is repealed, the FTC will not be able to intervene since the company has disclosed that it has paid fast lanes, charges online companies for access to users, and blocks those that don’t pay.

In other words, without net neutrality, the FTC lacks the power and tools to police net neutrality violations. With current net neutrality rules and ISPs also under Title II, the FTC can intervene.

And while the FTC is independent of the government, the ISPs seem to not follow: the ISPs have more power in Congress now that the FCC is led by a man who used to be a lawyer for Verizon.

It doesn’t stop there. This year in March, 2017 the Senate voted to allow ISPs to sell customer data, including browsing history without prior customer consent. And while the Senate is Republican-controlled, it isn’t an issue about party, not when 73 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of independents want to keep the current protections.

Ajit Pai wants the government to stop micromanaging businesses, so that the “vibrant and free competitive market” will return to its’ former glory, “unfettered by Federal or state regulation.”

Without “micromanaging”, what stops anarchy? Without rules, what stops one branch in government from superseding another? Repealing net neutrality would allow business to supersede the rights of the people, all the way to the youth. And trust in businesses, according to the Guardian, have “declined in two-thirds of the 27 markets the survey” covered and “is now below 50% in 14 markets, the worst showing since 2008.”

Sure, rules cannot stop LiAngelo from shoplifting in China. But they can set a precedent to others to not do the same. They define morality, what we should and should not do. Rules can make sure Larry Nassar, former USA Gymnastics doctor, serve 60 years in prison for child porn.

By allowing ISPs to no longer operate under “common carriers” in Title II, we allow businesses to influence this thought of society. We allow what the youth access on the Internet to be micromanaged itself. In the house, there are the youth, the children, the toddlers, and so on and so forth. If our voices are not heard, then the house is not home for these differing voices. And as Lincoln said, a house divided against itself will not stand.

I am a constituent and net neutrality rules matter to me. Please oppose Ajit Pai’s plan. You can speak for me, for Asian-Americans, for those in high schools, and for the youth.

#net neutrality #fcc #ftc #internet #ajit pai #us politics #save net neutrality #reblog #share #signal boost #tumblr #human rights

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curlygirl79 · 5 years ago

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Today, as part of the blog tour for Overstrike, book one in the Fixpoint series, I am honoured to be able to share with you a Q&A that the author took part in for me. Many thanks to CM Angus for taking the time to do this, and to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to be a part of the tour.

What made you decide to move from writing technical non-fiction to writing fiction?

That’s probably not how I look at it. I guess I’m more of an opportunist. Back in 2006 I found myself working with a couple of technologies which were new enough to have literally no books written about them. As I was learning the hard way to get to grips with these I saw there was an opportunity for a technical publication.

Likewise in 2014 when I found myself with the embryo of the story that went on to become Overstrike, I decided to give it a go.

It was certainly very different, but I believe the past is a dream that doesn’t define us – each of us has the capacity to continually reinvent ourselves..

What authors inspire you?

I’d have to say: Ones that make it happen against the odds. People like David J. Kowalski – whose 2007 debut The Company of the Dead I enjoyed a lot. The fact that he managed to write a pretty awesome novel whilst being a Obstetrician, inspired me to believe maybe I could somehow find time to write also.

Thank you David.

Do you have a literary hero? How about a favourite literary villain?

In a lot of ways, this is likely to be the stream of consciousness everyman like Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical Henry Chinaski, or The Narrator (Phaedrus) from Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Whoever it is, they’re likely to be a thinker, a drunk and a little unhinged. In a lot of ways, I find characters, or for that fact, people in general, become far more interesting when they don’t conform. As for hero’s and villain’s, I tend not to think in those kind of binary terms, I think that there are angels and devils in all of us – that everyone is both good and evil. The most interesting characters, for me, are ones that either fall from grace or seek redemption – whether that’s Milton’s Lucifer in Paridise Lost, Rowling’s Snape, Jane Austen’s Mr D’Arcy, Dickens’ Scrooge or even Martin’s Jaime Lannister, the idea that a character’s drivers and motives are fluid, makes them interesting to me.

What is your favourite under-appreciated novel?

Not sure whether this counts, but I’d have to say The View from Gallows Hill by Nick Stead. I was lucky enough to be a beta-reader on this and liked it a lot – certainly one to look for when it comes out.

Where do you do your writing? Do you have a special place to go for calm and inspiration or are you a write anywhere kind of guy?

I’d have to say wherever the muse takes me. But it’s more about finding the headspace than than a particular location or time. If things are too noisy I’ve got no chance. If things are too quiet – again; that’s an issue. So it feels like I’m forever in search of my own Goldilocks zone *laughs*. Sometimes I find it in my local park with a laptop, sometimes it’s in a bustling coffee shop – I seem to change like the wind. Invariably it ends up being stolen moments interspaced between other activities – I try to use technology so that I can switch between desktop, laptop, tablet and phone and keep going in between being Dad’s taxi! So I guess I’m a write anywhere kind of guy…

What is the strangest thing you have had to Google for writing research?

Man, now that’s going to be quite a list…

I guess it would include:

* Current theories on quantum entanglement and the plausibility of time travel.

* Elements of the Holocaust during WWII.

* Key players in early electroconvulsive therapy.

* Details of Schizophrenia.

* Large parts of London and its transport network.

However I’m sure I must be missing something.

You seem to be a man of many talents – how do you fit everything in? I find I am easily distracted from one hobby or interest by another – do you find the same?

Definitely. It’s not just a question of passion. I need to set myself goals and make these public – actively throw myself under the bus, if you will, to force myself to complete things. Then its a case of multitasking and combining things, but it isn’t easy and without the support of my family I couldn’t do any of it.

At the end of the day though, it’s about setting realistic goals and keeping on with these – even if the progresses glacial. For instance: Overstrike has taken around 5-years, so I’d say it’s more to do with perseverance and pig-headedness than some kind of silver bullet.

Thanks again to CM Angus for taking the time to answer my questions. For more information about Overstrike, read on!

BLURB:

When Matt Howard’s grandfather told him he must alter history to protect his newborn son, Matt thought the old man was crazy…

…Then he realised it was true.

Overstrike spans 4 generations of a family haunted by the prospect of an approaching alternate reality where their child has been erased from history.

Touching on themes of retro-causality, ethics and free will, and exploring ideas of cause, effect and retribution, it follows the path of Matt Howard, whose child, Ethan, is at risk, as he, his father and grandfather attempt to use their own abilities to manipulate reality in order to discover and prevent whoever is threatening Ethan.

Overstrike is volume I of Fixpoint, a trilogy about a family who discover their inherited ability to manipulate reality. It enables them to effect changes in order to safeguard themselves and all that they hold dear. But even seemingly small changes in a timeline can have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. Follow the stories of the Howards, on a journey exploring reality, time and our own sense of self.

PURCHASE LINKS:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

CM Angus author and writer of Speculative fiction, Sci-fi and Horror grew up in the North East of England and now lives in Yorkshire with his wife and children. He is interested in all things creative & technological.

Currently working on Fixpoint, a series of books with each piece tackling different aspects of discontinuities in time and is a Speculative Fiction spanning 4 generations of a family haunted by the prospect of an approaching alternate reality where their child has been erased from history.

Overstrike, Volume 1 of Fixpoint, will be published by Elsewhen Press in early 2020.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Twitter

Website

Facebook

Amazon

Goodreads

Publisher

GIVEAWAY:

Win 5 x Overstrike T-shirts (Open INT)

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter link below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for dispatch or delivery of the prize.

ENTER HERE

To find out more about Overstrike, head on over to the other blogs taking part in the tour.

@c_m_angus is answering my questions on the blog today. #bookblogger #Q&A #fixpoint #overstrike #fictioncafewriters #spoonshortagebookclub @rararesources Today, as part of the blog tour for Overstrike, book one in the Fixpoint series, I am honoured to be able to share with you a Q&A that the author took part in for me.

#@c_m_angus #@rararesources #fixpoint #overstrike #q&a

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gyrlversion · 6 years ago

Text

Talking to the Law Student With a Novel Theory About Amazon’s Power

No one man should have all that power? Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

With its ever-growing dominance of online retail, Amazon has long drawn accusations that it is a monopoly — or at least a monopoly in waiting. When the company acquired Whole Foods last year, that scrutiny only intensified. But maybe “monopoly” isn’t quite the right word for what Amazon is up to. Shaoul Sussman, a Fordham University law student, has a different perspective. In a paper for the Journal of Antitrust Enforcement and in a blog post on the ProMarket website, which have generated buzz in academic circles, he writes that Amazon may be throwing its weight around in a way that consumers might not immediately notice, but which will end up harming them nonetheless. Intelligencer spoke to him about his theory.

Amazon has been famously unprofitable for the vast majority of its history, yet it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, and has managed to keep consumer prices low. You’ve written that to pull this off, the company may have been violating antitrust laws — but not in an obvious way. Can you explain your thesis?

I argue that for many years, Amazon was operating with a negative cash flow, which means that the firm was receiving less money than it was spending. But this business model, which shareholders and investors on Wall Street really love now, doesn’t fit within the way antitrust regulation or law conceives of firms.

Conservative antitrust theory has said that predatory pricing — underpricing goods so that other firms can’t compete — is irrational and unsustainable, because shareholders will punish firms that are unprofitable. But with the rise of big unprofitable companies like Amazon and Uber, this kind of market-disciplining effect no longer exists. Traditional orthodox antitrust theory does not map onto current corporate reality.

Also, when a firm operates with a negative cash flow, there is simply no way for us as outsiders to tell whether they’re spending money on fixed assets and R&D and legitimate investments in technology and innovation, or whether they’re using that money to subsidize products to consumers at below cost to corner the market. In other words, we just can’t tell what a firm is doing when it’s spending more than it’s making.

Given this reality, we need to reconsider the ways in which firms can recoup their losses. The traditional way of thinking suggests that it happens after the predatory activity is over, when a company corners the market and raises prices for consumers, creating a monopoly. But we see that companies can now sustain losses and grow and be successful for many years, which means that there might be also qualitative, and not only quantitative, changes in the costs of their services or products.

In your paper, you also argue that Amazon might be concealing information about its expenses that would help shed light on this strategy.

“Concealing” is kind of a nefarious word. But right now, there’s no regulation that forces companies to disclose their cost structures to regulators. So, absent meaningful regulation, they can engage in certain kinds of activities without us really knowing that it’s taking place. We can only assume that it might be happening, but we have no conclusive evidence.

And what are the possibly shady activities you theorize could be taking place?

There’s this idea in antitrust law called “monopsony.” While a monopoly is aimed at the consumer market — the people who buy the product downstream from the firm — monopsony refers to what happens upstream, where the firm is sitting in the middle between the consumers and the suppliers or manufacturers. A classic example would be health insurance, which sits between me and you and the hospitals. When a company leverages its power upwards unlawfully, it’s engaging in monopsonistic activities.

When Amazon lowered prices and offered unparalleled delivery services and fulfillment, it was absorbing costs on both sides of the equation. It was absorbing costs that consumers usually paid when they shopped at other websites, where you had to pay for your shipping and it would take five or seven days, not two or three. And it was also absorbing costs that vendors and suppliers usually pay when they interact with other companies similar to Amazon, like Walmart, or other e-commerce websites, like eBay.

So how does Amazon recoup its losses? In my paper, I argue there’s another option besides charging people more, and that is by charging the vendors and suppliers more for the same service it had been providing, squeezing the sellers and making a profit that way.

There has been a trend over the last few years, and it’s accelerating now, of shifting people that were vendors of Amazon — which means that they would sell their products directly to the company and it would then market and sell to us, the consumer — to the Amazon marketplace, which is a place where sellers and consumers meet on the platform. When Amazon makes that shift, it shifts the cost of fulfillment onto the sellers. Talking to Amazon merchants, they’re really starting to hurt. And they’re facing a whole other series of problems.

All the vendors and sellers that interact with Amazon have to sign a binding mandatory arbitration clause, which means that if they have any legal dispute with Amazon or even if they think that Amazon is violating trademark or copyright or tax laws, they have to arbitrate that issue with Amazon directly. This means that even if they’re suffering, their only meaningful way of vindicating their rights is in private, so we wouldn’t know the outcome, or even if arbitration was happening. Even more egregious is that Amazon also tells them to waive their ability to file a class arbitration, where a number of vendors and merchants would come together against Amazon.

Because of this, most merchants and sellers that are relatively small, which is the majority of companies that work with Amazon, simply can’t bring claims against the company, because the amount of money necessary to do so is totally prohibitive. You’d really have to think about whether you want to go into bankruptcy to win whatever claim you have against Amazon.

So then what is the best way to uncover this essential information about Amazon’s business model?

The first and easiest step is to force Amazon, and other companies that are bleeding cash and experiencing significant growth, to file mandatory disclosures with the Federal Trade Commission regarding their costs, and allowing them and other government departments to investigate where the money is going.

There’s also a state-law avenue — legislators in places like California or New York could pass laws that allow merchants and lenders to bring claims against companies like Amazon because they deem those rights unwaivable. So, they make it that even if you sign the contract, that contract provision is not enforceable because that’s a substantive right that you cannot waive.

And the third way, which is something that a lot of state prosecutors that I had contact with are contemplating, is to launch attorney-general investigations into these claims, and see what’s really going on. One reason I feel more optimistic about this path is that the merchants and sellers involved are sophisticated parties that have a lot experience with Amazon and they can really track the changes in its strategy. They also know what their own costs are for many of the services that they provide.

When we think of a monopoly, we tend to think of a company that eventually raises prices on consumers, as you said, and which is often hated as a result. Companies like Amazon and Uber are different — in large part because they’ve kept prices low, they’re widely popular. So from a purely selfish perspective, why should customers care about monopsony? What harm is being done to them?

This is a really important point, because harm to the consumer can occur in various ways. When we tell vendors and suppliers to bear the costs of shipping, we’re basically forcing them to operate with lower profit margins. Those lower profit margins in turn affect the quality of the products we purchase. If a vendor or seller doesn’t make a meaningful profit because it has to comply with Amazon’s rules, they’re going to cut corners in other places, and the quality of the product the consumers receive is lowered.

It’s very important to note that monopsonistic claims are recognized by the most conservative judges, including even Brett Kavanaugh in a D.C. Circuit Court decision from 2017, who recognized the harm to consumers. We have a lot of experience from the health-care market and other markets where companies that had this monopsonistic dominance really reduced the quality of products that consumers received.

We also now have indicators that these practices are affecting prices. If you have to sell on Amazon for the lowest price possible, but you also have to take into account all the costs that are associated with free shipping, it puts pressure on these vendors not to lower prices on other platforms they might be selling, because they know that they need to subsidize their activities on Amazon. So even in the narrowest scope, on prices, there might be an effect.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 years ago

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An interview with Cory Doctorow on beating death, post-scarcity, and everything

So, this is a sort of prequel to Down and Out. Is it also a sort of sequel to Makers, at least on the theme of the end of scarcity?

You know, that's an interesting question. I just finished reading a whole ton of essays that a group of academics wrote about Walkaway for the Perfect Timber blog, which is doing a symposium. A lot of them were like, "Well, this is a novel that's about 3D printing producing abundance." I was like, "Well actually I wrote that novel [Makers] 10 years ago." This novel is about coordination changing what abundance is—our ability to, in that kind of GitHub-ian way, make some stuff, and then have someone else make some stuff, and then someone else, and for all three of those things to be captured and combined.

If you think of abundance being a triangle, one side is what we want, one is what we can make, and one is how efficiently we can coordinate and use it. Makers was definitely about what we can make. But this is about using the things we already have—fully automated leisure communism, the ZipCar edition. We have high-quality physical objects, and we don't have to have a personal one because they're all circling in a probabilistic cloud that we can collapse down into "the car will always be there when we need it." That's a form of even better abundance than everyone having their own lawnmower in their garage because, if everyone had a lawnmower, they would also have to have some place to store it.

The question of what we want is the third piece of abundance that I addressed a little in Walkaway. But it's something that's come up a lot in our wider debate, because everyone keeps bringing up the old Keynes essay where everyone will have a three-day week by 2015 and that his grandchildren would lack for work because productivity has increased to the point where we can just fill all of our needs.

We kind of got there, but then we had this advertising innovation to produce more goods than we ever wanted. Even though we can produce enough goods for John Keynes to be happy, we can't produce enough for everyone to be happy in 2017—because we want so much more. And, of course, that's the other way to adjust what our view of abundance is—how much we want. And those three levers—three dials that we can turn—are what determine whether we feel like we're moving into an era of scarcity or abundance.

I think that's why Marie Kondo is so hot. A lot of people are coming to realize that there's a luxury in getting rid of all of your stuff. There's a real class dimension there, too, because one of the reasons to hold onto a bunch of things is because the opportunity cost of getting rid of it means you might not be able to afford to replace it later; whereas, the richer you are, the more you can afford to buy things as you go. Buying your clothes as you travel as the cheap way to not have to carry luggage with you is great unless you don't have enough money to buy more clothes.

The model you use for the walkaway community in your novel and the social behaviors that are exhibited remind me a lot of some of what we see in open-source software communities. You've clearly drawn from a lot of experience there.

Yeah, totally. I mean—I've been in the middle of these fights about things like free and open source software, and whether they're a meaningful category, whether open source is incompatible with free. I've been around people who fork and unfork and refork and merge, and I've kind of lived through multiple versions of that. And I've lived through watching people who open things up and then wished they could close them again, that felt like they made the wrong choice. So having a front-row seat to all that stuff was hugely influential in how I wrote the book.

There are also reflections of other cultures, or countercultures, in Walkaway—aspects that reflect Depression-era "hobo" culture. Walking away with almost nothing, the walkaways seemed like a futuristic version of what hobos were.

Well, in a sense that hobos were a response to vapor lock in the economy. There was stuff that needed doing and people who wanted to do it, and the economy couldn't figure out how to marry those two phenomena. Job one for an economy is to marry stuff with people who can do it. And certainly in the high-tech world, hobo culture has had an interesting overlap. Warchalking, for example, exists because Matt Jones wanted to adapt hobo-glyphs for people who wanted Wi-Fi. Then there was John Hodgeman and his hobo names. Hobo-ness seems to have been in the air through the era of tech.

Wi-Fi is a little parable about abundance. To go from networks as planned, explicitly connected things where literally someone has to go to a patch panel and connect a switch to light up a jack near the place where you're standing, and sometimes you even have to let somebody know what your TCP settings are, to like, "Oh, I'm in a place and there's radio energy, let me see if that radio energy will give me Internet"—that's sort of a death-of-scarcity parable.

How close do you think we are technologically to being able to sustain the kind of world where the sort of post-scarcity in Walkaway exists?

I think that out of the triangle of technology making, coordinating things, and changing what things we want, that the one that is really most advanced and most reliable is coordinating things. Changing what people want is hard. We treat marketing like it's super good at what it does, but the reality is that there's a massive survivor bias in marketing. Everything gets marketed [and] most things fail. We only notice the tiny number of things that succeed and the fact that a lot of them are materially like garbage. That leads us to conclude that marketing can sell anything, but marketing really sells nothing—it's a statistical rounding error.

Coordinating things, though, we're good at. McDonald's was successful because it's a supply chain management system with hamburgers in it. Wal-Mart, al-Qaeda, open-source and free software—all these are things where people are doing collaboration and coordination. Sometimes we do it in a very improvisational way. Compare what it was like, growing up, going out 30 years ago to hang out on a Friday night, versus now. Thirty years ago, you would have to find those people on Thursday, and look at what movies were playing, and figure out where you were going to meet on Friday night. Now, you just go to the center of town and send out a text to all your friends or put up a beacon on your social network and say, "Who's up for the movies?" And they all find you or you find them.

That's the sort of fluid improvisational thing that happens all the time now. And then there's collaboration across time and space without any intention—for example, when you need to do code a thing, and you find a library, and you integrate that into your thing, and that person doesn't know that you've done that and you don't know that they've done it.

Every person who ever did hypertext wanted to do back links, and they'd all given up on them as being too hard for version 1.0 and swore they would come back and do them later. And every time, they failed to do them later. You know, Google was started to create Backrub, which was just back links. And it turned out to be transcendentally hard. Xanadu... every one who wanted to make these explicit collaborative mechanisms found it to be transcendentally hard, and they dramatically underestimated how much we can do with inexplicit hooks for collaboration, without explicit semantic tagging, and without explicit APIs.

You think about all the sets of APIs, and how much has been done successfully just with REST—with all those sites that don't have APIs, but Google can figure out how to search them because they can tell they have something RESTful in their URL. Like in WordPress, you just add a question mark to the base URL and then "s=" and what you're looking for, and you get back search query results.

That phenomenon of unintentional inexplicit... "coordinated" is the wrong word, but a coordination without the two parties ever having to communicate or even knowing that they're coordinating... it's an amazing story. And it's amazing because it works so well that when it occasionally falls apart it's huge news and it makes us all step back and say, "Wait a second—how does the whole Internet work now?" You remember when Leftpad got yanked?

Yes.

And it was like, "Wait a second, what the F is Leftpad, and, like, how did it get embedded in all of these websites? And how much more of this stuff is there?" But you think about 10 seconds and you realize, of course! Because code reuse is good coding, because the way to improve code is to iterate it, and so anything you write as a first iteration will not be as good as something someone has re-factored four or five times. So rolling your own is often the worst possible option, and you know the whole Web is built on small pieces loosely joined in this way that we only discover when it stops working—because it works so well most of the time that we don't even noticed that we're doing it. We're just soaking in it.

Read the rest:

https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2017/04/an-interview-with-cory-doctorow-on-beating-death-post-scarcity-and-everything/

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michaelandy101-blog · 4 years ago

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MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/mozcon-virtual-2020-top-takeaways-from-day-one-2/

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

So much of the day was different from what we expected six months ago, but the one thing we can always count on from our speakers is a MASSIVE amount of value. We’re talking insights, game plans, cheat codes — you name it, we’ve got it — and this year was no different.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

AAAAAND WE’RE OFF! #MozCon Virtual @Moz CEO, @SarahBird, discusses her take on the State of the Industry.

5 Timely Trends for 2020: 1. welcoming our robot overlords 2. entities 3. knowledge panel 4. localization of everything 5. new & ramping up search experiences

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I’ll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

Shannon explained that we talk about Digital PR campaigns as if the majority of them are “huge wins”. The reality, however, is that most of our campaigns will be steady performers and the huge wins are actually just anomalies.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

Aira put out a state of digital PR study and found that most campaigns only got between one and 20 links. When Shannon broke down the numbers for Aira, they were consistent: about 17 links were gained per campaign!

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

When it comes to determining the success of your “brand,” the numbers aren’t straightforward. There are a lot of data points to take into consideration. In fact, Robin started off by asking us if we used multiple datasets, collected data on our competitors, and got granular. Needless to say, many of us knew we were in for a ride.

Need? Brand interest data.

Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads.

This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Honestly, this presentation was so jam-packed with information that we had a hard time keeping up! Thankfully, at the end of his presentation, Robin laid out step-by-step instructions on how he collected, compiled, and analyzed all of this data.

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

Takeaways via @alexisksanders 1. Make use of first, second and third-party information 2. Ask questions on Google Discover 3. Try Sparktoro -new tool for me! 4. Map your users’ journey againts content 6. Today is change and learning fast#MozCon #marketing pic.twitter.com/DH80dThomS

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

The marketing funnel is broken, we all know that. But if we aren’t focusing on getting people to work down a funnel, what are we working towards? Building our brand. Right. Well, how do we go about doing that?

Phil blew our minds with insights on how he helped Wistia change their mindset when it came to creating “brand awareness.” The first step was to stop calling it brand awareness and instead call it brand affinity.

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

Dr. Pete talked all about spotting trends. Nothing about this year could have been predicted. There was no way that hair salons could have predicted that “how to cut hair” was going to be an opportunity keyword.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

Dr. Pete showed us exactly how we can use tools that we’re familiar with, and a few that we might not be familiar with, to spot trends and turn them into opportunities including Google Trends, Pinterest, Twitter search, and even Boing Boing Store.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

In Twitter Advanced Search, restrict to your language, relevant date ranges, and set a number of minimum likes. Go lower on that last one than you think – but this way you won’t get every random tweet on the topic@dr_pete #MozCon

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

If you’re looking for a great example of letting go and embracing automation, Microsoft Ads is a good place to go. They allow you to import all of your Google Ads right into Microsoft ads so they can start running right away.

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey…

#MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

Rob showed us how he scrapes websites (including the big G) in seconds using a few lines of code. He walked us through every piece of code needed to scrape G2, Google, and even Google’s Lighthouse tool.

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we’re calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

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isearchgoood · 4 years ago

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MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

AAAAAND WE'RE OFF! #MozCon Virtual @Moz CEO, @SarahBird, discusses her take on the State of the Industry. 5 Timely Trends for 2020: 1. welcoming our robot overlords 2. entities 3. knowledge panel 4. localization of everything 5. new & ramping up search experiences

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

Takeaways via @alexisksanders 1. Make use of first, second and third-party information 2. Ask questions on Google Discover 3. Try Sparktoro -new tool for me! 4. Map your users' journey againts content 6. Today is change and learning fast#MozCon #marketing pic.twitter.com/DH80dThomS

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

In Twitter Advanced Search, restrict to your language, relevant date ranges, and set a number of minimum likes. Go lower on that last one than you think - but this way you won’t get every random tweet on the topic@dr_pete #MozCon

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/38VQd7n #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

0 notes

fmsmartchoicear · 4 years ago

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

timeblues · 4 years ago

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

from The Moz Blog https://ift.tt/2Os8U92 More on https://seouk4.weebly.com/

0 notes

kjt-lawyers · 4 years ago

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

0 notes

theinjectlikes2 · 4 years ago

Text

MozCon Virtual 2020: Top Takeaways from Day One

Posted by cheryldraper

Today marked day one of the first-ever MozCon Virtual! Even though we weren’t together in person, it was so exciting to get the best people in the industry together again.

Let’s get to it.

Sarah Bird — Welcome & State of the Industry

It’s always inspiring to hear from our fearless leader. Sarah hit on some of the changes that we’ve seen this year and how they’ve affected both us as people and us as an industry.

Sarah also laid out her thoughts on major SEO trends for 2020.

— James Wirth (@jameswirth) July 14, 2020

In closing, Sarah reminded us that we rise and fall collectively and that in the end, the world is our work. In difficult times we must all come together.

We’re all so happy to be able to create this virtual experience and allow for everyone to have something (somewhat) predictable to look forward to for two days.

Andy Crestodina — Thought Leadership and SEO: The 3 Key Elements and Search Ranking Strategies

Andy started off by walking us through the three key aspects of thought leadership: personal brand, taking a stand, and proving expert insights.

Then, very kindly, Andy laid out exactly what to do to fulfill each aspect.

Expert Insights

Create original research

Write books

Share novel ideas

Take a stand

Have a strong opinion

Don’t shy away from controversy

Inspire others

Build a personal brand

Have a social following

Be cited by others

Be influential

This presentation was 163 slides of actionable insights. It’s definitely one that we’ll have to watch a few times over!

#Mozcon thank goodness I can rewatch this content. @crestodina gave so much great knowledge. I'll have to watch again and again.#winning

— Seth @ Goldstein Media (@GoldsteinMedia) July 14, 2020

Shannon McGirk — Great Expectations: The Truth About Digital PR Campaigns

Shannon came to set us straight: we aren’t showing the full picture when it comes to Digital PR, and it’s quite toxic.

She started out by showing a few of her own tweets and pointing out that she rarely, if ever, shares anything about campaigns that don’t “go viral”.

How we talk about campaigns:

How campaigns actually perform:

What do we do about this? Shannon challenged us to take as much time looking into what didn’t work as we do looking into what did work.

Using a custom made success matrix, Shannon and her team were able to spot the trends for both “successful” and “not successful” campaigns and implement plans accordingly.

Her parting strategy:

Take off the pressure of “virality” and focus on steady performers and fails.

Realize that steady performers can consistently impact weighty SEO KPIs.

Use the success matrix to review campaigns and catch trends early.

Robin Lord — Whatever You Do, Put Billboards in Seattle: Getting Brand Awareness Data from Google

Wow! Our minds are still blown from this presentation. Robin took us through some extremely valuable workflows for collecting and analyzing data.

Need? Brand interest data. Your new best friends? Google Trends. Census Data. Google Ads. This analysis is blowing my mind a little bit (ok, a lot) ????#MozCon

— Meisha Bochicchio (@MarketingMeisha) July 14, 2020

Alexis Sanders — The Science of Seeking Your Customer

Determining your audience is about more than demographics and affinity data; it’s about truly understanding your audience as people.

Alexis took us through four questions we should try to answer when defining our audience:

What’s the key information?

What are they like at their core?

How do they choose products?

What’s their relationship with technology?

She even provided a list of free and paid resources that anyone can use to collect this information.

— Jackie Jiménez (@Jackiecr86) July 14, 2020

Alexis also explained that audience research is not something that happens only once (at the beginning of a campaign), but instead should inform the entire customer journey.

Her parting words encouraged us to learn fast and become in-tune with the constant change, instead of always trying to guess correctly!

Phillip Nottingham — How to Build a Global Brand Without a Global Budget

Building an affinity to a brand means spending time with a brand. A KPI that usually gets lost in the mix of impressions, clicks, etc.

In his presentation, Phil breaks down the exact method he used with Wistia to get people to spend as much time on the site watching four videos as they did reading all 1,170 blogs.

Greg Gifford shared a great summary slide here:

Your new brand marketing strategy:@philnottingham #mozcon pic.twitter.com/kNjvhPtzTW

— Greg Gifford (@GregGifford) July 14, 2020

Dr. Pete — Moving Targets: Keywords in Crisis

We were so thrilled to have Dr. Pete back to speak at his NINTH MozCon this year. While this year’s conference was unlike any other, his presentation was just as insightful.

However, there is still a way to capitalize on these opportunities as we spot them.

There were some real gems in this presentation!

— Ruth Burr Reedy (@ruthburr) July 14, 2020

Needless to say, Dr. Pete has officially gone nine straight years impressing MozCon.

Francine Rodriguez — Let It Go: How to Embrace Automation and Get Way More Done

2020 has really come out swinging. Francine voiced exactly what we were all thinking: “that’s enough!”

We have enough to worry about, do we really need to keep adding to the list?

When it comes to search engine marketing, there are a lot of moving parts and it can be excruciating to try and keep up with it all. There is a solution though: ROBOTS! (Someone call Roger!)

Google is constantly learning, so why not let them leverage their new knowledge?

Francine walked us through the different areas of PPC automation:

Bidding

Ad copy

Smart campaigns

Keyword matching

Rob Ousbey — A Novel Approach to Scraping Websites

What do we even say about this presentation? Rob is one of a kind.

If you take a look at the #MozCon feed on Twitter, you’ll notice far fewer people live-tweeting — that’s because they were busy taking notes!

Actual footage of me watching this session with @RobOusbey... #MozCon pic.twitter.com/TwH6jgmkAK

— Brie E Anderson (@brie_e_anderson) July 14, 2020

He wrapped it all up by showing off exactly what he did to integrate Lighthouse data into Moz Pro’s SERP analysis.

Again, this is going to be one of those presentations that you have to rewatch multiple times. Or maybe even at half-speed!

Ross Simmonds — Designing a Content Engine: Going from Ideation to Creation to Distribution

We closed out day one with the Coolest of Cool.

Ross came in hot with some Disney references to make us think.

Disney movies — where do the storylines usually come from? Other stories!

In recent years we’ve seen Disney “revise” their previous movies to make them fit today’s world. And actually, some of the original Disney movies were “remixes” of Shakespeare’s plays.

Ross loves his four Rs (revise, remix, remove, redirect), and this year he gave us even more actionable plans.

This closing session really encouraged us to put on our “Sherlock Homeboy” hat and get curious about what others are doing, and how we can do it better.

A few places to find inspiration for innovation that Ross mentioned:

Your favorite website’s site map

Wayback machine for industry leaders’ sites

Wikipedia

There’s so much to do

For now, we're calling it a day and getting some rest because we get to do it all again tomorrow!

If you want to access the speaker slides, you can sign in with your Moz Community credentials and download them on this page.

If you did join us today, what was your favorite session? Your biggest takeaway? We can’t wait to see you tomorrow!

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