week six: techie tuesday

i feel so with it. i can't describe the internal pride i have as words such as rss feed, blogger, feedburner, url, re-pointing, and monetise become more tangible to me, emerging as forms against the previous grey-mass that was online-social/business-networking. i can't use them all properly, and i'm sure my understanding is entirely superficial, but i do now GET the fact that there is more to the internet than sainsburys.com or hotmail and that in itself has been something of a revelation. and i've somewhat ashamedly started twittering despite referring to this very activity with a rather clever vowel swap for the past 12 months. however i've been assured that this is the route to clients and to blog traffic growth so have now embraced the beast. the more web savvy amongst you may have noticed my new feed to your right; and my hugely exciting first few tweets!

this morning i spent three hours in starbucks: last week to my mortification they approached me brandishing a business card and asking if it was mine. each week i've been merrily sticking them on the community pinboard, blissfully unaware that this was for more knit-your-own-lentil groups rather than income-driven business-facing accountants. i'd happily been pinning them on top of requests for clothing donations and coffee mornings, congratulating myself on my ad-hoc multi-faceted approach to marketing. unfortunately it seems that the fast disappearance of these was more to do with moral outrage of the staff than a hugely interested potential client base as i'd optimistically assumed. this presumabley means jk rowling, my fellow starbucks driker, hasn't picked one up intrigued by my keen sense of business, and, frowning over her latte, wondered at her own accountant's lack of innovative direction. and wondered if perhaps she'd prefer to use me, a fellow female coffee lover, and she might want to be my best friend too. daydreams shattered. AND no free small coffee taster at 11am: i was a little disappointed as had used up all my cash on the now exhorbitant parking.

i particularly needed the caffeine this morning, partly because my entire three hours were spent setting up twitter, feeds and attempting to re-set my hit rate counter which has sadly expired, but also due to the fact that our weekend was marred by large amounts of sick from us all, joy. i think we've all recovered; i'd like to say i'd managed to lose weight due to the experience but as my recovering body demanded cheese i think not. for some reason it was all i could face, and it must be a symptom of the bug (i reassure myself) as daugher #2 who is only just talking thought for ages in her highchair last night until randomly shouting repeated "peasa" which i thought, happily, meant peas. however she threw these off the table in outrage, repeating her demand, until i realised she meant pizza which is not a word she's really ever used before of her own volition. rather bemusedly i fobbed her off with cheese on toast, calling it pizza, and she devoured it like a carniverous beast. good. who needs veg anyway; lions don't and they cope.

so the fruits of my networking labours are starting to show through, albeit buds rather than actual cash based activities to date. this week i featured on the scotmum website in an article on working mums (http://www.scotmum.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=329&Itemid=171) and i have also been invited to a group called cappucino connections through the athena group. more excitingly i have been sent, via a networking contact, a job position advertised as a part-time CEO designate. this is very very very exciting but may be a step too far: we'll see, i'll definitely give it a go if they want to meet with me.

and last week i went to my first women's networking lunch through a linkedin group and it was such a welcome relief! informal networking with women is a totally different kettle of fish; time for business cards, time for chat, time for wine, time for networking anecdotes, time for wine, time for reason for networking, time for coffee, time to leave! all very fruitful but also a lot of fun and i'll definitley be doing it again!

tomorrow i have two meetings and a networking event, and then another networking event on thursday. all this has lead me to realise that my networking wardrobe isn't really up to all this activity: yet the dichotomy is that there is (as yet) no income with which to improve the situation. however, pre-sick bug this weekend i decided that needs must, you have to live the vision and portray the image you wish to eventually become. that being said i limited myself to m&s (and i can't resist their mushroom and emmenthal toastie followed by chocolate stirrer). i managed to buy some black trousers, some leggings (unsure but decided i need to look contemporary; long top will hopefully hide multitude of sins) and a nice plum satiny top and matching shoes. so all in all rather more positioned towards a christmas party than a networking event but they were very nice and individually very reasonable although the total spend was somewhat tear-jerking. i've heard that there is a networking event for the sad and lonely un-corporately attached so perhaps i'll seek it out.

back to the topic of technical stuff; i've now attached some links to other blogs, you can see these if you look at my account (on the rhs with my picture on). and i don't know if my email subscription link is working. if anyone has had an update on email could they post a comment just so i know? i've mailed the person who designed it for blogger but i've had no response and they're called "rockhunk" ... but that might be my own generational mindset coming out and he's probably very reliable and socially minded, and doesn't go around graffitting community notice boards with self-serving demands for revenue.