Blogger Stories

Blogger Stories: Tim Jackson

Many of our Blogger Story Tellers have shown that life does not always follow a straight line. For Tim Jackson, aka Masiguy, a love of words was at the start of his life adventure. However, before he combined writing, via blogs, with his other passion cycling, he would take many side trips from designing custom hats to working on a shrimp boat in Alabama a la Forrest Gump.

Blogger Story Teller: Tim Jackson, Masiguy; Shut Up and Drink the Kool-Aid!

I've been a writer for almost as long as I've been a rider. The only thing that has held my imagination as strongly as cycling has been writing. Not that I get to do much creative writing now, but I used to be a very prolific writer, almost exclusively poetry. It is fairly accurate to say that over the years I've had a number of very different jobs and could be called something of a Jack of all trades.

I worked in potato, corn, watermelon and sweet potato fields, pecan orchards, horse stables, fishing boats, oyster beds and shrimp boats (one of my favorites) while growing up in Alabama. I also worked for my uncle in his auto repair shop- fetching parts, sweeping floors, cleaning the lot and other non-mechanical jobs.

I worked on a few construction sites, since almost everybody on my father's side of the family is a carpenter. I mowed lawns, raked leaves, washed cars and worked for a reupholsterer... all by the time I was 16.

By the time I was 12, I fell in love with cycling and got my first bike shop job in our small town bike shop.

BLogger Stories: Katie Delahaye Paine

Katie Delahaye Paine, authors two very different blogs. One that brings her smart point of view about the PR industry. The other offers her very personal story about not only surviving life but how to take a giant bite out of life and laugh at your demons.

Katie's email includes the following quote that is the essence of so many stories.

I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away. - Peter Viereck

Blogger Story Teller: Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog; truesurvior

I was asked to present  a paper at the International Public Relations Research conference in Miami in March of 2005 on How to Measure Blogs and realized that I better have some personal experience with a blog before I started writing. So I set one up and blogged the conference and then kind of forgot about it.

But then Shel Holtz scolded me about not keeping it updated, and I started paying more attention. I started getting comments from all kinds of people and having really interesting conversations with people who had very different perspectives on PR measurement and then I was hooked.

And then of course I read Naked Conversations and ran into Shel Israel in Palo Alto and got even more inspired. I've always been a journalist of sorts and I find blogging to be the perfect medium. In fact I now have two blogs, one for business, KDPaine's PR Measurement Blog and a personal one truesurvior that came out of my breast cancer experience and the need to process emotions and grief. Actually, I'm so enjoying this process my staff is thinking of enrolling me in Blogaholics Anonymous.

Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, Cancer_Blog, Business_Blog, PR_Blog, KDPaine

Blogger Stories: Gil C. Schmidt

In between moving and organizing his 4,789 books Gil Schmidt tool time off to tell a couple of his favorite Blogger Stories. The first is a public one, still ongoing, while the second is now being made public. Gil's story are wonderful examples of the ying and the yang of blogs: bloggers making a difference in other people's lives and other people touching bloggers' lives. And the greater good that so often comes from those relationships.

Blogger Story Teller: Gil C. Schmidt, Gil The Jenius

While researching blogs in Puerto Rico, I came across a post in a local blog titled The Information Soldier. The author, Aníbal Freytes, was a government employee at the time and was very disenchanted with what he was experiencing on the job.

I quoted his post and wrote to him, offering my help in any way. He wrote back to me, linked to my blog and we agreed to have lunch. Over pasta, we talked about dozens of topics, most of them related to working in and for the government and options for finding a better job.

Less than a month later, Aníbal resigned from his dead-end government job for one in a fascinating tech company. He was kind enough to credit me for helping me make the transition. A few months later, Aníbal stopped posting for a few days: he suffered a heart attack. Although in his early 30s, his weight and health habits were obviously negative factors.  Through our blogs, e-mails and phone calls, we stayed in touch, and though we haven’t met again in person, we have kept our new friendship growing through contacts and blog references.

Blogger Stories: Rita Arens

Blogs do more than just connect people-to-people. Rita Arens' story is about the blogoshere as a village with people from all over the world who help her feel a little less alone. A little less lonely. While at the same time providing a creative outlet for her talented and heartwarming writing.

Blogger Story Teller: Rita Arens, Surrender, Dorothy

When the little angel was two months old, I started blogging.  I have never been a mother before. I am the kind of person who always researches everything.  I was valedictorian of my graduating class in high school.  I graduated from the University of Iowa in three and a half years.  I couldn't wait to get out  there and prove to the world that I knew what I was doing.

I kept a pregnancy journal, fastidiously.  I recorded every pound I gained, every pretzel I threw up, every drink I denied myself.  I have always journaled.  I wrote down every emotion I had, every man who broke my heart, every morsel of food I didn't eat when I was anorexic from 1992 to 1994.

I keep lists.
I have a mission statement for myself.
I have goals.
I was going to be the perfect mother.

Blogger Stories: Mike and Ben Yoskovitz

Mike and Ben Yoskovitz are Blogger Stories' first father and son team. A family business is always a challenge; however, when you build a company on a product that provides personalized, satirical content there has to be more laughs than family conflicts.

Blogger Story Tellers: Father & Son Team, IGotNewsForYou.com
Mike Yoskovitz (dad)

Benjamin Yoskovitz (son)

My father lost his job in April 2005. He's a baby boomer, of the age where finding work in the I.T. industry can be difficult. For many years he had dreamt of starting his own business online, something he could do that would be fun, challenging and let him be his own boss. Shortly after losing his job he decided to go for it and I hopped along for the ride. IGotNewsForYou.com was born.

We started work immediately, mostly planning the business and the website. My dad's focus would be on the administration of the business and programming, but marketing was not his strong suit. One day I said, "Dad, we should launch a blog before we go live with the full site, it'll help generate some buzz and get us out there."

Although in the I.T. field for the past 20 years, his knowledge of blogs and social media wasn't terribly strong, so I set up the blog in January 2006 and showed him how it worked. I showed him the vast number of quality blogs out there on every imaginable subject, and we started posting.

Blogger Stories Interviewed

Curious about the back-story behind Blogger Stories? Yvonne DiVita, Lip-sticking, recently interviewed me, and in her usual savvy style, brings more to the picture than one might anticipate.

I wanted to do this because I think stories are the fabric of our lives; quilted, silken, burlaped, or braided, stories give us warmth and hope, they provide memory and reflection, and they help each one of us weave a blanket of many colors and textures - that is uniquely our own.

Yvonne so gets what it's all about. As soon as her hectic life slows down she's promised to tell her story on Blogger Stories.

Thank you Yvonne for your generosity in helping a new blog find its way into the blogosphere. Bloggers are the friendliest people!

Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, Lip-sticking, Yvonne_DiVita

Blogger Stories: Ed Garsten

  Ed Garsten is the Editorial Director of the controversial Chrysler Group's Media Blog. Ed's story begins with him calling blogs idiotic and ends with how blogs rejuvenated his life. How he got to that point via CNN and broadcast news is quite a tale.

Blogger Story Teller: Ed Garsten

To say I had no interest in banging on a computer keyboard for any reason would be an understatement. In 1981 I joined CNN, which, at the time,  had the biggest computerized broadcast newsroom anywhere.  They had some typewriters that worked most of the time, but none of the computers worked all of the time.

With those odds, why change? So I didn’t. I scratched out my swill on paper until a supervisor informed me the typewriters were going bye-bye so I had to give up the ghost along with actual ink.

After years of peering into those green screen “dumb” terminals, my eyesight deteriorated, but my patience grew to the point where I no longer whacked the side of the bland beige boxes ever time it lost my story or show rundown. Yes, I was slowly being co-opted into the computer world and once I stopped swearing, I learned to take advantage of all the stuff it could do…like fix my lousy spelling.  It’s broadcasting, who cares how you spell?

Blogger Stories: Nick Jacobs

Not only did Nick Jacobs find his muse through blogging but as the "blogging" President and CEO of Windber Medical Center he is setting the gold standard for social media strategies within the healthcare profession.

I loved Nick Jacobs' response to my request about telling his blog story, "Happy to work with you on this fishing trip." Blogger Stories is rather like a fishing trip .. never know what you'll catch!

Blogger Story Teller: Nick Jacobs or Google search name: F. Nicholas Jacobs, Nick's Blog

As President and CEO of two very unique organizations, our challenge is enormous. The hospital, a unique, urban hospital 7.5 miles away from a sophisticated tertiary center in a very geographically restricted market is almost totally dependent on the local newspaper and primary television station to tell a story that is typically lost in the advertising and PR of the neighboring, larger trauma center.  Their overall annual budget is nearly a billion dollars, ours is around thirty million. 

Our other non-profit corporation is a five year old, start up research institute that is NOT connected to any major deep-pocket medical school, university or large donor.  When you combine these two organizations, their world lives at about an 80% plus failure rate with negative bottom lines and almost no opportunity to gain access through the traditional "good old boy" grant sources.  Consequently, after trying every PR and marketing tactic, the weblog presented itself as an opportunity to get the story out internationally.

One of my best friends, a very savvy octogenarian, public relations genius, Zane Knauss, former PR director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, called me last year and asked, "Why aren't you doing a blog?" Then we called our webmaster, Mike Russell at Planet Russell and asked him if he could add pictures, do the occasional edit, and put some meat to the bones of some of our stories.  He agreed, and the price was right. 

The rest, as they say, is blogstory.  We are celebrating our first anniversary this month, and, although it has taken a while to find our voice, we are finally getting a few thousand readers. 

 

 

Blogger Stories: Millie

Every once in a while, as you travel in the blogosphere, you find a blogger who touches your heart. Millie, the 80 year young blogger of My Moms Blog, not only touched my heart but delighted my soul.

Blogger Story Teller - Millie, My Mom's Blog

When Toby asked me to write about "How the blogoshere has touched my life and opened new doors and created new opportunities for me" , I thought it was going to be a 1, 2, 3 piece. How to start?

Then one day a light went on and before I even attempt to write about what the blogoshere has done for me I want to write about something that ties in with blogging.

It had to be sometime in the 50's when I had the opportunity to experience a showing of photographs, "The Family Of Man" by Edward Steichen. The prologue written by Carl Sandberg explains what the contents will reveal: "photographs made in all parts of the world, of the gamut of life from birth to death with emphasis on daily relationships, joys, trials and tribulations."

Since I started blogging it has offered me the opportunity to get to know people from all over the world. What I have discovered is no matter where in the world you live, we all share the same life experiences, we belong to "The Family of Man."

Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, My_Moms_Blog

Blogger Stories: Robert Bruce

Robert Bruce is an innovative American Poet who is using social media .. blogs & podcats .. to "throw poems around the world." If you haven't read a poem since your college days The Thoroughly Modern Man at the end of the Robert's story might be a pleasant surprise. 

Blogger Story Teller: Robert Bruce, Knife Gun Pen

I found myself frustrated with the obscenely long turn-around time on publication in poetry journals and with the incestuous nature of the publishing business in general. Seems if you didn't attend the right school or have a buddy or your grandmother working as an editor of the mag, you had no real shot.... I suppose this is how business is conducted in all industries.

I figured there had to be a way to take the stuff straight to the audience. Of course, the internet is the general answer. So, I started messing around with a static site around March 2005.  Played with the thing for a couple months and wasn't too happy with it. Wasn't too happy with relying on someone else (unpaid, no less) to update it. The thing bored me.

Then I discovered blogs. I fired one up (now defunct) back in June, went through four domains and three platforms (use WP now, would never change) before I landed at KGP. Taught myself everything through trial and error, when I began I didn't even know what HTML was.

Glad I did it. Not looking back.

If you've got something good to get out, don't wait. Do it. Do it well. The days of your life are few.

The Thoroughly Modern Man

They tell me that
I can have thousands
of naked women
at my beck and call
slipping unnoticed
through a tiny wire
in my wall

They tell me that
I can own the treasures
of China and Europe
by driving my car
a mere five miles
to their
weekend only
parking lot super-sale

They tell me that
for $59.95
plus shipping and handling
I can quickly learn to master
my emotions
my work
my wife
my life

And they tell me all of this
with a straight face
assuring me that
if I cannot
pay now
I can pay later

In January
Or something

I am applauded
even rewarded
for being a flat-broke
perverted pack rat
with a bad marriage
and no
self-control

It is an old place,
the Vanity Fair
but its merchants
now wield ivy-league MBA's

And its hours of operation
are no longer confined
by space and time

But only by
the imagination
and affections
of
The
Thoroughly
Modern
Man

Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, Robert_Bruce, American_Poet