What I Did in January 2010
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Jobs for the Future/CommunicationWorks - Project management and website expansion
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization, beta testing
- University Pathologists - website project management
- Writing content for the new Schwadesign.com
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for DocEHRTalk.org maintenance and expansion
What I Did in November 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Providence the Creative Capital – Edits to content, updating website
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for DocEHRTalk.org and launch of site
- Jobs for the Future - Project management and website launch
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization
- Vein & Aesthetic Center of Boston - Content development
- University Pathologists - website project research and kickoff
- Preliminary work on the new Schwadesign.com
What I Did in October 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Providence the Creative Capital – Edits to content, launch of website, crafting ongoing editorial calendar, article assignments and editing
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for medical industry campaign, as well as branding/web development for Advocacy itself
- Jobs for the Future - Project management and ongoing strategy/consulting
- Highlander Charter School - Content development
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization
- Vein & Aesthetic Center of Boston - Content development
- University Pathologists - website project research and kickoff
What I Did in September 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Providence the Creative Capital – Edits to content, launch of website, crafting ongoing editorial calendar, article assignments and editing
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for medical industry campaign, as well as branding/web development for Advocacy itself
- Jobs for the Future - Project management and ongoing strategy/consulting
- Highlander Charter School - Content development
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization
- Vein & Aesthetic Center of Boston - Content development
- Proposal writing and prospect meetings
Providence the Creative Capital Podcast in iTunes
Well, this is a first for me: a podcast that I created is now available in iTunes - and looks to be for a good long time to come.
It’s the Providence the Creative Capital podcast, which is a companion to the Creative Capital campaign and website. Each episode of the podcast features an interview with interesting Providence residents on all kinds of topics - arts and culture, digital media, entrepreneurship, outdoor activities.
Two episodes are up now, with more coming each month. Subscribe, learn more about Providence, and hear my dulcet tones from time to time.
What I Did in July 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Jobs for the Future - Project management and ongoing strategy/consulting
- BioProcess - text editing
- PAL - text writing and editing
- Providence the Creative Capital – content development and article editing
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for medical industry campaign
- Proposal writing for a number of clients; prospect meetings
What I Did in June 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Providence the Creative Capital – Edits to content, launch of website, crafting ongoing editorial calendar, article assignments and editing
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for medical industry campaign, as well as branding/web development for Advocacy itself
- Jobs for the Future - Project management and ongoing strategy/consulting
- PASA – writing/editing website content, brand messaging
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization
- Brown Political Theory Project – information architecture and sitemap development
- Proposal writing for a number of clients; prospect meetings
- Process improvement meetings and actions
The Week’s Twitter Updates for 2009-06-16
- The shower is home to many of my story breakthroughs. Lots of good ideas while getting clean this morning #
- Invited by a colleague to submit new comic to an austrlian lit antho today. Have an idea already. Collaboration is awesome! #
- Planned put some new stories in a surprising new comics genre tonight. Intriguing/a little nervous-making #
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The Week’s Twitter Updates for 2009-06-09
- Ratings for apps in iPhone OS 3.0 males me hopeful that more adult fare- like Split Lip- can thrive at iTunes #
- Corrections for Split Lip iPhone apps sent to @tropicalsteve today. Fingers crossed that Apple digs ‘em. #
- Cooking up a cool new comix project with Neal von Flue. No horror involved -unless you find banjos scary. #
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What I Did in April 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- BioProcess - project management
- Highlander Charter School - writing website content
- PASA – writing/editing website content, brand messaging
- PAL - Content development and search engine optimization
- Providence the Creative Capital – website strategy and content development
- Brown Political Theory Project – information architecture and sitemap development
- Advocacy Solutions - web strategy for medical industry campaign
- Proposal writing for a number of clients; prospect meetings
- Process improvement meetings and actions
What I Did in March 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- BioProcess - project management
- Highlander Charter School - writing website content
- PASA – writing/editing website content
- Providence the Creative Capital – website strategy and content development
- Brown Political Theory Project – information architecture and sitemap development
- Proposal writing for a number of clients; prospect meetings
- Process improvement meetings and actions
What I Did in February 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Vein and Aesthetic Center of Boston - writing web content, preparing website expansion and content updates, project management
- BioProcess - project management
- Advocacy Solutions - rebranding
- Providence the Creative Capital - writing, IA, sitemaps, editorial calendar development
- Highlander Charter School - began writing website content
- PAL - writing web and brochure content
- Proposal writing for a number of clients
- Process improvement meetings and actions
I’m #1 (or at least some of my sites are)
As I’ve noted in this space in the past, one of the big achievement for someone practicing search engine optimization is to achieve a #1 organic ranking in Google. This means that when a user types in a keyword or keyphrase, the site you’re optimizing comes up as the first result in Google. It’s a pretty solid indication of quality work and directs a lot of traffic to a site.
I’m proud to say that I’ve recently found that I’ve achieved 8 #1 organic rankings in Google for keywords related to my iPod site for About.com.
Those keywords are (click the link to see a screenshot):
- restart iphone - note that my site is ranked ahead of Apple
- iphone help
- how to reset iphone - ahead of Apple again
- reboot iphone
- reformat ipod
- transfer itunes - ahead of Apple
- aac vs. mp3
- frozen iphone - ahead of Apple
In Praise of Paper
If you’ve ever read any of my “What I Did In Month X” posts on the site, you’ve seen some photos of the slightly over the top to-do lists I make myself every week. The other day, Jim Hanrahan, the intern at Schwa, looked at my list and said, “That’s a pretty intense to-do list.” He wasn’t wrong.
And because they’re so intense - and because I’m paranoid about forgetting to do things - I decided to try an experiment earlier this year: ditch paper and handle all of my GTD (getting things done) on the computer.
For this experiment, I took the advice of my well-organized pal Jake Camara, who uses the Mac app Things for all his GTD. He’d raved about it to me a while back and since it’s got both a desktop and iPhone version, it seemed to not only have all the features I needed, but also the ability to come with me a little better than paper.
So, I gave it a shot. I entered my to-dos into Things, adding my recurring events, and went to work.
And barely three weeks later, I’m back to using paper.
I liked a lot of, uh, things about Things, but found that ultimately it wasn’t versatile enough for me. I need to be able to write on my to-do list, use it to make notes to myself, track my time, and be something that has, within the confines of the page at least, a fairly open framework. As much as I liked Things, I still found myself needing to use paper every day. Plus, all those to-do items on the screen made me feel like I wasn’t accomplishing much, when in fact I was rocking the to-do list.
So here I am, back at using paper. I can imagine a day in which my to-do lists will go to the screen, but it’s probably going to need to be a screen I can write on. For now, paper is just too easy, too versatile, too effective to ditch.
What I Did in January 2009
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Vein and Aesthetic Center of Boston - writing web content, preparing website expansion and content updates, project management
- BioProcess - project management + proposal writing
- Advocacy Solutions - rebranding
- Highlander Charter School - began writing website content
- Eleve - finalizing website content
- PAL - writing web and brochure content
- Proposal writing for a number of clients
- Process improvement meetings and actions
Writing Fridays
Heading into 2009, I’m also heading in my third full year of being a full-time freelancer. In my first two years, that’s meant writing for clients most of the time and trying to fit in time for my own writing on nights, weekends, and during desperately fleeting breaks in the flow of work.
That schedule for my writing has produced work I’m proud of - 21 completed Split Lip stories, a handful of other comics, a handful of magazine articles - but it’s not as much as I’d like to produce.
What I Did in December 2008
Another installment in my regular series of posts detailing, in brief terms, my professional life for the previous month. Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Vein and Aesthetic Center of Boston - writing web content, preparing website expansion and content updates, project management
- Jobs for the Future - proposal writing
- BioProcess - project management + proposal writing
- Advocacy Solutions - rebranding
- Proposal writing for new 5 clients
For Creative Interiors:
- SEO research and implementation
For About.com:
- Lots of blog posts, new content, and creating holiday content
For Frame Media:
- InformationAppliance.com - blogging
- Setting my parents up with a FrameChannel account to use on their new digital frame
For .406 Ventures:
- Web project management, content updates
Writing:
- Submitted graphic novel proposal noted last month to non-comics publisher
- Began a new Split Lip script
- Cemented agreement with new Split Lip artist, approached another
- Provided art feedback for my two comics in the Work! anthology
- Continued work on secret eBook project
(The image above is a strategically obscured to-do list from, believe it or not, a slow week in December 2008)
Site Redesigned
As promised earlier in the year, my site has been redesigned and relaunched. The content is primarily the same (for now), but the design is way different. I think I’ve worked out all the bugs and kinks in my customization of this theme (barring one or two that are out of my hands right now), but if you come across anything, please let me know in the comments on this post.
As the year goes on, I expect to add more functionality and features to the site to make it a little more exciting and interactive. As always, though, I welcome your input in the form of emails or comments on any blog posts.
Here’s to 2009!
What I Did In November 2008
Last month, I spent my work time doing the following:
For Schwadesign:
- Ounce Labs - website project management and planning; proposal writing
- Providence The Creative Capital - website planning, information architecture, strategy, content creation
- PASA - content development/guidance
- PAL - website project management and sitemap/IA development
- Eleve - website content writing
- Vein and Aesthetic Center of Boston - writing web content, preparing website expansion and content updates, project management
- Jobs for the Future - proposal writing
- BioProcess - project management
- Advocacy Solutions - rebranding
- Major International Telecom Covered by NDA - website project management
For Creative Interiors:
- SEO research and implementation
For About.com:
- Lots of blog posts, new content, and creating holiday content
For Frame Media:
- InformationAppliance.com - blogging
For .406 Ventures:
- Web project management, content updates
Writing:
What I Did in October 2008
Because I’m pretty busy these days, it’s hard for me to keep up with regular blog posts about what I’m working on. Instead, I’ve decided to post a monthly recap of what I worked on to keep you up to date. Here’s the first!
For Schwadesign:
- PASA - content development
- Big Secret Project - website planning, information architecture, strategy
- Major International Telecom Covered by NDA - website project management
- PAL - website project management and sitemap/IA development
- Boston Portfolio Properties - content updates
- Jobs for the Future - Content population and web application testing
- Ounce Labs - website project management and planning
For Basics Group:
- RI EPSCoR - Writing two articles for EPSCoR’s first newsletter and editing/rewriting the others
For Creative Interiors:
- SEO research and implementation
For About.com:
- Lots of blog posts, new content, and planning for holiday content
For Frame Media:
- InformationAppliance.com - blogging
For .406 Ventures:
- Web project management, content updates
I’m No Longer at RIHLD
Just a houskeeping note: I’ve stepped down as the editor of Rhode Island Home, Living & Design magazine. I had a great 18 months in the position and am sorry to be moving on, but my workload has been so substantial this year that I needed to free up more time for my own writing, to say nothing of rest and relaxation. So, the issue on the stands now is the last one I edited. Elisabeth Herschbach, one of the magazine’s writers, has taken over as editor. I wish her, and Paul Anselmo, the publisher, nothing but good luck and look forward to seeing where they take the magazine next. I’m sure it will be great places.
Redesign Coming
Just a little hint of things to come: Sometime before the end of 2008, I’m going to be redesigning this site and turning it into something more useful and better looking. This site has served me well for a few years, but it’s time to upgrade. I know the look I’m going to have, I just need to customize it and upgrade my content. Not sure when I’ll complete it, but it’ll be better and maybe even worth the wait.
New Client: RI EPSCoR
I’ve been doing some writing recently, and will be doing more throughout the year, for RI EPSCoR, the Rhode Island Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, via the good offices of The Basics Group, who has created a terrific new website for EPSCoR and its related organizations.
As part of this work, I’ll be writing a series of articles about scientific research at higher ed institutions in Rhode Island. The first two of these articles are now live:
Submissions
Despite this blog looking like I do nothing but read a lot of comics and the occasionally novel, I’ve been hard at work the last few months on a number of projects. Many have been mentioned on this site, some have not.
Among the most interesting and exciting things I’ve been working on can’t be fully revealed yet – especially so as not to jinx them. We writers are a cowardly and superstitious lot – but I can say this: In the last few weeks, I’ve sent a book proposal to 10 publishers and four different graphic novel proposals to two publishers.
Wish me luck!
