Minnesota Blogger Conference, The End.

I want to share with you a few of my notes from Rick Kupchella the keynote speaker. This will be the last post on the conference.

Rick Kupchella is a former news anchor and journalist here in the Twin Cities. He left broadcasting to begin a few projects one of which is Bring Me the News. Some of the primary goals of this site is to distribute news electronically, keep it local, no political leaning [I find that rather refreshing], and sourcing stories through traditional as well as nontraditional news outlets such as social media and blogs. Then distributed through email, Facebook, digital, and mobile to name a few.

When asked what are we solving for? Bring Me the News wants to provide consumers with a clean digital landscape and to help the public find new and credible news. Kupchella shared that the world is creating five billion gigabytes of data every two days. That equals all the information created from the beginning of time through 2003 [Eric Schmidt was sited as the source.] That is a lot of information to wade through and they want to provide a clean source for consumers.

Kupchella also spoke about the benefit for their sponsors as being relevancy engagement and an influential audience. He mentioned, what I heard as a recurring theme at the conference, driving content is the new bar for online marketing. Consumers no longer want a banner they are looking for thought leadership. He sees media partners finding an economical way of obtaining high quality news curation.

I’ve added Bring Me the News to my Google Reader. I’ve found that it is straight forward and credibly sourced news. The sponsored posts are well done too. I look forward to seeing the refreshed and retooled site that is coming in the next month or so.

To Publish or Not To Publish … That is the Question.

I tweeted and asked a couple of bloggers this question, but wanted to see what y’all think about the (beta) Kindle Publishing for Blogs too.

What is it? According to the web site, “Amazon Kindle Publishing for Blogs is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets you add and sell your blogs on the Kindle Store.”

I set-up an account just to be able to get to the fine print. The disclaimers and legal jargon were enough to put me off. Definitely not written to be understood by the average person.

Here is the link to the Kindle Publishing for Bloggers. What do you think? Are you in? What potential benefits or hazards do you see? Me? I blog for the fun of it so not today.

Image source

2010 in review

Recently received this 2010 year in review! I was blown away. Maybe I shouldn’t give up blogging! Here’s to getting back into the saddle again!

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,400 times in 2010. That’s about 18 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 50 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 97 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 21mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was September 7th with 88 views. The most popular post that day was I am Women Hear me Roar!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were digg.com, twitter.com, scootinoldskool.wordpress.com, ow.ly, and facebook.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

I am Women Hear me Roar! September 2010
9 comments

2

Sign-up for class: Check. Helmet: Check. March 2010
2 comments

3

Call Ripley’s I’ve got one for the record! September 2010
6 comments

4

Dream big, work it out from there! July 2010
12 comments

5

F.Y.I. The world does not revolve around you. February 2010
5 comments