Learning is Important. Ego isn’t. A Real Life Incident.
At a Social Media workshop that I recently conducted, a participant approached me during the tea break. We started to discuss about case studies that I had taught. She then broached a question that stumped me for a second. She asked, “Would it be OK if I interned at your Social Media firm.” And she hastened to add, “By the way, you don’t have to pay me”.
If this question had come from a college student, I would not have blinked an eyelid. This was from a person who was branch head of a large Advertising agency. She currently holds a senior position at a major English Newspaper. A person with decades of work experience.
She said that she was very well versed with traditional media but was very new in the digital space and was determined to learn the ropes.
Her attitude impressed me. Most people with her seniority and years of experience (including me) would cringe at the thought of asking for an unpaid internship in another form. She didn’t let her ego come in the way of learning and for that alone, she deserves credit.
It reminded me of Richard Branson’s words in his book, ‘Screw it…Let’s Do it’. He says…
“If you don’t have the right experience to reach your goal, look for another way in. If you want to fly, get down to the airfield and make tea. Keep your eyes open. Look and learn. You don’t have to go to art school to be a fashion designer. Join a fashion company and push a broom. Work your way up”
This is a powerful lesson that we should all learn from the lady. Learning is important. Ego isn’t.
Yup, I did say yes to her and look forward to working together.
How to Get to My Profiles Easily.
I realize that my usernames are not standard. For example, my YouTube username is ‘Kiruba73′ , my flickr username is ‘Kribs’, my Scribd username is ‘Kiruba_Scribd’. This can be annoying even for me sometimes. Now, imagine what it must be for someone trying to reach these profiles. I always thought I was an early grabber of usernames but obviously I’m not fast enough.
So, I did a small work around. I have created simple redirects. So, all you need to do is just put the sitename ( eg. Facebook or YouTube) after my website domain name (Kiruba.com) and you’ll automatically be taken to the website. No matter how long or complex the url is, its all simple now.
COUCHSURFING
http://www.kiruba.com/couchsurfing redirects to http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/kiruba.
FACEBOOK
http://www.kiruba.com/facebook redirects to http://www.facebook.com/kiurba
TWITTER
http://www.kiruba.com/twitter
http://www.kiruba.com/tweets
http://www.kiruba.com/tweet
These redirects to http://www.twitter.com/kiruba
PHOTOS
http://www.kiruba.com/photos
http://www.kiruba.com/photo
http://www.kiruba.com/flickr
These redirects to http://www.flickr.com/photos/kribs
VIDEOS
http://www.kiruba.com/videos
http://www.kiruba.com/video
http://www.kiruba.com/youtube
These redirects to http://www.youtube.com/kiruba73
PODCASTS
http://www.kiruba.com/podcasts
http://www.kiruba.com/podcast
http://www.kiruba.com/tv
These redirects to http://www.kiruba.tv
PRESENTATION
http://www.kiruba.com/presentations
http://www.kiruba.com/presentation
http://www.kiruba.com/ppt
These redirects to http://www.slideshare.com/kiruba
http://www.kiruba.com/resume
http://www.kiruba.com/linkedin
These redirects to http://www.linkedin.com/kiruba
BUCKETLIST
http://www.kiruba.com/bucketlist
http://www.kiruba.com/43things
http://www.43things.com/person/kribs
GOOGLE+
http://www.kiruba.com/google+
http://www.kiruba.com/g+
These redirects to https://plus.google.com/101835654273149030903/posts
WIKIPEDIA
http://www.kiruba.com/wikipedia redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kirubashankar
BOOKMARKS
http://www.kiruba.com/delicious
http://www.kiruba.com/bookmarking
http://www.kiruba.com/bookmarks
These redirect to http://www.delicious.com/kiruba
PDF
http://www.kiruba.com/scribd
http://www.kiruba.com/pdf
These redirect to http://www.scribd.com/kiruba_scribd
Did I miss anything? If you did this for your own site, will you find this useful? Do share your thoughts.
Whipping out a Nice Twitter Background Image
One of the tricks in designing a good Twitter background image is to make it relevant when being viewed in different monitor resolutions. The most common ones being 1024×768 and 1280×1024.
My designer, Rajesh, recently took the initiative to design a background for my twitter account @Kiruba . We keep doing this for our clients and he felt we should eat our own dog food. I totally agreed with him.
Let me share with you our experience whilst designing the background image. But first, take a look at how my new design looks in both the monitor resolutions.
The first is the 1280×1024 version.
Here’s what the same background image looks like in 1024×768.
If you notice, it looks fairly OK in both the resolutions. It didn’t come easy. It took many iterations from our designer to nail it right. The trick is to align the position of the pictures and the URLs in the right spot. Take a look at what the real background image looks like.
You’ll notice that my logo appears twice. That’s to make sure that the logo placement come out perfectly in both the resolutions. In the 1024×768 resolution, none of the URLs will appear. That’s OK. Its a compromise one has to make. But you’ll notice that they disappear cleanly without parts of it visible.
Here are a couple of good sites in case you want to try your hand at whipping out a good background image for your Twitter account.
13 Resources & Tutorials for a Perfect Twitter Background
Twitter Background Design How-To and Best Practices
Good luck and do share in the comments section if you have designed a background for your account. Also, point out your favorite twitter backgrounds.
P.S : One of my new year resolution is to blog regularly here. I’ve been very erratic last year. Glad I sneaked in a post. My resolution lives to fight another day!
You Still Don’t Have a Domain For Your Blog?
I have always been preaching folks to move to their own domain name. Having a secondary domain (like yourname.blogspot.com) is amateurish. I’m going to get a ton of brickbats for saying this, but I’ll stick to my words.
If you are a blogspot user, you really have no more reasons to shirk this. Did you know that you can have your own custom domain for you blog! And what’s the best part? The hosting is free. Just like blogspot but now with your own domain. That’s awesome. Take it from a man who is paying for his hosting. When you get to have it hosted for free on Google’s own server, just jump for it.
If that doesn’t convince you. Check these out.
Seamless transition: Your blogspot URL will be redirected to your domain name. This way you don’t lose your audience.
No Dirty Hands : Google takes care of all technicalities. No tinkering with HTML.
Reliable Publishing: Did I say you are hosted on Google’s server?
Custom Email : Get yourname@yourname.com using all the fantastic GMail features.
Now, tell me one good reason why you should stick to your boring secondary URL?
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