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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
11:11:25 AM EDT
The Road Not Taken
When I was in junior high school, we were given an assignment to memorize a poem. I immediately knew that if I was going to remember something forever (yes, I was always as dramatic as I am now) it had to be Robert Frost. I loved “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and wanted to find something else of his to memorize.
And so I fell upon “The Road Not Taken.” There are a few pieces of writing that I can point to as truly changing my life, or changing the way I view the world. This poem would be on the top of that small list. As I memorized the words, I took them to heart – deciding that I would never fall victim to “what if’s.” I wouldn’t follow the easier, more popular routes unless it made sense for me to do so, and I would blaze my own way.
I’ve had the potential for a “what if” moment three times now, where I was presented with a big decision that would take my life in a new direction. I could either stay where I was comfortable and happy, or move on to something new and unknown. As a result, I’ve moved across the continent twice, and I’m about to do it again.
As I mentioned on Monday, today is my last day here at AOL. I just can’t say no to the unknown – I need to know what’s out there. I’m happy here at AOL, I love the people I work with, I love all of you in J-Land, but if I didn’t take this opportunity and see what I could make of it, I’d be saying “what if” my entire life.
This blog (and this screenname) will cease to exist after today. I'm not going anywhere, though, I’ve been blabbing online in some form or another for longer than I care to remember, and I’m certainly not going to stop now.
As for blogs here on AOL - Joe isn't going anywhere, and will keep you up to date on all things R11b and beyond, as (I’m sure) will the other members of the team who blog. And (my one last chance to pitch!), you can keep up to date on the team’s blogs by using the team aggregator I made over at Yahoo! Pipes.
All the best to everyone, and keep blogging!!
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
Written by stephaniebambam
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
12:01:14 PM EDT
Planned Outage Tonight
Starting at midnight tonight EST (9pm PST) the site may be inaccessible for approximately two hours. The downtime will most likely be sporatic, but you will have some difficulty reaching pages for a while.
The downtime is necessary due to some work that the engineering folks will be doing to improve performance of the site.
Again - the site will probably be DOWN from 12 am until 2 am EST tonight (Wednesday morning). Should you have problems accessing the site after 3 am or so (although you should be sleeping...) please let us know.
As always, thanks for your understanding. We know what a pain it is when we take the site down, but it is necessary to keep performance up.
Written by stephaniebambam
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Monday, April 16, 2007
3:49:28 PM EDT
R11b Soon..and Some News.
R11b will be going out to the beta servers in the next week or two, and we'd love to have as many people playing with it over there as possible. The big change that I'm sure you'll all notice is a complete overhaul of the add pictures functionality (what you see when you click "Add Pictures") and the addition of a add video button.
The new picture picker will allow you to upload new pictures directly into AOL photos, pull pictures from Photos, or use pictures you may have already uploaded to Flickr. The add video button lets you record and upload videos directly from your webcam - quick and easy video-blogging!
The other news I need to share with you all is that Wednesday will be my last day here at AOL. The news is bittersweet, I'm going to miss everyone here (and in J-Land) like crazy, but I'm also looking forward to see what happens next. After I leave, you all should contact Joe or another member of the team if you have problems - this AOL account will most likely cease to exist.
You're still stuck with me for two more days, though, I will be sure to post again before I head out. :)
Written by stephaniebambam
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Monday, April 2, 2007
10:51:55 AM EDT
April Fools Joke Turns Real
Every April Fools Day, ThinkGeek (a fabulous store for all things geeky) comes up with some funny fake products to "sell." This year the products offered for "sale" included a WiiHelm (yeah, a helmet you wear to play your Wii), a "Lonely Guy Digital Photo Frame," and...an 8 bit tie:
The Digg community jumped all over the tie the instant they saw it (other communities may have done the same, I personally was only involved in the Digg effort), e-mailing ThinkGeek asking them to pleeeeeeeease make the tie. And sure enough, by last night, ThinkGeek had replied, requesting that people stop flooding their inbox, that yes, they'd make the tie.
I've signed up to be notified when the tie is available, and will most likely buy several - it's a wonderful gift for any (male) geek.
The Digg community is regularly put down for being adolescent and childish, and while they certainly have their moments, yesterday I think they did a great thing.
This is the power of a community, baby - a joke becomes reality. Yay for the 8 bit tie!
Written by stephaniebambam
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Monday, March 26, 2007
1:27:34 PM EDT
Alerts Issue
Just a quick update to let you all know that we've gotten many reports of people not receiving alerts over the weekend. The alerts team has found the problem (it sounds like, anyway, something may have gone wonky with a recent update), and is working on fixing it ASAP.
Hopefully all will be up and running within a few hours. If you DON'T see any alerts by tonight (tonight meaning PST/EST - those elsewhere - your morning) please let me know.
Thanks!
Written by stephaniebambam
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11:15:29 AM EDT
BlogHer Business - Wrap Up
I really wish I could have stayed longer at this conference (my cat went into the hospital on Tuesday, and I needed to get back so I could bring her home). I met all sorts of people from all different types of companies - large companies like Microsoft, large companies you wouldn't expect to see at an event like this (H.R. Block's been blogging - I didn't know that!), and smaller independent consulting agencies or individual bloggers. And everyone was there to discuss the same thing...corporate blogging. How do we get our companies more involved in blogging, why should we get more involved in blogging, and what problems do we face from blogging (and how do we deal with them).
It was really fun. I didn't have to play my usual "social butterfly" self, running from person to person to try to get them to talk...people were open and more than willing to meet and talk.
Was it because 90% of the people there were women? I honestly couldn't tell you. I've been to conferences that felt like this before, I really have, but they were back in the gaming days where either we all knew each other from playing together online, or I was somewhat 'recognizable' due to my work in the industry. Did the mere fact that we were all women open us up, make us feel more comfortable than people are at most other conferences (where people tend to stick around the people they already know)?
No clue. I will be going to the next BlogHer conference, though, and I fully intend to stay the entire time. This was a blast, and I look forward to seeing all the women I met again in the future.
Written by stephaniebambam
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Friday, March 23, 2007
2:20:57 PM EDT
BlogHer Business - Convincing Companies to Blog
My afternoon here is going to be cut a little short, unfortunately, I only have another hour and a half or so until I need to leave to catch the plane back home. Buuut...until then...I get to see at least one more session.
This session is on "Embracing Social Media Culture," with Karen Walrond from AOL's very own Weblogs (woohoo), Nicki Dugan, editor of Yahoo! Anecdotal, which is a fun blog to read (a great example of "good corporate blogging"), and Lynne D. Johnson from FastCompany.com.
Nicki spoke a bit about negative comments on blogs, and allowing people to vent their frustrations about a company publically (and getting the internal culture of the company to approve of it). We've had our fair share of discussions about that internally here...as you all know, I'll take whatever hits you want to throw at me, but I'd be lying if I said the whole world has the same view. I think this will change over the next year/two, but it does take time and positive examples to prove the point first.
Karen answered a question on how to manage bloggers or convince people to write blog entries. Really, really interesting question, and something I can't say I've thought too much about (beyond my telling everyone that they SHOULD blog, I don't get in their faces about how often/how much).
(Side note - I just put on my super-comfy Yahoo! fleece I got as an x-mas present a few years ago but I am getting laughed at for wearing it. I get laughed at when I wear this at AOL too, but what can I say, my AIM fleece is sleeveless, and nowhere near as fuzzy comfy.)
Everyone's talking about how a lot of power that blogging has is that it's personal. You guys know me. You know I love pokemon, I have a cat, I'm a klutz (hence the name BamBam)...and so on. That (hopefully) helps people stay interested in the writing, and puts a face on a big nameless company like, oh, AOL. That's very true, and a very good point - a blog without some personal commentary or personal posts isn't much of a blog. :)
Ok, battery's dying, so posting this...more if/when I can plug in, otherwise look for a wrapup tomorrow.
Written by stephaniebambam
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11:58:21 AM EDT
BlogHer Business - Corporate Blogging
Hello from BlogHer Business! The folks here did indeedy set up wireless, so while I may not have it in my room, I do have it in the ballroom (yay).
I just finished speaking as part of the second day keynote panel," with Jeanette Gibson from Cisco, and Rachel Clarke, who handles brands like Guinness, Sunsilk (fabulous stuff, btw), and Captain Morgan. I think the session went really well, a lot of people seemed to be almost...surprised...by what we all had to say...which just means to me that we really had to get out and say it. I personally found it really interesting how different, but how similar, all of our views were.
What I said, in a nutshell:
AOL WANTS EMPLOYEES BLOGGING. AOL IS ALL ABOUT COMMUNICATION WITH OUR AUDIENCE.
(is that a surprise to you? *insert very big grin here*)
I also spoke a bit about how AOL's begun to open up, pointing to Ted's blog as a great example of how executives can make a difference when they blog (can I call them 'execu-blogs?'), and how one person really can help change a company (look at Kevin Lawver's baby, Ficlets.com).
It seems to me that the main differences between Cisco, AOL and something like Guinness blogging are mainly a result of the different purposes we've given blogs. Cisco has a lot of corporate businessy discussions on their blog, Guinness has to watch their blog comments for inappropriate comments about alcohol, and, well, you all know that here, in my blog, nearly anything goes.
I'm in a session now that's explicitly about corporate blogging, and why/if someone should blog. It's very interesting, and a lot of the points beingbrought up are very good ones...eg: a lot of corporate blogs intentionally don't include contact info (for the record, mine's stephaniebambam (at) aol.com ), blogs are a great way to talk about 'bad stuff' that a press release can't discuss, etc.
What do you think? Am I as transparent with you all as I think I am? What should I do differently?
Written by stephaniebambam
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7:56:23 AM EDT
BlogHer Business - Nerds Rule
Yeah, Joe's making fun of me and the picture the BlogHer folks chose to use on the website for the BlogHer Business conference. It's a funny picture! I do wear glasses, although not exactly ones that are that heavy (or that are taped in the middle), and the AIM Pages banner behind me is just a riot.
I'm on this morning's keynote panel, which should be really interesting - the main topic is why do companies blog...why SHOULD companies blog. Obviously, we think it's pretty important here at AOL, and I personally think everyone should get out and start blogging, so this will be a really good discussion to have.
I'm not sure exactly how much of an internet connection I'll have down at the conference (there are signs in my room saying 'no wireless'), but if I can post from there, I definately will.
Written by stephaniebambam
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
9:55:03 AM EDT
Time to Vote!
EDIT -
It's Monday morning now, and the winner - with 26% of the vote - was the Muppets.
A whopping 34 of you voted, and I'll update later today with the actual name the team chooses for our first release.
The future code name for blogs is in your hands. Below you'll find a poll with the top ten choices of the Blogs team from all of the options you've suggested. Vote (once, please) for your favorite. Vote in the poll, not in comments...no "votes" left in comments will be counted.
A reminder about what we're looking for from a previous entry of mine:
Again -
what we're looking for - ideas for themes for a code name for blogs.
This wouldn't be the public-facing name...AOL Blogs are AOL Blogs...but
the internal code name we would use on documentation, and to refer to
the product. We'd like a theme, so we can use it for multiple versions
of the product as well. .
The theme with the most votes wins, and I will announce it here Monday morning.
Now go...vote!
Written by stephaniebambam
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