My Week That Was June 4-10

This week I was fully recovered from my holiday BBQ hamburger mishap and looking forward to continuing my Steemit journey. I learned quite a few things this week, each one important in its own way.

Source

Tags. Umm yeah, I really should have done my homework on using tags on Steemit before it was really important to me to do so. A friend in the artist community lost his year long fight with cancer and I wrote a post, hoping to raise desperately needed money for his family. But I used the wrong tag as my first tag and found I couldn’t change that first tag once it was published.

So, that taught me two things -

1. Read the requirements of any group I want to include in my tags. Some of them want to first, some absolutely do not.
2. Do some more research and experimenting with tags on Steemit. They don’t act the way they do on Google or Amazon and I must keep that in mind.

That brings up another learning experience, Steem Press. A new app on the Steem platform that allows you to use Word Press with the Steem Press plugin to easily publish your articles in both places. You can also publish older WP articles in bulk on Steemit using Steem Press.

The objective is to increase the quality of Steem content while attracting WP bloggers from “the other side” to Steem. Following the Steem Press Discord channel one logic flaw leapt out to me. Just because someone published using Word Press is no guarantee of quality. While it is very possible that Steem will see an influx of new users, it could also see a massive increase of low quality WP content as the bulk publish feature is used.

Plagiarism and people gaming the system for the votes Steem Press is handing out could also become a problem. Want easy, fast money? Just copy someone else’s WP blog post, toss it onto your WP blog and hit the Steem Press button. Judging from the comments I’m seeing, Steem Press seems to have anticipated this wrinkle and is catching that sort of system gaming pretty quickly.

No matter how Steem Press works out, upping your content quality game is going to become a priority as more and more people discover Steem. We always like to see new people on the platform, thinking about the money they bring in, but if your content isn’t up to snuff, you will become buried and make less money with more active Steemit members publishing more content.

Speaking of members, I had great news this week from two people who have attended my feedback session over in Promo-Mentors. One got Curied and one got a vote from a big STEM whale group. That absolutely, positively made my day! I get such a rush watching the people who come through our feedback sessions and workshops improve the quality of their posts with a little bit of help and direction from the mentors who run those events. It puts a grin on my face that lasts all day when one of “my” people gets the recognition and upvotes they worked so hard for.

And that brings me to the capstone of my week on Steem. I got to run our first Workshop on how to create videos. I LOVE video and got hooked on creating online videos when Tech Smith asked me to beta test their new video capture, creation and editing program - Camtasia. Long before YouTube existed, long before video editors and post production software existed, I was hooked on the creation of online video.

And now I get to share tips and tricks and things I’ve learned about creating and editing online video with the people who venture into the weekly Video Workshop over at Promo Mentors. I wrote and polished my presentation all week, tested new software and couldn’t wait to get started. I don’t know about the attendees, but I had a blast!

Why was I so excited about teaching something I’ve taught for years? Steem forced me to look at the world in a whole new light. During my time on Steem, I’ve found I had to change my thinking. You see, in the past, I’ve always taught high end programs, the ones that cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. My former students had top of the line gear.

But now I have to change the focus to mobile phones, low cost or free editing programs, and online editors that are not device specific. I have to concentrate on showing people not only how to create a well crafted video that captures attention and holds interest, but also how to produce that video so it doesn’t chew up bandwidth plans or loads slowly on a less than ideal connection.

So, in many ways, this is new material for me, a new adventure. I’ll be posting some of the workshop info here in my blog, and also doing future workshops using Dlive. As soon as I have my intro graphics in place, I’ll also be tossing up edited versions on Dlive, Dtube and YouTube. I have a feeling that my Saturday workshop is going to turn into the highlight of my week.

Yesterday I hit the grocery store. A chore I absolutely detest but made necessary by the low level of coffee I had left in the canister. Absolutely can not ever run out of coffee. A few weeks ago I made up a batch of home made dog biscuits. Now you have to understand that while I can bake things, I really dislike baking. With a passion. I’d rather hear fingernails on a chalkboard for an hour than break out the flour and sugar and eggs. Yet I found myself baking dog biscuits because I knew what was in them and my dogs loved them so much.

I looked up dog biscuit recipes online and yesterday found me in the baby food aisle wondering if my dogs would prefer beef and sweet potatoes as a homemade biscuit ingredient or chicken and apple. (I got both). The irony of that purchase was not lost on me. I haven’t used the baby food aisle in a long time, yet there I was, gathering baby food for baking dog biscuits when I hate the very act of baking and won’t do it for myself.

So that was my week that was. Looking forward the the new adventures that this week will bring.

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