Baltimore Wordpress Meetup group at ADG Creative in Columbia

There is a great turnout for the Baltimore Wordpress Meetup Group at ADG Creative in Columbia, MD.

People are turning to Wordpress because it handles User Management out of the box.

User Segregation

example site: OnePhotoapp.com - Matt Taylor of OnePhoto gave a very informative presentation about how he built the platform using Wordpress. 

TinThumb is an imaging processing plugin. There have been numerous recent  security issues.

Post 2 Post allows you to create many-to-many relationships between posts. 

E-Commerce options:

WPMU

Jiigo

WooCommerce (multiple payment processor options)

You can also use PayPal.

Stripe - Credit Card Payment Processor that integrates with WooCommerce.

Use Payment processors to handle credit cards. You do not want to be handling credit card numbers yourself. An exploit or breach can cost $250,000 in liability.

With Wordpress 3.x you can integrate in to the Admin Bar. This can clean up your site design.

Twitter's Bootstrap is a HTML5 complaint tool for UI development - Great for laying out a theme.

Artisteer is also a great development tool for layouts. There is a 30 day trial period for it.

Codex - The Wordpress documentation. Best place to go http://codex.wordpress.org

Next meetup will be on "You're not doing it right!"

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Organizations have to learn that Social Media is a conversation and not a broadcast

There is a great article on John Bell's blog - The Digital Influence Mapping Project: "Don't over-react to a social media crisis"

Hugh McLeod sums up how organizations often take wrong steps in Social Media. It is not Advertising - it is a conversation.

Social media is a conversation

In my experience the detractors want to be heard and if a brand is really listening and not just using Social Media as a broadcast many situations that are initially perceived as a Social Media Crisis will quickly calm down and dissipate in to a largely forgotten timeline.

The key is IF the organization demonstrates that it is really listening. When the naysayers think you are a faceless bureaucracy they shout louder. When they realize that there is a real person listening they will typically moderate their tone because they perceive that they are being heard.

So as John Bell's article points out. Stay calm. Take a deep breath. Show the community that you are listening. That you are human. That you really are authentic. Don't be afraid of admitting a mistake or misstep. Demonstrate that you are willing to learn from your community. It is these steps that will help to not only address a crisis but in many cases convert detractors in to supporters.

I witnessed a small case like this last week. Google made a change to their bookmark gadget on iGoogle. It was a usability disaster. It looked pretty but was less than usable. Users hit the comments board for the widget and panned Google. A string of 1 star reviews. Within hours the widget had been reverted to it's original design. The comments board lit up again. This time with overwhelmingly positive responses. Those detractors had been converted to supporters. Google had listened.

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@Baratunde Thurston closing Insquared #in2

Baratunde Thurston - How To Be Black

Wikis and Streams - expanding the way we tell stories - this was an emerging trend in elections. 

Baratunde gave a hilarious recounting of the Abortionplex story.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/planned-parenthood-opens-8-billion-abortionplex,20476/

and the entries created on Yelp by readers:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/abortionplex-topeka?sort_by=date_desc

and how it was taken seriously by a congressman:

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/02/06/republican-congressman-duped-by-abortionplex-article-in-the-onion/

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@baratunde commenting on inclusion

There is an environment of possibility.

Exclusion may not be an intent but rather a result of non discriminatory habit that misses out on a world of other opportunities.

Checkout http:// cultivatedwit.com

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#In2 Startup Traction session with Tara Hunt (@missrogue)

After a great lunch time talking with different people about HealthCare and HealthCa.mp

The trigger question for this session: How do you get past the first user and scale your idea/product/service?

"Product market fit is what matters at the end of the day" - Tara Hunt.

Check out TechSoup - a resource for non-profits: http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx

Also NetSquared - http://www.netsquared.org/share?cg=slider

SEO - increases traffic but conversion can be really low.

Reduce the barriers to engagement. Easy on ramp. Easy sharing.

Growth isn't the only success metric. Check out the book: small giants.

One tip for cheap internet access. Check out Comcast internet essentials : $9.95 per month. http://www.internetessentials.com/

Tara's guide to setting your target:

1. Who is my customer (ONE person)?
2. Why would they give a hoot?
3. What is your ONE core metric of success?
4. What are 5 things I can do TODAY to get there?

Then work out what is the MVP - What is the Minimum Viable Product?

Some of the participants at this session:

• nobadgift.com
• dinnertime.com (not live yet - authorization required for access) ties in to employer health and wellness programs. 
• rigorison.com (a blank template for a teenage software writer)
• 
  

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Posterous - you failed me! But at least I caught some pics of @MissRogue 's Keynote session. #In2

I am here at the Insquared Innovation conference. I was trying to use the Posterous App on an ASUS Transformer  tablet and was making notes from a great Tara Hunt keynote session when I got a message that Posterous was not connected. 

I had taken a couple of pictures  which were saved but when I went back in to the app there were no draft notes. No autosave on the web through the app. So I lost some great notes from Tara's session.

Posterous - can you update your spaces app to either save a draft locally or perform an autosave at regular intervals on the web. I assume the Postrous mobile App is actually interfacing with the web platform.

What have I learned? Stick to email for posting to Posterous!

Here was Tara Hunt kicking off here Keynote session at InSquared. (http://bit.ly/In2Schedule)

Posted via email from ekivemark: pre-blogspot

Posterous - you failed me! But at least I caught some pics of @MissRogue 's Keynote session. #In2

I am here at the Insquared Innovation conference. I was trying to use the Posterous App on an ASUS Transformer  tablet and was making notes from a great Tara Hunt keynote session when I got a message that Posterous was not connected. 

I had taken a couple of pictures  which were saved but when I went back in to the app there were no draft notes. No autosave on the web through the app. So I lost some great notes from Tara's session.

Posterous - can you update your spaces app to either save a draft locally or perform an autosave at regular intervals on the web. I assume the Postrous mobile App is actually interfacing with the web platform.

What have I learned? Stick to email for posting to Posterous!

Here was Tara Hunt kicking off here Keynote session at InSquared. (http://bit.ly/In2Schedule)

Posted via email from ekivemark: pre-blogspot