Wild Words
Curating for social media self-care
I’m a huge advocate for social media as a powerful force of connection, to people and to information. Now more than ever that's important, but now more than ever I’ve found it necessary to turn down the social media noise. Like many people, I’ve been struggling to...
What’s the plural of freelancer? An ad hoc communications agency
Past me is jealous of one of my present clients. When I worked in-house for a large health care organization, our small but mighty communications department faced huge expectations with minimal resources. Communications departments are particularly vulnerable to...
What story do your images tell?
I've been involved lately in a fascinating program for creative entrepreneurs, and so far we've heard from a couple of speakers at some big-name technology companies about building values and culture in a start up environment. As you'd expect, their talks were...
Podcasts for lonely freelance writers
I started podcasting in 2007 or 2008, long before the boom of professional podcasting but long after the early adopters, interviewing Canadian television creatives for the then-nascent TV, eh? website. At first I went it alone, recording with Skype and editing with...
Stretching the comfort zone
Sometimes my dream assignments are the ones I know I enjoy: creating a juicy communications strategy, writing about something I find fascinating, getting sent on an all-expenses-paid trip to the Atacama Desert. (Maybe one of those has never happened.) But sometimes...
Learn to love your Twitter feed (or at least not hate it so much)
I joined Twitter in 2008 when I was a skeptic. The platform had only been around for a couple of years, and the early adopters I knew kept saying the big draw was to be able to hear news in real time, from people on the ground. Like earthquakes. Why I needed to know...
What’s the future of Communications? Don’t ask a neural network
I was lucky to work on a tech-related project a few months ago that leaned heavily into data science, with a client who preferred to educate me on the science rather than a scientist on the writing. I was also lucky to be accepted into the Creative Bridge program from...
What inspires creativity?
I've been participating in the #31DaysOfCreativity challenge this month, having fun with the short daily assignments that have also introduced me to tools like Adobe's creative types test, making words out of spaghetti, and creating my own newspaper clipping. One of...
Last call for resolutions
My new year's resolution is generally to not make resolutions, and now this is my second post on what I resolve to do over the coming year. Last week I wrote about my business resolutions, about who I want to be as a freelancer. Now, inspired by a Twitter...
My business resolutions
Here we are at a new year – a new decade if, like me and 99% of the planet, you prefer to celebrate when the odometer ticks over and not when math says you should. I don’t generally make new year’s resolutions, but I’ve been thinking over the last few months about...
Why social media scheduling is evil
But yes, often a necessary evil I know, I know, we're all busy, juggling multiple priorities, and if you run a business, social media is likely not your number one priority. Even if you outsource the task, you're likely hiring someone with multiple clients and their...
Confessions of an accessibility numpty
Social media sites could do better, but they do let us be more inclusive One of the great side effects of moving to Scotland is learning new words like "dreich" (the general state of winter weather in Vancouver and Edinburgh), blether (what a Chatty Cathy does), and...