Today is my first day working for myself and no longer for Pelago/Whrrl. So far, I’ve gotten some interesting website development work (go WordPress!) for a few individuals and one company, some great ideas for media/content generation, and opportunities to plan events. Things aren’t feeling as bleak as they might given the current condition of the economy. When I tell people I quit my job amongst massive uncertainty their responses are very telling and polarized. Either they say “congratulations” or “I’m sorry”. It’s always an interesting conversation to bring them around to my way of thinking.

Now I get to begin the journey of starting my own company, Social Kind, and figuring out how I want to spend my self-employed time. Before I jump crazily headlong into several exciting projects I’m working on getting my personal life, specifically all finances and little details that I’ve been neglecting in the past few months, in order.

I guess I could call this period Danielle 2.0, a time for me to re-invent myself not as the face of Whrrl but as my own brand and business. And you, dear reader, will have the pleasure (and sometimes pain) of following along as I chronicle how things go here on my own personal soapbox – this blog.

Last Weekend – Broadcasting Live at Seattle Startup Weekend 2

I’ve been intrigued by live streaming video for a few months now, as you can see if you’ve been following the Random Danielle Show. Last weekend I broadcasted live from Startup Weekend with a pre-presentation show co-hosted with Josh Maher (of Lunch 2.0), and a recording  of each of the new startups as they launched. The following and buzz was surprising, and I’ve realized there might be interesting live event coverage from Seattle 2.0 on a regular basis.

Last Night – Broadcasting Live at Twestival

On that note, I gave it a try last night with a live stream from Twestival Seattle with my friend Brian Westbrook as a co-host. Although the event was less structured and content loaded than Seattle Startup Weekend 2, we still attracted over 100 unique viewers through the broadcast. I’m looking forward to making video content (blogging, live streaming, etc.) a more regular part of my activity online, and will be looking for ways to make it pay.

Imagine if I could make a living doing what I love: producing, creating, and editing video content (among other things)! More to come.

I wish I had made this video! Mine has 200,000+ miles and no problems – but if I drove it this way I bet it would.

Hello 2009! I’m already loving this year. Why, you ask? Because today the “startup car” was retired and returned to my mother in law and I learned how to drive a manual transmission.  Why?  Oh baby – I’m driving the Audi now!!

Check out this commercial for my car (i love these doggies so BONUS):

And maybe this is what I’ll be doing tomorrow unless this snow melts:

The inspiration for the title of this blog post (Beyonce is great live):

While searching for Kelly Stewart’s New Media Douchebags video with the terms “common craft parody” I came across some videos from local wiki company Wetpaint, and a friend directed me to the their eHarmony spoof which I’m posting here for your viewing pleasure:

As a member of the Seattle Tech Startups mailing list, I received the word from Ian on the list that he was ready for us to give it a try. I’ve created a page to track Mobile Social Network news, and spent 20 minutes getting it started. To get an idea of how this works, watch the quick demo video on their homepage.

Thoughts & Suggestions

1. Without RSS this page I have just created will not remain current for more than an hour – at best. I wish I could provide a feed URL (such as a Google search of blogs for the term “mobile social network”) to feed into the page in order to keep it current.
2. Once I have added component to the page, it appears impossible to delete it.  Update: I figured out how to do this, there is a button called “Archive” after you double-click on something.  Took me trial-and-error to figure out what this meant.
3. If I go back and then forward again, all the changes I’ve made are lost. That’s painful (I just did this on accident).  They have a note at the bottom of the page which I didn’t even notice – maybe that should be front and center.  Better yet, don’t flush the data so soon – you probably want to hang onto aborted sessions of contribution anyway for metrics purposes.
4. When I add a news story link, such as the link from TechCrunch, it seems like it would be nice to have a little Ajax lookup of the URL that grabs the meta data (author name, title, date posted, blog name) so that I wouldn’t have to enter all that as text.  Structured data is gold.
5. I’m primarily a keyboard user (avoid the mouse whenever possible) and the tab order did not include the “Save” buttons, so I had to use my mouse frequently.
6. I’m not clear on how I can get my friends to subscribe to this page, so that they will hear about updates when I add to the page.
7. I was unable to add more than one link to the 3rd (far right) resources box – seems like a bug.

Fundamentally, I am unclear on how this is better than a feedreader + forum combination for managing a community that is interested in a specific topic.  That being said, I know this is a soft launch so I can only imagine there is a more feature-rich version of the service in the works.  I can see promise in this, as a feedreader-style landing page that is public.

I just spent the past four days peacefully with my family. We do three things a lot (and, I think, well):

1. read
2. play boardgames
3. drink

There was also a delicious dinner and some fudge in there. Here’s some video from the adventure:

Christmas Morning 2008 from danielle morrill on Vimeo.

My Mom is a Total Martha from danielle morrill on Vimeo.

I wanted to come up with three high-level goals to encapsulate how I’m approaching 2009.  I made this video this morning at breakfast, and I’ll be explaining them more in depth soon.  For now, here’s what I’ve got: