UPDATE: Major disappointment with SlideShare. All the notations I've put in the deck, which are meant to give you some insights into how I plan my week, are not viewable. Will see if I can get some help from SS, or this first installment of PowerPoint Confessions is a bit of a fail.
Back in November I was in DC, visiting New Media Strategies and chatting with their Director of Engagement Leslie Bradshaw, who turned me onto a cool idea--something she had been doing on her own blog--PowerPoint posts.
I have a love-hate relationship with PowerPoint. On the one hand, I hate when people over-rely on it to relay a message. However I love it as a stimulator of thought. Visuals can often make a point more powerfully than words. For instance: I can tell advertisers about the power of the BlogHer community, or I can show them pictures of women bonding at the conference, their Tweets and comments upon engaging with a brand, and a chart of the increase in brand awareness that ensued. These are more powerful than just taking my word for it.
I speak a lot to marketers, media professionals, and reporters who want to better grok the social media space. At some point this year it occurred to me that the creativity I once reserved for my previous blog Pause was now going into PowerPoint slides describing trends on the Internet. What if I brought these two worlds together, and created visual posts detailing anything from media analysis to the mundanities of the workday?
I was sold on the PowerPoint Concept; I just needed topics. Tresha gave me one in my comments section:
a simple request: a blogpost that offers your schedule. there's no typical schedule but what's a day in the life of Jory look like 5 am - 1 am? 4am to midnight. or 11pm? what? how you a lot time each hour? my why behind that? I think it's just a supportive hug to one another. We are all getting much done and have different demands.
Initially I thought, who really cares about when I eat breakfast, or if I even bother to eat breakfast? But then I thought of what I tend to ask entrepreneurs I meet: Not "How did you grow your business?" but "What time do you wake up?" "When do you go to bed?" "Do you make dinner?" "Who tucks the kids in?" To me, addressing the everyday and learning how to make it work is the key to entrepreneurial longevity.
So here, my first installment in PowerPoint Confessions, with a nod to both Tresha and Leslie, a week in my life--the first installment of PowerPoint Confessions. It truly is confessional, because I offer up the often nonsensical way I plan things in Outlook (nonsensical to others, not to me). No laughing, please.
