The Reader Appreciation Project has a transcript of Liz Strauss at WordCamp Dallas, along with the video. Her presentation was about the blog conversation and social networking, her claim to fame. She cemented that fame with the number 60,317. That’s the number of comments on her blog.
One of the points she made resounded with the participants like a bell. Many talked about it through the rest of the weekend:
You know, and the truth is we really can't talk without talking about ourselves whether we're talking about how we like this vase, or how we like Lorelle, or how we like WordPress. We're talking about ourselves.
Whenever we say we're talking about ourselves, we're revealing something about ourselves. But it's how we reveal it.
But when we ask our readers, "How'd you like this blog post we just did?" "How'd you like what I just did?" "How did you like what I just wrote?" We think we're asking them about them. But we're really asking them about ourselves.
And we need to be really careful that we know the difference.
Bloggers across the room sat back and realized that their blog is all about “them” and not the reader. It’s all about, as Liz explains, asking about how we are doing rather than turning things around to put the reader first.
Liz is the producer and founder of Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCON). The next event is May 2-4 in Chicago, and there is still time to register for her Business School for Bloggers theme.
Go read, listen, or watch her WordCamp Dallas talk. Liz was recovering from a disease left over from SxSW (I guess everyone got sick there), but lean in and listen to her husky voice to get your ears, and brain, open about why you are really blogging and how to make it work for you. 60,000 comments is a high goal to achieve, and she’s the one to mentor you towards your goals.
Site Search Tags: blog events, wordcamp, wordcampdallas, wordcampdallas2008, wordcamp dallas, wordpress event, liz strauss, successful blog, sobcon, successful and outstanding bloggers, blog conversation, blog comments, how to get comments
Subscribe 
Via Feedburner 
Subscribe by Email 
Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
Weblog Tools Collection has a list of the videos and special interviews of the speakers at WordCamp Dallas, including my presentation on WordPress Tips.
Check it out and tell me if I did okay. And be sure and watch everyone else. They did much better. 
Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordcamp, wordpress tips, wordcampdallas2008, wordcampdallas, blog event, wordpress techniques, video, wordpress video, wordcamp video
Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
User comment: By: i-martianwow , great tips . i really wish i was able to make it to there
User comment: By: just Meis this post Naked? or is just me..?
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: spamboyI don't need a video to tell you that you did great. And now I can relive the memories. :)
In honor of April 9, 2008, as CSS Naked Day, my blog is going naked. I discussed this a few days ago with details on how to strip naked your blog if you would like to join in the celebrations.
By going naked, my blog stands with thousands of others who recognize and honor the hard work of web design. I honor not just those who make our blogs and sites pretty, but those who set the those who set the standards we use on the web to make our sites pretty, usable, and accessible.
I honor the web designers who “walk the walk” and volunteer their time to ensure those standards grow with the web not against. I honor web browser developers who understand the need for standards and thus work with them, also not against them, for our web browsing pleasure, helping designers design well and avoid all the hacks and customizations on a per-browser basis.
I honor the founders of the web, the great minds who looked into the future and said, “Everyone must have access to this.” They meant everyone. Every person on any computer using any method to access the web. In their minds, they wanted to have people on different computer operating systems be able to share data. Today, this has stretched to include access for the blind and visually impaired, disabled, deaf, Mac user, Windows user, Linus user, cell phone, web TV, big screen, little screen, all the various methods the web is accessed so the data can flow both ways with ease.
I also honor those who give so much of their creativity to the WordPress Community, while setting a standard in web design around the world. Thank you to all who understand that a free WordPress Theme is a resume. A business card. A portfolio of your work. By giving, you are showing the world what you are capable of. It’s a way to give back to the WordPress Community which gives so much of its time to volunteering to support WordPress through their work on WordPress Plugins, donating and writing articles for the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, and volunteering their time in the WordPress.com Forums and WordPress Support Forums to help others.
For those who make a living off of the free WordPress blogging platform, I honor you for giving back to that which helps you pay your rent or mortgage. The WordPress Community is a fantastic free school of education for coders, programmers, designers, writers, and hackers. Thank you for volunteering your time and skills towards the improvement of WordPress and WordPress development.
In honor of celebrating the web designers, I also honor those who are working behind the scenes to break the last major barrier on the web: language. This is the year, folks, that we have to start breaking the language barrier to make the web truly accessible by all.
Sure, there are translation programs online. They are improving in machine translations, but they are in the wrong place. It takes too much work to copy the URL or page content and take it to another page in order to generate the translation. Who wants to bother with that much fuss?
Putting the pressure on websites and blogs to provide machine or human translations of their content is also a time waster. It puts the onus on the web owner, consuming bandwidth, database, and server access to provide translations. They do it because they know the future and want to reach out to everyone across the language divide, but we can do better. And we can do it now.
I call out to web browser developers to start working on putting language translation - instant language translation - into the web browser. Yes, it will consume resources, weight down the program, but where there is a will, there is a way. No matter what you may think today, the language barrier must come down. I visualize Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Matt Mullenweg standing at the virtual web wall, each picking up a piece of stone, and shouting, “Browser Developers, tear down this wall!” Okay, so maybe not them, but it has to happen. Why can’t they be among the first to proclaim the wall must come down?
I want to know what Sing Hio has to say in Japan on her blog. I want to read what Paulo is doing in Brazil at his favorite dance club. I want to read about the tough day Boris had at school in St. Petersburg. I want to share the love of a good book across the languages with Angelo in Mexico City. Why can’t I? Why should I be restricted by a language not my own? Why should we make them learn our language in order to communicate?
We must break down the final barriers on the web. We’ve crossed the data barriers. We’ve embraced web standards for design. We’ve put the peer in social networking. Now it’s time to truly cross the final frontier.
Consider yourself challenged.
Site Search Tags: web standards, web, css naked day, web design, web designers, web developers, translation, translate, blog event, events, holiday, language, language translation
Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
[...] Minister Gordon Brown's grilling by senior MPs on the Commons liaison committee. (68 clicks) Stripped Down Naked to Honor Web Designers and DevelopersIn honor of April 9, 2008, as CSS Naked Day... For the older folks who want to feel older!!!(From chucke) After Heston: Who's Left? Real movie [...]
User comment: By: 韓莉雅塔在陽光州 當下即是 » Blog Archive » CSS Naked Day[...] 相關文章： Strip Down Your Blog: CSS Naked Day Stripped Down Naked to Honor Web Designers and Developers [...]
User comment: By: fordudeWow! I'll be honest - before I realized what the title of the article was, I clicked on REFRESH 3 times to try and reload the page WITH the CSS sheet. What an awesome way to prove a point! Great Job Lorelle!
User comment: By: CSS Naked Day[...] is CSS Naked day, hence my stylesheet is turned off. Lorelle explains CSS Naked Day better than I ever could. [...]
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: Encephalosponge » Jonathan is naked[...] quickly realize how much of an artist I am not. Thanks to Lorelle for reminding me about today! Soaked up in g33k | No Comments » You can follow any responses to this entry through [...]
Get ready to go naked. On April 9th, 2008, hundreds, possibly thousands, of blogs and websites will go naked in honor of CSS Naked Day. Join fellow WordPress bloggers in honoring web designers and WordPress Theme builders by going naked.
This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.
As explained yesterday in the Blog Herald announcement of CSS Naked Day, this is also an opportunity to showcase how usable and accessible your web page structure is even without the pretty, reminding the world that it is the law that your website must accessible by everyone using any method to access your blog.
Going naked is easy for WordPress blogs. In Lorelle is Naked, I explained the various options last year on how to turn off your blog’s stylesheet using WordPress Plugins with WordPress Naked Day Plugin for all WordPress versions, CSS Naked Day WordPress Plugin for pre-WordPress 2x blogs, the Naked Day PHP Function script for non-WordPress and PHP driven blogs, do it manually by renaming your blog’s stylesheet for the day, or removing the stylesheet temporarily on WordPress.com blogs.
Recent versions of WordPress will automatically reset to the Default WordPress Theme if no Theme is detected, which means changing the style.css file will revert your Theme to the Default/Kubrick style. To override this redirection, you must use the WordPress Naked Day Plugin or create a separate Theme that has no styles in the stylesheet, which I’ve prepared just for this event.
I have stripped down the styles in the Default WordPress Theme for current versions of WordPress and pre-WordPress 2.1 versions which changed some of the sidebar tags.
themes directory. For those on WordPress.com, you can also participate if you are using the Sandbox WordPress Theme with the WordPress.com CSS Extra feature.
Reverse the process to restore your Sandbox Theme on April 10.
Be sure and sign up for the CSS Naked Day so your blog will be celebrated as one of those honoring web design and designers. Last year, almost 2,000 sites signed up for CSS Naked Day. So far, the list is over 400. Let your naked stance join with others on April 9.
Site Search Tags: css naked day, naked css, css, web design, blog event, wordpress news, turn off stylesheets, accessibility, usability, honor web designers
Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email Visit
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.
Visit here to subscribe to these commentsUser comment: By: JennyI didn't do it last year but I will this year. ;)