Themes Shmemes and more Themes for the New Year
This week I got back on the theme creation band wagon and created 3 more themes. I created one on Christmas Eve (part of a present) and 2 more today for business. One of the themes is on a website that is in need of a serious reboot, both in looks and in direction.
I kind of look at this resulting theme as a half step in the direction of new looks.
Now the thing is the old theme was not a custom theme. In using this new custom theme, I’m taking that half step in the right direction. I’m also hoping the new look and feel will help me re-awaken the purpose of this particular site. It started off with some good intentions, but when I started it I rapidly ran into a number of limitations in my own coding capabilities. I then fell into a routine that created some good content at first, and then lost purpose. It never faded, but never maintained focused either so I guess I’ll coin the term Blog Fuzzing for this particular site.
I stuck with it, but everything got fuzzy, and I might as well have let it fade away for all the good the fuzziness did. 
Now, I still remember what I ‘wanted’ to do with the site. I now also have the coding capability to pull that off. I also have a little more experience and wisdom under my belt, and so I’m trying to contemplate a new vision for the site, before I commit to it for 2009 and then jump on my full speed ahead persistence wagon train.
I’m also just getting going on a different theme for a brand new website that combined with Softduit Media and The LiveWriterz and my joint venture with New Media Creative could be one of the more important websites that I launch this year.
More on that later!
January Travel, CES, Affiliate Summit, Izea Insider Fun Stuff
CES 2009
This evening I’ve been working on booking my travel arrangements headed out to Las Vegas in January. I’m going to be attending CES two thousand and nine as well as affiliate Summit West two thousand nine. These are back to back tradeshow conferences and I’m very excited to have out and see both of them. This’ll be my fourth year covering CES, and I’ve had my press pass for several weeks now.
Affiliate Summit West 2009
This will be my first time covering Affiliate Summit, and I just confirmed my press pass for Affiliate Summit today. I’ll be covering Affiliate Summit on Top10Tech.com and several other sites.
Secret Event in Vegas
I am also working on trying to get coverage for another event that happens in between these two trade shows. I’ll have more on that one later if the pass comes through.
Big Dummy Can’t Book Trips
So anyway I made a bit of a travel booking snafu tonight. I was looking at travel rates on Expedia, and saw a hotel offer for the Wynn Las Vegas. As a special rate for the hotel, and it appeared to be a rate that would essentially allow me to stay at the Wynn for six hundred dollars from January 6 through the thirteenth. That seemed downright amazing.
Little did I realize, until it was too late and I told everybody in the world I found this amazing rate for the Wynn, that Expedia had temporarily change my travel profile from one person to two people. So this great rate that was looking at was actually the price per person for two people to stay at the Wynn.
That’s right, it would actually cost twelve hundred dollars. That’s still a pretty good rate for the Wynn, but way above the travel budget that I feel comfortable with. Hey what can I say I’m pretty cheap when it comes to traveling. I’ve stayed in some of the nicest hotels of the world and I stay in some of the crappiest hotels in the world. Hell I even lived in a tent city in the desert, and for that matter slipped in the desert with no attempt at all. At the end of the day I can sleep about the same anywhere as long as it’s warm. Paying an extra eight hundred dollars doesn’t necessarily make me sleep any better.
So I’m still in for the final hotel booking, I will be booking my flight using frequent flier miles(Update ended up getting round trip flight for 25k miles).
This is going to be a big travel year for me, and I kind of want to use up my frequent flyer miles before they maybe disappear or something if the economy gets worse.
Since I am going to CES so early, the press events start two days before the actual CES, I’m actually eligible to use frequent flyer miles for the first time. Typically, it’s not possible to use frequent flyer miles when you go to CES, as there are so many people trying to fly to Vegas for that conference.
In the meantime, I’m expecting a very cool FedEx to arrive tomorrow from Izea. I’ll have more on that as soon as it comes, but the Izea Insider program seems to be getting started just a little bit early! That is cool by me. We’ve been doing a lot of organization behind the scenes so far, and I am definitely ready to do some fun stuff.
With that in mind, some of that fun stuff starts tomorrow!
The LiveWriterz – an Izea Insiders Group
Well, I just made my second pass at a custom theme for my future group site for the LiveWriterz. There will be essentially two fronts to my efforts on this.
All of my events and general communications will come through this site There’s Something About Harry, which will likely get a make over itself.
But my individual group work, counseling, mentoring, contests, etc will go through The LiveWriterz.
Kicking Off My Izea Insider Team! TheLiveWriterz
This week I learned that I was selected as one of the Izea Insiders. You may recall that played for this program a couple weeks ago utilizing a very long-winded article that I’ve room with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10. You could kind of consider that articles not just an application into the program, but a bit of my thesis on where I’ve been and where I’m going in the world of social media and blogging in general.
Well I’ve been picked for the program, and now it’s time to let the rubber meet the road. I’m still waiting f. or a number of details myself, but while those details are coming in, I’m moving forward. To start with, I set up a Facebook group for my new IZEA insider team. (Friend me on Facebook and I can send you a group invite or search for TheLiveWriterz )
I have also set up a group on Utterli to enabled people to join up with my team the ability to communicate with myself and everyone else. I have been active at Utterli for over a year now, and find it to be a great place to help people communicate with each other, no matter if they are on a computer in an office, or traveling about the country.
Among other things, Utterli is a fantastic blogging tool. For this reason, I’m also an utterly evangelist, and a former Utterli ambassador. With the group that I’m going to set up, I’m going to help the people in the group benefit from all of the experience and tools that I’ve learned how to utilize to good effect over the last few years. I’m also hoping to learn many more things for the people in the group and cross pollinate all those good ideas amongst us.
The primary goal here is to strengthen the blogosphere. To give bloggers new skills and new purpose. I want to help people deal to generate better content, be more creative, and earn a very good living doing it.
So if you are interested in joining up with my team, or with one of the themes of the other IZEA insiders, drop me a comment, or send me an e-mail, or stopover at Utterli and talk to me there. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s going to be a lot of fun too.
Oh and did I mention that we’re going to make a lot of money as well?
First things first, let’s get organized, and improve the quality our content and our blogs and the rest will follow!
EDIT
I just finished putting together an initial custom theme for the new site, and getting the site itself up and running.
You can check it out http://thelivewriterz.com/
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