Microsoft Office Winter Games Contest Semi-Finals Report

I came, I blogged, I tweeted, I e-mailed, I Facebooked (no, that's not a real verb although people are using it way too much these days) and put up requests on a range of lists and other sites for the past 13 days in an attempt to win two coveted trips to blog at the Olympics and CES plus a brand new laptop. (Here's more info on the contest.) Voting ceased at midnight Pacific time, and to my knowledge, this is the last of the voting for this contest.

Many people have been asking what happens next. To answer the question on whether I have any idea where I stand regarding votes, no - not yet. I hope they will give us totals. The link I created near the end of the second day at bit.ly provided statistics and I was able to see how many clicks I received through that link. Some of the data was skewed, but I think I generated approximately 3000 clicks to the contest website. That does not necessarily mean I received 3000 votes, however, due to random site visitors, site errors, visitors who did not wish to share their e-mail addresses, and visitors who voted for someone else. And it does not give any sense of what the other semi-finalists produced in terms of clicks or votes. Still, it was a good learning experience for me to track everything.

I've been told that it will take a couple of weeks to tally votes, verify authenticity and inform the top three vote-getters who will be named as official finalists. Once the top three women finalists are identified, the judges will look at the vote totals, the overall quality of work on our blogs, our submitted essays and the social media outreach we did during the voting period. Then they will make their decision as to the grand prize winner, to be announced at the OfficeWinterGames.com site on January 7th.

So the best thing you can do for me at this point - if you're still willing! - is to visit my blog and write comments on my posts. I would love it if every figure skating post had some comments there for the judges to read.

Please visit and comment on my blog at BlogHer - http://www.blogher.com/blog/sarah-granger

Thank you all who voted, e-mailed and tweeted on my behalf.

Help Me Get to the Olympics - Vote!

Friends & faithful readers, I need your help!

I'll make it easy for you...

Go here: http://bit.ly/VoteSarah
Register once with e-mail. Vote for me every day through November 29th.

Tweet this:
I voted for Sarah in the #blogathlete @Office contest. Please help send her to the Olympics! http://bit.ly/VoteSarah #VoteSarah

Blast it anywhere else you can think of:
Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Ryze, Orkut, etc... oh yeah and that e-mail thing.

Be thanked:
THANK YOU!

...

Here's the full scoop:
I'm really excited to be one of 5 semi-finalists in a very cool contest to win a trip to the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada in February, but I need your help to win - starting today!

Microsoft Office is sponsoring one woman blogger to attend, and on top of that, the winner gets a trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in January and a free laptop. I made it to the top five by submitting my blog about figure skating at BlogHer, the women bloggers' network, but I need help getting into the finals with public voting.

Voting started today and goes through November 29th. It requires a simple registration, then you can vote once a day every day through the 29th.

Click here to VOTE!

It just takes a few steps: Click on the tiny highlighted login text at the top of the page above the list of voters, and it will take you to a screen where you can enter your e-mail address and a password. Then after you're logged in, it will take you to back to the voting screen where you'll see my name at the bottom. Click on the "Vote for me!" button below my name and you're done. Until tomorrow. ;)

The top three vote-getters go to the final round where the judges then choose the winner.  My goal is to get so many votes that I blow the others out of the water, so the judges have a clear decision in the final round.

Each person only gets 13 votes - one per day. If you would like to be on my daily reminders list, please drop me a line after you register and vote. Everyone on the daily list will receive Olympic fun facts and I promise I'll stop emailing the list on the 30th. Otherwise, I'll email you every so often with reminders as the contest progresses.

One last favor: if you're willing, please tell any of your friends who you think might take a few minutes to sign up and vote for me as well.

Direct link again to register and vote: https://www.officewintergames.com/Vote.aspx

Thank you so very much for your help!

Recap of a busy week - politics, new media, gov 2.0 and more

Last week was a whirlwind on the local level... after Newsom dropped out of the CA governors' race, I wrote a piece about it that had a pretty good reception at The Huffington Post but was maimed by trolls at SFGate. Having seen this happen before for other writers, I reluctantly decided to remove all comments. I reviewed the problem with other blogger friends who confirmed it's a common problem for newspapers-turned-online publications.

I put up a detailed response at SFGate explaining the problem to readers and the community there and received a lot of letters via e-mail in support. The SFGate staff also were responsive as well, looking into what they can do with the system that will help solve their comment moderation problem. (IMO it shouldn't be that hard technically - they're using Moveable Type - it's more a matter of budgeting the staff time and having a smart plan in place.)

After spending way more time on that last week, I was able to shift gears back to tech, I finished an article about Twitter Lists for Digital Landing. I've been researching Twitter Lists since they first launched, and one of my lists of the Women in Politics & Tech group (WIPT) was put on the Change.org list of Ten Feminist Twitter Lists.

Saturday, I headed to CA Data Camp where I caught up with local government, non-profit and media people who are passionate about open government. We talked about data specifics, data transfer, local applications, data and media and the related national scope. I'll be putting up at least one post at the Personal Democracy Forum about that. Here's a great summary at Spot.Us. Meanwhile, I was invited this week to be on two more conference program committees. More on that when they're official.

Meanwhile, as we were finishing up with the data apps in SF, the House voted on their final version of the healthcare reform bill. It was interesting to follow that on Twitter while in a room full of government software developers. Finally, I was surprised this morning to be on a list of Top 20 Women Political Bloggers (I think the list is a subset of liberal bloggers who are also moms).

This week, I'm working on an article about Google Wave and editing a book on confidential information. I'm also working on a couple new gov 2.0 related projects that I hope to write more about soon.

Top Twitter Tools List

In working on my article for Digital Landing on how to make the most of Twitter, I researched dozens of great applications. Since I couldn't write about them all in my article there, I decided to post the list of what I looked at here, so anyone can have a look. Of course there are more that are not on this list, but I have other resource lists where those can be found at the top.

Is there something great I'm missing on the list? Add it in the comments or email me at sairy(at)sairy(dot)com - or just tweet to @sairy.

Overall Twitter resources:

Twitter Fan Wiki - Everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter

Alltop Twitter Page - great blogs all about Twitter and related apps

@Twitter_Tips - great fed of all kinds of Twitter tools

@TweetingTools - more good tips on Twitter, with random quotes to boot

Twitter search and display:

Twitter Search - official Twitter search

Twitterfall - view tweets via subject as they "fall" like a waterfall down the screen

Multi-account and multi-user applications:

Tweetdeck - desktop & mobile apps (Mac, Windows, Linux) that allows for groupings and advanced features; top favorite of all apps

PeopleBrowsr - highly configurable, full featured web-based series of apps for Twitter use - includes search and configurable groupings apps

Tweetie - multi-account viewer for the Mac

Cotweet - multi-user twitter, ideal for businesses; the standard-bearer in business Twitter use

Twhirl - multi-account viewer for Windows & Mac (based on Adobe Air)

Tweetvisor - browser-based Twitter that allows for viewing tweets, @replies and DMs all at one on a quick interface

Nambu - robust viewer for the Mac

HootSuite - sleek, web-based multi-account Twitter interface; also comes with a Hootlet toolbar mini-app that works with Firefox, Safari and IE

Twibble - desktop app for Mac, Linux and Windows, supports multiple accounts

Seesmic Desktop - well reputed desktop app for Mac or Windows (based on Adobe Air)

Seesmic Web App - very clean UI for single-account Twitter view

For the iPhone:

Tweetie - easy-to-use, full-featured multi-account application

Twitterific - multi-account Twitter, but minus a few features

Tweetdeck - multiple accounts, syncs, works with yfrog and Twitpic, URL shorteners; configurable

Nambu - fairly sophisticated app for single-Twitter use, integrated with FriendFeed, pic.im and tr.im

Twitterfon - basic, clear interface

Seesmic - iPhone app coming soon

Birdfeed - clean app with local caching and timestamps

For the Blackberry:

Twitterberry - most popular Twitter updating software for Blackberry

Twibble - mobile version of desktop app integrated with Twitpic

UberTwitter - full featured app; integrated with Google Talk

For Windows Mobile:

TinyTwitter - basic app for using Twitter (note: entire site optimized for mobile devices, not traditional browsers)

ceTwit - full featured client that works with Twitpic and Ping.fm

Quakk - open source Twitter app

Twitter Feed Tools:

Twitterfeed - efficiently feeds blogs to twitter, allowing for added text configuration and timing

FriendFeed - view multiple twitter & other social media feeds

Posterous - posts to blogs and twitter feeds on a wide range of platforms; recommended by Guy Kawasaki

Lazyfeed - allows for blog feeds (like a feed reader) as well as input to personal feeds; similar to FriendFeed but a more professional UI

Stats & Analysis:

Twitter Grader - gives grades based on a 100% scale, based on number of followers, power of followers, number of updates, update recency, engagement level and follower/following ratio

Twitterank - ranking algorithm built by a Google programmer, rates percentages of accounts

Twitalyzer & Twitalyzer Pro - analyzes overall influence, retweets, references to and mentions of the account, with Pro features showing top influencers in your network

Twitterholic.com - tracks followers, friends and updates over time

Socialtoo - allows for surveys & stats but have to pay for Twitter stats

Twitter Analyzer - has nice graphs of usage by keyword, hashtags, etc.

TweetStats - graphs tweets per hour, month, etc.

Tweet Counter - sends reminders when users are close to major milestones like 100, 1000, etc.

twInfluence - provides sleek graphs of usage by interface, @replies, RT's, by month, days of the week, and time of day

Follower Management:

Twerp Scan - "anti-fool contact management" system; can manage by followers or those being followed and is quick to add/subtract - much more efficient than follower management in Twitter

Mr. Tweet - recommendation engine

WeFollow - adds users to searchable threads

SocialNewsWatch List of Top 237 Twitter Users Who Will Follow You Back - what it says it is, based on number of followers

Tweet Friends - compares 2 twitter feeds for common friends added over past 24 hours (or so)

Browser Plug-Ins:

Twitter Friend Bios - plugin for Firefox browser

Shareaholic - drop-down plugin for viewing multiple social networking feeds

Twitbin - sidebar plugin for Firefox

Marketing & Advertising Tools:

EasyTweets - cost depends on number of feeds, accounts, and continuous searches; posts automatically to Twitter

Twittad - affinity network that connects twitter feeds with advertisers; works on mobile devices

TweetROI - tweet about whatever you want (from their list of advertisers) and get paid for it

Magpie - embedded ads into user timelines

Izea - boasting 25,000 advertisers and 250,000 bloggers, they produce "sponsored conversations"

Payment Engines:

twitpay - allows for Twitter payments via PayPal; for all kinds of purposes via RT2Buy system

tipjoy - makes it easy to pay other Twitter users or to let them pay you with a simple 'p $x @user' command

Twitter Backgrounds:

PrettyTweet - creates twitter backgrounds

Images & Videos via Twitter:

yfrog - enables image & video sharing

Twitpic - sends photos to Twitter, view photos posted by others

pic.im - photo URLs and stats, usable with Twitter

Assistive Tools:

Twitwoop - allows you to record tweets by voice

Wassup?

A lot's been happening lately for me - elsewhere... so here's a bit of a summary for those who are curious. Also, I keep recent news of what I've been doing professionally updated typically at my professional website, SarahGranger.com.

My new media consulting (via PublicEdge) is going well. I'm working primarily with WomenCount as their director of new media. It's been wonderful working with elected women and women candidates on the blog, the radio show, and via Twitter. I've also been helping some online publications, start-ups, nonprofit and other political organizations.

In March and April, I received two awards. March's was a collective writing award given to an issue of Bay Area Parent where I wrote an article about gifted children (what it's like to have one, and what it's like to be one). In April, I received a new media award from the California Democratic Party, which was entirely unexpected but felt nice to be recognized for my political new media work.

I've been speaking at a ton of conferences lately. In February, I spoke at Fem 2.0. In March, I was at South by Southwest Interactive. In April, I provided a couple of trainings on social media and then I spoke at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on 3 panels. I also spoke at the Netroots Nation New Media Summit and at the 140TC conference. All three of those were in the Bay Area. I organized 2 other panels for the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in June. Then in August, I'll be speaking on 3 more panels at Netroots Nation. I'm looking forward to a break from conferences for a while after all of that.

Recently, I was featured in Vivanista's "Quintessential Careers" column for my work with SFBayStyle, and I was interviewed for an Entrepreneur magazine piece about social media as well.

Living on Twitter and Other Thoughts on Social Media

I've been living on the 140 character micro-blogging world of Twitter more than ever lately - it's easy given my mobile lifestyle and I've become quite enthralled by the community and immediate nature of it all. But eventually it can become too much. Sunday night, we had the #fem2 (Fem 2.0 conference follow-up) live chat, then Monday began the #p2 (new progressive aggregate hashtag) talk. Tuesday, we had a presidential joint address to congress and #pvow (The Political Voices of Women) participated in a life chat. Wedndesday night, #women2follow began (courtesy Alysson Kapin, @womenwhotech) and all of the sudden, it's #followfriday now. Busy busy. Follow @sairy to see what I'm up to there.

The rest of the time, I've been speaking at conferences - Fem 2.0 at the beginning of February and South by Southwest coming up in a few weeks. I'm working on a new major project helping WomenCount online as their Director of New Media. I'm also working with some startups and small organizations through FutureCampaigns. Through these activities, I'm learning new things and thinking a lot about the implications of social media in advocacy, outreach, activism and of course politics.

It's all about social media these days, so I'm trying to stay on top of the technology behind whatever I'm writing about here, there, wherever. Watching Twitter become mainstream with members of congress, moms, artists, and others not part of the usual tech early adopter crowd has been a lot of fun so far. I'll try to update this blog more often, reflecting my thoughts on related topics. Thanks for reading.

Fem 2.0

The question of where to go in terms of the feminist movement in the future with new media and the new millennium is a big one, and several people got together to plan a conference and brainstorming session around this concept. Feminism encompasses a broad range of ideals including gender equity, equal rights, pay equity, reproductive choice, and much more.

The challenge of the original feminist organizations as well as some of the newer ones is: where do we go now? The Fem 2.0 conference and online dialogue will hopefully provide some direction in this area.

I'll be speaking on one of the panels about feminism in the media and how to help women's organizations expand their outreach online. The conference is being held Monday, February 2nd at George Washington University in Washington, D.C..

Join Me at South by Southwest Interactive

March 13-17, Austin will be buzzing with web and new media professionals and enthusiasts for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, part of the entire SXSW festival which includes music and film and spans over a week of events.

I found out a couple of days ago that I will be leading a Core Conversation that I proposed a few months ago. It's entitled "Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government." What that means is I'll be primarily operating in the role of facilitator for a discussion about how the new national administration can provide more open dialogue through new media and use of the Internet.

Here's how I described the session in my proposal: "The 2004 and 2008 campaigns' use of collaborative tools, blogs and social networking have shown citizen activism and online communities can wield powerful influence. In 2009, our challenge becomes how to harness these tools in order to reopen the policy-making process."

I hope to produce a report of the recommendations that come out of the discussion to submit to the new administration and I'm looking forward to getting as many people involved with this as possible. Please join me at SXSW in Austin!

(Cross posted from the FutureCampaigns blog.)

Phew! It's finally over... but I miss the campaign.

It's difficult to explain post-election feelings I'm having this year. In 2004, I worked 16-18 hours a day on a presidential exploratory organization only to have it evaporate, leaving me completely spent. I then moved into consulting for a nonprofit and tried to help with the Kerry campaign on the side as able, but there wasn't the kind of inclusion and ability to feel a part of that. We thought he would win, as we'd thought Gore would win, and he lost. It was a terrible, hopeless feeling, wondering how we could make it another four years. And the people who I had worked with daily for so long just disappeared from my life, making me sad.

This time around, I started trying to get involved for Hillary at the start and did what I could, but the organization was tightly controlled with little we could do remotely other than blog about it and help out on the ground in small doses. I knew Obama was running a better online operation and my view of him improved throughout the primary to the point where I felt in many ways after he won the nomination that he would do better than Hillary in terms of being able to rally people behind him. She had the policy knowhow and experience; he had the charisma and the might. So I kept on blogging and began to a feel a part of a movement, through the MOMocrats, BlogHer, the Political Voices of Women and WomenCount, through the Personal Democracy Forum conference, Off the Bus (the Huffington Post project), VoterWatch, and of course the Democratic National Convention. I advised who I could on the side - candidates and campaign staffers alike, I blogged a bit for Women for Obama and helped launch the Tech for Obama site. I was tapped into everything and I felt included. I even reconnected with some people from '04 who had lost touch. Each debate, I was online live chatting, blogging, tweeting. I interviewed fascinating candidates and gave some tips on how to leverage the Internet for their campaigns. It felt good to help and I enjoyed interacting with people in every way I could. Then came election day.

I had already voted 3 weeks previous, just in case I needed to hop on a plane and cover voting problems somewhere, but I still felt the excitement for my vote on election day. I enjoyed hearing the reports of people voting via TV news, Twitter, facebook accounts, e-mail. It was like somehow the election was a real national event for once, not just something people dread. I felt a real thrill of being a part of it all, like being back in the stadium in Denver after a long line that lasted two years, winding around the web. I decided that night that I wanted to feel that buzz of people in person celebrating, so I went to 4 different election parties, the last two being juxtaposed both physically and in terms of their results. In one ballroom at the Westin in San Francisco, San Franciscans celebrated Obama winning the presidency and we watched his speech, cheering together. That was a great feeling. In the ballroom next door, it was too close to call for Prop. 8, and we inevitably lost in a close ballot proposition race over the right to gay marriage in our state. It felt bittersweet. Even after working countless hours and seeing all of the numbers as the electoral map turned blue, it was tough to soak it all in.

All through the night, I was on my phone, reading results and commentary by friends on Twitter, and I felt my friends with me, but the reality was that even though I saw many people I knew throughout the night, those who I had worked with closely each day of the campaign were scattered across the country and I missed being at home on my laptop celebrating and commiserating with them during that moment. It was like an incomplete memory. Somehow, I wanted that feeling of elation - celebrating in person and online with my compatriots, with all those who I felt were my sisters and brothers in arms. I even missed those in other parties who I had observed throughout the campaign. I felt for their loss when I saw their tweets come through during the night.

Now we look toward January 20th where we will watch the most notable inauguration of our lifetimes, and I am already fretting about how to make it memorable, meaningful. I've always been of the mindset that I need to see something to believe it. I want to see Barack Obama in the oval office behind the president's desk. Then perhaps it will really settle in for me. As President-Elect Obama has said, "this is our moment." Let's find as many ways as we can to celebrate it, revel in it, and share it together.

In-Video Commentary of Last Week's Debate

Well, we ran into some technical and logistical challenges with this experiment, but I'm excited to be done with my commentary for the debate from last week (just in time for this week's VP debate!)

Here's what I wrote. I don't expect anyone to read all of the commentary, but whatever you do view, keep in mind I was not in fact check mode while working on this - my notes are more related to language, style, nuance, gestures, expressions, that sort of thing. I made some policy related remarks, but there are others out there with a lot more time and resources than I had for this who can cover which statements were true, which were lies, and which were slanted.

Blogging the Debates

The first debate finally came and went, and it was fun to spend time viewing both candidates while talking off and online. You can see the MOMocrats' live chat, the BlogHer open thread/live blog, and my twitter feed for what I wrote live - it was mostly casual responses.

Over the weekend, I plan to use the in-video blogging tools from VoterWatch's bloggingthedebates.com site and I should be able to embed some of that here.

I'll be doing more of this type of coverage for the other debates, and possibly liveblogging for MOMocrats. Stay tuned.

Women Bloggers vs. the New Boys' Club

When I was at BlogHer recently, there was a panel about how to be taken seriously as political bloggers. When asked at the beginning of the session what we wanted to get out of it, I said something about women being taken seriously as political bloggers in general, even knowing we probably didn't have time to really get into that. The moderator, Morra Aarons, replied in kind with something along the lines of how that could take us all day.

It seems someone from the New York Times was there. Kara Jesella put up a post a few days ago about the issue, called "Blogging's Glass Ceiling". Unfortunately the post was under the Fashion & Style section (part of the problem with women being taken seriously - often women's issues are lumped in there), but nevertheless, I'm happy the topic was written about, it's a good article, and she made some interesting points about the issue, delving farther into it than I have to date.

Off the Bus Growth Noted in NYTimes Caucus Blog

Katharine Seelye put up a nice post today about The Huffington Post "Off The Bus" project where I'm a National Correspondent (weekly columnist). I had no idea they had so many people involved in the project; no wonder they always seem so busy. The content is good and changes regularly. I'm excited to be a part of such an interesting group of people.

List of Women Leaders in Tech Politics Is Up!

I published a post earlier today that was a long time coming that lists many of the talented women working in the field of technology and politics at The Political Voices of Women, a blog launched in the past year by BlogHer and Care2 Contributing Editor, Catherine Morgan. The list I hope will become a living document like her list of what began as under 200 women bloggers who write about politics and now spans beyond 450.

BlogHer 2008

My friend, Glennia Campbell, has described the MOMocrats blog as "a conversation, not a shouting match" in reference to it being a collaborative environment for people to discuss policy vs. a heated, argumentative environment that the majority of political blogs can have and it struck me after being at BlogHer this week and talking to people who were simultaneously at Netroots Nation that the community we have really is special.

Not that I didn't already know this, but I'm continually learning new reasons why the BlogHer network is unique, so I wanted to highlight what I felt and what I heard from others about the conference and the BlogHer site and sister sites. It's not that these women don't hiss at each other online or get riled up about things we care about, but there's just an aura of cooperation and cordiality that I see more as a European advocacy style than American political discourse. When we meet in person, even if we disagree, we are pleasant and try to find common ground vs. seeking to one-up each other to score some imaginary points.

Coming to BlogHer for the second year, having worked on a few collaborative blogs and been out there in the blogosphere for a few years now was like a happy college reunion with just women - even women I'd never met who had read my work. Everyone is nice, everyone greets each other with hugs, people exchange genuine pleasantries vs. brushing each other off, and they take time to inquire about each other's families, our health, etc.. Sure, there are suck-up scenarios and occasional rudeness, but it's by far in the minority and overall I had a great time. Kudos again to the BlogHer organizers for bringing us all together.

Good Jokes About Candidates & the Internet

Check out this one from Gawker...

PDF & New York

Last time I was in New York was for a totally different purpose during totally different weather, so it's nice to come in the summer with a mission and lots of people to see. I'm having a great time so far at PDF - too good a time, in fact. I've gotten barely any sleep this week what with preparing for the trip, a sick tot at home, and then just wanting to follow-up on so much while I'm here.

The first day panels were really interesting and I got a lot out of them that I'm blogging about in other places (The Huffington Post, MOMocrats/the Silicon Valley Moms Blog), so I don't need to go into that here, but what I've gained outside the conference hall itself is building relationships and seeing people I know feel the same way I do about technology and its role in politics, policy and governance. These people don't downplay how it can and can't be used and they're all brilliant.

So on to day two, and hopefully a little bit of sleep...

First Huffington Post Piece is Up

There's more in the works soon, but for now, my first post is up at The Huffington Post for "Off The Bus". I was planning to just write an intro to the Personal Democracy Forum conference and then they announced the Twitter debate, so I used that to get into the topic. (And I love the graphic they chose - very cute.) I look forward to covering the convention further next week.

Here's the permanent link for the piece, and any future posts I write for HuffPo or OTB will be at www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-granger.

Check Out BlogHer's New 'Do!

I'm so excited - BlogHer just updated their site and it looks great!

I don't know which version this is, but the one I saw in '06, the one in '07, and the one in '08 are vastly different from each other. They launched the '07 version last year at their conference and people had problems with the interface for a while... now the new site seems sleeker, easier to use, more inviting, and more colorful. Thumbs up! I know it makes me want to blog more there and spend more time on the site, so I hope it has that effect on others as well.

MOMocrats Column

For anyone who reads MOMocrats or my stuff there in particular, the decision was recently made to give each of the contributors our own column/category, so now it's easier to see our individual writing there. My column can be found at http://momocrats.typepad.com/momocrats/sarah_granger/index.html.

So far for MOMocrats, I've been covering a little about moms running for office or being considered for VP spots, a little about the environment, and some about tech in campaigns. I continue to be impressed by the writers there - these writers/moms are a really fascinating group. Just check out their bios and you'll see what I mean.