New Year's Evolution: Our Metamorphosis Chooses Us

We resolve to be different. Fitter. Pay off debt. Volunteer. Clean out that god-forsaken garage. Stepping into a fresh calendar year seems like a chance to try on a colorful persona, yet new year's resolutions are so often based on territory (and self-images) we already know. Instead, surprising facets of ourselves are evoked by a novel landscape and our metamorphosis chooses us. This year I took charge of my own web presence. A major undertaking requiring vision and planning -- but it didn't rate an end-of-'08 resolution. When I set down a tiny microblogging footprint with Twitter 18 months ago I didn't foresee 2009's curated-webpath to my interests and intentions.

Suddenly I was virtually attending conferences like the interactive SXSW and participating in live webchats on branding, innovation, and literature. I became a joiner and a beta-tester, signing on for a month-long experimental blogging course and volunteering for a conference-call-based life design course for expat women entrepreneurs.

I’ve become a full-feathered indie blogger, and a player in the digiventures of others: founder of the group blog to build on hybrid Expat Harem themes so many of us are living, a new media guest blogger, a location-independence blog carnival participant, administrator of a LinkedIn group for creative entrepreneurs using social media, and the curator of a year-long 2010 webcarnival to celebrate Istanbul.

Being proactive in the blogosphere is an epiphany, a 2009 reawakening of my inner student....a time to learn exactly what I need to know -- as a writer and publisher, a global citizen and cultural creative in Istanbul -- and contribute to the future of my communities.

What's your surprise metamorphosis of 2009? Who did you become this year?

[Gratitude to everyone who taught me something in 2009!]

Publishing And The Digital World Citizen

I once opened a can of ebook whoop-ass on Stephen King. “No interactivity, no extra benefit for readers!” I scolded the usually imaginative novelist back in the go-go days of Y2K. From my desk on New York’s Silicon Alley where I had the publishing beat at an internet industry magazine, King’s self-publishing experiment The Plant – a flow of static installments lacking flexibility, community and collaboration – was a lackluster leap of faith.

I was used to doling out tough-love to content owners peering across the digital divide. After previous stints in media and entertainment, intellectual property rights and audience concerns were also familiar to me but my exuberance came from a new media clean slate of the expat sort.

I'd just parachuted into the dotcom boom from Southeast Asia.

For five years my Malaysian office was minutes from Kuala Lumpur’s Multimedia Super Corridor, a futuristic zone advised by Bill Gates and Intel’s Andy Grove. Like the rest of the Newly Industrialized Nation, I was plagued by weekly power outages and wrote by candle light. While my attention span shrank to the length of a Compaq battery life, expatriate skills included patience to wait one month for a government-issued phone line. Waiting for internet access expanded my endurance to a couple of years.

When I finally got online the possibilities of global and real-time connection revolutionalized my estranged expat life.

A decade later I’m dipping into the professional fray from 6,000 miles to the East. I’ve been a writer and producer of cultural entertainment in Istanbul since 2003, and continue to live here. My first book Expat Harem took a conventional route: lit agent, Turkish and American publishers, road trip book tours, an electronic release for Expat Harem on Kindle (aff) and Sony eReader. My second effort — an edgy nonlinear memoir of friendship — requires a complete rethink. (Three months to set up our 49-day 10-state road tour across America, three years to recover from? Wouldn't do that again!)

Geographic disadvantage demands I compete in my home market virtually. With the economic crisis, collapse of traditional publishing and fresh hope pinned on the social web, my global audience is also now virtual.  I’m shifting to new school thinking in distribution, promotion, and sales.

Like internet access equalized my ‘90s expat reality, now social media closes the professional morass as my Tweetdeck columns resonate thought leadership across publishing, technology, and marketing. (Follow my Twitter lists of  300+ publishing professionals and 200+ interactive media people, transmedia visionaries, digital storytellers and marketers.)

I’ve got Web 2.0 and 3.0 plans for my second book -- see Digital Book World, the publishing community for the 21st century -- not only because as a contemporary author abroad I must connect with readers and offer dynamic interaction with me and my material, but because as a digital citizen I can.

Building community around the healing power of friendship – the memoir’s heart — promises to bring my writing world even closer to who I am and what I care about, making where I am viable. Exactly where I want to be.

Have you been culturally or geographically challenged in your career? How has the playing field shifted today?

A version of this essay first appeared in former editor of Writer's Digest Maria Schneider's Editor Unleashed, 2009.

See more images relating to this story here and here and here.

Twitter's High Barrier To Entry Makes It Worthless For People Who Don't Figure Out How Best To Use It

On a travel and lifestyle site I described Twitter this way: Twitter has a high barrier to entry and if you don't put in the time to figure out how best to use it, it just might be worthless.

For me it's a revelation and has absolutely changed my life in the year I've been using it for mindcasting. I'm now the #3 Twitterer in Istanbul!

I've virtually attended conferences around the world, gone to business school, gotten up to speed on my industry, and find *invaluable* the opportunity to connect trending thought across a slew of fields, learning and engaging alongside the top thinkers in innovation, healing, social media, sustainability, you name it.

If you're an intellectual Twitter is fabulous.

Interview With PLATIN Turkish Biz Magazine

Today I was interviewed for a story they’re running in September about the growth of the expat community and its micro-societies over the past 5 years.

I talked about the shift in the women’s social clubs to provide for more business support to expats.

I believe this reflects a change both in the demographics of female foreign passport holders, that is, who comes to Turkey, as well as what career opportunities they now are able to tap, including entrepreneurship with the help of social & mobile technologies.

Don't Lock Your Twitter Feed If You're Looking For Connection & Opportunity

Connected via TED's online directory with a sales and marketing director working in high tech and new media, in advance of both of us attending TED Global in Oxford. The guy explained he seeks to apply technology solutions in innovative ways to solve social issues, and he's currently looking for a new position.

Sounds good. I went to his Twitter feed to get closer and learn more but it's protected. He needs to approve me before I can see all the goodness he's sharing.

I asked him, "What's your reasoning for that, especially given you're in the market for new opportunities?"

He told me: "I have been inundated with dozens of requests of people to follow me. It is flattering to have a following, but when I look at the requests are from people I have no connection to. And, when I look at their profiles, they are following hundreds of thousands of others. Can anyone really follow 100,000 people on Twitter? I think there is a 'twitter stalker' phenomenon which likely leads to 'twitter spam'."

I have been using Twitter for a year (and am #3 Twitterer in Istanbul at moment, mainly because the Turks are not yet active on the service). I don't agree that twitter followers lead to spam. Anyone can send you spam using your twitter handle. If people follow you who have no good reason to do so, either they will drop off or never be heard from.

Many people don't use Twitter in optimal ways.

If you plan to be serious about it I'd suggest a bit of research into Twitter best practices. And follow @mashable @chrisbrogan @ambercadabra @sirhendrix and many others in the SM brand and biz coaching spaces.

One thing I'd say about this person's twitter handle (I'm not one to talk with an unpronounceable, easily misspelled name of "thandelike" but still, here I go) is that his handle itself sounds like spam. People are wary of marketers on Twitter so learning how best to be a marketer on Twitter may be in order.

The main idea of Twitter is to bring value to your network, and to grow that network organically through conversation with others. Share links (not only to your own work) and engage with the material others share. Don't make it hard for people to access what you share. Don't make it hard for us to grasp that you are a real person behind that spammy handle.

If You Follow People Who Use Twitter Well, You'll Be Wowed

My comments in A Small World (a private international travel and lifestyle community) thread about Twitter: Best practices on Twitter seem to be 1) post items of value 2) grow your network organically -- no schemes, no mass following whoever 3) engage with others and react to the material they share. (Be selective and honest about your interests.)

Use Tweetdeck or Seesmic to better organize the feeds you subscribe to, group them meaningfully, and actually build a series of networks that relate to who you are, where you are, what you do, what you want to do, where you want to go, and if you like, where you came from. I add to that all the lives and pursuits I didn't choose but I am nevertheless still interested in. We *can* live vicariously!

I hear what detractors are saying but all their points are disproven on Twitter every day.

It's not the same (or less than) a status post on a FB wall for a slew of reasons -- public search being just one of them. It's untrue you can't say anything impactful in 140 characters, but I agree it takes some getting used to. Tiny urls and succinct introductions are a way to bring substantial value to a Tweet.

If you follow people who use Twitter well, you'll be wowed. And if you use Twitter well, you'll be surprised on a regular basis at who and what it brings into your life.

BTW, I was just at TEDGlobal this week and by using Twitter I not only connected with a ton of attendees I might have missed, convening from all corners of the world, but I also got a richer view of the conference through their tweets --- including how and what they heard the speakers say on stage in real time. TED events are info-overload, and Twitter made it that much more accessible.

Istanbul As Epicenter Of Pro Expat Women & Social Media Tribe?

I just spent an hour on the phone with a member of Professional American Women of Istanbul (PAWI) asking for guidance on using the internet to grow her business. She’s 51, hearing all about social media networking and willing to try whatever it takes. I was sorry to learn she’s spent a lot of time joining professional “e-marketing associations”, as if she’s shifting her business to marketing when in fact what she wants to do is add an online component to her existing business.

“Which automation tools should I use?” she asked, “they’re all talking about automation tools like Seismic and Tweetdeck.”

To automate what, I asked. Content you haven’t created, to put into distribution channels you haven’t forged, leading to niche customer bases you haven’t identified beyond their age and where they live in Istanbul? Cart, horse.

“I went to the Twitter site and couldn’t figure out what to do.”

I agree Twitter has a high barrier to entry, but once she’s got it she’ll be accessing all the information she needs to grow her business, and she’ll be learning it from the very individuals who are pioneering this field. That’s the beauty of Twitter.

I'll be leading a panel this fall on social media for professional use for International Professional Women of Istanbul Network. After today's call, now I'll be inviting members of PAWI.

Perhaps this can be the start of a connected, digitally-savvy tribe of international professional women in Istanbul and expat women everywhere.

I’m envisioning people in the community self-identifying themselves as “Social Media enthusiasts” or “SM-interested” parties after this panel, and then we can create an actual Istanbul Social Media subgroup for mutual support, skill training and sharing, and more.

I'll suggest the entire panel be proponents and active users able to demonstrate their individual professional development through Social Media.

1. What is social media? Definition, main platforms/tools, overview of its rise to prominence and communication paradigm shift it represents 2. Personal/professional uses of social media including expertise and platform building, professional development, job hunting, collaboration 3. Best and worst practices

BTW TRUST AGENTS by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith is the hot book coming out of Social Media at moment and encapsulates the most progressive thinking on the issues.

Guest Hosting #LitChat On Twitter On Topic Of Expatriate Literature

On May 29 at EST 4pm, I will guest host #litchat, an open discussion series founded by a fellow author (@litchat), on the topic of expatriate literature. (#litchat is an hour-long open discussion on a topic, three times a week. You can follow it in Twitter search or on www.Tweetchat.com using the term “litchat”.)

I’ll be guiding the hour-long live discussion, soliciting opinions and offering my own based on this view:

Expatriate literature may be stocked in the travel section, but does it deserve a shelf of its own?

Living for extended periods in foreign locales, expatriates struggle to reestablish themselves and find meaningful access to their new home.

Travelers passing through often have the luxury to avoid the very issues of assimilation and identity that dominate the expat psyche.

We’ll talk about the unique depths this can bring to expat lit’s combination of outsider-view-from-the-inside and journey of self-realization.

See litchat.wordpress.com for more info.

+++

See the transcripts of my expat #litchat event here.

Talking To Expat Entrepreneurs About How Facebook & LinkedIn Don't Touch Twitter

My comments from a discussion thread at the private forum for expat entrepreneurs run by Karen Armstrong: You can find me on Facebook (which I'm using increasingly more as a place to share what I'm reading, thinking, what I'm doing, etc -- and created recently an Expat Harem page which still needs a lot more love), Linked-In (which I've begun to join in forum discussions here and there) and Twitter.

I'm most active on Twitter because it works so well for me as a writer, as an expat, as a trafficker of ideas.

With Twitter I'm back in school (taking business courses, marketing and media affairs), I'm at summer camp, I've rejoined the publishing industry, and making new filmmaker friends, and following peripheral interests through the lives of people more devoted, taking part in live discussions about literature, editing, branding, virtually attending conferences and events like yesterday's brown bag luncheon thrown by Random House on the topic of digital publishing.

The other two sites have their purposes but nothing touches Twitter.

'Twitter Is A Fad' Says This 2009 Businessweek Blog. Nope, I Reply.

My comment I posted on this piece by Burt Helm:

Twitter may not be of use to everyone and -- since it truly opens up for you once you learn how you can best use it for your goals -- it may not be for people who aren't inclined to put in the effort, or for those who have no goals.

It's changed my life positively in many ways and I'm no faddish fool. I look forward to it continuing in this form or another.

How Use Twitter As An Author

As the coeditor of an anthology by foreign women in modern Turkey, and an American living abroad in Istanbul, Twitter has been an invaluable tool to bring me closer to the world I work in, and up to speed on my industry. I meet my readers (fellow expats, travelers, writers, and culturati among them) and my publishing world colleagues (agents, authors, editors, publishers) to discuss not only issues relevant to my first book, but also to the memoir I am currently writing, and the rapidly changing state of publishing. I’ve also connected with professionals who are giving me feedback on my work in progress.

Some examples of how I use Twitter as an author:

1) On May 29 at EST 4pm, I will guest host #litchat, an open discussion series founded by a fellow author (@litchat), on the topic of expatriate literature. (#litchat is an hour-long open discussion on a topic, three times a week. You can follow it in Twitter search or on www.Tweetchat.com using the term “litchat”.) I’ll be guiding the discussion, soliciting opinions and offering my own based on this view: Expatriate literature may be stocked in the travel section, but does it deserve a shelf of its own? Living for extended periods in foreign locales, expatriates struggle to reestablish themselves and find meaningful access to their new home. Travelers passing through often have the luxury to avoid the very issues of assimilation and identity that dominate the expat psyche. We’ll talk about the unique depths this can bring to expat lit’s combination of outsider-view-from-the-inside and journey of self-realization. See litchat.wordpress.com for more info.

2) #editorchat – I follow the illuminating transcripts at editorchat.wordpress.com since the chats take place at 5am Istanbul time and I haven’t managed to be awake during them yet!

3) Through Twitter I’ve also been invited to write a guest post for an editor’s blog, voted in the top 100 publishing blogs, about my experience as an author abroad trying to get up to speed with my traditional and digital publishing options and comparing today’s conditions with those I once reported on the e-publishing beat at Internet World trade magazine in 2000.

4) #queryfail and #queryday – these discussions (also found by Twitter search and Tweetchat) have been consistently good to refresh my own agent pitching techniques, especially as I prepare a package for an agent this month

5) A pop physicist I met on Twitter is currently vetting some popular science in the foreword of my current memoir, and I’ve discussed some of my emerging theories about online psychology (also in current memoir) with a group of psychologists championing it, including the founders of #mentalhealthcamp

I wholeheartedly recommend authors use Twitter in these ways and all the others you’ll likely be inspired to pursue.

Reasons To Not Auto-Follow On Twitter

A LinkedIn group for photographers hosted a discussion thread about Twitter and invited us to share our handle. But to do so, we had to agree to follow everyone else in the thread. My response:

Very sorry you make this auto-follow stipulation. I've been using twitter for 9 months and it's changed my life. I believe there are many completely legitimate reasons not to auto-follow someone back on Twitter.

Among the reasons not to auto-follow: curating one's own timeline for particular communities and posting-behavior/topics/usage level, frequency and style.

Twitter is very much about customizing your experience for your own needs.

Even the most 'expert' users are split on the idea of auto-following out of politeness/courtesy. I routinely check in to see what followers I am not following are tweeting, especially newcomers and infrequent posters, who may change their output and interest me. If my followers engage with me I often follow them back as I get to know them. however I choose to follow people on Twitter for reasons other than that they are following me.

And I don't unfollow people because they don't choose to follow me -- that's very high school. If what they tweet is valuable to me, that is all I need from them.

Expat Personal Branding For Career Success Abroad

In a two-part interview with Career by Choice, a blog run by expat career coach Megan Fitzgerald in Rome, this week I talk about the lessons of Expat Harem in forging my expat writing life. Answering questions about personal branding and career success abroad, I explain how writing about my life overseas and editing Expat Harem connected me to a worldwide band of peers, and gave my career and conflicted expat mindset a new cultural context. Part one Part two

Thoughts On A Spark Summit

Brainstorming with a friend about a connection- and gathering-based global community we want to build for ourselves.... An intimate yearly salon of thought-leaders, change makers, cultural creatives, and humanists for sustained conversations with other globally-mobile progressives.