Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Producing, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Producing, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

How To Become Your Own North Star On The Internet

We're all digital strategists now.

 

In fact, if you aren't thinking deeply about how and where and with whom you appear and interact on the web, you need to start.

Today. You can and should be using your online presence as a 21st century life & work skill to connect with relevant people, information you need and enriching opportunities. I'm going to help, so you can get started today. (And the resources I'm sharing with you are completely free, so if you want to buy something you'll have to go find a different post.) I've been saying all of this for years. Doing it for years. As a content and digital publishing specialist, I've been showing people how to use their own content to connect purpose and action in digital spaces, for 5 years, both in private and group coaching environments. Along with Tara Agacayak and Tanya Monsef Bunger, I built a curriculum at GlobalNiche, a social web training company that's now shifting into an empowered digital life movement, so you can do it on your own, or in groups, wherever you are and whoever you are and whatever you do. If you are a person active online, this training will ask you the strategic questions you need to be thinking about. If you're not yet active or don't love being online, this will help you figure out what makes sense for you. Our combined 25 years of experience, including major expatriate life and work challenges, forced us to tap our backgrounds in culture, info tech, media & psychology to create this network-activating system using the backbone of the social web. We've used this method to survive. No matter who or where you are, you can use it to thrive.

I'm now making that training perfectly free, so you can take advantage of all our guidance immediately.

 

Want to learn how? It's my gift to you! Start by downloading the handbook

 

  When you download this powerful free handbook you're going to start to transform what you do, how you do it and with whom. This repeatable, dynamic six-step method will help you become your own North Star on the Internet and bring you closer to the people and things you care about. You'll emerge with inspiration, direction and confidence:

    • a vision that lights you up and goals you can measure
  • a do-able plan and digital skills you need
  • and a practice and peer group you can rely on to keep going

 

 

Here's what people who've done it say:

    • "I felt I couldn’t catch up. The way GlobalNiche describes social media – it’s about using technology to communicate naturally – clicked for me." ~ paralegal
  • “Opened my eyes to my own assets. It has given me the confidence to bet on myself.” ~ work-at-home parent
  • “I doubled my Twitter presence just by learning about good Twitter etiquette.” ~ scriptwriter
  • “I’m blown away by the possibilities. I now have an action plan. I feel a huge shift in my life." ~ academic
  • "For people who are wondering if what they have to say is valuable.” ~ financial officer
  • "Helped me to recognize and own how I am being virtually “seen” and make positive and educated changes." ~ landscape contractor

 

With this non-dogmatic foundational method you'll:

    • uncover the real value you've already created: by taking inventory of what you've been doing, detecting the patterns in your activities, gaining insight into what you're drawn to
  • put your mountain of natural resources to work for you: by acknowledging all that you’ve created and use it to gain insight into who you are and who you want to be
  • show the world how you make sense: by linking what you've done in the past & are doing today with your wider goals
  • recognize that you need to become visible to meet people you want to collaborate with, work for, hire
  • combine who you are and where you want to go with the tools available to express yourself
  • make empowered, focused decisions about how to operate online
  • go beyond managing your reputation online to using social media to represent your best self
  • meet and enter conversations with your peers, mentors and customers on the web
  • get recognized by authorities & peers in your field, recruiters, the media
  • identify how to use existing materials as building blocks for future projects
  • identify new ways to use social media, which platforms work for you (and which do not), and how to use those platforms to your advantage
  • express yourself with the best social web tools available, including how to use Google+, Quora, ScoopIt and Storify to your benefit
  • gain a new understanding of the best social media and content management and strategy tools, formats, methods to try
  • establish an interactive calling card at a site like About.me
  • learn best practices for blogging frameworks like WordPress and Thesis, blogging services like Twitter and Tumblr, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram
  • learn best uses of video and slideshow sites like Animoto, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, email service providers
  • grasp a new perspective on yourself as a content creator, realize the energy you generate around your interests IS content
  • publish, record, remix, repackage, reformat your content
  • design and implement a do-able plan with small steps to get your creations into global circulation in alignment with your larger goals

 

Want more?

If you want more guidance, get the free multimedia curriculum which expands on the handbook with video coaching and other materials. You'll have lifetime access to the self-paced course, 24/7, on all your devices. I'm making that entire program perfectly free for you, so join with a friend and do it together! 4,700 people already cashed in this free coupon to get connected & effective. Did you? Let me know how you're liking it!

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Community, Content, Culture, Expatriatism, Identity, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Content, Culture, Expatriatism, Identity, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman

Expat Harem: 9 Years On The Reading List

Screen Shot 2014-09-07 at 11.09.17 AM Thrilled to see Expat Harem top this list of best expat books in the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah. Thanks to Expat Harem book and blog writer Catherine Yiğit for the heads up! Leyla Yvonne Ergil writes, "Many an expat has penned their experiences of living of Turkey in captivating accounts of the beauty of the landscape and cultural divides...

"...some of the best reads to laugh, commiserate, and experience the wonder that is Istanbul through foreign eyes."

Glad to be included on this list with:

Screen Shot 2014-09-09 at 12.26.22 PM And thanks to Elle Loftis for recommending the book in her top 10 Turkey reads in Today's Zaman paper.

"It shows a side of Turkey and Turkish culture rarely portrayed outside of fiction, and definitely not covered by international media. Expats in particular will enjoy this anthology, where many of the stories will undoubtedly hit home," Loftis writes.

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Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, New School, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, New School, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Sarah Granger's The Digital Mystique

Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 9.39.07 AMSo pleased to support digital life thinker and my fellow Seal Press author Sarah Granger's launch of The Digital Mystique. In The Digital Mystique: How the Culture of Connectivity Can Empower Your Life – Online and Off, Granger shows us how digital media is shaping our lives in real time.

Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 9.37.47 AM Long before I moved to SF and met her at TEDx Bay Area's Global Women Entrepreneurs, I was following Sarah on Twitter  (since 2008!) where she was virtually taking me to the conferences and into the conversations I love about how digital life is shaping the way we learn, grow, and thrive. 

Sarah's shared her path to publishing this book and along the way I've been thrilled to share with Sarah my own experiences with the empowerment digital life can bring.

I really appreciate the enriching role she plays in her community, and thank her for recommending me as a speaker for the Exceptional Women in Publishing conference.

The book launch is September 9 in San Francisco at AppDynamics and will feature the viewing of an Emmy-nominated six minute video by Tiffany Shlain, an introduction by BlogHer cofounder Elisa Camahort Page, and remarks by the author.

Check out the book no matter where you are!

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Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Memoir, New School, Platform, Producing, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Memoir, New School, Platform, Producing, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman

Storytellers with iPhones! Want to be a pioneer?

  s_03-3 I'm heading community and content in a new semi-private social networking tool for visual storytelling called Selfish. We're about to launch our beta iOS apps in Russia and Canada, then in the US and Android a little later, along with our desktop component. Big, global stuff for socially savvy publishers!

We're looking for digital media pioneers and adventurous, creative people to work with us as we get the kinks out of the technology, and gear up for a public  launch. We're a work-in-progress, and we want to pay you for your own works-in-progress.

I'm pleased to announce the Selfish Content Creator Program.

Our paid content creator program runs from August 25-October 25. Those dates may shift, so check it out no matter what. (See full details here, and get the link to download the app on your iPhone. You'll need iOS7 or iOS8 to use the app.)

You'll be using the tool to fashion a short, connected string of posts with photos and brief text on a topic, either alone or with other co-authors.

  • You can do this with your friends or family, in fact, we prefer you do it with other people since this is a collaborative tool.
  • Use informal language and conversational tone.
  • Ideal topics are a weekend road trip; details about your obsessions, hobbies or work or sports you play; attending a special occasion, an event like a concert or a wedding or a conference; events in an interest group you belong to.
  • You can repurpose previously published material.
  • You can use personal content.

s_02The aim of this program for North American/English language creative communities is to attract diverse content into the app that reflects best uses of the tool.

I'd like to encourage creatives and bloggers out there to try the app and test its capabilities in telling a story that comes naturally to you, including stories that are happening in your life right now. Capturing real time, ongoing adventures is something this app supports well.

Also, we're going to pay you to start a story but you can always continue your Selfish stories after you reach the pay mark. We imagine you'll want to as you realize the value you've created and the new ways you discover to share your life and interests with the people who matter to you.

What are we looking for? The basics of a winning Selfish story in this program are:

  • has a good cover/title/story description,
  • with coauthors,
  • a minimum of 10 moments total of photos and text,
  • uses hashtags and geotags and @ mentions,
  • with active comments, and
  • social shares throughout the creation process.

s_01Presenting our content creator program in a Selfish story (see it here) is an experiment to show you how a Selfish story works, how it's an ongoing thread of small moments, how it's different than a blog post, how it's different than a tweet or a Facebook status or a Facebook photo album, or a Pinterest pin, or an Instagram photo.

As my fellow content creator, communicator, publisher, writer, transmedia storyteller, as my fellow friend, family member, and member of other interest communities, I think you might want to know about this new mobile, social, online option for connecting what you care about with how and what you capture and share, and with whom you choose to share it. If you have questions, just ask me. I'd love to try to answer.

This story about the program shows you sample screens of existing content and creation flows while you consider the guidelines. It also demonstrates what kind of Selfish powers you can expect to harness for your own storytelling goals:

  • a Selfish story has one link and is shareable everywhere;
  • a Selfish story can have multiple coauthors, all posting into the ongoing story;
  • a Selfish story is made of multiple moments of photos and text all linked together;
  • a Selfish story is created in the mobile app and displayed on the web;
  • a Selfish story on the web is displayed in animated moments with rotating images and blocks of text;
  • a Selfish story is interactive, with comments and likes on each moment;
  • if you’re a registered user, you can subscribe to any public Selfish story so you get all the moments in your feed;
  • and, Selfish is free;
  • there's more, because Selfish is all about user controls, but hey this post has to end some time.

s_04-4Check out the content creator program, or send this link to someone you know who might like to try it: http://bit.ly/SelfishApp

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Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Interviews, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Interviews, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman

Video Director Amit Raikar's GlobalNiche Interviews

Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.22.31 PM

"It's a community about possibility. I'd like to see this become a life philosophy." ~ Tiny Habits coach and environmental engineer Shirley Rivera

Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.33.02 PM Just saw the rough cut of director Amit Raikar's video about the GlobalNiche movement shot this spring. Such great questions, and so many distinctive perspectives to fill in the mosaic of what GlobalNiche is, what it means, where it's going, how it works in our lives. I can't wait to be able to share it more widely! Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.18.54 PM Here are some stills from the video (Shirley Rivera, Tanya Monsef Bunger, Loreen Huddleston, Bertita Graebner, me, and Evelyne Michaut), and a few juicy quotes. More to come...Thanks everyone, and Amit and crew for the wonderful work.Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.31.34 PM Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.32.27 PM Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.18.13 PM

"This allows me to build the platform to be very consistently me in the world." ~ transpersonal psychologist and life transitions coach Bertita Graebner

Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.17.09 PM Screen Shot 2014-08-01 at 6.35.18 PMScreen Shot 2014-07-24 at 6.20.23 PM

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Archaeology, Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Archaeology, Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Curated By Others

When lots of other people curate the stream of content you create, what image of you emerges?

When other people curate your content for their own specialized communities, what emerges might be a multidimensional snapshot...a picture of your background, your interests, your training, your current activities, and, maybe, where you're headed.

Here's what I saw recently with a variety of online newspapers curations based on what I share on Twitter:

  • My archaeology past
  • my life in women's travel, cultural communications and expat coaching
  • my experience with publishing options
  • my role as a continuing education instructor at Udemy
  • my media past-present-and-future
  • my present in a coworking situation (and I'd add, my interest in the future of work.)

The snapshot is a gift, and I'm pleased and proud to be included in the below and other curations by people like Jeremy Silver,  a digital media investor, entrepreneur, adviser I met at TEDGlobal.

Click on any of the paper.li links to visit the daily version of the paper each owner auto-curates from chosen sources for his or her unique and focused community.

Thanks to these newspaper creators and content curators for including me as a source in their custom paper.li.

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Culture, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Malaysia, Resilience Anastasia Ashman Culture, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Malaysia, Resilience Anastasia Ashman

What Crazy Thing Did You Build? How Did It Go?

Villa Langsat: I built this house outside Kuala Lumpur. My father designed it for me.

Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 3.18.22 PMScreen Shot 2014-07-11 at 3.17.31 PMScreen Shot 2014-07-11 at 3.18.05 PM

Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 3.17.56 PMI planted 100 plants in the garden and stocked the fountain with tropical fish.

(This is the same fountain an Indonesian workman washed his latex paint brushes in, thinking it'd somehow just go away.)

A tiny blue kingfisher took just an hour of diving to clear out the pond of all swimming things. An afternoon of expensive sushi for the little bird with the oversize orange beak.

Screen Shot 2014-07-11 at 3.18.14 PMIt was supposed to take 3 months to complete. That was before the contractor saw the plans. Construction lasted for 2 years.

It's all slate inside, stays cool in the equatorial heat. Cool! Not cool: the roof leaked for the first 7 months.

What crazy thing did you build? How did it go?

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Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Producing, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, New School, Platform, Producing, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman

My Complete Handbook On Slideshare

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Community, Entrepreneurship, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Entrepreneurship, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Pitched visual storytelling app to MBAs from South Korea

Had a great time today presenting SELFish, a social & visual storytelling mobile app in open beta for the next few months, to 30 MBA student-professionals from LG CNS visiting from South Korea, at RocketSpace. Thanks RocketStudios and LG!

I created and delivered the company's first live, public presentation of the product, the team, and our roadmap to market.

The event organizers asked each of the three RocketSpace startups which presented (social smartphone camera app Shoto.com and social betting app Youbetme.com) to include a particular challenge we are facing so the MBA students can address it in their afternoon session. I chose the challenge of selecting only one UVP as we go to market. At SELFish, we have several. Which should we emphasize to consumers? Is it our controls that allow us to pick who sees or contributes to our stories? Or is it our connection of moments into ongoing stories?

Thanks too, to Ronan Roche, a business analyst at RocketSpace, for making this homestyle video for me on short notice.

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Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Interviews, Lifestyle Design, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Identity, Interviews, Lifestyle Design, Platform, Resilience, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Shirley Rivera Takes On GlobalNiche Community Outreach, Compiling Case Studies

 

So excited, and grateful, Shirley, for you to apply your special skills to this massive task.

 

Shirley will be collecting good news and specifics from everyone. Hope to hear more, like the below...

 

 

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Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Biggest Startup Lessons, Fun Tech Coworking Spaces, A New Product's Superpower

Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 1.16.25 PM Thanks to RocketSpace for interviewing me for their Startup Spotlight series this month about SELFish, the new social network I joined earlier this year. We're based at RocketSpace, a really fun coworking and office space for high growth tech companies.

An excerpt from the interview (you can catch the whole thing here:

What’s your favorite thing about RocketSpace?

I’ve been working remotely as a cultural entrepreneur for many years so my favorite thing about RocketSpace is the energy and the serendipity of meeting others who are on a similar journey. After living globally for 14 years, I especially appreciate the borderless, international nature of RS. And I have to give props to RS’s sense of humor. The “wtf@” and “omg@” email aliases for reporting issues or happy occasions are your brand voice. You manage to be substantial and lighthearted at the same time.

What is your product’s superpower?

I’d say it’s that there are no social conventions to worry about at SELFish. We give you control, so you can indulge your self expression. Share what you want, how much you want, with whom you want. Since I’m a high volume publisher with very disparate interests and communities I want to interact with, I especially like that aspect of the product.

Screen Shot 2014-06-16 at 1.47.00 PM

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Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Your Entrepreneurship Goals Are Your Online Presence Goals

Your entrepreneurship goals are your online presence goals and community is how you get things done.

These are the slides from last month's workshop for startup founders that Tanya Monsef Bunger and I conducted at the Women's Startup Lab in Menlo Park.

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Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Founders Have Vision & Goals, Need Community To Get Things Done

Screen Shot 2014-06-03 at 2.21.34 PM Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 2.30.20 PMClick here for the slideshow. Last month we had a great day at the Women's Startup Lab in Menlo Park, workshopping online community building for founders. (See details here.) The questions these entrepreneurs asked got us off to a good start:

  • "How do I reach people I don't know?"
  • "Which tool can I use to bring together two communities and get them communicating?"
  • "My community lives on Twitter but what if my end users are on Facebook?"
  • "How do I combine my posts in two different languages?"
  • "How do I maximize social networks to grow community, and where I do find the time for content creation?"

It was wonderful to meet and get a peek into the businesses of founders Dedra Chamberlin (Cirrus Identity, for social identity management in the higher education space), Cynthia Litchi (she's launching Tejul, a social learning site for Latin American female artisans to teach each other), and Vicky Zhang of Fledgg (a company to connect young entrepreneurs and mentors globally).

Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 3.20.34 PM Cultural and personal sensitivity issues we covered in this workshop included how to strike a balance between one's CEO presence and personal presence online since "it's risky!" We also talked about optimizing your profiles at all the social media services and sites you're a member of. Cynthia Litchi mentioned that in Mexico, where she's from, professionals don't use LinkedIn because of security issues -- so if you want to connect with Mexican pro counterparts online, more closed settings are where you're going to find them. Thanks to Tanya Monsef Bunger, a coach at the Women's Startup Lab, for coleading this workshop and Ari Horie and everyone at the Innovation Lab for hosting.

I want to do more workshops with entrepreneurs about how they can use social media, online presence building, content creation, curation and content marketing and personal branding to grow community...

because entrepreneurs come to the table uniquely prepared to use their online presence to meet their goals.

They have a huge vision, they have distinct goals, they have content, they have a platform of some kind. And they are driven to make the most of their resources. And that's exactly what they need to combine in order to connect with their peers, their customers, mentors, advisors, investors.

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Community, Content, Entrepreneurship, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Content, Entrepreneurship, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Sneak Peek At New Social Networking App To Collaborate On Your Life Stories

Sneak peek what I've been working on as a community and content person at the Selfish startup since February... we go live in the Canada and Russian app stores this summer and the USA app store soon after!Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 5.02.05 PM

If you want to beta test this new social networking app for collaborating on your life stories with your favorite people, let me know and I'll send you a super special link.

Happy Memorial Day!

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Community, Connected Divide, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, Platform, Uncategorized Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Lifestyle Design, Platform, Uncategorized Anastasia Ashman

GlobalNiche San Francisco Area Meetup

"I'd like to see GlobalNiche become a life philosophy," says Shirley Rivera.

 

The latest of many F2F gatherings of GlobalNiche people and their friends, around the world! Reading this and want to do your own? Do it!! We'll help you get the word out. Special thanks to Amit Raikar, Shirley Rivera and Tanya Monsef Bunger for event production, transportation, and inspiration and a lot of other wonderful things that made this evening happen. It was a blur of wine, and excitement and twinkling lights, and silver and raspberry and houndstooth, and happy  faces and surprise meetings and balloons and cherry pie. There was a lot of hugging and huddling, and we really didn't need the crackling fireplace because we were all on FIRE!

Looking forward to the video interviews that Amit Raikar directed and shot along with his full production crew of Jeri Neves, James Pendziszewski, Mike Montoya and Ryan Munevar. Amit asked each of the attendees to share what GlobalNiche is to them, and where it's taking them (and where they're taking GlobalNiche!).

Everyone came out their five minute video interview proclaiming, "I have no idea what I said!" so it'll be fascinating to see how it all adds up.

...what this expat, Third Culture, creative entrepreneur, content creator, location independence community and curriculum and study group setting and online presence building and global network tapping and personal culture creating, hybrid life design movement means to each of us.

Great to see Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt, in from Denver, just for this occasion! From the South Bay and beyond, we were excited to welcome Loreen Huddleston, Bertita Graebner, Bonita Banducci, Karen Jaw-Madson, Trish Sewe, Evelyne Michaut and Siddartha and new friends including Heather Franzese.

"Our local GN community is, I am quite convinced, mirrored and replicated everywhere in our global presence," says Bertita.

 

"I felt truly blessed to be among a group of such strong, smart, interesting women (and men)," says Loreen.

 

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Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Turkey, Writing Anastasia Ashman

Expat Harem Writer Wendy Jean Fox Wins Literary Award And Publishes Her First Book

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 6.55.11 PMCongrats to Wendy Jean Fox (you may know her as one of the original Expat Harem writers, her piece is Coming Clean In Kayseri  [read it at that link] about a visit to an ancient hamam bathhouse in central Anatolia where Wendy was teaching). Wendy won the Press 53 award for short fiction for her collection, "The Seven Stages of Anger & Other Stories". It will be published by Press 53, a literary press in Winston-Salem, North Carolina this October. I'm pleased to receive an advance reading copy and honored to blurb it!

The Denver, Colorado-based Wendy also joined the GlobalNiche program.

"The GlobalNiche program has been instrumental in helping me get focused on doing something with all random piles of pages laying around," she said.

 

"I was already sending out pretty frequently to lit mags, and getting quite a few stories picked up, but GN helped me get better - what do I really want, how do I get there, what do I already have, what do I need to make. I wanted, first, a book. Now I have to get my novel in shape.

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 9.56.30 AM

"I know this is not a coincidence that I began the program (I'm about halfway through) and that this is happening.

"So, thank you to you and Tara and the entire community. I appreciate your energy and what you are doing -- it's an inspiration."

Thanks a lot, Wendy, and thanks for the Expat Harem shoutout in your bio on the book cover!

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Community, Connected Divide, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Entrepreneurship, New School, Platform, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Speaking At The Innovation Lab For Silicon Valley Startup Founders

Screen Shot 2014-04-27 at 6.49.59 PMLooking forward to speaking about social media for entrepreneurs along with Tanya Monsef Bunger at the Women's Startup Lab's Innovation Lab on May 13th. Innovation Lab is an intensive and interactive learning lab for startup founders "to develop the skills and competencies needed to be effective leaders/founders."

Screen Shot 2014-04-27 at 8.26.08 PMTanya and I will be leading a 3 hour workshop in the ‘Grow your Startup’ section of the lab.

 

To complement six other ’how to’ subjects offered in this series, such as essential sales techniques to close deals, lean marketing strategy, lean startup training, UI/UX design, IP Strategy and Valuation/Financial modeling, we will be instructing the group on using social media to build an online community.

Tanya is my GlobalNiche team member, and for the past year has been a business coach at the Women's Startup Lab founded by Allison Chapman and Ari Horie, who's pictured below.

 

Screen Shot 2014-04-27 at 6.53.25 PM

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Community, Culture, Expatriatism, Platform Anastasia Ashman Community, Culture, Expatriatism, Platform Anastasia Ashman

Multiplying Community Management Effects In A Startup Accelerator

Screen Shot 2014-04-11 at 11.25.00 AMExcited to brainstorm next week with Olivia June Poole, the new community director of RocketSpace where I'm now based, a regular gathering of community managers here to bring together all the different community people from startups in this incubator/accelerator/coworking space.

Kinda meta. Also, a way to make coworking even more beneficial.

 

I see it being a way to get to know our fellow community-entrusted pros, discuss community management issues among ourselves, and begin to meld our discrete communities for increased impact and opportunity.

photo-10

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Community, Content, Culture, Editing, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Interviews, Memoir, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman Community, Content, Culture, Editing, Expatriatism, Global, Identity, Interviews, Memoir, Resilience, Social & Mobile, Writing Anastasia Ashman

Faye Brann Addresses The Gap In The Market For Narrative Expat Literature

 

Screen Shot 2014-04-08 at 2.37.18 PM Thanks to expat author in Dubai Faye Brann for interviewing me about #expat #literature and the #publishing world's opportunities to capture expat lit's readers.  She blogs about it here. Here's the interview as it was conducted on Twitter this week -- which is where Faye and I met!

 

Screen Shot 2014-04-08 at 1.45.22 PM

Faye is working on her first book, There’s No Place Like Home, to "look at the often misunderstood life of the ‘trailing spouse’ abroad". At her blog she explores the gap in the market for narrative expat literature.

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Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman Community, Connected Divide, Content, Culture, Entrepreneurship, Global, Social & Mobile Anastasia Ashman

Executing Global Rollout Of A New Social Networking Collaboration Tool

 

photo-9BetaList highlights to thousands of tech-savvy early adopters the upcoming mobile app of Selfish.me, the San Francisco startup I joined in February as director of community...

So fun strategizing and executing the global rollout of this new social networking collaboration tool! Sign up now to be notified as soon as it hits the app store.

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