In no particular order…

Sometimes, you’ve gotta go rogue (dropping out of 10km for solo career) if that’s where your heart is leading you

It’s OK/perfectly acceptable to drop off the map to focus on things that REALLY matter (her: daughter/motherhood/music; me: self/depression/family/bf/grievance/job)

… When you reemerge you may/will knock their socks off w/a masterpiece/opus like her latest

Don’t be afraid to let your interests/passion lead you to your next breakthrough (childrens poetry)

Concept album/very different ideas – bold but momentous, could change game

ALWAYS DO YOUR RESEARCH (poetry, how in-depth she got w/authors)

Important to be well rounded artist (book smarts, singer, dancer, pianist, etc.)

Don’t stick to one genre (don’t silo) – each song v different style & you’ll be respected more

Secure your assets (she owns all rights to 10km writings/songs)

Doing things your own way is sometimes/usually the best/only way (leaving her label & starting her own)

… On that note, you CAN control your assets/brand/etc if u are smart about it (own label)

Turning your back on the crowd is OK/if you play for your band (support system) it makes you stronger performer/person, crowd forgives you

OK to dance to your own beat/like an idiot

Set your own rhythm/beat & the band/support system will follow along

Kick off your shoes & get comfy when you’re on stage – it’s your show, you call the shots

It’s OK to forget the words, ppl who know will help you out & forgive you

Mix old w/new material – ppl love classics

Say thank you

Having both a tuba & an accordion is weird but it works

Instruments: snare, tall bongo thing, small guitar that wasn’t a uke or mandolin, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, upright bass, cello, accordion, banjo, tuba, fiddle… Whatever was in the corner that I couldn’t see … No drum kit, mostly strings

In April 2010, custom social network service Ning decided that they were going to start charging and do away with their free service. Beginning August 20, Ning will charge the following for usage of their custom social network platform:

(Features included in each plan are not shown because of space.)

As you can imagine, this decision by Ning caused (and is still causing) quite a stir among users and administrators of such networks.  Even if it’s only $2.95, many administrators of smaller groups are unwilling to pay for it, and many are struggling to find effective Ning alternatives, especially nonprofits and “cause” networks. There’s even a Facebook group dedicated to prevent Ning from doing so.

Well, have no fear, activists — Switzerland-based Amazee is stepping up the plate and offering FREE Ning migration service to their platform.

What is Amazee, you ask?

Though it hasn’t caught on in the United States (yet), it’s a popular custom platform for projects and reaching goals, whether it’s fundraising or non-monetary aspirations. It’s very popular in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.

Here’s a quick video Amazee made explaining the benefits of migrating to their platform:

Welcome, Ning refugees! from Amazee on Vimeo.

From Amazee’s blog:

First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning*: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.

Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).

Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.

I’ve had an account at Amazee for over a year and have been (minimally) involved on this platform with a few projects in South Africa, and absolutely love the functionality of it. There are other Ning alternatives, like GroupSite and Mixxt, but personally, I don’t find the others very conducive to the needs of collaborative activism.  Amazee, on the other hand, was designed for that very purpose.

So if you’ve got a cause-based community on Ning, don’t fret – head on over to Amazee and they’ll make migration easy, painless, and free.

Have you found any other good Ning alternatives? Please share in the comments below if so. Thanks!

Note: I got no form of compensation for writing this post.

Back in April I wrote a preview post of the 2010 Detroit Music Awards for Detroit Unspun and interviewed my friend Carolyn Striho, who was nominated for twelve DMAs, the most of anybody this year. She ended up taking home three, including Outstanding Rock/Pop CD for Honesty. Carolyn has collaborated with a slew of amazing musicians in the past, including punk legend Patti Smith, but she’s an amazing songwriter/singer/performer in her own right.

Nothing exemplifies this more than her new video, “Sing it to Me,” a sultry, Spanish-sounding single with a film noir vibe that is slightly reminiscent of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video (minus the controversy). At the time I interviewed Carolyn for my DMA story, she mentioned that the following day she was going to be shooting a new video, and this is the product of those shoots. It was directed by Mark Kinnunen of Tears of Nimbus Films, and I’ve gotta say — it’s the best effin’ video of any local artist I’ve ever seen, no matter the scale of the artist’s fame.

I feel very fortunate that I know such a wide variety of talented people, and this kind of awesomeness is a constant reminder.

Find more of Carolyn Striho on ReverbNation & MySpace, and support this amazing Detroit musician by purchasing the award-winning album “Honesty” on iTunes or CD Baby. If you’d like to read more about her, there’s a great feature on Carolyn in the June 17th edition of the Detroit Free Press.

I’m clearly in the wrong field.

See, though some may say I’m rather outgoing, the truth is I’m an introvert. Meaning, while being out and around people is nice and all, I can only take so much. I prefer to be by myself (always have), and usually I’m lost in a deep cloud of my own thoughts. I’m highly analytical and have an uncanny ability to remain objective in most situations & not get too caught up in the thick of things.

In other words, I have a very finely tuned bullshit meter.

So when I say “I’m clearly in the wrong field,” I mean that from my observations, I’m not nearly as social as I should be, nor am I able to sit and be spoon fed the latest ideas, buzzwords, and thoughts du jour without throwing up in my mouth. I just can’t surround myself with people beating dead horses, talking more about the tools they beat them with than the strategies they have to do so.

Unlike the majority of the people I see in this “field” of “social media” online and off, I do not want to be in the spotlight. I understand that to some extent I have to be sometimes, but I don’t go out of my way to win contests, speak at conferences, get my mugshot in the pages of Fast Company, the local newspaper, or what have you to talk about my field or what I do.

Why?

Because I understand it’s not about me.

I got into PR initially because I enjoyed shining the light on others. I don’t need to be on center stage; I’m very happy being a “behind the scenes” person. Enter what we now know as “social media,” the ethos of which is to be social online through various media (plural of “medium” — in case you forgot). Then businesses caught wind.

Suddenly everybody’s a “social media consultant/expert/strategist/ninja/guru/swami/etc.,” thinking they can cash in and help businesses navigate the SM waters, experience and track record notwithstanding.

And suddenly, everybody’s clamoring and practically bashing each other in the knees for the spotlight, because hey, everyone wants to be “famous,” right?

It reminds me of the lyrics in that old Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones”:

We all want to be big big stars, but we got different reasons for that…

The recent “Influencer Project” experiment/stunt by Fast Company has done wonders for vetting the attention whores from those who are are able to call a spade a spade. If anything, this has become loud and clear:

The majority of this field is more social ME-ME-ME-dia than it is about marketing, than it is about PR, than it is about community, than it is about, well, being social for the sake of getting to know other people and helping them.

What ever happened to that?!

I’m not the only person to notice and point certain aspects of the social ME-ME-MEdia phenomenon out. I certainly won’t be the last.

However, it’s enough to make me want to duck out of it all, keep my head down, mouth shut, and nose to the grindstone and just do my job to the best of my ability. Many valuable people in the “scene”/field have done this rather quietly, and I’ve tried to, but I can’t stay silent on this any longer.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious here, maybe I’m not, but it should be pointed out that in everything in life, those who make the most noise are rarely doing much of the real work.

Social media is not about you, your agenda, or your ego, and likewise, it’s not about me. It can live without me. But if you take “me” out,  as the Latin words will tell you, it becomes “social dia,” which translates loosely to “social day,” which I’m not sure makes much sense. Maybe it would mean that hopefully there will be a day people realize that it’s about connecting with people in genuine, meaningful ways, whether that’s as a person or assisting a brand making that connection to create brand loyalists.

Maybe I’m not in the wrong field. Maybe I’ve just kept myself at a far enough distance from the “social” to recognize the ME-ME-MEdia and finally say something.  Either way, we all need to get back to our roots and figure out what exactly it is we’re doing here and why, else more valuable contributors to the space will be lost.

Image by Anyaka.

Once upon a time in 1960, a tiny little record label in Detroit named “Motown” released a song called “Money (That’s What I Want)” (you may have heard of it) that became its first hit and the beginning of a musical movement. The artist and songwriter was a man named Barrett Strong, who became a pivotal figure in Motown’s formative years and one of the most influential songwriters of the last century. Teaming up with legendary producer Norman Whitfield, Strong is credited for giving the world such classics as “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” “Ball of Confusion,” “War,” and “Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me.”

Yeah, he’s kind of a big deal.

A handful of years ago, Strong started collaborating with some new Detroit musical talent and decided to take them under his legendary-Motown-figure wings. His first protogé is an incredibly talented woman whom I am lucky enough to call a good friend, Eliza Neals. Together, they co-wrote her albums “No Frogs for Snakes” and “Liquorfoot,” both available for download on iTunes.

This summer, they’re bringin’ Motown back. REAL Motown.

Written fifty years ago when he was only 16, Barrett Strong released a single called “Misery” that didn’t get the marketing that it deserved. Now, he’s re-releasing it, sung by Eliza, and she’s putting her awesome Detroit diva soul spin on this authentic Motown tune.

Below is the video, just released, and Strong makes a cameo alongside super producer Tino Gross, also of renowned funk band Howling Diablos.

This is the sound of Detroit, folks — the sound that gave it the nickname “Motown,” the sound that started it all. And we all have Barrett Strong to thank.

The single will be available for download on iTunes soon (official date pending), but if you want it now, the only way you can get it is through email via private release. $3 will get you a limited edition copy of “Misery” with the video & outtakes with Barrett Strong and Tino Gross.

Eliza Neals lives in New York now but makes it home to The D once every couple months, and you can see her perform “Misery” and hear some more of her real Motown sound this Friday, July 2nd at Memphis Smoke in Royal Oak, and the following Monday, July 5th at Black Lotus in Clawson.

Find/hear more of Eliza Neals on iTunes, ReverbNation, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, and Barrett Strong on MySpace and CD Baby.

(Note: None of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I am making no money off this post whatsoever. My only disclosure is that Eliza is my friend, and years ago I did a little bit of work with Tino Gross.)

There’s nothing like tweeting about blogging and blogging about tweeting to beat a dead horse into the ground, eh?

Guess what?

I’m doing it anyway.

Last week a friend messaged me on BlackBerry messenger about something, I don’t remember the exact context, but somewhere along the line I decided to send him a link in a direct message (DM) via Twitter, and realized he wasn’t following me. So I asked him why, and he said he was “trying a different approach to his Twitter strategy” and he unfollowed a lot of people in order to reduce the noise in his stream. His logic was that if he wanted to talk to me, see what was up with me lately, etc., we’re connected on Facebook and of course, BlackBerry messenger.

I can respect that.

However, it spurned an interesting conversation about “Twitter strategies.” People put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out how to best use this tiny tool of epic proportions. Ari Herzog has been experimenting with it and documenting his findings, which, from an analytical perspective, is very interesting.

People ask me what my Twitter strategy is quite a bit. To my knowledge, I’ve never really divulged the details of what it is in writing, until now.

Are you ready? After the jump, you’ll find out my own personal Twitter strategy. (If you came here on a direct link, you won’t see the “Read more” thing.)

I don’t have one.

You read that right — I don’t have a Twitter strategy. I think putting that much time and thought into a fun little tool is silly. Note that I am talking about for personal use and not necessarily if you maintain a Twitter account for a business or organization. Even still, there’s only one rule I abide by:

Be yourself.

That’s it.

I have no agenda, I just tweet random stuff that comes out of my brain. I share things I find interesting, whether they’re blog posts, pictures, or LOLcats. Yes, I auto-populate stuff to Twitter, like my FourSquare check-ins and YouTube favorites, and even on the rare occasion that I do update this blog, but overall? I’m just me. I’ll share with you random thoughts, rants things that bug me, I like to point out absurdities and quote things that I overhear. I just find it fun, and have had some great conversations using Twitter and through it have met some incredible people, both online and off. I ReTweet stuff other people have shared if I like it.

How do I decide who/what to follow?

I have a special folder in one of my inboxes that filters all email from Twitter.com into it, so that’s where my new follower notifications go. When I have time, I go through each one, click the person’s name, go to their profile, and take less than three seconds to decide whether or not I’m going to follow them back.

My only criteria for deciding are my answers to these two questions:

1) Does this person seem interesting?

and/or

2) Can I learn something from this person?

That’s it.

I used to make a point to follow a lot of social media/public relations/marketing people, but after a while, the echo-chamber-ness got to be too much. I try to follow fewer of the type of people in my field and more people that have nothing to do with it whatsoever. It’s those people that I find most interesting. Recently I started following some astronauts, some fake (parody) celebrities, some indie bands, a baseball team, some random brands, etc. I want to see how they use the service, and I want to learn something from them. Sometimes, I just want to laugh.

Once in a while, I use a third-party app to mass-unfollow the accounts that have fallen dormant or spammy. Rarely do I unfollow anybody manually. You’ve got to be super spammy or somehow really offend me to get me to unfollow you, and since it’s pretty hard to offend me (I’m pridefully un-PC), that doesn’t happen often.

So there ya go. That’s my “Twitter strategy,” or lack thereof. Now stop thinking so much about the tool and just have fun.

Image by pmarkham.

When you live and work at Walt Disney World for nearly a year, you get used to seeing these every night, and then nothing else ever compares. I know video isn’t the same as being there, but it’s the closest thing I’ll come for a while. Use your imagination — that’s what Disney’s all about.

Wishes – Magic Kingdom

These are what I saw every night while I worked at the Magic Kingdom:

. . . when I wasn’t at the Magic Kingdom, I was at Epcot, watching my favorites:

Illuminations: Reflections of Earth

For good measure, I’ll include Fantasmic, at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Many people like these the best, but my heart will always be at Epcot.

(Yes, I know I’m acting like a total spoiled Disney princess. Kiss my tiara.)

Between friends getting married, friends passing away, getting used to a new schedule, and just overall life things, you could say I’ve had a lot going on lately. Sometimes, one can only take so much before wanting/needing to pull the plug on some things that cause more noise than signal in life.

The other day, after attending the funeral of a friend, I decided to quit Twitter for a while.

Many didn’t think I could do it. I’ve tried to “take a Twitter hiatus” before, and have only lasted a few days, at most. This time, however, I was pretty sure that I was done spewing <140 character blurts into the ether for a while. I just needed my “Stacy time,” my time to be lost in my own thoughts without the internet bugging me or me bugging it.

I really thought I could do it.

Fat chance.

It didn’t occur to me until after I had posted the above that even when I have no intention of tweeting, I tweet anyway. I’ve integrated so many webby things with my Twitter account that it’s nearly impossible.

Hitting the “Tweet this” button at the top of an interesting blog post or article after reading it has become second nature to me. BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I subscribe to a YouTube channel? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I just “like” a video on YouTube? BOOM! There’s a tweet.

If I check in somewhere on FourSquare? You got it — BOOM! There’s a tweet.

You get the idea.

Not to mention, that if somebody chooses to retweet (RT) or reply to one of my auto-tweeted tweets, it’s usually appropriate to say something back to them.

Oh sure, I could manually go and remove all of my Twitter connections/integrations on each app, but really, that’s a lot to go though if I’m only planning on a temporary hiatus. Plus, I’d have to re-hook it all back up when I came back.

So I guess I’m stuck tweeting, whether I intend to or not.

I guess I just find it funny — these days, there are still hoards of people trying to figure out HOW to use Twitter and why; meanwhile, I’m so enmeshed in it that I can’t easily quit using Twitter, even if I wanted to.

Has anybody else had this problem?!

In case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s been a lot of hullabaloo about Facebook’s privacy settings lately.  Facebook, which started as a network where people could share their information privately, has loosened their privacy options/settings/system/whatever over the past few years to be everything but private.

Yada, yada, yada . . . I’ve done enough research about this to make my head spin.

However, when it all comes down to it, I’m not sure if the public is freaking out about privacy settings as much as the media says it is.

Regardless, whether we agree with Facebook’s ethics (or lack thereof) in this situation, there’s only one rule you need to know when it comes to online privacy, and this is the rule that I live by:

Don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want your mom to see.

Period.

It’s common sense, people. The internet is a very public place. Clamp down on privacy settings all you want, but if you have stuff online that you would rather your mom not see, you probably shouldn’t have put it there in the first place.

Now, I know there are situations where people will upload not-so-flattering pictures of you and tag you on Facebook. Guess what? You have the option to not let people see tagged photos and videos of you. Look in the privacy settings. Guess what else? You can also remove tags. These were always options, even way before the recent Facebook privacy debacle.

No, this doesn’t mean that incriminating stuff of you won’t be seen by others, there are always the friends of the people that uploaded it in the first place, but still — you’ve got a better chance of covering your own hide this way than fussing over what Facebook is deciding to do with your information this week.

Are there some embarrassing pics on Facebook of me that I didn’t upload? You betcha. But my mom is my friend on Facebook, and she can’t see them. Nor can my dentist, my former college professor, or Jerrod Niemann. There’s nothing my mom can’t see that anybody else can.

Of course, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t comment things like “Please don’t get any more tattoos…” when I post pictures of my friends’ new tattoos, but hey . . . shes my mom! She’s supposed to be worried about that kind of stuff! (And since a good friend of mine owns a tattoo parlor, she’s got every reason to.)

So I’m wondering, are you freaking out about Facebook’s privacy flip-flopping lately? Why or why not? Or is this being overblown by the media?

It’s been over a week since the 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown, and in my last post I hashed out a little of what I would be doing there. My life has been nothing short of a whirlwind since then, but unfortunately, no, I wasn’t able to sneak away to Nashville with Dierks Bentley (or even get his phone number, for that matter). Regardless, I had a blast and thought I’d post here a few quick links for those interested in my coverage/activity at the Hoedown.

First off, I want to send a great big THANK YOU to 99.5 WYCD for organizing such an awesome event, and special shout-outs are in order for Terry Phillips and CKC Public Relations . Without you my experience would not have been half as amazing.

The other day I published a reflection on the 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown, and what it (and music in general) means for Detroit. It’s a bit lengthy but a quick read, and I’d love to know your thoughts on it in the comments of the post.  To make it easier, I’ll just put the other stuff up so far in bullets:

• Preview post: Detroit Rock City goes country for 2010 WYCD Downtown Hoedown
• These girls are a riot, look for them to be the next big chick group: Aussie superstar trio The McClymonts talk to Detroit Unspun
• Homegrown, 17, and on her way to the big time: Meet Ashley Allyson – Metro Detroit native, Nashville recording artist, and rising star!
• This guy is my newest favorite, you gotta check him out: Genre-blending Hoedown headliner Colt Ford talks to Unspun
• Singer-songwriter, Hoedown headliner Steve Azar finds Michigan “a special place”
• Flickr photo set of shots I took on my BlackBerry (there are more pix but I was limited on space and time. I left out pictures of me and will upload them in my Facebook pictures eventually)
• There’s more on the Detroit Unspun YouTube channel I haven’t written about yet, including an interview with everybody’s favorite singing newsman, Stephen Clark from WXYZ, and a great spot from radio personalities Edwards & Lee of WYCD)

I’ve been contacted by a few people (readers old and new) about certain content that has yet to be polished and published, and believe me, I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up. We’ve got a great montage on the way of footage I took with our FlipCam, including interviews with attendees and a couple special guest apearances, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, take a look at this kickass montage that WYCD put together, which is a very healthy nutshell of the awesomeness that ensued Hoedown weekend:

And of course, DEFINITELY head on over to WYCD’s special Hoedown section on their site to check out all kinds of great content, including interviews with ALL the performers (all audio, most video, too), lots of great event photography, and some exclusive backstage footage.  They’re still adding more stuff, so country fans — bookmark it and check back regularly!