What’s new in my world

I really try to stay away from these kinds of update posts for various reasons, but I feel like my blogging has been too sporadic over the last year or two.  So here are some updates on what we are working on:

I’m not travelling as much as I used to

When my LinkedIn book came out I was on the road quite a bit, and in demand.  Since there are probably close to 50 books on LinkedIn now that has changed.  I’ve had many requests to speak for free, or when people find out there is a fee, they find their cousin or some local social media “expert” to come in… I’m told those guys will “do it for a free lunch.”  More power to them.   Pros and cons of not travelling as much. I miss my new friends in my favorite places, including Maryland/Virginia, Minneapolis, Silicon Valley and East Bay, and Phoenix (what am I forgetting?).

Also, I have never marketed myself as a professional speaker, so I didn’t maintain a “pipeline” of potential gigs.  My professional speaker friends do a lot of marketing and can be on the road a lot, but I’ve always just kind of sat back and waited for the calls to come in.  That dried up as more and more people entered the social marketing space.

I’m doing a lot of video recording and webinars

I feel like I’m always working on yet another video deadline, and I see no end in sight. I need to redo all of my JibberJobber videos, and finish the fourth edition of the LinkedIn for Job Seekers video.  I’ve also been doing career management courses for Pluralsight, catering to IT professionals.  My hope is to build them a world-class career center video library. It’s been fun but each course is really a huge undertaking.  Considering how many hours I would be on the road for one presentation (or a week of presentations), I kind of prefer this alternative – I get to see my family more, and no hotel bed is better than my own bed 🙂

JibberJobber is moving forward in important ways

I have two developers and a QA professional working for JibberJobber, and we continue to have a ton of projects we’re working on.  Certain metrics have improved greatly over the last year, and we’re working on design and user processes (UI/UX) like never before.  It’s hard to manage the “this would be a cool/useful feature!” and “we need to go back and clean up some stuff” and “we need this to be more intuitive.”  Intuitive means simple, but the stuff JibberJobber helps with is not necessarily simple.  Making the very complex very simple is not very easy.  But that’s the challenge we’ve signed up for!

My books are always on my mind

I need to update the LinkedIn book, the Facebook book just got a massive upgrade, and it feels SO GOOD to have the 51 Alternative to a Real Job book done! I wish I had more time to market each of them.  The messages are excellent and needed, I just need another 24 hours each day!  I have a few others in mind, and am thinking about giving the ebook market a serious run.  We’ll see if I can fit that into my list of priorities.  I’ve just finished a course on authoring books for Pluralsight and it’s really on my mind.

I might schedule another live webinar, but I’m kind of nervous

As a reference, I had an awesome webinar on January 17th this year.  The next morning I was on the operating table having an emergency surgery. If I schedule another webinar, will I only be jinxing myself?  Really, I’m not superstitious… but … 🙂  After all of this research, though, I think I’m positioned to give a KILLER webinar on writing and marketing a book. There is money to made as an author, and what it does for your brand is amazing.  I might decide to do that. I should schedule it for January 17th just to spit in the face of superstition 🙂

I have also been writing somewhat regularly on my 51 Alternatives to a New Job blog, as well as my LinkedIn blog, and sometimes on my Jason Alba blog… but it’s been a big time management battle this year.

So that’s what’s going on in my world.  What did I miss?  What can you tell me about what’s going on in your world?