7 March 2008

Blogging Workshop

| Youth Project Officer
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Blogging with Gillian Polack
10am – 5pm on Saturday 8 March (this weekend)

Writing weblogs can help you get started with non-fiction; it can add to your writerly renown (or notoriety); it can even earn you money. We will start with the basics of blogging, from choosing the blog interface that’s right for you, to selecting the right subject and style. Other subjects we will look at will include: Writing for the vertical page. Writing for the unknown audience. Attracting an audience. Interacting with your audience. Keeping your audience. SEO optimalisation, technorati tags, carnivals and other strange terms: which ones do you need to know about, and what do you need to know? What do the numbers really mean? Getting paid for your blogging (becoming a problogger).

Gillian Polack’s blogs have 2,600 regular readers and cover subjects ranging from writing, to history, to food, to daily happenings. Venue: ACT Writers Centre Workshop Room.

Cost: $140 non-members, $90 members, $80 member concessions.

Bookings on 6262 9191

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damn, i don’t qualify as a pro-blogger and i really did want to get out there make my own course and rip people.

Does obsessive use of facebook while being paid to be at work qualify one as a 1337 pro blogger?

‘social media’ / ‘new (or not so new 🙂 media’ is abuzz in the APS – and trust me, there are HEAPS of people who do not know what ‘blogging’ IS let alone know how to set up a blog and write for one… or have ANY success getting anyone else to read it.

There is an art… some skills and netiquette to learn. I’d say this is well targeted at public servants who are being encouraged to micro blog and network at work (and in their personal time) in order to improve collaboration, consultation, knowledge sharing etc

no, it didn’t, this took me a small part of one day. This site came up in a google search last night. And I was curious as to the ire shown here.

curio said :

I also found those above sites while doing research. Although it did take considerably more than ten minutes on Google

and

no, just a person who prefers to actually check verifiable facts before accusing someone of not being truthful.

I agree you should be thorough in checking facts rather than just jumping to conculsions, but did it really take 18 months?

no, just a person who prefers to actually check verifiable facts before accusing someone of not being truthful. I was not interested in finding out about their personal life, merely their professional and volunteer work. I do the same for any person I am considering learning from, and I assume I am not alone. After all, this is the internet, records never die.

I’d also suspect that the website bio that caused such scorn was put up by someone else, someone who had copied and pasted from elsewhere, given the repetition of sentences, and that it mentions Illuminations as her latest published work. According to Google, it was released in 2002, but the bio said nothing about her work with CSFG and the Masques anthology.

looking for Gillian Pollack online lead me to this site. I noticed a lot of hostility from the respondants, and was curious as to the source of this. What I didn’t see was anyone checking to find people who had done any of Ms Polack’s courses, or checked on her actual background, beyond one out of date bio.

Has she done the things claimed? This can definitely be certified, and as the respondants here seem to have a grasp of using search engines, I believe you could have answered your own questions. I would have looked at her website, at her publishers website, and checked online records of minutes from meetings, before claiming a person’s old bio to be a Walter Mitty type of exaggeration.

I also found those above sites while doing research. Although it did take considerably more than ten minutes on Google

What el said.

el ......Turbo V8 Recumbent Bicycle9:56 am 12 Mar 08

PS – Love the new ‘Preview’ button, Admins.

el ......Turbo V8 Recumbent Bicycle6:53 pm 11 Mar 08

Does this workshop provide L33T certification for it’s attendees?

Surely this is a requirement for ‘Pro Blogging’.

neanderthalsis10:55 am 11 Mar 08

Agreed Skid, teaching at the Centre for Continuing Education at ANU is a little bit removed from being “running a Literature class at ANU”. CCE is a community education facility, not a legitimate academic post as she seems to imply.

Youth Project Officer10:41 am 11 Mar 08

I just looked at the participants’ evaluations of the Blogging workshop on Saturday and they are all Very Good to Excellent. “Information I needed to know etc”. Some of our workshops are aimed at beginners because many of our members are aspiring writers. But you doods are probably pro-bloggers who know all there is to know. Good point, I-filed. Our workshops are priced to just cover costs or less.

el ......Turbo V8 Recumbent Bicycle1:58 am 08 Mar 08

Everything you need to know is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzgEi_u9-88

Good on her. Here’s a bio. And the $140 is way cheaper than the CCE course – $700-odd dollars. 🙂
http://www.womenshistory.org.au/Women%20Bios/Gillian_Polack.htm

“Perhaps some members of this site could run it’s own “How to be a fascist, and attempt to undermine the ALP” blog. lol.”

The ALP is quite good at undermining itself, actually! 🙂

all of Absent Dianes base are belong to me.

I think its more a style development and content & information delivery learning session?

But as to what on earth seven hours of face-to-face course is going to teach about improving online style and method-of-delivery, I don’t know.

It -will- form a little people cluster who believe they know best because they were fleeced\taught by a 47 year old with only 2600 readers of her fictions and fantasies on the speculum, or maybe fictional speculative fantasy?

Either way, from reading even basic local blog coverage, this Gillian Polack woman doesn’t know her own audience, as indicated here.
But if her ‘gathering an audience’ advice and the 2600 readers comment doesn’t also give a caveat of “runs literature a class at ANU and several other institutions”, she’s not being as straightforward as anyone paying her ought to expect.

Absent Diane2:27 pm 07 Mar 08

the word pwned actually works better in lower case.

Perhaps some members of this site could run it’s own “How to be a fascist, and attempt to undermine the ALP” blog. lol.

I bet you this guy says “PWND!” every time someone shells out the cashola.

Exactly what is there to learn about blogging ?

Type in this box here, and click on the button at the bottom. That’ll be $140, ktksbye.

Holden Caulfield1:17 pm 07 Mar 08

So, should we run our own *free* blogging course in this thread? 😛

or you can make it up as you go along like we did with riotact (we started blogging before there were really terms to describe it) and attract an audience of 30,000 readers per month

print your own money comes to mind

Holden Caulfield12:13 pm 07 Mar 08

My original question, was genuine. If there is anything else offered that couldn’t be found by reading the plethora of blogging reference sites on the net, I’d like to know. And, yes, as mentioned, especially for the price being asked.

Looked kinda interesting…until I saw the price.

I will chip in a dollar for Chester if she agrees to go.

Pretty expensive! Perhaps this is aimed at the ‘pube’ market.

Ahhh…. right ‘pro blogger’ eh?

writers that are unsuccessful often run writing workshops where skills can be further diluted.

Holden Caulfield9:42 am 07 Mar 08

I don’t mean to be rude, but what can this course offer that 10 minutes searching Google can’t deliver?

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