Category / Reading & Writing

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Hill & Knowlton Social Media Event

Last night, Hill & Knowlton gathered together third sector web professionals for a social media forum to which we were very kindly invited. You can find a few tweets about the event hashtagged #hksocial. We were added to the mix via Candace Kuss, who as well as being a huge dog fan who has raised guide dog pups used to be at Ogilvy, who still work with Dogs Trust. She liked our Twitter feed and followed our social engagement with interest, so invited us to give a case study.

It worked remarkably well alongside Canadian H&K VP of social media David Jones, who gave a wide-reaching presentation on the basics of social media and engagement from a Canadian government perspective. This set the groundwork beautifully for me to babble on about what we were actually doing with the different tools. I will remind him to send me an analysis presentation from War Child Canada he mentioned, which promises to be very interesting. My focus now is on finding the right social metric; we know we’re succeeding because dogs are being rehomed and people are talking about us. Numbers are nice, but they’re not particularly helpful here. We just need to find a way to present that to people who don’t quite understand it, but want to.

As with most of my presentations, I make a few sketchy notes and then ad-lib to keep it fresh. After all, I do this stuff every day; if I can’t talk about it with passion off the cuff then I’m in the wrong job. As always there were things I wish I’d said (or said differently), but I hope I got the main ideas across and gave someone some information they can take back and use as a way of spurring internal buy-in: “Yes, I know the Internet is scary to you, but Dogs Trust did it…”.

That’s why we talk at these things; we know we have it relatively easy with a forward-thinking and positive marketing team and we want to help break down hurdles and silos in other charities because apart from anything else that’s where we too get inspiration and ideas! The more social media stuff that’s going on, the more we can all advance together.

I had to run directly afterwards as I wanted to drop in on Silicon Stilettos, a great women in tech networking event run by Zuzanna from Huddle. I’m glad I did, too. Not only did I manage to get the cutest nose-licks from Jamie Klingler’s Cavalier King Charles, McNulty, I met the fab Anna from CompletelyNovel, with whom I definitely want more to do.

No time to blog more now, but I did want to note my thoughts and thank Hill and Knowlton for the invitation.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

End of holiday post: Recovering at home

The Happiest Place I Know

The Happiest Place I Know

Well, it was a pretty spectacular holiday – actually, belated honeymoon. Everything was in our favour: good weather, fun times, well-organised and, best of all, good health all round. We went for a morning swim (I miss that already!), ate loads, walked loads, soaked up the sun and were entertained almost to the point of feeling guilty. I was left with a slight feeling of dread, even; after all that goodness surely something must go wrong?! But even the flights were good. And I’m planning a fear of flying course in the summer to stop me having any more travel-related meltdowns. I don’t want it holding me back. Plans are afoot to book our next trip once the coffers have been replenished. This time to Toronto. I’ve never been to Canada – any recommendations / tips?

My favourite moments are many, so I won’t list them all. But anyone who sets foot within 100 miles of Epcot should get over there are ride Soarin’ (one of the few we rode twice, so brilliant is its gentle, awe-inspiring hang gliding simulation). As mid-price restaurants go, Redrock Canyon Grill is lovely and does the best steak and mashed potato on International Drive by miles. Tarpon Springs is apparently a great place to walk your dog. But if you want to know more about my travels, just check out my Flickr feed, where I shall eventually put the photos.

I really want to talk books. I read three and a half while travelling: Anthony Flew’s There Is a God, a fascinating and highly intelligently written discourse on how the famous atheist found faith; Mark Gatiss’s second Lucifer Box novel, The Devil in Amber (slightly disappointing compared to the first as Box has become a little tiresome, but still amusing enough) and Augusten Burrough’s A Wolf at the Table were the completed ones. The last was relentlessly depressing. I had wondered how Burroughs could make an entire career – spanning some six or seven books – out of a dysfunctional childhood, but I had reckoned without the truly terrifying entity his sociopathic father turned out to be. Read this only if you have a good grip on your emotions; it is highly distressing and uncomfortable, not to mention frightening. There’s even guinea pig death. You were warned.

I’m still picking through Gregory Maguire’s Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, which is far better than its title. His spare, evocative writing, which I loved so much in Wicked, is put to excellent use once more in a plotline slightly reminiscent of Girl With a Peal Earring (though it might have been published before – I forget). It was totally worth loading up my Sony Reader, even with all the irksome issues I had with Waterstones before we left.

Tomorrow, we begin repainting the living room. I’ve been gently immersing myself back in social media – I relinquished all but my crutch, Twitter, while I was away, mainly to see if I even COULD – and I’ve missed my old friend. Tuesday will herald business as usual: baking, blogging, and dreaming of the next time I’ll have the time and cash to visit WDW.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Twitter and weekend baking experiments. Oh, and book clubs.

Richmond Park Deer

Richmond Park Deer

I know – just the kind of header that tells you that this post has no single specific purpose but might cover a lot of disparate topics. I haven’t even included the deer.

Maybe I should divide this up so you can just cast an eye over the stuff you’re interested in.

Twitter

I wrote quite an impassioned defence of the new-found popularity of Twitter. Far from killing it, I think it might just be what makes it better than other social networks now.

Weekend Baking Experiments

No photos here, frankly because they weren’t the most attractive looking results. And we’ve eated (sic) it. Ashley request oatmeal raisin cookies so I made an oatmeal raisin cake instead and that suited him fine. The random Internet recipe did not – I discovered halfway through folding in the flour – have any temperature, cooking times or tin recommendations. So I put it in a round silicone mould and baked it at 200 degrees, checking every 15 minutes. It took about 45, but eventually burnt a little on top while remaining a little squidgy at the bottom. I suspect, therefore, it’s best off as a tray bake. I must remember to bring back a 13 x 9 x 2 tin from Florida; American recipes so often fit this shape and it’s not that common here for some reason. Anyway, it tasted good. A little like what my cousin calls Dead Man’s Pudding, though I don’t see that as a bad thing.

I decided quite late on Sunday that making soft baked pretzels from scratch for the first time ever would be clever. Despite some sticking-to-the-baking-parchment issues, they tasted great, especially coated in salt (the poppy seed ones were a little bland). Had one for breakfast, and they held up well overnight.

Book Club

The first rule of book club is not making a reference to Fight Club. Oh, darn it.

Anyway, I’ve been invited to join a writers club on Facebook that I hope will make me actually do some more work on the Grown Up Monster Book. Largely it’s making me jealous of everyone else’s great ideas and hard work, but already I feel like I owe the fellow members my hard work which is what these groups are all about, right? Shared guilt is the way to go.

Deer

There were lots. In Richmond Park. So I crept closer and closer to try and get a decent photo with a DSLR lacking a proper telephoto lens, and this fellow obligingly let me snap quite a good shot. I have to sort out the rest of them and get them on Flickr. Then you’ll see them appear down the right, hopefully.

So, how have you all been?

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Four websites in one month…

..lying in the depths of my imagination.

There’s an awful lot going on just around the corner. Some of it is public knowledge; we’ve been awaiting a new website from Reading Room for a while now, and it looks like that is mere weeks away, post proper usability testing.Then there’s the website I was talking about recreating the other day, which needs finishing touches, one more to rebuild and another to build – at least the creative’s in the bag on that one.

I find this all quite exciting. I admit I never used to be this ambitious and focussed, but then I hadn’t yet found The Job. You know, the thing you finally realise you could do for a good long time, and be passionate about. I always thought that would be writing, but I didn’t necessarily expect it to be online writing. This job fills me with confidence because I know there’s a large part of it I can already do, and that I have a genuine interest in learning what I don’t know. And interest is surely half the battle when it comes to learning? Things come easily to people who are enthusiastic, or at least working hard does. This job makes me want to work as hard as I possibly can because it’s interesting and often fun.

I also find it a bit scary and nerve-wracking. I mean, after all, there’s a lot to do, and J and I both have long holidays planned in the next month because when we booked them none of this was specifically on the cards. I can’t help feeling the tension is part of what makes it interesting, though; I suspect we do better work when we’re slightly under pressure because it forces a special sharpness of the mind. It’s impossible to get distracted when there simply isn’t the time.

Speaking of distractions – positive ones – I’m reading a garbled mixture of Howard Jacobson’s The Making of Henry, Frank Skinner’s autobiography, rubbish free daily papers and a peppering of technology blogs, pet columns and, of course, Disney stuff. Jacobson is almost cruelly observant – it’s unsettling. I warm to his character only to realise I’m empathising with an object of ridicule; affectionate ridicule but ridicule nonetheless. I suspect that’s Jacobson’s point – that we’re all faintly ludicrous. Alarming, but undoubtedly true. Frank Skinner is honest to the point of discomfort, but I am fascinated by his discourses on Catholicism, and some of the stories are laugh-out-loud funny (funnier than any of his acts, in fact!). The rest you can read for yourselves.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Creative fits and starts

As is often the way, the project you’re initially more excited about stalls under the pressure of your expectation (and the person you’re working with not having time to work on it with you), and the project you barely talk about for fear of Writer’s Block sneaking up and battering you with a large stick quietly gets underway.

The Collaboration has not halted, it’s merely ticking along far more slowly than at first expected. Ashley has the harder job, from my perspective; getting the words right is a slog but one I feel sure of achieving, but the vision is something else altogether. Of course from his point of view my work is equally unfathomably hard. So we wait on each other for inspiration to strike and the next burst of development to take place. I suspect it might require me cracking the whip (at myself, apart from anything) to get it back on course.

The Grown Up Monster Book, on the other hand, having been left to ferment, is coming up bubbling. Two evenings on the trot of just getting things out on paper have been as productive as any I could have hoped for. Not least in the revelation of a new character who walked her way onto the page I would swear without the slightest prompting on my part. She owns the book right now – let’s see where we go together.

Hopefully the long hike we’ve got planned for this weekend will give everything a chance to churn up (I find that as I walk I clear my head and sort of narrate descriptions to myself mentally. It’s a very good writing-without-the-writing practice for me). Also the extra stone I’m carrying might even start to shift.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

New project for 2009: The Collaboration

I’ve had an idea! It’s been long enough since I’ve had an idea for a fictional piece that I’m really happy with and have pondered muchly, so I’m pretty happy about this. Actually, I’m more than “pretty happy” as it turns out I have two ideas! At once! I know, bring on the trumpets.

One idea needs more time to ferment and develop, although I’m stabbing at it erratically when I feel the urge. It’s a grown up monster book and hopefully will take some more shape in my mind than the nebulous ideas I’ve jotted down. The other idea is for a children’s picture book and has nothing to do with monsters (although the two do tend to go together). It’s basically a protracted, repetitive series of gags told in rhyme, which I’ve started to draft. Ashley has felt his creative fingers itching and is going to provide the illustrations as the gags have a strongly visual element. It’s all very exciting as this is the first writing I’ve done collaboratively, and the first idea I’ve felt really excited about and that I think has genuine marketable potential.

There’s still a lot of work to go, of course – the first draft is always a tad shonky, but there are one or two elements I see making the final cut. It seems like all this blogging has finally had a knock-on effect and inspired a different type of writing creativity. Fingers crossed.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Catcher in the Rye: should it come with an age limit?

So, after the fantastic conference on Thursday, I took Friday off and stayed Oop North as my sister and nephew live in Leeds. So right now, my husband and my two-and-a-half year old nephew are rolling around on the floor, making squeaky noises and talking about going to the cinema and farting. As you do on Valentine’s Day; quite honestly I could think of no better way to spend it.

In between trumping conversations, re-runs of Groundhog Day and enough food to sink a small dinghy, my husband, Ashley, has been reading J.D. Salinger’s seminal work of fiction, Catcher in the Rye.

And… I’m not sure he likes it that much. Which upsets me.

I read it for the first time around the age of 14, and was the only person in a class of 30 doing English Literature GCSE to be encouraged to answer questions on it instead of To Kill A Mockingbird. Others asked if they should, and were roundly told no; I, on the other hand, got my best marks waxing lyrical about a mentally disturbed teenage boy struggling with the death of his brother. Make of that what you will (all I’ll say on the matter is that I write best about things that are fresh to me and I’d read Mockingbird at least seven times since the age of 9 before I came to study it and therefore my essays were probably a fraction laboured).

The truth is, I identified. I understood Holden’s irritation with real or perceived fakery.

Of course, once I got to a certain age, I never picked up the book again. My mother brought up this book I’d loved and asked why I didn’t re-read it the way I did other things, from Jane Eyre (at least until the stupid St. John bit) to my beloved Jasper Ffordes and Terry Pratchetts. And the answer is because I was afraid that once I lost the ability to identify, I would start to pity young Caulfield. Once I did that, the magic was gone.

Ashley, at almost 34, feels no such sense of magic. “Why is this considered a seminal piece of literature?” he asks, feeling a sense of sympathy but no real empathy or liking for the troubled, angry protagonist. I sighed.

It reminded me of when my sister – 30 years old at the time – finally picked up a copy of another long-time favourite that I’d fallen in love with as a teenager: I Capture the Castle. Boy, was I gutted when her sole reaction to this heartbreaking and funny book was “yeah, you really have to be a 17-year-old girl to appreciate that”. This is a woman who actually stuck out to the end of The Little Friend and actually liked it. No-one else I know – myself included, and all big fans of The Secret History – even managed to finish the damn thing. How is it the sloooooow-burning story of a little girl gripped her, but a burgeoning adult’s hopes and fears were dull?

It seems that as grown up, professional and married as I might be in reality, in fiction I’m still in my teens – and looking good for my age, of course.