It seems I will be putting my WordPress on hold, and working more with Posterous. Posterous gives me the freedom to e-mail posts, and allows for easy formatting of video and audio files. It feels a bit more casual than wordpress, and I feel that I will be able to add more posts, easier.

So if your still interested in following me and my thaughts around the etherweb, even after I went from Blogger to Tumblr, and Tumblr to WordPress, then you can find them at posterous.com/jziemlak

-Jake

In between page turns I began to apply the information to my actual life, especially the section about blogging. The ideas began to race into my head about new segments I could add to the blog, what I could contribute to make this more fun to read, and more fun to publish. The most common information I hear from other bloggers and young professionals is that you must stick to a schedule, which until now I have yet to assemble. So here is a little teaser for those of you who are already reading about some of the upcoming segments that may be added to It’s Jake Not John. Something about listening to my parents sarcastic mannerisms while stuck in a car for three hours really gets my thoughts going.

Movies to watch out for: a segment about upcoming movies that have really caught my eye. Hopefully will be uploaded once a month, but the schedule really depends on the movie business, and what’s coming out.

Album of the month: I’ve been the owner of a record player for a little under a year, my record collection is small, but growing steadily. Every month I’ll post about what record I bought this month, weather its good or bad, favorite songs, etc.

Photograph of the week: As an amateur photographer I take a lot of pictures, and my portfolio is slowly increasing. It’s become large enough that I believe I can afford to show a photograph a week, for your viewing pleasure.

Recipe Hour: A new recipe for something delicious, on a college budget of course. With instructions on how to cook it, and even pictures to see how delicious your dish will turn out in the end. All cooked from our small apartment, if we can do it, you can too.

These are just a few of the ideas I’ve been tossing around some are better then others for sure. Decide which ideas you like best, by leaving a comment on the post with your vote. Feel free to suggest anything else you’d like to hear me write about as well, I’m always open to suggestions.

Unfortunately I’ve got to re-read my paper for Internet Marketing before I send it off through the interwebs to be graded and corrected by the wonderful Elaine Young, professor extraordinaire. I should be able to get some of these new ideas on to the site within the upcoming week if I’m not too busy cooking up some delicious treats in the kitchen.

So I was kind of excited when I heard she was coming, knowing only a small amount about her. But I got really excited to hear her speak when I found out she was going to talk about blogging. Perfect timing, since I finally picked a platform for It’s Jake Not John, and I had finally begun start putting up some real content. So Grace had a lot of really nice words of wisdom that I thought I would pass on to you.

In regards to company blogs she told us

1) Don’t make it all about press.

2) Guest blog posts are great.

3) There’s always something interesting people in your company have to say.

4) Blogs give a company great personality.

And on personal blogs,

1) Stick with it, it takes time to figure out blogging, it took me 2-3 months to get the hang of it

2) Enable comments, and if someone does comment, respond back, send them an e-mail.

3) Carve out a blog schedule, calendars help.

After dispersing her words of wisdom, we entered a short Q&A which really got me thinking about the blogosphere.

Q: Do you think Twitter will take over blogging?

A: “No, Twitter is great for saying a lot of powerful things, but nothing is comparable to the content you can have on a blog. They have great synergy, I’d be surprised if someone had a blog without Twitter.”

Q: What did you blog about when you where a student?

A: “I started blogging about what I did everyday. But through Twitter people started asking me what I thought about. So I began writing about what I thought. It’s very open ended, the best thing to do is just start blogging.”

As a final comment Grace left us with this… “I didn’t expect to connect with so many people through blogging. Future employers, clients, and friends.”

It was a lot of information for me to process, but I loved every minute of it. Every thing she said today will undoubtedly help me out in the future with It’s Jake, Not John.

After watching Ryan tape the Live Wire session we started looking over my pictures of Champlain’s Rail Jam 2009. That was my kind of self assigned photography project of the week. It took place last Friday on Aiken Lawn at Champlain. It was a real experience for me in a photographic sense. I was shooting the fastest subjects I’ve ever tried to catch in a camera before. Not to mention the nerves I got from the nine other photographers around me trying to all get the coolest shots of the contestants speeding by. My first problem was the lens I was shooting with. It was a lens of Ryan’s that I had shot with once before doing portraits on church street, it was a wide angled lens and didn’t zoom. So in order to get anything decent I had to get as close to the skiers and snowboarders as I could, without getting hit, and breaking a lens that wasn’t mine. It was a little awkward at first, but I eventually got the hang of it, here are a few of the shots, and all of them are up on Flickr if you’d like to see the whole album.

As we were going over the pictures Ryan pointed some things out to me that I should improve on. Some to remember for next time. Take risks, I really need to remember this one. There’s a lot more going on than just the event, get the people around the event, get up close and personal, capture their emotions. The ambient light can make a cool silhouette effect with the light going around the subject.

Anyways, it’s definitely time to catch some shut eye before tomorrow, it’s going to be a long day.

-Jake

But of course I’m not going to just talk about marketing and social media, that’s only a small portion of what I have to offer. I also like to take pictures, well I used to take pictures, but my roommate has sufficiently commandeered my camera for the time being. So I get a few pictures in every now and then.

I’ve also got a few jobs to accompany all of my studying. I’m an intern at the Burlington Free Press, where my supervisor Ryan is teaching me some photojournalism as well as integrating photojournalism into social media, like… blogs. My other job is at the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College. It’s quite an interesting place, full of computers and loads of creative minds working on video games. I’m a marketing intern there, specializing in… you guessed it, social media. So I get to toy around a lot with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and oh yeah, MORE blogs. I love it.

Alongside with everything else I do, I often get to kick back in the apartment. Me and my roommate Edward like to cook, a lot. Well we have to cook every day in order to, you know, eat. But sometimes we get a little crazy and make something absolutely delicious. And then, like most youthful gentlemen we like to dabble in video games, movies, music, and sometimes just sittin’ around.

Anyways that’s just a small introduction, hopefully it got your attention, and you’ll keep on reading as I add endless amounts of content to this web page. And with content, comes growth, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll even grow a little together.