portfolio site

In anticipation of applying for summer internships, my portfolio site is slowly but surely coming together!  There’s still a long way to go, but you can check it out here:  http://vafromva.com

I’ll probably be posting more… going through all my stuff sure stirs up thoughts and memories!

…here’s some word vomit to get that started….

For starters, I was reading through a final paper I wrote a few years ago about the music industry and the Internet.  One section details more or less how the Internet gives the consumer the power of not having to take as many risks.  The consumer can now preview a track before purchasing it, or explore a book before reading it.  We can now read reviews of products before going to the store.  The producers still have to take risks – riskier risks, but not necessarily BIGGER risks.  I say this because the producer now has more information about their target audience than ever before.  They know when they’re looking for certain things, how often, who they’re talking to about it, where they’re going to get their info, how they define their search (the keywords they use to find this information), etc.

I have a gut feeling that we’re getting really close to the new online metrics everyone’s been searching for for the past few years.  A few days ago my Digital Engagement class at the Brandcenter got a really amazing assignment… I can’t give any details yet, but it is going to be a grand experiment.  We’ll end up running 5 digital campaigns at the same time for the same thing.  This will be cool because it will allow us to compare metrics: to see what is more important, channel or content… to see if that information differs between different channels (e.g. content is more important on facebook but less important on digg) … to see if different channels offer a better conversion of unique visitors based on different types on content…  and so on and so forth.  If it’s anywhere near as enlightening as I think it could be, well that would be awesome.  I’m pretty excited.  I’ll have to case-study this for sure.

Thanks for reading…  🙂

-va

woot.

okay, so I’m pulling my portfolio site together (www.vafromva.com) and I was trying to write the “about me” section and kept writing stuff like what’s below.  Which isn’t really much of an “About Me” section at all — or if it is it would be an extremely long one in the end.  Anyhow, I enjoyed the word vomit so I thought I’d post some of it here.  Planning to link this blog into the site (which after much trial and error is, now, also a WordPress site!) eventually.  And, you know, post examples of some of the things I’ve been up to…

I find the same sweet taste of exploration, adventure and discovery in travel as I do in the Internet.  I love the way the Internet connects people around the world and allows them to share information and experiences.  Sharing is one of the cornerstones of a functional society.  I suppose I should mention here that I’m a total blog whore. My first blog was on expage w-a-a-a-a-y back in the first years I started really using the Internet (1996ish?). It wasn’t really a blog by modern standards – it was just an “about me” that I constantly updated with the day-to-day activities of my life and inside jokes with friends (insert paragraphs about adolescence and finding your true identity/ your true “about me” — it does seem to change on a daily basis when you’re 11). I guess by those standards I had one on AOL before that, but it was just a profile that was frequently revamped. In fact, all of my profiles were pretty dynamic until I started my first Livejournal blog. I stayed pretty active with that blog through my undergraduate years, detailing my inner thoughts, adventures and questions about what was going on around me. I’d share the link but I’m way too embarrassed. I’ve looked back through the entries a few times and am shocked about how public I was with such private matters – break ups and crushes – and how much I let the trivial stuff bother me. But I had a different understanding of the purpose of a blog back then. Heck, it *is* called liveJOURNAL, after all! I’ve also kept a blog on MySpace, on Tumblr, on WordPress, I have a Flickr account, I’m an active twitter-er and I just started a new account on Posterous.

I’m not sure all those sites are thought of as “blogging sites” but to me they are – they are the mediums through which I share what’s going on with my life, the way that I keep track of things I discover and things that I think have value.