OK, I admit it. Tumblr has killed my blog. Well, not really killed it, but it certainly has decreased the time I spend blogging on Random Sarah and looking for new content to blog about.

Last week was Internet Week here in NYC, and in the few days since I have had a lot of time to reflect on this past year of me being a part of this amazing community. I have been spending the majority of my time lately looking for a full time job, and that has put a lot of my passion projects on hold.

I got into this “new media” space because I was passionate about online video and I stumbled upon Social Media by accident. I was perfectly happy going on facebook and reading apple rumor sites. I had almost no desire to be on twitter, to be a blogger or a podcast creator. Then I started watching video podcasts and I realized that I wanted to create content as well.

As much as it seams like I’m busy, I know that it is not an excuse for letting my passion for online video fall off. What’s it All About has hit a few bumps in the road, and I feel as if I am back to square one with the project. However, instead of being discouraged I have decided to modify what I was doing.

Very often people will ask me questions, either on twitter, or via email. For example, the other day someone asked my about #followfriday best practices. I get asked questions about social media all the time. So, I am just going to start answering them on video, here in my room. For right now I am thinking that I will just put these videos up here on Random Sarah because I am not really sure that they are part of the What’s it All About brand, and I’m not really sure what that brand is anymore.

You can ask me questions on twitter or shoot me and email

I would love your feedback since you have all been an amazing part of this journey.

p.s. I am still working on the user generated “I am a geek” video, but so far I only have 5 submissions so keep them coming!

The other night I attended a tweetup. What’s a tweetup?

A “tweetup” is a local meeting of Twitter users, usually announced ahead of time. Tweetups can take place any time or any place, and usually everyone in the area is invited. It helps give social networking a more palpable environment and allows local Twitter users to meet each other in person.

So why would you do this? Why would you want to publicly announce on twitter that you were going to be somewhere and that you wanted complete strangers to come meet you there?

A tweetup usually starts as a desire for twitter users to meet IRL (in real life). Sometimes it’s a group of friends, sometimes it’s just a random group of people.

The tweetup I attended the other night started out simply because my friend Tim (@tspatz) wanted to see his friend @newscred, who was in NYC from out of town, and Tim wanted some of his friends to meet him.

So Tim DM’d some of his friends on twitter with the time and place. This quickly turned into a tweetup when the conversation went public on twitter.

Everyone that had been invited was tweeting about the tweetup and the result was really interesting.

Just like anything else on twitter, tweetups spread in an interesting way. I like to call it the re-tweet effect. (it’s kind of like a game of telephone)

If I tweet something it has the potential to reach the 1,800 people that are following me. However, my friend can re-tweet it and then all of his followers will see it as well.

So at this tweetup we had a few different groups of people that had formed organically based on how the tweets about the tweetup went out.

The tweet I sent out looked like this:

sarahcooley: RT @WaltRibeiro: TONIGHT Lunasa NY 1st ave b/t 7th and 8th St. @ 7pm! Let’s do it! #tweetup #nyc I’m on my way there now!

But some re-tweets looked like this:

jerrylore: RT @newscred: Entrepreneur/hacker #tweetup tonight atLunasa in the East Village #nyc , 6pm. Free beers on NewsCred if you come early!

Today I saw a post from Mike Arauz, he is putting up his favorite links, photos, and videos from his Tumblr blog. Many of you know that tumblr is an obsession of mine, and it has taken away a lot of the random content that used to be on random sarah. So I decided to adopt his idea so that those of you who read random sarah, but may not keep up with my tumblog can still get a taste of the content that I put up there.

So here are my favorite links, photos, and videos from my Tumblr blog this week:

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

Preparing for Chaos – the Life of a Startup

“Startups are inherently chaos. As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant. If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die. Therefore the best way to keep your company alive is to instill in every employee a decisive mindset that can quickly separate the crucial from the irrelevant, synthesize the output, and use this intelligence to create islands of order in the all-out chaos of a startup.”

Real Life Twitter

Screen-shot from the NFL Draft (this was done by me)

In today’s video I show you guys my favorite new iPhone app, and complain about annoying postal service.

Thanks for checking out the videos every day! And please leave comments on your favorite iPhone Apps below.

Today is the first day of Video Blogging Week 2009! yayyy

In today’s video, I go Raw Food Vegan! If you are interested, here is recipe for the smoothie I had this morning.

What?
Participating videobloggers post a new video to their blog every day for a week

Videoblogging week started in 2004 with less than ten videobloggers as a participatory way to raise awareness of videoblogging and welcome new videobloggers. Over the years Videoblogging Week has grown to be an exciting yearly event that encourages people to push themselves creatively.

When?
April 5th – 11th

Who?
YOU! All you need is desire and a camera. Anyone can participate.

How?
To participate post videos and tag them “videobloggingweek2009″.

Video Blogging Week is about:

• Sharing
• Communicating
• Experimenting
• Creativity
• Real Life
• Art

Video Blogging Week is NOT about:

• Money
• Resume’s
• Portfolio’s
• Celebrity
• Fame
• video view numbers

So for some reason I had it in my head that tomorrow, April 3rd, was the 1 year anniversary of this blog, but I was WRONG! It was actually today and I missed it

That is because April 3rd was my first video post. So I will do the full, one year of the blog, recap, tomorrow as planned. But I still feel bad for missing this anniversary.

But to hold you over, here is one of my first posts from the first day of randomsarah.com a whole YEAR ago.

To qualify for press credentials, you must:

• be affiliated with a nationally or regionally recognized media outlet and;
• hold an editorial title or;
• hold a position as an industry analyst

To obtain your press credentials at the show, you must present either:

• a business card, or
• copy of masthead show name and title, or
• letter from editor or publisher assigning bearer to cover the event

You do not qualify for press credentials if you are:

• a publisher
• a sales rep
• any other non-editorial personnel

To request a press pass, please email events@mediabistro.com, and include: name, title, publication, URL, and full contact information.

Here is the video from my talk at Social Media Jungle, a huge thanks to Bill Cammack for recording the video. The first few mins of the talk are missing but basically I was talking about do we have to draw a line between personal and brand? And if so, what does that line look like?

Speaker: Sarah Cooley (randomsarah.com / @sarahcooley)
Title: “Drawing The Line Between Personal And Brand”
Date: March 19, 2009
Conference: “Social Media Jungle: New York City” #smjnyc
Recorded By: Bill Cammack

FINALLY!!! I made a new video blog!

I know I have been away from video blogging for a while, but I am back! For all of my new followers on twitter, tumblr, and everywhere else, hi! This is me!

In the begining I mentioned Chris Brogan, he is awesome, check him out!

Also you can check out my Tumblr for more random stuff.

Keep checking back here for more video blogs in the future!

It has been a long year for Random Sarah. I joined twitter, started a new blog, started video blogging, started a video podcast, created a community blog project, met a ton of people….man I’m tired already. But I had one goal when I started all this and that was to make it to SXSW interactive in 2009. I know it sounds like a strange goal, but I figured if I could only attend one conference all year I would pick that one.

The plan was pretty simple: Find a company that needed help during SXSWi and work for them for the week in exchange for a conference pass and accommodations. It was a plan that I had seen many other people execute before so it didn’t seem to difficult to me. However, over the last few months it has become very clear that this year we are dealing with SXSW recession edition.  More and more, companies didn’t have the same big budget for conferences that they once had. They were going to try and get by with as little as possible. And in this economy who can blame them.

But I still have a problem: I have a plane ticket to Austin and no conference pass. I am planning on shooting a few episodes of my show What’s it all about: Web 2.0 at SXSW but this all requires a sponsorship that I don’t have. So, I have come up with a new SXSW recession plan. I will be there for all 5 days of the conference. So I am looking for 5 Companies who would like me to represent their brand during the conference. (This idea was totally inspired by Girl in your shirt and I Wear Your Shirt)

The plan is simple: Each day I will wear the shirt of a different company. On your day I will be required to wear your shirt all around the expo and to any events I attend that evening. You would send me a company shirt along with something about your company that I would tell people every time they asked me about my shirt. I will be your active brand ambassador for the day. In addition to talking about your company, I will wear the shirt on my show that will be seen by many more people than just people physically in Austin attending SXSW. Your company will be the sponsor of that episode. All of this would only cost you $150 for the day! Seriously, I know you have $150 in your budget to sponsor a totally deserving blogger to go to SXSW!

UPDATE: In addition to having me wear your shirt and talk about the company for a day, and a sponsor spot on What’s it all about: Web 2.0, I will blog about your company before SXSW in a post about my SXSW Sponsors, and a post after SXSW, thanking my sponsors with links to all the photos, and videos taken of me during the conference. You will also get ad space on Random Sarah for the month of March. (125×125)

Why should your company do this? That’s easy! Because it would cost you a lot less than paying for my whole pass and hotel stay, and you get a up and comming girl in the world of social media to talk about your company all day. This is especially great for companies that may not have the budget to attend SXSWi this year. I will attend for you!

If you are looking for more information about me you can check out the rest of Random Sarah which is my personal blog, including my old video blogs. Check me out on Twitter and Tumblr. And check out my old episodes of What’s it all about: Web 2.0

Please contact me if your company is interested in me being your brand ambassador for the day.

Related links:

Want a brand ambassador for SXSW, meet Sarah (Sanford Dickert, Social Engineer)