Week 19 Round-Up & Comment Awards
24 May, 2008 - Misc - 8 Comments
Saturday is here once again and that means it’s time for a recap of the week on this blog.
Notable Points of the Week
Coworking - I have an Office! - Coworking is a middle-ground between working from home and having your own office that you commute to. It’s ideal for freelancers, bloggers and sole traders to give back the early morning commute, the water cooler conversations and the after work gatherings. For a low monthly fee, you can have access to an office with multiple desks and equipment to allow you to drop in three or four times a week to work in a more structured environment, rather than working from home.
On Wednesday, I signed a contract for some coworking space at the old BBC broadcasting headquarters in my local city of Leeds. Old Broadcasting House is owned by Leeds Met University and provides a lovely environment to work from. As well as the Mac’s with 32″ HD monitors at the coworking desks and the Big Brother style diary room to allow me to record video blogs, they have allowed me to borrow, for free, a Macbook Pro to replace my broken Acer laptop. Couple that with the 40 minute train ride to the city and 40 minutes back each night which has allowed me to write a load of blog posts, I really couldn’t ask for a better way of working.
Here are some photos of the downstairs meeting and event space.
GeekUp Leeds - One of the best parts about working in Leeds, a city of 500,000, the home of the BBC North headquarters and the home of my county Chamber of Commerce, is I now have easier access to many events and meetings that take place in the city. After the very first day of working from Leeds (Wednesday), I had the pleasure of walking from the office to The Lounge restaurant and bar to GeekUp Leeds, an informal gathering of bloggers, Web developers, designers and technology experts. There are a couple of talks in the 20/20 style (20 slides. 20 Seconds per slide, with a bell to ring each time the 20 seconds is finished).
Although I only stayed for 90 minutes, I had the complete pleasure of chatting with Jeff Allen from California and his partner, Marina, from Switzerland. They both work for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international humanitarian aid organisation. They met in Liberia while doing some aid work, and Marina is now looking to study at Leeds Met. We had a fantastic conversation, Jeff did an excellent talk, and I realised on the train home that it was those conversations that I missed when I was working from home. A perfect first day working from the office, that’s for sure. 
Here are some photos of the GeekUp event (the first is me, Jeff and Marina).
Comments of the Week - Each week, I try to repay my best commentators by sharing their comments and linking to their blogs. This week I’ve chosen two comments that I think qualify as the best.
The first comment comes from StumbleUpon user Elizabeth Able of AbleReach. Elizabeth wrote a recent review of an old post of mine that gained a lot of StumbleUpon traffic. Here is her comment, in response to my post “My StumbleUpon Analysis - A Poor 500% Traffic Increase“.
“Your titles are a permalink, even when already on the page - a lot of themes are like that. Some users are probably clicking on the title to make sure they’re already at the full version of the page.
Also, they may be checking to see how many people already reviewed the page, and what they said, and then clicking the back button.
Don’t think of Su traffic like Search traffic. Regular SU visitors use SU like an RSS-enabled daily newspaper. First-timers may wander on through via the toolbar and not decide to read. Social Media subscribers may unsub after getting a closer look at your blog. It’s just a little different.
Over time, traffic and relationships can build. I wouldn’t assess what’s going on based on a single encounter. Social media is about relationships.”
Thanks for the excellent and enlightening comment, Elizabeth. I hope to see more comments from you in the future.
The second comment comes from Sarah of Copywriting Tips and Ideas. This was Sarah’s first comment on my blog, Here is her comment, in response to my post “Blogging for Money Displaces Your Focus“.
“I have links and paid advertisements on my site but that isn’t what my blog is about. I admit that I was blinded by making money but then I realised that the writing was something I enjoy doing more than anything else.
With regards to the paid posts, I have to admit I have never been tempted and I hate reading them on most sites. I think they devalue an otherwise fantastic blog. Am I the only person who feels this way? When I was reading blogs the other day, I came across seven blog promoting the same product…”
Thanks for the comment, Sarah! I’m still shocked at all those paid posts promoting the same product! I hope to see you around here more often.
If you want to see your name and link in this spot next week, be sure to come out of the woodwork and give your opinion on the posts I write.
Welcome to my New Commentators - Each week I intend to thank the people who have wrote a comment on my blog for the first time. Here is this weeks list:
Barbara Ling
John Cow
Sarah
Link Building Bible
Gavin Holt
Elizabeth Able
I’d like to thank all my commentators, new and old, past and present. It wouldn’t be the same without you.
That’s all for this week. Tomorrow there will be link love post, handing out the best of the love to the best of the weeks articles. If you wrote an article on your blog this week that you think my readers will be interested in, please post a comment here with the link and I’ll consider including it in Sunday’s post.
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Posted on 24 May, 2008 by Jamie Harrop
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Hey Jamie,
Sorry to be a pain, but my URL is http://www.gavin-holt.com
Not http://3spoken.co.uk/
Hey Gavin,
I’m sorry for that. It seems I messed up a few of the links.
They’re all fixed now. Thanks for letting me know. I guess I shouldn’t rush future posts.
Some sort of “Get More Comments” ploy??
If it wasn’t it should be!!!
Gavin Holt’s last blog post..Gavin Holt
Heh. More like a “Get more Doh! points and make myself look like a prat ploy”.
Hey… don’t wanna be another “you got my URL wrong” person… but, well, you got my URL wrong =)
it is:
http://linkbuildingbible.com
without the http://www.
Thank you so much for the link love! I love your blog!
Link Building Bible’s last blog post..Link Building Olympics: A Link Building Competition of Sorts
Jamie, Jamie, where have you been?! I’m checking here daily for the great posts but they seem to have stopped
Hope to see you active again soon
Mike
It has been so long since my last visit…I didn’t see anything new for quite long before I stop visiting your blog. Nice to see many new post here. Anyway your coworking seems a nice place…You know, I thought everyone love to work from home. But seems I’m wrong because some peoples decide to work outside their house even actually they can do it from their house.
[...] and I are currently viewing Old Broadcasting House in Leeds. I know all about this place, having co-worked here earlier this year, but there are still parts I’d like to see from an event organiser stand-point, rather than a [...]