I was tagged with the ‘7 random things’ meme, courtesy of my friend Simon Salt or better known as @Incslinger. Simon Salt is a good friend, but I am not a huge fan of these types of games or letters, but for Simon, I would happily play along.

As expected I thoroughly enjoyed my personal trip down memory lane, not all of which I shared, but the process was memorable. At the end of the post, time to tag seven people, you want to know more about.

Let me say, reading the various posts on “7 Random Things” has been enjoyable.  I have learned many things about people, their childhood memories, professional challenges, aspirations, as well as personal challenges. Most everyone was fairly transparent and some just plain bared their soul.

Here are a few of my friends and respected bloggers. They are in no specific order, as is clear in seeing the people at the end. I summarized, briefly, a few interesting facts.

Simon Salt, Incslinger

Twitter: @incslinger

Simon once lived in Scotland and traveled to England on weekends to play in Ultimate Frisbee. Today he volunteers as a firefighter. He enjoys reading and enjoys history, yet enjoys magazines like Men’s Vogue and Fast Company among other quick reads.

read more

Russ Sumers, Hoovers

Russ loves internet memes! Good to know for next time, I say smiling. Russ enjoyed the 1980’s style music and 80’s day on Twitter just isn’t the same without him. Did you know in 1979, Russ dropped out of college to be in a rock band? Or that the Smashing Pumpkins opened for one of his bands? �
read more

Cheryl Smith, Culture Smith Consulting

Twitter: @cherylsmith999

Cheryl did a meme a few months ago, so she highlighted seven things about Christmas. She loves drives down Cranehill Drive, in Lynchburg, to see the streets filled with beautiful luminaries. Did you know she loves the movie “Olive the Other reindeer”?

read more

Rosina, Baby Friendly LA

Twitter: @babyfriendlyla

Rosina is a first time mom, published her own retro lifestyle magazine, which went national and was in every major bookstore. She honeymooned in Paris and has never drunk a single sip of Coke or Pepsi.

read more

Mel Aclaro, Business Casual Blog

Twitter: @melaclaro

Mel is a dog lover that belongs to not one, but two very jealous cats. He is a morning person who has his best formed opinions in the morning, yet is forbidden to share them before 9 am. He is not a fan of chain letters but enjoys a good meme. Big hairy eight legged spiders, not a fan, yet will make an exception for daddy long legs.

read more

Mack Collier, The Viral Garden

Twitter: @mackcollier

Mack is a painter and artist who strives for perfection.  He is big-time introvert. He loves animals and believes you can learn about people, through their treatment of animals.  He came close to drowning once, his cousin reached him and saved his life.

read more

Shannon Paul, Shannon Paul’s Very Official Blog

Twitter: @shannonpaul

Shannon played piano and electronic keyboards competitively. She had two imaginary friends as a child, but they stopped hanging out with her around kindergarten. (cute). She can recite the quadratic formula on command.

read more

Dana Coffey, Crazee Geek Chick

Twitter: @crazeegeekchick

Dana believes there is no greater food than chocolate. She can write code to bluegrass and jazz music, when many of us need peace and concentration.  She loves a good treasure trove through thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets.

read more

Amber Naslund , Altitude

Twitter: @ambercadabra

Amber majored in music performance and her primary instrument was the flute. Today her flute, given to her by her grandmother, is one of my prized possessions. She is an animal lover with a house full of lovable rescues.

read more

Sonny Gill

Twitter: @sonnygill

Sonny’s real name is Sandeep.  He grew up in a large family and describes his families gatherings and both awesome and hilarious. A dog lover! He once had to get more than 40 stitches in his forehead. He has a passion for basketball. A man who admits he likes shopping! read more

Tim Walker, Hoovers Business Insight Z

Twitter: @twalk

Tim doesn’t believe in writers block. He has dreams of being an expert cook. He moved to Austin Texas in 1990 and has lived there since. Another of Tim’s many ambitions is to earn his law degree. But by far, his greatest career ambition — so far unrealized — is to write compelling books and he is working on that now.

read more

Aaron Strout, Citizen Marketer 2.1

Twitter: @astrout

Aaron has a tattoo, of a thunderbird, on his right hip. His third child sparked from a chance meeting in Jackson Hole. His wife wasn’t there. Hmm.

read more

Scott Monty, The Social Media Marketing Blog

Twitter: @scottmonty

Scott’s favorite candy is Peanut M & M’s. He impersonates singers, like Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias, when participating in karaoke. He only drives American made! He holds a Masters in Medical Science. He was once a writer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, during the Clinton healthcare reform proposal.

read more

Brent Schlenker, Corporate eLearning Strategies & Develpment

Twitter: @brentschlenker

I’m an Arizona native, married with three children, and lives a few homes down from his high school.  He loves 80’s guitar rock and prefers Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar to Diamond Dave.  His daughter was youngest girl to swim Alcatraz.

read more

Laura P. Thomas, LTP

Twitter: @LPT

Laura starts her meme off with an “ice breaker”. She tells of drowning as a young child, discovered by her brother, he pulled her out of the pool and emergency personal revived her. She shares a few summer jobs, one working at a TV news station, while working on her journalism degree.

read more

Cammy Bean, Learning Visions

Twitter: @cammybean

As a kid, Cammy wanted to grow up to be a writer. Her backyard looks upon a forest and little stream running through yard.  She is an extremely efficient, mother of three, and occasional mouse hunter.

read more

Ken Burbary, Web Business by Ken Burbary

Twitter: @kenburbary

Ken is a closet geek and likes to tinker with technology.  He is a digital pack rat and a early user of Compuserv and Prodigy. He has three children who love playing wrestlemania. He is a World War II history and has a book collection on the topic.

read more

�

Chris Brogan

Twitter: @chrisbrogan

Chris as written three posts in responses, over several years. Interesting to read his view of “meme’s”, change over time, as mine did through this experience.  In 2006 Chris wrote “Not Normally a Meme Guy”. In 2007 he posted “8 random things”, and most recently

“Memes and Why They Matter”.

Questions:

What do you think about the 7 random things meme? Were you tagged? Did you enjoy reading them? Did you ignore tags? If you did a post on your 7 Random Things, please post a link? Those of you who view it as a complete waste of time, let us know you thoughts?

I was reading TwiTip and realized there was a comment field, to link your twitter address, linking to your Twitter home page.  That is a great idea. I searched for a Wordpress Plugin, none was found on Wordpress.org. This worked great until I upgraded to 2.7 and am hoping this plugin will soon be upgraded as well.

To my delight, a few days later ProBlogger, wrote a post on his process.  He provided a link to Ideashower, a plugin developer with a method of adding fields into the comment section. Between ProBlogger ’s post and the overview of the developers site I was able to code my comments, fairly simple. If you use Thesis template, ProBloggers post would benefit you.

Here is the process I used.  Let me remind you, each Theme is different, so your code may look slightly different. It is also a great idea to make a backup before changing any code, here is a plugin referred by @panah, WP-DB-Backup. I used Dreamweaver to modify my php files and used my “undo” a few times testing this method.

Download Plugin Files

Download the plugin files from the developers site.

• • Download – Version 0.2 (For Wordpress 2.0 – 2.3)
    • • Variable Setup – Access Settings > Extra Comment Fields.
        • • Wordpress Plugin: Extra Comment Fields

          How I added the Twitter ID field to comments on Twitip.com

      Activate – Log into Admin Panel. Access the Plugins, locate “Extra Comment Fields” and click Activate.

      

      Comment.php Modification

      In this section, you will be modifying your html code. I am using Dreamweaver as my editor. Open your Comments.php file, usually located in wp-content/themes/yourthemename/comments.php

      Part 1

      Look for a piece of code similar to the image below. This code may be grouped together with several similar lines, grouped together, with “text” name(s) like comment_author, comment_author_email or comment_author_url or something similar.

      When you locate the correct code, copy one entire section, and paste it at the bottom.

      

      Part 2

      

      a.Name =”twitter” (your reference name)
      b.Id=”twitter” (Set in Activation & Variable setup A)
      c.Value = $comment_extra_twitter; ?>” (refers to plugin & variable set)
      d.Twitter ID’,'arthemia’) (“Twitter ID: is the label that will show on your comment form)
      e.optional)’,'arthemia’) (“optional” is the label that will show on your comment form)

      Once your code is modified, upload your new comment.php page. Go to your blog, view your comment section, it should now have a Twitter ID line for commenter’s to add their Twitter Id.

      

      Part 3

      This next step is a method of allowing people to enter their user names with and without the “@” symbol, and continue to link correctly. This piece of code, courtesy of ProBlogger referenced above.

      Look for code that looks similar to this:

      div class=”commentlist”

      Under this section of code, courtesy of ProBloggers post, paste the below code as is:

      extra_twitter) {
      // Strip out the @ if they put it there because we’re going to need to get rid of it for the url anyway
      $extra_twitter = preg_replace(”/^@/”, “”, $comment->extra_twitter);
      $extra_twitter = htmlentities($extra_twitter); ?>
      ”>@

      Twitter Added to your Comments:

      This is such a quick and easy way to locate the commenters blog as well as their Twitter Id, which is as important to me.

      

      Let me just say, I HOPE someone creates a great plugin to add your Twitter ID in the future. Every Theme is different, so please, if you follow this process and find any differences with your theme, please post the work around. I hope this was helpful and simple to understand. Please post a comment if you add it to your blog, so we can see your creativity.

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  Download – Version 0.4 (Requires Wordpress 2.5+)

  Install the Plugin

  Unzip the “Extra-comment-fields” zip file.  Upload the file PHP file “extra-comment-fields“ to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, under your themes directory. This file does not have a folder as do many Plugins available.

  Activation & Setup

This post is in response to being tagged with the ‘7 random things’ meme, courtesy of my friend Simon Salt or better known as @Incslinger.  In his post, he describes ‘7 random things‘ as “fun blogging event to get people behind the blogs to open up a bit and put the human face to their blogs”.

I have enjoyed reading the others random things, so I will happy to play along, who knows there might actually be something new I have not previously shared on Twitter.

1 – Wisconsin Summers

Wisconsin is my birth place. I spent the first five years of my life in a small town, in Rock County.  After moving to California, we continued to spend our summers in Southern Wisconsin. This was the place of running through corn fields and making forts out of hay stacks. A place you could ride a tractor without a license. My first corn roast and a country fair. The early mornings fishing trips and afternoon catfish fry.

2– Best Friends 30+ Years

I had six best friends from High School, as most friends get lost in the shuffle of life, I am lucky that these six people remain in my life today.  Recently, we spend an amazing weekend in Vegas.  It was the first time, in 30 years, that we were all in the same place at the same time.

3 – I love animals

I love animals. We currently have two gold retrievers, one of which was a rescue puppy we met at a visit to the Veterinary Cancer Group, he was there looking for a home.  It was like he was sent to us. The very next day, Kacee our five year old retriever, lost her two year fight against canine Lymphoma. Our puppy, now named Cody, helped us focus on life, after all puppies don’t give you time to rest. We also have a Macaw, a chick imported from South America, only to end up living in a pet store for five years.  I found him, gave him a home, he runs of household and too smart for my own good. (I doubt this was a little known fact, as my Facebook and Flickr pages are full of furry friends)

4 –My Genealogy Library

Life is full of discovery and learning about my history, has been a seven year fascination.  My library is filled with books and recorders, some dating back to the 1600’s. I have a database of over 8,000 family members, primarily in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Denmark and Australia, so far.  It is fascinating to see people and lifestyles change over time.  I am a member of the HistoricalSociety of Wisconsin and a volunteer of Rock County, helping other researchers piecing to their family trees.

5 – The Joy of Baking

There is something that comes over me in December.  I have overwhelming need to get creative in the kitchen and bake.  A two week period, full of cookie baking, fudge making, chocolate melting and cake decorating.  My efforts are a continued tradition in my family, where mothers, daughters and grandmothers spend this special time together.  My husband finds it a bit scary, multi Suzie Homemaker’s on Steroids, but I love it and he is lucky it only happens once a year.

6- Love of Ceramics & Sculpture

During a summer visit to Wisconsin, we went to my great aunts farm in La Prairie, where we spent the day painting ceramics. It was a room filled with brushes, colorful paints, clay and a kiln. Fascinated by the possibilities, I have spent 35 years studying sculpture and casting techniques, first in High School, then in college. Today I continue through experimentation in my own studio. Writing this is a reminder it has been too long.

7 – A Few things my husband would like you to know…..

She chooses to live in shorts or sweats, even though she has a closet of designer clothes.  She believes filing is a passing fade (which it is if you scan your documents).  She is fluent in two languages, English… and DOG!  Despite Popular Opinion, she is ruled by a man, a guy named “Jose”, our blue and gold macaw.

I hope you enjoyed and maybe found something new or interesting about me.

Those of you below are now tagged.

Cheryl Smith, Brent Schlenker, Mel Aclaro, Brian Regan, Graham Smith, Calvin Lee, Lamarr Wilson

The Four Simple Rules:

• Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged

My business partner and I attended BlogWorld 2008 in Las Vegas recently. We had not planned this event in our schedule, but thanks to fellow blogger and Twitter friend, Rosina Rothman of BabyFriendlyLA, for bringing it to my attention.

In researching the events and reviewing the list of presenters, I was intrigued. The list was a whos who, all energetic, passionate people in their fields of expertise, early adopters, already embracing new media.

A little planning and research and the tone was set that this would be a great event.

The excitement began to mount the day prior to leaving for Las Vegas, as many attendees had already arrived and were preparing for a full Friday session. Not to mention the unexpected Twitter exchange with @CirqueLasVegas, who graciously set us up with complimentary tickets to Cirque’s Beatles Love Show on Saturday night! One of my best Twitter experiences yet!

The days of planning we over and we are off to the airport. We began to feel part of the event immediately upon arrival to the airport. We were both following Twitter and the official code for the event, @BWE08. There were photos via TwitPic, party announcements, weather information and tweeps announcing departures, arrivals and discussions on the sessions that were already in progress. How nice, we were waiting to departure from Orange County airport, yet we were already feeling part of the event in Las Vegas. Thanks Twitter!

We arrived in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, checked in and immediately launched the Blogworld08 website for the latest news. Then I checked my RSS feeds and bloggers were already posting about Friday sessions, while still present at the session. I love technology.

We decided to walk around our hotel, play a few games, and headed to the Blue Man Group to get our tickets for the Friday night show, compliments of BlogWorld! Special thanks to Noel Watson, the Sales Manager of the BMG, for her help and tour of their offices earlier in the afternoon.

Prior to heading down to the show, I sent a Tweet asking if anyone was up to a Blue Man Show Tweetup. Time was tight, so no pre-tweet up, but that didn’t stop us from Tweeting in route and in the venue. We soon found we were in the same row as @onetake and @gototchris, only the band separated us. A very nice usher moved us to be near our BlogWorld friends, a very nice gesture. To our surprise, these two also live in Orange County, California. What a small world.

The Show was fabulous, as well as the company and the post Tweet Up too, where we finally met @danportnoy, after tweeting for months on Twitter and speaking on the phone. Dan and his work is a story in and of itself, working with non profits. Thank you to @cherylsmith999 for the introduction.

Technology gave a wider eyes view of the actual conference and all of the activities. People were sending live streaming, tweeting, sending photos to TwitPic and Flickr and although we were not able to be everywhere, we felt connected to the other events around town the entire weekend. How I appreciate those hashtags #bwe08.

On Saturday, as the sun rose, so did the Bloggers. It was apparent by the good morning tweets on Twitter. Even though we were in different hotels, spread around the city, we were enjoying breakfast and coffee together. Normally, this morning ritual wouldn’t be unique, but on this morning we were all in the same town and time zone, all headed to the same event. That was a unique twist.

I sent out a Tweet “Watched the sun come up over Vegas. Getting ready for BlogWorld. Many great presenters, now is decision time.” I smiled when I got a response from Dave Taylor, “me! me! come to my SEO for bloggers workshop this afternoon! ” Now how could we refuse such a cheery early morning invitation?

Upon arriving we could see bloggers carrying all their techno gadgets. They were equipped with video cams, smart phones, iPods, voice recorders and cameras. Yes, we are in the right place.

We attended two back to back seminars on Podcasting. The best part of these presentations was watching the tweets from the Twitter presentation with Laura Fitton, across the hall. That presentation caused much discussion on Twitter and how I longed to be sitting in that room. Many thanks to those in the “Twitter: Building the Connections that Drive Traffic” presentation for keeping those of us not in attendance, up to date throughout the presentation.

Next, we took Dave Taylor up on his early morning tweet and attended “Ten Things You Need to Know About Search Engines”. A topic of interest for me over the last few years and his presentation was not a disappointment.

He presented key information to people looking to take advantage of SEO on their sites. One specific topic was of great interest to me, adding blogrolls to your blog. I had often wondered what the benefit was to listing which blogs we each read? In my case the list would be ever changing as I discover great new sources every day, as would the lists of the other bloggers that contribute to our site.

What are the benefits? Looking for a SEO stand point, there is none. Surprised? I believe many were, but then he asked the question “Why spend your valuable time creating content and to give visitors a list of reasons to leave your site?” That makes sense from a SEO stand point. What is the reason so many people have a Blogroll? What is the purpose of listing out the other blogs you read and does anyone else really care?

His presentation contained a lot of valuable information. What did we learn? Let’s just say after Dave’s presentation, we have several things to redesign, and dedicate more time reading Dave Taylors Blog. Did I mention Dave gives free tech support?

Hungry, we headed over to the Palazzolas, which luckily for us was attached to our hotel and we were lucky enough to be guests at Sushi Samba’s. We enjoyed the Cuban sushi creations and were entertained as they prepared for their grand opening party that very evening.

Saturday night and time to enjoy the Cirque’s Beatles Love Show that @CirqueLasVegas arranged for us, compliments of the marketing team and thanks to Twitter. Thanks to Dave Taylor for suggesting the show! I was sitting right there and how he remembered all of these details I am not sure, but he did a great job in his post. The show was fantastic, but at midnight, back to the hotel to rest up for Sunday. Still had many people to meet and spend time in the Expo with exhibitors.

Sunday we decided to attend one presentation and then spend some time in the Expo. We decided on “My blog is a Business?”, which did a brief presentation and took questions from the audience. I actually enjoyed the questions, because every individual came from a different perspective, each having different interests. One particular question kept arising, monetization.

We didn’t create our blog with monetization in mind, did we? No, but after listening to this presentation, in fact that is what we are doing is having it as an extension of our eLearning Development. Chris Brogan said an interesting thing, if we were to look at his blog, there is a plan when he writes posts. He is indirectly giving us messages to his knowledge, experience and his value. That is why we are at BlogWorld, just more food for thought in our planning and direction.

The panel also continued to express, the key is doing what you are passionate about. If you work hard at making it good, quality content and monetization will come. Great advice, hands down. When I decided to make a drastic change and do things that I loved, although initially out of my comfort zone, well worth it because great things begin to happen when you follow passion.

Now for the Expo and what I view as shopping! Someone has to do it! We talked to many great exhibitors, some we knew, some we just met. We will be writing more about these great new finds in future postings.

However, I never found a Twitter shirt that I have been longing for, but what I did find came straight from Twitter and was even better. I saw a tweet from @coachdeb that she was at the i360 booth and signing pre-release copies of Twitter Revolution. Let me just say, @coachdeb is exactly like she is on Twitter. She and @warrenwhitlock were both nice enough to sign the book and pose for photos. Read the book on the way back on the plane, great book, another post coming about this great gem.

Will we attend in BlogWorld 2009? You bet! Would we do anything differently? Yes. We did many things right in researching in advance, but after this wonderful experience it would do a few additional things to prepare for all future events.

• Participate in many more hosted events, to really take advantage of time with people face to face, one on one.
• Research the speakers and their presentations, to ensure we are getting the most out of each presentation, to meet our individual needs.
• Take more photos of the event and friends to share with those that don’t attend, as well as our own memories of the events.
• Pack video equipment or bring one of our videographers, to tape planned interviews.
• Research product and service providers and make time for those specific to our interests.

Thank you again to fellow blogger, Rosina Rothman, of BabyFriendlyLA, I hope you make it next year!

Our Twitter friend and blogger, Rosina Rothman, the author and creator of BabyFriendlyLA, gave us a tip on the upcoming BlogWorldExpo, in Las Vegas.  She sent me a tweet and asked if we were attending.

This was not a conference on my agenda, but after looking at this list of speakers my plans suddenly changed.  The list of speakers was like reading my daily feed reads and other people I interact with on Twitter. Having all of them together, at one event, is fantastic.

And let us not forget, it’s Vegas!

I had attended the Gnomedex event online the past weekend and had read many of the blog posts, post event.  Many first time attendees, all which enjoyed the event, but some said they wished they had planned better in advance to take full advantage from all the experience had to offer.  Many wrote what things they would do different next time.

It will be my first time to BlogWorld and I would like very few, post event regrets.  BlogWorld appears to be much more of a social event, than normal conferences I attend. I sought out some advice from my network. Who would be a good advisor, who could direct me some articles? Then, I saw the name of Chris Brogan, right in my LinkedIn network. I am a fan of his blog, seemed like a good choice.

I sent off a brief email, explaining my desire to be prepared for BlogWorld, with few post regrets as some had a Gromedex, within minutes Chris sent me a list of links to help me.

• Be Sexier In Person
• 10 Ways to Make your Next Conference Better
• Using Social Media To Meet people
• Jeff Pulver Teaches You About Conferences
• Slicing Time In A Face To Face Environment

He suggested these might be good starters.  Thank you to Chris Brogan, great example of the value of Social Networking for all those who still don’t see the value. You know who you are…..

First great tip, check around and to see who’s attending.  Who is attending? I located a group in Facebook, specifically for this event, BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008.  It has a list of possible attendies and confirmed attendees, as well as updates about the conference.

Then I went to the list of speakers, many of which I follow their blogs on a daily basis, and reached out to my favorites for a hello while in Vegas. I was completely surprised by the response and how many people wanted to meet their fans or even share additional tips about the event.

Some of the first to respond, with very warm gettings, were Becky McCray, Deborah Micek , Neenz Faleafine and Roxanne Darling. And, yes Neenz I look forward to more laughs too!

Then I went on to my Twitter community and again, asked was attending BlogWorld, immediately began to receive emails, tweets and direct messages.

I came upon an article on How to Maximize Value from REBlogWorld. This is a co-event for Real Estate & Mortgage professionals, yet this article has great tips for planning.

It’s a tech-oriented conference so bring your devices.  There will be Free wifi available throughout the conference, so bring you devices.

1. Bring your laptop.
2. Bring a capture device; Cameras, Voice Recorders, Flip’s useful for archiving ideas and presentations for later review.
3. Stick around after presentations, exchange cards, say hello.
4. Get a Twitter Account if you don’t have one. I love Twitter @tawnypress !
5. Standard code on Twitter for this event will be #REBW , allows for easier following of information.

Speaking of Twitter, I am also following @blogworld on Twitter, have it set for device updates as well.  It will help me keep track of news, both before and during the show in Vegas.

There are exhibits, so take some time to see what is new.

If you are want to attend and haven’t purchased your ticket, here is a Discount code: mashvip .  Will get you 20% off Exhibits-only, Exhibits & party, Full Access, or Executive, Entrepreneur registration options. (thanks to Dave Cynkin for clarifying) off each ticket. Thanks Mashable!

Once again, this will be a tech-oriented conference, so bring your devices.  Bring you cameras, there will many photo opportunities. Take back pictures from the event, the new friends you meet, and the friends you are seeing again.

Using the old form of social networking, I would have never received such a positive response from my network, so quickly.  Nor would I have been able to get a real feel for the people, like I can do today by reading blogs, podcast, videos and live streaming events.  Getting a sense of who they are, who I want to meet, follow and share.

If the response from attendees as well as the speakers, is any indication, this is sure to be a very special event. Am I prepared? I believe so. Am I excited? Yes.

If anyone has any other useful helpful hints, links to share or advice, please share.  If you are going to the show, tweet me, let me know in comments, or contact me from any of my social networks!

We encourage you to share, any of our posts that you find interesting or useful. Please feel free to repost portions or the entire post, but please link back to blog.einnoventions.com‘s article, and give our team credit. Thank you! (This notice excludes use for profit)