Friday, October 30, 2009

Blog Out Loud


While I'm still at best a neophyte blogger, I'm thrilled to be participating in Blog Out Loud's next event at DWR on Nov. 4. Sitting on a panel with the likes of Alissa Walker (Gelatobaby, Fast Company), Laure Joliet (Apartment Therapy, Dwell, At Home at Home), Gregory Han (Apartment Therapy, Unplggd) and Emily Goligoski (Sanfranista, Notes on Design) is pretty exciting. We'll be talking about a host of different things, like finding our voices, how we got into it, how we keep up with it, why we even do it, all that good stuff. My angle on it being slightly different since I'm from the dark side.....(PR).

Blog Out Loud organizes these blogger town halls regularly mainly for people who are interested in blogging themselves, putting a face to the monikers and kind of offering an inside look at the ever-expanding world of blogging. Basically, they promote self-expression through blogging.

The best part? Since organizers Megan and Rebecca have great design taste and connections, the goodie bags are always AWESOME. If you plan on attending this event, be sure to snag one. Secret Agent client Amenity will be putting in a special modern organic goodie for all attendees.

Here are the details...hope to see you there. Hecklers welcome.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

About Hiring...

Over the last few months, I've been blogging for American Express' OPEN Forum as a "Lifestyle Expert" for Inhabitat. The topic is generally supposed to be "lifestyle" with a green tinge (since that's what we know about at Inhabitat), but still needs to be applicable to small business owners. Honestly, I've kind of been struggling with ideas on what to cover. Mostly because the topic is lifestyle and most of the time, I don't really think I have a life! But finally, after several essais, I think I've found the key, which is to write about my own business-related discoveries. Despite my own disbelief at this fact, I am indeed a business owner. And my business is, knock on wood, doing pretty well, all things considered. (And by "things" I mean recession.)

My last story on Hiring for the Home Office actually got a few comments (at least in the twittosphere) which was pretty rad. For the record, my new employee/intern/assistant-secret-agent has full use of a separate bathroom and doesn't seem to mind the occasional poot from Brutus.

PS. That's not my office, just a very neat and clean example of a home office. I'd share a photo of Secret Agent HQ, but then I'd have to eliminate the three people who read this blog.

Good-Byte, Fare thee Well

My friend Shelley recently started a delightful and delicious little blog about Single-Handed Cooking, and it reminded me that this whole blogging thing is about enjoying yourself. This isn't a press release, or a post for an editor. This is straight up, unadulterated self-expression. That said, I'm hereby retiring the ridiculous byte system of categorization that I stupidly instituted in a lame attempt to organize my writing. Frankly, all I do all day is organize thoughts, words, and expression. The Saturnfly Report has the right to be as completely disorganized and scattered as it wants to be since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who reads it and well, that's pretty much how my mind works anyways. A million things, all at once.

So just as Shelley's Hawaiian Ladies come out unabashedly different each time, so shall my posts from now on (though clearly never quite as delectable!)

Photo by Wade