Last week I attended another Citysearch Eat Drink Learn event, this time the topic was cheese at Andrew's Cheese Shop in Santa Monica. The shop's owner, Andrew Steiner, says cheese is the controlled spoilage of milk. Using terms like fermentation, bacteria, aerobic, pasteurization and ammonia this cheese 101 course seemed more like a science class, granted a more interesting one than the ones I remember back in school though.
The first was TOMS Shoes LA blogger night at the TOMS pop-up store on Abbot Kinney in Venice. TOMS are basically flats, but way cooler than typical Keds and not as hard or blister causing either. At first I wasn't crazy about the designs that I saw on their site, however, I soon became a fan when I saw these flats in person and on the employees there. I then tried a few on and found them to be super light and bonus, they looked cute on my feet too. The best part though, for every pair sold, TOMS gives a pair of shoes to a child in need and have donated over 70,000 shoes so far (video here). One for one is their motto. At the event, we were all given a coupon for a free pair of TOMS (score!). I chose their tan suede ones with fleece lining (soft inside like Uggs) and because I felt guilty for stealing a pair of shoes from a needy kid somewhere and because I liked them so much, I also purchased a pair of blue corduroy ones for $46. TOMS sells at Nordstroms, but the pop-up store will be open until the end of December, so go check it out. My Glam.com article goes into more detail about the shoes, Stars With Soles.
I started twittering not only because of the peer pressure I was experiencing among my tech and blogging friends, but because I thought it might be yet another place to market and bring attention to my blog. On that level, it has worked in some respect and also failed. People who normally didn't read my blog are filing in, including perceived "influencers," however, some only read and follow my tweets but do not explore on to my blog. Also, the people that I follow aren't necessarily my typical blog reader who wants to read about my adventures and LA happenings. Plus, my Tweets vary from the personal, local to the professional.
A negative to Twitter for me is that I find myself twittering stuff that at one time I would have expanded upon and turned into a blog post. Twitter is also monopolizing what little free time I have to blog, thus affecting the amount of times I blog in a week. On the other hand, Twitter has helped spark my creativity and a blog post or two by following the different discussions and articles being sent around. Thus, a good research tool that can spark blog posts.
The worst part though is that people will now twitter responses to my blog instead of leaving a traditional comment here, so although I'm glad they are talking about it, it's now on a different medium.
In the end though, Twitter might not have helped my original goal of building my blog, but it has helped me to virtually meet others in my space and has aided my job in PR by understanding the space better. Oh, and if you want to follow me I'm @tarametblog.
It was especially interesting being in the windy city a day after the big Obama rally and speech. I could still feel the excitement in the air. When I visited The Chicago Tribune building for meetings, the lobby was selling special commemorative editions of their paper (75 cents) announcing the prior day's presidential win as well as Obama posters ($3.00). They are also selling Obama Wins! wares on their site. I bought myself a paper and will save it with my other historical newspapers.
