17 posts tagged “horn tooting”
In honor of OneWebDay, I am posting to all my blogs a little story about how I first got started on the Web...
True Story: In August 1994, I was held up at gunpoint on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and kidnapped with a friend. Three guys, three guns. They took us down the block at gunpoint to the nearest ATM machine to take out money. It was dark and suddenly there was nobody on the street except for us. Long story short, we escaped, and I lived to tell the tale.
I left New York City for a month to regroup. Went to Santa Fe to visit my sister who was living there at the time. Now I'd been going online in one form or another since 1987 when I bought my first computer - an Amstrad 1640 dual floppy (no harddrive). The IBM of the UK, I was told when I bought it. I also purchased a modem (1200 baud?) and learned how to access local BBSs - bulletin board systems or computers in somebody's room or basement.
After I realized I could chat with others online and discovered the wonders of e-mail, I began networking with other women through America Online (which at the time was the smallest of the 3 big commercial online services - Prodigy was #1, CompuServe #2) and Women's Wire (which had almost 1000 members at the time). I also started consulting clients about Internet communications and marketing. This was 1992.
So back to Santa Fe, December 1994. I learned about the Web when I saw an ad in the local arts paper. "Discover the World Wide Web" said the ad. I had no idea what the World Wide Web was but I saw an e-mail address. E-mail I knew. So I e-mailed a query and found out that a guy was teaching a class on HTML in town. I took a 2 hour class for $10 in basic HTML and was immediately an expert. Well, in that amount of time, I learned all there was to learn - it was so easy back then.
I began building web sites and published my first one when I got back to NYC in January 1995. I called it "The Web According to Cybergrrl." I had decided not to use my real name online because I wasn't sure who was reading (we've come a long way, baby). So I drew a cartoon character of myself and called her "Cybergrrl" - "Cyber" because I had read and loved William Gibson's book "Neuromancer" where he coined the term "cyberspace" and "grrl" because I wasn't a "girl" and it was sort of a nod to the Riot Grrrl movement.
That month, I began pounding the pavement looking for clients for the new business I dreamed up - Web consulting. I called the company CGIM which stood for Cybergrrl Internet Media. I was wary of calling my company Cybergrrl because I wanted to be taken seriously in the decidedly male-dominated tech industry. Within a few months, everyone was calling me Cybergrrl anyway. My first client was the brand new New Media Director at the New York Times who would sneak me into his office after hours to teach him how to surf the Web and set up an account with an ISP because he knew CD-Roms but didn't know the first thing about the Internet.
My personal web site quickly became Cybergrrl.com, Cybergrrl, Inc.'s first official site for women followed by Webgrrls.com which had started out as an old-fashioned blog - literally a Web Log listing women's web sites around the world. Then we built the first searchable directory of exclusively web sites for women and girls called Femina.com in direct response to the fact that searching for "women" or "girls" on Yahoo.com at the time yielded nothing but pornography. Yeah, this was back in the day when Yahoo was just a side project for two kids in college and Cybergrrl was the most popular women's web site.
About a year later, Women's Wire went online with Women.com (I had approached them in early 1995 to help put them on the Web but they didn't have see the point at the time). Half a year after that, Candice Carpenter and Nancy Evans put up iVillage.com (I had lunch with them a few months before their launch and then held Webgrrls meetings at their offices after they debuted). Both were well-funded endeavors while Cybergrrl started as just me, my PowerBook and some hot pink business cards.
People ask why I'm not a millionaire if I started at the beginning of this whole Web thing and am known as the "woman who pioneered the Web for other women." The honest answer is two-fold:
1. I never set out to make a million - I was just hoping to pay my bills. Like so many women, I just wanted to do a good thing and love what I do. I figured the money would follow. I didn't take a salary for the first few years then took about half of what the receptionist made after.
2. I had a business partner who had a totally different vision for the company than I did. We clashed all the time. I finally walked away from the company and never saw a dime after that. I was able to continue to refer to myself as "The Original Cybergrrl" and "Founder of Webgrrls International," but I lost all of it.
Such is life. And that, in a nutshell, is my early Web story.
Stop by The Everything Blogging Book blog to join me on my Virtual Book Tour. I'm appearing on blogs around the world such as Daily Eats, When Tara Met Blog and Learned on Women.
Direct links to my appearances are on The Everything Blogging Book blog!
My friend Tery Spataro interviewed me for her site Daily Eats.
Okay, not only have I been woefully remiss posting here (I'm spending most of my time on Babyfruit), I am now going to use up this comeback post with a gratuitous plug for a teleseminar I'm giving this week. So shoot me.
How To Use Blogging To Brand Yourself
The Latest Cutting Edge Blogging Strategies To Use For Maximum Branding
With Cyber-pioneer Aliza Sherman Risdahl, the original "Cybergrrl,"
WHEN: Wednesday, March 29th
TIME: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Eastern
(9:00 AM Alaska Time, 10:00 AM PT, 11:00 AM MT, 12N CT)
FREE "The ONLY Secret To Getting Booked On OPRAH - The Rest Is Strategy" CD When You Sign Up!
Sign up at http://www.anniejenningspr.com/cyber-grrl.htm
Join us for this free teleseminar and learn how to leverage blogging to brand yourself and market your book or expertise without allowing blogs to take over your life.
Cyber-pioneer Aliza Sherman Risdahl, the original "Cybergrrl," brings you common sense tips on setting up a blog, maintaining your blog and making it an effective marketing tool to achieve your goals.
Cut through the hype of blogging and discover what blogs are really good for when it comes to marketing.
Find out:
- The cheapest, easiest solutions for setting up blogs.
- The concrete ways a blog can be an asset for you.
- The art of building an active community around your blog.
- The best ways to manage blogging in your busy schedule.
Aliza Sherman Risdahl has been marketing online since the early 1990s - even before the Web was invented. Her books include "Cybergrrl@Work" (Berkeley Books, 2001), "PowerTools for Women in Business" (Entrepreneur Press, 2001) and the upcoming "The Everything Blogging Book" (Adams Media, July 2006) available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
Her next book will be a practical guide to using the Internet for business, marketing and sales for late adopters due out in 2007. She is an avid blogger as well as a radio and television producer. Her "day job" is independent Internet and public relations consulting. In her "spare time," she is a documentary filmmaker.
FREE "The ONLY Secret To Getting Booked On OPRAH - The Rest Is Strategy" CD When You Sign Up!
The Everything Blogging Book is available on Amazon.com for Pre-order!
We're still working on the final edits but looks like it will be out in July 2006 - hurrah!
So hurry over to Amazon.com, and be the first on your block to own a copy!
We thank you for your support.
Here's my 2nd segment for them.
Keeping a head above water in Alaska
Global warming has the water rising in the Native Alaskan village of Newtok...
My first segment on Marketplace airs today:
A different kind of bookmaking
Business on Native American reservations isn't just about gambling. Aliza Sherman Risdahl looks at a growing publishing enterprise on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation.
Find out more about Painted Pony, Inc.
I'm tickled pink by the mention in MORE magazine of my Babyfruit blog. It is in the October 2005 issue and the incredible, amazing, fantastic Jodie Foster is on the cover.
The piece is about women over 40 who blog, and to be in the same company as Rosie O'Donnell, Anita Roddick, and yes, even Ariana Huffington, is quite an honor!
Click on the image to see a larger readable version.
I guess I've finally graduated into the "over 40" category, or at least 40 years, 9 months, 2 weeks and a handful of days...and counting.
I just did an interview for MoneyPants.
Excerpt from their site:
You're looking for someone who can bring some fun to the misery of money management...Welcome to MoneyPants.
Great concept. Much needed. I think my interview accurately reflects my ecclectic and somewhat haphazard view of money. I encourage everyone not to learn from my actions with money but to learn from my mistakes!
I'm a recovering spend-a-holic and still slip off the wagon now and again. Like the chihuahua lunchbox I just bought along with half a dozen magazines that I probably won't even read but just wanted to have them. Yeah, that was a slip-up.
Hey, I'm allowed to use double entendres on my blog - because it doesn't serve families. Anyway, I was quoted in the Ad Age piece about the controversy. Interesting how Burger King removed the offensive imagery (see previous post).
BURGER KING'S COQROQ.COM TRIGGERS CONTROVERSY
CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- Even though it has suddenly removed sexual double entendres from its new Web site, CoqRoq.com, Burger King today denied it had received any complaints from consumers or other outside groups. by Kate MacArthur.
You do have to register for free to read the whole thing. Email me at mediaegg at hotmail.com if you'd like me to email a copy of the text to you.
My favorite part of the article:
Among other things, CoqRoq.com, which is linked directly to the main Burger King Web site, includes photo galleries with Polaroid-style shots of young girls with the handwritten captions "Groupies love the Coq" and “groupies love Coq." Since the site went live yesterday, those captions and others have been erased from the online materials. AdAge.com took screen shots of those removed materials yesterday afternoon.
“Nothing on the site has changed because of any reaction to the site,” said Edna Johnson, senior vice president for global communications for Burger King Corp., which is owned by private equity firm Texas Pacific Group. Mrs. Johnson said photo cutlines were written and then assigned randomly by computer software that as since been disabled. She said malfunctions in the Flash and XML programming were responsible for putting the "Groupies love the Coq" on the photos of the young women.
background info from NYTimes.com
From Burger King,
Music to Eat Chicken By
Burger King and its creative agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami, are hoping to score again with a campaign using entertainment to sell chicken menu items to fast-food consumers ages 18 to 34.
A campaign that is to begin today introduces a make-believe band, Coq Roq, whose members, bearing names like Fowl Mouth and Free Range, wear chicken masks as they belt out heavy-metal music to promote a new Burger King product, Chicken Fries, chicken strips formed like French fries.
A Web site (coqroq.com) will present Coq Roq as a real band sponsored by Burger King, complete with CD's of songs like "Cross the Road," merchandise like T-shirts and downloadable cellphone ring tones. Burger King is owned by the Texas Pacific Group, Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners.
The Chicken Fries campaign seeks to emulate two successful efforts last year in which Crispin Porter used some nontraditional media, including a Web site called subservientchicken.com, to entice consumers into trying new Burger King chicken items.
