Continuing Education

American Advertising Federation Asheville

Posted by Megan Jonas On November 20, 2015

When I moved to Asheville, one of the things I worried about was finding a fantastic community of professionals, like the one I had in Washington, D.C.

I was a pretty regular attendee of events hosted by the Online News Association in D.C. and loved the inspiration and camaraderie I got from that group. Of course, our community was huge in D.C. (note the specialized nature of the group) and I knew that I wouldn’t have quite that size group here in Asheville.

But last year, I found the American Advertising Federation of Asheville, and felt some of the elements I was looking for. This year, I’m serving as the Education Chair for the group, which gets me involved in board meetings and other decisions. We’re a small group, but we host great programs and social events.

Being the education chair has allowed me to meet with students at the local colleges in the area and hear from them what they want in a professional group following college. We are hoping to attract some of these students to the group and need to provide networking events and interesting programming to do so.

Our challenge this year is membership and attendance, since our group is small and new, but I hope we continue to grow and provide great programming for the year to come. If you want more information on the group, check out the American Advertising Federation of Asheville and come to an event!

Keeping up with the cutting edge

Posted by Megan Jonas On November 18, 2015

One of the things I’m loving about self-employment is the opportunity to continuously learn new things. From changing technologies, to new projects, it seems like every week presents a challenge that I have never conquered before.

Last week, I worked my way through some social media best practices courses that served as a refresher course for me as I launch into a social media project for a client. This one in particular from Hootsuite has a series of videos and quizzes that help you work through the changing landscape of social media.

It was great for two reasons:

I refreshed my knowledge, staying up-to-date on the latest best-practices for social media
And, it reminded me of the items that I needed to describe to the client to get the best elements for their profiles and posts

Now that I’m working for myself, doing these kinds of things can be hard. While I’m running through these courses, those are not “billable hours” for me. But it improves my work across many clients and lets me reset my brain for new projects.

How about you? How do you balance the need to do continuing education and research with the need to create billable work?

Social Media for Open Source Communities

Posted by Megan Jonas On November 16, 2015

This is the final post in a series of nine posts on the All Things Open 2015 conference I attended in Raleigh in mid-October. For more information on the conference, along with videos and slides from the presenters, check out the conference website.

For a community that prides itself on “openness” and “collaboration,” the open source community does not always readily embrace social media as a means to promote their projects and get people involved.

Rikki Endsley, from OpenSource.com, gave a quick rundown of best practices for all social media, and some of the key platforms in particular.

For those of us that do this for a living, her tips were not groundbreaking, but it’s always nice to get a quick refresher course on what we should be doing to promote our projects.

Her key takeaways were:

Send out Relevant, Interesting, Accurate Information
Know who your audience is
Craft your text
Use hashtags
Avoid PR Speak
Numbers do well
Ask questions
Images are very important
Retweet, Respond, Reshare, Reply

I think even experience social media professionals can use this refresher course from time to time, and it was an excellent way to talk about how Open Source communities can get out of their small bubble and welcome more people in, which was, after all, the point of the conference.

Community Without Code

Posted by Megan Jonas On November 11, 2015

This is the seventh in a series of nine posts on the All Things Open 2015 conference I attended in Raleigh in mid-October. For more information on the conference, along with videos and slides from the presenters, check out the conference website.

In the final session on the first day, I attended a speech about how to contribute to the open source community without being a coder. This was not exactly what the speaker talked about, but it was interesting anyway.

He spoke in completely plain language about contributing to any open source project, including what first timers needed to know about GitHub. In addition, he recommended that non-coders use social media and blogs to promote projects that work, and that meetups and conferences were great ways to get involved.

If I have one criticism of the conference, it was that their “101” track still supposed that we were all hard-core back end developers with massive experience in the open source community. Hopefully next year, they’ll take the “101” idea to the next level and encourage speakers to develop sessions for those of us who really are beginners.

Don’t Always Do The Easy Things First

Posted by Megan Jonas On July 10, 2015

Like any web developer just starting out, sometimes I have days where it seems like nothing works. Today is one of those days. I have one site where all of the out of the box solutions are failing in one way or another, forcing me to dig into code that I had no intention of changing. I have another site where, try what I may, I can’t seem to access the FTP servers. I have googled. I have changed settings. I have contacted support at the hosting company. Nothing is working.

On days like today, my inclination is to set these items aside and do the “easy” things first. Starting new projects, writing blog posts (procrastination alert!), and sending emails sounds like a better option than trying to figure out these issues.

But it’s not always a great idea to set aside the hard things. They need to get figured out at some point and that point needs to be soon for at least one of those sites. So I will continue to plug away at these issues and hopefully at least one of them will get solved.

#TBT: The Last Time I Was Unemployed

Posted by Megan Jonas On July 9, 2015

The last time I was unemployed was when I returned to Washington, D.C., after finishing grad school in Chicago. This was a weird time in my life. I had left a great job to get my master’s degree in journalism, and then returned to Washington, where I thought I had a great network of contacts, excellent, well-connected references, and a shiny new degree that would certainly lead to the job and career path of my dreams. Right?

Fast forward two months and I have worn out my welcome at every guest room, couch, and floor of my friends and friends of friends. I have sent out maybe 50 resumes with no response. I have had coffees, dinners, lunches, and happy hours with people who should be able to help me get in touch with people who are looking for someone with “exactly my skillset.” And, to add insult to injury, I have broken my wrist in an ice skating accident.

So… sitting on a friend’s couch in Oakton, Va., eating bite sized foods, I did what I had to do. I emailed my former employer to see if there was any work that would be a good fit for me and my new skills. They knew I hadn’t intended to come back, I knew I hadn’t intended to come back. But there was a job available, and the pay was good. So back I went.

And I got great experience. And I learned a lot of things about a lot of things. But the most important thing I learned is that I will do whatever needs to be done to make it on my own. And if I hadn’t ended up back at that company, I may never have decided to move to Asheville. And that was one of the best decisions I ever made. So now, when I’m just starting out on this whole self-employed journey, I know I will do whatever I have to do to make it work, and I know I will learn a lot. And most of all, I know it will lead to great things, no matter what.

Posted by Megan Jonas On March 1, 2015

Part of the reason that I love the work that I do is because it is always changing. Just when I think I’ve mastered a technology or a technique, something new comes out that changes everything I know.

Because of this, it is crucially important to refresh my skills from time to time and to learn about new technologies before they become the industry norm.

Now, I was one of those people who loved school. I mean loved it. I went back to school after being out in the workforce for four years because I loved it so much. I loved that so much that after only about three years out, I’m starting to think about going back for a Ph.D. so that I can teach and never leave school again.

How do I maintain this kind of schooling when I’m not formally enrolled in classes? Well, lucky for me there are a number of web-based tools that can help me refresh and expand my technical skills.

Codecademy is a great place to start. It’s also a fun place to go back to when you need a quick refresh on some coding skills. And it’s free.

Lynda.com is a low-cost way to continue to expand my knowledge. I particularly like their “updates” series, which covers just what’s new in updates of software like Adobe Photoshop. And the “Up and Running” series that gives you just enough knowledge of a technology or application to dig in on your own. Lynda now covers everything from Adobe software to strategies and philosophies of design, marketing and more.

Google Developer Tools has a number of high-quality, free tutorials that you can use to learn about web development, Google Analytics, and other products.

And finally, the applications themselves often have extremely good support, documentation, and even interactive tutorials of their own. This is especially true for open source applications like WordPress, but is also true of MailChimp and other proprietary software/web apps.