Connie Bensen

How often do you pause & look back on the path that brought you to where you’re at? Do you assess the challenges that you overcame or feel thankful for the events that brought you to this point?

People around me realize pretty quickly that I’m high energy & that I’m always planning, doing & evaluating. But I do have reflective moments too. Yesterday morning our lake was starting to freeze over & I wanted to share this photo. It is a reminder that Minnesota is heading into winter. (But we really don’t slow down – we just move faster!)

So what was I thinking about?

My new job as Community Manager with ACDSee

• 7 weeks in & I’m really enjoying the challenges that I create
  • that sounds odd, but I am creating my own work!
• the ACDSee team is supportive across all levels & I’m learning a lot!
• working remotely has tech challenges, but I’m enjoying it
  • (now that I have Outlook in my own timezone, it really helps! *grin*)
  • being self-motivated makes it easy to get things done
  • have a routine now for working projects, email & phone calls
• lots of phone conference calls isn’t ideal, but I’m adjusting
  • they do allow me to multitask which would be difficult in-house

Networking & blogging

• This blog has only been up 2 months & it seems like ages!
  • thank you to all of my readers! you totally make my day!!
  • 62 posts with 133 comments
  • I’m addicted to blogging & writing to 3

Loving Twitter & Facebook – invaluable!

• • my network continues to grow
    • follow me on Twitter & I’ll follow you back
    • add me in Facebook
  • it’s incredibly stimulating to exchange ideas & learn
  • interviewed by 3 people writing books – cool, huh?

Speaking at the Facebook conference in less than a month!

• • yikes! I need to plan what I’m going to wear – soon!
  • but excited to meet people in real life

Have a weekly routine now

• Because my husband works weekends, we needed a plan
• Monday nights we go out for dinner, groceries & 99 cent movies
• This allows us to have food in the house
  • Who needs to eat when I’m loving my work?
  • I do like to cook, so the hurdle is just to buy it

Anticipating travel – which is my dream

• Upcoming trip to ACDSee home offices in Victoria, BC
  • We’ll be taking a roadtrip this time exploring the island
• Conference in Seattle – I’m looking forward to the great food!
• Phoenix, AZ in January – Grand Canyon & a hot air balloon ride
• CHA in Anaheim in February – the BIG trade show!
  • ACDSee will be networking with digiscrappers & magaziene editors
• Europe in late spring – should it be London/Paris or Norway/Sweden?

This is an incredible adventure. I can’t use past tense because I don’t view it as over yet – in fact I feel like it’s just beginning which is very exciting. I am SO thankful for all of you who have supported me, encouraged & inspired me! Please let me know what I can do for you?

That sounds odd because why would anyone purposefully ineffectively network?! That’s the main criticism of social networking sites though – people add friends & then say, nothing’s happening. Well, there’s more to it than just clicking ‘approved’ for a friend request.

What needs to happen next if you’re going to effectively network:

1. Get Involved – if you don’t nothing will happen – no matter the platform, you need to participate!

• on blogs – comment
• Facebook – if they added you, write on their wall or send a message, a nice little note of thanks. I do it immediately & have it correspond to their reason for the invitation to add
• Twitter – I publicly welcome @them

2. Check in periodically – connect for whatever reason is applicable

• usually my connection happens immediately (that happened today); it’s a result of browsing their Facebook profile or commenting on their Twitter bio info.
• Drop a note to ask how things are going? not only when you need something (it’s not all about you)
• Provide value to your network – consider what you can do for them?
• Participate in groups – you’ll be surprised when you start seeing the same people

3. Participate on their blogs, networks, etc – oh! this was #1

My philosophy is that participation & showing interest is key. How do you feel when others enquire about things that interest you? An excellent example is the meme that Jeremiah started on Social Media Snacking. When I saw that I was tagged, it was late, but I took a few minutes to post my response. Who would’ve known that the meme would become so viral? The names kept being added to it. People from all over the world have responded (I tagged two in Singapore) & I saw a post by a friend from Greece.

Brian Solis writes about snacking, but it summarized my thoughts here too.

There’s a shift taking place in how certain groups of people discover and share information, and if you’re in the world of publishing, marketing, or sales, you should probably pay attention. With every new channel that gains momentum, a new bridge can also be built between you, peers, and your customers to foster healthy and dynamic communities based on conversations and relationships.

And you’re saying to yourself, that takes time. Yes, I agree it does. But isn’t that the point? To get to know people, you need to interact in a genuine way. The result is huge though. Having a network (community if you will) of people who trust your opinion & know that you’ll help them is invaluable.

If you are a friend first, then it will come back. My UK Twitter friend, Nik Butler, posted a Social Startup Pack for Twitter & I was humbled to see my name on the list. That’s a good place to start if you’re interested in Twitter.

Feel free to add me on Facebook too. And if you’re hesitant about networking, I posted awhile ago about Overcoming Social Network Shyness. Start there & ease yourself in.

Maybe it’s a result of being a librarian for almost a decade but I have a fairly low tolerance for disorganization. This isn’t to say that I never become disorganized, but I’ve learned that being highly organized is key to working efficiently! I love to multitask & my organization systems allow me to do that happily.

Everyone once in awhile the intense desire to organize strikes me! It’s not a bad thing because I know that after an hour or two of focused effort my work areas will be much greatly improved. Once I’m done it’s like a breath of fresh air for my mind!

I’m curious to hear how you stay organized? Do you have a system? or do you just leave things to fate? I have been working from home & that has affected the high level of organization & routines I had developed at the library. But here’s what I need to do:

Evernote – I absolutely LOVE this free desktop organizer! I can drag URL’s & images into this so fast & it makes them hotlinks for future reference. It’s category structure is the same as ACDSee’s & allows one to tag entries & then just click on a category to pull only those entries. The secret is to periodically go thru & tag. And I put my to-do’s in there also. Now it’s fun to go back & delete the items that are completed.

Copernic – This is fast becoming one of my most valued tools because it’s saving my life (& SO much time!). It’s a free software that catalogs your desktop files & then you can search for an abstract term & it will search all files, images & email. I’m feeding 6 addresses into Thunderbird, so it’s imperative to use this to find things quickly. I don’t have it on my ACDSee laptop yet & I’ve already felt the need!

Outlook (replacing my Palm) – I’m learning to use this. Yes! at 41 I had never used it before. It’s fairly intuitive & I know that once I engage in using the tasks functionality completely I’ll be cruising!

Thunderbird & Firefox – two more essentials! Thunderbird is just my favorite. (did I mention I’m learning Outlook? How did THAT get ahead of these two?! *shock*). I have so many Add-on’s in there (21 – I just counted). And it looks like I need to do some purging there to lighten the load!

New ACDSee laptop with Outlook. It’s pretty blank. So I need to get busy this weekend & add the above items. Evernote is cool because I can transfer the database. I’ve been working on my personal laptop for five weeks so I need to shift some doc’s over too.

Soon I will share a photo of my workspace at home. So how do you stay organized?

• How often do you stop & consciously get organized? or don’t you?
• Does disorganization bother you? a certain level motivates me to action!
• Can you accomplish more if you’re organized? or doesn’t it matter?

The title should probably be “Connie’s random thoughts”. My goal today was to get my email under control & reply to comments on this blog. I did get a fair amount done, but certainly am not finished.

Organizing – In the past 10 years I’ve learned the value of purging & getting organized before starting a new project. Working at a library taught me the value of having some sets of operating standards. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could tolerate only so much chaos on my desk. At home we also have a standard for our living areas.

In the past two weeks though, my email had gotten out of hand. I must be more careful moving forward to keep ahead of it. I swear that being active in social networks is like spamming yourself! I could turn the alerts off, but I like getting them. Here are some things that I find helpful in dealing with my email:

• respond immediately as much as possible
• use Thunderbird & forward email to the main accounts that you reply from
• set up folders that make sense to you & use filters to send regular mail into them
• Copernicus is a cool app that searches my desktop – it’s a great timesaver when I’ve forgotten where I stashed something

Blogging - I am SO loving all this blogging! At first I was paralyzed by the concept of three. But each has their own perspective & there’s a bit of cross over of course. My sister helps out with the one on our site & my vision for the ACDSee blog is that more staff & evangelists will get involved. I posted some photos today at ACDSee’s blog.

I find writing very therapeutic so this is a great way to express myself. I look forward to getting a few blog posts written in advance. When I saw Jeremiah O’s explanation of that, it made total sense! And when I did it for awhile it worked great! I love how Twitter results in a number of links to respond to. And I look forward to returning to reading blogs on a regular basis.

Do you like my buttons below each post? My sister has been doing her magic again. She’s amazing!

How do you keep ahead of your email & blogging?