Posts Tagged ‘networking’

Networking & Happy Holidays!

{ December 23, 2008 @ 8:01 am } · { Uncategorized }
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OK, so I haven’t written for over a week!

The Holiday Season puts the best of us behind schedule….

Last week was an eventful one! On Monday, I attended a Web 2.0 Christmas party with my friend Alexi.

web 2.0 treeShe works for Ask.com and gets all the invites to all these web events, which is GREAT for me and Baseball Beauties! This was my first time entering a Web 2.0 world… And it was as foreign to me as it was exciting, there were so many people there and they were speaking in foreign tongues! However I met some nice people who explained things to me and made things more clear. One of the things that I got our of the night was that I had to TWEET and do so IMMEDIATELY! (Because Tweeting is the new hype right now everyone who has anything to say at all is doing it!) As I mentioned before, I created a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/baseballbeauty a few weeks ago, and wasn’t sure what I should be doing with it. That hasn’t changed, I’m still not sure what to do! LOL But I am trying to keep up with my Tweets and hope that if I do at least 5 Tweets a day someone will notice… We’ll see… Nothing that’s worth doing is easy. I also ran into a pair who I met at the Webgrrls X-mas networking party, I guess that the more Networking events you attend the more of the same people you’re going to run into! This is great because this is how you create your network and find your connectors! I’m going to meet Cheryl, who I met a the Webgrrls event for coffee on Wednesday and she is going to help me organize the Baseball Beauties top page!

On Tuesday night Nick and I stopped by another Web 2.0 party, this one was hosted by none other then Microsoft itself! Microsoft BizSpark was the name of the team that was hosting this event http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/

The event took place in the Carnelian Room in San Francisco and was VERY crowded and LOTS of FUN! They were serving free alcohol and appetizers. I met a couple of interesting people there and once again ran into some regulars 🙂

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It is too bad that BizSpark only support start-ups that are involeved in software development. Baseball Beauties is definetly not a software developing kind of a company! But I am sure that there are other groups which support Web 2.0 start-ups which Baseball Beauties can be a part off.

Networking is what it’s all about when it comes to any business, it is the best way to meet people who can help you! It takes about 6-7 degrees of separation to get to any person. For example, if you’re looking to meet Obama, chances are that you will know someone, who will know someone who will be able to set up a meeting (of coarse there will be a few more degrees of separation than just 2, but you get the picture)

If you’re wondering what to wear to a networking party, I found this great sample outfit for us ladies!

networking-outfit-1It’s very stylish, but simple and elegant at the same time. You don’t want to look over dressed or under dressed. Dark denim jeans, heels, sweater and a bold necklace are OK too! A little more casual and/or dressy than a job interview. You never know who you’re going to run into, so be prepared and make sure that you stock up on those business cards!

On to the other topic. On Thursday I had my first meeting with Deographics and we went over all 40 + wire-frames that they created so far. There will be lots more to come! At least another 20… It was really helpful to talk to Nate and see what their vision was and input my ideas into the frames as well. I had some minor changes and we notices a few things missing, but overall everything looked great!

They added a really neat feature to the member’s pages (I can’t recall it’s name). When you need to update your info, you will not actually need to leave your home page. The “changes” screen will pop up and the home page turns Grey. All you have to do is change your info, click OK and it will desepear bringing you back to your home page. (Maybe this isn’t anything new, but I haven’t seen anything like it and it looked pretty cool :)) They’re going to start designing the top page this week! YAY!  Im looking forward to seeing it and posting it on here for you to see!

Only 2 days left before Christmas!

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Happy Holidays and I will put something up between Christmas and New Years, and wait there is my Birthday too! SO MUCH going on!!!

RIP Betty Page

{ December 13, 2008 @ 11:41 am } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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I was very sad when I heard that the Queen of Pin-up passed away 😦 Arguably Betty Page laid the foundation of the sexual era in America.

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She was one of the reasons why I got interested in pin-up style pictures. When thinking about Baseball Beauties, Betty was always in the back of my mind. She died at the ripe age of 85, she had a FULL and VERY EXCITING life and it will be remembered! She was one of the first Playboy centerfolds and a good friend of Hugh Hefner. He said: “Betty Page was one of Playboy Magazine’s early playmates and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion. Her passing is very sad.” Rest In Peace Betty! Her legend will never die, and I think that it’s awesome to be remembered as someone who was such a HUGE part of the American sexual era. Did I mention that Betty LOVED shoes?

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Yes, she had a shoes fetish 🙂 don’t all women have that??? Oh wait, it’s probably just Betty, SJP and I… LOL I’m sad because I didn’t get a chance to meet her and listen to all the stories she had to tell. Ones Baseball Beauties is up and running we will do a Betty Page tribute in 2009.

I have been mentioning that Amy and I are going to start recording our weekly Baseball Beauties Viriety Show. And yesterday we finally went into details and figured out out how to start our first show. Its always the most difficult to start something, no matter what it is (a paper or an exercise program) but once you get into it, things flow smoothly after you get over that initial HUMP. We are going to record our first show this coming week. The show is going to be only 2 minutes in length (because MOST people won’t watch anything longer than 2 minutes!) and in our first segment we’re going to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about the show and what it’s going to be about. Sounds SIMPLE right? Not really, because it’s going to take sometime to figure out what exactly we’re going to say in those 2 minutes, which is barely any time at all!!! Ahhhhhhhhh! Maybe we’ll increase it to 5 minutes and those of you who REALLY want to see it will watch our show till the end and the rest of you lazy people who can’t get through more than 2 minutes of film shouldn’t be watching it anyways! There….

Eventually, we’re going to have local guests and friends and Beauties themselves come on our show, we will primarily talk about baseball and what’s going on with Baseball Beauties in general (highlights from this BLOG) Once our cartoon artist is finished with an int-ro and out-ro for out show it will be up 🙂

I even bout a Flip MinoHD Camcorder to use for taping and just taking it with us when we go to different events.

upload_photoIt’s pretty cool because they let you decorate your Camcorder. So, I decorated ours with one of the Baseball Beauties Logos (the one with a red heel stepping on a baseball)

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Its going to be great to be able to get HD footage on such a tiny device. Although it only holds 60 minutes of footage on it’s hard drive that should be plenty for clips and memos. Look for more videos in my BLOG soon 🙂

This week I finally joined Webgrrls, I payed their $150 yearly fee and got a membership card. I’m looking forward to going to all of their Networking events! Nelly, who runs their NYC chapter is such a sweet person, she posted some pictures up on Facebook and tagged me in some of them. I also thought that it was cool that they chose to use my quote on their even page on top: http://www.webgrrls.com/sanfrancisco-ca/articles/2008-12-03_287.php

It says that I’m the “Founder” of Baseball Beauties, which I thought was kinda cool  🙂 I am indeed the founder, seeing it in print sort of puts a stamp on it and makes it OFFICIAL.

This week I also attended the FIDM Alumni event with Elena. That was fun! I met a real nice lady named Hanzel, who does social networking consulting and is also a big part of http://www.ladieswholaunch.com/ This is a great website for women with businesses. So I am going to look into it further this coming week.

FIDM Networking EventFIDM Alumni did a great job putting this event together. They served all ORGANIC food (which was Yummy) donated 2$ from every drink to charity and had a Christmas tree which was going to charity too. It was a pleasant evening and it was nice to spend some time with my friends. Lets see what this next week brings to the Baseball Beauties table!

Baseball Beauties News… Friday Blues…

{ December 5, 2008 @ 10:19 am } · { Baseball Beauties News }
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I just read that WordPress updated their look, but I didn’t expect it to look so different! I’m a bit overwhelmed and hope that I’ll be able to figure out how to use these new features….

Since writing a little bit on Tuesday, I have lots of exciting Baseball Beauties news to tell! 🙂

One very important thing that I learned this week was that “Less is MORE”. I’m talking about the overall design of the members pages of our website. They are going to be very simple and easy to use. I mean, look at Twitter! It’s as simple as they come and extremely popular and fun to use. And a BIG part of the reason for Twitter’s popularity is it’s “Less is MORE” design concept. I buy it!

I just received the Members wire-frames, all 20 of them! That is actually not that many considering. I wouldn’t be surprised if MySpace had about 500-1000 wire-frames for their members section, but as I said before, “Less is MORE” in our book.  Check out what a sample Baseball Beauties Member’s Page will look like bellow:

members-profile-visitor2

It’s tough to imagine what it’s REALLY going to look like, but this gives you a rough idea. Member’s picture is going to be round like a baseball and will be on the left hand side. Member’s favorite teams (you will be able to pick up to 3 of your favorite MLB teams to be displayed on your top page) will be bellow and that is where you will find your 9 top friends (inspired by the 9 innings of the baseball game!) Groups and photos will be bellow on the left hand side and all your comments will be on the right hand side right bellow your info.

A little different from Facebook and Myspace but a typical social network layout. Again, this is just a wire-frame and we will be adjusting it as we test it and go along with the rest of the site.

I will be adding more sample wire-frames along with some sample design layouts as we go along, until the LAUNCH in April 2009.

My partner in crime Amy and I attended the Webgrrls Networking Christmas Party this Wednesday night. We had such a great time! We met so many nice people and got lots of new ideas about new Marketing platforms. The food was yummy and we got some nice wine to along with it. I would defiantly recommend going, if you haven’t already! Networking is the BEST way to stay connected and meet people that can help you out with your business. They also had some giveaways, but of course we didn’t win anything 😦  I never win anything and Amy said that she doesn’t either… Oh Well!

We collected a good amount of business cards and by the end of the night, I ran out of Business Cards! Oh NO! I will be more prepared next time. Speaking of business cards, I just ordered some for Amy (she is going to be a permanent member of our team, and needs some pretty business cards to give out) I always get complements on how cute our business cards are.

They look like one of our Logos with information bellow the http://www.baseballbeauties.com part. They come on real nice vintage looking paper 🙂 Thank you Elena for designing them!

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I think that a business card tell a lot about your business, it’s an old school way to stay connected. The morning after the party I went on Facebook and found most of the people who we met the night before and befriended them 🙂 The WEB, what a wonderful way to stay connected!

On a final note, Nick started a Baseball Beauties Mens BLOG yesterday: http://baseballbeautiesmen.wordpress.com/

After exchanging several e-mails with his buddies, Nick decided that they have to change the name to GUYS from MEN, I guess that MEN sounds way too stiff…. I thought that it was perfect for the pin-up 40s-50s era, there were no GUYS back then, there were MEN!!! MEN!! MEN!! Highly mannered ones at that!

Never the less, check out the BLOG, it’s highly technical and too advanced for my knowledge of baseball, but MEN usually follow that technical stuff, while WOMEN love the game itself.

Somewhere Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday

{ November 29, 2008 @ 12:30 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Gobble! Gobble!

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Alright… I was just consuming my Thanksgiving leftovers, and I actually think that they get better the next day and even better the day after (as long as they smell OK, they’re OK to eat! At least that’s the way I look at left overs, the only exception to that rule is fish and milk products)

This is the 1st day in the last 4 that I got back to work and am vigorously trying to catch up on everything that I missed. So far, I didn’t really miss anything that important since it was Thanksgiving and all (people were stuffing their faces and the ones who weren’t pigging out were sleeping off their hangovers and were stuck in food comas for the last few days…)

803-thanksgiving-dinner

The Holidays are GREAT!

BTW, (that’s not my actual plate, I found it in Google Images… My family has WAY nicer plates than that!) I thought that the picture speaks louder than words, it’s giving me a stomach ache!

I had a nice Thanksgiving 🙂

Thanksgiving is not just 1 day, it’s more like 6 days, almost a whole week. It starts of on Wed (many people take that day off) and go out at night. MY bf and I met up with some friends at Noonans (a local BAR/RESTAURANT) and had a decent time, the place closed at 12pm! WTF!!! All the other bars had lines going out their door.. (what can you expect for Marin, it’s a family place…) I had one too many Vodka Tonics… Likely I didn’t get sick, which is not too surprising, I hardly ever get sick and have NEVER EVER had a hangover! I know…. It’s nice 🙂 I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t get them. LUCKY ME! Maybe I just haven’t gotten wasted enough to get one (however there have been a few pretty crazy nights in my life) Im not a big drinker in general, 1-3 is PLENTY for me.

Furthermore, the next day of Thanksgiving is Thursday. This is the day that you spend time with your friends and family. My bf and I went to my parents house. It was probably the best Thanksgiving dinner that my mom has ever made! My family moved to the US from Russia in 1995 and we have become accustomed to all of the American traditions over the years. But this year her Turkey was delicious (thanks to my bf’s Nick’s recepe) My parents are also BIG on sweets and tea (this was my favorite part of the dinner and STUFFING!)

Then we go into BLACK FRIDAY…

black-friday-walmart1

Believe it or not, this was my 1st year ever participating in this craze, technically I only shopped for 30 minutes and stood in line for 20 min (not too bad) One of my favorite stores, BEBE was having a $29 (On average priced $79 each) for ALL their TOPS sale from 8-11am, so I figured that Ill go and see if I like anything. Sure enough, I walked out of there with 6 tops and 2 pairs of earrings… What can I say, it was fun! 🙂 The thrill of it all! I think that’s why people go to all these HUGE SALES, for the THRILL and NOTHING BUT THE THRILL!

Then we have the Thanksgiving weekend, when people go out and get their X-mas trees and do some more shopping and sleeping and eating.

Finally there is the after Thanksgiving CYBER MONDAY (this is a dangerious one for me) I love on-line shopping! People sit in their cubicles and SHOP till they drop! No worries, my personal X-mas gift list is FULL and Im not going to shop for myself for a while… Im dead serious!!! STAY AWAY FROM ME CYBER MONDAY!!!

On Tusday people go back to their normal lives, till Christmas!

As far as Baseball Beauties is concerned, I made a little bit of progress. I made some good contacts and also bought some tickets for Amy and I to attend a Networking group on Wednesday in San Francisco. It’s called, Webgirrls International (a network for women who started on-line businesses) perfect for us. Ill update you how that went on Thursday.

Deographics (our web guys) have been lagging on their response time, but I am going to let it go this time. It was Thanksgiving after all! Ill see how they do when the Holiday season is done and over with.

And the “Mashable” newsletter which I read everyday, made me realize that I need to start Tweeting! So I will get on that this week.

For a closing note…

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My Lily and Bebe (Doggies) wouldn’t just wait and examine the Turkey leg like that. They would snatch it and run as fast as they could!!!