Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Master Class Format for the Win
Above are the presentation slides for yesterday’s Blogging Master Class. Though they only formed a small part of the course, I fully intended to get them up last night. This was fine in theory, except we retired to the nearest available pub at the conclusion of the day’s proceedings, and after one pint I could no longer feel my face.
In previous incarnations, this would have queued a wild night of drunken antics complete with table top dancing, a shoe left in a gutter, and possibly my knickers left on a lamp post, but I am older, wiser and vastly more tired these days so the only thing is queued was me going to my bed at an hour suitable for very small children.
Lightweight drinking escapades aside, it was a wonderful afternoon and I greatly appreciate the ten nine people who turned up (some after long drives) to be the guinea pigs for the maiden appearance of this course and have their blog posts picked apart by a roomful of weirdos off the internet. Joe Scanlon, Mike and Matt Kane, Julian Alubaidy, Aedan Ryan, Gordon Murray, Ger Hartnett, Keith Shirley, and Linda FitzPatrick all deserve kudos for braving the Master Class format, which is a bit of a scary prospect all on its own. It’s not for the feint of heart – as Joe Scanlon noted in his Twitter stream, “Well that’s my test post fucked out the window.” (That wasn’t quite true, for the record, and he did get points for a hysterical post title.)
But the anonymous feedback forms at the end of the course were spectacular, and the people who left comments all noted that they loved the Master Class format, which I’m completely delighted about.
My one regret was that I fully intended to also have a brainstorming session for topics each business could be covering to appeal to their audiences, and that just slipped my mind when I re-shuffled the running order at the last minute. I’m very sorry about that, so if you attended the course, you can drop me a phone call and I’ll gladly throw some ideas at you if you like.
PS: Cheers for the room rental whip round, guys! For anyone else interested in meeting space in Cork, the Lancaster Lodge is an excellent venue, highly recommended.
03 Dec 2008
| In: Boot Camp |
Arrgh, now I’m even sorrier I missed this one! Come to Dublin missus, I’ll do the leg work if you give the class! Lot of great points there that I’m going to start following. Thanks.
03.12.2008, 10:52 amThanks again Sabrina. It was a great format, even your quick points like “Short paragraphs” (And short posts), never say “I feel”, never say “Feel free to comment” (=needy) were great. Also don’t be selling yourself short on the drinking front – it was a pint AND a half you had :)
03.12.2008, 12:01 pmThanks for a great class Sabrina. It was great to get feedback on our sample posts. I have the notes I took stuck to the wall now to make sure I keep on the straight and narrow, especially to think about the target audience of the particular post and provide resources for them.
03.12.2008, 12:29 pmThank you for the class, which has left me with plenty of food for thought: what did I miss by not going to the pub? Do they think I’m cheap because I somehow dodged the whip-round? How was I supposed to know to fill in the post-mortem form before leaving? and of course all the very cogently put points about effective, streamlined blogging.
03.12.2008, 1:58 pmThanks for the class Sabrina. I really enjoyed it and have taken away lots of food for thought. One of the main takeaways from the class for me was “know your audience”. That mantra has been going around me head since yesterday and it’s certainly making me think about what knda stuff to post on the blog. That and stop “I feel”-ing so much! Good time in the pub too. Maybe your numbness was caused by that stout faux-pas of mixing your drinks (emptying one glass into another). I hope you’ve learnt your lesson!
03.12.2008, 2:39 pmVery interesting class. Most amusing being checklisted for tumbling into the fluffy female (was airhead the word used?) stereotype.
And funny how all the texts/ e-mails i got today from female friends are peppered with ! and … and ones from males aren’t!!
Even more amusing reading the above posts and seeing who else falls into them too!!!
Learned loads, like who Damien Mulley is, what Twitter is and lots of other useful stuff…..lot of fun on the horizon!!!!!!
Sorry, Sabrina couldn’t resist….
03.12.2008, 7:08 pm[...] Dent gave us a master class on blogging yesterday and she has kindly put slides up here. [...]
03.12.2008, 10:04 pmThanks :)
03.12.2008, 10:58 pm[...] drove to Cork yesterday to go to Sabrina Dent’s Blogging Masterclass. This post is about things I learned and some other blogging links I found useful. Now you might be [...]
04.12.2008, 9:47 amCool the trackback stuff worked. Thanks again Sabrina.
04.12.2008, 11:16 am[...] did a great blogging masterclass the other day and her slides are online. I’ve certainly learned a lot from the slides alone. [...]
05.12.2008, 6:28 amAhh, thanks, folks. It was really lovely to see/meet all of you again, and again – you were sincerely very brave. I’m chuffed you found it useful and I really appreciate the feedback.
Sorry I missed this – from the slides and feedback above, it seemed to be great! Hope you’ll be swinging by Dublin at some point…(is that an overuse of ellipses?)
05.12.2008, 11:34 amVery interesting power point. You got a video of the talk?
05.12.2008, 1:28 pm[...] Dent and Niall Harbison (and many others) have many great tips on how to blog. Keep it short is one of my main [...]
14.01.2009, 6:48 pm