The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.
I am so grateful that I felt compelled to pen this email to the reporters at FiveThirtyEight.com, praising them for their work on the Live Blog that has been my mainstay these past few days. I thought they deserved public recognition (such as it is on this badly-neglected site), so I’m reprinting it here.
I’m sure I’m not the first person you’ve heard of adopting a standing desk, but there’s likely still more to learn. Everyone’s different, after all. Maybe I’ve experienced something that will help you in your own ergonomic working endeavors.
When I was in journalism graduate school at Columbia — one of the most intense periods of my life, work-wise — I experienced carpal tunnel syndrome for the first time. When I visited a doctor to get treatment, he talked about the perils of being a desk jockey and even said that people who sat all day at a keyboard should do strength-training to enable them to handle the rigors.
Since then, we’ve seen study after study determine that sitting all day is “the new smoking,” leading to early adopters experimenting with treadmill desks, standing desks, sit/stand desks, etc. One thing I’ve learned in reading their accounts is that people’s bodies really aren’t meant to STAND all day, either. Therefore, I determined to try a set-up that allowed me to switch positions — not to mention walk around a bit — throughout the day. [Read more…] about My Standing Desk Initiative
I arrived home last night this morning after a whirlwind beginning to the conference season — starting with SXSW Interactive, which had to be interrupted midstream for a trip to San Jose for our company’s own conference, SMX West.
I don’t know what it was about this year’s show — maybe our inaugural Marketing Land Digital Marketing Summit — but I came away from the show with such a good feeling. I loved socializing with people, meeting columnists I hadn’t met before in person, and seeing long-time industry friends again. Additionally, the panelists for the sessions I moderated did such a good job and had such interesting and valuable things to share.
So I thought I’d take the opportunity to share the live blogs and slides from my sessions here.
“Life After Not Provided” explored the options for measuring success (and fixing problems) in a world where we no longer have access to keyword data in analytics platforms.
“Pro-Level Tips For Succeeding At Retargeting” covered a few different approaches and platforms (Google search, GDN, FSLA, FBX and a technique that uses LinkedIn) to successful retargeting.
I’m both pleased and sad to have said goodbye today to my tenure as a Federated Media employee. I’d been at the company since 2006 — I was employee 18 — and I’ve watched the company grow from a scrappy start-up to a seasoned professional organization. It’s been quite a ride and I’ve met some amazing folks along the way that I hope will be friends for a long time to come.
And now it’s time for a new adventure. I’m going back to my first love, journalism, and will be joining Third Door Media — publisher of Search Engine Land and producer of the SMX Conferences. I will be Executive Features Editor of the just-launched-in-beta Marketing Land, which will follow the SEL model but expand into a wide variety of disciplines in digital marketing — with a heavy dose, at the start, of social media marketing. I’ll also be writing news here and there for both Marketing Land and Search Engine Land.
I’m thrilled to be working with such a great group of people at Third Door, many of whom I worked with back in the day. And I’m especially excited to start my full-time work with them at the SMX Social Media conference in Scottsdale, which starts on Monday.
All this to say that I hope I see some of you at the conference, and at future conferences! Meanwhile, I bid a fond farewell to the great crew at FM, who I know are bound for bigger adventures themselves. Maybe in my new gig I’ll even have more to say on this very-neglected spot in the blogosphere. We’ll see…
Hi, folks. Have had some technical problems on The River, and am just now getting around to letting you know I’m now back in the journalism game, covering search marketing at Search Engine Land as a contributing editor (read: part time). I’m still working in business development for Federated Media, as well. Just wanted you to know where you can visit me when I’m not here.