Spiders and Bugs: Web Writing and Management

Saturday, February 17, 2006

Today’s effective professional writers use the Internet as both a tool and a marketplace. Learn how at IWOSC’s January Saturday Seminar, when iMedia Editor in Chief Brad Berens discusses writing for the Internet, and Internet marketing expert Cliff Allen speaks about webmastering.

The workshop will cover the differences between writing online and off; site metrics and how they inform editorial decisions; how to design, implement and manage a website; tips on creating a good website; and personalization, e-mail marketing, and data mining. In addition, Berens will talk about iMedia’s current needs and its marketplace for freelancers, including his freelance budget.

Brad Berens is an editor, writer, critic, public speaker, and thinker — mostly about media (new and old), culture (high and low), marketing (traditional and interactive), and how what audiences do with the things they watch have a huge impact on who they are.

Berens is Editor in Chief and the primary content supervisor (and freelancers’ contact) at iMedia, an online trade publication and offline events producer whose business mission is “to advance how interactive media and marketing can — and must — work together.” The internet has changed and will continue to change how audiences behave, and tracking those changes is a big part of what Berens does at iMedia, in his Mediavorous Blog, and in talks he presents all over the country.

Previously, Berens was editor at Earthlink, overseeing the company’s main corporate website redesign and, later, the transitioning of Earthlink’s bLink magazine into eLink, an online newsletter and primary customer touchpoint with a circulation of roughly seven million readers. He has also worked at an innovative but failed dot-com, Lineup Technologies, and was a story analyst in Hollywood for such companies as DreamWorks, CAA, and New Regency. Berens is a bona fide Shakespearean scholar and stage historian with a Ph.D. in English from U.C. Berkeley. “From Shakespeare to the Internet can seem like a crazy transition,” observes Berens. “But when you learn that much of my academic work concerns how Shakespeare invented the modern audience — how he created the way we watch movies, TV and other forms of mass culture today — my career trajectory starts to make a bit more sense.”

Cliff Allen began his computer industry career in 1973 when he left the broadcast industry to start his own software company serving the advertising industry with statistical analysis software used to analyze audience rating data. After selling the company, Allen established a high-tech advertising/PR firm to provide marketing communications services to companies selling software, hardware, electronics, data communications, and telecommunications products. His firm’s high-tech clients included Microsoft and IBM. In 1989 his firm became one of the first marketing consulting companies to use the Internet. Eventually Allen introduced a line of web and e-mail personalization products.

Allen is also an author whose latest book is “One-to-One Web Marketing,” and whose first book was “Web Catalog Cookbook.” He has written a weekly column on “precision marketing” for ClickZ.com, as well as articles for other marketing magazines.

Seminar
Where Do I Put The Apostrophe?

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Even seasoned writing pros sometimes need to brush up on basic grammar and usage – as evidenced by the often-comical mistakes we sometimes see in newspapers and magazines.

Back by popular demand is a seminar on grammar presented by the Independent Writers of Southern California. Seminar leader Flo Selfman, a longtime public relations consultant and IWOSC’s current president, bills herself as a “professional nitpicker” who conducts lively on-site grammar workshops for organizations and companies.

Has the lazy language of e-mail made your professional communications sloppy? Do you agonize every time you prepare an article or a query letter because you’re afraid it contains grammar and punctuation errors? Some of this you may not have learned in school, or you may have forgotten.

Participants will gain grammar confidence in a review of few simple rules that can correct dozens of the most commonly made errors in written and spoken communication. Topics to be covered include:

• 10 common grammar and punctuation errors to avoid
• How to error-proof a manuscript
• Why spell-check isn’t enough (or, when is a rose not a rose?)
• Why grammar and punctuation matter
• My computer has a dictionary; what else do I need?
• Coping with current trends in language
• And more!

The seminar incorporates class exercises and useful handouts, and the opportunity to have grammar, syntax, and punctuation questions answered.

FLO SELFMAN of Selfman & Others Public Relations in Los Angeles is a public relations consultant with more than twenty years experience. She creates and implements PR campaigns for lifestyle companies, festivals and events, theatre productions, and personalities. She also is a consultant on all aspects of publishing, marketing and publicity for self-published authors and small publishing companies. Her press kits and campaigns have received awards. Before entering public relations, Selfman handled viewer relations and audience research for Dinah Shore’s television show, “Dinah’s Place.” An Ohio native, she earned a BA degree in Psychology from UCLA, a California Secondary Teaching Credential, and the Instructor Development Certificate from UCLA Extension.

Ongoing Intensive Writing Workshop
by Oliver Mayer

Oliver Mayer leads an ongoing writing workshop. Playwrights, screenwriters, novelists, poets, short story writers, and journalists were all welcome to start with any next session.

Oliver Mayer is the author of “Blade to the Heat,” which premiered at the Public Theatre, with subsequent productions in San Francisco, Chicago, and Mexico City; “Joe Louis Blues,” which was shown in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta; “Conjunto,” developed at the Sundance Lab and presented at the Mark Taper Forum New Work Festival; “Ragged Time,” a work which has been widely seen and is anthologized in “Out of the Fringe (TC 2000)”; and “Joy of the Desolate,” which premiered in Chicago and was produced at Cal Arts. His other plays include, “The Road to Los Angeles,” “Young Valiant,” “Bold as Love,” “Laws of Sympathy,” “The Righting Moment,” and “Dias y Flores.” Mayer, who is an Assistant Professor of Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California’s School of Theatre, is the recipient of a Gerbode Grant, which he used to write the libretto to “America Tropical,” a new opera composed by David Conte which will premiere in 2006. He is a graduate of Cornell and Columbia Universities, and attended Worcester College, Oxford. His literary archives can be accessed through Stanford University Libraries.

This ongoing workshop was held the second and fourth Tuesday evenings of each month from 7:30 – 9:30 p.m. in Westwood. IWOSC members $30 per month; Non-members: $40 per month.