After Drop Off

Launch of DailyLit's Externship Projects

Here’s what I posted earlier today on the DailyLit blog:

I’ve always been a believer in internship and externship programs, particularly since I’ve been lucky enough in my own life to have greatly benefited from strong and supportive mentors.

We’ve started mentoring others here at DailyLit through both an internship and externship program.  It’s been wonderful to see the passion, insights and dedication that interns and externs have brought to DailyLit.  And these programs wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the programs’ overseers, Maggie Hilliard and Laura Kelly.

Today marks the launch of the initial projects from our DailyLit Extern Program.  We created this Externship Program for those interested in learning the digital publishing space – and there were only so many interns we could have working in our office at one time.  There were also a number of talented people working at large and small publishing houses who didn’t have the opportunity to learn the digital space in their current jobs. Incredibly talented people eager to learn was a resource we were eager to tap into.  And their projects show this talent.  For externs to complete their projects, they needed to dive into the world of social media, tap into on-line communities, start a blog and begin to tweet.  They also learned the basics of HTML (we gave them an introductory HTML class). The final projects are being launched on DailyLit.

You’ll see the fruits of the first externship projects – “Authors in the Kitchen” by Megan Halpern here, and “The Ghost in the Pantry” by Erin Ferretti-Slattery here. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating these externs on a job well done.

And I hope others will follow suit by starting their own mentoring programs.

Plan B

I’ve been asked by the Scarsdale Adult School to participate on a panel this evening entitled “Plan B” – for those interested in finding a job or switching careers.  It’s free for those interested in attending. 

Thought I’d jot down some of my thoughts in preparation for the panel:

First, it’s been clear that throughout my life I’ve had many different jobs/careers and continue to reinvent myself.  I’ve been an attorney, a coat check girl at Restaurant Daniel, led a bicycle tour through France, taught English as a second language, worked at Random House, been a literary agent and now am an entrepeneur that’s created and run a company – DailyLit – that’s delivered over 25 million book installments.   So, if this panel is about Plan B – I’m probably on to Plan M or N!  Figuring out what you want to do in life is a continuing process.

-Second, if you’re trying to figure out what it is you want to do, you (meaning all of us) need to get yourself out there and be consistently pursuing your career as you’ve probably done in your home, raising your kids and with your first career.  I’ve found a helpful tool in this transition is to buy a simple, small notebook that you can carry around with you.  Every day, I’ve made sure to do at least 10 things to pursue my career.  I literally list them 1 by 1 and at the end of the day, there needs to be 10 on my list.  I start with folks I know – a call to an old friend counts, an email to a former colleague, breakfast with a neighbor, dinner with my brother.  It all counts.  If you don’t know what you want to do (I didn’t at various stages of my life), I’d ask each one of them to tell me whom they know who does the most interesting things – who’s the happiest.  And whoever sounded interesting, I’d ask my friend to make an introduction.  In fact, with each person I meet, I ask them to introduce me to at least 3 people they know.  If there’s a particular area of interest, then I focus on that area.  But careful not to think too narrowly.  I make sure to follow up with each of those people with an email, phone call, and, hopefully a meeting.  You’ll find getting to 10 each day really isn’t that difficult.

-Third, we have opportunities now in social networking that we’ve never had before.  This is a place where each of us can excel and build up a following in a particular area so that we become experts.  It may sound daunting, but if you start slowly — reading other people’s blogs, following others on Twitter, you’ll get the hang of it. And once you’re ready, start a blog (Tumblr is an easy tool to do that).  Start tweeting on Twitter.  And join Facebook.  I’m sure your kids, husband or neighbors can help you get started – mine sure have!

Finally, think about interning or externing at a company that works in an area you’re interested in.  For instance, at DailyLit, the company I run, I got an email out of the blue from a woman I had met a year or two earlier who said she wanted to volunteer her time to help us, and in exchange, get in experience in social media and digital publishing.  It was smart of her and great for us. 

That’s probably all I’ll have time to discuss, but I hope these  few nuggets may help you:

1. Get a notebook and list 10 things you do every day

2. Establish yourself as an expert in your field by being active in social media (a blog, Twitter, Facebook)

3. Think about interning or externing in your field of interest.  And if anyone is interested in social media or digital publishing, we have spots open this fall at Dailylit (we’re based in Mamaroneck, NY).  

Good luck!

Our Kids’ Digital Futures

A friend asked me recently what she should do to secure her child’s digital future. 

Here’s one thing we’ve done:

We’ve reserved our kids’ domain names (as we’ve done for our own names).  So I’ve reserved “www.susandanziger.com” for myself, and I’ve done the same for each of our children (Michael, Katie, and Peter).  The reason this is important is because when someone does a search on Google, it values highly whether that name is part of the domain name.  So when a search is done on Peter, for instance, we know that by reserving his domain name, he’ll be able to control (or at least be in a good position to control) what’s first seen about him. Now it’s true he’s only 7 years old, but as he gets older, applies to schools, starts looking for a job or wants to make a name for himself in a particular field, people will look at his digital presence to see what he’s accomplished.    We certainly wouldn’t want someone else who has a complaint about Peter (not that that would ever happen!) to be what first comes up about him on a search.   This may not seem that important now, but in the future, this will be critical.  I can only imagine how upset Peter would be if we didn’t reserve his name when it was still available. With Godaddy, it’s relatively inexpensive (e.g. $9.99 a year).  In fact, I’ve heard of people who will check to see if the domain name is available before they name their child at birth.

Oh, and I’ve done the same with registering our kids’ names on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  

Raising Digital Kids

We’ve had a lot of fun with the kids (now 7, 9, and 9 – yes, twins!) helping them learn the computer space.  A number of folks have asked me what they’d recommend for computer programs/tools to give their kids exposure to the digital world.

 Here’s what we’ve done that’s been helpful for us:

-Scratch: this is a program that the MIT media lab created that lets kids program very simply by attaching building blocks that direct particular actions.  Scratch is a great program that’s really easy for the kids (My 7 year old, Peter, even managed it when he was 6).

-Tumblr: each of our kids keeps a tumblog on Tumblr that’s basically a scrapbook of images, videos, websites they like, comments and sophisticated critiques like “ahhhh, isn’t this bunny cute?”  Every day they add just a little bit to it.  And the great thing is that we can “follow” them on our own blogs.

-My 9 year old (Michael) worked with my husband to create his own website by using TextEdit.  They then used heyzap (which is a widget) to import 1500 games onto his website (boy was he psyched!).  Now, he uses Tumblr to critique the heyzap games on his website.

-My 9 year old daughter (Katie) loves to use KeyNote for a scrapbook (it’s a more kid-friendly version of Powerpoint.)  We downloaded KeyNote for her (it costs a bit of money), but she’s thrilled with it.  She used it in school and loves that images she imports can do cool things like fade in and out while emitting sparkles.

-My 7 year old son, Peter, loves the Flipcam we just got.  He can manage it himself, take videos, and I believe even uploads the video himself onto the computer.  Michael and Katie are planning to make a movie this summer using the Flipcam (Michael wants to direct, Katie wants to be the leading lady!)

-Michael has also started to learn HTML, a little at a time, using the tools on w3schools.  In fact, I’m going to start teaching myself HTML from the w3schools tutorial as well.

Oh, and just for the record, we all gather together every night for reading time (with physical books).  

Sliding -- or rather crashing! -- into the new year...

I wrote this first entry a few days ago from the Dolomites (Italian Alps):

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already December 31^st.  This year has really flown.  It’s a bummer that I just busted my knee (tobogganing down a slippery, steep slope, supposedly taking a break from skiing).  In any case, I’m determined not to let this get to me.  In fact, there’s a real lesson in here to not let small obstacles prevent me from tackling the bigger issues.

Some new year’s resolutions:

To engage my children in making them more socially conscious and help them cultivate their own interests by focusing their energies.

To continue to get more involved in social media and learn as much as I can about what’s going on in the digital space. 

To make DailyLit (www.dailylit.com) even better and make it an ultimate destination to bring great stories and knowledge to the world, one day at a time. 

Goodbye, 2008!   Cheers – to a great 2009!

-SVD