Sep
15
Marcia Who? And Why the Hoo?
Filed Under Marcia Personal
Marcia who?
First of all, the one who’s blessed to be the proud Mom of Samantha, who helped me get my first Windows computer and got me started on this adventure called the internet. I started net life as an iVillage member with the handle mamafoofoo the first day logged on and in a couple of months began hosting message boards and chats. I haven’t stopped yet, though I did move on from there.
Having begun doing web design and SEO, from iVillage I moved on to WebmasterWorld, where I became the first moderator of Commercial Exchange and then, the first Mod of the WebmasterWorld Community Center when it changed to that from a tech announcement and testing forum. I was an Administrator there as well as one of the Moderators in the Google News Forum for a few years, until stepping down as an Admin last year to lighten the load.
The commitment of being an Admin and moderating three forums, and being possibly over-conscientious about it, had grown to taking an average of 30+ hours a week and it was time for some personal breathing room. I continued on as one of the Moderators of the Google News Forum there, which is busy beyond belief, until the end of June, 2004 when I decided it had become time to resign as a Mod and have a time of personal refreshing, both in terms of time allocation and perspective.
My workload remains heavy and time-consuming, but it’s been a summer of renewed inner strength and peace. I’ve found the time to begin updating my own sites that have been long-neglected, and regained perspective, including a renewed appreciation for my first love when I first began, which was personal websites. There’s something about the “I” of a personal site rather than the “we” of a business site that makes the internet a very enriching experience.
Why the hoo?
The Marcia with almost 7K posts at WebmasterWorld alone at the date of this writing can’t find any of them without remembering part of the posts or exact words and Googling for them, which isn’t easy and doesn’t always work. Not to mention all the other scenes of my crimes called posts at other forums that also can’t be found.
PLUS - and it’s a big plus, if not the biggest one, how about all the great resources, articles, papers and forum discussions out there that can’t be found again either? Like the Mike Grehan interview with the guy from Yahoo where the meta keywords tag was discussed, and Grehan’s paper out there on linking. Sheesh, it isn’t easy. If I could remember the words used in that last one I’d have found it.
Then there was the quick interview with someone from Google right around the Florida update, where mention was made that Google is looking for breadth of content. It was posted in a forum thread, ended up getting nuked, and that was that That is not an insignificant piece of information, and having kept it in mind it’s done rather nicely by me since then.
Something like a personal police blotter, if you will. I think of it as a dysfunctional look at the world of search engine optimization, internet marketing and website promotion, as they relate to web design and development. I have to add that I most humbly consider myself to be well qualified to render dysfunctional views and opinions, by reason of having long personal experience with dysfunction in its various forms.
Thus the hoo.