The week that was and what I got up to

I slept really, really well last night and it's no wonder. When I woke up this morning the first thought I had was, 'Did I really do all that this week?!'.

The answer was, 'Yes, I did.' ;)

So, without further ado, I'm going to give an abbreviated version of the highlights from this week. I'd love to dedicate a blog post to each event, but hey ho!

Day out in Lichfield 

Me and my Lovely Mum, @createdineire, had a jolly nice day out in Lichfield last Friday. I hadn't been there before and it's only about 20 miles away. We had a nice time just wandering around this old city, browsing the shops, having a delicious lunch and of course we couldn't leave without visiting the cathedral.

Lichfield Cathedral

Mum lit a candle for me saying "This is for you and that you'll get back to NYC. You have a year to get there", coz I won't shut up about the place lol. 

Top Secret

On Saturday, Sunday and Monday I knuckled down to work on something Big (to me anyway!). My Dad used to tell me 'You don't have to tell everybody, everything, all of the time' and in the case of this Big Thing, I'm keeping it under my hat, for now. It required immense use of my brain power and it may well be one of the biggest challenges I've set myself (as well as NYC that is!). I really had to knuckle down and draw on my resources and hopefully it will pay off. If it does, or it doesn't, I will reveal all either way later in the year!

Speaking at Yardley Photography Society

On Tuesday evening I did a talk at the Yardley YPS. I was booked to do this almost a year ago - they plan their speakers quite well in advance.

I first thought my talk was going to be about 20-30 minutes, but soon realised it was for 90 minutes which made this into my longest talk to date!

It was in two 45 minute sections. The first half I went right back to the beginning of my photography career - how and why I started, what I did next, how I turned my passion into a career for myself. The second half I talked about the 4am Project. I showed over 100 photos in all.

The very first photos I took with a digital camera. So out of focus!

My published work in the Birmingham Post and Birmingham Mail newspapers

Professional Photography shoots

My first 4am Project photographs

New for this year! My Wedding Photography Services!

Digital Editor's Network

On Thursday I headed up to Manchester for the day, well to Media City in Salford to be more precise.

As well as looking forward to the Digital Editor's Network event, I was quite looking forward to my first visit to Media City.

I was really impressed with Media City itself. You could live there and never need to leave. It has apartments, a big shopping centre, cinema, restaurants and tons of business and places to work, including of course, the BBC.

The day ahead was all about innovations in Social, Local and Mobile in relation to new organisations.

Speaking at the event were Nick Turner, Head of Digital Content for CN group, Martha Stone CEO at World Newsmedia  Network, Francois Nel from Journalist Leaders Programme, Sarah Hartley from the Guardian (and of course talk about local!), Aiden McGrath from Aetopia, Paul Bradshaw from Help Me Invesigate and Greg Hadfield from Open Data Cities.

What a power house of people!

This really deserves a blog post of it's own. This was all about journalism, surviving in these difficult time, how to make money from digital assets (it's the way to go), with some amazing facts, figures and data being produced. You can catch some of the highlights over on the Live Blog and I did a very quick Storify from the hashtag of the day #solomoden (but twitter wouldn't let me catch all the tags) and they are worth a look to get an idea of the amazing discussions that were going on!

Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Yesterday was the 2nd Birmingham Social Media cafe of 2012 (the next event is on Friday 30th March at the Birmingham Town Hall. It's free and for anyone who is interested in using social media for work or play. There were about 40 attendees, so there's always lots of peeps to meet!

One of the reasons I took over the running of the event was that I know that as least once a month I will get the chance to go out and meet people, see friends and Be Social! I run quite a tight schedule work wise so I welcome this event at the end of the month. And if you want to 'pick my brains over coffee', this is the best place to catch me! :)

And that was the week that was!

And the week that will be....

Monday - Liverpool delivering a talk about local workshop

Tues - A day in Fazeley with the talk about local team

Weds - Stoke with Nicky delivering talk about local workshop and Wednesday evening having a phone chat with a lady who loves what I do online and would like help with blogging and starting her own website.

Today I'm catching with with 'stuff' (work) and cracking on with the 4am Project launch (there will be a global date in April), and tomorrow is pretty much the same!

Re availability..... It's very limited at the moment and I'm having to say No more than Yes right now and it will be that way until June, so feel free to ask away, but don't be disappointed/offended if I don't say yes.

Right now, I'm going to do some housework (yaaawwwwnnn!) and try not to throw away my tv (the built-in dvd player keeps switching itself on so I'm having a battle of wills with it at the moment).

Have a fab weekend! :)

Say Hello on Twitter @karenstrunks


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Speaking at the Birmingham Girl Geeks launch event

Last Saturday was the launch event of Birmingham Girl Geeks. 

What is Birmingham Girl Geeks you ask?

It's a networking event for geeky girls and women in Birmingham and the West Midlands! 

It was a fantastic first event, with about 40 ladies coming along to Urban Coffee. The event organisers, Rachel McCollin, Nivi Morales and Karen Bugg did an amazing job, and considering it was the launch event, it actually felt very established already. A testament to all their hard work. 

The ladies asked me to do a short talk at the event, and I spoke about the 4am Project, how it began, how I used social media to make it global, and gave a few hints and tips on managing an online project. Btw, there will be another global event coming up in April which I'm aiming to announce next month!

The star guest of the day was Denise Jacobs from Miami, who is an author, speaker and web evangelist! And quite an inspiration. She spoke about encouraging women to become visible web experts. 

Then it was time for my talk. Hope you enjoy it! I tried to squeeze a lot into 12 minutes!



And last, but not least, Rachel McCollin spoke about launching her own web design business and mobile web design!



And there were cakes!

And a raffle - and I won a book! CSS Detective by Denise Jacobs. Hey, I'll be a Girl Geek yet! :)

And I had to draw the next raffle ticket out, and I pulled out my Mum's numbers! What are the chances of that. She was very happy as there was some gorgeous jewellery to be won as well!

I did a Storify of some of the tweets and pics from the event. 


There are even some dates set in place for the next events:

Evening of 16th Feb, 17th March, 19th April, 17th May, 23rd June & 19th July! A full schedule for your spring/summer diary. Just keep an eye on their website and twitter for more info. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet other ladies and some new faces too, and I really recommend it :)

My first Pecha Kucha talk!

I have known about Pecha Kucha for some time and it's been on my to-do list since last year.

I finally booked myself book onto the Birmingham Pecha Kucha night (volume 4) which was held upstairs at The Victoria pub in the city centre.

What is Pecha Kucha? It's a night of presentations that consist of 20 slides/images where you have 20 seconds (if you time it right!) to talk about each one.

Initially I was going to do my presentation on Heartache. Unfortunately I ran out of time to prepare it, so I based my talk on the 4am Project and made it a shorter version of the presentation I gave at the Redeye Photography Network event in Liverpool I gave earlier in the month (that one was about 20 minutes long)

So with a bit of (very) tight editing and highlight selecting I managed to pare it down to about 7 minutes, and I also made some notes on a piece of paper.

It was a really well attended event! Normally when I go to events in Birmingham I already know a lot of faces, but PK night was different. I only knew about half a dozen people or so. A whole new crowd!

I had asked the organisers if I could give my presentation earlier in the evening (then I could sit back and relax).

A weird thing happened though. I suddenly got really nervous! Like butterflies in the tummy kind of nerves. It was a really weird and new feeling and I'm not sure why it happened. I've give presentations in front of strangers and I normally feel really confident. So strange!

The 3 speakers before me did really good presentations. They didn't have any notes with them, so at the last minute I ditched mine and just hoped for the best!

Despite the rare onset of nerves, it all went well and I got a great response, the audience were interested and asked questions afterwards.

I hope you enjoy my first Pecha Kucha presentation.




I'd really recommend Pecha Kucha as a night out. You'll hear interesting talks and meet new people too! And if you are up for the Pecha Kucha challenge, the next Birmingham date is the 20th July! You can also follow PK Birmingham on Twitter.

Say hello on twitter: @karenstrunks