The Science of Web Art, Design and Development

Today is blog action day and the theme is poverty, and I’ve been struggling for weeks to find a subject to write on and following discussions today, I realized many other people are in the same boat.

I did wrote yesterday a post saying that poverty isn’t off-topic in any blog niche, and I certainly believe that’s true. Why is, then, so hard to write about it?

Maybe my good friend Jen said it best when she says that any post that comes to mind seems to carry a bit of hypocrisy, and certainly Chris Garret has a point when he says “good intentions are not good without actions”.

According to blog action day stats, Today 12,044 sites have blogged about poverty and hopefully, risen awareness about poverty, but, I’ll join Sue Clark on saying: Just blogging about poverty is not enough.

Awareness about poverty is high enough, what is lacking is attitude and not information. If 12,044 posts have today lead to 12,044 actual actions to fight poverty, then I’ll call it success, but if a good part of these posts are just transferring the responsibility to the reader, then is time wasted.

What can you do?

Actions fall in two categories: long time strategies, and short time solutions. Ideally, actions that fall in the first category will help wipe poverty from the face of the earth, but the short time solutions are essential to supply the immediate needs of people, literally, starving to death or being unable to supply very basic needs.

Short time solutions

• Donate money to an organization
• Engage in activities to raise funds or help manage one
• Donate what you don’t want, instead of selling on eBay
• Donate your professional skills to help find and optimize solutions

You don’t have to cross the world to find people in the need of help. Living in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, London, I tell you there is plenty to do here. I’m sure there’s plenty to do near you as well. If there isn’t, you can always engage online.

Long time strategies

• Educate both rich and poor
• Help create sustainable solutions in terms of cost of solutions/revenue
• Help change the greed mentality

The greed mentality and the credit crunch explained

Nothing is more harmful to the delicate balance of the human beings than trying to have plenty of limited resources. There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, and is more than enough to all of us.

More often than not people seem to want to be really rich. And what’s that for? The only reasonable answer I see for willing to be rich is to have more stability over life, which is a fair point. Still, it’s a fragile thought.

People believe to think they are as wealthy as they money they have. But money is just an abstraction and, as Christian Heillmann pointed it quite accurately, these days is an abstraction to no real world goods, merely speculation, then, bam, credit crunch! Where has the wealth gone? Nowhere, it has never been there.

But I’m slightly digressing now, the point is, greed is making some people rich and, as consequence, others poor. Make Greed history and you’ll make poverty history. And if you don’t have poverty, why would you bother in being rich to live with stability?

Easier said than done, I hear some saying. I’m not sure, it seems that becoming poor and broken is even easier than fulfilling the objective, while trying to become rich.

Finally, is not about you or me being rich or trying to, but where you shop and what. Is about who you endorse with your money. As my cousin Saverio told me once: You don’t make politics voting, you make politics buying. Chose carefully where and what to buy!

If you believe in blogging at all, then you have to believe that bloggers united for a cause can be a strong driving force to change. The motivation behind Blog action day is that bloggers around the world gather one day a year to discuss subjects that concern all of us as individuals.

On October 15 last year, thousands of bloggers wrote about the environment and targeted an audience of millions. The environment has become a frequent and recurrent subject but the need for a change of conscience and attitude on that field is still huge and what has been done is not yet enough.

This year, Blog Action Day’s subject is poverty, and so far 8,634 Sites already engaged on the cause and will reach an audience of 9,201,889 subscribers.

Why is your post important?

Now, with all the media coverage on the subject, why is your blog post important?

As a blogger, you probably know that relationship between writers and readers in blogs are much more personal than in traditional media and when you write a post on your blog you might be targeting only a few hundred people (or even less) but these few people are listening to you and if there are bloggers among your readers, they’ll be talking to some people who are actually listening to them.

Why is not off-topic on your blog

Poverty, just like environment, is a subject that concerns every single human being and your blog and your business, as tools for your business, networking or your online persona are part of your footprint on the planet. Being a personal or professional blog, either you or your business have an impact on poverty. Either you are helping, creating poverty or doing nothing, which means, at the very least, endorsing the current situation.

To make a long story short, whatever you write about, has an impact on poverty, either positive or negative, and there is at least some point in which you can discuss the subject inside your niche.

What if I’m wrong?

Say I’m wrong. Say that your niche doesn’t have anything to do with poverty at all, it doesn’t help, it doesn’t get in the way and it doesn’t endorse the current poverty. Well, then the non-relationship of your niche with the subject is so unique that it is on itself a subject to write about and I’d be the first one to read your post.

What’s in for me?

Well before being bloggers, entrepreneurs and professionals, we are all human beings and I’d be happy if that were enough reason, but if that’s not, then let’s roll up the sleeves for some simple math.

There are 8,634 blogs registered and a fixed audience of 9,201,889 Readers and the numbers are growing. It is quite likely that this event will have a lot of more traditional media coverage and the networking happening on this event will be massive and you risk end up knowing interesting people you wouldn’t normally meet.

Is the Zo’C blog dead? I hear you asking.

No. Not at all! But in the last four months or so a series of serious changes in my life have drained most of my energy and I had little choice but to stop writing for a while.

The good news are that the serious changes are mostly (if not all) positive and were actually the realisation of projects I was actually investing in. Some of the major changes are to be living in London now (a longtime project of mine) and working for Yahoo! which is a source of so much web goodness that I can’t but be proud of working on a daily basis with some of the guys and girls who shape the web as we know it and write some of the best web literature around.

It is also (hopefully ;) good news that I’m into blogging as much as I used to be and now, with recharged batteries, I’ll try to share the best bits of what’s going on the piece of the web that surrounds me.

Being the author of the Zo’C Powerblogroll — A Wordpress Plugin intended to transform the bulk blogrolls commonly are into powerful link-love tools — I couldn’t resist to offer Catherine Morley my plugin when I saw her blogroll was, literally, a few hundred links long.

I could tell you myself the story of how this happened, but yesterday I’ve been the featured designer on Designers Who Blog and since Cat decided to tell it in a much funnier way I’d be able to, then you’d better just go there and read it from her.

To me it was already a reason for pride that my plugin was the base for such a giantic and useful blogroll, but, makes me even prouder to be featured shoulder to shoulder in such a front line of great designers in DWB.

And by the way, did I mention how useful her blogroll is? I can’t stress that enough! If you are looking for great design blogs to follow, you should start there.

Two years ago on February 22, 2006, the Zo’C blog started as a personal blog and, while I’ve been working on the web for over ten years now, this was my first time blogging. The very excitement of running the blog and being a blogger designer transformed it into the professional one it is today.

Lessons learned and achievements

Two years blogging really changed my perception of the web and aside for professional opportunities I also made friends in the blogosphere. Among the best things that happened in these two years I can count:

Friends on the blogosphere

In Italy people say: “Le montagne stano ferme, ma gi uomini s’incontrano” (the mountains are still, but people meet) and that is completely true. You never know what can turn out from an aquaintance. And being friendly on the blogosphere had brought me friends and work opportunities like few times before.

Guest-blogging

I haven’t guest blogged a lot, but the three posts I wrote for Domestik Goddess (1, 2, 3) and writing for the January writing project at The Giving Hand were a door to indulge my will to write about subjects other than those of my own blog. There are so many things to write about that is a waste writing for a single blog.

The Mediterrasian Cooking Blog

One of my inspirations for having a blog, initially, was food. I’ve always loved to cook and one of food inspirations was mediterrasian.com. I can’t but be proud I’ve been invited to join them to create the MediterrasianCooking blog, officially launched yesterday.

Cultural diversilty

Thanks to my deep plunge on the blogosphere I had come to know blogs about all kinds of different subjects and their bloggers. Besides all the fun, it has been a rich cultural experience.

The road ahead

Provide more value

I think in these two years I have been too shy in submitting valuable day-by-day content and have focused too much on big discussions. I intend to add more tutorials and doable stuff. Make it a blog more result-oriented that it has been so far.

Video and podcasting

I had a very pleasant experience publishing my first two videos, I’m willing to do more. And I like to combine this with the previous topic: tutorials and results.

More regular posting

I hadn’t been very nice in being predictable. My post frequency is “about once a week”, but just looking to the archive you can see one can see that I should try it a little harder.

More out links

I read a lot of things on the web, really a lot. Yet, I link back in very modest amounts. This is not because I like it this way, it just happened. I want to engage this blog on a bigger discussion with other blogs and links exist for this purpose.

More comments

It must be something with my writing style, because despite the reasonable high number of visits and subscribers, there aren’t as much comments as I’d like. I’ll have to work out a way to make the readers more welcome to join the discussions.

More guest blogging

Definitely, as a blogger, writing is intransitive: You have to write! And it is a pity to be restricted at your blog’s subject. I see myself guest-writing a lot more and maybe I should open the door for some guest-posts here in Zo’C.

Back in the old cooking times of Zo’C, when it was more personal than anything else, one of my main inspirations for content was MediterrAsian.com.

I’m proud to say that a few months ago, I was invited by the talented MediterrAsian team to join them on a blog project and today we are launching a multi author blog named “MediterrAsian Cooking“.

Mediterrasian Cooking is a blog to share cooking experiences and ideas based on the concept that Asian and Mediterranean food is not only delicious, but a great source of health.

You don’t have to enjoy the site with moderation, it is quite healthy, use it a much as you want.

By following some principles contained on these cuisines and lifestyles you can live longer and better and have more fun out of food and life. After all, who doesn’t like to eat Italian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Thai, Korean? And the list goes on.

The blog is authored by Ric Watson and Trudy Thelander from the original team and have been joined by Emily Seah and me. The blog was co-designed by Ric and me based on the mediterrasian site.

And the best part. You don’t have to enjoy it with moderation, you can have as much as you want, because despite its great flavor, is quite healthy, you can use it on every meal.

This post is just a quickie to wish all Zo’C Readers a Great Christmas. And I hope following this blog this year has been as interesting for you as mantaining it has been for me.

Also, warm feelings to the nice people at Authority Blogger Forum, which is friendly community and an invaluable resource for bloggers.

Regarding my post of Tuesday about the Dove Onslaught Video for the Campaign for Real Beauty a question of many is:

Whose soundtrack is that?

And the answer is “La Breeze”, by UK group Simian Mobile Disco

The lyrics to follow along:
read full post…

When I saw the Dove Evolution video for the first time I just couldn’t keep my jaw from falling. They have achieved to stand out with a campaign that at the same time makes women feeling good about themselves and does a great service to society at the same time.

The whole Campaign for Real Beauty is at the same time a first class marketing strategy and a brilliant human campaign but the second video, Dove Onslaught, has achieved to tell you why their competitors are the bad guys and they are the good ones in a way that a sensible person can hardly disagree.

Now, I only wish is that the fierce and agressive marketing campaign behind the very true and enlighted message doesn’t prevail and hopefully the whole beauty industry starts to align itself with this ideology.

By the way, if you have children don’t miss very interesting activities on the campaign website. And when I say children I do mean both boys and gilrs, because if boys keep on thinking that anorexia is beautiful, hardly ever you will convince the girls otherwise.

Dear readers,

Before I moved to Italy, I prepared a series of posts on photography basics to cover me while I was unable to write, but it seems that I underestimated this time and this is why this blog has been silent for the last three weeks.

I wasn’t even able to mantain the Bee Side of Zo’C which is a personal blog and much easier to fill with trip pictures and stories.

But, by no means this blog is abandoned, I have finally reached a point of comfort here and I am back on the track of writing, while I am still having a hard time to follow the blogs I usually do (If you own one of the blogs I read, I promess soon I’ll be active again).

Sooner that you can imagine, new Zo’C posts will be published.

Cheers,
Guilherme