Working at It...

After a morning trying to produce a skills-based CV (bits of it are slowly emerging!), and trying to extrapolate what I've actually done this week towards my jobsearch, I was offered some work which involved getting to grips with a new CMS system.

Joomla
Joomla! is a free open source content management system for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. Joomla is licensed under the GPL, and is the result of a fork of Mambo. (Text from Wikipedia)

Much more to learn, and deadlines are tight, so I need to focus on that for a few days.

Life Coaching
On Saturday/Sunday I will start a life coaching certification with Serenergise. Very excited as been talking about doing something like this for 2 years. It's great to move from talk to action, and even better to hear today that they are the first course in the UK to be accredited by the International Coaching Federation.

Image Sources

Arranging a photo-shoot can be an expensive business, but websites look rather stark with no imagery (although I always believe the information must come first). Taking photos through e.g. Google's image search generally means that you are using illegal images.

Microstock Photography
There are many different microstock photography sites, in which you can purchase Royalty-free (free from licence restrictions) images for as low as $0.20 per image if you sign up to a subscription plan. Pay as you go images are more expensive per image, and credits usually need to be used within a year, although the image is then yours to use. Check the small print as, for example, Shutterstock says that an image must be first-used within 6-months of download to prevent stockpiling.

Purchasing Credits
It is rare that you will find a site which will only let you buy a single image credit, so expect to buy several photos from each site if you sign up, usually with a credit card, sometimes with PayPal. All will let you sign up and add images to 'lightboxes' for free... in the hope that you will return and purchase them!

• Bigstockphoto approx $20 for 10 images
• Dreamstime approx. $20 for 22 images, but also provides free images
• Fotolia from 57p - £3.99 for a single-image
• iStockphoto starts at £9.00 for 10 credits, cost per credit decreases as more are purchased
• Shutterstock £29 for 5 images, or by subscription
• Snapvillage images from $1
• Stock.xchng offers free images or refers you to Stock Expert where small web images are around $1 each. 
• Photobucket mostly designed for the MySpace user, but has some gems tucked away through the search function

For historical (and very creative recent) images Getty Images comes highly recommended. To search for images created in a particular era search for e.g. "Image created 1940s". Royalty free images start at £39 for web-use only.

You Tube
You Tube is of the course the ubiquitous video-posting site, so I've set up an account there and just uploaded one small video!

Just a thought on Social Networking
Finding the Tagged site slightly freaky in that people (well, blokes) vote 'YES', send messages and WINK at me (I guess it makes a change from pokes), especially in the 20 minutes after I've just checkeed the site!

Careers: Not for Profit Organisations

Working has never been about earning money for me (although obviously we live in a world where things need to be paid for, and I would like to be appropriately recognised for the effort I have put into training with an appropriate wage), but more about making a difference in the world. Therefore, I am signing up with some of the following agencies:

• Charity Job
• Guardian Not for Profit
• Idealist
• Notforprofitjobvacancies
• ProspectUs
• Public Sector Jobs
• Third Sector Jobs
• Total Jobs

As a Christian, I am also checking out agencies specialising in (advertising) that particular line of work, including:

• Church Times
• Christian Vocations
• Christian Resources Exhibition
• Eden.co.uk
• UK Christian Jobs
• Job Search Monitor

I posted a new version of my personal website today: http://www.bex-lewis.co.uk. Unfortunately, I've not been able to spend as long on it as I'd like, but it's more focused than the previous version.

Careers: Media Agencies/Academic Work

I'm hunting for either web content or lecturing work, and have identified a number of agencies specialising in media/web content work:

• Media Guardian (buy print newspaper on a Monday)
  
• Civil Service (Communications roles)
• Creative Pool Agency
• Purple Recruitment Consultancy
• Formula Won Media Recruitment
• The Blueprint (Digital Recruitment)
• Brand Republic
• Job Rapido
• Planet Recruit
• Chinwag Jobs
• Profiles Creative
• Reed Agencies
• Careersandjobsuk
• The IT Job Board
• Pure Genie (online travel jobs)
• Amazon.co.uk (specific vacancies)

There are only a couple of places that I know of that Universities advertise in. Looking on the websites of specific universities you are interested in always works:

• Guardian (Education)
• Jobs.ac.uk
• THES Jobs

Rediscovering a social life on the 'net

Just because an application, widget, tool, web device, web 2.0 implement - whatever you want to call it - is available, doesn't mean that it is necessarily useful. Yesterday, I started my re-familiarisation of what is 'now' on the 'net. Here are some first thoughts in response to that...

Blogging
Working on a previous project, we'd established that www.blogger.com was a simple, solid site to use, and easy to access using my Google log-in. Wikipedia explains what a 'blog' is.

FeedBlitz  and Feedburner are free services which allow your content to be seen by more users through sending them updates (using RSS or Atom Feeds, as generally used by blogs). Feedblitz converts them into regular ('regular' can be defined') emails to be sent to subscribers. 

RSS Feeds add automatically updated content onto a website, naturally keeping the site fresh. Choose content carefully to be relevant to your website/blog. 

Virtual Worlds
I tried Second Life, but discovered I wasn't that interested in getting the hang of it. There's enough going on in the real world to keep me busy,  without inventing a second life! Social networking is different as it's keeping in contact with people I have met in the real world. 

Social Networking

Facebook is my social networking site of choice. Facebook has been a great tool whilst I have been travelling, and I have many 'Friends' on there from a variety of different walks of life, but particularly from my time as an Oak Hall Tour Leader. Others recommend 'spring-cleaning' Facebook, but if I want to find someone, it's easy enough, no need to go removing people... always interesting to have a chat with someone from your random past!

I still have MySpace and Friends Reunited accounts. I find Facebook more useful than MySpace, but am currently tinkering with the new features in Friends Reunited (now it's free!). I have recently signed up to Twitter (famously used by Barack Obama) andTagged to experiment with their capabilities. 

There are also more specialist social networks which I have experimented with, includingMyChurch and OKCupid (which gives access to a number of personality tests). 

I have deleted my Orkut account as it is largely aimed at the South American market. I've not used Bebo as it seems to be aimed at the younger market. 

A couple of useful Wikipedia articles: 

• what is a 'social network service'
• 'List of Social Networking websites'

Bex's Blog

Purpose of this blog

• Familiarisation with what is 'now' on the 'net
• Experimentation with some of the new widgets/applications
  
• Listings of useful websites, depending on my focus for that day

My Websites

See portfolio of websites: www.mydesigna.co.uk