Today I spent the afternoon digging around the internet researching everything and anything I can find about the release of Google’s Hummingbird, or rather the backdoor introduction nobody knew about a month or so ago. SEO feels like a constant juggle for me and the thought of figuring out another round of changes has had me in a bit of a tizzy. Everyone’s talking about it and the other day someone said to me, “Remember the days when you knew you were doing a good job with your site (or your client’s site) because you ranked high on the first page of Google Search for all the relevant keywords?”

Like a good child of the 80’s I answered with a quote from Raising Arizona “Ah, those were the Salad Days.”

What the heck is semantic search? In my search for information I read a number of articles and blog posts but none of them really did much to make me feel like I truly understood what semantic search really is or how Google is using it. Then I ran across this video recording of a Google Hangout Semantic Search and Google Hummingbird. (see video embedded below) There are some seriously smart people on this panel and I found it incredibly informative and helpful.

The search algorithm is always changing and it has never really stressed me out too much because I’m one of those people who has always bought into the whole “content is king” philosophy.  From what I understand semantic search buys into it too. Trust and authority is earned with good content so I’m jazzed about semantic search because I think it’s going to be a good thing for my clients.

The “Salad Days” may be over but SEO with Hummingbird is not going to be as scary, in fact it may not mean much at all. Watch the video – I watched the whole thing!

I was fortunate to have had some really great writing teachers in high school. I went to Interlochen Arts Academy as a violinist during my junior and senior years in high school and my teachers were actual writers, many of whom taught writing to the creative writing majors. I learned a ton from them and it served me well as a music major writing papers and presentations through college and graduate school.

I think I’m a decent writer but about five or six years ago when this blog began to take off and and people started to actually read it and I was asked to write elsewhere I found myself spending more and more time thinking about what I’d write and how I’d write it. I had a blast working with brands like Disney, Clorox, and Red Robin (love you guys!) to name a just a few, but seriously, most of the time I wasn’t saying anything useful.

I was really interested in social media and how it was influencing marketing and business but I’d stayed home for a number of years having babies so it surprised me when I was able to turn my blogging persona into a platform to build a business helping other small businesses understand and use social media. I was all about empowering the small business owner because I knew I could help them.  Then suddenly I was in a position to be able to choose my work and I chose to work in my major area of interest: the arts.

I used to really enjoy writing but the more I worked the less I wrote. For the most part I just didn’t have time anymore but the reality is that I had become paranoid about clicking the stupid “publish” button. I was riddled (still am) with self-doubt and paralyzed by “perfectionism” (still am). So, where before I could just spit out everything I thought about pretty much anything, I suddenly couldn’t get the words to come out. They were there and they often ran through my head in blog post form but they stayed in my head and never made it onto the page.

I’ve been constipated. It is a horrible feeling having all of this pent up stuff that just won’t come out. Recently though, I’ve come to the realization that constipation is the enemy of personal growth and that if I am to overcome this paranoia I’m going to have to just suck it up and get over myself.

So, last week when a friend of mine who writes the popular blog, AllisYar, here in Los Angeles, encouraged me to write a classical music review on his site I accepted right away. Truth be told, I may have had a glass of wine in me when the offer came via Facebook chat but I’m glad for the liquid courage because it was a blast!

OK, writing the review was hard because as we have already established, I am a paranoid scaredy cat who writes very long run-on sentences and I also had a ton of work and family stuff going on. Attending the concert as a “critic” was a blast because I was “on” during the whole concert and in writing the review I was able to draw on an education and experience that has shaped who I am. Who am I?  I am an advocate for the arts and arts education. I am a musician and I am a writer and the only way that I will continue to grow as a writer is to do exactly what I do as a musician and that is to practice! So thats what I’m going to do. Go me!

Want to read my review of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s season opener featuring Benjamin Beilman? I’m actually sorta scared/proud to share… click HERE! 

Thanks to CK Dexter Haven at AllisYar for encouraging me to do this AND for so generously sharing the artsy-fartsy side of Los Angeles with me!

Broncos play Raiders on Monday Night Football this week!  Monday Night Football when the Broncos play ROCKS!

I love where I live but I’ll always miss Denver. Check out this person’s garage decor – even in Southern California peeps be bleedin’ orange! Go Broncos!

The stream of back to school photos on Facebook has me in a bit of a panic. Can summer really be over? My kids don’t go back until August 26th but what happened to summer?

When I was a kid the summer was three months of lazy days at the beach and even after I was old enough to have a summer job I had enough time to fit in 4 weeks of music camp, during a few of those summers I even went for 8 weeks. This summer my kids got out of school on June 13th and we headed east the very next day (I work at the music camp in Maine that I went to as a kid!). We arrived back home 8 weeks later and have been enjoying lazy mornings and fun days at the beach.  Behind the scenes I’m filtering emails about registration and fall sports. The kicker is that my middle guy’s football season started 3 weeks ago so every evening since we arrived home from camp he’s been busting his butt to get in his 10 hours of conditioning so that he can join the team’s regular practices. They’ve had a great summer so I’m not complaining but I’m doing my best to protect them from the chaos leading up to the first day of school. I’m certainly not dragging them around clothes shopping when they’ll be wearing shorts and t-shirts for the next two months anyway.  I miss the days when you could look to labor day as the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. It feels wrong to be buying school supplies and fall clothes in early August.

In the camp world we’ve felt the pinch over time as the school year gets longer and the summer break gets shorter. Some schools go year round but I’d move or run away before I’d let that happen to my kids. Downtime is important, I wouldn’t trade lazy mornings and days at the beach with my kids for anything. I’ll be ready to get back into a routine by the time next Tuesday arrives but for now I’m savoring every minute!

“Precisely crafted to strike the perfect note.”  My instrument is just like a Håagen-Dazs ice cream bar! I love when advertisers use classical music references! This ad is great but made me stumble when I first saw it. Is it just me or does the sight of a violin in pieces make you shudder? I grit my teeth when straightening a bridge and the few times I’ve popped a string while playing I’ve almost screamed in fright.  I could never be a luthier or a surgeon, seeing an instrument pulled apart like this makes me cringe the same way a bloody surgical episode on the Discovery Channel does. I’ll stick to playing the pretty notes.

Now tearing into one of those ice cream bars? I’m all over that.

LA Opera’s final production of the season, Puccini’s Tosca, runs through June 8th at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, part of The Music Center of Los Angeles County.

Let’s be honest, while my husband often likes to introduce me as a “violinist” at every opportunity, I haven’t played professionally in over a decade since moving to Denver and “taking a break”. That break basically turned into a retirement when I started popping out babies and realizing that I had zero desire to go back to a life that would involve never seeing my family. It took that “break” to realize the extent to which my profession had sucked the life out me. I’m a much better marketer of music and the arts than I ever was as a violinist anyway and playing without pressure has made me a better player so it’s all good. There have been a ton of fun opportunities for me to play here since we moved to LA last fall and I’ve taken advantage of them all so far. Anyway, Denver is a great city but the arsty fartsy scene is mediocre at best so while I’m an avid patron of the arts, it has been a long time since I’ve experienced the level of performance I saw/heard at the LA Opera last night.

I tell you all of this because I think it’s only fair to say that I could be easily impressed at this point, not to mention that the FTC crackdown on blogger disclosure has everyone getting nekkid so I’m working hard to be “transparent”. That said, I was invited by a friend and local blogger, @mrckdh, to join the Tweetseat Crew last night as his +1 for LA Opera’s final dress rehearsal for Tosca prior to opening night Saturday. This crazy blog post is in no way a review or commentary on the performance, rather, an account of my experience live tweeting an opera performance.

First, getting over the fact that I had a cell phone in hand during a performance that included the likes of Placido Domingo (conductor) and Sandra Radvanovsky (Tosca), was impossible. I felt positively naughty and terribly gosh the entire time. Second, being naughty is awesome!

Did tweeting during the performance take away from my experience? Absolutely, but that is not the point. This wasn’t about moi, or my experience.

Was it distracting for others? Probably, but we were in the very back of the hall and caused less disruption than the loud giggly audience members 5 rows ahead of us. Keep in mind, this was a dress rehearsal and not an official performance.

Do I think Tweetseats have value? Yes. If executed properly. You can see from the #LAOTosca Twitter stream that our role was primarily broadcasting commentary and our reach was fairly limited. There wasn’t a lot of conversation going on and who knows if anyone “on the outside” was following the stream. The social media strategy part of my brain is still mulling this over but I have a lot of ideas percolating for ways I can personally implement things I learned from this experience.

Would I do it again? In a heartbeat!

Not a review, but what did I think of the production?  Pretty darn fantastic. The cast is top notch and the orchestra is powerful and, having played in many a pit during my starving artist days, it was really fun to see what a rock star celebrity Maestro Domingo is, the audience gave major props for him and for the orchestra at the beginning of each act. There were moments where the orchestra was overpowering but again, dress rehearsal and vocalists probably holding back a wee bit. Definitely good excuses although I will say it never hurts to match the efforts of those you are accompanying *ahem*. Oh and whoever had the clarinet solo in Act 3 – I’d like to kiss them. That hall was MADE for that solo and whoever played it nailed it and captured the stress and pee your pants anticipation Puccini intended.  The scenery was appropriately dull during each scene and there were lots of crates piled high with naked statues in Scarpia’s apartment, that was a little odd and as one tweep noted very Indian Jones-ish. Most poignant scene was in Act 3 (*SPOILER ALERT*) where we witnessed the actual hanging of Angelotti who then dangles from the rafters for the duration of the scene. I wonder if Mr. Bloom had to do some serious neck pilates to train for this role and do you think he gets overtime pay for that particular aspect of his contract? Powerful but creepy, which means the director, John Caird, is probable patting himself on the back, as he well should, at the effect he had on the audience in that moment. You should go simply to experience the nausea that occurs when the human eyes witness such a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Juicing sounds cool and it’s supposed to be healthy. I was recently motivated to try a juice cleanse. It didn’t go too well.

This green stuff? Tastes like pickle juice. Which reminds me of a shot style drink that one of my girlfriends has coined the “Pickle-Back”. It’s essentially a shot of tequila followed by a pickle juice chaser. I don’t get it but I think the pickle juice is supposed to keep hangovers away, or so my brother tells me. So, I had some trouble getting this green juice down because I all I could think about was how much better it would taste with a shot of tequila.

I’m pretty sure I’m not cut out for juicing.