Stop messing up and start making apps work for you. A quick recap and resource list for @robncampbell and @jngsta’s talk at Social Media Camp in Victoria, May 7, 2013.

The other day I read a post my friend Teresa wrote called Building Self-Confidence: You Can’t Fake Cool, You Have To Feel It. It’s a short story about her trying a hip hop dance class for the first time and learning some unexpected lessons. Her takeaways were solid and it’s definitely worth the quick read. I love it for three reasons:

1. She tried something new (it’s crazy how many people stop doing this)
2. It was something outside of her comfort zone, and
3. She grew her confidence from a place of vulnerability

As a dancer, I totally connected with the lessons she talked about and it stirred up a lot of thoughts I’ve had, recently and in the past, so I wanted to whip up this little response. Plus, it’s about time I get writing again.

Everyone wants it.

Getting covered in the press is a game, and business, of eyeballs. Do you have what they want?

The other day, my Tapstream homie Mack and listened-in on a mentor session Jerrid Grimm, the VP of Client Service at Newad gave at Launch Academy (the sweet place we work out of). It was about how the advertising industry works, and how to go about buying and selling ads as an option to monetize or market your business. Pretty interesting.

What was even more interesting than the knowledge Jerrid was dropping though? The fact that he said he saw Tapstream in every major industry publication he read last week. Even if that was a slight exaggeration, hey, we’ll take it. So, how did that happen?

Exactly a year after joining the Summify team, that journey has come to an end and I’ve found myself with a new team. One that I’m just as excited about. So how’d I end up at Tapstream? Funny story. I called a guy a noob and he hired me.

Weird right?

I sat down the other week for a conversation that was long overdue. I never used to be very upfront – I’ve been shy most of life, so these much needed conversations were rather hard to muster in the past. Fortunately, I’ve spent a lot of time breaking through this barrier and now prefer to bang the nail right on the head.

In a community building adventure that lasted just seven months, I joined five software engineers on a ride that went from iPhone app launch to Twitter exit. These are some the stand-out lessons I’ve taken away.

I reached my breaking point and I couldn’t do it anymore. My hip flexors and adductors were shot, I couldn’t lift my leg, and my IT band was incredibly tight, making it rather painful to walk normal. That was it, I was done. No more dancing. I needed to find an answer to why my hip was hurting so much. For the next two years I tried everything under the sun and short of a shaman…

I’ve wanted to release tortugas since I spent a month in Mexico last December and heard you could help liberate them. The stats on this are quite staggering. The Californian lady who helped run the tortuga camp – where they protect the eggs until they hatch – along with the local biologists, told us that there used to be 250 odd species of sea tortugas. Thanks to poachers there are now only 8 left. That’s not all…

(Photo: Natalia Delgado)