WordPress for Toastmasters*Most of what I’ve posted on this site is tutorial material, but here are a couple of more personal posts I put on LinkedIn about what I’m doing here and why. I also used the second one as a conversation starter in the Official Toastmasters Member Group.
My WordPress for Toastmasters project and what I’ve learned so far
Can a technology journalist and self taught programmer find success and happiness as the proprietor of a cloud service? That’s what I’m trying to find out.
By day, I’m at an editor at InformationWeek and can also claim some fame in certain circles as the author of Social Collaboration for Dummies. I’ve been covering the web since the web was young, in the mid-1990s when I wrote for WebWeek (laterInternet World). I’ve sat through countless demos of web software and online services and talked web architecture with experts on scalability and usability.
My turn: WordPress for Toastmasters allows a Toastmasters club to take advantage of everything the WordPress blogging community has created for an easy-to-use yet powerful platform for marketing and social networking, along with Toastmasters-specific functions like managing meeting agendas and member role signups. (Read more…)
Challenging the Status Quo with WordPress for Toastmasters
Suddenly, I feel more sympathy for all the technology vendors I have interviewed over the years who had a product they believed was far superior to the established leader in their category — and yet getting the rest of the world to recognize its virtues was still difficult. Competing with the established, default choice is a real challenge.
While I am best known as a writer and editor, for years I have been doing web consulting and web programming on the side, sometimes for money, often for fun. For the past few years, most of this has been work on WordPress plugins, with my most successful open source product to date being RSVPMaker (event scheduling and RSVP processing with PayPal integration). My latest, WordPress for Toastmasters, builds on that work, helping these professional development clubs market themselves, organize meetings, and track member performance. (Read more…)
