3 conferences in 1 week + My First Trip to Orange!

Beautiful Orange, NSW - the view from my hotel room!

JXT Colleague Wil and I at the beautiful RCSA Gala Ball last Thursday

What a crazy two weeks this is! Here's a break down of what I've been up to (and where I currently am!)


Last week:
Monday-Wednesday: every day, all day, super intense SEO course with Bruce Clay. Learned HEAPS and my head was FILLED with SEO knowledge! Can't wait to start applying it. PS: social media is a huge part of SEO! Also, it's official. Bruce Clay is a genius. I feel honoured to have met him!
Thursday morning: off to Melbourne early in the morning to attend the RCSA Gala Ball in the evening (see above). I had the pleasure of meeting Greg Savage (finally) and we talked twitter for a few minutes!
Friday: training sessions and post-production work on my hopefully soon-to-be published VIDEO SERIES on social media and recruitment! Then a late flight back to Sydney only to work all weekend for the upcoming week of speaking at 3 different events :-)
Monday (that was today!): Fly to Orange, NSW for the first time (see above). I'm loving it so far! BEAUTIFUL countryside, DELICIOUS wine and an environment of peaceful serenity so unlike the hustle and bustle of Sydney...what a lovely change of pace! I can't wait until tomorrow for.....
Tuesday: an all day workshop with the Department of Primary Industries on how they can best utilise social media. They currently have twitter and youtube, but is it enough? Tuesday night I fly back to Sydney.
Wednesday: early flight to Melbourne. Training session in the morning, then an hour long workshop with the Courts Social Media Group in Melbourne (all about government this week - probably because I was a main speaker at the Social Media in Government conference about a month ago!)
Thursday-Friday: Global NPA Conference in Melbourne. I'm speaking alongside my CEO, Rick, on JXT and how awesome we are! 45 minutes in front of target audience - recruiters. My presentation is going to be AWESOME! I hope, anyway. I want it to be funky and interesting..perhaps even enjoyable! 


Such a long two weeks! Good think I love what I do. :-D


On a side, note, I have a big project that I'm very, very VERY excited to be working on...RIGHT NOW! I can't reveal details yet, but I'm having lots of fun and will keep you posted on what it is soon :-) 

Alive and Kicking....at the ZOO!

Too close for comfort? 

Gorgeous views

Meercats...my favrouite!

Soooo it's been a few months, to say the least, since I've posted onto my blog. I'm a terrible representative of the social media community - I know! I have, however, been very, very busy. JXT has kept me extremely active and occupied! I've made hires, expanded our products and services, travelled the country and made plans to grow the social media division above and beyond what I ever dreamed!


Importantly (and see above), I've been to the zoo again. A few weekends ago we had a BEAUTIFUL weekend in Sydney (finally - it's been raining for weeks nonstop and now there are flood reports throughout the area). I took full advantage and headed to the wonderful Taronga Zoo for the 2nd time in 3 years! (And I call myself a Sydney-sider...sheesh). 


It was awesome, however, and JUST what I needed to get away from my crazy schedule. The next day I ended up going to the NSW Wine Festival, which was amazing, and back to my old stomping ground in Clovelly to hear one of my favourite bands, Soulganic, perform! Great weekend with great weather :-) Summer is holding on by a thread!

Social media experiment: BE KNOWN about BEKNOWN

A client recently asked me about a Monster facebook app called beknown, which I’ve had a lot of enquiries on lately.  I had a look at it, and immediately deemed it unworthy and inferior to the JXT social media solution (aka the social media superstar solution aka my solution).

For starters (and trust me, this rant goes on for a while, so strap yourself in), it’s an APPLICATION (not a page) and as such facebook is asking my permission to take the below actions. Personally, I would never agree to any of that because the app can then POST on my facebook wall AS myself. No way! It can also access my Interests, which means pages I like. For instance, I “like” Burnetts Vodka on facebook. Not something to showcase to employers! All around a terrible idea. Apparently, it won an award in the states and has seen great results in talent sourcing, which is fair enough. We came to the conclusion that Americans are just so desperate to find work that they’ll do anything to find a job, even if it means giving potential employers access to their facebook profile! Stupid Americans. Sheesh.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, ranting about applications, not Americans. In addition, apps are generally pre-templated by the developer. It costs heaps of money to develop these facebook apps (I probably could but won’t). And with pre-templates comes the difficulty to control & edit. As a facebook developer and by hardcoding the tabs, I (and ultimately my clients) remain in total control of everything: size, font, exact colour, layout, images, click throughs, etc. Don’t get me started on SEO; side tabs allow for integrations with RSS, youtube, twitter, google maps, etc and as such drive traffic to the designated website - apps do no such thing but rather become part of the person’s facebook experience. Once it serves its purpose (finding that person  a job, or so it claims to do), the app will no doubt be uninstalled immediately.

There are dozens more reasons why pages trump apps, but this is just a start. Initially, I wasn’t planning on installing this app.l Why would I waste my time with such incompetent technology? It’s below me, and I’m better than that, damnit! But alas, curiosity got the best of me, and I wanted to see what all this hoo-ha is about. How could it possibly have won an award?!

As such, I went against my better judgement and “allowed” this application to do the above things (hovering over the box..waiting...turning away....eyes closed....cliiiiick? Ah, my facebook profile is still in tact. Phew!) 

Now that I’m in, its time to get an inside look on the world of facebook applications! Here’s what happened: 

Welp, were not off to a very good start here, though I’m not surprised they want me to spread the word. They want to use MY network of friends to promote THEIR application! Nope, NOT spamming my friends with invites to connect. I get enough Farmville invites as it is and I refuse to be THAT facebook friend. Skip....

Hey, look! The app has imported my career details from the “work experience” portion of my facebook profile! Note that it has also invited me to import details from CareerOne. Er...NOT American (coughanymorecough) so nope, I have no profile there. Where is the import from LinkedIn option!? It allows me to edit this info directly, but now I’m confused...will editing this profile through BeKnown change the “work experience” portion of my facebook profile? I might not want my ENTIRE resume on facebook because to be honest, most of my friends don’t care! I’ll go ahead and change a few things....

LinkedIn to the rescue. I copy and paste the Summary portion of my profile as well as a few bullet points:

OK, summary saved. Now what!? There’s no “next” button so I’m sort of stuck. Normally, I’d give up and go back to whatever I was doing before fiddling with this app, but let’s pretend that I live in America, am jobless, desperate and bored at 2 pm on a Wednesday. I have nothing better to do, so I’m going to figure this out, damnit! (Apologies to anyone reading this who is in America, jobless, desperate and bored at 2 pm on a Wednesday. Chin up! You’ll find something soon!)

I started clicking on the tabs on the left hand side (contact information, beknown photo, summary, experience, etc) and filled in the blanks. When I clicked “beknown photo,” I was expecting to upload a professional photo of my choice to act as my “profile picture.” Instead....

Are you serious!??! NO WAY!! I am now officially scared of this application. Why do you want to access my photos? Why do you need more than one? What are your terms of service and privacy policy, and does the size 8 hard-to-read legal jargon slash nonsense policy allow you to store my photos on your database and publish them somewhere? Curiosity wants me to “allow” to see what happens, but common sense tells me to back off. Hey....what happens in college, stays in college, thank you very much! Skipping this step...

(I had to click the “back” button in my browser to get away from this page, and it kept refreshing the above image instead of going back to the edit section. I had to click and hold the BACK button and go back 2-3 pages. Not cool.)

I tried to fill out the details of my job at JXT, and ummm it’s cut off. I don’t implement social medi. I implement social media strategies. So far, I’m not impressed with this app. Instead, I’m very, very angry with it!

For the skills tab, I have to list each of my skills separately and note how many years of experience I have for each. I initially did this the wrong way, as you can see above. I don’t have time nor energy to list every single skill I have and the years of experience in each and jobs in which I utilised those skills. Nope, not going through with this. Skipping this step...

“Interests”  has pulled the interests from my facebook profile. The interests that I display on my facebook profile are NOT the same interests I’ll display to my potential employer! I’m skipping this step because I don’t want to change my facebook profile. Yes, teaching music to little kids makes me the happiest person in the world. My friends know this and I’ve communicated it in a way that I’m happy for my friends to see: passionate, enthusiastic and with lots of exclamation points. NOT the same way I’d list it on a resume. I’d want to say “music education” or “music theory” or something professional. Skipping this step...

Ah, the good ole Notifications Settings. Normally, this is a favourite place to go as it controls which emails you receive. However, I have no idea what a badge is, I’ll never have a job posting because I’m not an employer, not sure what an endorsement is and am weary that a “connection” may be more connected to me than I’d like, based on my experience thus far. Sooo I’ll go ahead and UNtick the twitter boxes (no , I do NOT want you tweeting on my behalf, and facebook knows my twitter handle and therefore beknown probably does, too...).

Right, now I actually have no idea what to do! I clicked on “Profile” at the top (in the purple section, within the app) and it takes me here:

I click on Network, and it takes me here:

No connections available – awesome! NO, I do NOT want to connect with my facebook friends! They would kill me for spamming them.

Then I click “jobs”...

Ding ding ding! Look at all those jobs! Wait, what? Why would I want to be a tennis coach? The word “tennis” isn’t even in my profile, ANYWHERE, and I’m a terrible player and haven’t touched a racquet since high school. Office All rounder? Nope, no desire to answer phones. I see no social media jobs, digital media jobs, communications jobs....NOTHING, in fact, matches up to ANY of the skills or keywords that I purposely used throughout my profile! The one underneath Tennis Coaches was “Security Engineer,” which is pretty much the last job in the world that would suit me. Apparently, my profile is 85% complete, so I click on “complete profile” (reminds me of LinkedIn). Low and behold, it wants me to make connections by inviting my friends. For the 3^rd time..NO!!

I’d also like to note that none of my 1200 facebook friends use it. Yes, it told me so.

OH EM GEE. I just hopped onto my profile and I am APPALLED and terrified and ANGRY at Beknown. Look what it’s done!!! Arghhhhhh. 

That’s it – I’m done. I officially hate you, BeKnown. FOUR TIMES my friends saw a ridiculously useless update about an app that I’m using on THEIR newsfeed. I’ve now risked getting my updates hidden or being unfriended altogether.

I’ve uninstalled the app and will never get the past 30 minutes of my life back.

Let it be known that BeKNOWN is NO GOOD!!

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Compliments, courtesy call or catastrophic calamity? Are you the BeKnown developer and have a few words for me? Whichever the case, you can email me, tweet me, LinkedIn me (perhaps not really a verb, but it is now) or call me. Thanks for reading all the way through! (unless you scrolled to the bottom just to get my contact details, in which case, please don’t be too mean).

Qantas Delays & Travelling Days

Melbourne: SHOPPING!

Hey, NOT my fault that it was on my way to my next meeting. And that I need a new purse. A new season dictates a new bag...duh!

An infamous Melbourne tram.

The tourist in me couldn't help myself. SO MANY UGGS!!!

The adventures of a social media superstar continue! I actually wrote this entry a few weeks ago, in a cab on the way to the airport, but haven’t gotten around to posting it. I’m one fantastic blogger, aren’t I!? So I’ll just copy and paste it below, and you can press the rewind button in your head. Yes, this is a time travelling blog entry; maybe I’m not so bad, after all!

Today, Qantas (the major Australian airline) was on strike for whatever reason Qantas workers go on strike. As such, there’s a chance that the strikes could continue tomorrow. As life goes, I’m meant to be hosting a half day workshop in Melbourne tomorrow morning on social media, and the conference organisers were worried that my morning flight would be cancelled or delayed due to the strikes (the conference starts at 8:45 am so I have the 6 am flight booked). So at the last minute they decided that I need to fly to Melbourne TONIGHT to avoid any such potential drama. Alas, participants paid a fair bit of money to attend and would be pretty upset if it was cancelled at the last minute. So here I am, heading to a 9:15 pm flight (that’s all that was left), landing me in Melbourne at 10:45 tonight only for a 8:45 am start tomorrow. My workshop runs until 1 pm, and then I have meetings at 2, 3:15 and 4:30. My flight back to Sydney tomorrow night (the lady on the phone informed me today) was “downgraded” due to the strikes and thus pushed back from a 6:30 departure to a 8:50 departure. Meaning, of course, that I’ll land in Sydney around 10:15 and will probably get home around 11 (I’ve found that taxi queues on Thursday nights are the worst). On the upside (trick prepositional phrase; there is no upside), they’re putting me up in a nice serviced apartment in the city tonight and I can probably order ridiculously expensive room service and take what I want from the mini bar!!! Then again, I won’t get to the hotel until 11:30 and I can’t drink due to my early workshop tomorrow. See? That’s not an upside at all. Mean.

Alas, there is much travelling to be done in the upcoming weeks. This week I’m in Brisbane to speak at the HRSummit. Next week I’m in Melbourne to conduct some training sessions and to meet with new clients. The week after that I’m in Adelaide & Perth again, to conclude my Australian-wide tour of the “How-To of Social Media: A Hands-On Approach.”

Hopefully, come November, I can stay Sydney-side for a few weeks. November brings my 25^th birthday (sob, gasp, tear..I’m getting old) as well as the end of my lease period. Meaning, of course, that I’ll have to move, which is never an easy task. Finding a place will be difficult enough (Sydney is SO expensive!) and then the process of moving is going to be at the very least mildly annoying. Now that I think about it, I’ve lived in 5 different places in the past 2 years! Coogee (where I fell in love with Australia), Waverley, Randwick, Coogee again, and now Maroubra. Having said that, I never had any furniture to speak of until I moved to Maroubra, so moving hasn't really been that bad. This time around, I’m going to try and live closer to work (North Sydney), because let’s face it: I’m a workaholic. I can sit here and tell myself that I’m not, look around for places in the Eastern Suburbs, close to my favourite pubs and beaches, but at the end of the day it makes most sense to live north of the bridge. Hopefully, more blog entries coming soon as I traverse Australia and endeavour to find an affordable and convenient place in which to reside!

4 cities in 6 days!

^^The Adelaide that I should have seen during my trip...^^

^^The actual Adelaide that I saw on my trip...chucking down rain the whole time^^


Wow. Sure has been a while since my last update! I’ve been super, SUPER busy lately, traversing Australia and trying to make a name for myself whilst trying to find my sanity and keep my head above water with my thousands of projects, conferences, training sessions, case studies, meetings and the like.

I’m writing to you from ADELAIDE, Australia! Wine country, or so they say, but unfortunately I won’t have time to indulge in some pleasures (although I did enjoy a few samples and might have potentially ordered a case of something amazing to be delivered in 2 weeks….oops?)

I’m here to kick off my Australian social media recruitment tour! I’m hosting a series of workshops in conjunction with the RCSA (Recruitment and Consulting Services Association) and will be speaking at breakfast conferences on social media in recruitment in Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane (in that order, I think). More details on the breakfasts can be found here.

So Adelaide’s brekky is tomorrow, and then I fly to Perth in the afternoon for the Perth brekky on Thursday. I’m very excited to see Perth. The most isolated city in the world, Perth is meant to be beautiful and I've heard nothing but good things about that city!

Yesterday, Monday, I spoke at the Health & Productivity Management Conference (in Sydney, for once!). It was only 30 minutes, but it was very well received and I was quite pleased with my presentation. It was recorded and photos were taken, so hopefully multimedia is coming soon. Last week I was in Melbourne for training sessions & meetings, and the weekend before that I was in Melbourne as well, speaking at the HR Summit (I also spoke at the HR Summit Sydney and in October I’ll be presenting once again at the HR Summit in Brisbane).

Suffice to say, JXT Consulting has me racking up those frequent flyer points left and right! It’s tiring, but I love (most times) every minute of it. Flights are usually at 6 am, meaning 4:30 wake up, and often I don’t get home until 10 or 11 at night. Sometimes it can wear me out, but it does make me appreciate a good night’s sleep.

With this week’s trips to Adelaide & Perth and my arrival home from Melbourne on Friday night, I’ll have hit 4 cities in 6 days :-) Woo!

I reckon that’s enough for now. I could say that I’ll write again soon, but who knows?! 

Chou for now.

PS: my most recent pride and joy is the completion and launch of Crown Casino’s Career facebook page – designed and developed by yours truly! Crown Casino is the largest casino complex in the in the southern hemisphere so you can imagine it was a pretty exciting project!