Ad Operations and then some

It's about that time in my life where I rejuvenate all cranial activities to have the knowledge to teach and guide others. Yes, I am over 35.

This week I have decided to take up as much information as possible while managing a team of 10, fighting for Playpen as a start up, helping those with Ad Operations needs, and (apparently) decide to blog again. It's funny how that happens (with me). If I task my brain to do 100 things, I just feel obligated to write about it. Here are some things I would love to share with you: (and is a good reference to me to see how long it takes to complete)

• "Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment" by Jim Sterne. I saw a presentation last week by Jim Stern at the OMMA Metrics conference. I declared him my Hero and told him so. Details of why he is my new Hero... well I'll let you know after I tell him myself and report his response. Plus I bought his book that day and am finishing it this week. Book Report coming! So far... it's awesome. Well written, informative, and it's like a guide to anything you ever wanted referenced on social media metrics with re-usable quotes that last centuries.

• "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug. Truthfully, I have owned this book for a year. It came highly recommended by the UE guru at Playdom. But this week, I'm giving it to my lead Creative Services person and will receive a Book Report! (yup, that's 2 BRs!)

• "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh. I've seen this book in just about every start-up I walk in to have a meeting, like Zivity, ngmoco, and more. I own 2 copies thanks to who knows who. Again, I haven't read it but I know it's importance. RETENTION is a big part of our favorite 3 R's: Reach, RETENTION, Revenue. So last week, I gave it to one of my Campaign Managers to read and provide a BR. More to come!

• Last week I attended a Venture Shift event, invited by our friends at Ackrell Capital, Ilan & Micheal himself. I learned that I have could have profited from going to one of these events 2 years ago before trying to embark on my first start-up. There are yummy tidbits to carry home from these events. Watch out when smoking a cig with a panel member, they are extremely jaded and have "done these events too many times, and don't understand why an entrepreneur would waste their precious time at an event like this rather than actually producing a product." OK. That's kind of fair. But really, had we just taken a breather, networked better, and attended 1-3 events, then we would have been much better shape, felt like we had people to talk to, and have received some solid advice. BEWARE OF THE JADED! BUT DON'T HEED THEIR WARNINGS!...as really you don't have to go to too many of the same events to realize that they are truly a waste of time.

• An old friend, now the head of Ad Products for Google, introduced me to Aditya Vuchi the CEO of Media Mint, an outsource Ad Ops solution. With my 10+ experience in Ad Operations and consulting around the bay, he asked that I be an Advisor. Well, hell yeah! Why? Cause I feel his passion and love what he's doing. He's fighting those outsourced Ad Ops giants (insert Operative here) and is the only CEO of an outsourced solution that truly ran campaigns. After working at Tribal Fusion, he returned to India to make his dream happen on his own dime. Go Aditya!! After just over a year, he has a handful of clients and a pipeline of Ad Ops individuals ready to roll... he's even working with the nearby university to train Ad Operations and fill his pipeline of specialists.

Fun 7 days? Yup! More to come? Double Yup!

I'm back bitches!!

Stumbled Upon

Drum roll.....

The moment you have been waiting for. A StumbleUpon.com entry! Yup, it's enough to chalk a rich stranger and have your hooligans pilfer the pockets. Huh?

Exactly.

Today's Stumble Upon:

Click here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1oZGZu/www.youtube.com/watch%253Fv%253D5eXsSluPNxY

or just watch it:

Bored in Costa Rica, not in the good way

Preface: In January 2000, I packed a truck with my boyfriend and we drove from San Diego to Costa Rica. We took 2.5 months to drive through all the fabulous countries and towns in Mexico and Central America. Camping nearly the entire trip and only in a hotel when I was sick. The most favorite road trip of my life. Though at our destination, we were ready to settle in the first town we landed in in Costa Rica. That town was Playa Grande, a surf town on the Nicoya Peninsula, and at the time it was the most inhabited surf town North (aka the first as you enter Costa Rica from Nicaragua). Here's a journal entry after living there for 3 months:

-------- ~June/July 2000-------------

Bored. Bored. Bored out of my tits. Sure a 3 becoming 7 month vacation is relaxing, but boring? That is sad. I have lost my motto, "Smile & See joy in everything I do." I do nothing. I drive around a town that is 1.5 miles in diameter in search for lines of communication to places thousands of miles away. When that doesn't seem to be working, due to government monopolized phone lines and pseudo power, I try to indulge in a little remodeling of a cave. A beautiful cave I may add. But a cave, which seems to have been vacant of humans for quite a while, now full of bouncing crickets, sojourning ants (some with wings of course), melancholy scorpions, cracked out cockroaches, and 100's of delectable spiders; or should I say this growing list of delectable critters are a treat for the 100's of spiders? Who cares? And Who's counting? I just want them out. A bomb. mmmm. I tried to find a good fumigator. Surely you would think a country filled with over-zealous insectos would have a way of ridding them forever. Forever, impossible, but desired, or just for 4 more months. I can't stay much longer than that anyway! Not with all this talk of surfing. That is when the true boredom begins. Go surfing, have fun, I don't care, but please save the surf talk on the beach! Anytime I hear words of surfing I shall walk away. Not to be rude, but simply to save my sanity. [who said journal entries were up-beat?]

Now the question is, "Why do I despise surfing so much?" Just because I don't surf? No! I don't do a lot of things but I would enjoy a good conversations. [I ran out of books a month ago including what was in the town] Most of the surf talk is absolutely fucking mind torturing! [the boys were hot, but still]

"Oh that was a good wave."

"Yeah I caught 4 today." [loser]

"Hey did you see that swell?"

"No, but the wind is offshore." [yawn]

Wait. It is because I don't surf that I find none of this interesting. But [insert cursing] Did you read what I just wrote? Does this surf talk not bore you?? It's like the power went out [happened all the time during a rain storm] and the generator is puttering. [if the generator puttered] My circuit breakers are going nuts and the sparks are flying off all the wrong synapses [that's my brain on drugs]. A once happy-go-lucky-girl has become a lion in a cage drooling for fresh meat. [the hot boys were not enough to make me happy]

Damn that felt good. "Get if off your chest", some psychiatrist on their knees, ass up, bowing to Freud once said.

Viva La Posts!

I moved. Which means I found a ton of shit that was hiding in my closets. Which then means I threw out much of my past. Some things I can't let go. So... Viva La Posts!

I found a few posts that I never published during my 5 week stay in Paris in 2008... read on to read little.

And I found a journal entry worth keeping. This one is from my trip to Costa Rica.

What's up with all the change?

I had to change my template to this blog, the green was killing me. But I'm too busy to really make a pretty template, so instead I'll write...

There has been so much change in the world lately that has seemed to affect everyone. First of all, I have to say it, Facebook really has changed our communication with everyone from the past, from the bar, and especially online. I am a fan. I would buy stock but perhaps it's over-rated now with all the incredibly greedy decisions made at the company (did I say that?). Anyway, maybe it's the age I'm in but I really think it's the time we live in. We are all working hard to find a way to not work so hard. Some of us have clearly been let go from jobs, some of us have run from opportunity, and others are grabbing balls left and right. As for me, in 2009 thus far, I have done them all. OK, I've mainly grabbed a bunch of balls. And yes, this blog entry is about me, cause it's myyyyyyyyyyyy blog!

Soon after knee surgery in my incredibly over-percacet state, I had the balls to tell my boss at YouTube that, "No, I do not agree with the new terms of my offer a week prior to when I was to restart work." OK, that's not a direct quote, but close. So, I started my new year jobless, crippled, medicated, and broke. When I returned to SF, at the end of January, I had a huge friend base to help me get back on my feet. Took me a month to interview, decide that I would start my own company with some fantastic peeps, and change the way companies would think about hiring an Ad Ops Director. By March, I landed my first true consulting gig with a Mobile advertising company. Score! Meanwhile, I was trying to get my other Ad Ops company off the ground.

Then a couple of months later I convinced another company to hire me as a consultant. I'm hot! And I still don't have a website for my consulting company. Oh yes, I have a corporation, get this... isokrankee, inc. Yup, that's me! DBA and all (ok... still haven't filed that, but damn, I'm so busy!) For a month, I worked 2 consulting gigs, the new one in the city the other in the South Bay. And I would swap them MWF in the South Bay, T/Th in the city. That clearly drove me nuts.

Once the end of that hellish month was over, I was out on the prowl during my "spare" time interviewing and building up my pipeline while still working a couple of days at the gig in the city. Prowling was fun, but it started to wear on me. Over and over again I had to repeat my intentions of, "I'm starting a new gig, I don't want the full time position, if you decide to not to hire a consultant (aka me) then I can refer you someone else in the industry."

I hate repeating.

In July I figured it out finally, and after finally meeting the man of my dreams. And just around the time that my partners and I decide to put our startup in the back burner, and just watch is buuuuuuurn. Although before I figure it out, I lose all control and breakdown. It could have been the pityriasis rosea, then uncontrollable hives, on top of stresses from a new relationship, job hunting, people disappointments, and all that is life... but I finally just lose it. It's one of those days when you wake up already 10 minutes late to an interview, you have to fabricate a lie (and I hate lying), run out the house with an ice pack to your face to reduce the swelling from crashing on your pillow funny after drinking a couple of whiskeys, and somehow make it through a day of 2 interviews, consulting in office, and crying any chance you get. Let's call that a cleansing experience, because since then I have learned to manage my pipeline better, stop the repetition of interviews, and chose just 3 or 4 things to work on. Just 3 or 4, ok maybe 5.

And that brings me to tonight. Where among the many very important very life changing things that I must decide in 24 hours, I have decided to change the template of my blog. Why? Shit, cause I can! Because I have the easy decision and control to click a single template to get rid of that aweful green that blanketed my blog and make this thing legible. Writing this entry was a by-product, a slight mistake, perhaps a waste of my valuable time, but really it helps. I've gotten something off of my shoulder, wish I had time to tell more...but I am ready to focus again, crank out some work, build an empire, motivate anyone that is ready to be motivated. I am going to have a lot of work for anyone ready to work, have fun, and is ready for some quality change.

As my dear friend Anna says, "You won't win unless you play! So play!"

Are you ready?

Gotta Walk First...

...but I want to run!!!

About 3 weeks ago I took my last vicoden. The thought of feeling again was frightening. Not just the pain but the feeling of want to do more. Vicoden is a great sedative, which helps with mellowing out a hyperactive person like moi. Which in turn is a good thing when this person bashes her knee snowboarding after the second day on the job as a snowboard instructor. This season would have been my 8th year as an instructor at Vail. And this season, I planned on getting my avalanche certification, possibly level II certification, and generally tearing up the steep slopes for a month (that would be steeps not at Vail...shhh Vail Mountain is nothing compared to BC and much much more). All a part of my big sabbatical plan. But that came to a crashing hault (no pun intended) when I stupidly hit a compression (most likely) straight legged. After 13 years of riding you think I would know better. Maybe the greys in my head aren't just an indicator to go blond? At any rate, I did a good job tearing my MCL, meniscus, and ripping my ACL to oblivion. Now a dead person's donated Achilles tendon holds my knee joint in proper alignment. Ha!

So it's 3 weeks in with no Vics and nearly 3 months past my surgery, I am antsy! I want to run, jump, bike (not just in my living room), skateboard, boogie board, SNOWBOARD, and get everything going at once. Everything. Even secret things I can't share with anyone right now...

Today, I walk and dammit I do it well.

What the Paris - Shopping!

Shopping in Paris: http://www.francetravelplanner.com/go/paris/shop/index.html

Yoga in Paris & a Whole Lot More...peruse through David Lebowitz's site: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2006/12/yoga_in_paris.html

(that's all she wrote) I found that walking through the streets of Paris was the best way to find a gem... plus it really depends on your style or your want to be Paris style.