I participated in the 3rd annual Winter Writer’s Weekend, a local program coordinated by Open Door Publications. This is the third time I have been invited to participate in the weekend as a presenter. This year I was assigned two workshop time slots. The audience was a mix of established authors and authors who are still developing their books. From the intimate reception at The Artists Gallery to the full day of Saturday workshops, and half day of Sunday presentations there was a great blend of presenters and attendees to learn from.

While my workshops did have a slight bias towards using WordPress, one of the authors shared her experience moving from WordPress to another content management system. I also had an opportunity to work with an author who already had one WordPress powered website and was ready to spin off a service into a separate website. Other attendee authors were just starting to gather the ingredients to build a website as part of their overall book marketing plan.

Takeaway lessons when assigned to present during the last session of the day:

1. Make a concerted effort before the session to break away from the main conversation area to re-charge and re-energize.
2. Preserve at least one unused dark colored marker to have it fresh for last session to write on the flipchart. I had found most of the ink in the dark colored markers had been used up during the earlier sessions and only the light colored ones were still usable.

I am looking forward to the 4th annual Winter Writer’s Weekend.

Bonus:

On the same weekend I saw the announcement that Note Plugin was updated to include to support for images. I tried it out right away to add a simple telephone (image) icon to my phone number on my work samples page. I did not have time during my initial use of the updated Note plugin to test it’s full capabilities.

Image Credit: Laura Pedrick Photography