Kim Werker › Comments

"Yeah, I barely touched my pile, too. I'll have to go back and look. Ooh! End-of-year list assessment." - Kim Werker

"Here's Ars on it: http://arstechnica.com/apple...... What a dumb move." - Kim Werker

Hi Kim, do you have a url for those guidelines for accredited bloggers for the 2010 Olympics? - Ton Zijp

Not me. Thanks for the info! - carolbrowne

"YES! Of course I'm in. Let's discuss, then we can share 'em!" - Kim Werker

"Yes, I certainly see your point. Also, imagine a game-knitting *party*. Or, maybe, just a small gathering with, say, The Big Lebowski. Oh, yes." - Kim Werker

"Au contraire! There is a thriving and massive crafts community online -- in all formats from blogs to Facebook to Twitter, and certainly YouTube. I see tremendous opportunity for niche-oriented publications to use online media to reach their audience (current and new). The interactivity of social media allows for rapid question/answer exchanges that are impossible in print, allowing tutorials of any sort (text, photo, illustrated, video) to become wildly successful. My hesitation about using these tools for IC wasn't that the tools themselves are in any way inappropriate. In fact, I wonder if part of the reason was the timing and risk differential between print and online: There's little risk in trying something new online, and it can take very little time to put together an online experiment. That trying new things in print takes so long and uses so much in terms of resources means I rarely encounter free-wheeling experimentation amongst publishers online. Yet what's really needed is..." - Kim Werker

"I'll argue it's only mostly about conversion. Conversion as long as a level of integrity and honesty is maintained. Without that, it's just business, and *just* business can be empty, cynical, irresponsible and harsh." - Kim Werker

"I'm so glad you delurked. You should do it more often! I see your point. I never thought of being online as a representative of the magazine as promoting myself - it was, to me, about promoting the magazine. But I needed to be able to promote the magazine *as* myself. What I mean is, not that I was the magazine, but that I needed to not be a persona while promoting it online - I had to be me. Which should have been perfect, since "me" was the editor of the magazine. The differences you highlight are exactly the ones that trip companies up when they start a social media campaign. Employees *are* people -- and when they appear as such, when other people can relate to them as people, that's when the magic happens. Otherwise it's like encountering a robo-call, but online. That's no fun for anybody. Hm. Between all the crazy verb tenses in my post and this convoluted comment, I must be driving you totally nuts." - Kim Werker

"Wow, Steve. Thank you so much for sharing your story. People like me, who've always (heh, "always" = for like a few years) been online and have been immovably enthusiastic about the business potential of such, hypothesize about your very story all the time. We do this because we're intimately familiar with our own stories and we've watched others succeed along similar lines. But to read about your thinking and how your approach has changed over such a relatively short time, and to know you're happy with the changes, is, well, it's just really very exciting." - Kim Werker

"Ooh, please flesh it out!" - Kim Werker

"Oh, Kathy. I'm so sorry to hear about such a tragic loss. My thoughts and love to you and Steve, to your boys, and to your friends." - Kim Werker

"Oh man, you're right!" - Kim Werker

"Any idea if this will affect niche imprints like Watson-Guptill? Just the other day, I emailed my W-G editor to ask whom I might speak with about the possibility of creating e-books of my two crochet books..." - Kim Werker

"Yes, please." - Kim Werker

"Ok, first? I had no idea that's what the little strawberry thing on a tomato pincushion is. (I've had one of those for, like, ten years.) And second, now I wish I didn't know that both because I want to make a steel-wool bottlecap pincushion and also because I want to wear off my fingerprints." - Kim Werker

"I'm in." - Kim Werker

"Ha! I loved the image on your blog, but I had a similar reaction after I stole it and put it here. Like, wait, I don't think I can read it? Still, I totally love it." - Kim Werker

"I'd love to hear from you after you've read the book! I love the book too much to watch the movie. I don't want to be moved by it in any ways that are different than how I was moved while reading. It's too special to me. Still, I'd be very interested to know what you think of each." - Kim Werker

"I'm so glad you chimed in, Beth. I knew when I wrote my post that finances would never support the dream I outlined, but it can't hurt to dream, right? In the end, I think your idea is a stronger one -- to spread things out over shows, with a theme to connect them, will actually allow people time to digest things. Time to think, question, experiment, and come back to talk about it and learn more. One whiz-bang weekend will keep people fired up for about a week, and then it will fizzle. Keeping the conversation going, and the learning along with it, is the way to go. Of course I also agree with you about the incredible value of getting together in person. I've told every single new designer who's asked me for advice that the first thing they should do is scrape together the cash to attend a show. That's where the business gets done. (And the fun. Don't forget the fun. We work in an industry filled with creative people who are passionate about the same things we're passionate about. Not..." - Kim Werker

"I'm with you on every point here, Annie. I've found myself saying a lot, over the last few weeks, that using social media doesn't require any skills (besides typing) that businesspeople don't already use in their brick and mortar stores. Friendliness, sharing of knowledge, expertise, humility, good aesthetic sense, good humour. The rest is just learning where to click to get that stuff across (by which I don't intend to dismiss people's very real concerns about learning this stuff). I know some folks at TNNA are following this discussion, and I'm very glad to hear it. There are many people who work in the industry and who are active TNNA members who have a stunning breadth of experience and knowledge in this area. And quite a lot of us can teach and speak and write. I'm hopeful." - Kim Werker

"Go on for longer, Vashti! I love your crochet-centred way of thinking. Your second point nearly gave me a headache with all the nodding I was doing as I read it. A constant stream of inspiration! That's what we have here online. Now, constancy of inspiration can be a very intimidating thing to present to someone. That's a lot of inspiration. It's a lot of information to sift through, absorb, consume. So perhaps an approach to this would be to talk about filtering and finding the most meaningful information. Certainly I don't find crappy photographs, bad writing and same-old-same-old crafts inspiring, and I'm sure most people are with me on that. There's a lot of those things to sift through. We old-hat surfers aren't even aware anymore of the ways we filter information online. I'm going to give this more thought." - Kim Werker

"I love learning about which aspects of these books most upset people. I'm certainly bothered by perfect-body crap, and I'm very sensitive to the issues teens (and adults) struggle with when it comes to body image. But it flew under my radar when reading these books. Don't get me wrong, I totally see it now that you mention it. I suppose I was too distracted by the multitude of other things that angered me as I read." - Kim Werker

"I agree with you about the sexuality in the book. I don't at all think this book portrayed a teen boy pressuring a teen girl to have sex; indeed, the openness with which Bella and Edward talk about sex, and during which she indicates her desire to have sex with him, is totally refreshing in a YA book. It's all the other stuff that made me nuts." - Kim Werker

"You'll have to contact Wiley or the author. I'm afraid I don't know a thing about it." - Kim Werker

"I don't think it's either the industry's role to promote social media – all it must do is persist – nor social media's role to reach out to anybody – social media can't reach out or in any other way behave as if it's a discrete entity. What I think the industry trade organization's role *should* be is that of educator. And specifically, what I want from this particular trade organization is to educate its membership about business game changers. A new, robust, nearly ubiquitous technology came upon us rapidly, and I think it's every business educator's role to enlighten its members/students/clients/etc. on what it offers and, if a member/student/client/etc. is interested, on how to use it." - Kim Werker

"Oh, I think your question is answered every day. Look at the number of people who declared they had to learn how to crochet when the gorgeous blog photos of the Babette Blanket started popping up a few years ago. Gorgeous photos, good writing, and friendly help inspire people to make stuff. A yarn store may be a destination, and a yarn-craft blog may be a destination, too, but a blog can be visited without getting into a car and can be emailed to a friend or picked up by a big, less niche-oriented site that could reach thousands of people who might become inspired. So yes, I think online media can definitely be used to create more crafters. And to sell in-store classes or workshops, to promote events, to keep a community in touch between events..." - Kim Werker

"Option B, certainly. In no way do I think technology of any sort can single-handedly save anything. In fact, I don't even think that using online media would necessarily help the yarn industry. But I do think it's a tool that could be used to great ends, and it didn't exist even five years ago. You've pointed out the limitation of my thinking that Amy also mentioned: I wrote under the assumption that TNNA should be at the front of the pack. I'm not sure why I think this. It might be that I think the organization has the *potential* to be a great resource to the industry. I don't currently think it's meeting that potential in more ways than its failure to understand this ubiquitous new technology. It might be that TNNA shows are already a popular biannual gathering of yarn businesses, so therefore a convenient potential conduit of information. To be clear, I don't imagine an overhaul of anything. Just one, single trade show with a theme. I'm using strong language, but I don't..." - Kim Werker

"I'm starting to get a little frightened by the "why not". This is the problem with me and dreams. I'm glad you're in!" - Kim Werker

"Ah, yes. I was writing with a focus on the role I *wish* TNNA would/could play in the industry in this respect (and, consequently I suppose, in all respects), under the assumption that its success would be a good thing. Put another way, I was writing under the assumption that TNNA should be at the centre of an industry-wide solution. You're absolutely right that that may not at all be the case. And really, it would be much easier if the answer were for the businesses and people that are doing an end-run around TNNA to pool resources to share their knowledge directly with others in the industry. Maybe that *is* the answer... You summed things up really well. Though I do think a good dose of firing-up is almost always a very good thing." - Kim Werker

"I see your point, but I'm not sure I agree. Store owners know how important it is to build community within their store. They know how important a customer's experience in their store is and how it impacts the likelihood that customer will come back. They know word of mouth brings new customers to their store. All of those things translate pretty much directly to how businesses use social media online -- they build online community, they communicate with customers, they do their best to stay on top of word of mouth. The technology is just the tool with which the communication happens instead of the face-to-face communication that happens in-store and between customers. There's a conflation of the technology and what it's used for. Twitter isn't great because 140 characters are magical; Twitter's great because it enables a certain kind of brief, public form of communication, with the added benefit that a business can more easily keep track of what folks say about them than they can..." - Kim Werker