It’s that time of year again when I count my blessings and give thanks for the people who have made a difference in my life.
This past year has been one of great change, both personally and professionally, and I’d like to thank everyone who has supported me through those changes.
To the people below — and to my friends on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn (yeah, I’m not even going to pretend I visit Google Plus anymore) and the readers of this blog — I’d like to say, thank you.
I’m not sure you realize just how much your support and encouragement means to me.
Kary Delaria
Kary and I have, in tandem, built lives and careers for ourselves merging online and offline worlds. It has been a really weird and rewarding experience — one that only she really gets. This is why our conversations usually start with things like, “Do you think it’s weird…?” or ” “Did you see…?” or “Do you remember…?” (The answers are invariably, “No,” “Yes” and “Always.”) I’m a lucky lady to know her and am thankful the Internet has enabled so many more people to discover how amazeballs she is.
Ann Handley & Marketing Profs
Many thanks to Marketing Profs for giving me the chance to speak at this year’s B2B Forum in October. I loved the opportunity to share some new information about brand storytelling with attendees and the chance to meet some fellow marketing nerds. Thanks in particular to Ann for the hospitality, the copy of your book, and the pen! (seriously, the 12 year old girl in me had a squee-fit over it.)
Steamfeed TV
I want to give a big shout out to my fellow panelists on Steamfeed TV — Dorien Morin-van Dam, Jeff Howell, Randy Bowden, Greg Digneo and our moderator Gerry Michaels (who keeps us all from going off the rails.) I really enjoy our bi-monthly chats about marketing, branding, technology and everything in between. I so appreciate having a chance to talk shop and build a community with other smart people.
Anne Castro
Anne is my pop culture “sister from another mister,” and has been doing an excellent job in the past year of forcing me to come out of my house and socialize. She’s super smart and sassy (my favorite kind of person!) and has extraordinarily good taste in television and movies. Thanks for being a well-adjusted grown-up who is well versed in the art of two-sided conversations.
Word Up/Ignite
I’ve been awfully burnt out on social media lately, so I really appreciated having the chance to speak about other topics this year. Thanks to Patrick Kuntz from Ignite Minneapolis for including me in your crew for the Bush Connect conference (where I talked about mindfulness meditation.) And thanks to Garrick van Buren for the referral to the folks at Word Up Minneapolis, where I gave a keynote talk about what “making it” looks like.
Dawn Carlson
Every year, I include someone on this list who quietly but consistently gives me support. Dawn is my choice for this year. Just want you to know, Dawn, that I notice every time you comment or hit “like” on my random musings and am thankful for it. Quite honestly, most days there is a voice in the back of my head saying, “No one cares what you think, Jen.” People like you help me fight that voice every single day. And that’s pretty amazing.
Etiquette Book Readers
My big accomplishment of the year was publishing a little book, (And starting to write a much bigger one. Stay tuned for news on that) called Social Media Etiquette: 100 Ways to Communicate with Grace and Class. Many thanks to everyone who downloaded the book and read it, to the people who wrote reviews on Amazon or on blog posts, and to Social Media Breakfast Twin Cities for giving me a chance to talk about it in a free-form Q&A (which was loads of fun.) It was all an amazing learning experience.
Johnna Stob
As most people know, I’m kind of a messed up person, physically. Thankfully I have people like Johnna Stob in my life to fix me back up. Johnna is a physical therapist and my pilates trainer. She knows a lot about bodies and how to fix broken ones. And I’m super broken. So it’s pretty much a match made in heaven! Plus, she has an excellent sense of humor and understands me when I say vague things like my neck is feeling, “smunchy on the sides.”
My husband
It’s because I have a loving and supportive husband that I am able to say no to projects that feel wrong, companies I don’t feel comfortable supporting and opportunities that might make me more popular, but likely less happy. So, to my husband, I’d like to officially say, “thank you” and “I love you,” (and I’m sorry I am a huge pain in the ass sometimes.)
In case you are curious, here are links to the shout outs for…
I still like all of the people on the old lists an awful lot.
(Before 2010, I was thankful, but not savvy enough to blog about it.)
*photo by Lee Scott licensed under Creative Commons Zero