As some of you know I stayed in London this week visiting my best friend, Anna, and another very good friend, Paula, who works for Global Voices Online. Paula’s flat became my home for last three days and I felt it really difficult and sad to leave to work today!:( Last night I have managed to convince Paula to tell me (and you!) few words about her newest blog, as well as work for Global Voices and generally the Global Voices spirit.

I really hope you will find her words at least just as inspiring as I did:)  Here is is (apologies for cheating, I was told I’ll be able to embed it properly soon;), alternatively check the widget on the sidebar to listen to it on my blog!):

You can read her newest blog in Portuguese here! Thank you, once again, Paula, for your being such a wonderful person and great host! And thank you for the interview! 🙂 btw, transcription is mistaken, we did not have ‘blocks of chocolate’, only a box of chocolate;)

To kick off this year’s blogger interviews I have asked my colleague, Rachel Steed, to talk about her blog ‘quotes from the street’ and her other experiences with social media. Hope you like it and check her blog, it’s worth it:)

Syl:  When did you first hear about blogging? How did you start to get involved in it?

Rachel: I started blogging in June 2009 when a friend of mine suggested that I take a list of things I’d overheard people saying whilst out and about in London and put it into a blog.

Syl:  ‘Quotes from the Street’ – how did it start? Tell me more about the blog. Does it affect your life, I mean: do you pick up more quotes now, while writing it, or is it something you always did? Did blogging change your life? If so, how?

Rachel: Has the blog affected/changed my life? Definitely, and in more than one way – creatively, it’s an outlet and something I really love to do – Personally, when my friends and readers tell me they laughed or thought about one of the quotes it makes me happy; I think it’s really cool to know that there are people out there reading and actually enjoying what you’re producing . – Socially, everyone in my life seems to have deputized themselves as veritable quote machines – and the idea that they’re now all out there eavesdropping on public conversations is quite amusing – it’s sort of become a game.

Professionally, I’d say blogging has a few benefits, demonstrating that I’m able to build, optimise and maintain a blog is fairly relevant to my job in word of mouth/social media @1000heads, it also helps to convey my personality in a way I might not have the opportunity to do so otherwise – at the end of last year I signed with a book agent who took the contents of the blog to the Frankfurt book fair with a view toward publishing it as a book in 2011 – that alone, was really cool!

Syl: Did your blogging change after you got involved in work in social media? What other online presences do you have?

Rachel: Not really – although, in a few months, Lisa Burprich @lbp and I are launching a new blog called londonbridged.com which will have a slightly satirical spin on the difference between East and West London, but also offer helpful reviews of local restaurants, gigs, shops etc.

Syl: When it comes to other online presences, do you incorporate them in your blogging? If so, how?

Rachel: I use a Twitter account @QFTSblog and Facebook Group to help make it more accessible and also add my posts to bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg.

Syl: Tell me more about your charity related projects – you are involved in Bright One and Child’s Foundation Network – can you tell my readers more about those?

Rachel: I work with a group founded by Ben Matthews called ‘Bright One’ which is a volunteer run communications agency for  professionals who want to donate their skills to small NGO’s in need of assistance with marketing/comms – we are currently working with an amazing charity called Childsi Foundation, which was founded by an inspiring woman called Lucy Buck who is currently on-site in Uganda building an orphanage for  abandoned children. Lucy uses social media to raise awareness of her charity and its activity, you can follow her on Twitter @childsi or if you’d like to give your support you can do so using an Obama-esque mechanic of donating as little as £2 by buying a brick in the virtual wall.

Syl: When I call myself ‘geekette’ I sometimes come across people who claim there is no such term. Is there a ‘blogette’? What type of a blogger is she (tell me in 3 to 5 words;))?

Rachel: I am TOTALLY a blogette! and I would challenge anyone who disputes the usage of the term

– Creative

– Observational

– Conversational

– Dedicated

Syl: Would you like to share anything else with this blog’s readers?

Rachel: My current favourite blog ‘I AM THE CLIENT’ epic reading when you need a laugh.

Syl: Thank you, Rachel!:)

It seemed like a hard one to me, however, once I started to look around the house, I realized there is still some work to be done:

1. I live in an old flat and some of the light bulbs have not been changed since I moved in. Changed them for the energy saving ones.

2. I encouraged my parents to take public transport to Oxford, even though I hate the quality of their services;)

3. I joined One Hundred Months, do check the site out – it has the most impressive list of partners I have ever seen on an activist website, which only proves that climate change finally became an agenda for many, not only a few of us.

Day 3 is for our friends so here is my little list:

1. Calling my old friends from uni.

2. Writing letters (on paper, sent by post) to few ladies, who are always close to my heart, but also to a person who potentially will become my good friend too.

3. Writing a long e-mail with a difficult experience from my past to someone who was asking about it – I hope it will build a bridge between the distance sharing us at the moment.

4. Not really me: a good blogger friend, who helped me to sort out my self-hosted blog settings. I am very happy she is around, and hope to meet her for lunch in January.

So, I started Twixtmas path and I must say I like the first bit. It actually matches the idea of re-thinking life towards the end of the year and does put me in the right mood. So today I:

-watched tv – enjoyed a late night watching of comedy shows,

-started meditating and planned my meditation area in the new flat,

-planned furniture for work from home (well, and some other cool stuff:)),

-bought web hosting and spent rest of the evening browsing through WP themes to find one matching my ideas for next level of this blog (chatting to a friend, whos opinion on web design I really cherish).

The first bit was easy and pleasant.

Just read on Fundraising.co.uk about Twixtmas and thinking about joining it. From December 27th to the 31st there are several things we can do to use the free time for a good cause. The first day is for us, second for others, third for our friends, fourth for the Earth, fifth for our future – it all seems like a good schedule for meditation of where we are, where we can and should be in 2010. Shall we? Any one fancy joining me in using those… (I think it’s a brilliant idea, but there is one, an obvious bit missing – what has this whole idea to do with Twitter? I am assuming I should tweet my commitments with #twixmas hashtag, but I am not sure – we could do with instructions on the site, or is it there and I missed it?)

UPDATE: it has nothing to do with Twitter;)