Having a healthy passion for work and life in balance can be a big productivity booster. But too often, that passion for work can veer too far into workaholic tendencies, especially for web workers. Here are a few tips to make sure your passion is productive. Read More »
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Dawn Foster
Bio:Dawn is a community manager, event organizer, blogger and technology enthusiast with years of experience in technology and software. By day, she is a mild-mannered corporate employee who manages an open source developer community, but she spends her evenings and weekends hacking on RSS and playing with various online technologies for fun. Dawn is the author of the Fast Wonder Blog and the book “Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy”. Follow Dawn on Twitter at @geekygirldawn.
My Focus
community management, social media, RSS, open source
Recent Posts
I think that many of us need to think differently about our work if we want to be productive over the long term. Here are a few things to think about if you want to be able to get more done by enjoying what you do. Read More »
The key to remaining productive is to not let the many distractions in your work day sidetrack you from your primary job. Here are a few tips for taking charge of your day and kicking a few of the most common distractions to the curb. Read More »
Death isn’t something most of us want to spend time any thinking about, but it is inevitable for all of us, and we need to think about passing on our digital assets as well as our physical and financial ones. Read More »
Our online presence defines much of our identity both personally and professionally, especially for web workers. But how much of your online identity is controlled by someone else? The Indie Web movement is primarily about ownership and control over your identity. Read More »
It’s important to be proactive and figure out for yourself how your strengths and weaknesses drive your web working preferences. You can improve your job satisfaction and make you happier in your work by finding projects and jobs that play to your strengths and preferences. Read More »
Side projects can be businesses or just-for-fun efforts that we do in our nonworking hours. While there are some risks with taking side projects, I strongly believe that most of the time they benefit both the individual and the employer. Read More »
More Must Reads
Most helpful folks are well-connected to a large network of people, but they don’t build this network by being selfish and difficult to work with. They’re usually generous and “pay it forward” in return for the help they’ve received from other people. Read More »
I make extensive use of smart folders and tags to sort my email into logical groups that I can easily process all at once. The key is to use rules and filters that automatically sort my email without any additional intervention from me. Read More »
As part of my recent productivity kick I’ve been thinking about to-do lists. Better task management allows us to get more accomplished while not spending too long managing the process. Here are some suggestions to help you focus on completing tasks rather than managing a list. Read More »
How much more you could get done if you had just an extra hour a day? While I can’t magically transport you to Bajor, where they have 26 hour days, I can share a few tips that will help you to take control of your schedule. Read More »
I’m a huge fan of anything that can make me more productive, so I’m always looking for ways to accomplish more while not killing myself doing it. It’s easier to excel if you can do more than your peers while still having time to recharge. Read More »
During an annual performance review, it is important to be able to document your accomplishments. Here are a few ways to ensure you can demonstrate your value to the company, whether you’re a freelancer being evaluated or an employee preparing for an annual review. Read More »
International meetings can be tricky. Language barriers can make communication difficult, while time zone differences can make finding a suitable time can be awkward. Here are a few of tips to help you overcome those issues and make your international meetings more successful. Read More »
Simon says that email’s reign may be coming to an end, and I recently mentioned sending less email as one way to reduce email overload, so I thought it would be fun to think about ways that how can replace email with other, more suitable tools. Read More »
You don’t need to be a software developer or hardcore techie to use APIs. In fact, some web APIs, like the Twitter API, are relatively easy to use, and you can use them get access to useful and otherwise hidden data. Read More »
A primary source of information overload is our email inboxes. While I’ve previously mentioned a few strategies for dealing with email overload, I think it’s a good time for a post with comprehensive rundown of my tips for managing email. Read More »
The key to cutting information overload is to more efficiently find the data that you want among the data that you don’t care about. I wanted to share some of the techniques that I use to hack and filter my RSS feed to prioritize relevant information. Read More »
This week, I’ll be attending SXSW; I’ve been thinking about ways to make sure that I get the most out of it. Here are my tips to make sure that you get as much value as possible for the time and expense associated with conference attendance. Read More »
Too often, out of sight can mean out of mind when you have team members spread out in various offices around the world. Even those of us with the best intentions sometimes forget to thank people or recognize them for doing great work. Read More »
We no longer live in a world where you’re likely to land a dream job with just a snazzy resume; employers now want hard evidence that you know your stuff and can deliver great results. Here are some tips to help you land that dream job. Read More »
I’m seeing more companies starting to hire again as the U.S economy slowly swings back into positive territory. Whether you’re looking for remote workers or office workers, there are a few ways to improve your chances of finding the best talent, regardless of location. Read More »
Did you know that next week, February 14 through 18, is Telework Week? I’ve gathered a few data points to help you convince your manager to embrace telecommuting, whether that’s during Telework Week or any other time of the year. Read More »
Keeping in touch with people over various online social services can sometimes seem like goofing off, but those connections can be tremendously valuable. Thanks to social tools, I have more meaningful interactions with people than I would have been able to maintain in the old days. Read More »
The tricky part in having remote employees is making sure that they feel like they are an integral part of team and not second-class citizens. Here are a few ways to make sure that your virtual team members feel loved, instead of neglected: Read More »
Working in teams with members spread out across various time zones around the world can be a challenge. Even when your team is located in the same building, sharing and collaborating on documents and content can be tricky if you aren’t using the right tools. Read More »
At CES my employer, Intel, hired Hugh MacLeod (aka gapingvoid) to draw custom cartoons, hang out in the booth and give out signed copies of those cartoons. It got me thinking about other ways to incorporate fun into our work events. Read More »
I’ve recently written a couple of blog posts related to analytics. It appears (based on the analytics, of course) that quite a few of you were interested in this topic, so I thought I would follow up with another post and a few more tips. Read More »
It can be too easy to slip into the daily routine without thinking about what you love to do. What do you really want to be working on? Here are a few suggestions for finding ways to do what you love, and still pay the bills. Read More »
It’s free and easy to get started with Google Analytics, but there are also a lot of advanced features that can make it even more useful. I thought it might be time to do post with a few quick tips for getting more out of it. Read More »
As we approach the end of the year, it’s a good time to take a step back and look at some data to see which of your blog posts have been getting attention and which ones have been mostly ignored. Read More »
We’re right in the middle of the holiday season, when the stress starts to accumulate until it reaches a breaking point. Start taking steps today to make some positive changes that will help you manage our stress over the next two or three weeks. Read More »
As a community manager, my role at many events is to make sure that there are plenty of opportunities for community building: getting people talking and spending time together. I wanted to share some suggestions for both attendees and organizers. Read More »
Spending time with non-techie family members can cause some stress over the holidays for those of us who don’t want to completely disconnect from the Internet. Here are some handy excuses that you can use when you want to escape your family for a little work: Read More »
I hate spending time on email. But for those of us who do most of our work online, we can’t escape it. When was the last time you took a hard look at the emails you send to other people? Are your emails helping or hindering? … Read More »
I’m probably more comfortable sharing my work with other people; I also tend to share information about other parts of my life online. Occasionally, I like to step back and think about how much is too much when it comes to sharing details about my life. Read More »
Using the APIs really isn’t as hard to use as people seem to think. In this post, I’m going to show you how you can make use of APIs (perhaps to gather data, or to carry out some automation) with no programming. Read More »
Last week, I posted some tips for automating boring everyday tasks. However, I feel I should point out that automation’s like a nice wine: you can have too much of a good thing. Here’s a look at some of the things that I don’t automate. Read More »
Lately, I’ve been taking a look at many of the tasks that I do on a regular basis and thinking about ways that I can automate them. There are many things that you can do to eliminate routine tasks that don’t require specialist knowledge. Read More »
The posts on an organization’s social media accounts reflect on it in a very public way. People’s impressions of the company can be positive or negative depending on whether the people posting to those accounts represent the company in a professional and consistent manner. Read More »
One of my favorite things about Ignite events is that anyone, anywhere can organize one. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Ignite, it’s an event with a unique format: Presenters each get five minutes to present 20 slides; their slides auto-advance every 15 seconds. Read More »
Multitasking is a bit of a misnomer, since our brains really aren’t capable of doing more than one thing at a time. We think we’re doing multiple things at once, but we are really just switching between several activities quickly. Read More »
In the spirit of reuse, I thought it would be nice to put all of my thoughts the pros, cons and things to think about when making the move between corporate web working and freelance web working, and vice versa. Read More »
More efficient use of our RSS readers can have a big impact on our overall productivity. As Google Reader is one of the more widely-used RSS readers, I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips for getting the most out of it. Read More »
More efficient use of our RSS readers can have a big impact on our overall productivity. As Google Reader is one of the more widely-used RSS readers, I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips for getting the most out of it. Read More »
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