Pitched visual storytelling app to MBAs from South Korea

Had a great time today presenting SELFish, a social & visual storytelling mobile app in open beta for the next few months, to 30 MBA student-professionals from LG CNS visiting from South Korea, at RocketSpace. Thanks RocketStudios and LG!

I created and delivered the company's first live, public presentation of the product, the team, and our roadmap to market.

The event organizers asked each of the three RocketSpace startups which presented (social smartphone camera app Shoto.com and social betting app Youbetme.com) to include a particular challenge we are facing so the MBA students can address it in their afternoon session. I chose the challenge of selecting only one UVP as we go to market. At SELFish, we have several. Which should we emphasize to consumers? Is it our controls that allow us to pick who sees or contributes to our stories? Or is it our connection of moments into ongoing stories?

Thanks too, to Ronan Roche, a business analyst at RocketSpace, for making this homestyle video for me on short notice.

Media Empire Building For Women, What We Can Use Our Platform For & Why We Need To

Regarding an on-going kerfuffle in an area I follow pretty closely (media & journalism plus gender disparities in those fields), this post by magazine editor and journalist Ann Friedman on media empire building has a lot of lessons in it for those of us building platforms and what we can use them for, and why we need to.

We need them for leverage, if we're thinking bigger or one day will. We need them as evidence. If we're women, many of whom are relegated to supporting roles in our fields, we need our own platforms to grow strong as marquee figures.

"I’m doing pretty well at building a following for my work that’s mine alone, not reliant on the individual outlets I write for. But I’ve never approached a publisher or editor-in-chief to ask for my own vertical, or the funding to create my own mini-empire."

When she decides to pitch a funder to finance her own media empire, Friedman writes, "There will be footnotes about my own Twitter following and the number of newsletter subscribers I have and my proven ability to cultivate a strong editorial voice."

Requests That Get A Yes

I get a lot of requests related to my Expat Harem book and other productions that I wish I had the time to say yes to.

Sometimes I get requests that I would have said yes to if the requester had spent a little more time setting it up. Make it really easy!

I heard from a travel writer developing a story about her own cross-cultural family experiences who needed expert sources to flesh out her query to an unnamed publishing venue. She gave me four questions to answer.

Four questions is a lot to ask, but her email gave me even more things to wonder.

Which venues she was pitching and by when did she need my answers?

I wondered why she was seeking an expert quote for a personal story (expert quotes in a pitch usually point to experts you're going to interview if you get the assignment). That would be like using my material to land an assignment to write about her own life! If she were to be assigned the piece, was she planning to interview me in more depth? It would have been good to hear that she only needed a one sentence answer for  -- any of -- those questions.

An expert would want to see how she was going to be described in the query. This could be done by telling me why I am being approached. For instance, "because you wrote about your Turkish in-laws in the Expat Harem book and in Cornucopia magazine." Or, it would be nice to be asked to point to a description I prefer.

Assume people want to help.  Just cover your bases and keep the ask as small as you can, so they can.

P.S. Be gracious when someone says no. When I let this travel writer know I wouldn't be able to help her out and explained what questions her pitch brought up for me, she let me know how sorry I was going to be for not doing what she asked.