I’m very pleased that my cousin Matt and I were able to get a nice website for him started during his three day visit to Austin. He’s a fantastic artist and now he’s got a place to showcase his work online. His pseudonym is Faullyn Skautch. Check out FaullynSkautch.com.
The SXSWi themes this year were mobile and games. The keynote by the SCVNGR kid got me dreaming of how I might use a location based service to augment gigs, possibly in remote settings. My mind has been reeling with ideas for mobile apps and ways to use location to enhance, reward, share, and show what I’m doing musically.
So I was thrilled to find this panel today, Rockin’ the Check-in: Location Strategies for Musicians, where the Gowalla music dude (@jimcaroll) testified to what a huge, wide open potential there is for collaboration. Here are my notes and some clues for where to begin.
This post is from my phone. I just installed WordPress for Android and am feeling my paradigm shifting as it is now much easier for me to take pics of my baby girl and post from my phone than taking having to upload to computer>Flickr/Vimeo>blog.
Now, when Maile snaps a pic os Anais and IMs it to me, I can phone it up to the blog. That makes daily pics and post possible and that’s a big shift.
I discovered Bandcamp lastnight and am amazed at how well they’ve nailed the essentials of the interface design for an artist’s music site. I’m uploading my stuff there now. Here’s one of their little players that’s embeddable.
Jason Repko encouraged me to develop my book idea. We had lunch and I advised him on creating a Web presence for himself. He agreed to help document the process from his perspective, exactly what I need to make sure this book answers the questions of the novice reader. Here’s what I advised, he asked in reply, and I answered. (I haven’t answered all the questions yet, but I will. And add others.)
Me: You need a site with blog. Get a host that supports (easily installs and upgrades) WordPress.
Q: Why in the world would I need a website?
A. It’s Google’s world. That’s where you need to show up as you want to be found. But you need to do more than show up, you need to be accurately and impressively portrayed. Don’t leave that to chance. Represent yourself. Google rewards recency, relevance, and referrals. So do people. You’ve got to have a site that was updated recently, is relevant to your interests, and is referred to from other sites, part of the Web.
Say someone is interested in you. Perhaps you’re applying for a job, or they heard about you through a friend or colleague, met you at a conference or saw something you had done. They want to know more about you. They Google your name. What do they find? Make sure they find you as you want to be found. Continue reading Q&A w/Jason Repko
