DazzlinDonna » General

Entrepreneur Finder

Donna — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:33:09 +0000

There’s a new site that will be launching soon that aims to bring entrepreneurs, skilled individuals, professionals, students and investors together to grow their companies, find employment or form new industry contacts. It’s called Entrepreneur Finder. When I first heard of it, my immediate reaction was, “what makes it any different from LinkedIn?”

Apparently, I’m not the first person to ask that question. The founder of Entrepreneur Finder had this to say:

Our aim is not simply for members to manage their professional or entrepreneurial identities, but to facilitate the interaction between members by sharing knowledge, information and business resources. By providing all our members with the right tools to reach each other, EntrepreneurFinder.com stands apart from Linkedin.

I’m going to be keeping my eye on this one, but it will definitely need to offer some outstanding differences from LinkedIn to be able to convince people to sign up for yet another professional business network site.

Despite my reservations, I wanted to let everyone know about it anyway. Why? Because times are tough. Jobs are scarce. Clients are harder to find. If this new site helps one of you find a job or a client or some funding, then I shouldn’t stand in the way of telling you about it. And who knows…it might really be lots better than LinkedIn, or if not better, it might be just different enough to help a group of people find what they couldn’t via LinkedIn.

Let me know if you have any experience with Entrepreneur Finder, or how you feel about trying new networking services. I know we are all bombarded with this kind of thing all the time. What are your thoughts?

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Interesting Job Event

Donna — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:54:44 +0000

I’ve made it pretty clear that I love working from home, but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I also dig making my living via the Internet, but that’s certainly not how most people make their living. Most people I know just want to have a good job, out there “in real life”, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. I almost never discuss that method of making a living, but I probably should now and then. Today is one of those days.

There’s an interesting job event taking place soon that intrigues me. It is centered around the concept of Healthcare IT, or “healthcare information technology”. Now, frankly, that sounds like something that would only be useful to a limited group of people, but bear with me for a few minutes, because it actually might be something that quite a lot of you would be able to jump into as a new career, whether or not you know anything about healthcare or information technology.

Apparently, Intellect Resources is a healthcare IT staffing company that is putting on this very cool jobs event (several, in fact) in various parts of the U.S. The first one is happening soon – on January 21, 2012 – near me, in New Orleans, LA. This jobs event is really more like a reality TV tryout. Seriously, they even describe it that way, themselves. Let me quote one of their FAQ items:

Big Break is a one day audition process where candidates compete to become a trainer at an Ochsner Health System and instruct healthcare personnel on the use of Epic, the fast-selling electronic medical record program on the market today. As a result of Big Break 200 candidates will get their Big Break into healthcare IT.

There’s no healthcare IT experience required. I have a feeling personality and “presence” will be useful. They call it an “audition” consisting of a “series of interviews, a video Q&A and a presentation.”

I happened to mention this event on Facebook, and an old friend of mine let me know that he got accepted to audition for it. That’s what inspired me to write this post now. If they were only auditioning for one position, I’d probably keep my mouth shut, so my friend, Bob, would have less competition. But since they are looking for a whopping 200 people, I thought, what the heck…I’ll tell all of you about it too!

My understanding is that there will be similar events in other areas of the country in the future as well. I’m not completely clear on the details, but I’ll try to get them if I can. In the meantime, check out the Big Break site, hone up on your healthcare it job interview tips, get your professional interview outfit cleaned and pressed, cross your fingers, and try out for what looks like a very good, well-paying job.

If I were looking for a new career, I’d be jumping all over this opportunity. And if I manage to get any more info on future event dates and locations, or other tips that might help your audition be more successful, I’ll pass them along. Good luck to my buddy, Bob, and to anyone else who auditions for this!

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Tis The Season – For Winning?

Donna — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:43:54 +0000

It’s that time of year when the sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas permeate our lives. Sure, it’s CyberMonday today, and that means lots of great online deals, but I’m not going to make this just another CyberMonday deals post. Instead of showing you how to spend money today, I’m going to tell you about a way to win some money instead.

Because I own Christmas Corner, I was asked to judge a Christmas-related contest. As one of the official judges, I wanted to make sure to let my visitors know about the contest. It is described as the Coolest Christmas Pictures Contest. The idea is that you submit your coolest Christmas photos and how-to tips. You can win a cool prize and get the chance to showcase your holiday creativity and passion on the coolest Christmas website for others to enjoy and learn from.

So turn CyberMonday into a day for entering a contest for a chance to win some money instead of spending it. There are always cool contests online so take some time to find others that you can enter as well. I’ve won several contests over the years, including some that offered cash or prizes worth several hundred dollars. Make today the day you enter the one I’m judging, and as many other contests as you find online that look interesting to you.

While you’re rummaging around the net for contests to enter, stop by my Christmas site and see if anything strikes your fancy. Grab some Christmas wallpaper for your desktop (Melvin Moose is the star of this year’s wallpaper), personalize a children’s Christmas story, written by me, to print out and read to your little one (your kid is the star of the story), or download some Christmas printables that I made. It’s all free, so enjoy without spending a dime.

Happy CyberMonday!

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How To Get The Free RSS Feed Here

Donna — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:50:09 +0000

I’ve used Feedburner for years, but like any good techhead, I like to shake things up now and then and test things. So, I’ve stopped using Feedburner – at least for now. It *shouldn’t* affect anyone who subscribes to the feed and reads it in their normal feedreader. I *think* you’ll continue getting it as usual. (If not, just click the RSS button to the right, or go here to re-subscribe).

The only people that should be affected (and it’s a small percentage) are those who opted to get the feed via email. In that case, you’ll need to re-subscribe to it. You can do that by clicking on this link and inputting your email address. Doing so doesn’t sign you up to my newsletter. It is only to let you get my blog posts sent to you via email, instead of reading them in a feedreader.

If you normally read the posts here on the site, and don’t want to read them anywhere else, that’s fine too, of course! In that case, just keep coming here and don’t worry about anything. But for those of you who like to receive posts in your email, you’ll need to sign up (or re-sign up) here.

Sorry for the inconvenience, folks, and if anyone has any problems, let me know!

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Totally Rockin Make Your Own Newspaper Thing

Donna — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:13:56 +0000

Sure, that title isn’t the greatest, but it’s how I describe a site I just discovered because Gabriella (@seocopy) mentioned it on Twitter. Paper.li a site in which you simply give it a twitter name (yours is a good start) or a twitter list or a #tag, and it will create a newspaper page that’s updated every 24 hours based on whatever you entered. For example, I entered my own Twitter name @DonnaFontenot, and it created an awesome – let me repeat that – AWESOME newspaper for me that included highlights of all the LINKS that people pointed to from my own Twitter stream.

Donna Fontenot’s Personalized Newspaper

Below is a screenshot of the upper part of the newspaper, but there’s TONS more awesome stuff in it.

This enables me to see interesting things from the people I’ve chosen to follow. Sure, Twitter allows me to see that, right? But Twitter streams flash by and I miss much of what floats down that stream. My personalized newspaper allows me to see what I missed, which is very cool. Even cooler is that it’s all organized in an incredibly smart way, and it includes thumbnails to help visualize what’s there.

This perfectly fits ME. It uses my own curated list to create the perfect personalized information for me. I’m blown away.

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Discovering New Bloggers and Blog Resources: Part 1 of 3

Donna — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:39:59 +0000

Thanks to the FamousBloggers ComLuv Contest, I’ve been introduced to several bloggers and resources that weren’t already on my radar because they are generous sponsors of the contest. Discovering these new bloggers and resources is like finding money in a parking lot – it’s just a neat little surprise. So today, I’m focusing on introducing you to the ones that I was particularly happy to find. Here’s the first one.

Kiesha Easley of WeBlogBetter.com, earned her degrees in English (I did too, but she got more degrees than I, that’s for sure). While degrees in English aren’t necessary for creating outstanding blogs, I have no doubt that Ms. Easley’s writing talents help make her blog such a great read. Want an example?

In one post, she discusses ways to use similes, metaphors and analogies to spice up your posts, and explains how using “unexpected” comparisons can really help readers engage with the ideas presented. This was from a series of posts called Blog Food Series. Along with standard posts, she has several other series of posts, all interconnected into a central theme, such as “Get Into The Cloud”, and “Guide To Guest Posting”. I haven’t had time to devour all of her content yet, but I’m working on it. I’ve definitely subscribed because I have a feeling I’ll be enjoying this blog for some time to come.

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Ask And Get Help For Five Bucks – Experiment

Donna — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:03:42 +0000

I’d like to try an experiment. I’d like to offer my services, in the form of Q&A, for five bucks. Here’s the way I envision it working. You ask me a question (privately). If I can answer it, you send $5 to my PayPal account. If I can’t, you owe me nothing.

What Kinds Of Questions Can You Ask?

You can ask all sorts of questions, though I’d imagine “how-to” questions related to internet marketing, WordPress, blogging, SEO, etc. would be most answerable. And of course, the more specific, the better. Overly broad questions might end up needing an answer that starts with, “Well, it depends…” and that’s never a good answer.

What Kinds of Questions Should You Not Ask?

Well, as tempting as it may be to try to get me to answer things like “What is the meaning of life?”, it’d be nice if no one’s time gets wasted with silliness. This is for serious stuff. If you need to know how to add a feature to your site, for example, that would probably fall within the types of things that makes sense to ask me.

How Do You Ask Me A Question?

Just use my contact form to get in touch with me. From that point on, you and I can just email back and forth, as I’ll just reply to you via the email address you supply in the contact form. It might be a good idea to note in the contact form that this is a $5 question.

Other Thoughts

This is just an experiment, so I may adjust things as time goes on, or I may decide to stop the experiment completely. Obviously, if you ask me a question that would require 3 months of time to answer, I probably won’t find it worthwhile to answer it for $5, and I’ll just let you know that the question goes beyond the bounds of what I can do in this experiment. But if you think your question can probably be answered within a normal email type of response, then it’s probably within the scope of what I’m hoping to do here.

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Freelancers Union

Donna — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:24:17 +0000

I’d like to quickly point out a site I’ve only recently become aware of (where have I been, right?). It’s called the Freelancer’s Union and can be found at http://www.freelancersunion.org. It’s headed by Sara Horowitz and you can see a short Youtube video introduction of it on CNN Money here.

Basically, Freelancer’s Union is a site geared towards giving some breaks to U.S. freelancers, including the ability to get group rates on insurance and retirement plans. In addition, the organization is involved in political action to try to bring fairness to the tax issues that freelancers face, (we generally pay more taxes than traditional employees do).

Other benefits include discounts on products and services, seminars, webinars, live events, a job board, and a community forum.

It’s free to join so if you are a freelancer, check it out.

I have no idea if this same type of organization exists in other countries, but if you’re a freelancer living outside the U.S., I’d recommend searching around for one. There could be some benefits waiting for you.

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Post tags: Freelancer, Freelancer's Union, Sara Horowitz
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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

Donna — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:32:10 +0000

To all of you, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. If you celebrate something else this season, then Happy That too! Enjoy the holidays, and be sure to return here on the 30th (next Tuesday) for a special announcement. See ya’ll then!

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Dazzlin Badge of Excellence for LightEcho

Donna — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:49:29 +0000

This Dazzlin Badge of Excellence is awarded to LightEcho. I haven’t given a badge of excellence in a while, and this is the first I’ve given to someone of the male species.

I like this site, not only because it’s visually appealing to me, but because the information it contains is broad and varied, but still on point. And what is that point? Well, I’ll let Jonathan’s own words explain that:

LightEcho.com is the creation of a long time philosopher, a seasoned economist and an experienced internet engineer. It has been designed to provide insight, practical advice, and a new perspective on the emerging internet and technology that inhabit our everyday lives. By imparting ideas that are both attainable and enlightening, the internet can be understood on a level other than what is offered through mass media.

I haven’t fully explored every post in LightEcho’s engaging repertoire, but of of the ones I’ve read, I’m hooked. I bet you will be too.

If you’ve won a Dazzlin Badge of Excellence Award, you can display the awards badge on your site by pasting the following code into your page. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it.

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Post tags: economist and an experienced internet engineer, HTML, mass media
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