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December, 2008:

An experience to remember

Dec 22nd, 2008
by Michelle Heath.
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I happen to believe that it’s all about the experience. It’s one thing to meet someone for drinks. It’s another to meet-up at The Liberty Hotel and experience a restored prison with hip decor, great music and fun people watching. It’s one thing to shop online. It’s another to visit BlueFly where you can shop by price, color, size and style. The thing that gets me coming back for more is the experience and, boy, did I have one today.

I decided to take my 5-year old daughter, Maddie, to the Nutcracker. It just so happens I was a dancer in a former life and had the honor and unique pleasure to dance in the Nutcracker ballet once upon a time. It is an experience I will never forget and, to this day, influences my ability to stand on tip-toes to reach stuff on the top shelf and to sit with good posture:)

Anyhow, I got two tickets and decided we’d make it our first experience. Then, I met John Osbon and he took our experience from good to great. John is a member of the Boston Ballet board and is also active in my daughter’s school. I had won an auction prize of some ballet tickets a while back and he helped me put them to good use. He heard about my love for the ballet and how Maddie is taking lessons and loves it as well and told me he’d leave a special surprise for her at the desk.

Off we went through the sleet and snow. We were both on pins and needles wondering what the surprise would be. We arrived at the desk and waiting for us was a brown Boston Ballet bag. Inside, were two signed pairs of dancer’s shoes and two Nutcracker snowglobes. Nothing like being in tears with my daughter and the show hadn’t even started! We took our seats in the beautifully renovated Boston Opera House where Maddie promptly took off her snow boots and donned her well-used pink toe-shoes. She could not have been more excited as we waited for the lights to dim. She was riveted through the entire performance and wanted for more as the lights came up. Then came the best part.

The backstage tour. Where, although my camera battery died (when will I learn!) , I got some great shots of my girl with the sleigh and the giant Christmas tree. But all she wanted to do was go home and put on her new toe-shoes. We practiced our releve and arabesque in the living room and she wore her ballet tights to bed so she could “slip on her toe-shoes when she wakes up”. What would have been a day at the ballet was turned into an extraordinary experience for a 5-year old aspiring ballerina and her ballerina-at-heart mom.

A magical day created by an unforgettable experience. Check out the photos.

The future looks bright

Dec 12th, 2008
by Michelle Heath.
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Not sure why that Pat MacDonald song came into my head but it captures how I feel right now. Anyhow, I am jumping out of my seat. Why you ask? Well, I just joined the team at Currensee as their brandy-new VP of Marketing. I am thrilled to join an amazing team of people and to help them bring their big idea to the market.

From my first meeting with Dave Lemont, the CEO and king of go-to-market strategies, I knew this position was made for me. It’s one part financial services (my past life), one part social media & community (my new life) and a healthy dose of innovation, testing and data gathering. Currensee is in stealth mode but I can tell you a bit about how they are changing the forex game. Say you trade foreign currencies. You chase the Aussie and play the Cable against the Swissy. You’re always trying to find an edge – tough to do when the markets trade 24×7 and most humans need some sort of sleep.

Well, Currensee, not only lets you stay connected to the market, it lets you understand and leverage the community of forex traders who are looking for an edge just like you. Kind of like a Facebook for forex traders. You can share a whole bunch of data with your Currensee friends and share charting strategies and trading ideas in real-time. I spent most of my life in financial services and have seen alot of products. Everything from active trader pro screens that look like a DOS terminal to level II quote screens that make you go cross-eyed. After seeing how the simple and intuitive the Currensee screens are, I know forex traders are going to love the product.

There’s alot of work to be done. Much to test and much to be learned. My job will be all about growing the trader community and figuring out which levers to pull and what buttons to push. I am thrilled to dig in and get my hands dirty. I will be a one-armed-paper-hanger so, I’ll be working my @ss off. But I am so jazzed about the mission and people, it will be worth every ounce of energy. I’ll be sharing more as I dig in and get us ready for beta.

Gotta wear shades.

Is more better?

Dec 4th, 2008
by Michelle Heath.
2 comments

I guess if you’re talking cake, you betchya. But when it comes to social media, are more friends & followers better?

I just read a press release about Matt Bacak, The Powerful Promoter. So, this guy just issued a press release that states he now has over 5,000 friends on Facebook and is part of “the Twitter elite,” whatever that means. Okay, dear readers, how in the name of pete can one person keep up with 5,000 people?! I can barely keep up with the people in my immediate network, never mind thousands of people I have never met, probably don’t care about and, thus, will never meet.

IMHO, more becomes noise and noise is meaningless. I happen to be one of those people who gets very random Facebook requests from people I don’t know. Okay, can you say…creepy! Why would I want you to see me doing a keg-stand if I don’t even know you? You know I’m just kidding (sort-of). To me, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and all the other social media tools lose their value when infused with noise.

But, there’s always two sides to the story.

What about the people who don’t see it as noise. What is it to them? Fame? Glory? Do they get a badge for their blog that says “I’m a Twitter Elite!” Come on now, is that really what this is about? Yes, there are people out there like The Powerful Promoter who appear to be in it for the fame and glory that comes from saying they have millions of followers. There are others like Guy Kawasaki who believe that nobodies are somebodies. Sounds like something my 2nd grade teacher told me.

At the end of the day, I suppose you need to decide what social media means to you. Is it important to have thousands of friends and followers who you don’t know and probably don’t care to know but who can carry your message to their network? Or do you want to have a group of friends and followers who you know, for the most part, and who you are interested in getting to know better?  Better yet, are you more interested in a small group of influencers and hearing what they have to say and having them carry your message out to the world?

I grew up in the land of social media where targeting a few leads to the words of many. I am not convinced that a sea of nobodies is better than a pond of somebodies. I’ll stick to my guns for now but look forward to testing out the theory to see what kind of meat is on the bones.