Flickr Meme

So this is thanks to Alison Young's post , which inspired me to do it for myself!

Go to http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr and create a mosaic using the answers from these questions. Take your answer to Flickr and search for it.. Pick an image from the first page of search results, put it into the mosaic maker and post your results!



NB: For simplicity’s sake I’m linking and attributing after each answer and licensed under the Creative Commons. (thanks Alison!)

1. What is your first name? Lou
2. What is your favorite food? Fruit Salad
3. What high school did you go to? Brigidine
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Hugh Grant
6. Favorite drink? Vodka Raspberry
7. Dream vacation? Somewhere on the beach
8. Favorite dessert? Chocolate Cheesecake
9. What you want to be when you grow up? No idea!
10. What do you love most in life? Opportunities
11. One Word to describe you? Crazy
12. Look up my flickr name and find something someone dedicated to you. Well I couldn't find anything, so I used a photo I took of a cake I baked my dad a couple years ago.

Dream Days at the Hospital Existence

So in the midst of all the saga in Canberra - I jotted down a few points. These are totally unrelated to public relations or social media, but I figure they're worth sharing. So introducing:

How to tell if you've spent too much time in a hospital

- When the waiting rooms turns into a lounge room and you are up to date on all the latest hollywood gossip courtesy of all the crappy magazines.

- With no medical background, you know what intubate means, what an NG tube does, how blood oxygen sat machines can be temperamental and that nurses really do all the hard work.

- You also realise that hospital coffee tastes the same as any other fluid after a few sugars, and that cafeteria food usually isn't as bad as what the patients are getting served up.

- You know that breaking a nail, finger or leg is not comparable to what families have to go through when visiting family in the ICU.

- You're on a first name's basis with the night time security guard.

- That no matter that you look older or similar to your sibling, you will continually get confused as a girlfriend or wife.

- You appreciate the irony when the random strangers ask you why you're there (at the hospital) to which you reply 'car accident' and they reply "glad it wasn't the one where..." and you suddenly realise it is the one they're retelling.

- When the alcohol antiseptic spray you put on each time you enter the ward becomes your latest cologne/perfume.

- When you're allowed to eat at the staff cafertia and use a mobile phones on the ward.

P.S. In case you didn't get it, the title is a pun on one of my favourite Powderfinger albums :)

So I'm back...

It's been awhile since I've had the real urge to write a post..

I didn't last long in Argentina, my brother was involved in a serious car accident . I lasted about four and a half days in cold Argentina, and hopped on a plane to come back to Canberra, Australia. After six flights and a total of 34 hours of flying, it felt like I'd not even left the country.

To use the cliche, it's been an emotional roller coaster. It's one of these experiences that you hear on the television or see in the movies, not something you wish to ever live through. Our family are lucky enough to have such a strong network of family and friends who have helped us through this rough patch..

So for me now it's settling back in the normal day of life, bizarre after spending almost 5 and a half weeks of living in a hotel in Canberra.

Don't cry for me (because tomorrow I shall be in) Argentina!

A busy day spent packing for an overseas trip is quite an educational experience - not only have I questioned half the pieces of clothing I have purchased, but it really helps to find out what I need to survive. Should I pack a hair dryer? Do I really need 7 pairs of socks? Am I asking rhetorical questions because I've just watched the Sex & the City movie?

My procrastination of planning (how's that for an alliteration!) has culminated in packing this arvo before my flight out to Buenos Aires, where I will spend a solid three months fumbling around the continent with minimal Spanish. Thankfully, the first few weeks of my trip will be based in a language school with my good buddy Bella, hopefully easing some of the communication barriers I can currently foresee...I doubt that "Muchas gracias mono" is going to get me everywhere.

I will try my best to source out the Internet, I have a fear that I could be stuck with nothing, but that's just because I've been reading a lot of articles about the Lost Tribes. I do know the first 6 weeks will be in either Buenos Aires or Mar Del Plata.

A few of my twitter friends have asked if I'll tweeting - and the answer is 'si', I will be sending updates via my mobile phone. It's going to be my main communication channel for family & friends, as the 13 hour time difference might throw a few people off.

Next post: The struggles of communicating in Argentina.

CSU PR Grads - Where are they now?

I toddled off to Bathurst last week to graduate in my beautiful gown and silly hat, and discovered that my short visit prevented me from finding out where everyone is at the moment. So here's a bit of an update of what people are up to at the moment, based on what I can remember and what Facebook tells me!

Hannah Dunn, Nea Pilgrim, Peri Muddle & Pip Goldsmith are taking over Burson-Marsteller, well at least their North Sydney Office. Hill & Knowlton still have the talented Jess Hughes on their staff, with Courtney Howard close by at the Department of Lands (sorry if I'm wrong Court, I'm sure it was a government organisation of some sort!).

Elisha Weber has made the trek down south to Melbourne, working in the crazy IT department in house. Someone else who caught the travel bug is Ali Hunter, who hung around in Bathurst to graduate,get her PRIA award & dashed off.

Archer Cox is missing in action, last seen wearing bright fluoro runners. Mitch Hume is still enjoying his picturesque views at Cannings, while Thom Landers continues to work hard at Bang PR.

Kate Leahy & Alex Mayhew are working at Cox Innall and Magnum PR respectively, and both have some attractive bio's up on their agency pages.

I left out almost half of our class, but my memory is a tad stretched and facebook stalking is very time consuming ;)Feel free to flick me an email if you guys have anymore info on where people are.

Strewth - Check out these little beauties!

In my usual meandering online, pottering about and dabbling with new sites, I've come across some pretty useful online tools. Some of these have been around for awhile, and I may be a little slow off the mark, but bear with me - you may not have seen all of them!

The first site is Dipity, who I discovered through a tweet from @bmoyle (Joffre Street Productions).
Dipity is "the easiest way to make and share interactive timelines about the people and things you care about".


I can see these being very useful for monitoring and evaluating online campaigns for both individuals and organisations - it's easy to submit a RSS feed from any site and track what they're posted up.

The next site which I've actually known about for awhile is SlideShare. Most recently, I've been looking at the slides of a presentation done by Seb Chan, a blogger for The Powerhouse Museum, fresh + new(er).
His presentation covered the important aspects of social media & government, it was a really great view - the images & included social media content really show some of the amazing work being done at the Powerhouse Museum.

| View | Upload your own

Bloggerati Australia has been around for a couple years, as I checked out in the FAQ - but haven't only just come across it recently. It's hosted by the popular, Laurel Papworth, most famous for her appearance on the Today Show...I jest ;) It's got over 43,000 members, so definitely of worth to news chasers, public relations professionals & all those concerned with the media..

Finally, for those lacking the understandings of Aussie slang, go and follow AussieSlang on Twitter. Though they can be a bit on the rude side, I'll suggest you go and check out the link, rather than me chucking some of their updates on my polite blog ;)

Holy Moly - Catholic Facebook!

The latest news this week was that the Pope & The Catholic Church are going to create a social network (like Facebook) as the central communication channel for World Youth Day. He'll also be sending inspiration holy text messages to those participating, as well as hosting digital prayers walls.

I guess this doesn't surprise me much - considering that social networks are really just specialised groups targeting people with specific interests - collating everything together just makes more sense. It's great to see this happening, especially within our beautiful country!

A few posts ago I mentioned that if social media is to become adopted by Australian organisations, more coverage is needed in traditional press. Well it seems to be heading that way, not just World Youth Day branching out online - the front page of AFR was a story on Woolworths planning some Facebook involvement.

I guess now it's just more discussion and research into specific ways Australian businesses can target online audiences.