Premier Outlining with Tinderbox

I’m giving a five hour web-writing training session for a corporate client this week. I don’t think I could plan my talk as effectively without Tinderbox.

This multifaceted application is, amongst other things, a phenomenal outlining tool. Just to give you a hint of its capabilities here’s a slide of my (hotchpotch of) notes.

Tinderbox helps me to shuffle my thoughts around, stores the image clips I’m using in my Keynote to illustrate my talk, and happily handles all the urls I need quick access to. I’m workout what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it before building my Keynote presentation. Because Tinderbox is so light and adaptable, all the hard work is done here figuring out the content of my talk before I fire up my presentation software and craft my slides.

I could do this on paper –possibly. But it would take so much longer.

The eclectic work I do as a copywriter, journalist and translator always benefits from this tool. It’s one of the reasons I love the Mac platform.

Promoting Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet Södermalm

I’m zonked. I’ve spent the day helping the folks at IEG Södermalm promote the school at Stockholm’s annual Gymnasiemässa –a recruitment fair for senior high school.

As well as helping them with the creative brief for this event, I supplied copy and promotional posters and flyers.

Thanks to Julia Ledenstam for the pictures. My camera died as soon as I got to the EXPO.

Does Your English Copy Sell?

Email Interviews versus Face-to-Face

I was interviewed by Annette Schwindt this week. Annette handles the PR for Norwegian author Pål H. Christiansen.

The interview is about my translation of Christiansen’s amusing novel The Scoundrel Days of Hobo Highbrow.

The interview was done entirely by email, as Anette is based in Germany and I’m here in Stockholm. I often do “email interviews” when working as a journalist; however, I have to say I prefer actually talking to someone face-to-face. You get a better sense of the person you’re working with.

Email is very useful for follow-up work, getting some decent quotes and checking material. I’ve found this particularly important when I’ve done pieces on Cell Biology ! But it’s incredibly sterile. There’s all that paralinguistic information missing that reveals so much about a subject.

Still, when it came to being interviewed as opposed to asking the questions, I felt quite comfortable being able to write my responses as opposed to just saying them and having someone scribble hasty notes.

I’m yet to do an interview with someone via Skype or iChat but I guess it will happen eventually. I’m not sure about using a web-cam for an interview, though. I always find it so weird having to look up into the camera on the top of my iMac.

The interview with me should be online sometime next week, according to Anette is available here.

Leon Kuhn Website

I’m just finishing a website in ExpressionEngine Core for South African artist Leon Kuhn.

The design is ported from the Photopress design by Brian Gardner from WordPress but although Leon’s site uses the CSS of the original (with a stack of tweaks by yours truly), the code underneath is pure EE.

I chose to use EE because I like the way it handles custom fields so easily, and it really suited the project.

Although it would have worked in WordPress, in my personal experience, EE is easier for clients to get handle because you can customise it to suit their needs.

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