Giving up, letting go and saying no
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Uncategorized on January 5, 2012
I’m going to be selfish. Well, I admit – I’ve been selfish before. But this year, I really am going to be selfish. The problem is that it’s going to be very hard for me to do.
My plan is to give up volunteering. Those who know me well will just shake their heads and say, “She won’t be able to do it.”
Escaping the brand is impossible
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Communication, Social media on December 29, 2011
My post, Defining who I am, triggered another debate with friends about personal and professional branding. One friend believes if you think you have a personal brand, then you are putting yourself on the same level as company brands. Company brands, personal and professional brands have different methods but they all have the same purpose – promoting or selling a product.
I dislike the label and even squirm at the thought that I have a personal or professional brand. I don’t want to put myself at that level where I’m coming across as arrogant or selfish. However, let’s face reality – we all have a brand.
Defining who I am
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in About, Social media on December 28, 2011
I had an interesting debate with a few friends recently. I’ve been contemplating changing back to my maiden name. For some, that would be an easy decision to make. However, I feel like it’s erasing my professional brand.
For almost 30 years, my friends and family knew me as Tammy Vineberg. My parents named me Tamara but say at the age of three that I insisted to be called Tammy. In fact, I’ll respond a lot faster to Tammy than Tamara. When I got married in 2001, I decided to discard Tammy Vineberg and take Tamara Stecyk as my name because I didn’t think the sound of Tammy Stecyk sounded professional. At the time, I totally confused the readers of The Brooks Bulletin. They thought the newspaper had hired a new reporter.
My 10 Twitter lessons
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Communication, Social media on December 14, 2011
This week marks my third year anniversary on Twitter. I thought I would jot down the 10 lessons Ihave learned from Twitter and they are not in any particular order.
- Numbers don’t matter, people do. So what if I have this many followers or I follow this many people. Yes, I’m thankful that people care about what I have to say. But what’s more important is the people I’ve met and built relationships with.
- Be transparent. People can really read the lines between your tweets and figure out who you really are, what you stand for and if you give a damn. Don’t fake it and say what you really mean.
- We all have something to sell. We all do love the interactions and the chatting that goes on but let’s face it, we all do have a message that we want to convey to our audiences on Twitter. That said, we are all human and also want to be acknowledged.
- Edmonton is an awesome place to live. I’ve learned so much about Edmonton and what it has to offer through Twitter from events to where to eat.
- Twitter is there to help. There are so many times that I’ve turned to Twitter for assistance that I’ve lost count. I’ve asked advice on what to buy my kids as presents. Edmontonians have guided me to safety when I walked from a Commonwealth Stadium concert to my car and wouldn’t leave until I tweeted that I was safely locked in my car.
- People are very generous. I’ve not only received advice from Twitter. I’ve also been loaned a hockey shirt for my daughter to wear for a concert. Someone has given me snow pants for my son. I’ve seen others team up to help Slave Lake after the devastating forest fire this year. If someone faces a loss, people are willing to jump in and offer anything that is needed. Non-profit organizations have held successful fundraising campaigns with support through Twitter.
- You can’t be friends with everyone. You communicate and read hundreds of tweets from people. You bond and argue over issues. However, it doesn’t mean you can be friends with those hundreds or thousands of people. There will always be different levels of relationships and what happens on Twitter is no different than what happens in real life.
- Put down the phone. It’s okay to walk away from Twitter. Those who know me well can testify that it is a very difficult addiction to break. I’ve learned that I won’t miss too much if I don’t read all the tweets within the last few hours. It’s still hard for me to do.
- You don’t have to tweet about your life. You can still build meaningful relationships on Twitter without tweeting all the details about your life. If people ask me more questions about myself, I’ll tell them in a tweet or in a private direct message.
- If you miss a tweetup, it’s not the end of the world. For a while, I made it a point to attend a lot of Twitter-related events. It was exhausting. Then I realized that it’s fine to cutback and enjoy time with people who I meet on Twitter on a one to one basis. You can build better relationships this way and have an actual conversation without feeling rushed to talk to everyone in the room.
I’ll end with a big thanks to everyone who has seen me through my ups and downs over the last three years. Twitter has been a support system that I don’t think I could ever live without.
Protests aren’t the best PR ploy
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Communication, Community on November 25, 2011
I’ve been sitting back watching Occupy Edmonton unfold over the last two months and fall apart as of today. I do believe in the right of free speech, opinions and lobbying for what you are passionate about.
Many Edmontonians blogged about Occupy Edmonton, including Kathleen Smith, Edmonton Journal columnist Paula Simons and Paula E. Kirman.
The Hebrew markup
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Bat mitzvah on November 15, 2011
I’ve been studying Hebrew for my bat mitzvah for about a month now, spending Sunday mornings with seven other adults who each have their own reasons to master reading of this challenging language.
It’s more of a challenge because I believe we’re all self-conscious reading this phonetic language aloud. It’s my third time attempting to learn Hebrew. I pretty much remember the letters but it’s the vowels that I keep stumbling on.
Communal charity succeeds to help others in need
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Community, Social media on November 8, 2011
Last night I volunteered to cook and serve a meal at the Mustard Seed in Edmonton. This was my third experience of helping my friend, Sandra Der, to put together what always seems like the impossible.
Why does it feel like that? Sandra organizes this dinner for the homeless and unfortunate each time through social media. She’s asked people to donate and volunteer four times for a Mustard Seed dinner, mainly through Twitter. And to my amazement, she succeeds each time.
This speaks how strong the tool of social media can be to bring together an online community. Sandra put this dinner together, with the generous help of many people she never met before, within a week.
Building a woman’s cave
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Social media on November 6, 2011
I’ve been wrestling with words this past week in French, Hebrew and my native English. What challenges me in French is to remember to female context of words. For Hebrew, it’s the vowels. so when the term man cave came up twice with two different friends, I began to wonder – what do women have for that word that fits them?
So I asked on Twitter and as a result, I discovered that there is no definite word. So I decided to use Storify for the first time to illustrate the comments.
It’s interesting to see the context of the word, man cave, for men and how there really isn’t a set definition of what women would want as their own cave.
If there isn’t, then can someone build me a girl geek cave?
Are we over communicating?
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Communication, Connection, Social media on November 1, 2011
Lately I’ve been wondering if our society has gotten to the point where we’re not communicating at all. We have so many options to connect and chat with people – Twitter, Facebook, Google Chat, Kik, MSN Messenger, Skype, emails, texting and the old fashioned telephone.
Making up for a past decision
Posted by Tamara Stecyk in Bat mitzvah on October 16, 2011
I’m turning 40 next August and while many of my friends are celebrating their milestone by going to Las Vegas, throwing a huge party or going on an adventure, I’m taking a step to make up for a decision that I made when I was 12.