Deanna Zandt » berlin

Viva Berlin

deanna zandt — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:18:47 +0000

I could go on and on about the month that I spent in Berlin, especially the week that I was traveling around with my mom — we had an absolute blast! Instead, tho, I’ll direct you over to my Flickr collection of trip photos, conveniently sectioned off for your browsing pleasure. Enjoy!

I’m baaaaaack.

deanna zandt — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:32:26 +0000

I’m back on the ol’ Brooklyn couch, and it feels pretty good to be home. Not to say that I’m not already pining away for the sweet blossomed air and generous spirit of Berlin! Along those lines, check out my new project documenting some thoughts from the trip: http://chachawhereareyou.com/

Ich bin ein Berliner

deanna zandt — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:16:47 +0000

Just a little note here to let yas know that I’m leaving for Berlin today. I’ll still be online and working during the typical EST workday times, but my US phone number will only accept voicemails (no SMS). I’ll have a German phone number and Skype for those in the know.

The rest of the time, I’ll be flaunting about doing Berlin-y things. A bit of travel with my mom is in store as well, yippie! Check back here and in the lifestream for updates and pics.

See you New Yorkers on May 27th!

New look + features for dz.com

deanna zandt — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:02:45 +0000

Just a quick note of announcement here (especially for you RSS people that never come to the site, haha): I’ve updated the design of dz.com to reflect a little more “practice what I preach.” Why yes, look at that fancy new sidebar, with my lifestream, where else you can find me online… oh, and is that a tag cloud? Yay. Tag clouds are just about my favorite thing in web 2.0. Also, ye RSS peeps: you’ll find now that there’s two feeds to choose from: one with just my blog posts (same ol’, same ol’), and one that will give you my lifestream (blog posts plus twitter, digg activity, what-have-you).

In addition to being a little bit more practical and up-to-date, this will also serve as some public documentation of my upcoming month in Berlin and other parts of Germany, so stay tuned for news and enjoy!

Roundup: WAM!, Women Who Tech, and more

deanna zandt — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:05:12 +0000

A crazy time here in Deannaland. I was in Cambridge this past weekend for the annual Best-Conference-Ever: Women, Action and the Media. I did double-presentation duty once again, sitting on Jenn Pozner’s panel about women, feminism and blogging, and then did my workshop on “Empowering Online Communities.” (See the presentation and the followup materials here.)

WAM!‘s gotten to be huge, and it’s hard to say how I feel about that. It’s like when your favorite restaurant gets discovered, and the atmosphere changes because the throngs are rushing in to discover the yummy treats. Yep, I’m thrilled for my favorite conference, and it was still like camp-for-grownups, but I did lose some intimacy with my fellow attendees. There’s a group of “old-timers” who are already saying things like, “Wow, remember when it was 10 of us hanging out afterwards?” during the afterparty, in which around 50 women crammed into the very generous Amanda Marcotte’s room. (Who is the quintessential afterparty-hotel-room-hostess with the mostest, by the way. I was amazed at her mad skillz, and learned much from her party kungfu.)

Pictures galore from the conference are on Flickr.

Continuing the theme of “women who work together, rock together” when I got home, I attended the first-ever Women Who Tech Telesummit on Monday. That’s right, it was the first conference I was ever able to attend in my yoga pants and t-shirt. We dialed in to listen to the panelists and watched the presentations via ReadyTalk. (Hint for future participants: use a separate computer to log in to both via Skype and ReadyTalk. It was like having a TV with really good shows on all day.)

The two panels that blew me away were Tara Hunt’s “Women And Social Capital,” with panelists Arianna Huffington and Joan Blades. While Arianna and Joan are always inspiring and fun to listen to, I have to say, it was Tara’s opening remarks that really got me thinking. I’m going to write more extensively about this, but she pointed out that women tend to hide themselves online, using pseudonyms and private profiles on services, which often can mean we are not shaping the discourse. I’d never thought of it that way, and it was inspiration for me to set my profiles free. Go free, little ones! I’ll be implementing a redesign of dz.com to reflect my newfound carefree abandon. Wish me luck.

Equally compelling was the panel “Web 2.0: Hot Or Not?” I can’t wait for the podcast of this session to come out, there were so many interesting tools and concepts for measuring the success of social energy. I’ll post links when I get them, but all the panelists here were just completely dynamic and amazing.

What else can I tell you? On a personal note, I’m heading off this weekend to Cheryl and Mike’s wedding, and then commencing on the mad prep for my month-long trip to Berlin. Oh, let me leave off with a cute postcard from Jim Hightower: he married John Weiss of the Colorado Independent this week. Tee hee.