Thursday, October 13, 2011

You Never Know Where You'll End Up On the Web...

We all know the perils of sitting down in front of an open browser window and letting the winds of the Internet blow you whither they will. I'm sure there are people who fell into the Net years ago and someday they will wake, like Rip Van Winkle, to peer blearily around and find decades have passed since they sat down. I try to carefully manage my loose browsing time, but occasionally I'll just surf to see what's out there--usually to see if someone has put up anything new about Siyeh Studio, or to see how we rank in Google for different search queries. Yesterday I found out I am being seriously dinged for using the term "kiln-forming" instead of fusing and slumping on my website. I say dinged because it's the newbies I want to find me, and they most likely think of the technique as glass fusing or glass fusion. (Maybe I need a terminology page on the website and I can say "fusing" there a lot to boost my rank...).

But enough asides. Part of my search motivation yesterday came from a call I got out of the blue from Carolyn Edlund at the Artsy Shark. She wanted to know if I'd be willing to have her feature our Date Night in the Glass Studio in an article on her site. She was also planning to include the video of me speaking on Outside-The-Box-Thinking: Secrets of Retail Success at last winter's Buyer's Market of American Craft in Philadelphia. Video? I didn't know there was a video. I have mixed reactions to the existence of a video without my knowledge, but at least I was apparently having a Good Hair Day and I don't think I sounded too stupid. However it would have been nice to be asked if I minded being slapped up on YouTube. (I got permission from all of our date night attendees before I plastered them all over the Net!)

Last note of the day: It's a good thing I didn't let hubris get the best of me yesterday as I didn't even get through the three things I had on the list--the newsletter lies fallow, the glass order is not yet unloaded, the glass furnace is acting up again (Error-1 last night some time--I think it's balking at heating a solid 80 lb block of glass in a 50 lb crucible), and I didn't get my kiln loads in. Add to that that I ended yesterday's post with the thought that there was something I wanted to start with this morning and I can't remember what it is now (senior moment), and, well, no room for hubris here.

1 comment:

Bill said...

I guess that if you speak in public, then it's assumed that you're willing to be seen by a wider public. Or not. I don't pretend to be an expert on law.