To say that 2017 was filled with change would be an understatement. Many events, both professionally and personally, made 2017 a year to remember. Below, I’ve provided links to a few of the blogs I’ve posted on various sites throughout the year, that catalog a couple key moments from the 2nd half of 2017.
In May, my husband and I made a very difficult family decision and moved from Augusta, GA to Austin, TX, after faced with a career opportunity to co-locate. Check out my Linkedin blog on “The Fork: How I Met Fear and Opportunity and Chose Backbone” to hear about some of the factors that helped us make the decision. After nearly 8 months in Austin, we’ve come to love the “Keep Austin Weird” community and all that Austin has to offer – except the traffic. In June, I’ll write a blog on life in Austin after a year, so others can learn from our experiences.
After moving in May and getting settled into the new swing of things. We managed to take a much needed vacation for once – and explored the seas and shores of the Yucatan Peninsula [& the ancient Mayan ruins of Tulum]. Of course, a vacation wouldn’t be vacation if it didn’t involve me doing some sort of fun extreme activity – like ziplining off a cliff into a cenote and having my footage rescued from down below.
Upon returning, work continued at rapid pace. One area of my work that I enjoy is leveraging social media analysis tools to listen and analyze key events, audiences, and engagement opportunities. From the various events this year, a couple that I enjoyed helping provide insights around included Advertising Week #AWNewYork, and being able to create the social plan and leverage social media listening for our first-ever IBM Analytics University in both Berlin, Germany and New Orleans, Louisiana. In addition to a various events, I’ve had the chance to lead and work on some fun projects including chatbot development [in early public beta], training others on how to build social listening queries and build data visualizations for branded, market, and competitive share of voice monitoring. In 2018, of my various goals, one of them includes leveraging my current social listening skills and learning how to combine it with cognitive computing software to setup an efficient and scalable dynamic prospecting process – in addition to writing more useful insights here on my blog as well as the other various websites I post on.
Here’s to a challenging, yet positive, 2018!