A wise investment

Very exciting news Camilla's Store readers (yes Mum, that means you!). I've decided to get my game face on about this site. What started in April 2008 as an outlet for my thoughts, has now become one of my most important assets. This blog has got me interviews, got me jobs, and helped me hone my craft as a blogger, writer and, ultimately, strategist. So it's time to give it its dues and show it some love.



My friend Ellen Turnill and her boyfriend Sam Putera are going to design and develop Camilla's Store 3.0 over on Wordpress. So watch this space and get ready for some BAMF upgrades!

The dark future of social networking

Check out my latest blog post on the Eye Magazine blog
http://bit.ly/Camilla3

And for those of you who just cannot get enough of me, I suggest you also swing by the Moving Brands blog too.

When blogging gets dirty.

Who doesn't love a bit of gossip? One of our favourite bloggers, The Sartorialist, has been spotted cosy-ing up to some style-harlot and has even, apparently, allowed some of his photos to be featured on her blog. Now Sart's wife has taken to the comment boxes to vent her side of the very acrimonious story. Perez, eat your heart out!



Watch it all go down, down to China Town, here.

And, speaking of getting rumbled, check out this hilarious 'outing' of a 419 scammer.... here

Now it's just getting silly.

First Grazia Magazine made its printed format redundant by making their blog just a little too good, then Monocle Magazine opened a shop, and now there's a paper which prints a round up of the week's blogs. The world of print journalism, thrown into disarray by the digital revolution, is acting like a cat on catnip as they whizz around jumping on every bandwagon and adopting every fad going.



What's next? A constantly updated hand-written blog penned live by homeless people in the Shoreditch area? I wouldn't be surprised.

The tipping point.

Tomorrow I will turn 25 and, in a month, this blog will turn 1. It's been an interesting year in both our worlds and we have each informed and grown the other. Since January of last year I have worked for four different companies - in each one learning new skills, meeting new people, and seeing the world from a different point of view. And during my tenures, this blog has twisted and turned as well. Sometimes bursting with thoughts, ideas and links, at other times tired and vague.

What has surprised me the most is the response prospective employers have had to my blog. A top London fashion PR agency, a global qualitative research agency, and a digital branding agency have all been considerably impressed by this manifestation of my commitment to my career and the branding industry.

I cannot over-emphasise how useful a blog can be to young talent. A blog is a free, quick and simple way to show people how you think, what you think, and how you work. Forget the 'hobbies' section on your CV, a link to a focused, dynamic website is simply the best way to distinguish you from the crowd.



Camillastore doesn't have a huge following, but it's there and up-to-date when I need the right person to see it. For me the blog serves as a living database. At work I find myself frequently referring it to it for this company name, or that clever website.

Those of you who do check back every so often, may notice that my posts have been flagging a bit. While it's a shame that the days of posting from my bed at 11pm are being replaced by crawling home from work at 8 and conking straight out, I have my blog (and the visual implementation of my skills) to thank for the amazingjob that now fills my days!

Geek me up: Part 2

Making the most of the 'snow day' (snow, rain, falling leaves, wind, hail, heat, sunshine - you name it, Britain grinds to a halt), I've been doing R&D for my new role, where I'm hoping to bring credibility, strategy and commercial application to the massively undervalued and under-used art of blogging and web-based research. It only seemed right, then, for me to finally bite the bullet and join Twitter. Not quite sure of its purpose or meaning just yet, but ask me again in a few weeks and I'll no doubt be able to give you a persuasive answer in no more than 140 characters. You can follow my 'Tweets' by clicking the link to the right.

Geek me up!

Forget Disneyland, forget the Oscars, the American destination of choice for me in 2009 has got to be SXSW Interactive. Four days of nothing but web-techy-geek stuff in Austin, TX? That's my kind of holiday! I'm mean who doesn't want to attend talks that go by the name of 'UR blog sux and print is dead', 'Help! My ipod thinks I'm emo' and 'Web Typography: Quit Bitchin' and Get Your Glyph On'??

From the lastest Cool Hunter newsletter...

"The Bloguls (blog moguls) have revolutionized the global media and the practice of journalism. Print can no longer compete, in terms of reporting information first. By the time newspapers and magazines hit the news-stands their content is already old news. Bloggers are setting media agendas and have become a crucial resource for print journalists, who rely on them to supply raw, uncensored, immediate information. We experience this first-hand every day when we receive emails from major publications asking us for high res images and more information on posts, which we see covered in their pages weeks later.

The world's most powerful mastheads, such as the Vogues, Vanity Fairs, Wallpapers and New York Times' of the world - have had to accommodate the increasingly influential Bloguls, with whom they now compete with for advertising dollars as growing slices of marketing budgets are being funnelled into the blogosphere."



Money AND power? It's every blogger's dream!

Click HERE for the Cool Hunter article
Or HERE for a previous Camilla's Store post on the subject (yes - I think I got there first! Not so 'cool' now, Cool Hunter!)

Interesting article on blogging from The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/06/search-engines-internet

Apparently the key is "just write great content". Consider it done!

A blog's life

According to Wired, blogging is dead. I'm not quite sure what they're basing that on, but, in my view, it couldn't be further from the truth. Certainly, I am often coming across corporate blogs which have petered out and have been left unattended since March of last year and, at the other end of the spectrum, I am constantly hearing of good blogs leading on to bigger and better things. Namely, a high-profile job for Susie Bubble at Dazed and Confused, a book deal for Wife in the North and international fame for Perez Hilton. But that is not to say that what goes on in between is not unique, profound or vital.

I read a whole host of blogs on every topic from design to news to cooking and nearly always find them way ahead of the game in terms of information and trends. Indeed, when I was working for a product development agency, we relied heavily on the blogs to give us an insight into where the 'buzz' was.



From a personal point of view, blogging is like pushing back the fur coats and finding Narnia. Suddenly the normal, everyday world around me is a mine-field of ideas. From my camera phone to the Internet, I can harness the modern world and tie it down to make one succinct and immediate point. It costs me nothing, I don't have to get approval from an editor and if people don't like it they can just click on.

Blogs may die when their owners go to critical acclaim heaven, but blogging is far from dead. It is very much alive and kicking.

Click here to read the Wired article

Photographer, fellow blogger and sometime classmate of yours truly, Marcos JQ, busted a very cosmopolitan move and attended the opening of Apple Mac, Geneva.





See more from this series and others at http://marcosjq.blogspot.com.

Note to self: Dress excellently all next week.
Why: The Sartorialist is in London for the first time!