The Girls’ Book of Flower Fairies. Cicely Mary Barker. Copyright Frederick Warne. Publisher: Penguin. Figure that out.

I was instantly infatuated with Cicely Mary Barker’s illustrations of the flower fairies — all 120 of them, from the Acorn Fairy to the Zinnia Fairy. I mean, who wouldn’t be? (Don’t answer that.)

The original Flower Fairies books by Cicely Mary Barker date from 1923-1948, and were “re-originated” by Penguin in 1990. I think that means the new books are beautifully produced in the original styles, with a velvety hard cover and pages artificially yellowed and foxed. But the activities pages have photographs of modern children and modern tools like pinking shears and staplers. So this is rather a strange concoction.

My product tester, Elsie, is almost five. She was utterly bored by the stories, and I don’t blame her. American fairies lead boring lives and any naughtiness is miniscule, any conflict resolved by a little chat.

She didn’t even pay much attention to the illustrations: I was the one who drooled over those in an initial fit of nostalgia. Then I found myself hankering after Arthur Rackham: his fairies are so much more complex, and they draw you up and away into mysterious worlds. Cicely Mary Barker’s fairies are very down to earth — though adorable, of course.

Elsie went crazy over the activities. She wanted to do stuff, and we worked our way through fairy gardens, fairy meals, fairy picnics, fairy beads, fairy wings, fairy garlands and lavender sachets and all the rest. I came to dread the demand for the next activity.

The flower fairies are now a product empire with t-shirts, “fashion accessories”, dolls and toys. But you can’t tame fairies. I’m thoroughly confused.

How is the Internet changing literary style? asks Caleb Crain on Steamboats are ruining everything. It’s a leisurely, literary, philosophical talk transcribed. So why would I ruin everything by paraphrasing? I’ll just quote a bit.

Crain writes a lot for the New York Review of books. Enjoy.

What styles do thrive on the internet? I’ve kept a blog for several years, and although its readership is tiny, I of course notice when the hits rise and fall. I seem to get more readers when I post frequently, when I write about people or topics in the headlines, when I have been drawn into a conflict, and when I write something that speaks to a self-image that a group of people share. Over the years I’ve gradually revealed more personal details; I still reveal very little, comparatively, but enough to entitle me to say that I feel a tug there, too.

Do not hesitate, as they say. To enter.

If you care about plain English, you never think your web content is good enough.

But hey, it’s probably way better than most! Maybe some of your organisation’s web content is really rather good. You may be suffering from ultra-sensitivity. Why? Because you care about clear communication. Because you know about plain English.

Applause, applause!

If you care, enter your own or somebody else’s web content in the amazing annual award ceremony for New Zealand’s Plain English awards. They honour those who write plain English. Kevin Milne of Fair Go will once again be the MC, and the winners inevitably get great media coverage.

Heaps of entries = a howling success.

10 facts about New Zealand’s Plain English Awards

1. Entries close in two weeks, on 28 July 2008.
2. Most people don’t think they are good enough to enter — so seize the advantage!
3. No entry has ever been perfect — perfection is not possible.
4. The judges are impressed by effort and delighted by every clear
document.
5. The only documents publicly criticised are those in the BrainStrain
award.
6. You can enter a document, a web site — or just a single sentence.
7. You can enter other people’s work in People’s Choice (category 5).
8. Entry is free, because a sponsor now covers the expenses.
9. The premier prize is worth $10,000.
10. The awards are a not-for-profit event hosted by the WriteMark Plain
English Awards Trust.

Read more, then send in an entry

What a week!
Yesterday, two days after the Presentation Zen workshop, I went to
Search Engine Boot Camp in Auckland.

I enjoyed this conference and hey, it was at the Hilton on Auckland Harbour. The views! The beef fillet!
Now, I know this blog entry looks like a boring and dutiful list of presentation topics, which you could have got straight from the Search Engine Boot Camp site. My perhaps too subtle intention is to show how the focus of search engine optimisation has changed in the last six years:

• from free to paid search results
• from one-way PR manipulation to managing unpredictable swarms of public opinion on Web 2.0
• from trying to outwit search engines to saying thanks for all the help.

It’s still the wild west out there, so it’s still a lot of fun. SEO is no place for the faint-hearted. Go Barry!

I was quite startled at the shift in audience and focus since the first time I’d presented at a Search Engine Strategies conference in Sydney 2002.

Sydney 2002: the audience was largely male, the industry was packed with cowboys, and people kept asking,

Yes I know you have to you say that but really, (nudge nudge wink wink) what dirty little trick will get my business straight to the top of search results?

What did we talk about in 2002? If I remember rightly — and why would I? — there were sessions on the differences between the major search engines and directories. (Remember Excite? Inktomi? This was before they all started swallowing each others’ tails.) Metatags for sure. Spammy things. And many topics related more to web content management than SEO.

In 2008, worlds away. Despite this being a boot camp, the audience was highly professional, and nearly half were female, I reckon. One of the bad boys had hung up his spurs, but he still had a glint in his eye, and Barry Smyth still kept things trotting along.

Only two of our topics straddled the last six years: SEM Fundamentals (Paul Webster, Google) and Copy writing for SEO (my topic, naturally). Even Researching keywords and Building search-friendly websites are topics that have necessarily changed along with tools and technologies.

Sense the larger changes, but. Several speakers dealt with aspects of paid search, including Writing Ads that convert. A Google Analytics Workshop from Rod Jacka, Panalysis showed us the wonders of some free Google webmaster tools: why try to outwit Google when Google is the optimiser’s best friend?

The impact of Web 2.0 on search engine marketing is enormous, and Boot Camp tackled the topic head on.

• Simon Young of iJump talked about using social media to promote your visibility in search results.
• Jason West of WebSalad discussed reputation management: it’s no longer a case of one-sided self-promotion, but of damage control when other people push your name to unwanted prominence in search results.
• I missed a session on optimising for Web 2.0 technologies but I bet that was interesting too.

Link Building Fundamentals (Jason West, WebSalad) is a topic that has largely outgrown its dubious past. Universal Search and Local Search (Jacqui Jones, Netconcepts) and The Best SEO Practices for Mobile & Local Search are two more talks I missed.

Check out the agenda while it’s still online. And next time there’s a Search Engine Boot Camp near you, enlist if you are half interested.

Presentation Zen came to Wellington last Tuesday.
Garr Reynolds epitomises the dream presenter, in theory, example and practice.
This was a mini-webstock event. Lucky us!

Garr’s greatest gift may be stating and showing the blindingly obvious in a manner so clear, so cool that we could not fail to read, hear, learn and inwardly digest it.

People simply cannot listen to a speaking voice and read at the same time.

Well, we can try, but fat chance of the audience absorbing either message. It follows as the night the day that the accepted style of slide presentation is utterly ludicrous. Why do we display words to an audience and simultaneously talk to them? This is as silly as trying to feed a baby and cut its hair at the same time.

If we say the same thing as the written words, that’s pointless redundancy. If we say something different, the audience will struggle to absorb either message.

Powerpoint’s original developers intended it to display images only. Good idea.

This penny-dropping fact has interesting implications for training courses developed in Flash with audio. We are pondering them this week.

Garr stressed that there is no one perfect presentation style, but that the idiosyncratic is precious. He showed video snips of wildly diverse presenters. A shy technical man who displays huge isolated kanji in sync with his speech. A stomping ranting demanding bully. And so forth. I felt relieved to get “permission” not to become bland. So in an exercise, our hugely brainy group of nine world leaders demonstrated a Punk style of presentation complete with immortal lyrics:

1, 2, 3, 4
Listen listen
Definition
Listen listen
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition… (or something).

Image from PresentationZen.com: a great blog by Garr Reynolds.