Changes

After a quick dinner with a great friend, I realized that as many changes as 2009 brought, 2010 has been and incredible year so far. From exciting professional milestones to big home improvements and even travels, this has certainly already been a crazy year. I guess that's what life is about though: changing and continuing to move forward to get the most out of every day. If it isn't it certainly should be.

All things considered, here are some my big changes:

• Found a way to make printed programs more interactive by using QR codes and attracted national attention from media and other professional leagues from the success.
  
• Stopped making excuses and started making time to spend with wonderful friends for random nights, adventures, workouts or even lunches. Laughed more. A LOT more.
  
• Hosted a party worthy of the Detroit blogging community at MotorCity Casino Hotel's Amnesia Ultra Lounge in celebration of social media day, where I got to physically see what our over 400 blogger strong social media community looks like in one room (determined, enterprising and excited to name a few).
• Found a better way to cope with allergies and started gardening with Mr. NWlife (despite my aversion to pollen, flowers or any other allergic-reaction-inducing plant life).
  
• Made the decision to leave the new amazing friends and colleagues Detroit Red Wings (those really, really great kinds of friends made at work who make plans and keep them) to become the brand manager at Livio Radio.
  
• Found the time to open and use the Yelland house pool.
• Convinced Mr. NWlife to (finally) get on a plane and celebrate our second wedding anniversary in Mexico. Had the time of our lives.
  
• Picked up more books for fun, remembered why I love fun reading so much.
  

Every day I'm inspired by my incredible friends (professionally and personally), technology, art and businesses continuing to thrive in this economy. I have a feeling if this was the first half of 2010, the second is only going to be better.

More to come,
Nicole

Livestrong

I love working out. Not only because of it's physical benefits, but also because of the opportunity it presents to do some good in my community. Over the past year and a half, this opportunity presented itself through spinning.

Spinning is something I've always liked but it took getting involved in a local fundraiser for Livestrong get me hooked. The Ultimate Cycling Challenge (started by a fantastic group in Grand Rapids) is a 12 or 24 hour event (depending upon your team's stamina and availability) with live entertainment, food, music and dozens of spinning bikes that annually come together to raise money for the Livestrong Foundation.

It's a truly inspiring event, I met both cycling enthusiasts, cancer survivors, cancer patients and families of those fighting cancer. These people share their stories and help put a face to a cause. My team included 3 other women (my sister and two friends Amanda and Cat) who have all been affected by cancer in our lives at some point and had been looking for a way to become more active in our communities - needless to say, we couldn't say no when our friend Katy emailed us about this event.

Team Old School was born. To date, we've participated in 3 events and plan to keep it going. This past year was our first pass at the 24 hour challenge and it was great motivation to get into shape to compete with other teams. I'm hooked.

So now I'm challenging you - how are you getting involved in your community and using your passions to make a difference?

More to come,

Nicole

Catching up

Now that I'm back from the dead, it seems the most appropriate thing to do is recap the past eight months - in true NWLife style: bullets and photos!

• In July, Greg (or for those of you on Twitter @CoachYelland) and I celebrated our first year of marriage in Mackinac Island
  
• After nearly four crazy years, I chose to leave my wonderful friends, coworkers and clients at Airfoil Public Relations for a new job as Social Networking Coordinator with the Detroit Red Wings
• In my first month at new the new gig, I not only traveled to training camp with the team in Traverse City, MI but also got the opportunity of a lifetime to go to Sweden with the team where I live blogged from the road.
• Feel deeply in love with our new Akita-Chocolate lab mix, Coach.

• Made new friends (like the really good kind) at work. Breathed a deep sigh of relief.
  
• Made the best EVER Halloween duo combo with my sister.
• Celebrated my birthday tradition by heading to Crossroads Village to see the Christmas lights (I'm a Christmas Eve baby) with great friends.
• With the help of Medical Weight Loss Clinics I learned how to eat right for my body and celebrated the loss of 20 pounds and a new beginning.
• Took some time for myself during the Olympic break with my best friend from childhood and spent Valentine's Day in NYC for Fashion Week and was inspired by art.
• Headed to Grand Rapids for my annual Ultimate Cycling Challenge spinning event with Team Old School where we not only raised money for Livestrong but also managed to clinch the most spirited team award after 24 hours of spinning.
• Celebrated the birth of William Louis Urbanik, the son of Nikki and Phil Urbanik - my first friends to have a baby.
• Celebrated Coach's first birthday with special doggie cookies from Doodle Dog Bakery.
• Adopted and temporarily housed a siamese kitten as a gift to my dad for his 49th birthday.
• Started taking boxing lessons and really loving my time at the gym.

This brings us to today. At home, blogging while snuggling up with my puppy (I still call her a pup) waiting for Mr. Y to get home from his baseball tourney and have a date night. There's so much to be thankful for and happy about. This post doesn't come close to capturing it all, but it's a snapshot of my wonderfully charmed life.

More to come,

Nicole

I'm alive

Hello bloggosphere! I know, I know I'm very guilty of not posting for a long time. The good news is that I have inspiration to post. For the past eight months I've been manning my post at my new gig as the social networking coordinator with the Detroit Red Wings. It's been a whirlwind few months but I really do love it and am inspired every day by bloggers, social media types and becoming even more of a nerd than even I thought I'd ever be.

Not only am I inspired by Wings bloggers, but even my own sister-in-law has started a blog full of deep thoughts and mental deep breaths.

So thanks guys, I'm back from the dead!

Rockin' Robin, Tweet Tweet, Tweet Tweet!

If I haven't mentioned it before, I'm a big fan of the newest social media phenomenons - Twitter the microblog. For those of you who are either new to the service or wondering what's next, I thought I would post my top 5 favorite new tools available to help you measure your effectiveness on the site. With no futher adieu...

1. Twinfluence - Twinfluence is a scientific approach to measuring the influence of Twitter users. This can serve as another set of metrics to help you figure out how successful our client twitter accounts are proving to be in their respective industries. Plus, it’s pretty cool to get your overall rank. It’s hard to say though how valid this information means as we have no way of knowing what it is measured against and exactly what criterion the service is using to rank users.

2. Tweetcloud - Creates a tag cloud of a person’s tweets to give you a bird’s eye view of the type of things they tweet about, this tool allows you to zero out and see which words we are using for our clients most often, look up other users and check what they are writing about or even look to see which users are tweeting most often about a certain word and allow you to follow them from the application. Check it out to see if you’re on message with your tweets.

3. Qwitter – Ever wondered when certain users quit following your client accounts? Qwitter is a nice app that will update you via email whenever someone stops following you. It will even let you know what you tweeted that caused them to stop following you, which could be useful for continuing to grow you following

4. Twitvid – Have a cool client video on your desktop but not on youtube? Never fear, Twitvid is here! It’s just like twitpic, only for video application.

5. Tweepler - Of course our clients want us to follow users, but when it comes to following everyone, sometimes we need to be a bit more choosey and do it quick! Tweepler is a new follower management application that lets you make quick, one click decisions about whether to follow people back or drop them into an ignore pile (out of sight, out of mind). In addition to being able to view recent tweets, Tweepler gives helpful stats about new followers, such as average tweets per day.

If anything, it's fun to see how others are viewing the value of what you are sharing and how you can work to improve in the future. Happy tweeting!

More to come,

Nicole

And they called it - puppy love

Well, we finally did it folks. My husband Greg and I brought home a puppy today!

She's a 13 week old lab-akita mix and has brown and white coloring. It has been a wait though, due to the poor economy and owners not vaccinating grown parent dogs before bringing puppies to a rescue, potential disease in her litter left us waiting 4 weeks before we could bring her home. Now that we have her home, we're both convinced it was well worth the wait. Considering the things a little dog is bound to teach a newly married couple about ourselves and each other, we decided to name her Coach.

Surprisingly, though Coach has only been home for 3 hours, she's had 8 visitors, several presents, a walk and lots of kisses - better than either of our last birthday! No matter how you slice it, this is going to be one spoiled little dog.

And here's the part I know you logged on for...adorable puppy pictures below...enjoy!

A puppy's life is so tough.

Coach takes a breather from trying to buck off the leash.

I love her speckled legs and curley tail.

My husband, Greg already in love...

Last, but not least, Coach and I share a hug in the livingroom!

More to come,

Nicole

Never gonna give you up!

These past few months at work, I have become more involved in social media for clients. From helping develop social media strategies, to "tweeting" it's been an adventure. Lately, I've been enjoying updating my own personal vocabulary, which brings us to today's new term: Rickrolling.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Rickrolling is an Internet bait and switch tactic where a person provides a web link that he or she claims is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled" (also spelled Rickroll'd).

This most recent emergence of this trending term is shown here with promise of a wheelchair and escalator stunt – this time the user is “Rickrolled” into viewing a keyboarding cat halfway through.

Currently, this trend is taking media by storm – Stephen Colbert rickrolled his viewers and even Adam Sandberg rickrolled his captive audience during this year's MTV Awards.

Okay, so what's my point? Well as it turns out, shocking and sometimes outright silly humor is not only still appreciated but also effective in communication...not to mention, this particular version of humor earned Mr. Astley over 36 million youtube views with two viral campaigns.

So go ahead, give funny a try. You just may start a trend.

More to come,
Nicole