This is our last She Said, He Said blog post series for 2011. Yesterday, Shelby looked back through our posts and picked three topics that she thought brought the best discussions this year. Now it’s my turn! This week, our #shehechat on Twitter will be an open mic night. We’ll discuss anything and everything in this special year-end chat. Join us at 8 p.m. CST tonight!
Of course any list like this is subjective; but Shelby managed to get through the task yesterday so I figured if a girl can do it, so can I. Before you get all upset about that being a condescending comment, please remember this is the She Said, He Said project and we bill it as a modern day battle of the sexes. As long as we are on that topic, you might as well note that the “girl” managed to convince me this should be “She Said, He Said” and not the other way around. She does a darn good job of sticking up for herself.
In the beginning …
To put this list together, I went back to the beginning and skimmed all the posts we have written (this will be the 70th). When I read the very first two posts, I knew they had to be included in my list. After all, that’s how it all began. In the beginning, I wrote “Strategy to work with others” and Shelby responded with “Working with Jim is a full-time job, but one I like.”
At the time, Shelby had been providing contract marketing services to my company ColorMetrix for about a month. She’d also been editing posts on this site for about four months. After reading my post, she said, “I like it but I have a different perspective than you.” I said, “Fantastic. Write a post and we’ll run it as a guest post.” (Heck, it got me out of writing for a day, right?). While our working relationship and friendship have matured since early March, I could already see in these two posts that the framework was in place for both relationships to work well. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Most fun post (of all time) to write
As much as I love to write, it can – and is – a grind most days to get the words out in some semblance of order. So most days writing is work. We call it “work” … well, because it’s work. Every now and then, a post is easy to write and just flows from the fingertips. (This is not one of those posts.) Every once in awhile, a post is easy to write also a lot of fun. Shelby and I wrote “Twitter Tennis – Jim and Shelby Volley” while on a late night flight from the east coast to Phoenix for a business meeting.
The flight occurred in the middle of a trip we dubbed “9 states in 5 days.” We should have been exhausted and just wanted to sleep on the flight. Instead, we passed the computer back and forth and crafted this little gem. I like it because it captures what it’s like to listen to us debate/argue face-to-face. We really do banter like this whenever we are in the same room.
The future according to a fanboy
For those of you that think Google+ is a passing fad or already dead, you can stop reading right now. I’m not one of those folks and Shelby has gone as far as to call me a “Google+ fanboy” multiple times in the last year. When Google released Brand Pages for its new social network, I knew it was going to be around for the long haul. I wrote “G+ Brand & Business Pages – Jim Says” knowing a year later Google+ would be alive and well. I guess only time will confirm that prediction so I’ll check back with you then.
Shelby doesn’t share quite the same enthusiasm as me for Google+, but she does agree that it’s preferable to Facebook in many ways. Covering social media topics from our two perspectives is how She Said, He Said has evolved. That’s our focus and where the majority of posts will go in the next year. Who knows? There could even be an eBook in the works …