Monica Yoo

technology. science. marketing.

“Lady in Red…”

You’re probably thinking, “Lady in Red?” Is that a Chris DeBurgh reference? It is. However, this blog entry will have a different spin on ladies in red.

In case you didn’t know, today is National Wear Read Day.

The Heart Truth—a national awareness campaign for women about heart disease—created and introduced the Red Dress as the national symbol for women and heart disease awareness in 2002 to deliver an urgent wakeup call to American women. The Red Dress reminds women of the need to protect their heart health, and inspires them to take action. National Wear Red Day promotes the symbol and provides an opportunity for everyone to unite in this life-saving awareness movement by showing off a favorite red dress, shirt, or tie, or Red Dress Pin.

One of the best ways of taking precautionary steps to lead a healthier lifestyle is simply by being aware. Today, I’m showing my support by sporting a red turtle neck. Will you?

BarCamp. Texas Style.

This past week was topped off by an awesome day at BarCampTX. Kudos to The Creative Space for organizing a great event! It was definitely one of the best learning and social gatherings I’ve been too.

Let’s recap:

My Saturday morning trip started out with some taquitos from Whataburger and a bit of Twittering. (Ohh, yeah) Since I had never been to Bryan, TX I was very excited about exploring a new territory. We passed by tons of churches and unusual stone figurines on our drive over there and I think every time I peeled my attention away from my laptop, there was something to chuckle at. Anyway, once I stepped out of the car, I immediately felt like I was on a movie set. Everything was so cute and clean – including the perfectly paved streets. See for yourself:

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The entire day was a lot of fun. Not only did I see tons of familiar faces, I had some great conversations with them. It seems as though when you’re in an environment that fosters creativity and free-thinking, like one at BarCamp that’s fun and laid back, you have the most meaningful conversations. Which is why personally, I love attending events like these.

Something I didn’t expect to happen was this…

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From left to right: Zaki Mirza, Aaron Belafonte, yours truly, Marianne Masculino

Photo Credits to Michael Cummings

…to come across a giant old-school laptop. Not sure about the others, but I felt like we were cavemen/cavewomen that discovered something amazing. Except we were just purely fascinated at how old it was. The keys on the keyboard made a plastic-y sound when you pressed it, there was a three inch port for something in the back (can’t tell ya what it is, but not a USB port for sure), and weighed more than my Chihuahua dog.

What do I think? BarCampTX was a great experience and I highly recommend attending them.

I’ve Got Social Media! How About You?

Got Social Media Badge

This past Thursday I attended the first Got Social Media conference and had a very refreshing experience. I was surrounded by tons of people who were enthusiastic, thirsty to learn and all of them with a streak of ambition.

Throughout the day, various subjects oriented around communications were discussed from a beginning to end kind of fashion; what communication is and the value and purpose it serves, the metrics involved in quanitfying the effectiveness of communications, the future direction of communicating and its experiential shift, tactical approaches to stir buzz marketing, a reality check about women and internet (which by the way makes up 52% of the entire web user population!) and the evolution of web technology.

There were some great presentations with valuable messages and I especially loved the ones that sparked curiosity. For me, those are the ones that usually stick. =)

A personal favorite from the event was the presentation by Stephen Anderson. His discussion tied in a number of different psychological/social behavioral elements and how in the future he believes the focus will shift towards the experience of browsing. In an “off-line” conversation I had with him, he talked about how it used to be the programmers and developers who ran websites, and now it’s the web designers and in the future it’ll be the psychologists and those involved in the social sciences. After thinking about for a bit, I think he’s right. As websites and internet users become more sophisticated, the development team will have to also. You can already see it on Nike.com and UnderArmour.com. It’s pretty clear that they’re selling emotion and experience, not just the shoes and tshirts.

With all that I’ve learned, I think that in the future, successful websites will be the ones that are able to replicate real in-person behaviors and tendencies in an online environment. In his presentation, Chris Bernard said that studies revealed that women shop for longer periods of time and spend more money when they shop with a friend or in a group. The question now is, how can you create an environment to simulate this kind of behavior on the internet? It’s something to think about.

Natuba: Relaunched!

Happy New Year! I’d like to introduce you the new and hip Natuba!

Taking into consideration that it’s 2008, most of us (if not all) have cell phones with cameras. Many of us (if not all) use our camera phones to take quick snap shots of food, people and unusual sightings. We love to sneak pictures of our new baby nephews, our first real attempt at cooking and the surprise candid moments of our friends. How can we not? Having a tiny camera inside of our phone has got to be one of the most entertaining aspects of owning one (unless you have internet access).

The unfortunate reality of all this is that the pictures we gleefully take rarely make it out of our square phones. Most often than not, the only instances that any picture will be shared is immediately after the picture is taken, when you’re with a posse of pals to recap the event or any other situation where your phone is within tangible reach. If you take an awesome picture, wouldn’t you want to share it with your friends (or even the world)?! It would be a waste to leave a picture like this on your phone:

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(in case you can’t read it, it says: 4N AFRS)

So what can you do? Natuba it! Natuba is the place to store all your cell phone stuff. With it, you can easily upload the pictures from your phone and send “shouts”- fleeting thoughts that you’d like to post up on the web aka text messsages. Once you create your account, you can share your personal link with your buddies so they can see all your exciting mobile pictures! *ta da*

Music Makes My World Go ‘Round…

Music plays a large role in my daily life. Therefore I want to share a few things that I’ve been fortunate to come across.

I present to you, 3 internet radio sites!

Pandora.com – This is a site I’m sure many of you already know about. It creates playlists based on similar musical characteristics of the song or artist you select. It’s nice because it’ll play songs from various artists – sometimes with new artists that you’ll probably end up having a growing interest for.

Last.fm – Similar, but different from Pandora, Last.fm allows the user to share and promote artists. Registered users can subscribe to other users to hear their taste in music. Fun way to explore new, different and upcoming musicians.

Musicovery.com – Of the three internet radio stations, this one has to be my favorite! This nifty application selects songs from a wide variety of genres (or the ones you specifically pick) based on a mood matrix. If you’re in the mood for something slow paced but with a positive melody, click in the positive and calm quadrant.

Give each of them a try! They’re all unique and come in handy in different situations.

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