Oklahoma Blogging Club

Amy Bellgardt is known as @MomSpark, the name of the blog she created in July 2008 as a way to connect with  moms who were experiencing the same joys and challenges of parenting. Amy also founded the successful Mom Made That!, a site for supporting and promoting mom businesses.

1. Where are you writing and where else can we find you online?

You can currently find me at MomSpark.net, MomMadeThat.com, and SummerCelebrations.info.

2. How do you feel living in Oklahoma has shaped you as a writer or as a person?

To me, Oklahoma is a very kind, generous state, and I hope that shows in my writing and online community.  Most Oklahomans I know work hard, have heart, and genuinely want to help others.  I have traveled all over the country in the past year and I have yet to see a state like ours!

3. What are your primary goals for your blog moving forward?

My goals always change, because life changes.  I think my path is already laid before me, so I do not question it or force it another way.  I just go where it takes me and give it my all and heart.

Saying that, I do set goals for myself, even if those goals change during the process.  Setting goals allows me to work harder and stay focused, which is important when you are managing several tasks and trying to parent at the same time!

The first of our three question interviews, highlighting the fabulous members of our Oklahoma Blogging Club! Becky McCray is “a small town entrepreneur, with a retail store and a cattle ranch in Oklahoma. I work with small town governments and promote tourism and entrepreneurship.”

1. Where are you writing and where else can we find you online?

My main site is http://www.smallbizsurvival.com . I also run http://tourismcurrents.com along with Sheila Scarborough. In fact, I have quite a few separate blogs. You’ll find links to all my projects at http://www.beckymccray.com .

2. How do you feel living in Oklahoma has shaped you as a writer or as a person?

Small Biz Survival is focused on small town business, and that is absolutely a result of living and working in small towns here in Oklahoma. I’ve come to realize that small town business people have an advantage in business. Our Oklahoma roots make us closer to farming, closer to economic realities. These are lessons that seem to have been lost in the larger national society.

3. What are your primary goals for your blog moving forward?

Together with Barry Moltz, author of Bounce and You Need to Be a Little Crazy, I’m working on distilling some of those lessons into a book. And the over-arching goal for Small Biz Survival is to build community among small town business people, so I’ll be doing more things to bring people together.

Group Creation Function –

Just a quick heads up that I have resolved the issue that prevented users from creating new groups of their own.

I now have it set where REGISTERED USERS can create new groups on the site (ie Foodie Bloggers I know someone mentioned specifically) but unregistered readers cannot create new groups. That should be a good mix between spam control and usability for members!

So you should be free to create new groups, or new conversations within existing groups.

Promoting Our Tribe Thread –

I also wanted to call everyone’s attention to the newest forum conversation about promoting our fellow Oklahomans in their online writing! Check it out and share your latest blog post with us so we can tweet, stumble and comment!

Tonight we took our family to the local fireworks show. All ten minutes of it. Actually, it took us longer to get out of the parking lot (grass field) than to watch the show. But that’s hardly the point of this post.

I wanted to talk about my observations.

Small Town – Community and Politics

It was interesting to watch the crowd milling around before the show. Small town community friendliness was at it’s peak. A local politician was handing out free coupons for hot dogs at the concession stand. A rival was giving children balloons. Gravel roads, grass fields, and pick up trucks. It was iconic Oklahoma.

High Tech – Connected and Communicative

Simultaneously the evening was filled with technology for me. I recorded a vlog on the way to post on my large collaborative site. Tweeted from my phone on the way home. Took stunning acceptable non-embarrassing photos with my digital SLR. It struck me – some of the most amazing bloggers, social media advisers and brilliant technical geniuses I know live in similar settings. Small, supposedly back-woods towns with backwards thinking.

To me the contrast is stark. And interesting. Textures of two halves of the same life that mixed in my own day-to-day life – feeding chickens in the backyard one second and posting to my blog the next.

Photos by Angela England (c).

The “Get Social OKC” social media un-conference will take place on Thursday, June 24 from 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Renaissance Oklahoma City Convention Center Hotel, located at 10 N. Broadway Ave. The half-day event is a networking and educational opportunity for everyone interested in learning about social media in a relaxed, highly interactive environment that encourages presenters to engage in “coffee shop” conversations with attendees.

Founder, Jessica Miller-Merrell (@blogging4jobs) had an email interview with us to tell us a little bit more about the conference. Jessica is an author, speaker, new mother,and human resources professional with a passion for recruiting, training, and all things social media.

What was your favorite part of Get Social last year and can attendees expect more of the fun this year?

This is our second Get Social Conference event.  We had a previous event this year in Tulsa, Oklahoma in May and it went very well.  The unconference atmosphere is like a coffee conversation.  Our sessions will not rely on powerpoints.  We encourage audience participation and allow the conversations to flow based on the participants just like the flow of social media.

The overall thought behind GSC is to bring the conference to the people and businesses.  Large events like Blog World and South by Southwest are fun but required a large investment of money, time, and travel and most of us do not have those things all at once.

What improvements have been made to Get Social this year that you are looking forward to introducing to everyone?

The BuddyPress system on wordpress allows some unique community networking features including a forum system built into groups.

If you click the Groups Tab you’ll see all the groups we currently have – members are welcome to create new groups so if you have a specific niche blog, etc, you can create a new group there.

Please note – I shouldn’t have to say it but spamming groups/posts will be deleted. I will create a group specifically for posting links to your blogs, posts and giveaways, etc so we can help eachother out in that area.

If you click the Activities Tab you’ll see any recent activity on the group, such as new members, profile updates, forums postings, etc.

If you click the Forums Tab you’ll see a list of any posts/threads from any group on the site. That’s my favorite way to keep up with what’s going on since it will display results site-wide.

Thanks for your patience as we get this new set-up running and thankfully we won’t have to worry about that madness ever happening again since this site is self-hosted!

photo by KB35 / Kevin

I realized after being recently nominated for the Okie Blog Awards that there are a LOT of Oklahoman bloggers out there! I’m so impressed with the talent we have out here and felt we needed a gathering place to support, network, encourage, learn, and share.

Maybe your blog is a company blog you manage for a business, maybe your blog pays for you to stay home with your kids (like mine), and maybe your blog is just an online diary for touching base with friends and family.

Regardless of your personal goals, we’re here to help. My desire is to create an active community where we can support and engage one another. I’m planning to do monthly trainings on a wide variety of topics, so if you have any suggestions (and want to volunteer!) let me know. I have access to webinar training programs and will probably be using that technology for us to access the trainings.

Look around, join some groups and let’s get blogging!