Sesamedia New Media Blog

Tonight in Burlington, Vermont we're excited to participate in the Art Hop with Vermont Makers. We're creating a light, spiral and flight Mashup in the SEABA Art Park - that's the small park on Pine Street in front of Harvest Bread. We'll have art and tech demos and we will happily field questions about Champlain Maker Faire and Vermont Makers fall programming.

We hope to create an inviting space for idea exchange along the main artery of the 'Hop.

See you there!

Thanks to SparkFun for helping us get the word out about Champlain Maker Faire! Like SparkFun, Sesamedia New Media is a sponsor of the event.

In addition to their sponsorship, SparkFun will be at Champlain Maker Faire, giving demos and presentations. Their generosity is something we've experienced here in VT before, when they visited just last spring and gave workshops.

Here's a snippet from the recent SparkFun blog post:

"We're all really big fans of Maker Faire at SparkFun - we have sponsored the Faires from very early on. The big Faires, New York and San Mateo are spectacles of the first order. The draw of the Faire is that you get to see things and meet people who have common interest and are working on projects that you might not otherwise see. The exposure to new technology and ideas is constant and inspiring. It's also great to be part of a community, we are all familiar with the eye rolling family members who could care less about our totally autonomous freezer defroster with datalogging and Twitter feed. But the ability to revel in our absolute devotion to odd ideas with our community is really fun! This brings me to Vermont..."

For the whole story:
http://ow.ly/dgSwb 

This summer Facebook launched a redesigned version of its Facebook for Business website. This website provides in-depth education that's focused on teaching businesses how to use Facebook, including:

    Steps to Business Success
    Latest updates on product launches
    Resources for advertisers
    Success stories

Much of the information provided is about getting businesses to buy advertising, but there's still good information about the basics of managing a Facebook page.

Facebook business pages are still best for businesses that sell sweets, salty or addictive food and drink, are of the entertainment industry or have fun and visually interesting information to share. Facebook pages remain somewhat limited in what they can do for B2B businesses.

The best new feature in Facebook pages is the voice bar that now appears on the pages you manage. It allows you to easily change back and forth between your personal and business profiles when making comments.












At Sesamedia New Media, we believe that a facebook presence is important to your overall online presence, but that it is just a piece in a larger puzzle. A successful facebook page drives traffic to your website.

Visit the Facebook for Business Website

Sesamedia New Media is pleased to support the efforts of the Vermont Makers and Champlain Maker Faire. We do this through some online media support, most recently with the launch of the Champlain Maker Faire website. This week, Seven Days Newspaper featured the cover story "Meet Your Makers: Vermont hackers, artists and inventors are sharing ideas — and solving problems." The article written by Megan James does an excellent job of capturing the spirit and excitement of what's going on. Sesamedia's founder Jenn Karson (yes, that's me) was interviewed for the story. Be sure to check it out!

Read the full story here.

At  Sesamedia we're delighted to announce our sponsorship and the launch of a new festival website, Champlain Maker Faire. Maker Faires like Champlain Maker Faire are starting to show up all over the United States, this will be Vermont's first. Champlain Maker Faire will be hosted at Shelburne Farms and have its own special Vermont twist. The event will feature inspired creations and workshops by inventors, artists, engineers and scientists.

At its core, Champlain Maker Faire's intention is to share the spirit of invention and innovation with the Vermont Community -  to spark interest in explorations within the sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics and the arts. Hope to see you there!



Champlain Maker Faire website

This week the Huffington Post reported that:

Security experts warned Wednesday that LinkedIn users should change their passwords immediately to avoid potential scams from hackers.

"First change your LinkedIn password. Then prepare for scam emails about Linkedin password changes, linking to phishing sites. Will happen," Mikko Hyponen, a security expert at F-Secure, wrote on Twitter.

Here are some resources to help you change your password and learn more about the security breach.

How to change your password on Linked In

More on this story

 

We are pleased to announce the launch of the new outdoor educational website, Long Trail Bound. For this project, we put open source website design to work for Vermont's Green Mountain Club (GMC), the non profit organization that has managed and maintained the Long Trail System for over a century!

On May 3, 2012 North East Mountain Sports named the new Long Trail Bound website 'site of the week,' saying:

"We love this educational site, which is an initiative of the Green Mountain Club. Its mission is to teach kids safe outdoor travel skills, promote backcountry appreciation, inspire active stewardship of Vermont’s trails and mountains, and support educators in their outdoor programming through workshops, activities and other resources."

Thanks to the organized, quick-learners and savvy marketers at GMC, this site and its facebook page quickly became popular. We had a great time teaching GMC's team how to keep the site up-to-date with the WordPress content management system. We also showed them how to use Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to track visitor behavior.

GMC's team designed the banner for this site and came to us with a very clear understanding of how they wanted its content organized - this all made the site launch extremely efficient - it just took a few weeks.

If you are looking for outdoor activities for kids this summer,  check out the Long Trail Bound website and facebook page!

On Monday night April 9, the software company PIEmatrix gathered a small group of its users and potential users at August First Bakery in Burlington, VT. It was a group of sharp professionals from a variety of industries; the conversation was lively with tasty food and a cozy-urban atmosphere.

Presentations were by companies and non profits much larger than Sesamedia, but we all had something in common: PIEmatrix helps us save time and money. Even more, it allows us to deliver better products more efficiently to our clients.

At Sesamedia New Media we use the process management features of PIEmatrix to map out the process of building a website from start to finish. While we do our best to keep a website build simple and effortless for the client, behind the scenes there are hundreds of details and integrations to keep track of.

The web is always changing, and so the platforms we use to build websites are always adapting and improving. PIEmatrix makes it possible for us to carefully manage our processes while technology rapidly advances. Moreover, it allows us to easily analyze and improve our best practices. Sesamedia is committed to providing up-to-date and flexible websites for our clients, this means we put a lot of energy into staying ahead of emerging technology + online marketing trends, PIEmatrix software helps us do so.

We are very grateful to have a partner (and a neighbor!) in PIEmatrix.

Learn more about PIEmatrix process management software here.

The short answer is that if ...

1. Construction of your Joomla! website  began before April 2011 or
2. Your preference is to be proactive about preventing website problems or
3. It's a priority that your Joomla! website stays secure beyond April 2012

Then, yes you should upgrade your Joomla! website. Sesamedia can help. Contact us for details.


Use the handy guide below determine your site's need.
To view a larger image of the map below, click here.
This very cool guide was created by themepartner.com.

 

Come out with us tonight to enjoy one of the many awesome concerts put on by Valley Stage Productions! 

We recently launched their new website that now allows them to promote concerts like the one tonight with Terry Adams, in addition to their annual festival The Valley Stage Music Festival. Also new to the site is a growing artist directly tof artist bios and original video from Valley Stage events of the past seven years and into the future. Staff is currently being trained so that they can "hold the reigns" and add new content on their own in addition to maintaining a blog that will broadcast to their very successful facebook page and other social media.

Here's a link to the new Valley Stage Productions website













Here's more info about tonight. See you there!

Terry Plays Monk and...

Thursday, April 5, 2012
7:30pm
The Flynn Space, Burlington, Vermont
Tickets

NRBQ keyboardist and Thelonious Monk enthusiast Terry Adams will perform two sets of jazz at this one time event. Two different ensembles; one with favorite collaborators of Terry's and one with NRBQ members will contribute to what Terry and Monk fans alike will not want to miss. Tickets are $25, students $22.