I’m starting the year with a resolution to continue supporting the good works that bloggers can do by becoming part of the Mom Bloggers for Social Good with 400 founding blogging Mums.  I know I am in great company and hope that we can make some noise in 2012 for all these good causes.

Mom Bloggers for Social Good is a global coalition of mum bloggers who currently span eleven countries – United States, Canada, UK, India, Spain, Nigeria, Singapore, Netherlands, Malaysia, Jamaica, and the Philippines  – who care about spreading the good news about the amazing work non-profit organizations and NGOs are doing around the world.

When the campaign partners need to reach the masses about new initiatives, advocacy campaigns, or fundraising efforts we will work collectively to spread the word through our social media and blogging platforms to spread the word.

Here’s where you can follow the campaigns in social media:

If I don’t see you there, please follow the hashtag to join the conversation.

When: 17 September 2011

Where: Save the Children, St Johns Lane, London, EC1M 4AR

Time: 9.30am for tea and croissants, 10am start, 4pm finish.

Children welcome

Save the Children’s blogging conference is for all bloggers and vloggers. It’s going to be a fun packed and informative day with sessions from leading bloggers, prominent You Tubers and special guests.

Whether you’re a You Tuber, a parenting blogger, food, politics blogger or travel blogger we’d love to see you. We’re putting together a day packed with brilliant workshop sessions for all levels of experience.

Join our campaign

Come and spend the day with your blogging friends, learn new skills, meet Save the Children’s healthworker heros and join our healthworker campaign.

Health workers are critical to saving lives: they are the single most important element of any health service. Without them, no vaccine can be administered, no life-saving drugs prescribed, no family planning advice provided and no woman can be given expert care during childbirth.

We’ll be providing lunch too. Workshop details below.

Register now using the sign-up form to the right of this page.

9.30am: Arrive for tea and croissants

10am : Welcome and introduction

10.10 :  Amanda Mealing, actor and Save the Children Ambassador, talks about her experience visiting our work in Sierra Leone and hosts our live video chat with a healthworker in the field.

11.00 :#Pass it on:

Hear from our three mums who followed the journey of a vaccine from a warehouse in Maputo, Mozambique to a rural clinic. Together we reached just under 30 million on Twitter, had over 150,000 You Tube views, had hundreds of bloggers up and down the country blogging, we met politicians and encouraged world leaders to pledge enough money to pay for vaccines. With Chris Mosler, Tracey Cheetham, Lindsay Atkin and Liz Scarff

11.30:Tea break – sponsored by Netmums

12.00: First workshop sessions:

1) Blogging 101: Everything you need to know about blogging but were afraid to ask

If you are new to blogging or want to know how to set up your blog from scratch and how you can blog to support Save the Children then this session is for you. This roundtable discussion will be led by our expert bloggers.

• Chris Mosler, http://christinemosler.wordpress.com
• Nickie O’Hara,  www.iamtypecast.com
• Kate Gunn – representing Netmums,  http://katetakes5.blogspot.com
• Jennifer Howze -  http://www.britmums.com, www.jenography.net
• Elinor Shields, Mumsnet - http://www.mumsnet.com/
• Sarah Blakemore, Save the Children

2) Get Vlogging: Inspirational stories of how to use YouTube for social good

This roundtable discussion will enable you to get top tips on vlogging from the experts and get inspired as to how you can use your skills to support Save the Children. Our speakers:

• Lindsay Atkin, http://www.youtube.com/user/liliesarelike
• Myles Dyer,  http://www.youtube.com/user/Blade376
• Kristina Horner,  http://www.youtube.com/user/italktosnakes
• Liz Scarff, Save the Children

13:00:  Lunch break: we will be providing lunch.

14:00:  Second workshop sessions:

1) Taking your blog to the next level

Roundtable discussion: this session is designed for those who have been blogging for a while. Learn how to build a loyal following, create quality content and build an audience around a particular niche topic. Our speakers:

• Eva Keogan - www.nixdminx.com
• Sally Whittle - www.tots100.co.uk , www.the-mads.com ,www.whosthemummy.co.uk
• Maggy Woodley - www.redtedart.com
• Josie George - www.sleepisfortheweak.org.uk
• Tracey Cheetham - www.tchee.co.uk
• Saira O’Mallie – Save the Children

2) From floods to famine: multimedia storytelling using photography and film

This practical film session is hosted by Rachel Palmer our multimedia expert. Rachel will give a fascinating behind the scenes insight into both our life-saving work and her job producing and commissioning photography in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

From Niger to Somalia Rachel’s job is to commission and shoot incredible photographs that we can use to bring the world’s attention to events like a forgotten famine or under-reported natural disaster. This session will be practical and you will come away armed with top tips on how to film content for your blog, how to shoot for your edit and what makes a good visual story.

• Hosted by: Rachel Palmer, Save the Children

15:00: Gareth Owen: When disaster strikes- dispatches from East Africa

Gareth is our Director of Emergencies, when a humanitarian disaster strikes Gareth is the first to know. But how do we do what we do? Gareth will be focusing on the current crisis in East Africa.

15:55:Closing statement and thanks.

16:00:Finish.

I was really inspired by the photographs of Roald Dahl’s ‘writing hut’ which were published this week. And while the headlines were screaming about the £500k it would take to save the building for posterity, I was much more fascinated by the backstory which went along with it. This photo below shows the genius writer of many childrens’ classics installed in his literary writing chair. He looks as if he is comfortably seated in a hybrid nursery highchair-cum-bridge table, dispensing with rattle and feeding spoon and completing the ensemble with green baize and an ashtray. His room was littered with strange objets, photos, ashtrays and reminded me a little of the photos I have seen of Picasso’s studios. And then I thought of what lengths writers go to to find and create their spaces to write.

Writers are well known for their eccentricities and I think bloggers fall into that category too. But for most of us blogging is by no means a career and it has to fit in rather than be the central features of our lives.

It’s not just a matter of finding the time to write though. Is writing a blog post easy? Sometimes, when you’re in the flow, it’s an unstoppable stream of words that amounts to something great. But it’s not always the same, and sometimes it’s quite hard to keep up the momentum of writing.

Some things really catch my thoughts so much that I let them run around my head for a while and then I get the thought that I want to post them – these are usually the blog posts that fail to appear. And then, another idea doesn’t make it to the page. It becomes a silent period for one reason or another.

At the last Bloggers Meet Up I caught up with a few friends and we got talking about writers block and what kind of rituals we perform before we write, and also, where we go to write.

I tend to prefer to write at different times of the day, in different places.  My main writing places are; for the evening, my trustly old Chesterfield which I heap with cushions and balance my latoptop on my knees.  I usually have some candles lit, some twinkly fairy lights and the TV on in the background.  That’s when I tend to write my longer feature articles.

In the daytime, it’s a different matter altogether. I am much more ritualistic and work in the kitchen so I clean the place and put everything in order, then sit at my white table. It’s a multipurpose venue and serves as a writing desk, a book shelf and a great surface for taking photos – the room is really light so it feels like an artists studio.

And having asked around, I’m definitely assured that I am far from alone in needing to create a physical space to write, no matter how eccentric it may appear to others.

Penny Golightly has a small room that she squeezes into to whip up her creations
Viviana at TheLeantimes works from a multipurpose table -work by day and dining by night – and uses a laptop.

Julie Mahoney likes to sit in our basement at work which to her reminds her of being in a library and feels happy that she can write in relative peace and quiet without being disturbed and sent me this article about the Joy of Writing to inspire me.

How do you do it?

As someone who is heavily involved in research every day, I tend review a lot of statistics and insights. This research is really quite something, especially since it’s a look into the future and the resounding stats are still ringing around my head; over 80% of 0-2 year olds have a digital footprint and 20% of those are not even born. Like it or not (and I don’t mean in a facebook way) this is the future we are all facing. Social networking, social media, social web, social whatever, is not going away anytime soon – but some of us might be embracing it while others are just none the wiser.

The launch of the research coincides with The Bailey Report, reported here in The Guardian recently. This worthy report about protecting children needs further thought, and I’ll review it in more depth in another post. So back to Digital Diaries; it’s not a flawless piece of research as it compares tying shoe laces and bike riding to internet usage in the under 3s and 5s; I don’t think comparing those skills stack up. However, what was really pertinent was the way it was presented; as a study, a hard back book aimed at children and also an iPad app. It was well thought out and even though there were some great headline stats, I don’t think we should really be suprised by the statistics. Many of us post pictures of our children on facebook – I’ve noticed a lot of those photos are around birth, hence the post-natal digital footprint.

While looking into the digital future is akin to stargazing, it doesn’t hurt to think about it. In fact, it’s something we all need to face up to.

For those of us who are bloggers, there is a badge of pride that comes with followers, friends, likes, recommendations, reviews and badges. So why wouldn’t children be any different? I know several teenagers and younger, who blog, run big pages on Myspace (what’s left of it) and of course, Club Penguin, Bin Weevils and Moshi Monsters are all open to under 13s.

But my big drum to bang is who is showing the way to the new generation about online behaviour? Are schools teaching children how to manage this? No, they are far behind. Is our major public service broadcaster aka the BBC giving how to guides? No. So what’s left for parents? Very little except the common sense of those who are digitallly savvy.

According to the spokesperson from the IWF at our roundtable, it is the remit of influencers, namely Mummy bloggers who have a digital space, to show the way – and that is the way we should all be moving. As a blogger, I don’t know if that’s the right way, I am teaching my daughter the ropes of online behaviour, but what else can I do? Who or what is galvanising our communities to share knowledge and experience without scare mongering? Children’s issues are always so low on the agenda, I don’t want to see this slip through the net, hence my post.

Here are some of the key take outs of the research:

- More than half (51 percent) of 6- to 9-year-olds use some kind of children’s social network such as Club Penguin

- Roughly one in five use email, and despite being underage, 14 percent are on Facebook, according to their parents.
47% of 6- to 9-year-olds talk to their friends on the Internet.

- Almost one in six 6- to 9-year-olds and one in five 8- to 9-year-olds have experienced what their parents consider objectionable or aggressive behavior online

- 58% of parents admit they are neither well-informed nor understand their children’s online social networks

- 56% of parents were certain their family computer has parental controls or safety programs in place

Internet usage is part of our regular conversation at home and I aim to keep it that way.

We’ve had long lazy days in the park playing rounders, hours spent on the swings in the park and lazing around in the garden and with the sun shining, there’s no way I want to feel that my daughter can’t stay out and play in the sunshine – it’s such a rare treat after a long winter. So we’re already stocking up on sunshine skin care, and we don’t leave home without it.

We’ve been using Nivea products for years and this new range offers top protection and it’s water resistant so it’s perfect for making the most of the sunny weather whether you are by the pool or fooling around in the garden.

NIVEA SUN® to help keep sensitive souls protected is the latest innovation from the experts at NIVEA is 100% free from perfume, colourants and preservatives helping to reduce the risk of skin allergies and especially developed for kids’ sensitive skin. I’m going to give it a go myself too!

The new launch offers all of the usual NIVEA SUN benefits and has been developed for the most sensitive of skins with a formulathat is dermatologically approved and hypo-allergenic and with the very high protection of SPF 50+ and offering immediate protection.

With the highest quality UVA and UVB protection system it helps protect immediately against sunburn and long-term skin damage while the very water resistant formula helps keep kids sensitive skin protected all day.

NEW NIVEA SUN Kids Pure & Sensitive keeping precious skin protected in the purest way possible and you can find more about the whole range here.

NIVEA SUN Kids Pure & Sensitive Sun Lotion and Sun Spray SPF 50 RRP £16.84
Available from March 2011 – Boots exclusive

This is a sponsored post for Nivea brought to you by Nixdminx and Handpicked Media.

He writes for children, specifically teenagers and his work has sometimes courted controversy. But he’s adamant that story telling is incredibly powerful and that whenever we write, we are trying to find a story to tell.

He says that we and the cultures we belong in are all about the stories. He was confounded by the stories coming out The Congo; that children were being accused of being witches and chased out of their families. He said it was incomprehensible and explained how people became witches; they were given their witchhoods by being approached in their dreams in the ‘nightworld’ and exist in a wholly surreal and fantastic world, unlike the dayworld. In the night world, these activities are powered by human flesh and blood – rather like vampirism I suppose. He explained the construct of society and that the man is the provider for his wife, children and her family. If things went wrong, the family maybe advised there is a witch in the family and that could be a child; the child then has its night wings burned away by hot wax and all other tortures are given to get a ‘confession’. Children between the ages of seven to eleven are the most picked on and in the last ten years or so there has been an explosion in this phenomenon, 80% of street children are ‘witches’.

Symptoms of being a witch are supposedly; bedwetting, skin disease, answering back, being to stupid, being to clever.

Melvin collected folk stories when he was out there and he also told stories to the street children there; little red riding hood and the big bad wolf were the two favourites he told and he was fascinated about their universality.

His favourite story is available on his blog and Save the Children here (link to come later) told to him by a small boy on the equator; it involves letter writing monkeys and bonobos.

Here’s the view from the panel, it’s a full house and a few familiar faces are here.

I’m on the panel with Sian To @Mummytips, Liz Scarff, and in the photo below are Sacha Anthony and Gareth Jenkins from Save the Children who are engaging with the attendees and showcasing some great NGO work which has been done across the blogosphere for many other causes which are emotive and topical.

A-lister Gywneth Paltrow has established her llifestyle and family blog/newsletter Goop and a year or so on, there’s still lots of negative backlash. I’m not exactly sure why – it’s a pretty, well designed, considered, and sometimes wistful, statement of who she is; yet it’s had a pasting. It’s more genuine than, say, the lifestyle pages of Vogue. At least when I read her thoughts on London, I don’t feel I’m being sold something, which I so often do when I ready glossy mags fattened by advertising. I love what she does, and by the way, if you haven’t seen Glee, you have to watch her in this.

Celebrity Mommy bloggers aside, Dooce is the leading US Mom blogger, and a great success story to boot. One of my favourite blogs, Gawker, has run a piece on the amount of attention she receives which you can read here. There’s a bit of ‘So what?’ about it when I read it – and I wonder why shouldn’t she get media coverage if she’s a trailblazer, and why is a blog bashing another blog? Well, there are no rules in the blogosphere which makes it such an interesting and frustrating place to be.

Sadly, blog-on-blog bashing is becoming an all too familiar story. I don’t do it myself because I have neither the time nor the inclination, but it’s tough to be on the receiving end one way or another. It’s a very weird feeling to read a blog post written about something you do, or are doing, and the comment trail that follows. It’s then that you have to take on board that blogs are to some degree public property once they are put out in the web at large (and don’t ever forget it, for good or bad). It’s a sympton of the cyber conversation culture that love and snarkiness co-exist – free speech resonates with others and comments can take as little time as a text message to write and post.

But all hope is not lost. Dooce is owned by Heather Armstrong and if you’re into blogging and you can’t fail to have heard of her, she has very resourcefully turned snarking on its head and her army of dissenters into a new art form. It makes me laugh out loud that she has developed a huge ad revenue stream from her ‘hate mail’ by publishing it on an area of her blog for people to read – it turned out to be hugely popular, obviously people love to read a good snark if it’s at someone else’s expense – if only I could the same from spam comments!

And who are the other US Mommy bloggers worth checking out? I’ve just got two super special reads to recommend, and both of them have made me cry with laughter and they also are shit hot writers, so well worth taking a few quiet moments to read and enjoy the stillness (by that I mean after the kids have gone to bed!):

Nashville, Tennessee based Suburban Turmoil is a favourite of mine which I have definitely not had enough time to read of late. While it’s a window on another world it airs the common themes of modern life with a large dose of humour

MTFF is another one, she’s a Brit with a massively creative life, and her blog is choc full of beautifully written prose

And if you don’t know what snarking is, it is by definition:

a) A strange creature created by Lewis Caroll

b) A sarcastic, caustic comment or interaction in cyberspace

I may have jokingly referred to Mummy bloggers as BUMs on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour last week but I felt that the Blogging Unpaid Mums Society needed to be highlighted. It’s by no means a bitter and twisted post feminist reference to the drudgery of domestic life, it’s a lighthearted one with a message.

Integrity, transparency, authority and credibility are the watchwords of social media; and we all take heed, so why take offence when it becomes a business opportunity? I’m not advocating a take the money and run scenario but I do support the needs and desires of bloggers to become more professional, and paid. A new media is emerging and Mummy blogging has earned a place within it.

Having done many a stint of unpaid work in media over the years to get ‘experience’ (6 weeks at a press agency, one month on a radio station presenting a show and all sorts of other stuff) and not to mention funding my blog for ages, I wonder if it will pay for itself one day and that day I hope is not too far away.

On the other extreme, over the years, I have found myself working with very well paid interns in media agencies who are given plum opportunities ‘just in case they get bored’ – they still moan about getting paid, but at least they do. It seems on that basis, that if you’re starting out opportunity knocks but, if you’re experienced you should throw your hat into the ring for free. It makes no sense at all.

So why I ask is it such a thorny issue for women, who have children and decide to blog, to get paid in one way or another?

Many of us with children find ourselves uncomfortably cushioned between the younger generation and all it’s associated needs and the older generation, our parents, who may need care and attention through age related illness and disease. This is a fact of life and many women often feel they have lost a sense of themselves when they are sandwiched in between these pressures and responsibilities.

It’s hard not to function on autopilot when other peoples needs are put before your own. Washing, cleaning and shopping vye with doctors appointments, hospital visits and playdates for the most time and attention in your diary. It may appear utterly selfish to want to go the gym or have a beauty appointment or take time out for lunch but sometimes it’s what we really want to do. And then there is the negotation and haggling over ‘time off’ and ‘free passes’ just to get out of the house – plus what I call going out tax (£7-£10 per hour for a babysitter). It’s exhausting just writing about it and that’s before I’ve even started on the topic of have a job or trying to work from home.

And my point?

Daily life is not about the cold hard facts and statistics that we spun out in the media. We individually make up the masses but we also have the luxury of first hand knowledge and experience that we want to share. And so, this is why many of us blog. When the toys are put away, the homework done and the house is occasionally peaceful we let our creative sides have free reign and write. It helps us connect with other people out there doing the same thing and we also influence readers. Whether we like it or not, that’s the way it is.

If you blog, you are actually a publisher and this has associated costs. I’ve spent quite a lot over time on this fabulous and addictive habit because I really enjoy it. I am not urging everyone to sign up to google adsense, skimlinks and any affiliate scheme going, but you might want to try them out if you’d like to get your yearly hosting covered or even pay for your broadband bill or, dare I say it, a new laptop?

I wouldn’t say I’m a typical female, but I’m a working single Mum and every penny counts and my time is precious to me. My blog is my property and my own little scrapbook of musings and tales – just like the rest of us who have been blogging a while, it has started appearing on lists and communities and groups and it now has a life of it’s own. I don’t mind trying out commercial stuff. I don’t mind finding out what it’s like to run a digitorial.

While I never started my blog as a way to make money, it would be foolish not to investigate the routes which are now becoming available to us all as the UK blogging scene emerges and forms a whole new medium.

There, I’ve said it. It is what it is.