Starsong Blog

More hats acquired in my quest to win Next Top Spiritual Author competition April 2, 2010

I added a couple more hats today. 

 Researcher hat – searching out not only local media contacts but also national and international ones.  After all if I’m going to win an international competition I really need to get international support.  Keep looking at the big picture I tell myself every day.

 Press release hat – thankfully it seems possible to Google anything these days and find sixty million answers.  Finding an outline for a press release was child’s play compared to some of the things I’ve looked for in the past; such as when I Googled “characteristics of a galactic season”.  For once Google was silent on the subject!

 One thing entering the Next Top Spiritual Author competition has given me is a boot up the backside to get done all the things I had planned to do but in a much shorter timescale as 1^st round voting finishes on 3 May.  When I’ve done the press releases in the UK I’ll do the same in the States.  Thank goodness for the internet as I can just sit here at my desk and reach the rest of the world!

 The past 2 days have been spent writing and sending e-mails asking for votes.  My plan is to step through everybody in my contacts list and e-mail them personally asking for their help.  This could take quite a time!  As I was writing my nn..th e-mail yesterday I had one of those rare AHA moments.  It suddenly dawned on me that this was the first time in my life I had EVER used the words I NEED YOUR HELP so many times.  In fact they are not words I have ever used much at all.  Interesting what a competition will do for you!

 Prior to entering the competition I added yet another hat to my collection Audio Presentation Creator and it had to be in mp3 format.  Hmmmmm, yes, I had a laptop which could play mp3 and I searched high and low through my software to see if I had anything I could record with – nothing!  Yes, I had a small recorder which I could attach to the laptop and upload the recording.  Yuk!!  Terrible quality which made me sound as though I had a huge lisp.  Back to my favourite place, Google, and within the blink of a sparrow’s eye I had thousands of possibilities presented to me.  It had to be free as it was the end of the month and funds had run out! 

 Audacity was the name of the program I downloaded.  At this point I wish to take ALL my hats off and give thanks to the many, many people round the world who spend their time willingly to create Open Source software and especially to those who collaborated in the creation of Audacity.  It is an awesome product and within a very short space of time I had created an audio presentation.  They even provide an app that will convert the output of their program into other formats [also free].  Hip hip hooray!! [as all my hats are thrown into the air!}

 In the blink of another sparrow’s eye I had my created my audio pitch in mp3 format which uploaded to the competition site like a dream.  Now people would be able to listen to my smooth silky soft voice with absolutely no hint of a tint of lisp and absolutely no back ground noises or hisses.

 Well folks, time to put on my e-mailing hat again.  Back to my contact list.  I’ll check in again soon.