Brain Dump – Niebu, Helium Contests, and Twitter

photo credit: neurollero

All right, I’ve got so many different things rolling around in my head this morning, and none of them are working themselves into a full post.  Let me offer you, then, a potpourri of the things jumping between my synapses:

Niebu

Being an Internet writer (or any other sort of self-employed web worker) means several things.  It means sometimes working long or odd hours. It means having clients and colleagues that are, mostly, people you’ll never meet in person. Add the two together, and you wind up with “Niebu.”

How exactly does that work?  Simple. You take an Internet Writer like James. James wakes up one morning at 5 AM. He likes to get things done in the morning, before his kids are up. He starts the coffee pot. While he’s waiting for his “jet fuel,” he hops on Twitter to type “Morning” to greet his colleagues and followers.  Only problem is, both hands are shifted one key to the left. He types “Niebu” instead.

Two or three weeks later, Niebu is an Internet phenomenon.  James and his colleagues (and peers, friends and hangers-on) have their own little inside joke.  I think DebNg referred to it as “Men and their made-up words.” We use Niebu to mean “Hello,” “Goodbye,” “Good Luck,” and even refer to Niebu as a sort of tribal Deity, as in “My Twitter is acting up.  Quick, sacrifice a virgin to Niebu.”

In reality, Niebu means Community. Niebu is the grand community of web workers and their friends, followers, and anyone else who wants in; it’s not exclusive. Niebu means, in some ways, I get up at 5 AM to work my a$$ off all day so that I can have the afternoon to watch my kid’s Kindergarten play.  It means The soul-sucking corporate environment is eating away at my soul.  I need a way to escape.

Niebu to you all today, my friends.

For another take on it, check out Dave Navarro’s perspective on What Does Niebu Mean?

Helium Contests

I told you all last time how you can go about earning money on Helium by writing for contests, and I wanted to follow up by pointing you to this week’s writing contest topics.  They are as follows:

• 2008 Elections
• Hawaii
• Terrorism
• Antiques
• Online Business
• Trucks & SUVs
• Arthritis
• PC Support
• Christian Teens
• Role-Playing Games

I won’t be writing in the Role-Playing Games contest this week, as I’m the “sub-channel steward” for RPGs.  “What’s a channel sub-steward?” you ask?  I’ll cover the steward program in more detail at another time, but the basic principle is this:  Helium utilizes a community-based system of quality assurance, in a similar fashion to Wikipedia. For each content area, there are stewards.  There are sub-channel stewards for the very tiny portions of each content area, and I’m it for RPGs and Wargames.  I’ve just really started doing this, though, as my focus up until the last couple of weeks at Helium had been the Reward-athon.

At any rate, good luck to those of you who decide to give the contests a shot.  I’m thinking of writing in “Online Business” and probably “PC Support” this week.

Good luck to everyone who gives it a shot this week!

Twitter

 
If you’ve not jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon yet, you should really consider it. My understanding is that there is some social networking/marketing value in it, but really I think it’s just a nice little way to blow off steam for 3 to 5 minutes at a time, several times a day.  It is, for me, what the water cooler was when I worked in the corporate world.

Follow me on Twitter here.

 ———-

Have a great weekend, everyone. If you get a chance to see Iron Man this weekend, you should take it.  Make sure you stay through the credits, though.  I promise a totally geeking-out moment for any comic-book fanboy who does.  It’s great stuff.

Related Thoughts on the Writing Life

• The Helium Report is Now Available
• Working Hard for YOU, 24 x 7
• The Student Becomes The Master
• How to Make $750 a Week Writing Part Time at Helium