Alisha Miranda

Read all about it here: http://ti.me/11iNbot

Mental Floss | 50 Best Websites 2013 | TIME.com

Congrats to my fellow _floss’rs for winning ALL the awards in 2013 thus far: a Webby, an ASME, and Best Twitter Feed. Follow more of their success at mentalfloss.com!

Congrats to mental_floss on the stellar tweeting! I’m continually impressed with our digital team and can’t wait for us to integrate more of our social prowess to ad campaigns this year. 

Happy tweeting!

Monday through Thursday nights I have the pleasure of teaching media literacy as part of The LAMP’s Digital Career Path program with young adults from Brooklyn. It’s been a tiring, exciting, and surprising few weeks as we’ve provided these students basic computer and Internet skills to fuel their digital careers forward. It’s amazing to realize how fortunate how I was to be given these same tools at their age, years ago, run with it, and now see how far my career has really gone. Even more so now I realize how crucial it is for young people entering the job market to be digitally savvy in every way possible in presenting their skills and passions to produce meaningful work. I highly recommend reading this piece of coverage we scored as it highlights some of this importance. But on a larger scale, I hope that more people my age with my opportunities can take time to give back and pay it forward for the generations that will come after them. I see it every night when I can talk to these students on how I used these same skills to land clients, plan events, manage my own workflow, and network beyond my peers. Teaching with The LAMP has easily become one of my favorite projects and if you also have a passion for sharing knowledge, I suggest you reach out to them to become a Program Facilitator as well.

For more info, go to The LAMP and Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow 

Proud to have successfully launched Melba in New York City! Thanks to all the staff, volunteers, and interns who joined in the effort and wishing future food entrepreneurs hosting their own feasts much success!

Sign up to host and discover feasts in New York at melba.co 

Alisha Miranda: A freelance success story

My exclusive announcement is finally here: I am quitting my freelance career. 

Five years of bouncing around gigs in pursuit of an entrepreneurial dream… I quit. I’ve thought a lot about how I want to share my story publicly so it was perfect timing that Stephanie Vorhees at Crush New York approached me for an interview last week. 

I’ve been taking a long, hard look at the career path I’ve dealt with this past year. New Years Eve I laid in bed unconsolable as I tried to think of just one success from each month that had just passed by. I couldn’t. Every month seemed to end up worse than the previous and I was puzzled as to why this kept happening. Opportunities that presented themselves as meaningful, enjoyable, and promising quickly became nightmares for me. I couldn’t get things right and the line between my personal life and my professional career began to blur. Despite my best efforts, I was falling apart. 

Things were really, really bad. I was left without a place to live three times in 2012. I noticed myself becoming a different person: someone with no motivation, no trust in other people, a distracting negative attitude, and crushing stress that took a toll on me in ways I never thought imaginable. 

Five years of this crap wasn’t worth it. 

In the end, unable to look back with pride on work I had done (with a majority of roles I flat out abandoned for more reasons than one), losing my confidence and motivation to contribute my talent, and being disregarded in too many ways, I gave up. I knew that things had to change and they had to change NOW. My life depended on it. 

So, how did I quit and what am I doing now?

Getting a job is all about who you know. It’s the oldest tip in the book, and it’s absolutely true. You never know who may have an offer you can’t refuse one day, and that is exactly why I always tell people to connect with people in a meaningful way. Don’t think about business cards; think about conversation.

For me, it’s also all about timing. Good timing has always been unpredictable for me, and this time was one of those perfect times.

With no desire to stay in New York, given I had no money or guaranteed long-term offers, I was on my last leg to find an excuse to give this “career-y thing” one more shot. At my lowest of lows, that’s when I got recruited by a good friend of mine whom I had met at a travel happy hour for the opening position of Digital Sales Planner at THE WEEK and mental_floss. We know each other pretty well and have exchanged many pro-tips, attended the same tech events, and even did some bike rides together (this is my version of “networking”). No application, no job description, no experience in sales required. The job was mine if I wanted it. Salary, benefits, and paid vacation were also on the table. 

I of course accepted. For the first time in my professional career, I felt I had made the right adult decision. I finally could see a future for myself again and could regain confidence and challenge myself to accomplish better work. As Digital Sales Planner, I am able to take all of my digital media experience creating, managing, and measuring integrated advertising programs for publishing. It’s a new world for me, but I welcome the learning curve. 

I thank every one who has followed my story and continues to follow my story no matter what successes and failures I go through along the way. I hope that I can inspire you to also find your own path and create a meaningful career, even if it takes longer than you want and requires you battle the same obstacles I had to. I welcome your comments (and congratulations) with open arms. Feel free to email me at my new address or ask a question or tweet me. 

In addition to working full time at mental_floss and THE WEEK, I will be teaching a five week digital career path program with The LAMP and throwing a dinner party for Melba’s New York launch. 

See you at the water cooler…

Check out the new warble.co site for Twitter alerts launched by my friend Jess Eddy, tech hacker extraordinaire! Proud to have given a testimonial on using Warble alerts for client social media campaigns and highly suggest you do the same!

Pro-tip: Warble works just like Google Alerts in which you can set custom parameters (keywords, URLs, names, geo-location, etc) and delivers results to your email once a day. While I’ve used them primarily for tracking client mentions online, I’ve also dabbled in Warble for apartment searches (h/t to Jess for that) which was great!

Visit warble.co to get started

Spotlight: Alisha Miranda, Ambassador of Awesomeness and LAMP Facilitator

People ask me all the time about my favorite sites, tools, and resources on the web. Everything from where I buy my travel gear to how I schedule content to the best productivity hacks. Now, instead of trying to remember and list them for each individual query, I’m using Refer.ly to pass on recommendations and be rewarded for them. Similar to an affiliate model, Refer.ly pays people for simply referring products through links. Users create ‘collections’ and are paid whenever a product they recommend is purchased (not on words, clicks, subscribers, pageviews, or anything else). See my collections below:

• Tech Hacks
• Stationery Nerd
• Travel Geek

Part social storefront, part curation and discovery platform, Refer.ly is my new place for sharing the best of the web, through my interests.

Clarity is one of my new favorite finds as it offers an easy way for people to receive entrepreneurial advice. Here’s how it works:

• Set your hourly call rate
• Schedule calls with others
• Share your advice questions
• Donate earnings to a nonprofit
• Collect earnings through PayPal

I’ve been waiting to sign up for a service like this and can’t wait to start!

Just go

Excited to have chatted with the bitly community team on how I’ve been using their links platform both personally and professionally over the years. Find out my tricks for using bitly as part of content strategy with clients and what sites I live for. 

Read the full interview here.

For my early followers who knew me when I was still doing music publicity - I’m back!

Now covering Musicplayr, a German startup with a new concept: now you can curate and share your favorite songs/videos from the web all in one place with Musicplayr’s free iPhone app, available at the App store today.

Since its debut in 2011, Musicplayr has been on a mission to simplify how users create and showcase their online music profiles. Recently the site launched in the U.S., gaining over 100,000 users curating and sharing their own web music playlists. Musicplayr remains the only free, cross-platform music and video web service available worldwide. 

Now available on iOS, Musicplayr gives users the ability to showcase their online musical identity and create a personalized music experience:

• Explore & follow music profiles based on genre, tags, or songs
• Stream music while browsing other playlists without switching screens
• Identify unknown tracks through Gracenote audio finger technology
• Organize, share, and blog your favorite music through a web music archive

With Musicplayr, users collect music links from YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, Dailymotion and music blogs, allowing them to organize and play songs from multiple internet sources as a shareable playlist. Think Pinterest for music lovers or Twitter for music discovery. 

Check out Musicplayr for the iPhone now available at the App Store. You can read more here.

Let me know what you think!

Excited to be working with Astrsk PR on a new pay-as-you-go mobile provider called Karma that travelers will love. With Karma, you pay for data as you go, and take it with you on your 4G mobile hotspot.

The concept is pretty neat: Share Wi-Fi. Earn free data. Here’s how it works:

• Every Karma hotspot comes with an open Wi-Fi signal branded individually to its owner (ex: Robert’s Karma)
• The hotspot owner earns 100 megabytes of data each time they share their Karma with a new user
• Invited new users are then gifted 100 megabytes of data

For digital nomads like me constantly in search of reliable internet, Karma is a life saver. It fits in the palm of your hand, has 6 to 8 hours of battery life, is capable of speeds up to 6 megabits per second (Mbps) and can facilitate up to 8 open connections at once. 

Sound interesting? You can order a Karma hotspot at yourkarma.com for $79, including 1 gigabyte of free bandwidth. Additional bandwidth costs $14 per gigabyte and never expires.

melbablog:

We’re giving away a Whole Foods Voucher worth £300 / $450.

Go to www.melba.co/contest to enter the competition and increase your chances of winning.

For every friend you invite to the competition, your chances of winning double! 

What would you buy at Whole Foods with $450? Remember, UK and US folks are both eligible for winning!

Meet people. Feast together.

I’m excited to announce that Epicurely has relaunched as Melba.co, a new site to discover and host the most original dining experiences in town. Feast with your friends and other Melba members at the best supper clubs, pop-up restaurants and creative dining venues. 

Social chefs: this is your time to shine! Host feasts for friends or strangers - our platform is designed to provide a unique opportunity to showcase your talents in the kitchen. Whether you love to cook at home with loved ones, are pursuing a restaurant gig, in culinary school, or just want to perfect your cooking skills, Melba.co is your marketplace to connect with like-minded enthusiasts.

Inspired by some of the greatest culinary innovators, (including Ferran Adria), we wanted to create a greater context around food. With our new platform, we aim to push a community of cook enthusiasts forward. We invite you to join us at Melba.co - read our story below.

Conceived by revolutionary French chef Auguste Escoffier in the late 1800’s, the peach melba was highly innovative at the time for its simplicity and elegance. We view the Melba project as bringing a new spirit of innovation to the kitchen, by empowering individuals to express their personality and creativity through their food. Escoffier’s use of food as a social language reigns true to us. We believe that food has a special power to bring people together, and as symbolized by this story, it can become a language for social exchange.

Happy eating,
the Melba team

Follow Melba:

on Twitter // on Facebook // on Tumblr // on Pinterest

Ways to make friends: Coworking spaces

Thanks to Time Out New York for featuring Likemind this week! I love that the article touches some of my favorite principles: coworking, community, and connecting!

Thanks to Jen Bokoff, Nichelle Stephens, and Jeannie Rose for all their help with #likemindbk this year. Be sure to attend the next coffee + convo group in January, and every third Friday of the month.

You can also join the Facebook group or visit Likemind.us for more info.