For 2010, I would like to see the hard work start to pay dividends. I would like to focus more on results. I want to see ventures that don’t just have a mission, but accomplish it. I would like to see 2010 be the year (for all of us) of harvesting the ripe results of our efforts.

My 3 Words: Queens, Focus, Freedom

December for me was a forced sabbatical. We traveled to Disney World at the beginning of the month, I was sick for three weeks, and then we lost power at home twice (once for three days, which forced us to travel on snow-covered roads to a hotel just to find heat for our family).

It became an involuntary vacation. It was impossible to be productive, and at best hard to get any work done. In the end, it was a gift. I got a chance, long needed, to step away from the work and reflect. To relax and prioritize. Life is a lot like a neo-impressionist Pointillist painting. If we stand too close, it is nothing but random dots. Step away, and the picture becomes vividly clear.

Queens

For my first word, I confess I am stealing (with slight modification) Chris Brogan’s word of Kings. His words about behaving like a king really connected for me. He described it as the ability “to maintain poise and balance and charm and demeanor when dealing with life’s unpleasant moments.” I think for women it is even more important to behave regally. The level and intensity of mom blogger dramas I witnessed in 2009 is just unacceptable. In 2010, I’d love to see all of us as women rise above.

If not all women (hey, there will always be the fools who perpetrate this low-life behavior), let’s set the bar and hope others follow. I also think it’s important to command respect. We are professionals. Let’s act like it. (And yes, that includes insisting on being paid for time, consulting, marketing and any other work.) Let this be the year that the mainstream media runs out of mom blogger scandals to cover. You can get mad at journalists for ignoring the inspirational stories about the mom blogosphere and focusing on the negative. But the fact of the matter is, they can’t write negative stories if they don’t exist. Don’t create them, and ignore those who do.

Focus

This has always been my challenge. As a journalist, I had a writing coach who suggested coming up with one word that summarizes each news story. It was tremendously helpful, and has stuck with me for years. In fact, I thought of that lesson when I saw Chris Brogan’s list. I am one who tends to think of ten things at once, and operates best with several balls juggling. That is great for productivity, but bad for focus. In 2010, I want to work hard to prioritize and to determine what is worth my time. I did some of this in 2009, leaving About.com after seven years and despite it being a nice stream of income. Sometimes, you have to walk away from things, even important things, to give you time to focus on what’s more important. If it were easy, you would have walked away ages ago.

I am planning to sell some of the social networks that I have fully developed and that have nice Google rankings (PageRank 4 for both), but I don’t have time to grow: Dadosphere (which would be a great buy right now, as I think dad bloggers will be the next in thing) and PictureMyCamera, a social blog/social network for photography enthusiasts). Contact me if you’re interested in buying one, or taking over management for a share of the revenue.

It also means that I will be focusing my services. One issue with being a jane of all trades is that it’s tempting to offer all services. I am going to revamp my hire me page to focus on the things I really enjoy, and which provide a better return on time investment. While I like my SEO Makeover, it is very time-consuming. For things like that, I am looking at developing eBooks or online courses instead. With so many pursuits, some simply need to require less hands-on time. I get a lot of joy from speaking, training and mentoring, so that will be my focus.

Freedom

There’s one thing I learned from my unexpected time off in December. It’s that I don’t want to be tethered to work and social media all hours. Going off the grid is good for us all. Part of the reason I want to focus is to create more time. I spent the last month doing many things just for fun. I rediscovered reading. I can’t tell you the last time I read a fiction book just for the pleasure of it, but in December I read every book by Karen Chance and the entire Twilight series. Yes, those are books with absolutely no purpose whatsoever except entertainment. It was wonderfully indulgent.

I want freedom on a few levels. I want to earn more for less effort to create financial and lifestyle freedom. When I decided to go from seasoned career woman to work-at-home mom, that was my vision. As anyone who works from home knows, it can be dangerous if you are a workaholic. You end up doing nothing but work. I will not spend 2010 with my fingers glued to a keyboard.

I’d love to hear what three words will be yours for 2010. Share in comments or, if you do a post, be sure to share the link in comments. And thanks to Chris Brogan for the inspiration.

_{Image of blogging queen, © Mike Licht of NotionsCapital.com.}

Believe me, there are things I could complain about (U.S. Airways and Sheraton, brace thyselves!). But I choose not to in this first post. It can wait.

Bottom line: BlogHer was one of the single coolest experiences of my lifetime because of the people there.

I got to meet @prairiemama for the first time in person. I met her online SEVEN years ago before I even became a mom when I was expecting my first. (KIM?? Are you out there? I know someone took a picture of us together. Have you SEEN it???).

I met @littletechgirl in person for the first time. Chatting with her FOUR years ago while stuck in a bed during my pregnancy with my twins was one of the only things that kept me sane. And now she is a Type-A Mom editor and speaking at my conference. Here we are (and no I am not stoned):

I have been writing for About.com since 2002, and for the second time ever got to meet other guides.

The coolest part was meeting the moms I work with directly. For the first time ever, if you can believe it, I met @mamikaze (the Type-A Mom chief managing editor) and @feelslikehome (the Foodie Mama chief managing editor). Here I am with Astacia, aka @mamikaze:

Both are dear, dear online friends, and it was just amazing to meet them in person finally. I got to room with Tara and another Type-A Mom/Foodie Mama editor, @highimpactmom, and I will always look back and smile when I think of our last night up giggling like schoolgirls. I finally met my chat BFF @slpowell so we could giggle and snark in person instead of miles apart.

I got to hang out with others I have met before, like @ilinap and I who “met” via Twitter while sitting in an Anil Dash session at ConvergeSouth. She eventually became a Foodie Mama, and I’m sure it’s because we met in real life last year and hit it off. She is just coolness, period. At BlogHer, we managed to Twitter-connect in the airport, ride into town together, do lots of complaining about Sheraton, and then later hit a wine bar with @highimpactmom, @mamikaze and @jenniferperillo. This outing was a highlight of the weekend. Don’t we look happy? Believe me when I say there were NO COMPLAINTS there:

Above all, it was amazing throwing a party with my favorite people at BlogHer! The #typeamomfluence party, hosted by Type-A Mom and the amazing concept of Momfluence that was created by Amy Lupold Bair, aka @resourcefulmom, and the uber-cool people of HP like @angelaathp. Here is the cool Whrrl story on the party.

So I don’t know. I have things to complain about. But really? All of these pictures and names I am throwing out? THAT was my BlogHer takeaway. And I’ll take that any day.

- It’s a SiteWarming, so of course there are Door Prizes! Get ready to swoon…

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Here are some details about the conference:

Type-A Mom Conference is a unique mom blogging conference designed to help you take it to the next level. The conference will feature some of the most influential, admired and insightful mom bloggers talking about topics like power social networking, branding, blogging, finding your voice, and turning your passion for blogging into a real paycheck.

When? Sept. 24-27

Where? Asheville, NC

Find out more at the official Type-A Mom Conference site.

And be sure to register before 11:55 p.m. July 1st. The current Super Early Bird rate of $100 is half the full price, and it ends (and bumps up $50) in mere hours.

_{Photo © National Rural account on Flickr, used via Creative Commons license.}

What really clinched it, for me, was when I heard that my fellow Type-A Mom editor, Amy Lupold Bair, was already planning to visit Disney World the exact same week we were considering it. (You may have seen Amy at her wonderful Resourceful Mommy blog, or as the Type-A Mom Suburban Moms editor.) It was clearly fate!

So… soon you can follow us:

• 2 Type-A moms
• 2 dads
• 5 kids
• 3 grandparents
• 2 birthdays (ish… my daughters is soon after)
• 1 flight
• 1 roadtrip via Type-A Mom-mobile

If you follow the #magicmoms tag at Twitter or visit Type-A Mom from Friday, Nov. 28 through Saturday, December 6, you’ll find live Twitpic pictures, Qik videos, Utterli audio, blog posts, and more about our experiences at the most Magical Place on Earth at what I (at least) consider the Most Magical Time of the Year (a time of year I’ve considered even more significant since my first child spent her first Christmas in the NICU).

On a side note, I really think micro blogging and the many social tools out there are so well-suited to travel writing. Besides breaking news, I can hardly think of writing better served by the immediately to provide your audience with pictures, video, audio and just random thoughts in real-time. I love me some Web 2.0.

You can also customize the widget below with you’re preferred size and color if you’d like to follow us on your desktop or put it on your blog.

Part of the hang up for many higher-ups, I think, is fear of change. Another part of it is the desire to track ROI on marketing down to hard numbers, and social web campaigns don’t work like that. It’s a bit like asking to measure water cooler conversations.

Mostly, it’s a fear of surrending control of the marketing message to the online community. But guess what, people, they are already running it. You don’t think so? Search for your company name in Google and just see what you see. Mmm-hmm.

The Moms Panel is not even a year old yet, but the call for applicants alone attracted about 10,000 inquiries. Yes, Ten Thousand. So many that they created a private site, the Mickey Moms Club, just for the many moms who didn’t make the cut (they only selected a dozen for the Moms Panel). They are right now in the midst of going over the thousands of applications for the 2009 Moms Panel members.

Just think of this: the power of connecting with thousands of your enthusiastic fans, many of whom already are active online, and some of whom are bloggers and influencers. Just pause and reflect for a moment.

Yesterday, I chatted with Disney World Social Media Director Leanne Jakubowski about the Disney World Moms Panel. It was interesting to learn about how it all began, and how amazingly and wildly successful it has been in helping them find real mom Disney World evangalists. Also, I’d like to note, every major (and some minor) company should have a social media position on their roster. Just sayin’. It isn’t the 1990s anymore.

“It’s been a huge success,” Jakubowski said. This year, for example, they have upped the panel to 16 members. They were forced to do that to handle the high number of questions web site visitors asked.

When the idea first emerged, however, she said there were naysayers. In fact, even proponents were surprised at the impressive response.

“At the start, we were like shooting darts at the wall. We had no idea what the response would be. We thought if we got 100, we’d be doing good,” she recalled. Not only did they get around 10,000 applicants, but these were people who took the time to complete essays to apply. “These were very passionate people. These people were pouring out their hearts and souls.”

Their response in creating a social network just for the moms who didn’t make the cut is pretty impressive. I think many companies would have missed that catch. “We were going to tell 9,999 moms they didn’t make it. We quickly got together as a team here and worked with our internet folks and an outside consultant. We reached out to the moms and we formed the Mickey Moms Club.”

Kudos to Disney World for getting it! And if you have any questions about visiting Disney World, ask the Moms Panel.

I’m also thinking about going to Disney World in December to write about spending the holidays there. What do you think? It is an insanely busy time of year for a mom, but I keep thinking about the cool events happening there that I wrote about here. The kids would certainly enjoy checking those out, and it seems like I’d get loads of travel writing material. I was even thinking it could be fun to live blog and live microblog the Disney World trip, post twitpics, post qik videos, generally do something like Apryl did at Type-A Mom last weekend while on a press trip in Destin.

So do you think I should go? I would probably do it early December so readers/followers would have time to plan their own trip, too. Would you follow live blogging about it? I’d love your feedback while I mull the idea over.

_{Photo of the 2008 Disneyworld Moms Panel, courtesy of Disney World.}

Even today, it provides a great resource for moms seeking advice from real moms. It provides a central social network profile where moms can link to their web sites, blogs, and other social networking profiles. There is also a free mom directory for mom blogs, mom owned businesses, and so on.

I also hope other user-generated content web sites will see the model of revenue sharing and copy it!

It also has me thinking I might start a Type-A Mom show on Ustream. I see it as yet another opportunity to help moms promote themselves and to provide tips and advice to moms. What do you think? Would you watch a Type-A Mom web TV show?

Enough about me, here’s a video about me. And thanks so much to Aronado and Dennis of Lucky Startups. And kudos to them as well for creating an outlet for startups to get exposure. Be sure to contact them if you have a startup and what to be a guest on their show.