Hawkins was the original producer and organizer of the first WordCamp Las Vegas and continues to be a WordCamp party boy, traveling to WordCamps around the country, speaking or just hanging out sharing. So it’s appropriate that he used the WordCamp Las Vegas logo for his tattoo.

Matt Mullenweg was impressed and is debating creating a new category on Code Poet, the WordPress consultant and hiring list, for Hawkin’s company, 9seeds.

Many people may grimace, but both Ed Morita and John Hawkins are two of the best representatives of the WordPress Community. They go beyond the call of duty to help others and reach out to support the community of bloggers and WordPress fans. We’ve had both on WordCast and consider ourselves lucky to call them friends.

John Hawkins: Building a WordPress Plugin [WordPress.TV]

John is no stranger to the WordCast network. Hear him on WordCast Conversations 3: Blog Productivity.

Episode 3

Panelists

• Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Collection
• John Hawkins of 9seeds.com
• Maria Langer, freelance writer, book author, total blogger rock star (and helicopter pilot!)
• Anne Helmond of Blog Herald, Masters of Media and the Next Web fame

Tips for Researching and Managing Potential Post Topics:

• Evernote is a favorite of our panelists for taking notes, managing to do lists, saving important blocks of text
• Readitlater browser add on allows you to save stories for later
• Delicious allows you to bookmark story ideas on the web, Maria recommends the Postalicious WordPress Plugin.
• Text editors can work just fine, too! John uses a system of todos.txt, posts.txt, etc with Ultra Edit.

Finding stories:

• Keith uses the WordPress IRC channel. In general, immerse yourself in the community
• John suggests Twitter searches on your topic. (Dave loves his TweetDeck!)
• Maria also recommends Twitter, by following a select number of people, but “really follow them”.
• Anne runs through her feedreader every morning with her coffee. Dave depends on feeds as well.
• John likes to use a smartphone

As bloggers, how do we balance our time?

• Maria says she can write quickly, so the amount of time actually blogging is fairly limited. She likes a post per day as a good rule, but if she doesn’t make it she doesn’t STRESS. Her life doesn’t stop.
• John “spends almost every waking moment in front of a computer” but balance is nice.
• Anne says “don’t be a perfectionist”, “don’t be afraid to hit the publish button”
• Keith’s Feed Pauser WordPress plugin keeps posts out of the feed for a certain amount of time, so you have a window to correct any typos.

Power blogger vs. normal blogger

• John: A power blogger is once a day.
• Maria: As a writer first, the topic’s the tough part. Power is not how much they write, but what their influence is

Blogging “peripherals” – side projects like mailing lists, Twitter, etc

• John is a Twitter freak, but does more reading than writing.
• Anne: All these are important extras. They don’t replace a blog, they’re supplemental.
• Maria: “I’m on Twitter more than I should be”

Working with multiple bloggers

• Keith: Focus on communication within the group. As a leader, you have the job of helping others write better content.

Desktop software: Writing outside your admin

• John is a big fan of desktop software, saving things outside of your CMS so that you have a local copy to progress with.
• John uses Windows Live Writer, Ecto
• Keith also loves Live Writer, but it can cause problems with WordPress plugins. Live
• Ecto on the Mac is dying, lots love MarsEdit.
• Anne is very much moving towards everything in the cloud, and local copies aren’t good for that, but…
• Keith recommends using Dropbox to sync files across the internet so you can access your posts everywhere
• Our own Lorelle VanFossen loves blogging in NoteTab Pro
• WriteRoom for the Mac is loved by Anne, Dave
• Anne mentioned Omm Writer. Dave finds it weird ;)

HTML vs. Visual Editor:

• Everyone LOVES HTML except Keith. He flips back and forth for different uses.
• Anne mentioned that her students use both.

Insider secrets from our experts: Final quick tips

• Eliminate distractions. Anything getting in the way of your writing needs to be eliminated.
• Maria likes to take notes on PAPER about her blogging duties. She also recommends to get posts out of the way, then go about your day. She likes to blog in the morning because she’s fresh and it comes out best then.
• Keith reminds us to keep your expectations consistent with your posts. If you have high expectations for a post, you’ll get no results. If you have low expectations, you’ll be surprised. Treat all posts the same. Also, make sure you have SOME tool to keep notes, write, etc. You need good tools to do good work. Find what works best for you.
• Anne tells you to be careful of draft posts. What happens in drafts stays in drafts. Don’t spend too much time.
• Dave recommends using text substitution programs like TextExpander or Texter
• Kym tells you to set a realistic expectation or goal, and set a regular schedule.