We offer project-based training services for Sonoma County (or North Bay, including Marin and Napa County) individuals and businesses in web, graphics, video, and [more...]]]> Web People Media offers tutoring to help Wine Country small businesses and creatives with a full range of digital media projects, including graphics, video, web, SEO, writing, business software, and creative software.

We offer project-based training services for Sonoma County (or North Bay, including Marin and Napa County) individuals and businesses in web, graphics, video, and related digital media business skills.

What is project-based training? It is a process of teaching in which we use the projects you are actually trying to complete as the basis of your training. The goal is to teach you the skills you will need to maintain your project, or to work on future projects, while helping you plan and build the project from start to finish. We can help you launch a blog, a website, a series of videos, an ad campaign, search engine optimization (SEO), a brand, etc.

We can help with little pieces of projects, where you might get stuck, as well. What if you just need some help writing a piece for the web, or for your business marketing plan? Or maybe you need to learn how to process your photos for your ecommerce application. No project is too big or too small to get some help when you need it.

Are you a designer, artist, videographer, or budding photographer? We can also help you hone your skills in high-demand applications like Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, and Photoshop, so you learn the tools the pros use—the ones that get you noticed.

Need help with writing for your website? Web People Media can show you how to write with both SEO and click-through in mind. If you’re not writing in this manner already, you are missing the opportunity to help your customers find you and visit your website. Search engine optimization and search engine marketing become more important each day, as more websites compete for Sonoma County’s business. You have to get your site into the first page of search results if you want to see results. And then you have to make sure that listing contains the information that will convince your audience to click through to you.

Web People Media is looking forward to helping you to make your website, graphics, videos, and digital media projects number one on the web and in the world, and training you to use the most cutting-edge tools is an important part of how we can help you to succeed in your business. If you need services or an estimate, please feel free to send an email to leha@webpeoplemedia.com.

Today’s buyer of web design and development services knows [more...]]]> Web 2.0 is on the rise, and each year, more and more sites are on the web. In the old model, webmasters were guru rock star cowboys who ran the show for their not-so-savvy clients, but as Bob Dylan once put it, …”the times they are a-changin’.”

Today’s buyer of web design and development services knows more about what to expect from a functioning site, and how to evaluate the growing pool of site statistics available. These buyers rightly should have less patience with developers who hide behind a veil of programmer mystique, and yet, never seem to deliver a finished product.

Further, with so many people and businesses on the web, the only way to get your site noticed is to keep putting up new and relevant content, and this places new demands on the tunability of your site. Here lies the scenario we keep seeing more and more with local Sonoma County business owners trying to keep their web budget under their web ROI.

Problem: You can’t update your website without learning sometimes as many as five scripting languages, and when you do, you run the risk of losing your data if you make a mistake. Or worse: your web developer is holding you hostage and won’t give you the “keys” to the site (information) without you constantly paying them more. This is not how it should be.

Solution: You need a content managed site (CMS), designed and geared to liberate you from your web developer. A content managed site:

• Provides you easy access to an administration panel in which you can create web pages and post news to your site
• Stores all of your content (your graphics, videos, writing, etc.) in a database you can back up with the click of a button
• Provides an organizational hierarchy that is easy for search engine crawlers to navigate (important for SEO)
• Is quick and simple to add plugins and widgets to, giving you access to a variety of Web 2.0 tools and functions
• Is easy to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites
• Is most importantly faster and more affordable to set up than a non-content manged site

This is the kind of site we like to design at Web People Media. Let’s solve your problems, rather than just create more.

Blogs, web “business cards,” galleries, electronic press kits, personal and professional websites, Paypal sales, social networking, and much more can all be handled with a simple, content-managed design that you can easily add web pages and postings to.

If you want to add a dynamic ecommerce store, you can do that, too, and the same rules of use apply: you have an admin panel to work from, you can back up your database at any time, and you don’t need a programmer to make basic updates. We’ll even give you scripts to help you process your product photos in Photoshop.

A data-driven, content managed web presence frees you to run your business and to integrate your website into that plan. You will control the reigns, not some lonesome Internet cowboy.

(Web People Media is a content managed site.)

I wrote a letter to Michael Pollan today. I want to share it with you all, because the food movement is so important, and because, as usual, [more...]]]> Okay, this is not about the web, not about media, and not about technology. But it is about community–yours, mine, and all of ours; and about health and sustainability.

I wrote a letter to Michael Pollan today. I want to share it with you all, because the food movement is so important, and because, as usual, agribusiness would like to redefine it. But we can’t let them. So it’s up to all of us–not just Michael Pollan–to retain the values of health, sustainability, and kindness to all species. Let us all be conscious eaters and conscious buyers.

Here’s the letter:

Hello, Michael:

I know you are very busy, but I’m writing to you because I feel you are at the nexus of the extremely important food movement that’s taking place, and I’m concerned about a trend I’ve seen recently that the food movement might inadvertently be contributing to (or at least that its leaders, such as you, might be able to help prevent the expansion of).

Here is the issue: Certified organic foods are becoming less important to people than hollow promises, and large buyers (like Whole Foods) are capable of squashing certified organic producers by buying “GMO and antibiotic free” (also known as “Natural”), but uncertified products exclusively. Granted, there is a plus side to allowing some flexibility for growers and ranchers who can’t afford to make the transition to certified, but there is a potential for certified organic to become *completely* impossible to maintain if no one is demanding it anymore, and the net result for the end buyer is that our ability to buy truly antibiotic and GMO free foods goes from small to non-existent, while the retailers, processors, etc. ream us for close-to-organic prices on non-organic foods.

I’ve read Omnivore’s Dilemma, and I agree with you that certified organic is far from perfect, but I also know that you agree with me that it’s still worthwhile; and it would be a terrible state of affairs if the large corporations that co-opted organic in the first round were now able to eliminate it by manipulation of the tenets of the current food movement, claiming that “natural” is more important than organic, doing away with the “local” part of the argument, and pulling the rug out from under organic producers.

This is not a paranoid scenario: Whole Foods (at least the one in my neighborhood, and I’m guessing they are all marching to the same drum) has eliminated organic meats (pork, lamb, beef) in favor of the claim that ALL of their meats are antibiotic and GMO free. Well, it’s not true. I have an extreme hypersensitivity to macrolides (of which Tylosin is a member), and got a major reaction after eating some Whole Foods “antibiotic-free” pork. Since I had otherwise eaten nothing that wasn’t either from my own garden, from a known-good local farmer, or certified, the pork was definitely the source of the antibiotic. While I realize the hypersensitivity is my own personal cross to bear, it does make me a sort of walking litmus test for truth in advertising when it comes to antibiotics. And the larger issue is what could happen to the very important organic certification and the producers who go to the trouble and expense of getting it.

Whole Foods did not lower their prices, either, so this is a racket. They can now charge organic prices for business-as-usual, polluted foods, grown by the same unsustainable, unhealthy, and cruel means that they have been for decades, because public perception–even among the members of the food movement itself, is that maybe organic isn’t so important, and the complexities of that statement are lost on most people.

I’m not sure what should be done about it, but I wanted to alert you, because I think this is a serious issue, not just for me personally, but for everyone. Our food should not be “antibiotic free” in the same way that a Rosie or Rocky chicken is “free range.” (I obviously won’t be buying from Whole Foods again at all, but so many people do–and again, the organic producers could be crushed out of business by this trend.)

Thank you so much for any time and consideration you can give to this issue, and that you have given to the letter at all! I honestly think you are at the center of the most important movement of our time–not just for humankind, but for all the earth. If people can follow the logic of the food movement, they will be forced to realize how intricately all on Earth are connected, and that would be a very good thing indeed.

Thanks again, and with the kindest regards,

Leha Carpenter