Author Archives: Ann Daramola

Actually… You Don’t Need A Website, You Need A Platform

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Since launching the first Afrolicious course last week and listening to all your feedback I realized that you don’t actually need a website.

That’s right. We’re not building regl’a ol websites. We’re designing platforms where all your various media channels can live, even while you’re participating in social media.

What’s the difference between a platform and website? A platform is a website designed to amplify your message and create communities from the audiences you already have.

This means that you can create a platform for your stories your videos, your images, your posts and, yes, even your tweets while still participating in the conversations happening on other platforms.

So I’m changing the course to better suit your needs. You don’t have to know any code to design your own platform. You just have to have a cause, a message, a story that needs to be heard and a community that wants to hear it.

We will work together to create a platform that will help you amplify your story. You bring your stories, I’ll bring my tools and together we’ll create something amazing.

Sign up for the course asapually and I’ll see you in class this May!


Building Platforms, One Story at a Time

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When I first started building websites in 2002, there were no images of Brown people doing normal people things to be found.

Now, ten years later, platforms like tumblr make it easy to find beautiful Brown people doing reg’la people things in all corners of the world.

It’s been exciting to watch the web transform into a space more representative of the world we live in.

But we’ve got some more work to do. While we have these images and stories readily available, we as Brown people rarely own the platforms where they are distributed.

And we should. After all these are our stories, our experiences, our lives. And they are worth owning both physically and digitally.

The Benin Empire wasn’t built in a day, but step by step, iteration by iteration, it became one of the greatest empires in West Africa.

We can also build our modern platforms, one website at a time. And the best time for us to start is now. It’s time for us to own the content and the platforms we put them on.

And these days, you don’t need to know how to code or design to build a beautiful website that works.

Let’s build the (digital) worlds we want to see, one story at a time. I will teach you what I know!

The next class starts this month! Sign up for Let’s Build on Afrolicious.com


Owning Your Stories: Posterous Edition

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Did you get the announcement? Posterous is closing its services tomorrow. That’s right: unless you download your backup, you’ve got no access to the words you’ve spent the past five years crafting on their platform.

This is the nature of the web: services come and go. Even if you’re not on Posterous, you’re likely using Tumblr or Blogspot or even Facebook to spread your stories, your messages, your graphics and images. Isn’t it time we owned our platforms?

I get it. Ownership is expensive. But the cost of having your stories packed up under someone else’s brand is greater. Even if Facebook never goes down, everything we give them – our snarky comebacks, our photographed memories, our long-winded commenataries – is theirs. That’s what we sign up for every time we sign up for a new ‘free’ platform.

The best time to build and cultivate your own platform was five years ago, right around the time Posterous began. The second best time? Now.

afrolicious-lets-build-your-website I’ve built many platforms for individuals and organizations over those five years and I want to teach you how to build yours. Sign up today for Let’s Build, a four-week course that will teach you how to build a platform you own.

Let’s build the worlds we want to see, one story at time.

Onwards!


What It Means to Do The Work

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What does it mean for you to do your work? What have you been put on this earth to do? Who are you accountable to?

For me, it means making Afrolicious more awesome this year. There’s a lot to do but I get carried away not doing work (procrastination, woo!) and then finally doing work and then signing on to twitter to take a ‘break’ and never really signing off.

You know how that goes.

But let me tell you: the moments where I was building the thing I’ve been building for the past several months, I was excited. Even when things were breaking, the momentum was enough to keep me going, to keep poking and asking questions until I found a solution or created a different problem.

On twitter, I use the hashtag #DoTheWork to get folx (me, mostly) motivated about…well… doing work. For me, it’s not just about the work, but the way work heals. You see, I loved someone very much, but when things fell apart, throwing myself into my work – telling stories online and teaching others how to do the same – was one of the ways I pushed through.

Eventually, ‘Do The Work’ became my mantra and prayer as in, “Lord help me to do the work because I don’t want to strangle this mofoloko.”

Doing the work isn’t an entrepreneurial thing, or a self-help thing, or a capitalism thing, although it can become any iteration of those. We do the work to heal ourselves. We do the work to heal others. We do the work to build better worlds for generations to come.

You can buy the Do The Work posters here: http://afrolicious.bigcartel.com/product/do-the-work-poster

Onwards,
-a!


Have You Told Your Story Yet?

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So… have you told your story, yet? When’s the last time you did?

Last week I realized that for all the noise I make about telling stories, I hadn’t really told mine. I mean, I told bits and pieces of it on twitter, on the blog and to my friends, but I hadn’t really told it to myself. I signed off of twitter (and promptly signed on to Facebook, baby steps), retreated to a quiet space (church) and… found myself stuck.

Oh dear. So this is what it’s like.

Even though I had coached and cajoled and cheerleaded others into telling their stories either by writing or drawing or painting or actually talking, it had been such a long time since I’d gone through the process myself. I forgot what blank pages do to the mind. I thought the quiet of church would afford no distractions, but I still found ways to *not* write, to not do the work.

Eventually, I just started writing. And all the little tweets and motivational quotes came to mind: ‘do the work’ and ‘keep moving forward’ and ‘always be creating’. I became my own cheerleader and by the time I put my pen down, I had seven handwritten pages of what Afrolicious was to me.

I can’t even describe the thrill of that moment, of what it felt like to flip through those pages, trying to decipher some unfortunate moments in my handwriting, knowing that most of the story was there, out of my head and in my hands. Literally.

I want you to feel that. I want you to be able to hold your story in your hands and know its truth. It won’t be perfect. Trust me, when I send off the typed up versions to my team, I expect them to rip it apart. But it’s out now and I can dream even bigger. I can keep moving forward because I am moving forward. And that’s the thrill.

So. What’s your story? Have you written (painted, told, sang, drawn, photographed) it? What’s stopping you?

This week on Afrolicious I’ll be sharing tips on how to tell a story, my thoughts on what a story is in the 21st century, and people who are telling their stories in all sorts of ways. Will yours be one of them? Send me a link to whatever you’ve got: ann@afrolicious.com

Onwards,
-a!