Social Media Benefits for Your Writing Career
Description: How to use LinkedIn and Twitter to market your business by Ciranna Bird
Published: Carolina Communiqué - A publication of the Carolina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication
Food Safety
Social Media for Freelancers and Medical Writers
Farms and Food Safety
Presenter – 2020 Southeast Indian Studies Conference
Scheduled for: March 20, 2020 but cancelled to comply with
UNC system's directive to contain COVID-19
Location: Museum of the Southeast American Indian, UNC-Pembroke
9:15 am - 9: 45 am SESSION VII
NC Tribes Growing Their Own Food: Challenges
and Success Stories to be presented by Ms. Ciranna Bird, Farm and Food Safety Writer
This presentation will cover food production challenges tribes in North Carolina have experienced in the past eight years. These include extreme heat, hurricanes, farming with varying physical abilities among elders, and lack of funding.
In addition, this workshop will highlight the successes of indigenous farmers, and NC tribes that are producing sorghum syrup, have created orchards and are engaged in the NC Native Ethnobotany Project, which celebrates the remembering and relearning of the medicinal and cultural value of native wild plants.
Facilitator – Committee on Racial Equity (CORE) In-between
June 20, 2019
Location: Recity Durham, NC 27701
During this 2-hour event, Ciranna Bird facilitated a check-in, shared agreements, guided discussion, and debrief process. The purpose of the in-betweens is to discuss our work in addressing the racial disparities in our food systems. Ciranna chose Scene on Radio podcast Episode 43-Losing Ground as the story starter. In this podcast, field producer, John Biewen shares a gripping story of the eviction of farmers Eddie and Dorothy Wise from their hog farm and the role that racial discrimination played in their loss of income, home and health.
An interview with Ciranna Bird on WCOM 103.5 FM
June 12, 2019
Location: WILPF Wake up Call on WCOM 103.5 FM
Ciranna Bird was interviewed on the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Show. This Wake-Up Call was hosted by Lori Hoyt, the radio broadcaster was Iris Schwitzer and the videographer for the recording posted on YouTube was Emily O’Hare.
During this 55-minute conversation, Ciranna talked about farmworkers in North Carolina, her Colombian heritage, the excellent work being done by Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and resources written by people of color including "The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience and Farming" by Natasha Bowens and “The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South” by Michael W. Twitty.
- About the NC Farmworker Institute starting at 1 minute and 55 seconds of the Youtube video.
- About Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) at 18 minutes and 30 seconds and at 36 minutes and 56 seconds of the Youtube video
- Mention of The Cooking Gene book at 51 minutes and 14 seconds of the Youtube video.
Presented the activities of the CFSA Board Agriculture Workforce Committee
November 11, 2019
Location:CFSA Membership Meeting, Durham, NC
Facilitated a "Share your thoughts on Agricultural labor with CFSA"
November 9, 2019
Location:Sustainable Agriculture Conference, Durham, NC
I facilitated a farm labor listening session and created a CFSA Farm Labor and Immigration survey. The goal was to hear farmers thoughts on policies affecting migrant farmworkers.
Food Safety
Workshop: Protect your egg-laying hens and customers from Salmonella
July 21, 2016
Location:
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle,
Raleigh, NC
In this 90-minute workshop I provided a brief overview of how people get Salmonella, the bacteria that causes diarrhea and fevers. After discussing the NC laws and USDA egg handling regulation, I demonstrated different methods of collecting and washing eggs on small-scale farms. I provided strategies on how to limit the movement of bacteria and viruses on the farm as well as best food safety practices for cooking and preparing eggs at home.
Home-Canning Heirloom Tomatoes
July 16, 2016
Location: Chapel Hills Farmer Market Chapel Hill, NC
Thank you for joining me at the Chapel Hills Farmers Market 2016 Tomato Festival. I enjoyed handing out Carolina Farm Stewardship Association stickers, organic cherry tomato seeds donated by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and copies of my home-canning heirloom tomato article.
In addition to the wonderful taste-testing of hybrid, heirloom, and cherry tomatoes, I had a chance to meet Craig LeHoullier, author of The Epic Tomato in person.
Social Media for Freelancers
Build Your Freelance Business with a Strong Online Presence
Friday, October 7, 2016
Location: The 2016 AMWA
Medical Writing & Communication Conference Denver, Colorado
During this session, Lori De Milto and I presented online marketing tools to freelance medical writers. Lori, the author of the The Mighty Marketer: Your Guide to Making More Money as a Freelance Medical Writer, shared with the audience how to maximize visibility on LinkedIn and the American Medical Writers Association AMWA freelance directory. I shared tips on how to protect their websites from being hacked as well as how to recover from a breach. Then I discussed ways to ensure visitors to their sites had a positive experience by recommending the following tips:
- Minimize the time it takes for your website to load
- Structure the navigation within the page using hypertext markup language
- and provide alternative text to pictures to ensure people with limited vision can easily access the content.
5 Tips for Creating an Effective Freelance Business Website
March 12, 2016 Location: AMWA Delaware Valley Chapter (DVC) Freelance Conference, King of Prussia, PA
It was an honor to be invited by the AMWA Freelance Conference Committee to share my knowledge alongside my peers and mentors. Attendees of my 5 Tips for Creating an Effective Freelance Business Website roundtable asked great questions and learned how to do the following activities:
- Use plain language and document design techniques to ensure their web content is easy to read.
- Choose a theme that meets web accessibility guidelines.
- Perform monthly maintenance to protect their websites from hackers.
Five Tips to Prevent Your Author’s Website from becoming an Antique
October 3, 2015
Location: American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX
March 18, 2015
Location: Holly Springs Writers Guild, Carey, NC
My interactive discussion helped attendees ensure that the money and time they invested to launch their websites continued to be worthwhile months and years later. I shared strategies to avoid becoming a hostage of website hosts, content management systems, and website designers.
Technical Communication Round Table and Panel Presenter
May 2, 2015
Location: WriteNow!2015 Triangle Area Freelancers Annual Writers' Conference, Raleigh, NC
During the Technical Communication Round Table, Ciranna talked about medical writing as a career to an audience of freelance writers. Later during the day she participated on a panel with Guiseppe Getto, a professor and researcher of utilizing user experience (UX) design, Rick Evans, Carrie Knowles, the Piedmont Laureate for Short Fiction in 2014, and David Morrell ,the award-winning author of First Blood, the novel in which Rambo was created.
I want to thank Andrea Wenger and Ciranna Bird "for their efforts in bringing the first tech writing track to the conference
...through Ciranna's participation in the panels, she demonstrated some of the many possibilities for writers to find work in unexpected places.
She showed how a mind so informed by science and data can find ways to be creative in solving problems and helping people through writing."
- Jenni Hart, writer and copy editor
Recruited the roundtable speaker for medical writer's conference
May 1, 2015
Location:AMWA-Carolinas Spring 2015 Conference
Francine Netter, author of Medicine's Michelangelo : The Life & Art of Frank H. Netter MD. shared the story of her father, a doctor who educated other doctors through his books of illustrations. His drawings are in over 200 pamphlets, and thirteen atlases including the popular Atlas of Human Anatomy.
March 26, 2015
Location: Carolinas Chapter AMWA meeting
As the facilitator of this meeting, I encouraged a thought-provoking discussion of Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. We talked about the value of checklists in medical writing.