FEATURED: OSM! Editor to Speak at New York Writers Forum

By Leani M. Auxilio

New York City

[caption id="attachment_1851" align="alignleft" width="300"] OSM! editor Marivir R. Montebon to share OSM! experience to NY writers in April.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1850" align="alignleft" width="300"] Shindig's Yusang Lee in NWU-NY's March forum for writers. Beside him is Tim Sheard, NWU-NY who puts the monthly event together.[/caption]

OSM! executive editor and publisher Marivir R. Montebon will speak before New York writers in a monthly forum sponsored by the National Writers Union - New York Chapter on how to effectively build and market one's website. Her online magazine, OSM! (awesome) has garnered over 20,000 in readers and viewers on its 10th month of existence in cyberspace, a record recognized by blogging platform WordPress as impressive and one of the most heavily read websites for 2012.

The forum titled, "For a Great Website, Content is King," will be on April 8, Monday, at 6:30 PM, at Ben's Restaurant in mid-Manhattan.

An author, television host and online producer, Montebon will explain how she has built her web site into an internationally recognized place to visit. Participant writers will learn in the forum how to build their brand and attract viewers to their site with tantalizing, relevant content.

In March 2012, Montebon was given the Woman in Media/Journalism award by the New Jersey-based Pan-American Concerned Citizens Alliance. Montebon also serves as managing editor of the Migrant Heritage Chronicle, a community paper based in Washington, DC.

She has three published books. Her debut work, published in 2000, is entitled "Retracing our Roots: A Journey into Cebu's Precolonial and Colonial Past;" the second book, published in 2007, is entitled "Beyond the Seed Money". It is about successful women micro-entrepreneurs in Cebu. Her third, most recent book, is titled "Biting the Big Apple: Memoirs of a Journalist Turned Immigrant" which is self-published and available at Amazon.com.

On its March monthly forum, Yusang Lee, marketing manager for Shindig, explained to writer participants at the NWU Forum how they can host video chats with multiple participants around the world in real time, at practically no cost, using Shindig as a platform.

A thousand fans, prospects, clients can gather in one place for an interactive video chat such as book launches, presentations, press events, meet and greets, and all types of promotional activities through Shindig. These interactive internet sessions allow participants to watch and listen to a program, and to submit questions and chat with the speaker in real time.

Lee said a Shindig encourages audience engagement by allowing members of the community to talk to one another while interacting with one's brand or listening to one's live presentation, without the cost, administrative time, and effort.

Shindig is a NYC start-up committed to unleashing the unrealized potential of a video chat for an online group of 50 to 1000, founded in 2009 by Yale College, Harvard Law graduate Steve Gottlieb.

The NWU monthly writers forum is put together by NWU treasurer and webmaster Tim Sheard, a novelist and writer of the Lenny Moss mystery novels and Cat Burglar crime films.

(Shindig could be reached www.shindig.com

For forum details, please visit www.nwuny.org)