Already the second Trendy BuzzAngel! For our December release, we have chosen Dana Harrison-Tidwell who is blogging at Diva in a carry on.

Dana is speaking

- How old are you?
39

- Where do you com from?

Originally a small town - Columbus, Mississippi. Until Hurricane Katrina, I lived in New Orleans’ French Quarter for about 7 years, then moved to New Mexico. I still consider New Orleans home.

- What do you do?

Freelance writer, and I publish and edit the women’s travel blog, diva in a carry on. I’m also a published poet, fiction writer and journalist.

- When did you start blogging?

June 2007.

- Why did you start blogging? What does blogging give you in daily life?

What does blogging give you in daily life? It seems most people start blogs for one of two reasons: they are either really excited about a topic, or something really pisses them off. In my case, I started for both those reasons. I love travelling with just a carry on bag, and I was actually researching an article about travelling light and got mad because I couldn’t find the information I wanted all in one spot. So I decided to create “diva in a carry on” to give other women a place to find good, practical and fun info to help keep them out of the long luggage queues associated with air travel. It just sort-of grew from there.

- Do you remember your first blog post?

Yes! It’s a little rough around the edges but it’s still in the archives on diva in a carry on. It was about this great pair of shoes called Onesoles. You can interchange the tops on them so you can carry one pair of shoes with different tops to match your outfits. Very compact. Great for women like me who always stuck on what shoes to carry on a trip!

- Are you rather a «twitter» or a «powncer»?

I’d have to say I’m a twitter.

- Twitter, Facebook, blogs, buzz, web 2.0… What do you think of all this? How do you see the evolution of the web?

I’ve been a web junkie for a long, long time, and the jump to the Web 2.0 mindset is by far the biggest marketing, networking and information advance for Internet consumption. I think, like all Internet leaps, when things “shake out” in a few years, several tools will come out on top, and the less-useful ones will lose speed and die out. In 3-5 years, though, we’ll all look back and be amazed at how the web has changed so quickly.

Chinese portrait

What if you were…

- An animal? Younger, I was totally monkey. Now, I’m somewhere between dragon and cat.
- A color? Red.
- A place? I’d probably be CC’s Coffeehouse on the corner of St. Philip and Royal in New Orleans.
- A season? Autumn.
- A musical instrument? Piano, not sure why though.
- A meal? Pecan glazed muscovy duck - hard to find, and something you really have to develop a taste for to enjoy.
- A song? 15 Minutes by Wired All Wrong (Break Out the Battle Tapes, 2006)
- A proverb? “Never confuse open minds with ones left merely vacant.”
- A blog (other than yours)? Lifehacker.com
- A web 2.0 homepage? Del.icio.us.com
- A buzz? Real women don’t check luggage.