Gurus and Evangelists – 6 Creative People to Watch in 2010

[tweetmeme source=”ileane” style=”compact”]I’ve known about blogging since it became a cyberspace phenomena over a decade ago, yet this is my first blog.  I figured out that what I needed was an internet guru or an evangelists to inspire me.

Web Analytics

Before you start thinking that this is a religious post let me give you some examples.  One of my favorite bloggers is the self-proclaimed Web Analytics Evangelist for Google Avinash Kaushik. Avinash has lots of great video tutorials that explain why you need web analytics in the first place and how you can get the most out of using it. I realize that his  video presentations are what initially captured my attention. I must be a visual learner, because I won’t even subscribe to a podcast unless it’s a video podcasts. I’m also fond of Avinash because he turned his blog into a book and all of the proceeds are donated to charity.

When it comes to gurus I have four that I watch faithfully every week.

Mr. Excel

One is Bill Jelen Mr. Excel.  He stands head and shoulders above the rest because he will explain any and every feature available in Excel that you could possibly imagine and if you go to his website you can download his books for free.  That is something so rare that it cannot go without mention.

The other three gurus are all rolled up into one funky, little podcast called Photoshop User TV. The Photoshop guys are very talented and you can watch the podcast just for laughs.

Photoshop User TV

They give step-by-step instructions to help you manipulate images on a whole different level then what you might expect.  But in contrast to Mr. Excel they don’t give many books away for free.  Don’t get me wrong, they have a contest or two every week and the winner gets a free magazine or a subscription but their book sales punctuate every podcast.

Yesterday Word Press gave me a glimpse of the blogosphere guru I’ve been longing for Timothy Ferriss. I watched this awesome video Blogging Without Killing Yourself that gave me insights and a fresh approach to blogging.

Tim Ferriss

I might end up finding some other blog evangelists in the coming weeks, but I’ll never forget Tim because he was my first. I also found out that he has a talk on www.TED.com called Smash Fear, Learn Anything and I now I’m truly hooked. Tim is author of bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, he’s credited with coining the phrase lifestyle design, has over 57,000 tweeps, and he is on the list of 20 People That Started as Bloggers, Who Are Now So Much More.

I’ll blog more about www.TED.com Ideas Worth Spreading, in a future post because I think you’ve had more than enough of gurus and evangelists for today.

Smooches!