giada Archive

Giada De Laurentiis is one of the top chefs on the Food Network in the U.S. Her show, Everyday Italian is the show I want to discuss today. Now you may ask yourself, what in the heck does a cooking host have to do with Web 2.0 or passion-centric communities? Stick with me and I hope it will become clear by the end of the post.

I think it takes a lot for someone to be passionate about an onion or a tomato. And there are other chefs on tv as well. Rachael Ray and Emeril come to mind first. I actually spent a day with Rachael on her set. She rocks as a person and loves food. I have watched Emeril since his first Bam! and think he is such an excellent food personality. But what makes them different than the way Giada demonstrates her passion?

If you watch Giada when she began Everday Italian in the 2003 timeframe, you will see someone who enjoyed cooking but really was not able to get the viewers excited. In interviews she would talk about the passion, but on TV she seemed unhappy or scared. Over the past two seasons of the show, she is now demonstrating her passion and the show has taken off. Just like her TV career has. Why? Because she became able to draw viewers into her passion.

Two of the most important aspects of a passion-centric community are to:

• be passionate – if you don't have the passion for your community, no one else will
• show the passion to your users – you may have the passion but without showing it, it is the same as the other item above, your users won't be passionate either

And these things are the things she does on her tv show today. First, she is completely passionate about the food she is cooking. She lets you know it by the tone in her voice, the look on her face, her expressions and the way she works with the food. It might be just cutting a clove of garlic, but when she does it, it almost seems real. I have never seen someone so excited about food. And even better, watch how she reacts when she talks about chocolate. You can really feel the passion.

Second, she gets the audience involved with her passion. When she takes a sip of a drink she made, or cuts into a meal, you wish you were sitting there with her, experiencing the meal or drink as well. There are times that based on the way she describes the item she just ate, I actually think I ate it as well. This is because of the 2nd bullet above – she can move her passion from herself to me.

So what do you need to do to obtain this type of passion for your site. It is really quite easy. Believe in your product passionately. No matter if it is a web app or a blog or a ecommerce site. Make sure that you do the things that you would want someone else to do if you were using their site. And then, get people excited about what you are doing. When you have done both of these things effectively, you will have a passion-centric community that can't fail!

Everyday Italian is on the Food Network 2x a day everyday – check it out sometime and drop me a line if you agree or disagree about her passion and the ability to draw you into the passion. I have emailed the Food Network to see if we can interview Giada — I think it would be interesting to get her to provide some insight into where her passion for food comes from and more importantly how she is able to convey her message and get others passionated! (new word) about her food.

This week should be exciting for the Fat-Off. I am working on getting a press release together to issue to the major news networks and newspapers in the US and UK. In addition, I will be sending information about the Fat-Off to Dr. Phil, Oprah, Rachael Ray. I am also going to try to get some time with Giada DeLaurentiis and Emeril as I want to see if they can provide some help when it comes to the cooking/healthy eating aspect of the Fat-Off. It ain't just about working out, ya know!

This week I will focus mainly on traineo and gimme20. We will dive deep into each and provide a comprehensive review of both. Unlike many of the other Web 2.0 reporting sites (I won't name names), I don't look at a tool for 10 minutes and write a review. CN review will always be in-depth.

Stay tuned and pick up the RSS feed to be instantly notified of any updates. I certainly hope we can get some press coverage for this so that people can learn about these new tools to help you lose weight and get in shape.