Hocus Pocus

Here are online resources related to my October 25, 2011, presentation at the HighEdWeb 2011 conference in Austin. more »

I’ve been considering proposing a presentation on the subject of crisis communications for a session at the 2011 CASE V annual conference here in Chicago this December. Here’s my current draft. What do you think? I’d love your reaction and suggestions for improvement. more »

After you read Mark 2:1-12, think about these questions:

With regard to the paralytic’s friends:

Which people do you know who need to be brought to Jesus?

With regard to the paralytic himself:

What areas of your life need Jesus’ healing?

With regard to the crowd:

In what ways do you hope to witness or observe Jesus’ power?

Written by Ann Boyd, January 2011, for microchurch

The real world and its fate have gone unrecognized on the academic curriculum.

— Alistair McIntyre, quoted by Eric Miller

Here are some links, books, tools, and recommendations related to my workshop, “Web Principles for the Rest of Us,” given for the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management at North Park University on December 2, 2010. more »

If you’re here because you’ve read my article in the newsletter of the School of Business and Nonprofit Management from North Park University, welcome. I’m pleased to pass along a simple “starter” tool that helps demonstrate the importance of various social-media activities for particular portions of the population.

Play a little with this tool, noting particularly anywhere your clients or constituents would have an index (in the right column of the chart) over 100. That’s a mode in which they’re especially primed to engage you in conversation via social media.

When you’re ready to take this initial information further, I highly recommend the following books for lots more, detailed strategy advice and information:

• Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

• Rick Levine et al., The Cluetrain Manifesto: Tenth Anniversary Edition

• David Meerman Scott, The New Rules of Marketing and PR

I look forward to your joining the conversation!

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

How many of these can you do? Here’s how I would tabulate my results:

Thanks to Jeff Scripter for the quotation.

I’m feeling like a bit of a dork. At Flatstock 26 here in Chicago a couple weeks back, while I was buying a poster, its designer asked about a button I was wearing, having picked it up a few minutes earlier at another booth.

“Crosshair?” he asked — seeming not to recognize the name. “I’ve seen that name around, but who is that?” I didn’t really hear him, and when he went on, “I mean, is it a designer or a group?” I just didn’t follow the question.

Now I can’t help thinking I must have been being played as a pawn in some kind of poster-designers’ nerd-war, in which one printer tries to prove that noobs don’t recognize the other.

For how could any Flatstock artist not know Dan MacAdam? His gorgeous Chicago factory water tank poster hangs right here on my wall, and you could never forget it.

Because file-conversion is always exciting, and because I found this obscure little tip buried way down in a forum thread — but it’s golden — I figured it needs to be published more plainly: more »