Author: Jon

Posted on

Three great questions to ponder

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

With regard to the paralytic’s friends:

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

With regard to the paralytic himself:

bq. What areas of your life need Jesus’ healing?

With regard to the crowd:

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

Written by Ann Boyd, January 2011, for “microchurch”:http://microchurch.org

Posted on

The real world

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

— Alistair McIntyre, quoted by Eric Miller

Posted on

Forrester’s social technographics profile tool

If you’re here because you’ve read my article in the newsletter of the “School of Business and Nonprofit Management”:http://www.northpark.edu/sbnm/ from “North Park University”:http://www.northpark.edu/, 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_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1422125009/octothorppres-20

* Rick Levine et al., “_The Cluetrain Manifesto: Tenth Anniversary Edition_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465018653/octothorppres-20

* David Meerman Scott, “_The New Rules of Marketing and PR_”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470547812/octothorppres-20

I look forward to your joining the conversation!

Posted on

Core tasks

bq. 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.

p>. — Robert Heinlein, _The Notebooks of Lazarus Long_

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

|Proficiently   |10|
|Acceptably|6|
|Badly|2|
|Not at all|2|
|Unknown|1|

_Thanks to “Jeff Scripter”:http://facebook.com/jscripter for the quotation._

Posted on

Flatstock Noob

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.