Driving In Traffic

This weekend I am going to a board of director’s retreat for a non-profit animal rescue group with whom I work. The goal is to come up with a strategy for 2006 that will help us adopt out more dogs and gain more volunteers and donors to help us with this endeavor.

My role over the last 6 months has been to try to get more press attention for our organization. To do this, I have sent out a number of press releases, info e-mails and short stories about successes. Overall the effort has been pretty successful thanks to the willingness of a colleague, Russ, to be on TV and talk about the dogs.

Today, I got my first, “gee thanks” but that is not a worthy story e-mail from a reporter who had solicited for heartwarming stories about adoptions. That caused me to wonder what will make us stand out and be noticed. This story was about an animal that was picked up by animal control because of neglect. Actually, the owners (if you can call them that) had chained this dog and its puppy to a tree. They had not changed the collar on the dog since it was a puppy. Subsequently, the collar had become embedded in the dogs neck and had to be carefully removed. It left a pretty bad scar, but has healed ok. The volunteers at OPP were able to find a great home for the dog and now she is living in the lap of luxury.

So that made me think… how can I make things stand out… and what kind of world are in that animal neglect with a happy outcome is not noteworthy? What could make us different? What would be noteworthy? How can I present what we do in a new and interesting way?

Technorati tags: animal rescue, public relations, non-profit

This weekend the hubby and I went to a birthday party at a vacation getaway home that our friends Dave and Teresa just bought in Big Canoe. We got to catch up with a number of folks we had not see since before the holidays. My hubby, being proud of me (which is a good thing, but still embarrassing sometimes), began telling everyone that I had been invited to Japan to lecture at a medical conference.

I known that I would be going for a few months, but had not really told anyone just in case it did not work out or if I got there and did something stupid. My friends were excited and began asking questions. Thus, I began sharing my trepidation about the protocol of bowing, making sure I had enough business cards, how to handle it if Dr. X offers me an odd delicacy not really made for human consumption, and not wanting to appear the ugly American while over there. My blog Mamma, Teresa, insisted that I blog about the process. She also stated that I needed to be sure to live blog from Japan. While, I sort of see the point. I’m just not sure how to start the conversation without seeming like a neurotic mess.

I’ve been overseas before, so I’m not worried about the travel aspect. However, I’ve never been in Japan. I know that there are a lot of social rules there. I also understand that physicians are revered…. so are lecturers on any topic. However, I since I am not a physician, I’m not sure quite where I fit in. It appears that Dr. Campbell’s History of Japan class as a Freshman at Agnes Scott would only teach me enough to make me dangerous…. eeeeekkkkkkk! Sorry Dr. Campbell— I probably should have listened more, huh?

Well, stay tuned. I ‘ll probably be coming back to this topic as time gets closer. The conference is at the end of January.

All of my life, I have been a writer (not for pay, but for pleasure). Eventhough I am well into adulthood and truly older that I care to think about, my mom proudly displays my first writing assignment of my public school career on the refrigerator — to write one page on “If I Were a Magic Wand.” Ok— in my story, my brother did not fair so well but eventually recovered. However, poor Brian H, the red-headed little boy that proclaimed his undying love for me on the playground, was turned into a rock. Oh…. for the days when being turned into a rock was the worst image I could conjure.

I teach online classes at the graduate level. For the last few years, I have been disappointed how people with active minds and a good amount of intelligence do everything they can to avoid writing an original thought. Many is the time, that I get papers that are a series of lifted passages from a whole host of webpages. I had begun to wonder… is writing a lost art? Has writing gone the way of the handwritten thank you notes and hostess gifts?

Blogging and reading other’s thoughts has renewed my faith in the creative outlet of writing. Sometimes, it not so much what you say as it is that you say it in your own way. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t find blog diarys that interesting. I really don’t care what you ate for breakfast nor what crappy thing your boyfriend did on Thursday. However, I love a blog that has a personal tone of passion, introspection, analysis and creativity on a topic or series of topics. If comments are punctuated by a good dose of humor and a little sarcasm, all the better.

Now…. how do you teach this to graduate students?

Technorati tag: blogging, writing, creativity

Ok– for those of you who know me, you knew it would not take long for me to express my true opinion on one thing or another. Well, today probably starts a series on blogging pet peeves. My first one will be

Useless Link Blogging

Imagine if you will… you want to do a blog search on a topic. So you go to your favorite blog search engine (BTW- I haven’t found a favorite. If you have one, please drop me a comment). You type in the topic and look around. Then you click on one and what do you know….. you’re taken to a blog that is comprised of only links to other pages…. a tactic used to drive up your position on search engines…

Otherwise… useless…..waste of time and bandwidth

Anyone can enter a bunch of URLs into a Free Blogging tool…. whoopdee schmooopty! Exercise some “little gray cells, ” you lazy twit, and write something that reflects who you are and what you think. Obviously the practice would be good for you. Because I am polite, I will provide no links to those who do this in order to call you out— afterall, the guilty are aware of their transgressions….

Off the soap-box — for now…..

Technorati Tags: Blog Spam, blog-spam, blog etiquette

As I previously mentioned, I help to manage my business blog. I have noticed that my customers are very new to the Blogsphere and do not really know about or understand all the cool things that can make reading blogs easier.

Some have complained that their work ISPs block them from accessing certain pages. Also, they are not able to download programs on to their desktop.

One option for getting all of your blogs in one place is to use www.newsgator.com. Although the thoughts of “gator” — the bad spyware– come to mind, this helpful service can be a web-based news feed aggregator.
After a free sign up procedure, this service will allow you to keep track of your favorite blogs in one place.

To add a feed to Newsgator, click on the “newsgator Manager” tab. There you will see a link that says “add a feed.” If you click on that, then up pops a new set of tabs. If you click on “URL & Import,” you will be able to enter the web address of the blog you want to follow.

From there on out, you can simply go to newsgator.com, click on the online version and VOILA! All your favorite blog entries in one place.

Newsgator also has a cool option where you can save blog entry in a “my clippings” section. To save an blog entry, simply click on the icon that looks like a little floppy disk at the bottom of the entry. This will automatically place it in your “My Clippings” folder

As time allows I will continue to play with these news aggregator programs and post reviews here. I think for the time being, Newsgator provides a pretty easy program.

Technorati tags: Newsgator, Blogging