tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60318882024-03-13T03:16:51.257-07:00Intelligent Human Agent ™I might write about community building, Drupal, social media, nonprofits, librarianship, information architecture, taxonomy, usability, and the profound absurdness of life. Might. Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-17512704672768298442015-04-09T15:12:00.001-07:002015-04-09T15:12:26.197-07:00Fare Thee Well and thank-you NSRC, RC, NSRT Back in February I said I needed to reflect on the close of the grant-funded project I worked on for thirteen years. But life and work have a way of pressing on, and making reflection a priority seems to be difficult for me.
But now we are moving offices. Those thirteen years of files and resources must be discarded in preparation for the move. I should be just tossing them into the recycling Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-59378892994743292272015-01-28T08:24:00.001-08:002015-01-28T08:24:13.028-08:00Alone with the Books - Night ThreeWe all agree that the scholarly, and/or rare books, should go to Brandeis as was Gerda's wish. Surely they will be more loved and used there than just sitting on shelves at one of the kids' houses.
It's letting go of the collection as a whole that is so hard. It's why my brother so lovingly photographed them (and this is after a large chunk taken by some scholar friends). Why I made Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-26024468315770941732015-01-28T08:14:00.000-08:002015-01-28T08:14:40.789-08:00Alone with the Books - Night Two (12/10/14)My second night alone at my mom's condo, which we are finally working in earnest on emptying, a little over a year after her passing.
There is no TV so I decided to pick up an actual book. My choices, while not infinite, are vast. I wind up having an encounter with Gerda's copy of James Gleick's Chaos. As my sister-in-law had been noting earlier that day, it is astounding how many of her books Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-53537799437280648832014-12-12T15:35:00.003-08:002014-12-12T15:36:29.498-08:00Alone With the Books - Night One (12/9/14)I am so jealous of people who take the time to reflect.
Last year, I declared that I *would* reflect on two momentous endings in my life, one much more personal and significant than the other, but both with the potential to provide insight.
And here I am, almost a year later, without much to show for my declaration. I scribbled down a few thoughts here and there on scraps of paper that are now Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-20041802281289992872014-12-11T18:50:00.000-08:002014-12-11T18:50:07.828-08:00Ten Years Ago Today (oops - was supposed to publish back in April - doh!)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-74505107747971374502014-02-28T09:21:00.000-08:002014-02-28T09:21:02.272-08:00Throwback Thursday: Musings on Internet Privacy
My IT guy just told me to delete a folder I had called "personal music - move to Google". It was really old and I had forgotten all about it but it was hogging up 3GB. Well, that led me down memory lane to all kinds of crazy files I have here at work. One of them appeared to be the draft of a blog post I wrote on November 25, 2003 but never posted, probably because I couldn't strike Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-24533701821461513592014-02-13T08:18:00.003-08:002014-02-13T08:19:51.136-08:00Two Cars: What if We Could Empathize With Earth?
Today on my way to work, I was missing my cushy car. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I drive our old Toyota truck. It's a manual, with manual steering and no radio. As I was missing our comfortable new automatic Camry and the radio, I thought: What if driving our cars made us as uncomfortable as climate change and fossil fuel pollution makes the planet? What if we got unusually hot or cold in our Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-67292943029681163842014-02-11T14:15:00.000-08:002014-02-11T14:22:40.080-08:00Endings and BeginningsThe last few months of 2013 were filled with some very intense endings for me. My mother was in the final stages of her terminal illness, and my grant-funded project at work, something I worked on for 13 years, was coming to an end.
Generally, transitions like this in real life do not have fairy tale endings. If they did, our funder would have lovingly taken over our project and given it the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-25614894083806564092014-01-30T10:10:00.002-08:002014-01-30T10:11:59.189-08:00People, Let Me Tell You About My Best FriendMy mom and I used to really love to watch The Courtship of Eddie's Father. The song was the best. Somehow that song popped into my head recently, and it's making me face the reality that I did lose my best friend. My mom died November 15, 2013 and I'm still trying to process that.
I realized that part of the reason my mom was so thrilled about my son was not just because she genuinely enjoyed Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-34098277898254466172014-01-23T09:07:00.004-08:002014-01-23T16:35:09.513-08:00X Ways to Verb Your NounWatching a blogging class from HubSpot. It's packed with great information, so I have to admit I was a little surprised to see them embrace the tired convention of creating a headline with a number in it. Sure, these are meant to assure the reader that they will get a finite number of digestible tips to achieve their goal. But they are so commonplace now, and so many inferior articles have been Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-87124524316865760382014-01-08T11:16:00.003-08:002014-01-08T11:18:00.941-08:00Think Like a Customer, Not Like a Marketer
Yesterday I was taking a look at some of the Google ads we are running, including one that had originally been drafted by someone on the marketing team. Not to call anyone out specifically or anything, because I see this all over the place, but I noticed he had used the word "products" in the ad heading. I also noticed that the ads headed "MyPlate Education" that I had been experimenting with
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-59002110688431562902014-01-07T09:42:00.002-08:002014-01-07T16:15:27.308-08:00Instant Analytics Feedback is AddictiveWhen I wear my social media hat, I get addicted to real time analytics. Whether it's bit.ly or Facebook, the data absolutely shapes my behavior and helps me do my job better - instantly! I actually think Facebook made a big mistake by taking the little graph off of the pages main view. Now they give you some general up or down data, but I always thought the graph was very motivating.
Now I'm Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-61275035027414192932014-01-06T08:45:00.001-08:002014-01-07T22:31:28.871-08:00Habit Fails and SuccessesSo ... as predicted ... since I was so super busy this weekend and forgot to think about cues for my new habits, I failed on some of them:
Grabbing lunch of leftovers - Didn't do ... but it wasn't exactly a fail as I still have last week's lunch because I ended up going out to eat Friday.
Kegels - Totally spaced. Car radio being on is not a good cue because I just leave it on! Cue has to be anUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-78179116368918202552014-01-03T08:45:00.002-08:002014-01-06T08:45:59.636-08:00Day Two of Habit PatrolWhat I didn't do: sit down and create a chart and determine what the cue and reward will be for each of the habits I spontaneously started yesterday.
What I did do:
Grabbed a lunch - this is going to become harder next week when school starts for Wade. May need to change the habit to: make lunch the night before. What's my reward for this? Getting to eat a tangerine and some dates for Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-54959288614927743952014-01-02T08:39:00.000-08:002014-01-02T08:39:03.683-08:00New Year, New HabitsI didn't really make any resolutions. On Friendfeed, where my online posse hangs out, I tested out some vague hopes: "Be present. Be more social with potential/close friends. Make hard decisions and do stuff."
But today, after rising, I found myself trying on many new habits:
I grabbed some leftovers and fruit for lunch so I would save money and eat healthy
I did kegels on the way to work (Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-64539261858327322062013-04-10T15:06:00.004-07:002014-01-06T08:46:30.937-08:00Where I'll Be at NTC
Where I'll Be
At NTC
-- I like that rhyme!
At any time
You can look
You can see
Where I'll Be
At NTC
Super excited to be flying into a snowstorm to meet up with my favorite tribe ever, the nptechies!
First stop: #NTCBEER on Wednesday night at Brit's Pub, although I probably won't be there until about 8 pm.
April 11. This will be the first year I am going to do the Day of Service, on Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-33162355907964953742012-11-09T17:30:00.003-08:002014-01-06T08:46:50.384-08:00Google Plus - Hot or Cold?
So, I've already waxed a bit hot and cold about Google Plus.
The cold part is because, we've had so many of the same features in Friendfeed for so long that they don't seem special to me. Realtime? Friendfeed launched that years ago.
A little hot and a little cold: incredibly awesome conversations ensue when the digerati get access to a new exclusive service. This happens with every new Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-87800063088518421962012-11-09T17:27:00.000-08:002012-11-09T17:27:59.150-08:00Everything is MiscellaneousSo much of being a librarian involves the instinct of wanting to group things together to facilitate future retrieval. In the early days of librarianship, cataloging was limited by the realities of physical space. In cyberspace, "Everything is Miscellaneous."
(and thus, my re-entry into blogging begins).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-55564973198253926432010-01-11T09:29:00.000-08:002010-01-11T10:06:05.889-08:00National Mentoring Month, Beth Kanter's birthday, and meFor several weeks now, I've been thinking a lot about the idea of getting myself a mentor. Not because it's National Mentoring Month (that actually slipped my mind as I was having these thoughts), but probably because it's a new year, and because of where I'm at in my career, and because I feel ready to try something new. I was thinking about it so much that I felt a blog post brewing.Then I got Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-16817385112618068792009-07-19T17:36:00.000-07:002011-05-31T14:29:49.608-07:00Friendfeed as a Nonprofit Technology Water CoolerBack in April I created a slide presentation for an Ignite session at NTC about the Many Uses of Friendfeed that Beth Kanter picked up on, intrigued with the idea of using it as an internal listening tool. I still don't know of that many nonprofits using Friendfeed, though, whether as an overall tool or for joining the "nptech" community conversation ("nptech" is a tag that Beth Kanter, Marnie Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-80519153648791753082009-05-02T09:47:00.000-07:002011-05-31T14:23:28.119-07:00When E.F. Hutton Talks ...Jumping into the sea of social media over the last nine months I've made many connections in the library and information science world, the social media enthusiasts world, and the nonprofit technology world. In the back of my mind, increasingly over the last three months, has been the knowledge that I need to up my game as far as having a recognizable professional presence on the web beyond Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-51780033233196310412009-04-30T20:28:00.001-07:002009-04-30T20:42:58.378-07:00I'm not dead yet, just piningSo I haven't blogged here much, it's true. I've been pretty busy Friendfeeding and Twittering and developing presences in social media land for my organization, the Resource Center of the Corporation for National and Community Service.I did a few posts towards the end of last year on another blog, Swimming in a Sea of Social Media. I thought I should have a separate blog, since I originally Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-28034049486416379972008-12-12T01:23:00.000-08:002009-07-17T15:14:04.225-07:00Spare Me the Gordian Knot - My Brain HurtsEarlier this week Robert Scoble posted a tongue-in-cheek post, 10 Reasons Why Twitter is for You and Friendfeed is Not in which he suggested that Friendfeed required a bit more of its users because there are a variety of ways to use it, the character limit is much longer, and the search engine is more sophisticated, among other things.In the comments on the blog post several people proclaimed Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-46137663795753091352008-12-06T03:20:00.000-08:002009-07-17T15:14:04.238-07:00Google Friend Connect Might Be Cooler Than I ThoughtOK, at first this seemed pretty dumb. What does it mean, exactly, to "join" a blog? Isn't it more meaningful to show support by adding the feed to google reader, leaving a comment, or showing up as a visitor in the MyBlogLog (even though the latter is such a tongue twister it always makes me think of Bob Loblaw's Law Blog)?But tonight I caught the first glimpse of some of the value. A Friendfeed Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6031888.post-87428040852275141052008-12-04T21:39:00.001-08:002009-07-17T15:14:04.269-07:00Have Your Cake and Eat it, TooApparently I can't stop singing the praises of Friendfeed. The thing about it, and perhaps there are other lifestreaming / microblogging services with this same feature, but the beauty of it is that it combines synchronous and asynchronous modalities so seamlessly. Like a busy Craigslist forum, IRC, or live chat room, the conversation sometimes zips along at a furious pace in real time. But Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0