Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

CIO magazine - what we're Reading Mon 26 Oct 09

The October 15th print edition of CIO magazine featured this blog in its "what we're Reading" section. This section is about "books, blogs and the latest leadership about IT, management and leadership". It's very flattering to be included. Thank you CIO magazine!

To those of you visiting my blog as a result of reading about it in CIO magazine, welcome! I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear your comments and suggestions.  The best part of running a blog are the conversations it starts. Please leave a comment.

I'd also like to thank Steve Francia  for alerting me to this as I on vacation last week when this came out and would have likely missed this in the crush of catching up. Check out Steve's blog, spf13, where he's "Living at the intersection of Business, Technology and Strategy".

CIO Insight - China Profile and Interview Wed 09 Sep 09

Li Xiaohui with with CIO Insight - China wrote a profile and interview piece about my non-traditional IT career, customer service orientation and interest in social media.  Translations from the Chinese are available via Bing or through Babelfish.  Neither translation is perfect but do manage to convey the general intent.

CIO.com Interview Tue 01 Sep 09

A few days ago Kristin Burnham with CIO.com published an interview with me for her article, Expand Your Brand.  In this article, Burnham also interviewed Kirsten Dixon, online reputation management expert and coauthor of Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand along with Chris Curran(@cbcurran on Twitter), CTO and partner at Diamond Management & Technology Consultants and creator of the "CIO Twitter Dashboard" and me on the use of social media.  As Burnham states, "The benefits of social media outweigh the downsides. It's time for CIOs to reach out."

12 CIOs Who Love Social Media Mon 29 Jun 09

Michael Eggebrecht on CIOZone published an article on the adoption of social media, 12 CIOs Who Love Social Media.  He writes "Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring social networking technology, as some large enterprises have opted to do, probably isn't the solution. But there are many CIOs who don't need to be told that -- they're already out there, blogging, twittering and networking on sites like CIOZone and Facebook."  Eggebrecht was kind enough to include me and this blog on that list.  Thank you, Michael.

Fluid CSS With A Sticky Footer Fri 20 Mar 09

Adventures In Programming

The title makes this sound a lot more interesting than it really should be but does describes my latest adventure in programming.  You may have noticed that my blog has a new format primarily regarding how the main column appears.  It is now a variable width or "fluid" column that varies with the size of the browser window to maximize the viewable area.

Back at the beginning of February I rolled out a new blog format with slightly wider columns and different font to help improve the readability.  At that time I really wanted to have a variable or fluid main column that adjusted to the available screen resolution.  Unfortunately at that time I didn't have a clue on how to do that so I set the page width to 1360 pixels and left it at that.

Guest Post - The Courage To Lead Mon 23 Feb 09

Terry Seamon is one of my favorite bloggers.  He writes Here We Are. Now What?, a blog dealing with leadership, transition, and as he says "Facilitating wisdom to make the world a better place."

He is running a series of guest posts on the topic "Leading in the Crisis" and has honored me by asking me to guest post on this topic.  You can find my post "The Courage To Lead" on his site.

Thank you Terry.

Comments and Trackbacks Sun 15 Feb 09

I love comments and trackbacks!  To keep these useful for everyone I've added a statement about my policy on Comments and Trackbacks.  You can always find the link to this in the footer at the bottom of the page if you have any questions.

Blog Design Updated Sun 01 Feb 09

Aimed at improving readability and reducing clutter

As you may have noticed I've redesigned my blog format yet again.  I've done this in the never-ending quest of making it more reader friendly.  It turned out to be an interesting learning experience as I don't know that much about CSS (cascading style sheets).

I've widened the columns to take advantage of the fact the most people now are using larger monitors and screen resolutions.  Along with this I've made two changes to hopefully improve the readability.

First, I've switched the main body font to Georgia and used some CSS spacing techniques to make it easier to read.

Second, I've continued the de-cluttering of the sidebars in addition to adding a color background to them to distinguish them from the main body.  Like a lot of bloggers I fell trap to the concept of adding a lot of badges and widget to my blog.  While all of them are useful to me the reality is they don't mean much to any of my readers.  So rather than clutter up the front page with badges and statistics that are of little interest to anyone other than me I thought it would be best to establish a separate page for them.  If by some chance you are interested in these you can always find the link in the page footer.

Now for a question.  On many of my posts I include a photo, usually from Flickr, related to the topic.  I've just started using the thumbnail versions to reduce the size so the main page should start opening faster as the older posts with larger photos flow to the legacy pages.  Should I keep using photos?  Do they add interest and value or just clutter?  Let me know what you think.

I still need to get a better banner and a new photo but it's one step at a time.  Let me know what you think and if you have any other suggested improvements.  Thank you for reading.

[Update Feb 3, 2009 - I've had to add a couple of widgets back to the front page as they have to be there to collect data - I'll keep it to a minimum.]

The 12for12K Challenge Sun 25 Jan 09

You may have noticed this banner in the right sidebar.  The concept behind it is really very simple.  As it states on The 12for12K Challenge website:

The 12for12k Challenge is the brainchild of Press Release PR owner Danny Brown. Inspired by the way that social media has changed so many lives for the better already with various charity promotions, Danny wanted to do something that was both easy to take part in and have the potential to change as many lives as possible.

The 12for12k Challenge started taking shape.

With statistics showing that the easier something is to remember and support, the more likelihood of people taking part. If a buzzword or catchphrase can be short and punchy, people remember it - this was the genesis of 12for12k, the acronym for the 12 for 12,000 Challenge.

The concept is simple:

• 12 months of the year
• 12 charities, 1 chosen every month
• 1200 people
• $10 donation per person, per charity, each month for 12 months, a total of just $120 per person over the year
• The goal - $12,000 per charity, $144,000 raised overall by December 31 2009

The hope is that by keeping the donation amount small but the donating numbers high, the 12for12k challenge will not only be simple, but doable. $10 per month should be an easy amount for most people to give. One less beer; one less pizza; one less magazine - is it too much to ask for so little that can benefit so many?

Let’s make history together.

You can find out more at 12for12K.org plus Danny Twitters about this (Twitter dannybrown) and of course there is a 12for12K Challenge Facebook group.

Give what you can.  Give what you think is right.

Make a difference today.

Privacy Policy Mon 12 Jan 09

Since I've started using third-party advertising on my blog I thought I should state my privacy policy to let everyone know about the information collected on this site.  You can find the privacy policy link at the bottom of every page.

You are encouraged to read the policy if you have any specific concerns but the heart of the policy is conveyed in the first two sentences.

"I'm not a lawyer so I'm to try to keep this simple and to the point.

First, I value your privacy as much as I value mine and I will not violate this trust."

"Privacy" photo by rponsaj