OMG! Britannica.com!

An article I wrote has been indexed by Britannica.com!

http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/38313406/Data-Security-for-Libraries-Prevent-Problems-Dont-Detect-Them

Wow! Gosh!

Visit Finland Thanks to Rotary

If only I had had a blog when I visited Nepal and West Bengal in 2004 on a Group Study Exchange trip sponsored by the Rotary Foundation.

I hope that Rotary District 7470 sends bloggers to Finland in 2010. What an opportunity would go to waste otherwise, now that Finland has declared universal broadband access a right.

To be eligible you must be between 25 and 40 years old, a full-time professional, either living or working in one of the following New Jersey counties:

• Morris
• Essex
• Warren
• Sussex

(If you're not from those counties, check with your local Rotary club. Many districts participate in the Group Study Exchange program. You could find yourself visiting some other foreign country for an entire month, staying in the homes of Rotary Club members and seeing your host country from the inside out.)

The team going to Finland will go from March 21 to April 21, 2010. You need to get your application in by November 30, so email fgeraghty@verizon.net now.

Social Networking

"Katharine?" You sounded very nervous. "As you know, I have just finished my training here at (famous insurance firm marketing financial instruments). I wonder if I could..."

Of course you can come over to my house and give me your spiel. It's a tough economy for everybody, and you are changing careers. I'm sure that they just put your whole class in front of a bank of phones and told you to call everybody you know. How frightening!

I've known you for 20 years. I very much want you to succeed. I probably am not going to invest anything with you, but at least now you can turn around and give a thumbs-up to your supervisor. "I made an appointment!"

Who knows? Maybe I'll think of somebody who can use your services. Or maybe I'll help you think of a way to market yourself and set yourself apart from the competition.

Good job--keep tapping that social network! But, if I may, two words of advice.

1) I have made other people irate when I did not end up buying their product even after (or especially after) their drawn-out sales pitches. I trust that if I do not buy. we will still be friends. After all, I am not really interested in your product. I'm meeting with you because you're my friend and it's good karma.

2) Your call displayed on my caller ID as "UNAVAILABLE." That's the same as screaming "SALES PITCH"--you might not get as many pickups that way. I did pick up, we did make the appointment. And after we hung up I remembered that I had a conflict. I wanted to call you back, but you had not left me your number. You might want to try leaving your number next time, just in case. :)

See you this afternoon. And, good luck!

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

Just finished reading Junk Science Judo: Self-defense against Health Scares and Scams by Stephen J. Milloy. Milloy seems to assume that poor science makes headlines because scientists, peer reviewers and editors do not understand the scientific method, and that if he just explained it, the scientific community and the media would see the error of their ways. They would refuse to report on inconclusive but alarming results.

How touching. Milloy does not know that there is an entire marketing technique abbreviated as FUD. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt--deliberate dissemination of disinformation about a product or service in order to confuse consumers and dissuade them from supporting the competition.

Blogs make FUD easier than ever. If I wanted to, I could say disturbing things about my competition here on this blog, and encourage my friends to leave similar comments to boost the PageRank. I could moderate any ripostes from the maligned competition. And if I were truly devious, I could have other websites pick up my posting--websites that do not allow comments. No peer review, just my slanderous word out there in the blogosphere forever.

It's hard to get other people's blog posts taken down, even if they are blatantly inaccurate. Another blogspot blogger took some of my press releases last winter and ran them through a blender, but left my name and telephone number intact. They looked like real press releases, albeit written on hallucinogens. The purpose of those postings was to create links back to an Internet pharmacy site. See the "report abuse" choice at the top of this page? I complained to Google, which owns blogspot. I filled out their online form (the only way they allow complaints) but I when they requested it I did not send a scan of my driver's license because they did not offer me an encrypted transmission. Because I did not send it, Google has not acted. Stalemate.

Fortunately, the bogus press releases do not spread FUD, except on the question of whether I might be blogging while intoxicated. But I give this example to show how easy it is to post misinformation, and how hard it is to remove bad information. Who needs the New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Medical Association if they can start a free and anonymous blog and say whatever they want?

Do I believe everything Milloy writes about the inappropriate reporting of scientific studies? I don't know. And I find his web site, JunkScience.com, more strident and abrasive than the book. But I do think that as long as people are out there perpetrating FUD, we all need to be aware of it lest we wind up, as Milloy quotes Carl Sagan's foreboding

of an America in my children's generation or my grandchildren's generation...when clutching our horoscopes, our critical faculties in steep decline, unable to distinguish between what's true and what feels good, we slide almost without noticing, into superstition and darkness.

On a similar subject but from an entirely different section of the library, I also just finished reading How to Rig an Election by Allen Raymond and Ian Spiegelman. Raymond is the former top GOP operative who served time in federal prison for jamming the Democratic call center phone lines during the 2002 New Hampshire Elections.

Raymond did not go to the pokey for his political FUD. Having actors portraying urban men calling conservative, potentially racist, households to urge them to vote for the Democratic candidate, in order to scare them into voting Republican is just business as usual, I guess. Ugh. Between shenanigans like that and Operation Bid Rig is it any wonder The Star-Ledger, the largest paper in New Jersey, endorsed independent candidate for governor Chris Daggett?

Adrenaline gets our attention. But we have to keep questioning the source of the information that makes our hearts race, lest we be frightened into acting against our own best interests by cynical purveyors of fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Branding Ads

One thing I like about creating ads for my church is being sure that when I call to book the space, no salesperson says to me, "What's the purpose of the ad? Is it just general branding or do you want the customer to do something?"

Now, duh.

I confess, there have been times that I've run ads just because my boss said, "Take out an ad in the New York/New Jersey Issue of the Widget Journal." I suppose you could call those branding exercises.

But usually, if I have fought for the money and the management approval for an ad, I want results. I want the phones to ring. I want extra bodies in the pews. At the end of the day I want to be able to prove that the time and money I put into the project had measurable results.

Ad salespeople who ask if I just want to brand must imagine me rolling around in stacks of loose greenbacks like autumn leaves, uncertain what else to do with them.

Thanks for letting me share.

Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us

I rarely 'fess up to the years I spent performing and managing customer service. It seems quotidian compared to my current glamorous marketing duties.

And yet, marketing and customer service are mirror twins. Marketing targets and attracts the customers, then it hands them off to customer service. Customer service has the longer-term job of keeping marketing's promises--and of keeping the customer satisfied.

I read with great interest Your Call Is (not that) Important to Us: Customer Service and What It Reveals about Our World and Our Lives by Emily Yellin. Most of us "get" customer service. We understand how voicemail works, and how companies use customer relationship management (CRM) phone trees to try to keep us away from an actual expensive live operator.

What we don't all know is how those CRM systems work, what the best ones are accomplishing and the unintended consequences of the systems that make it deliberately hard to communicate.
I never thought about the relationship between the corporate toll-free number and longer wait times, but of course it's true that if the company is paying for a WATS line it feels free to keep me on hold--if I were paying for that air time I would revolt or hang up.

As much as companies may wish that I would serve myself by locating the right person through their phone tree or by referring to their website, telephone service is still a valuable outreach to customers who either don't have Internet access, don't read the language, or have a difficulty spanning departments that they can't shove into just one box.

I bookmarked page 84 in the chapter To Send Us Your Firstborn, Please Press or Say "One," glad to learn that I have allies among the experts.

a big pet peeve among top speech technology designers like Springer is the phrase, "Please listen carefully, as soon of our menu options have changed"....He thinks it should be banished from all speech systems, calling it "extremely controlling." And he asks, "Why take up eight seconds to say something so condescending?"

19500 words

And so to bed

maybe a novella by tomorrow?

Today I have only accomplished a few over 5000 words, bringing my total up to 12,600. Clearly I am not going to write 60,000 words by the end of the day tomorrow, but I believe I can write a respectable novella. I "just" need another 5000 words to hoist me over the 17,500 mark.

53,000 Words to Go

Thanks for asking. My word count yesterday was 7,000.

I'm aiming for a 60,000-word novel. If you divide that over the three days of the contest, that means I should be writing 20,000 words a day. Yikes.

Back to work.

Wish Me Luck, Please

As I embark once again on the 3-day novel contest. Writing a novel is intimidating; I don't believe I can get it perfect so I'm reluctant to start. If I know I only have three days, how perfect can it be? I lose that fear.

In fact the novel I wrote for the contest in 2007 was rather dull, but how proud I was for completing it. Let's hope for better results this time.

Today's ad for Sunday School Registration

The ad is due today: a quarter-page in the local paper. It's a lot of money for one church, but if I can get four to chip in it's a little over $100 apiece.

So far, three churches have agreed to participate. Wish me luck.

Now all I need is ad copy. How does this sound?

Increase your child's life expectancy by 8 years

• Improve her attitude at school
• Increase his school participation
• Reduce her risk from alcohol, tobacco and drugs
• Reduce his chance of committing a crime

The benefits of Sunday School go way beyond learning Bible stories. Bring your child to a local (denomination name) church for a Sunday morning education with lifelong advantages.

This September, the (denomination name) churches below are beginning a new Sunday School year. Please visit the churches or call the numbers below to learn more about the valuable lessons waiting for your child in Sunday School.

I have to add this, because my denomination goes by a different brand name outside the United States: The Episcopal Church is known in other parts of the world as the Anglican Church. Remember, wherever you are,

The Episcopal Church Welcomes You

I am writing this to collect my thoughts because I will be throwing the actual ad together quickly during my lunch hour.

If the facts above interested you, you may want to visit The Life Benefits of Regular Church Attendance

I Wish I'd Said That

(T)he more you look at Gerrymandering and partisan redistricting, the more egregious it is: it enables representatives to choose their constituents, instead of the other way around.

Dennis Kucinich likened himself to spinach because they were both good for you. And look how far that got him.

When I opened What You Should Know about Politics...but Don't by Jessamym Conrad, I was afraid it would be as edifying and unamusing as spinach. I can't say that What You Should Know is the perfect beach read, but it has enough insights and witticisms like the one above that I am enjoying it.

Semantic Stretch II: Low Redefinition

Julian Baggini has another name for semantic stretch: low redefinition. In The Duck that Won the Lottery: 100 New Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher, Baggini writes.

The advertising industry often uses low redefinition to make the ordinary sound extraordinary. My personal favorite is the wide use of "passionate."....This devalues the truly passionate, whose ardor is now put on a par with a corporate desire to make good curtain fittings.

You could say that semantic stretch or low redefinition is the act of appropriating a word or symbol that people have learned to respect (such as "passionate") for one's own personal gain.

This just in-- Tiffany Sharples tells us in the August 10 Time Magazine that words really do have power. Using profanity allowed study participants to withstand greater discomfort, and it decreased their perception of the intensity of pain. "(P)eople should not overuse profanity," Time quotes Richard Stephens, lead author of the study in question. "...it blunts [swearwords] of their power when you do need them."

So, you semantic stretchers and low redefiners, stop sapping words of their power. Appropriating words to promote your product is just as dishonest as counterfeiting LiveStrong bracelets or concrete certification tests or antivirus software.

Ps. No one is more surprised than me that this is my 100th blog posting. Thank you very much for continuing to read and post comments. kh

I wish I could hear this speech

It may interest you that in my valedictory address to my graduating students (I was Program Director of the Master of Science in Information Assurance in the School of Graduate Studies... from 2002 to 30 April 2009), my topic will be _kindness._ I will specifically be mentioning the unpardonable rudeness of some professionals (!) towards public relations personnel. I have never understood why anyone would wantto be rude to someone doing her job.

An editor sent me this email on Friday. I sure wish I could hear the speech!

Clever Swag

If as a marketer I am going to hand out a promotional item, I want it to have three attributes,

1. I want the item not to cost too much, because I want to hand out a lot of them
2. I'm willing to pay more for an item that is so clever that I believe people will hang on to it, or even show it to their friends and family
3. Most importantly, I want the recipient I give it to to pause for at least a microsecond and think about the organization I am promoting.

I once directly stole an idea from a church in Colorado, figuring that no one could accuse me of poaching in their intended market. At a street fair on a hot a dry day, the church set up a booth and handed out cups of cold water. My church did the same thing. We still don't know if we had extra Sunday visitors because of the booth, but it was so inexpensive that it really didn't matter. The fairgoers appreciated it, especially the bagpipers, who guzzled the stuff.

On Saturday I saw two more clever ideas for swag. I attended the Self Magazine Workout in the Park in Central Park in New York. I intended to arrive early because I recalled that the lines for the free give-aways were very long when I attended two years ago. Getting in line for promotional items would have kept me away from the exercise classes. I preferred to take the classes, but I didn't want to miss any good promotions, either.

Actually, I did not get their early, but it didn't matter. The lines for promotional items were much shorter. Marketing departments are cutting back on spending. Last time a plastic surgeon gave away handbags. This time my most expensive gift was probably the Asics backpack. Last time Physicians Formula gave away compacts. This time they gave away lip gloss.

I am looking forward to using both of these gifts. But the gifts that made me say, "Wow!" as a marketer were the ones that the users really appreciated and that cost next to nothing.

The Jell-O people had a challenge. The Workout in the Park took place on a warm day at 105% humidity (according to my personal barometer). They could have arranged for refrigeration and handed out thousands of 2-ounce cups of Jell-o with teeny spoons, but that would have been a lot of work.

I'm not even sure I took one of their give-aways; it was a coupon for your next purchase of Jell-O. Yawn. And yet their booth was one of the most popular at the event. Why? Because they invested $50 in Hula Hoops. Women flocked to the booth to twirl their hips and recall their baby boom childhoods, days of Wham-O and Jell-O.

"Where did you get that?" I importuned a fellow attendee. I had just finished an exercise class. As I said, it was 105% humidity. Instead of perspiration cooling me down, the moisture in the air was condensing back on my brow. This young woman had a bandanna. It clashed with my shirt but I didn't care. I wanted that bandanna, to stop the sweat from dripping into my eyes. She pointed me to the Ford booth. Way to go, Ford! Other than the fact that it was a special Ford calico print, this was a very ordinary inexpensive bandanna, but that does not stop me from being grateful for it.

I'll have to try hard to think of give-aways that inexpensive and memorable.

Clash!

What's a marketer to think when the Economist is saying

The downturn will also accelerate the use of social media, such as blogs and social-networking sites, by consumers looking for intelligence on firms and their products
(From Buy, Buy to Bye-Bye)

.at the same time that the AP is saying

Call it online sociability fatigue.....As social networking grows, from stream-of-consciousness Twitter to buttoned-up LinkedIn, even some of the very young people who've helped drive these sites could use a break.
(Are You a Twit If You Don't Want to Twitter?)

?

Marketing Intellectual Property

I never really thought much before about how marketing an idea is a lot like marketing any other intellectual property, a manuscript, for example.

Then I read License Your Invention: Sell Your Idea & Protect Your Rights with a Solid Contract by Attorney Richard Stim. Chapter 5 has a long section warning against marketing scams.

Promoting an idea is an extreme test of marketing ability. All you can sell is the sizzle; you don't have any steak. Stim says that some marketers are not up to the challenge. He describes the "Invention Developers" law of 1999 and how it protects inventors from bad marketers. Definitely read the book for more information.

I learned more by talking for a long time to Charles Wieland, III, at Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney, about the patent process. He was both knowledgeable and helpful. If I had a patentable idea he could help me with, I would have signed up with him on the spot.

To Every Cow Her Calf

"as to every cow her calf, so to every book its offspring"

Having now taught, bought, begged for, and bartered copywriting, I enjoyed reading Intellectual Property, edited by Jennifer Peloso.

Jeff Beale reminded me of the 6th-century copyright decision above in Broken Links and Broken Laws: Copyright Confusion Online.

The most interesting article in the review was Plagiarism by Denise Hamilton, with its profile of the students most likely to copy their essays and why.

Ups and Downs

Up: I did not want to speak at the public meeting last night about the proposed development of Oakwood Park. I felt I did not know enough about the subject.

I recalled that I had to appear at planning board meetings in the past. For those meetings a friend (an attorney, a gifted public speaker and reluctant political advocate) had advised me at those times that all I needed to do at the meeting was to state my name and residence, and that I opposed the proposal. That was sure a lot easier than mustering arguments and putting them to the elected officials.

Up: decided to research. Called the NJ DEP and spoke to someone in the Green Acres program. In case he was mistaken, I omit his name here. He said that according to Green Acres regulations, the property holders needed to inform the DEP 30 days before any public discussion about a transfer of title. He said that the DEP had not been notified.

This, I thought, was real information that I could proudly bring to the mic. Democracy in action.

Up: Called the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. Because I was too busy writing down my interlocutor's suggestions, I omit her name here. She gave me some great information about the ROSI (open space inventory), and about how to ask about impervious surface coverage.

Up: Looked up the New Providence Master Plan online. It was a productive lunch hour.

Down: Called my friend the attorney. He said my recollection was poor. He said that I could just mention that I opposed the action, but that it would be far better to muster the arguments.

Up: Attended the meeting. Even though I was not perfectly prepared, it was definitely better to be there in person than to learn about it after the fact and grouse about it in private.

Down: Sounded dumb at the mic. They were about to close the meeting because there appeared to be no more speakers from the floor. It was then or never so I approached the microphone.

I asked my three questions.

"What kind of synthetic turf?" and "Have you consulted your impervious surface coverage requirements?" got the "We don't know but maybe they will answer that at next week's meeting."

"Have you notified the DEP?" got "Of course we did. We have been discussing with" (did not have pen handy at the mic to write down his name). In the end my questions sounded random and not very pointed.

Up: Maybe the fact that I did not sound like the brightest crayon in the box encouraged some of the speakers who came after me to air their questions. Democracy is not just for those accustomed to microphones. It's for everyone.

Down: Many of the people who spoke after me sounded much more intelligent. Good thing that this was a public hearing and not a competition...

Up: I felt very web 2.0 blogging about the meeting as it happened.

Up: the meeting petered out around 9:30. Other meetings I have attended have lasted till midnight.

The mayor's public letter said that the borough council had discussed this issue at its December 08 meeting, which was televised. There was an article in the local paper at the time. The minutes of the meeting are online.

I could have checked any of those sources, instead of being gobsmacked last week learning about last night's discussion in the Independent Press. (Kudos to Mike Neavill!)

I definitely should be following my local government more closely. On the other hand, there are only 24 hours in a day. How many of them do I need to devote to the government?

I want to be able to trust that my government is going to pretty much do what I think they should do. I want to be able to trust that if the government is planning to do something really radical, the press will let me know.

Too bad eternal vigilance is so darned time-consuming, and, at times, humbling.

Brian Flanigan's Bons Mots

Brian Flanigan, Planning Board Member, says that he is concerned about the park.

"The problem is that the public hasn't had a voice on this project....it's of a scope and of an intensity that may not be appropriate for this site.....This is really in the heart of a residential neighborhood.....The uses that I'm afraid that this intensity of development will preclude" are the passive uses, the spontaneous uses.

He is also concerned about turfing over the greensward. "If you're going to make that decision, it can't be made in a rush....If the only way out of this is to give Garwood the money, let's give it to Garwood.....Please, let's take more time with this and give more consideration to the intangible aspects of it."

Brian enjoyed two rounds of applause.

Chain Link Fence

Gee, the Mayor's glowing letter http://www.newprov.org/pdflibrary/OakwoodParkMayors%20Letter%20March2009.pdf

neglected to mention anything about 10-foot high fences around the park.

Someone Did His Homework

Whatever this guy's name is, he's asking good questions.

How long has the Union County Open Space Fund been in existence? 7 years
How much money is in the fund? 11.2 million

So there's a precedent where we could have received money and not have deeded it to the county, am I correct? No, said Devanney.
Should the renovation exceed the project 3.5 million, is there any liability on the part of the borough. No, said Devanney

He's from New Providence, but I couldn't hear his name. It's a shame that people here are allergic to microphones.

Oh, and the next guy asked another good one: why wouldn't the county use that money to acquire open space, instead of investing it in Oakwood Park which is clearly in no danger of development?

What Is Synthetic Turf?

Darn, I was really hoping that there would be hours of questions, that other people would ask all my questions and I would never have to go near the mike.

It is always a bad sign when people at these meetings profess ignorance of crucial details. Say the store next door is applying for a variance, including installing a dumpster. As them what time their garbage pickup will be. Their eyes will glaze over. "Oh, I don't know," as if such details were too petty for them to consider.

It makes a difference when the truck comes at 5 in the morning.

So I asked, "This synthetic turf. Is that the kind made out of ground up old rubber tires?"

"We, uh, don't know," was the response, but they were sure that that would be addressed in the April 2 meeting.

The future taxpayer sitting next to me was against rubber "turf," because coaches won't let athletes carry any foods on the turf. Unlike growing grass, the "turf" stains. Also unlike growing grass, "turf" can get up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Maybe I'm a snob, but I don't like the stuff.

Not Surprisingly

Freeholder Scanlon claims that Union County will "rehabilitate" Oakwood Park.

Frankly it does not need rehabilitation. "New Providence has the land; the trust fund has the money," she adds.

The borough had already designed the park before it went to the county for the grant? The county says it was "disappointed" about that. Obviously, this has been in the works already.

After the meeting started 15 minutes late there were 45 minutes of laudatory speeches by the mayor and freeholders. Before any public comment, they announced that the discussion of the Oakwood Park resolution was done and have now opened the floor to the public.

First speaker, Tom Getzendanner of Summit, here to praise the county's cooperation with Glenside Park, and apparently using the opportunity to ask the freeholders not to take a pension holiday.

Next speaker I am not familiar with, asking a question about the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. What, did they convince people to come here and filibuster?

I'm sure they announced that they were opening up the floor for comments about the agenda items, didn't they?

Are we having fun yet?

300 People at Oakwood Park Council Meeting

Maybe some of these 300 people feel like me. I can't do anything about the fact that Geithner is a scofftax. I can't do anything about AIG spending its bailout money on bonuses.

But when the county and the borough council seem to decide unilaterally to redevelop a 15-acre park, that's when we decide to speak out.

So here we all are, ready to tell the mayor and the freeholders what we really think.

Here's what the mayor says:
"We don't want to have lights on those fields," which seems unlikely. Who would not want to draw out the number of available hours after someone spends $3.5 million to resurface?

He has already claimed that the New Providence Master Plan calls to develop this park. I read the Master Plan today, particularly the Recreation Plan Element, but it does not call for developing the park, only for upgrading playfields at schools.

Vis a vis park lands, the master plan does not call for development. It calls for monitoring the facilities. It calls for expanding open space/recreation inventory, but not for developing the park.

Today I called the Green Acres department of the NJ DEP. I learned that At least 30 days prior to any public hearing to be held on the proposed transfer of parkland, the local government is supposed to advise the DEP of the hearing. As of 12:30 today, the NJ DEP had not been notified.

"We did our due diligence," says Mayor Thoms.

Stay tuned for more info as it happens.

Fair Use/Abuse

As a content writer, I am very much interested in the issue of copyright abuse. With screen scraping, it's easy to do. (CNN might even accuse me of it for my posting on McCain and Fannie Mae.) And, what the heck? It's just words. I hear that a lot: "Just put in some content," as if no actual work was involved.

I had to work for that content. I had to gather and organize all the material, then try to inject some original thoughts. The stakeholders had to approve it, and then I had to get the legal department to sign off on it. It's not "just" content. It's work and you should respect it.

An article in the New York Times points out that publishers object to extensive quotes, even if the writer who appropriated them gives back links. The person reading the rehashed article may not follow the links, so the original publisher is not getting the eyeballs he or she needs to win advertising dollars. Another point the Times did not bring up is that Google takes points off PageRank for duplicated content. That's why everybody wants original content, both for their readers' pleasure, and for better search engine rankings. But, as I said before, conceiving and delivering original content is a lot of work. Which is why it is so much easier just to scrape someone else's off the screen.

Chris Crum of WebProNews invites us all to weigh in on this matter.

Marketing Communications Metrics

At two round table discussions today "Computing the PR-Sales Link: How Leading Brands Organize the Integration of Communications with Sales" and "Linking Your Communications Efforts to the Bottoms Line--Measuring How You're Being Perceived by Different Audiences and Where to Adjust Your Messaging to Make the Greatest Impact" I learned that other marketing communications professionals are as stymied as I am about how to prove the value of our work.

Every other PR professional I spoke to, including people who worked for agencies, international airlines and Ivy League universities, all felt frustrated by the lack of convincing benchmarks. And all this time I thought that it was just me. I thought that if I read the right book, took the right class, diligently studied the metrics in VOCUS, I could figure out how to demonstrate how my pickups resulted in sales.

Thanks to the Business Development Institute for the Communications, Reputation and Sales Driving the Top Line Conference today, for letting me know that I am not alone.

Leadership and Communication Workshop in March

Books give me great ideas, but they don't give me feedback.

That's why I'm glad to see that my friend Gloria Pierce is organizing a new course of the Individual Development Program. Under the auspices of the Business and Professional Women (BPW) of New Jersey, Gloria taught me personal communication and leadership skills in the ID program 15 years ago. (Frankly, I did not enjoy seeing my skills on videotape. Fortunately, the tape was VHS, so no one will be able to watch it anymore!)

When I read about her new class in the Independent Press I called her to wish her well with this course. She told me that this was a new, revamped ID program. She sent me the details, included below. That convinced me to sign up myself, instead of simply recommending the course to others. Men are welcome, too, Gloria said.

The IDP Leadership program will be March 14 and March 21 from 8:30 to 4. It will be somewhere in the Cranford or Kenilworth area, but the exact location will depend on the size of the class. For BPW members the cost is $50; everyone else pays $75. If you want to sign up, please call Gloria at (973) 375-5445.

IDP LEADERSHIP PROGRAM of the BPW/USA

The IDP Leadership Program is BPW/USA’s leadership development series. The program will assist people to succeed in meeting their goals for community action and Change.

The modules are:

Module 1: Historical perspective and current opportunities of BPW defining membership opportunities, objective, mission, vision, and legislative platform.

Module 2: Understanding peers and employees behavioral and communication styles – managing for improved performance.

Module 3: Reviewing behavioral styles and learning to recruit the right person for the right program/task.

Module 4: Learn how to create presentations

Module 5: Learn to give oral presentations

Module 6: Networking – A Skill for Life.

Module 7: Interviewing tips and techniques.

Module 8: Negotiating skills for the workplace and beyond.

Module 9: Developing leadership qualities that will help you rise to the top!

Module 10: Using parliamentary process can streamline any meeting and committee.

Module 11: Business etiquette: standing out from the rest by understanding how to be the best!

Module 12: Understand your advocacy role in your business and community.

Module 13: Learn about governing values – what is important to you, how do you see the world, and what do you believe in? Develop your goals.

Module 14: Develop media relationships for your business or organization.


©2005 BPW/USA 1

Web 2.0 Acid Test

I waited all day Thursday for the New York Times to call me.

I felt that Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece on the 11th was disingenuous in claiming that America's economic might was due solely to its "really flexible, really open economy" which tolerated creative destruction. I wanted to remind him and the editors that the European settlers had encountered a vast land rich in natural resources. If they found indigenous people living on the best land, they ejected them. In short, our success is also due to the wealth we have commandeered or stumbled upon, not only to economic policy.

I could have registered my opinion instantaneously by logging in to NYTimes.com and leaving a comment. But I really wanted an editor to read it and say, "Hey, this is interesting. My readers may want to think about that." If that had happened, they would have called me. But they didn't, and I have not posted my riposte, at least not until here and now.

That, I guess, is the litmus test of Web 2.0-ness. Is it important to you to put your opinion out on the Internet, or is it important to have an imprimatur? If, like me, you want the imprimatur, you may want to read Joel Stein's column '25 Things' we really don't need in today's LA Times.

Scanners

If you scroll down this page and look on the left-hand side you will see that I have replaced the old picture of me.

With a scanner, anyone who can doodle can now be a graphic artist. Obviously. So why are we still seeing so much clip art?

Is This the Future of the Media?

A friend of mine's story is troubling me. She said she sent a press release to a trade journal this week. She received an email back telling her that the publication was no longer accepting press releases. If she wanted her release to be published, she would need to become an author on the publisher's new site. Then she could submit her press releases.

She needs the 46 industry journals the publisher represents more than they need her. Ergo, she became an "author" on the site. Then she was told she would need to create her own "topic" under which she could submit her press release. It took her an hour to create the topic, she said, because she needed to devise a slogan and a mission statement, and she needed to choose a few articles from the publisher's archives to populate the topic. In essence, she was creating a mini-website for the benefit of the publisher.

I think I understand the point of view of the publisher. Ad revenues are falling, and with email it is easier than ever to send press releases, so the publisher is deluged with material. For search engine optimization, the publisher needs unique content. But because ad revenue is flagging, the publisher can't afford to pay reporters to turn those press releases into fresh thoughts and insights. "I know," the publisher proclaims. "I'll have those overpaid PR people do it instead. And if I give them each their own bylines, they'll take professional pride in their work, so they'll give me original content. And, eh, maybe some of them won't take off. That's okay, because the same people who aren't shelling out for advertising are still paying their PR people to do things like this."

My friend glumly reported that she was proposing titles for topics such as "Database Management Journal." "Actually, I would love to be an editor," my friend said, "but I want to edit something I know about. I don't want to be forced to edit a topic just so I can submit a few press releases."

Let me assure you, when my friend edits the DatabaseManagementJournal.publisher.com because the publisher can't or won't pay an editor, we are all in trouble. She knows little to nothing about databases. Any application that depends on her advice may very well fail.

Put editing back in the hands of professionals.

SEO and PR

I really would appreciate your feedback on this question. Maybe I am not rubbing elbows with enough, or the right kind of, people.

But what I am finding, by and large, is that people who understand SEO do not understand PR and what it does. The ones with the best grasp of Web 2.0 stuff don't understand how the edited media work.

Is that a gross oversimplification? The reason I ask is that I would like to give a speech to PR professionals about SEO. I want to tell them that if they can learn about SEO they will have a huge advantage over the current SEO experts.

But I don't want to tell them that if it is inaccurate. Of course, there is always a person here or there who masters both. But in your experience, in general, do you find it to be true?

Sen. Winfrey?

Just when I think US politics can't get any more ridiculous, yesterday Rod Blagojevich wanted to nominate Oprah Winfrey to serve in the Senate next to Kirsten Gillibrand.

Nominating Oprah is a fine idea. She's been so much in the public eye that if she had any dirty secrets beyond her disordered eating we would all know about them. I don't know her grasp of politics, but I know she speaks more articulately than Sarah Palin and Caroline Kennedy.

I object, though, to the idea of Blagojevich nominating anyone, even if Aung San Suu Kyi were a citizen. Once he made it clear that he thought he should profit from the nomination, that power should have been wrested from his greedy hands. And somebody should have fed him a bar of soap.

Kirsten Gillibrand

I am so proud of Kirsten Gillibrand. New York Gov. David Paterson has picked her to fill Hillary Clinton's seat in the Senate.

Kirsten and I attended Emma Willard School together. She impressed me when she spoke there about women and power last year--and now she will have a lot more power.

Kirsten, good luck.

InDesign Lust

I haven't always been just the content lady. At other jobs I was the only marketing person in the company. When we needed ads, I taught myself Illustrator and Quark.

So when I read Art Direction + Editorial Design by Yolanda Zappaterra I found myself itching to have a little more control again over the way my words looked on the page or screen. Read the book for yourself and see if it doesn't cause you to say, "Wow, I wish I could do something like that."

I could, I said to myself, if only I had a graphic design program. And if the graphic design program also included Dreamweaver, I could apply ideas to my websites as well...

Then I remembered that I have two graphic design projects coming up that might justify purchasing software: people close to me will celebrate milestone birthdays this year, and their families are reuniting to celebrate with them. I could buy InDesign, I said to myself, and produce keepsake books for the occasion.

Then I looked at the price of InDesign. Yikes! I decided that my websites looked good enough with their template design, and I could put the birthday books together with a flatbed scanner and a Sharpie marker.

Adobe does offer the 30-day free trial. If I end up going for it, you will hear about it here.

Wall between Editorial and Advertising

Last night at dinner I ran into a reporter for our local weekly paper. I'm sorry to hear that they had two rounds of cutbacks last week.

PC Magazine published its last print edition this month.

Times are tough for direct print media. It's harder than ever for me to convince people to pay for advertising. Print advertising is probably ineffective.

• If I want to buy something, I look online, not in print.
• The media that I respect do not allow advertising dollars to affect their editorial decisions, of course.

This means that if I do convince the people with the checkbooks to pay for print ads, the ads will probably not reach the buyers. Even if I spend, editors may still allow unfavorable coverage of my product.

That said, I bear in mind two things

• Print media are businesses, too. Subscription revenue does not pay their bills; without advertising, they sink.
• The editorial process gives direct print coverage and its online versions much more credibility than unedited usergroups and blogs like this one.

I believe in print media, and I believe in spending on advertising to support them. It's hard for advertisers to point to direct benefits, but if we allow our print media to sink, we have lost something important.

Keep It Simple, Sweetie

I haven't had any recent requests to dumb down my content, thank heaven. But what if I decided to write all marketing content at a 10th grade level? As it happens, Word has a language and grammar checker (Flesch Kincaid), which evaluates the grade level of the highlighted content or the document. Theoretically, I could tweak all my work until it was appropriate for 10th graders.

When I looked into the Flesch Kincaid algorithm I was disappointed. As far as I can see, all it evaluates is the length of the sentences, the lengths of the individual words, and the number of sentences per paragraph.

1) The orangutan was encountered by the multitudinous elephantine community. (Woo—Flesch Kincaid grade 19.3)

2) The large elephant herd met the orangutan. (Flesch Kincaid grade 7.3)

I would smack down any English student or content writer who submitted sentence #1 to me, even though its Flesch Kincaid score was more than twice that of sentence #2. Clearly, a higher Flesch Kincaid score does not indicate higher quality.

I would pay good money for a Strunk & White scoring algorithm, though.

Try the Flesch Kincaid scoring system for yourself in Word. Highlight any section of your document. Click , Go through the spelling and grammar check. At the end of the check you get a “readability statistics” box.

In case you’re wondering, this posting scores 8.0.

Just Wondering about the SuperBowl

The guys I work with talk about football all the time. I understand that I am not the only person with no interest whatsoever in watching football but who still watches the SuperBowl for the ads, especially if the snacks are good enough.

Besides, I didn't want to schedule a social occasion that might conflict with the big night. So back in December when I was filling out the 2009 calendar, I asked the football fan in the house when it was. "I don't know," he said.

So I asked the guys at work. None of them knew.

In case you're wondering now, I looked it up online at Superbowl.com. It appears to be February 1.

But what is it about the football fans? How come none of them knew when their big game was, the night of the biggest annual simultaneous toilet-flush and post-game domestic violence? Do they wait for their favorite tournament to sneak up and bite them on the butt?

Just wondering.

Pickypedia II

So much for last year's resolutions. I swore I would not do this again, yet here I am editing Wikipedia. Or not, because, as you can see, I am procrastinating by blogging.

When I put up the article about my church last May, people immediately slapped banners on it. The one that annoyed me the most was the one at the very top of the article that said, "This article does not cite any references or sources." I had kind of thought that the two articles from the New York Times were unimpeachable references.

More warnings at the bottom tell me that "This article about a building or structure in New Jersey is a stub," and "This article about a church or Christian place of worship in the United States is a stub." And if I visit the discussion page there are more banners from the WikiProject Christianity and the WikiProject Anglicanism.

I stopped editing Wikipedia after that experience. After taking a long time to learn to add the citations, the "lack of reference" banner disgusted me.

Now, though, I am dismayed to learn that I have forgotten everything I learned about citing sources on Wikipedia. This is unfortunate, because the company where I work is having trouble with its Wikipedia article. We had a problem with our supply chain the week before Christmas. A Wikipedia editor added a mostly-truthful section about the problem on our article. So my job is either to remove the section or dress up the article so the edit is less conspicuous, all the while maintaining Wikipedia's vaunted neutrality.

We tried the "remove the section" approach, but this did not sit well with the Wikipedia community, which added it back. Fair enough, and we try to abide by the rules.

I discussed the question with my Wikipedia sponsor (How do I ask this editor why he or she did not add sections to our competitors' articles when similar problems have occurred?). In response, my sponsor slapped a "conflict of interest" banner at the top of our article.

The banners are raising my hackles. Especially, though, the charge of conflict of interest. Our product is rather dry. It's not like a church or civic organization, where people's deep emotional connections encourage them to ride the Wikipedia learning curve for several hours so they can write about it. Plus, the product is technical. Even if someone earnestly desired to write about it, he or she would face another steep learning curve in order to be able to describe it.

In short, the only people who are going to write about my product are the people who work for the company. (Or the people who work for the competition--infer what you will about the motives of the anonymous editor who gives only his/her IP address. Or someone with too much time on his or her hands, such as Dr. William Chester Minor.) Yet, this is an important product, one that every Internet user relies on to keep data transmission secure. Playing by the rules, in this case, is really difficult.

Okay, I feel better now. Thanks for letting me share. And best wishes for a healthy and peaceful new year.