All Things Cahill

100 Years of change - Helen Algier

 

My grandmother, Helen McCowan Algier, turned 100 years old on Monday.  

“I never thought I’d live this long…” she notes.  

100 years of change.  Think about all the things she’s seen come and go…

• Telephones were a relatively new device, having been patented in 1876.  They were fairly rare in the rural parts of the country.
• Autos were rare, the first mass production started in 1902 by Ransom Olds in 1902.
• Airplanes were utterly bleeding edge, with the Wright Brothers having made the first flight in 1902.
• Computers were a far off dream.

The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal had an interesting article about Helen on Monday.  Some of the information I didn’t know:

She learned to drive at age 46.

“My husband told me I had to learn,” Algier said, because he traveled quite a bit as a salesman, and being able to drive would give her some independence.

We had a party on Saturday for her with her friends from Landis Homes, where she lives in independent living, as well as family from around the country.  Monday, we were going to have a small cake party at the restaurant she has lunch at everyday, Leola Family Restaurant, but unfortunately she had a fall and wasn’t able to go out. She’s doing fine and will no doubt be back to going out for lunch very soon.

During the party we used the wifi setup at Landis Homes to allow us to connect to Skype and video conference with my brother Craig’s daughter, Aliciia Cahill, who is in college at the University of Tampa. Many of the elderly in attendance marveled at how far technology has come.  

The event also marks the first time she hasn’t reminded me that when I was 3 I tried to compliment her by telling her she made hamburgers “almost as good as MacDonald’s.”

We all look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with Helen…

Going Amish

I’m in Pennsylvania Dutch Country for my grandmother’s 100th birthday - I’ll be back and blogging Wednesday.

Here are a couple pictures via the iPhone - many more to come off the digital later.

Friday Music Video: John Coltrane

I’m not certain the tune, but the Coltrane sound is unmistakeable and heartwrenching…with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones.

More on Coltrane…

Notice to Staff and Stakeholders: Reorg

Notice to Staff and Stakeholders: Reorg.

One of the funnier blog posts I’ve read in recent memory.  Ann Handley gets what is is like to be support staff for a teenager.

Greetings all staff and stakeholders of Coddled Teenage Boy Enterprises:

It has come to my attention that there has been some confusion about your roles and responsibilities within the organization, which has led to infighting, yelling, and name-calling—this happened just yesterday, prior to 7 AM. Such behavior is both unprofessional and upsetting, and it is my job as the CEO and central “brand” of this enterprise to address this situation before it begins to negatively affect morale as well as my performance in the marketplace, also known as “school and social life.”

I get similar messages from Self-Obsessed Tweener Girl Inc., especially when I have the gall to suggest that she ought to be dressed more than 5 minutes before the bus is scheduled to arrive.  Dogs have owners, cats have support staff and kids have slaves…;-)

9/11 - I Remember

I’ve either got too much to say or not enough, so I will simply say that I remember.  And I always will.

Tags: 9/11

Friday Music Video: John Mayer and Eric Clapton

I’m liking the videos from Vimeo more - the quality is much better.

http://www.vimeo.com/250364

Friday Music Video: Mission of Burma

To Edit or Not To Edit…

I was listening to This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte this morning and the gang got onto a topic that I’ve been thinking alot about lately: as bloggers, what should we do when we need to edit live posts?

The topic was prompted by Xeni Jardin’s purging of every single reference (among the hundreds) to Violet Blue on BoingBoing.com with no notice. That matter’s been covered to death but you can catch up with the story here in the LA Times.

Where I come in is this: I received an alpha software push yesterday, and since I hadn’t checked my personal email, I didn’t realize that’s what it was. I thought the software had gone to regular release, so I blogged about it. A little while later my buddy who pushed the software gave me a ring at the behest of his PR firm. They were a little concerned that they might lose some of the more mainstream press if they realized I’d scooped them.

My thinking was very simple on this issue: if I’d read my darned email, I never would have published. So I went ahead and unpublished the piece. Now I realize that would send a Journalism School professor into absolute fits. But my position is that I reserve the right to correct my mistakes, and I will do my best to make sure where it actually matters (such as a factual correction) to make a notation. Similarly, I do my best to disclose if I have a vested interest in something I right about.

So let’s take the case in point of my post on the Tampa Tribune last week. Morris noted that I’d had their name wrong in the first version of the post via my comments feature. So I commented back, saying that I’d fixed that. The question is, does merely noting the change (a day or two later) in the comments suffice? Or should I be noting changes in the body, say at the bottom with italics? Some suggest using the strikethrough to show that it’s been changed, but I really don’t like that.

Further to the point, I will frequently publish a post, then continue to edit, usually fixing formatting, spelling, etc. That’s exactly the case with this entire paragraph which I’ve added after I hit the publish button. In many cases, I fix things because as I give it a read, I find that I made absolutely no sense, or didn’t make my point as well as I could have. Does that actually necessitate a note? Or can I invoke the “15 minute rule” wherein editing anything I post is fair game for 15 minutes.

The bigger question is that as a blogger, how much time should I be spending trying to adhere to the old school standards of journalism?

Tags: bloggers, blogging standards, journalism school, leo laporte, this week in tech, violet blue, xeni jardin

Social Media - Participation Rates Much Lower Than We Thought…

Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester has a great post up entitled ” Why Some Don’t Need to Join the Conversation“. The basic premise is that even though social media has been so very hot in the past year or two, actual participation by users remains at a relatively low percentage of overall visitors.

To prove my point, let’s start with data: In most markets, (even youth) there are no bars that span 100% for creators. In fact, 18-24 year olds in United States only are creators 39% of the time. 45-54 year olds in UK only create online content a paltry 6%, although they are critics 11% of the time.

So what does this tell us? Not everyone is part of the online dialog exchange. Not everyone will ever be part of the online conversation.

This point has really been driven home lately to me as I’ve become more directly involved in the Reel-Time Community again. In discourse with a few readers, I’ve mentioned “well, you’ve only been a member for the past two years,” only to be told that they were actually lurkers back well into the last decade. In two distinct cases, that means they waited at least 8 years before registering or posting on a site they use almost daily.

So what’s it all mean? My feeling now is that you’ve got to assume that the active participants on your site are the tip of the iceberg. They’re responsible for helping to make the experience rich and vibrant, but you’ve got to realize that many of your dedicated users may actually never really contribute.

New information? Not hardly…we’ve been discussing the lurker factor on online bulletin boards since pre-internet days.

Tags: bulletin boards, forrester, jeremiah owyang, lurkers, participation rates, social media

Twitter, FriendFeed and Overexposure of the Personal Brand

I’ve said it before, but this post especially requires that I state it clearly again: I am a New England Yankee.

That means that I possibly have a heightened sense of propriety and generally would consider a lot of things marketing-wise as crossing the line that some of you might not have a problem with.

I’m noticing lately that a lot of marketing types are spending a lot of time on micro-blogging tools such as Twitter, FriendFeed (the new darling), Plurk, etc. I’m sure many have convinced themselves that a lot of what they are doing is “creating social media brand awareness” for their products. The truth is that Twitter is more about branding for the personal brand, and as such I find in most cases, it creates a level of over exposure that’s downright harmful to your personal brand.

Think about Jason Calacanis, who was for a while offering all kinds of contests, giveaways, etc. via Twitter, trying to increase the awareness of the Majalo Search Engine (disclosure: I signed up to contribute when it first started, but honestly never did produce any results for them). For a time, it seemed that the Twitter stream I was getting was all Jason, all the time. “I’m going to have lunch with xxx here. Burritos, yum” or something like that. The signal to noise ratio was so high that I really began to dislike what Calacanis was doing. I didn’t even know him and I was starting to develop a strong dislike.

Jason mentioned on the This Week in Tech podcast this week that he has a lot of people who can’t stand his online persona, but actually become good friends when he meets them. And for the record, I really enjoy hearing Calacanis on podcasts, and I’m sure I’d like him if we were to sit down for a beer sometime. However the Twitterati Calacanis was, for a time, utterly annoying.

Similarly Jeremiah Owyang - he’s been a perennial link in my posts, but when Forrester did their conference in March this year, I had to un-follow him for the time being, I just didn’t need to know whenever anyone decided to go to the bathroom at the conference, or what specific CEO he was talking to.

On the other side, I see a lot of the Twitterati catering to prurient interests to build their following. Yes, sex sells, for the most part, you’re selling yourself here. Do you really want the interest that brings? If you’re even thinking about that, you might want to talk to Ariel Waldman, community manager at Pownce, who’s now got her own stalker, with all the fun that brings. Oh joy!

The problem we have is that so many of us are making the mistake off blending our personal and our professional lives. In business, I prefer not to be known for my ability to consume Mojitos…although personally I really like them. Yet, I blend my Twitter posts with a weird mix of both professional and personal information (yeah, do as I say, not as I do).

I think too many of the Twitterati are making the fundamental mistake of overexposing their personal brand via social networking, to their personal and professional detriment. Your thoughts?

Tags: ariel waldman, blogging tools, brand awareness, crossing the line, jason calacanis, jeremiah owyang, personal brand, signal to noise ratio, twitter