Tonight I am attending a meeting of the Circle of Progress. It evolved from a Chicago Meetup.com entrepreneur group, where the concept of attendees talking about what they did the last month and what you plan to do the next month became the focus of the meetings. Where many networking events for small business people tend to simply be card swap events, this meeting has depth to it that I have been seeking, and brings people back each month.

As I was thinking about my accomplishments and plans, I recalled this blog post about paying the price for success. It served as a check for my plans in the next 30 days and if they are directly related to the growth of my business. It is often easily to get wrapped up in something that is more time consuming that the reward for the time spent. Stepping back and taking a look at it in the context of the big picture is required. I view the Circle of Progress as one way to ensure I am doing all I can to grow my business.

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If you have ordered something online or posted a comment to a blog, you have seen captcha. It was originally developed as a method prevent robots from automatically submitting forms on a Web site by requiring a person to visually view text in an image and enter its value in the form, something a robot should not be able to do.

Where it has a noble purpose to prevent bogus information going to a Web site owner, it is a roadblock to someone who is visually impaired using a form. And as you can see from the example I grabbed from a Chicago-based Web site, it can be hard for those who do not have any visual impediments to decipher.

I made a decision to not use captcha on The Hot Iron or on Dunkirk Systems’ Web site. I do have logic in the forms to try to thwart bogus submissions, but they still get through. Comment moderation is enabled on this blog, requiring me to approve a message. Where this slows down legitimate comments from going live, not to mention more work on my part, it provides a better user experience for you the reader. This I value more than deleting a few offers for pills and watches.

As for the Web site I took this captcha example from... their privacy policy and Web site copy did not make it clear what was to be done with the information submitted using the form, so it was another strike against be using it.

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Last night was TECH cocktail 4, a quarterly networking event in Chicago that has developed a reputation for being a fun and of high quality. I have personally attended three of them, and I believe this was the best so far. The venue was easily accessible near Wrigley Field and public transportation as well as in its vast size to give plenty of room to move, and the diversity of the attendees, from those deeply immersed in technology to those on the periphery.

It was nice to catch up with colleagues that I don’t see often enough, such as Mike Carruth of Digital Bootcamp, Peter Meyers from Tminus2 and debabblog, David Dalka and Tom Sherman of WindyBits. I also had the opportunity to meet two people in person I have up to then only communicated with online – Jason Jacobsohn of Networking Insight and Joe Piekarz of timeXchange.

Not to forget the stack of business cards from people I met for the first time I will be following up with. My only regret from the night was not meeting the founders of the event, Frank Gruber and Eric Olson. Now I have an agenda item for TECH cocktail 5.

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Last week I got an email from Yahoo telling me their points program, Yahoo Points, was being discontinued as of June 30, 2007 and if I do not redeem my points as of that date, I will lose them.

My first reaction to this was, “Yahoo Points?” I had to think back as to when I may have earned or redeemed these points. After logging into the Points site and looking at my points history, it has been 4 years, so no wonder I forgot. This took me back to a time when buying online through Yahoo Shopping was a preferred way for me, as Yahoo’s buyer protection was leading-edge at the time. Today I am buying more through Amazon and eBay and I can’t remember the last time I bought something through Yahoo. Another way to earn points was with your Yahoo credit card.

It looks like Yahoo has already stripped most of the functionality from the site, including some cascading style sheets. I have a couple hundred points in my account, but you need a minimum of 1,000 points to redeem anything – even a charity donation. So they will sit there and wither and die; another victim of the Darwinism of the Internet.

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A couple of weeks back I posted about the abrupt shutdown of the ChicWIT email list and organization, as well as its parent organization, WorldWIT. I am now happy to write that a replacement list and organization has been formed to replace it, under a new moniker.

I just got the following email from Gigi Bozzano, who was the leader of ChicWIT, and it stated the following:

Warm greetings to all of my much missed friends!

I'm thrilled to let you know that I've started a new women's networking organization to replace the one that recently closed - guaranteed to be even more benefit for all of us women (and men)!

Called CW-Network (Chicago Women Network), it will feature moderated online discussion, networking events, educational opportunities, and as the group expands, discounts on services and products for members.

The site will be live by no later than mid-week next week so please watch your email box for instructions on how to sign up! Also, please forward this information on to your friends, colleagues, and any former members of the recently closed women's organization.

I'm looking forward to continuing the friendships and alliances that have already been formed and to establishing many, many new ones. Hopefully, you'll join us!! And...if you would like to contribute your ideas and suggestions please get in touch with me. CW-Network - Chicago Women Network - is for all of us!

Cheers...
Gigi Bozzano

That Web site mentioned will be at cw-network.org, and as of me writing this it is not live yet. Where it may take some time to ramp back up to the thousands of subscribers, it will be good to see this community, valuable to women and men in Chicagoland, back in action.

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