Photo credit: Wilke (?@Wilke_411) via Twitter

Yesterday I had a distinct honor to guest lecture to college students on the topic of blogging.

I was invited to speak to 2 classes at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh by journalism professor Dr. Sara Steffes Hansen. As part of her classes where she is teaching the students all aspects of blogging, each student is building a real, public blog. What better way to learn blogging than with real-life experience?

As someone who has his own blogs and has built blogs for clients, I have learned on the job about blogging as well as keeping up with trends and changes to blogging over the years. One challenge was focusing on key elements to share with the students and keep it to a brief presentation with time for their questions. Another challenge was that I would not be able to be physically in the lecture hall on the Oshkosh campus, yet deliver my messaging in an interesting and engaging way.

As with my own writing style, I decided to tell the story of how I got into blogging myself and then focus on areas that I felt were important to the students, including the art and science of writing and writing on a regular basis, plus some key pointers about blogging such a sharing and social media integration.

For the presentation itself, I created PowerPoint slides and used technology from Personify to literally insert myself into the PowerPoint presentation so that when the students were looking at the screen they saw both the slide material as well as myself, as you can see from the picture above. As the Personify technology is extremely unique in itself, I'm already writing another post on using Personify and how I was successful in conveying myself, my style and my message to the students remotely – watch for it soon.

I have posted the slides from the presentation to SlideShare and you can link to it here or view embedded below. I kept the slides at a high-level and spoke to the details so that the students did not have to read slides, and by using the unique Personify technology I was able to make that happen very well. If you look at the slides and are wondering about the references to Ernest and Edgar, those are to 2 “other” famous Chicago-area writers, Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Rice Burroughs, as I used them as examples of different approaches to writing.

Thanks again to Dr. Hansen, the team at Personify and the students who asked great questions and shared the presentation on social media. It was great getting back into the classroom and I am looking forward to my next opportunity.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Announcements • Blogging • Build • Social Media • Strategize • Technology • Thrive • Web Design • (0) Comments • Permalink

Goals by nature are complex. At least that’s how I see them. As they segue to an action plan to achieve them, they must be clear and not too wordy, yet not vague or they will lose their meaning. Often times goals are “boiled-down” to a phrase or even one word for marketing and promotional purposes as a simple rally cry to those who are a stakeholder to these goals.

In the book One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton and Jimmy Page (not the guitarist), they propose you simply have 1 word as an overall goal for yourself for a year. They present a rather simplistic yet thoughtful process by looking inward, opening yourself up to discovering the word, then applying it to your year.

As I read this several takeaways came to me, including:

• You need to find a process that works for you – The steps in this book may work for you, and also they may not. Sometimes it takes a book like this to help you though such a process.
• Divine intervention is not for everyone – The book is based on faith in God in order to open one’s self to ”receive” their word for the year. This may be a turn-off for some, perhaps those who do not believe in a supreme deity. That being said, if you are a spiritual person, you can still follow this process without acknowledging a god to open up and find your word.
• Maybe simple is all you need? – If you are typically someone who does not set goals, or are someone who belabors the process to do so, following a simple process in this short book may be exactly what you need.

As simple as the concept is for One Word, the book is as short. It was written to be read in less than an hour, and tells a good story on how the concept was formed, how it works and how it has been used by others. One Word was another book I owned and found when I moved – note there are more to come! I don’t recall the inspiration for getting it, but my guess it was its process meaning around goal-setting.

So I set a phrase and not a word

As I started 2015, I thought about this book that I had read a while back and decided to open up and see if I could come to a word to guide me through the year. As I reflected on where I was and what I was doing, what came to me was not 1 word but 3, and after trying to come up with a good 1 word for the 3, I decided to stick with the 3 – mix it up. As I am creeping up to my sixth decade on this planet, I often find myself getting a little stodgy and repetitive. I could be going to the same stores or reading the same blogs and sites or simply doing the same thing. Why not mix it up, expose myself to new things, foods, places, people, even if the change is slight. This way, I am making small, incremental changes in my life, which won’t seem as obvious while in the process.

For myself, I will use the hashtag #mixitup to mark things new and different for me.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on the concept of One Word and the book itself. Have your goals so far this year been a challenge and you’re looking for something new? Or have you followed One Word and chose your own? Please share in the comments to this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Editor’s Note: Shortly before the kick-off of Super Bowl XLIX, I made a bet with Glenn Letham, a good friend and a GeoTech professional, communication strategist, geo, location and mobile tech evangelist and community manager, as to the outcome. I was rooting for my team, the New England Patriots, and Glenn was for the Seattle Seahawks. The supporter of the losing team would write a guest post for the supporter of the winner’s team blog, extolling the virtues of the victor. Glenn’s post follows.

I will add as a disclaimer, that the Denver Broncos are my #1 team, however, as a resident of the Pacific Northwest my #2 team is always the Seattle Seahawks. I'm depressed, much like every other Seahawks fan and I'm also confused, like many of you. We all are asking ourselves, why run the ball? Indeed a good question, and apparently, even coach Pete Carroll can't provide a rational explanation for that play so we'll just move on I guess.

Football, like business, is a funny business where people constantly make rash decisions... for example, imagine having in your possession, THE best running back in the NFL, and you have 3 downs to move the ball just 1 short yard – well naturally you'll elect to pass the ball rather than trying to run it! {Insert facepalm here...}

So, here we are, celebrating the newly crowned {again} Super Bowl Champs, the New England Patriots. Congrats to the Pats on a fabulous 12-4 season and for being the better team on the first day of February 2015. The Pats have loads to boast about this year including Tom Brady passing for more than 4,100 yards, Gronkowski for receiving more than 1,100 yards, and a very impressive 12-win season and an undefeated postseason – not to mention, establishing themselves as a dynasty, perhaps comparable to the 49’ers of the Montana era, or Steelers, ala Terry Bradshaw.

Let the Super Bowl be a lesson to all, in sport and business, that we all are capable of making dumb, rash decisions, yet we are all also capable of greatness. Think before you leap and remember, anything is possible!

Cheers, from a disgruntled Seahawks fan who is eagerly awaiting spring training – enjoy the celebration New England, you've earned it!

Image Credit

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Chicago, Illinois is a great city to visit. And for some reason unbeknownst to me, most people I know visit this fair city in the winter. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty to do, see – and eat – in Chicago at any time, including the winter, but summer for me is the best time to be here in the city along Lake Michigan.

That being said, people come, and you may well be one of them. This is why I am sharing these tips for you, things to do or be aware of specifically when you are here in the winter months, as you won’t want to waste any more time outside than you need to.

#1 – Get a Ventra transit card ahead of time or when you first get to Chicago – In 2014 the Chicago Transit Authority (also known as the CTA and the “El”) outsourced its fare system which calls it Ventra. The Ventra card is technically a MasterCard debit card with the paywave feature, and can be used as both a transit card or as a standard debit card (but you don’t have to, or most likely won’t want to). You can buy a Ventra card online or at retailers in the city. If you register it online, you will get the US$5 you paid for the card as transit value on the card. You can also set it to autoreplenish from a credit card so you don’t have to spend time in the cold reloading the card at a kiosk.

#2 – Use ParkChicago for mobile on-street parking payment – Chicago also outsourced its parking meters and one benefit from it is the ParkChicago mobile payment system, where you can pay for your parking using a mobile app, mobile Web site on your device’s browser or even pay by text message. It requires a registration and the system works very well.

#3 – Familarize yourself with the Pedway – Below the streets of Chicago is the Pedway, a system of mostly interconnected tunnels in and between city buildings downtown in the Loop. Note you can’t get everywhere through the tunnels and walkways, but it is convenient to get to some places, like public transit stations, without going outside.

#4 – Look into joining a museum you are visiting to save money – Chicago has some great museums, and the larger ones charge admission. If you are bringing the entire family, the cost can add up. When you get to your destination museum or aquarium or planetarium, look at the cost of joining. Depending on how many people are in your party and if you are looking to see special exhibits for added cost, it may be cheaper to become a member and get free admission. If you think you may return to the place, membership is a no-brainer.

#5 – Bring your own ice skates to Millennium Park and Maggie Daley Park – Chicago has 2 skating areas downtown, the McCormick Tribune Rink at Millennium Park and the skating ribbon in the newly-opened Maggie Daley Park (formally called Daley Bicentennial Plaza before the park was literally dug up as it’s on top of a parking garage, and you can read more about that here). Where skating at both places is free, there is a fee to rent skates. That in itself is not the issue; it is the logistics of renting them, which usually requires a long, long wait in the cold. This is why I recommend bringing your own skates to the rink, then you can lace up and hit the ice. If you don’t have your own skates, take a short train ride to either Sports Authority in River North or Dick’s in the South Loop and buy a pair – the time saved will be more than worth it.

#6 – See a show – Whether it’s walking or waiting, the cold can get to you. Fortunately just about every night of the week there is quality entertainment at the over 100 theatres in the city. From plays to sketch comedy to improv, Chicago has plenty to offer for all tastes and genres. You can learn more on the theatres at the League of Chicago Theatres and get half-price tickets to shows at HotTix. On Monday nights, you must see That’s Weird Grandma by Barrel of Monkeys!

#7 – The sales tax in Chicago is 9.25% – Though you have no control over the sales tax here, it is something to consider, as at is rate it can add up quickly. Not to mention taxes on hotels, meals, parking and even bottled water. There is a tax on candy too, but it is cheaper for Tix and KitKat, as both contain biscuits made of flour, and since grains are grown in Illinois, it has a lower tax. I am not joking on this!

Enjoy your trip to Chicago, and especially the food. If you like it in the winter, come back in the summer as it’s even better.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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When we think of major national and international events that occur in our lifetime, we also remember the impact of it on ourselves – where we were, what we were doing and how we felt as it unfolded. As today is the anniversary of the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, I would like to share my day after first hearing about it and how I remember it today.

Twenty-nine years ago I was in the production studio of my college radio station, WNEK-FM in Springfield, MA, preparing for my first newscast of the semester. Where our newscasts were far from anything that would win a local Emmy and could easily be called “rip-and-read” reports, we always did a professional (or as professional as we could) job at presenting world and local news on the air. I was sitting at the console board recording audio clips from a network audio feed we had to accompany the stories I had collected thus far from the Associated Press teletype printer, or commonly referred to as the AP machine.

I was well aware of the Space Shuttle Challenger launch, especially as the crew included Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher from the neighboring state of New Hampshire, around whom there was a lot of buzz for her being on board. I listened for the reports from the audio feed and there was to be one for the Challenger launch, so I was prepared to “cart it up,” or record it on a tape cartridge to play along with what I was to read from the AP machine story.

As I was listening and getting ready to record, the audio feed cut out. I recall calling out something like, “what the hell?” and then I heard the bells on the AP machine ringing as I had never heard them ring before. The AP machine, which was nothing more than a dot-matrix printer that printed on rolled paper, would sound bells when there was urgent news. In the few months on the college radio station I would hear bells ring, maybe once or twice, but not non-stop, or what it seemed. As I and others went to look at what was printing out, we saw initial stories about the launch of Challenger, then that “there appears to be a major problem after the launch of the shuttle ‘Challenger.’”, which was then followed with what is pictured above, “’NASA’ says the vehicle has exploded.’, which was then followed by messages about the successful launch of the shuttle, which apparently were written and sent before the explosion message.

My memory of this is amplified by the fact that for some reason I kept the initial news feeds that came off the AP machine on the explosion. Typically news stories are ripped, read and then discarded (thus, rip-and-read). I kept about 2 feet of the scrolled paper, which included the above alert, and the complete scanned images of the entire scroll are at the end of this post. Note the above alert went across 2 scanned images, thus I made this composite from both.

Following these alerts, there was a lot of activity in the radio station, which was located in our campus center. As there were no TVs in the campus center, we became the primary source for information on the explosion, and we even got the radio signal piped in over the campus center PA system. What was to become a 10-minute newscast at noontime engulfed more time from music programming and more people as well, as we were reporting on what was coming off the AP machine, as well as the network audio feed, which we had cut to directly, unedited, for a portion of time.

For most all of us, in our late teens to early 20’s, we had really never lived through a large national tragedy like this. Then add to it our role in broadcasting it. Where we tried to not be chaotic and somewhat organized about it, for most of us we were making up our approach as we went along. There was plenty of stepping on each other’s toes and voices and literally bumping into each other as we moved around our small studio space. The doors from the broadcast studio and lobby were all open – a major faux pas – as station members and students and faculty were coming and going to hear what was transpiring.

As the day went on, TVs were brought into the campus center, allowing all of us who had only heard about the explosion to actually see it. I remember being in awe as I saw the video played over and over and over and over. I also recall a mix of emotions, from tragedy and sadness, to thinking of all the school children who were watching this live, to why it happened after so many successful launches. The last loss of life for NASA happened before I was born, and after growing up seeing other launches, moon landings and successful returns to earth, this was something entirely new to think about.

Nearly three decades later, we know about O-rings, known engineering flaws, the loss of another shuttle vehicle and the remaining ones are now on their way to museums. Then President Ronald Reagan’s speech to the nation was perfect for the moment then and reflecting on it today, and you can view it here on YouTube. I share the images and memory of this as the these types of stories need to be told, not just the headlines but what happened behind and around them, as these show the complete fabric of our society.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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