Creme Brulee for Pauline's 90th

Creme Brulee for Pauline's 90th
Originally uploaded by SoCalSig

Roberta, Ethan, and I made a late night soiree to Flemings in San Diego with Pauline (Dellhime) Eckhart on the eve of her 90th birthday.

Rancho GoogleMonga

The push is on to bring Google gig fiber to Rancho Cucamonga.

Elements of a Social Media Strategy

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and YouTube are now considered essential business and government tools. These "disruptive" technologies were introduced into organizations by employees who initially became acquainted with them in their personal lives. How should an organization react to the introduction of new technology into the workplace? How does an organization handle the blurry line between personal and professional conduct when using a social media service? Is there a viable business model for using a social media service?

Below are my initial thoughts on this issue. Please feel free to add your comments to help me construct a more thorough analysis.

Elements of a Social Networking Strategy

Protect an Organization’s “brand image”
Regardless of considerations over the relative merits of the various social networking services, an organization must take certain basic steps to protect its reputation. The potential exists for individuals, other groups or organizations, through their use of social media, to:
• Misrepresent themselves causing others to believe they are agents of the organization or
• Unjustly impugn the reputations of employees, executives, Board Members, or the organization in general.

At the simplest level an organization should quickly move to reserve (“cyber-squat”) user names and identities synonymous with their organization on the most popular social media services like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter. By reserving these names and identities the organization will create an initial hedge against others misrepresenting themselves and afford the organization time to formulate a more comprehensive social media strategy.

Establish Action Plans
An organization should establish a cross-functional team to examine the following issues:

• Which social media services demonstrate beneficial business purposes

- What are their demographic compositions
- Do they represent a viable means of communication between the organization and the clients of the social media service

• How should an organization represent itself on various social media services
• Develop action plans for the deployment of an organization’s presence on social media services

Find Your Voice
Whether you have one person or several people post on behalf of your organization it is essential to present the tone, vocabulary, and style in a consistent single voice. To do otherwise is to risk confusing your audience as if your organization suffers from a multiple personality disorder.

Learn to Listen
The use of any social media is not to just push your message, it is also to listen to what your audience says about your posts and your organization. Resist the temptation to assume that your organization is always right and take your audience's comments to heart.

Create an Acceptable Use Policy
Employees, agents of an organization, as well as Board members must be informed and comply with a Social Media Policy that establishes expectations for decorum, professionalism, confidentiality, and the protection of privacy. The policy should be created even if an organization elects not to establish a formal social media presence.
Should an organization decide to have a social media presence, the policy should also clarify:

• Who may post on behalf of an organization
• What types of postings are appropriate (e.g., informational, promotional)
• What type of online relationships are appropriate (e.g., “following,” “friending,” being a “fan” of)

Wine Tasting Party

Last night we hosted a wine tasting party with everyone bringing a favorite wine to share. What a treat!

Wines ranged from a Sauvignon Blanc to a nicely aged Cabernet Sauvignon. In between were such delights as a moscato d asti from Italy, an Ice Wine from Vermont, and a Cabernet Sauvignon Porto from California. Each wine had a nice appetizer paired with it including some unique goat and sheep cheeses, lobster ravioli, chocolates, strawberries, and homemade cheesecake.

We can't wait for the next party in June.

Dallas Cup XXX

To view some photos from Spencer's participation in the Dallas Cup soccer tournament visit my Flickr page and select the Dallas Cup photo set.

Help Me Raise Money for the YMCA

The YMCA of the East Valley (Highland, Redlands, and San Bernardino) is in the midst of its annual Sustaining Membership campaign. The campaign raises funds to provide membership scholarships to families of modest income.

Please help the YMCA fulfill its mission to build strong kids, strong families, and strong communities by visiting my online donation site at www.firstgiving.com/sig.

Cool Web Site

Check out a true "world clock" at poodwaddle.com, it's very interesting.

Did You Know?

If you haven't already seen the Carl Fisch presentation Did You Know? I suggest you take a few moments to view the presentation on YouTube. There is the original version (use the link above) and an updated one. I personally prefer the original version for several reasons: it's unpolished and conveys honesty, and its focus is open ended. The updated version is slicker and tightly focused on education issues.

Vacation Photos

I recently added photos of our Mediterranean cruise vacation to my Flickr site. Take a few moments to view them and then let me know what you think.

Spencer's Senior Photo

Hard to believe it's Spencer's senior year in high school, but here is the proof - his senior photo...

Economy One-Liner

With economy in the dumps it's time for the humor quotient to increase. Post you best one liner to this expression:

The only difference between Las Vegas and Wall Street is ...

Here's one to get the ball rolling - "free drinks"

New Thoughts, Renewed Thoughts

For my minion of fan out there in the blogosphere I apologize for not posting on a more regular basis. However, you may have noticed the sidebar area showing my activities via Twitter, Facebook, and BeenUp2. None of these social network tools quite compare to a Blog entry in terms of gauging what someone is really thinking about.

If anyone paid attention to my Wiki, Collaborationwiki, they would have noticed it went cold for about two years. If you were to go there now, you would notice a complete facelift and a new purpose. Collaborationwiki is being borrowed by a small working group of staff at the City of Rancho Cucamonga. The group is working on identifying the "ideal" organizational culture and how to align the City's culture toward the ideal.

To accomplish this task the group is using Collaborationwiki to gather information and discuss items in a flexible and supportive online environment. To ensure higher participation among group members, and to ensure confidentiality, the majority of the Wiki pages are set to a private status - only group members will be able to view and edit these private pages. As the team progresses in its mission, some of these private pages will once again be publically accessible.

Metaphorically Speaking ...

I couldn't help but draw a possibly ironic metaphorical connection here...

I heard that Hillary Clinton planned to have her daughter place a bet at the Kentucky Derby last Saturday on the 20 to 1 long shot filly Eight Belles. I presume she meant this as a metaphor for her campaign. You know, the long shot filly running with the guys trying to win it all.

So here's the irony, Eight Belles finished second behind the favorite, broke down, and was euthanized.

Just a random thought with no political endorsement. In fact, I wonder if Obama and McCain put any money on the race; it's kind of like asking if they put there money where their mouths were.

Air Spencer

Spencer gets air at a recent high school track meet.

Water Water Every Where

On Monday we noticed a water leak somewhere in the house. The plumber initially thought it was a defective water spout on the bathtub in the Master Bath. So we spent hours that night sucking up the water from the Family Room carpet only to find it flooded again Tuesday morning.

When the plumber returned he figured out that maybe there was a water leak in the wall ... somewhere. Upstairs in Roberta's closet he made one hole in the wall ... no leak. He was preparing to hack his way down the walls into the Family Room before we nixed that concept.

Long story short he called in 7 other plumbers to work on the problem and we were able to minimize the hole cuts. Below is the opening they made to crawl in under the stairs. The next photo is what they found.













I have more photos from under the stairs, but you should get the point. Apparently there is a capped section of copper pipe that developed a pin prick leak in its cap. A fine spray of water shot upward about 4 feet soaking the bottom of several steps on the stairway and then soaking the backside of the Family Room wall. Water eventually flowed from under the stairs onto the Living Room floor, under tile in the Entryway, under the Wet Bar cabinet, and down the wall onto the Family Room floor.

The most noticeable damage is in the Family Room, but the worst damage may be what we don't see yet. Tiles are already lifting in the Entryway and the oak on several of the steps is warping.

Just another day in Paradise!

BeenUp2

I just added a feed from BeenUp2 (www.beenup2.com) in the Blog sidebar. Check it out.

Think of BeenUp2 as Twitter for the camera phone. Snap a photo on your cell phone and send it to your BeenUp2 account for friends and others to see.

Renewed Connections

Thanks to Facebook I heard from two more classmates today: Brian Battles and Alvin Ashlaw.

If you have a Facebook account look me up. It would be great to hear from more of you.

Is it Snow or Snail?

It's been a bit since I've posted anything, but today's drive to work was interesting enough to mention.

Just the other day it was almost 80 degrees out. Image my surprise when it started to snow and hail on the way to work this morning. Do you call it snail (snow + hail)? Spencer even sent me a text message noting that it was snowing at his high school.

A Short Visit

Clark Lindstrom, one of my old college friends happened to be in Southern California on business this week. While we knew each other at USC, he hadn't been back to California in about fifteen years and I hadn't seen him for an even longer span. Another friend, Jim Yerdon, intended to join us but in the last minute ended up stuck at work.

It was only a three hour visit (including lunch), not nearly enough time to catch up with each other's lives. It will, however, have to do until we can meet again either here in California or there in Nebraska.

Here are a couple of pictures from today. The first one is of Clark with his old friend Shakespeare. Guess who is in the other photo with Clark.

Lotus Symphony

I recently installed IBM Lotus Symphony. It's not a bad suite of applications especially when you consider that it is free and from a major corporation. While its appearance is fresh and clean you will need to spend some time getting use to its organization, icons, and nomenclature. None of the components (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) are as bloated with feature as MS Office, but they do cover the basics.

Here's the biggest fault I have with current beta version of IBM Lotus Symphony (beta v. 2)Users are able to open and save documents in MS Office 2003 format, but users of Office 2007 beware! The current beta version does not support Office 2007 XML document formats; you cannot open or save in the 2007 format.

The next fault is somewhat minor for the home user, but potentially significant for small business users. Unlike OpenOffice, Symphony lacks a database component.

As I see it, there are still two major advantages to Symphony. Unlike its cousin, OpenOffice, Symphony is being developed by a single vendor which should imply the availability of technical support at some level. The availability of technical support is often cited as a major reason why businesses and individuals are not eager to adopt open source applications. The other advantage is its price (free) and how this is an attractive characteristic for home and small business users.