What's all this about comments?

San Diego Zoo sign

The past few days it appears a few bloggers are writing about blog comments. I think I must have missed a meeting. Was there an on-line discussion that triggered these posts? It seems to me there is a strange undercurrent about this topic. Let me give you a few examples, maybe you have read others. 

When Opinions Turn Ugly: Passive-Aggressive Blogging

From Silent to Troll in 60 Seconds

Look in the Mirror

The Other Side of Comments and Community

How Do You Sleep At Night?

Beware the Bog of Eternal Stench

This is Déjà vu.  In fact, now I remember it was last fall when I wrote a comment on one of Chris Brogan's posts.  It went like this:

Chris,
Sometimes I must really be asleep at the switch. Where does all this drama unfold? I get so busy with my clients and trying to stay up to date on strategy that I have totally missed this soap opera. I will say this: yesterday I read Julien's post about "How to Make Popular/Influential Friends" and he closed with this sentence: "This post inspired by a bunch of talk going on recently that I don’t want to give more attention to." So...I said to myself...something is going on and I am really out of the loop, but I wondered why Julien was dignifying the 'bunch of talk' by even writing the post. (Curiously no one has commented on Julien's post. [to date only one comment - 04/06/2011])
In the scheme of things...we have two wars, North Korea shooting at South Korea, people losing their homes, cholera epidemic in Haiti, people starving in our own towns...be the bigger person, as I know you are, do good work like you tell us to do.
Thank you for all you do.
Judy

Come to think about it, yesterday Chris Brogan tweeted: 

"If people spent 1/2 as much time working on good things instead of spreading rumors..."

When I read Chris' tweet it gave me a funny feeling and then in the last 24 hours came the blogs referenced above. Here is what I know.  It is hard to know what all is going on in social media. Sometimes there is an undercurrent that just lingers. It is unsettling. You aren't quite sure what started the discussion and many involved don't want to share the gory details. My guess is this will always go on, after all we're humans. We don't always communicate well when we are face to face, so for sure our words can and will be misconstrued in cyberspace. 

Last evening I was reading a fairly new blog and came across this post: An Editorial Comment. Go ahead click over and read it. Pretty interesting, don't you think? 

I know it seems a bit crazy to ask for your comments. But I really would like to know what you think. So please, comment away!

60 Minutes With Homeless Kids

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Why I missed #blogchat on March 6, 2011

Over the past nine months I have regularly participated in a Twitter #blogchat, Sunday evenings at 8:00PM CST. That is, I join in if I am in town and not busy with family or friends. I learn a lot from this Twitter chat, which I then apply to my business and share with our clients. I have met many interesting and talented people on #blogchat. In fact, this very blog exists because of a #blogchat that took place on June 6, 2010. But today I want to tell you why I didn't join #blogchat this past Sunday.

60 Minutes is a Sunday night tradition

60 Minutes has been a part of American Sunday evenings since 1968. CBS 7:00PM.  I started college in September 1967, so really all of my adult life I have been a fan of 60 Minutes. Now that I live in Arizona 60 Minutes comes on at 6:00PM MST. This is a little hard to get used to, sort of have to plan dinner hours and family time around it. It becomes even more complicated when Daylight Saving Time kicks in everywhere, but Arizona(certain areas) and Hawaii. That is the time of year that 60 Minutes conflicts with #blogchat and I have to set the DVR! But this Sunday I was all set to watch 60 Minutes and then sign in to #blogchat. But instead I was so taken by Scott Pelley's report Hard Times Generation: Homeless Kids that I found I just had to take a night away from #blogchat.  I invite you to watch the segment here and I'll catch up with you on the other side.



I have talked about homeless children before on this blog. You might remember last July I wrote about Twitter being a fashion consultant; however, I closed that blog by suggesting that we all take time to watch the HBO Documentary - Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County.   It doesn't matter whether you are in Orange County, CA or Seminole County, Florida, homeless is painful and scary. And even more so, if you are a kid.

It is still All in the Family

If you are wondering what I did after 60 Minutes, well, I'll tell you. I was numb. I had the remote control in my hand and I just kept clicking through the channels until suddenly I came upon an October 1974 episode of All in the Family. It was Season 5, Episode 89 and it was titled: The Bunkers and Inflation (4) (aka Archie's Raise).  I stopped and watched. It felt as if I were sitting down with old friends. Here they were  dealing with unemployment, a recession, a strike and inflation. Take a few minutes and watch a bit of this episode. Right around minute 6:30 you will see Archie and Edith talking about the economy and being scared. Archie says (thinking about his childhood and hardships): "We were kids, we didn't know any better."  Edith replies: "We ain't kids no more." Archie responds: "You're damn right we ain't!"



Hmmm...1974 to 2011. I am wondering how much has really changed in all these years. We have a lot of new technology and social media. But how social are we really? Maybe the biggest change is that now kids know homelessness and hardship when they see it.

I would really love to hear from you. Any thoughts?


[By the way, I can get the #blogchat transcript. @mackcollier is really good about creating it and my other friend @allison_boyer almost always captures the best chat nugget and you can read a few of her observations here.]

Related articles

• Overheard on #Blogchat: Have Something to Say (@CC_Chapman) (blogworld.com)
• Overheard on #Blogchat: Blogging is Hard (@griner) (blogworld.com)
• Homeless children: The hard times generation (cbsnews.com)
• Hard Times Generation: How You Can Help (cbsnews.com)

Witnessing Egypt 2011

Witnessing Egypt 2011 is remarkable. I know most of us have been following the events on the streets of Cairo for the past few weeks. Obviously social media has allowed us to have 24 hour access to the events. Today, 02/11/2011, will now be a date that we will call to mind for ever so many years. On January 28, 2011, my friend, Allison Boyer, who owns After Graduation and also writes for Blog World, wrote this post Social Media's Role in the Egyptian Protests.

Alli Boyer

It caught my attention. I hope you will read it. It occurred to me that Alli's perspective as a young woman (she is younger than Mubarak's regime) was interesting and hopeful. It made me recall my feelings from some 32 years ago when I was Alli's age and the news about Egypt also brought hope.

Here is my OP-ED...
January 29, 2011

Hi Alli,
I just want you to know that I appreciate you writing about this world event as it unfolds or doesn’t unfold (due to a black-out) in the social media. As you say we can “listen”. And maybe by listening we will take the time to read and learn about the most recent history that has brought Egypt to this point. 

I remember distinctly watching as the Camp David Accord was signed by Carter, Sadat and Begin…one week before my wedding in September 1978. While we watched on television, this was before the days that you would run to your phone and call your friends long-distance. Afterall…long distance calling was still a luxury. But we did write letters and I remember receiving one letter from a good friend marveling at the miracle of the Camp David Accord. The actual Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty took affect March 26, 1979, the day stays in my mind as my father passed away the next day.

Thinking back over the past 30 years…Sadat was assassinated by fundamentalists in October 1981, shortly after Mubarak took office and he has remained ever since. Begin’s life history is one that is most interesting. Leaving office in 1983…well time goes on.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: For half of my life, the Camp David Accord and the subsequent treaty helped to keep things just a bit calmer. But it seems that what passed for calm to those of us so far away and wrapped up in our own worlds was not really calm, but simmering, and now we all need to take the lid off of the pot and dare to look inside!

So much to learn…listening is a good beginning.
Judy

___________________________________________
It would be great to hear your thoughts about Egypt now and even then....

Related articles

• Foreign Policy: Why You Should Care About Egypt (npr.org)
• Cairo: Finding the city behind the headlines (cnn.com)

Too Busy to Write? My September 2010 Review

As usual, today Chris Brogan's post "The Discipline to Write Daily" was thought provoking and it reminded me that during the month of September 2010 I did not publish one single post here on my OP-ED page. This is not to say that I was on total radio silence for the last month, but just active writing for Webconsuls, working with our clients, commenting on others' interesting posts...

Today I thought it might be fun to point you to some of my favorite September reads. If you read these posts, you will see I left a comment, so take a few minutes and scroll through the comments, you will learn a lot about people.

• September 1, Chris Brogan wrote about "Selling Wool or Yarn" ---I have done both!
• September 8, Ridgely Johnson talked about "My Kindle, My BFF" --- I don't have a Kindle.
• September 16, I published "Rose Knows What to Do When Novelty Wears Off"  --- A lot of people enjoyed meeting Rose!
• September 17, Allison Boyer writing for Blog World chatted about "Twitter Chats: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"  --- for those who join in chats this is a great primer.
• September 22, John McLachlan asked "Why Blog?" --- Why indeed?
• September 22, Jorja White talked about "Empathy 101 and Adam Braverman" --- Jorja is busy with family and writing an e-Book, but on September 29 she did a follow-up  "Misunderstanding and Adam Braverman"
• September 22, Julien Smith wrote  "Your Happiness is Not Your Own"
• September 23, Lisa Petrilli talked about "How I am Measuring My Blog's Summer Harvest" --- I was honored to be mentioned by Lisa.
• September 29, Chris Brogan started an interesting discussion "How Not to Have Mind Numbing Office Meetings" --- to which I commented...

Chris,

I have known some employees/workers who just love meetings. You know why? You can easily fill up your whole "workday" with meetings and not open your brain or your mouth. I promised on Twitter that I would give you a couple of funny meeting anecdotes, so here you go.

I was a banker for many years. In the old days, many banks were required to have standing committee meetings for things like commercial loan applications, directors and officers, etc. One day I realized that I was going to be in three consecutive meetings with just a 30 minute lunch break. It was a cold winter day in northern New Hampshire (Littleton). The meeting room was cold and uncomfortable. So during the break I walked across Main St into a wonderful store and purchased a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown. I went back to the bank, put the nightgown on over my wool business suit, walked into the empty room and waited. The rest of the "committee" arrived and it took 20 minutes before the bank President looked at me and started to crack up with laughter. I told him I was preparing for a long cold day into night. The meeting was wrapped up quickly.

Many years later I was working as a Senior Business Analyst on a high profile project for a casualty and property insurance company. The CTO was directly in charge of this project, even though there was a "project manager." The CTO had a habit of answering many direct questions by saying: "We'll see." I must add that when we had our weekly project meeting on Friday mornings we each had name cards, so one day I created a name card with the name "Will Cee" and placed it at the chair next to mine. The meeting started and about 15 minutes into the "agenda" the CTO asked if Will was coming to the meeting, to which I responded "We'll see!"

In closing, I will be pretty busy over the next few weeks. Don't worry, I will take plenty of photos. And, don't forget I will be meeting some of you in person at Blog World Expo 2010.

In the meantime, you can enjoy my wedding photo album that covers family weddings from 1901 through 1978.

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