Archive for the Leadership
A concerned friend called me this week to ask my opinion about putting her children’s pictures on social media sites like Facebook. She knew I had strong opinions about this topic but wanted to discuss pros and cons of both sides of the issue with me. I relayed my thoughts to her as follows:
- I don’t publish pictures of my daughter on the internet….period. Not anywhere.
- Since this has not always been my policy so I ask friends and family to alert me if they come upon a picture that I’m not aware of so that I can promptly remove it.
I was working on another project this morning at my kitchen table with the window open. It’s a typical Santa Ana fall weekend in San Diego where it feels like the threat of fires. When you’ve lived here through both the Cedar and the Witch Creek fires, your sensors are up for that kind of stuff in the fall. Both of those fires came within a mile of my home. Luckily, we survived with minor damage and big messes from both. Comparitively speaking, over 400 homes in my community were lost last year. It was a devastating time.
I’m truly amazed at feedback I’ve received in response to my post on Proposition 8: Why Should the Majority Get to Choose How the Minority Lives?. In addition to the 16 comments on the blogpost itself, I’ve received emails, phone calls, twitter tweets & direct messages, facebook messages, phonecalls and people walking up to me to chat. It’s been so enlightening. Below are some demographics about the folks that have reached out to me:
- 90% of the group voted no for Prop 8.
- Most of them have someone in their family that is gay and therefore directly affected by the law.
Since last week’s election, you have inevitably saw some of the statistics covering how President Obama maximized social media tools to connect with his constituents. During his campaign, he reached out to connect with people using the internet through Facebook, Linked In, My Space, Twitter, and other social media tools. He even paused to email a thank you note to his team before his acceptance speech. Undeniably, he had many competitive advantages over John McCain, but one cannot debate that social media played a huge part in his election.
Yes, I know. This topic is controversial…especially to working mothers. Well, I guess I mean to say to any mother or any parent for that matter.
As some of my Twitter buddies know, I was in Hollywood over the weekend. As I drove down Santa Monica boulevard, I knew I’d be late for a meeting with Denise Wakeman of The BlogSquad (more on Denise coming soon) due to all of the Proposition 8 demonstrators lining the street. The level of energy was noticably high as people yelled and sang and honked their car horns on every block in support of gay marriage. Today, as I drove through my conservative San Diego neighborhood lined with demonstrators in the rain, the energy was much different. These demonstrators equally as passionate, had showed up to urge us all to Vote “Yes”.
As I walked into a meeting Wednesday afternoon, my phone vibrated with a new email message. “angiesmom is following you on Twitter”. I got a huge grin on my face. My mom is following me-too cute! You see, my mom is young. She graduated early from high school (read brain child), got married at age 18 and had me when she was 19. We grew up together, more like sisters than mother-daughter. She’s so playful and pretty into technology for the baby boomer that she is. (She knew the intricacies of AOL long before I did).
Last Thursday night I attended the 15th Annual Women Who Mean Business Awards Ceremony presented by the San Diego Business Journal and Procopio. I was among 111 finalists and I had also nominated two other women. I’ve never been more proud to be a loser! As I sat at a table of 12 people I didn’t know who wanted to know my story as an honoree, I watched and read the details of each nominee as they were featured on three large screens in the front of the room. I was in awe of the talent surrounding me. What an esteemed and accomplished group of women doing great things in our San Diego community.
It’s been so interesting to me lately to watch the faces of people when they ask me what I do and I answer that I’m a blogger. Of course, my answer includes a few other things too (executive coach, speaker, web 2.0 evangelist and a writer) but the blogger part always stops people in their tracks. If someone isn’t intimate with the blog community, their face gets distorted, they get a somewhat condescending smile and start asking questions. “You do what now?”
This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day, joining thousands of other bloggers to write about one topic for a single day. This year’s topic is poverty.
I grew up in Southern Ohio in a county with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state. Incidentally, also close to another county where the number of drug trafficking arrests were also high (no pun intended). Families who lived on welfare were abundant.
Ok, I admit it. I’m crazy in love with Twitter. Just like my historical attractions to men, this is happening with Twitter because I’m learning things I never even conceived. My relationship with Twitter started about six months ago when we casually started seeing each other. I signed up for a twitter account and then installed the Twitter application on my facebook account. By doing this, I could tweet and my updates would show up in Twitter and on my Facebook page as “status updates”. So efficient which really does it for me. I thought Twitter and I knew each other pretty well. But little did I know, our relationship, analogous to relationships with men, was to grow in layers.