Interesting, have heard about this but not explored it yet. Thanks for the info!
Category Archives: Resources
Storify and Journalism: An Exploration (via Anna’s Cubby Hole: Ramblings of a Cub Reporter)
Filed under Infrastructure, Resources, Social Media, Technology
Google + Notes: on Circles
So one of my buddies on Google + mentioned this TechCrunch article about the challenges facing Google + in terms of early adopters being all interested in the workings of Google + itself, and that conversation not being interesting to normal people, basically.
And that just heightened my focus on circles, which I’d been thinking about anyway.
If those conversations were kept in circles for those interested, and not put in the public stream, there wouldn’t be that issue. (Of course the article mentioned more aspects than just what people see in the streams, but that’s the part that’s relevant to this post. Great article though!)
But for me, I’m more likely to put those in my public stream, and put personal items in my personal stream – which a public viewer wouldn’t see. But then, a new user to FB today wouldn’t see private content very likely either, only as they get added to friends list would it get interesting.
Then that brings up another thing I’ve thought about Circles. I wish there could be circles of circles. Google + suggests that I have one circle for ‘Friends,’ one for ‘Family;’ yet as far as posting goes, they would both receive personal posts.
Circles defined by relationship don’t match circles defined by content of post — would need 2 sets of circles to accomplish that.
So I could make my circles about post-content (not caring if folks in personal group are friends or family), or could get all database-y about circles, with a content ‘header’ term and then a descriptive term, could at least the ones with similar content will be next to each other.
Like this:
Personal-Friends
Personal-Family
Personal-Work friends
The other thing would be if Google + lets you create post ‘groups’ of circles.. so I could have a posting group called ‘Personal’ which contained Friends and Family. And a posting group called Professional which included Social Media and Site Members, etc..
But I don’t see that. It looks like there are ‘extended circles’ which is like FB Friends of friends, but not a way to group a subset of your circles (friends and family) together.
The other thing about posting in this circle-specific way is that that choice itself becomes an aspect of the conversation. If I’m understanding how circles work, people are not aware of their circle-assignment. And they’re not aware of who else is in the circle they’re in. Those audience-identification aspects of the conversation are important for context though. They color the meaning of the communication, whether it’s personal communication or social media communication.
Without that context, is the message intact still? And the responses of folks in the circle – seems they might respond one way if they know they’re in a ‘friends’ group or a different way if they know their circle assignment is ‘acquaintances’.
I wonder if practices will evolve that will include id of the group w/n the message in some cases, or will include the specific response that would be appropriate/desired.
I’m modifying this as I go this morning, which is not optimal perhaps, but I want the content to end up as valid and true as possible! One thing I just realized – each post does have a header on it that has the time, and then also whether that post is ‘Public’ or ‘Limited’. So that adds a lot to this discussion.. Limited posts being indicated as such is a good starting point.
I’m toying with the idea of including something in my About message about special interest groups I have, for people to let me know of their interests. Especially since I’m including work content – social media, links to these blog posts here. Like, maybe I’ll have some really generic, Highly Interesting & Fun content of interest to all circles in my public stream, then not only personal content will be circle-specific, but also most social media content (I’ve obviously posted too many notes on Google + recently!), other work content etc.. would be circle-specific.
And then, being the way I am (verging dangerously close to TMI), I have folks in multiple circles. Thinking about it more (after original posting): it’s not so much like an email that they’d get multiple copies of, it’s an ability to perceive the content. So folks in multiple circles included in one message – I’m sure they just see it once. They’ve just received the ability to see it multiple times.
Hmmm, lots of interesting aspects to learn more about! I know there were groups and lists in FB, but I never used those. My impression is that most people used Groups, and everyone knew they were in that Group, cause they joined it in particular. Everyone is aware of group messages being for the group. So these being issues new to Google + Circles, that information not being available.
One Tip I just heard from comments on a post of Chris Brogan: two special circles you may want to establish are ‘bookmarks’ and ‘drafts’, and then have yourself only in those groups! For works-in-progress, items of interest, etc.. Another is, if you want to see what circles other people have used, type a few letters in the circle-naming box and other frequent choices will appear!
And from a post by Imad Naffa, one could hope that Google will make possible shared portions of two circles (venn diagram-like) and so forth, since those capacities exist in their regular search processes.
Also, circles can also be used as a viewing glass for your wall – you can look at posts only from people in this or that circle! Those posts you can see would be only the public ones of theirs, if they haven’t added you to any groups, or additional posts of theirs in the groups they added you to. As Mark Krynsky mentions at the end of this more-broad and excellent post, that won’t guarantee those posts are specific to that content, since most people post a variety of content. But it’s something.
PS I just have to say, love how the alert box (on the right top bar, shows red when there’s a comment) opens up to show the post itself being commented on, and lets you comment back right there, without having to scroll down to where the original comment was!
One more thing: Content from Google themselves on Circles!
Filed under Infrastructure, Marketing, Resources, Social Media, Technology
Google Plus: Content-rich snapshot of today’s information and reactions
from savvy early-adopters, via twitter! (see acknowledgements)
for a Google + invite, see this blog post from Nick LeRoy!
So, just over a week after the launch of this new super-suite of applications, and the response is intense! After seeing so many articles and blogs etc.. I decided to bring together the most useful bits I’ve seen, for the convenience of my readers.
For a quick, intense set of facts on Google +, here’s the Google+ 50 from Chris Brogan.
Google Plus – the new spectacular, all-in-one web-connection machine is kind of similar to Facebook and Twitter, is said to be possibly replacing both as well as Skype, yet is very different. It is intended for both personal and business use, and will soon have company ‘pages’ like Facebook. It provides an opportunity for you to interact with other pages (+1 them), similar to ‘like’ –ing them.
In referring to it, I’m using Google + and Google Plus interchangeably, mainly using Google Plus when it’s before some punctuation symbol that would look weird coming after a + symbol. Some also refer to it simply as ‘Plus’.
This fascinating article from Jay Baer (Convince & Convert) argues that Google + is the perfect fit for how our use of the web is now, because it’s not so much about whole pages as small bits of sharable content – posts and tweets and photos and whatnot. And that – having to do with popularity rankings and search processes, as well, Google + is perfect for both people’s personal use and business presences/interactions.
Besides these positive impressions, there are a few warnings. Or not so much warnings as things to be aware of. In particular, Google + is more like Twitter than Facebook in that the default is for everything to be public. You can restrict content to ‘circles’ of people, but if you don’t go out of your way to do that, it’s public. Similarly, your Google profile itself (that is at the core of Google +) is now required to be public for the minimal info (your name and gender). Other profile info can be private, but that data must be public as of a recent change.
The other thing-to-be-aware-of is in that same vein – privacy, or the lack of it. This article by NakedSecurity highlights all the policies that Google has instituted around privacy, that will especially come in to play with Google Plus (there are 37 all together).
Should you hurry up to get started with it as soon as possible? Well, one thing is, it’s in closed beta still to the general public, so you may not be able to.
Once the next phase comes, if you like being an early-adopter, if you have an active web community you often connect with, then probably yes. Sure, it will be there later on, but there is a lot of excitement about it and it looks like it’s worth the investment!
Be aware though – there are fake Google + invitations circulating at this point that are actually spam, containing only links to a pharmaceutical site!
Anyway, once you do get started, the web urls default for each person are long and cumbersome, so here is how to get a short ‘vanity’ url thanks to mobilelocalsocial.com.
For business owners, Google + shows definite promise of professional functionality, as ReadWriteWeb describes.
For businesses themselves, the site is not yet geared up for that, but according to searchengineland.com, ‘pages’ for businesses are coming very soon.
To get started, here is a video from ExploringSocialMedia taking you through all the steps involved (10 minutes). Also, here is an introduction from Google themselves. And here is a how-to guide written by early users of Google Plus. And here’s a list of tips.
By being an early adopter, you’ll join some pretty auspicious company. Here’s a list of power users put together by Steve Rubel, as of 7 days after launch!
So, lots more out there of course, but hopefully this is useful resource collection! All comments, tips, additional great resources welcome. I’ll review again in a bit then!
And don’t forget, for a Google + invite, see this blog post from Nick LeRoy!
Acknowledgements: These wonderful twitter folks provided the material in this post: @ipHouse, @steveruble, @rjfrasca, @spinsucks, @HaggbergConsult, @timoreilly, @brainpicker, @glenn_ferrell, @GOOGLE_INFOS, @NickLeRoy.
Also here is a site listing: exploringsocialmedia.bloomfire.com, ReadWriteWeb.com, TheNextWeb.com, NakedSecurity, MobileLocalSocial.com, ChrisBrogan.com, PCWorld, convinceandconvert.com, zulucreative.co.uk, NickLeRoy.com, Google.com.
Filed under Business, Marketing, Resources, Social Media, Technology, Uncategorized
Accounting Journal: The Absence of Normal
This is the first of a series of notes I would like to write about issues facing the business world – through the lense of accounting.
There are some particular accounting specifics I’ll mention, but mainly these notes will cover ideas widely applicable to anyone in business.
Normalcy provides solid ground, a foundation for strategizing and taking action. For most of our careers, it was probably assumed to be present, like gravity. It permits shortcuts and abbreviations – both in writing and thinking.
These days though, as well all know, hardly anything is normal. There are obvious consequences of that which we all are aware of. They vary among us.
But I suggest it’s important to look beyond those immediate consequences, dig deeper, and uncover other ways in which your thoughts or practices are based on a situation – normalcy – which no longer exists.
We always limit our attention, according to what matters to us, what we want, what we don’t want. Those limits are based on prior experience and long-standing patterns. Now, all those past indications are much less relevant.
One big area is relationships – whether it’s co-worker’s, managers, customers, suppliers, competitors: in every case, taking anything for granted isn’t as valid. It needn’t take long, but checking in with the folks in the periphery of your day could inform you of situations you weren’t aware of. The highly-effective among us check in with a wide swath of people regularly all the time already, but many of us are normally more relaxed, and fall in to a rut. Time to reach beyond that are reconnect more widely.
It also is a good time to widen your circle of people as possible. Whatever important vendors you use – check out their competition. In case something changes with someone you rely on, you want to have beginnings of relationships already in place. Know who is the best among the rest of the folks. Know who would not be a good fit for you, no matter the circumstance.
If your business or organization has seasonal variations in your activities, and you normally prepare a certain way for that next season – try to check in more extensively and earlier before making those plans.
Your contingency planning – that one area that is already based on the absence of normal – even that can become outdated or lax. Review those assumptions. What if your alternate location itself was unavailable? Are the resources needed in that scenario readily available? Are your current staff and any important contractors all as familiar with your plans as they need to be?
Staff redundancy/cross training is always useful. In these days, even more important. The time-worn preference that employees have for making themselves invaluable to increase their power is really non-optimal for the company/organization. You want the ability to continue in any circumstance. You want all the necessary information from every employee/contractor necessary to have that ability.
In accounting land, I’ll just mention two areas of consideration very briefly. If you would like the longer version, please contact me.
In terms of accounting, there are relationships between the balance sheet and the income statement that are relatively stable. The balance sheet – a snapshot in time – contains the results of the income statement – which shows results of a period of time.
Balance sheet accounts – snapshot data – is supposed to be accurate at every interim point. Oftentimes the various accounts also vary in the extent to which that is true. Some accounts are really only accurate at year end, but the variations during the year are small enough that everyone is comfortable with that. Accrued vacation/pto payable and accrued salaries are two of those accounts.
If, however, your staff size and/or your programs/sales are changing, then you may want to reconsider.
Going about things the normal way when operations are shrinking can overstate your expenses during the year, and misstate the detail revenue/expense data to a degree that you might notice if you pay close attention to those things.
Accrued vacation – if you have a significant % of your staff leave, and they are taking PTO payouts, and they had a large amount of that pto already accrued at the beginning of the year – consider booking that payout to the liability account rather than the expense. That makes your expense this year smaller, and the balance sheet more accurate.
Accrued payroll is a more complicated consideration, for those of you with payroll period that don’t match the calendar months. It’s complicated because for you, accrued payroll – to be accurate – would be different every month, but nobody does that. Payroll is so important though that making any change from actual is a big deal. So again, please contact me if you’d like to know the rest of my spiel about that.
The accounting reality though – of the balance sheet / income statement relationship being complicated – is similar to many business realities.
It is similar to the ongoing differences we all have between how we want to be, and how we are. Our intentions and our actions. ‘Mind the Gap’.
During periods of rapid transition such as this one, that gap can change dimension and depth and have an impact on us unexpectedly. For that reason, it is useful to look more closely at these areas we normally ignore, to become aware of small shifts in time to respond effectively.
In this way there is more likelihood all of us coming through this transition period as optimally as possible.
Filed under Business, Entrepreneurship, Infrastructure, NonProfits, Resources
MN Grant Info: FSRs on egrants
Given the extreme pressure right now to bill/request an advance prior to the shutdown, I’m sharing a copy of my notes on the new egrants system that replaced WEGO.
*************
IntelliGrants site aka egrants
Introduction
–Terminology:
Task = Grant
Related Items = FSR’s
–Notes:
Grant ID numbers in this system may be different from what you have in your other documentation. If you have multiple grants, you’ll need to determine which is which by looking at the grant budgets etc..
—**Important: Within the FSR process, the lines that you bill on are identified differently. In particular, if you have a line per position, those lines don’t include the position name. Instead what is provided is the total budgeted amount per position. So you’ll want to indicate that on the sheet you’re billing from, for easiest processing.
You probably want to have your grant budget handy the first time you go through this process on this site. The line descriptions may relate best to the budget, instead of what you’re used to seeing.
Good News –> This site doesn’t time out after the slightest delay! I haven’t had it ever time out on my so far. So you can take the time needed without concern for that (but still save often!).
Process for creating FSR
1. Under View My Tasks, click on TASKS box
2. Choose the grant you want to work with.
New ‘Main’ page opens, with additional choices. You want the last choice on the bottom:
3. Examine Related Items
This will show you the FSR’s filed in the past, and last item in the list is
4. ‘Initiate new FSR’
New ‘Agreement’ page opens, click on ‘I agree’ to create new FSR
Back to ‘OJP FSR Menu.’ You want to
5. View Forms
OJP FSR Menu – Forms menu, and a box, with one choice in it:
6. Financial Status Report Type
Then it opens a screen in which you choose whether to file an Expense or Advance type:
7. Expense or Advance – click radio button (round one), then click ‘save’ at top of window
Then it tells you that the info has been saved, but you’re still on that same page. (tricky!)
8. You have to click on ‘Forms Menu’ yourself to move forward in the process.
(That selection is in grey, and the other things around it are distracting. Above it, in orange, is the grant ID number. Below it, also in bigger, darker letters is ‘Financial Status Report Type’. But you want the small, light gray lettered option – Forms Menu. Have to select those words on that line, not the ‘OJP-FSR Menu’ option in the middle of the line.)
If you are creating an Expense-Type FSR:
You will see the OJP FSR Menu – Forms screen, with a box in the center. The top of the box includes the words ‘Financial Status Report Type’ (does not indicate which type you chose), and the name of the logged in user and the time.
Below the border in the middle of the box are two options, similar to the WEGO system:
10. FINANCIAL STATUS REPORT/PAYMENT REQUEST LINE ITEMS
9. FINANCIAL STATUS REPORT/PAYMENT REQUEST SUMMARY
They are in reverse order in these instructions because that’s how they are on the screen.
I didn’t do detail instructions for this process, because it is very similar to the WEGO process. Just have to look at the line info when you first open the detail lines, and make sure you know what each line corresponds to in your budget and your biling.
Like in WEGO, you can do the summary first, Main Contact (from a pull-down list), whether it is final or not, the period covered (I’ve done 6/1/2011 to 6/22/2011 for instance, for this emergency expense request).
Then you can do the detail lines. You want to hit ‘save’ often (especially when there might be high volume on the server). Hitting save updates the total, and it also opens up new lines. (Note: the ‘save’ button and that menu bar floats at the top of your screen, is always visible even when you scroll down).
Like in WEGO, the data from the detail line entry fills in to the Summary page.
After you have all your detail entry done, you can print both pages (in the line with ‘save), at the top of the page.
Process: I like to take that detail print out and manually add up all the detail numbers for each line, to confirm that that matches the amount I entered in the total box, since Excel has that goofy pennies-off problem. After printing you can still go back in and change the detail info or the line total as needed, then re-print.
After you’ve printed both pages, there is one more task before you are done filing your FSR.
You need to click on the Left/most part of that main grey line:
11. Advance/FSR Menu
Then you are again on that main page, with 3 options, and you choose the middle one:
12. Under: ‘Change the Status’ — > View Status Options
It then opens the Advance/FSR Menu – Status Options window, where you can submit or cancel your document.
To do that, look below the box, and it says:
Payment Request Submitted
With a box below that which says ‘Apply Status’.
13. Clicking that ‘Apply Status’ box is the final step in the process.
Once you have done that, in the box it will show this message: ‘Payment Request in Process’. This is the final sheet you may want to print to document the billing process. (The Floating menu bar isn’t available at this point, have to print from the browser command.)
Unlike in WEGO, this last sheet does not indicate the period billed, the amount billed, or even the grant info very well.
Hopefully more of the old functionality will be added in yet!
If I can help further at all, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Hope this helps you and your organization spend more time on the important work you do!
Filed under NonProfits, Resources
Hootsuite: New Features! Exciting!
I love Hootsuite.
It took me (seriously) a while to get comfortable with it. But now I just adore it.
I mean, all the volume of content still is a bit much at times.
But overall it works well for me and I haven’t even considered using any other similar program.
I schedule messages quite a bit, since I’m working under the belief that having tweets spaced at least 45 – 60 minutes apart is optimal. My actual work life doesn’t allow for being with Twitter all day long every day. So the time I do have, I use to gather content and send it out again – in the future.
Now, that is one area that I’ve been less than enthusiastic about – the scheduling. I mean, it’s worked fine as far as doing what it’s supposed to do. But when I’m scheduling 8 messages for a work day ahead, first thing in the morning, it’s not easy to keep all those times in mind to fit new things in to the stream optimally.
I didn’t really fret about it though, I figured with all they have going on, they would probably be addressing that.
And now Hootsuite has made all my dreams come true. There is a ‘Publisher’ window, 2nd-from-the-top over on the left side, which shows you all your scheduled tweets! And, more than that, you are able to revise your scheduled times for any of the scheduled tweets! And you can edit the tweets themselves!
I am extremely happy. Now the process of tweeting is much closer to the process of good writing – you can brainstorm basically, set up various tweets. Leave it for a bit. Then come back to it, go in to ‘Publisher,’ and edit what you’ve written as you look at the full set of items all together.
Maybe you were going to re-tweet one particular item about a new development, that had a link to a good source of information about that development. A little bit later, you come across a better reporting of that new development. Before, it didn’t matter. That tweet you had scheduled was gone, you had no way to revise it, you just had to live with it.
Now that artificial ceiling on the quality of your tweets has been removed! You find better content, you can replace that in!
Each tweet you send can now be its actual best self!
Filed under Business, Infrastructure, Marketing, Publishing, Resources, Social Media, Technology
June 15th! Second Qtr Tax Payments due today!
This is the day when your 2nd of 4 annual payments of self-employment tax are due.
The payment today is for taxes due on your net operations income generated during April and May.
Here are two links for more information, from BHB Advisors here in the Twin Cities:
Determining if this payment requirement applies to you
Details on how to make the payment.
Feel free to comment with any further questions or mentions of anything else that would be useful.
Filed under Entrepreneurship, Infrastructure, Resources
10 TED Talks for Entrepreneurs (via The Educated Entrepreneur’s Blog)
Fascinating, thanks for making these known!
Filed under Business, Leadership, Resources
Sole entrepreneur websites – Then and Now
Back when I first had a consulting practice, in the 1997 – 2000 period, online marketing was very different.
I put up a website (had worked at an ISP, learned a bit there) using one of those do-it-yourself software programs (will post the name when it comes to me), managing all the linkages and parent-child relationships, choosing the look from the set options, etc..
It was a lot of work, but fun too. Then, I published it!
On to my domain that I had registered, via an ISP I had a relationship with.
And then I waited, hopefully, for people to find it!
It was like constructing this beautiful, elaborate structure.. on the edge of a cliff. Then, standing beside it, staring out into the vastness — hoping that some human energy from somewhere would boomerang back in return. Certainly that did happen, sometimes, for some people. Not so much for me though. Accounting services just aren’t all that compelling, really. Lesson learned, now all sorts of other content as well. Still – so nice to not have that chasm-staring thing going on any more!
I didn’t know anything about whatever search processes were in place at the time. There certainly was no online blog community like this with any ‘dashboard’ or ‘followers’ or anything.
Just had to hope that somebody would click on it from my web address in an email, or from a posting on an online forum.
Things are *so* different now.
I tend to look askance at some aspects of social media – the inserting of commercial relationships in to other social contexts, the privacy issues, the manipulations. However, the ease of access itself is so wonderful now. Remembering back makes me that much more grateful for all that is in place now. Definitely worth the struggle of minimizing the bad to have the good!
Filed under Business, Community, Infrastructure, Resources, Site, Social Media
