My Great-Great GrandfatherFebruary 27th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchI’m not sure how many greats there are but this guy is one of my ancestors. He was the first Governor of Dakota. Another one of my grand fathers was the first governor of Washington. Not that I know any more than this. My father was a hippie. Hippies aren’t very good record keepers and they couldn’t care less who was governor.
What Makes a Visionary Web SiteFebruary 21st, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchOur moto is that we make "Visionary Web Sites". What is that? It is not that the site is about anything fantastic. It could be a site about something very simple. Or the site could even be very simple.  What makes the sites visionary is that they allow the owner of the site to go to the next level. This might be any number of things, from a new mailing list or some tools that help the person or persons gear up to a new and higher level. They might not even know what that is. But we as web designers have to be able to see it. That is the vision. We look deeply at what the client wants and aim to give it to them. Many times the client doesn't even know they want it! But we see where they are going and provide the tools to get them there. We think that is visionary! Buy this book: It might make your rich AND happyFebruary 13th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-Church I've mentioned Peak Potentials before. I have given them a lot of money for courses and I have made it all back just from the inspiration they have given me. It is really worth checking out. Buy the book at the very least and go to one of their three day workshops (they are free). Buy this book. It will cost you less than a meal on the town. It might make you a lot happier and richer. At the very least you will be entertained for a couple hours. It worked for me. And believe me, I am the LAST person to fall for this kind of stuff. PS. I am part of their affiliate program so I make money if you buy the book. I baught the book from a good friend who made money from my purchase. So the cycle goes. Los Angeles Times Magazine - Dung beetles are worth $60 BillionFebruary 13th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchFebruary 11, 2007 How to Get Wall Street to Hug a Tree By David Wolman This is the future of the environmental movement. Increasingly, economic measures are being used to assess ecosystems by way of the universally comprehensible currency of money. The calculations can be quite explicit: A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund reckoned that the bees that pollinate a Costa Rican coffee farmer’s crop, and by extension the nearby forest where the bees live, are worth as much as $60,000 annually to the farmer. Last year, two entomologists, one from Cornell University and the other from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, figured that a $60-billion-a-year chunk of the U.S. economy is supported by wild bugs such as dung beetles and bees that pollinate plants, hasten the decomposition of manure, feed on crop pests and end up as dinner for birds, small mammals and fish. The Wise Woman's StoneFebruary 12th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchA wise woman was traveling one day and to her joy she found a very precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman. "I've been thinking," he said, "I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone." Author Unknown A Web 2.0 site is a TOOLFebruary 12th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchWeb 2.0 for me is becoming clearer. A web 2.0 site is a TOOL. It is not really a web site at all. It is part of your life in many ways, via your cell phone, pda, and computer. It helps you organize your life, connect with friends, and bring you closer to certain activities. When most people think of making a web site they basically see it as a glorified business card. They envision putting their bio on the site, maybe their photo. They might list what they sell. But web 2.0 is so much more than that. The web sites we build are amazing tools. I only really discovered this recently. I honestly thought that a glorified business card was a great goal to achieve. And it is. But that isn’t what we charge for I see now. We offer a fantastic tool to increase productivity and life value. Ok, I know that sounds a little far fetched but that is exactly what the sites do for me. We have a lot of sites we build for our company to increase our productivity. They are great tools. They might be a simple blogging site, or a calendar site, or a project management site, or a mailing list site, but they all perform a function. They all provide tools that make our lives easier and increase the amount of time I can spend with my daughter. Or spend watching a movie, or spend picking my nose on the beach. Or whatever. The tools do things that would take me much longer to do manually. THAT IS WHAT WEB 2.0 IS ABOUT. Web 2.0 gets us one step closer to the nirvana of machines doing all the grunt work and humans sitting around naked with fig leaves on our groins eating grapes and playing harps. Or whatever turns you on when you aren’t doing grunt work. We hired a new writer! With a phd!February 12th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchWe just hired a writer! She’s not just any writer; she has a Doctorate in English! Writing content for your site is one of the most important things you could do. It is what search engines like Google look at. If they come to your site and see lots of informative writing with good keywords then they will deem it a useful site and will rank it highly. It’s all about keywords, so for example if you have lots of nice writing with keywords about organic food (keywords such as: organic, food, green, produce, pesticide-free etc) then the search engine will decide it is a useful site for that topic. Next time a person does a search for any of those keywords the search engine will put your site high in the list. And thus more people will come to your site. If you are selling something then you have more customers. Makes sense? Thus the importance of nicely written content on your site. Thus our hiring a fantastic writer. I have a degree in creative writing from Columbia University so I’m no lightweight in journalism or writing. And I know that it is perfectly possible for an accomplished writer to write a very informative article about something they know nothing about. In fact, when I was in college I often got A’s for writing essays on topics I knew nothing aboutJ. Back then I called it bullshitting because I was meant to know about my topic. They had assigned many books for us to read. But I learned that if you were a good writer nobody could tell that you weren’t an expert in the field. Journalists do it all the time. They are given an assignment and a deadline. They don’t have time to learn the whole subject. They become very good at getting the jargon and overall feel. They paraphrase other people’s thoughts, and presto! they have a great article. Some may find this unethical but I strongly believe that we live in a postmodern information age where the collective awareness is all around us and anyone is free to assimilate the information as they wish. That was a big sentence! Am I speaking fancy to justify plagiarism? I’ll have to think about that for a while. What I think mean is it has all been said before and we are all just rehashing it so lets not get too uptight about who owns what. Granted some may feel I’m giving an ok to plagiarizing other peoples’ work. Not so. What I’m saying is firstly that most information is now public domain, at least if you look hard enough you will find a variation of it that is not copyrighted. For example one of the first things she had to write was an article on Wicca, the religion of being a witch. There is so much info in the public domain that it was easy to write an essay and not commit any unethical act at all. And secondly, if it isn’t public domain, you can read ten peoples’ articles and then write an article in your own words based on a synthesis of the other ten. To do this takes brains and people do it all the time. Thirdly, and probably most ethically, you can write your article and give people credit if you use their ideas. If the person is great then some of their light will brush off on you and everyone benefits. I actually find this third one hardest to do because of what I mentioned before - we live in a postmodern information world where every thought comes from a multitude of places and people and for one person to claim right to it seems ridiculous. Along the same lines I have very little attachment to any of my writing…we’ll see if that changes if I ever write a bestselling book…again I see my ethics treading another fine line. As I write this I feel I’m writing myself into a corner. OK, so I hired a writer to write about things that she may not be an expert in. Ok, I also hired her to read up on what has been written before and then write it again in her own words, hopefully with new insights and better written. Am I treading a fine line here between plagiarism and original content? Hmm… maybe. I’ll have to think about this one some more…. New Management Software!February 10th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchOur jobs are getting bigger, we have more coders and more clients. We were bursting with the amount of emails going back and forth. It was time to get a project management platform. We deicided on ActiveCollab It is a clone of Basecamp, which is written in Ruby on Rails. ActiveCollab is php. The main difference is Basecamp is a monthly subscription. ActiveCollab is OPEN SOURCE! And we do so love open source. We've been using it one week and so far so good. The big question when getting it was: WILL THIS TOOL IMPROVE OUR WORK OR CREATE MORE????? We didn't want something that took time to manage because it would end up not being used at all. But it is a real joy to log in and see each job clearly listed. You can enter a job and see the coders who are working on it. You can see the notes they have made, the deadlines they need to meet, the messages back and forth. And the same goes for the clients. They can log in and post messages or simply watch that we are actually working on thier job! It is too early to tell but my hunch is that the platform will be used by us. How exciting! I love tools that improve my work so I can spend less time working!
Goals TrackerFebruary 8th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchI belong to a group here in NY called the NY Power Team. We basically meet once a month and exchange ways to improve our lives. Here is one of the things I got from the team: A “Snapshot” of Your Life
CAREER… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) RELATIONSHIP… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) HEALTH & FITNESS… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) FINANCES… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) PERSONAL… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) SPIRITUAL… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) EMOTIONAL… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) CONTRIBUTION… Identity (1) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (a) Goal (b) Identity (2) ……………………………………………………….. Standard Goal (b) How to get things done, fastFebruary 8th, 2007 Gennaro Brooks-ChurchAnother thing from the NY Power Team. Getting something done fast and effectively is a real skill. Here are some contextual things to help make that happen: RPM - Rapid Planning Method Or Results, Purpose, Massive Actions plans [previously known as OPA]… Result… What is my Outcome? What is the Result I am after? What do I want to see happen specifically (adjectives & adverbs) and measurably (weight, size, dollar value, *timeframe, etc.)? What is my dream, my vision, my desire? What do I feel I want to have happen? Purpose… What’s the Purpose? Why do I want this outcome /result? Why is this outcome /result a must for me? What will it give me and/or allow me to give others? What would achieving my outcome /getting my result mean to me and my life? How will I feel having achieved my outcome / my result / my vision / my desire? Actions… What are the actions I must take? What needs to happen to achieve my outcome /to get my result? What are the steps to making this happen? What would be a great plan? Additional Planning Distinctions… What is the duration of each of my action items? When and how specifically will I fit these action items in my schedule? To Whom can I leverage these action items? CANI… [Constant and Never ending Improvement!] *Review your progress –weekly/daily How is my progress? What did I do great? What am I doing well or right? What could I acknowledge myself for? What can I still do even better? What do I need to do even better? How can I step this up? What, if anything, has prevented me from taking action? |
