About Martha Mihaly

I was reading a post on TechCrunch about the future of social networking and the direction warms my heart.  It’s all about relevance, portability and context.  What it boils down to is that you’ll be able to use your portable device (phone or whatever) to walk into a room and see profiles of everyone in there that subscribes to the service.

Imagine walking into a meeting/bar and knowing who everyone is, what their interests are whether they are working or socializing, single or not.  You can ping them, if they are interested they’ll ping back…

It’s going to take a while to catch on outside of large urban centres I suspect, BUT the potential for it is incredible.  Can you tell I am excited?

Our Dear Heather was named Ayr Head of the Year.

Congratulations Heather!

For all of the wonderful things you have done for the community of Ayr, from the church work, to the North Dumfries Children’s Choir, to taching piano, to raising tens of thousands of dollars for cancer and ALS, and for being an inspiration - thank you for setting the bar high.

Well, I have to apologize that I haven’t kept up to date with the blog.  I was away on holidays skiing. 

So, then for the excellent news.  Beverley Mahood  from CMT will be performing at the Hootenanny.  You can check out her myspace site here and listen to her tunes.  This is going to be a heck of a celebration!

I am ‘cross posting’ here which is something that I try desperately to avoid.  I think you’ll find this helpful.

I don’t know how many of you know about these applicaions, so those of you that so will have to bare with me here. 

One that I use every day is Netvibes .  It’s  an ‘aggregator’ site which allows you to put in the addresses of all of the websites that you like to visit.  So, for instance, all your blogger friend’s sites, and your news feeds.  Once you’ve put them in (which is really fast, you simply paste the address in and Netvibes confirms the feed) then you just go to the Netvibes page and it shows you which feed has been updated.  You can then click on the post, and it’s there to read!

It saves a lot of time and effort over visiting each site individually.  The only caveat is that you should become a member, otherwise all of the feeds will be lost when you log out.  It’s a small price to pay.

The second site, is more of a browser filter.  It will appeal to anyone who has kids of a young age using the internet.  It’s a Firefox add on called Glubble.  It’s still very much in beta, but promises to be a great feature once they’ve worked out all the kinks.

The way it works is that you add this onto your FF browser, and you become the ’super user’.  You then can set up accounts for your children.  They can visit a dozen or so very primary sites like Clifford the dog.  Anything beyond that you must first approve. 

Once you approve a site, the child can visit it at any time.  So, instead of trying to filter content for words like breast, or what have you, it simply blocks all sites.  I tried it out with my kids, and frankly they are beyond the age for which it is useful.  I think you really need to start using it with little ones who only visit one or two sites a time.  Mine were simply ticked that they couldn’t go ANYWHERE on the net.  Mind you one was trying to research the question of whether the restoration of the Parthenon will be a success, and the other was looking for Gameboy Cheats….

One of the really neat features of Glubble is that you can join forces with other trusted Superusers and link into their approved website list.  It may well save time if you trust your friends’ judgement.

 So, now that I’ve had my techie release for the day, try out the sites and see what you think.

We were spring skiing in Vermont this last week and had an absolute blast together.  There wer the usual hiccups that a family has on any long car ride but all in all we couldn’t have asked for a better holiday.  The weather was decent, with one solid day of rain, but 3 solid days of sun so all in all I can’t complain. 

What struck me though was the number of families skiing together…or should I say NOT skiing together.  There seemed to be so many parents dropping their kids off to ‘lessons’ for the whole day while they skiied.  I wonder if that’s lessons or daycare.  We always insist the kids have at least 2 half day lesson sessions when we go for a five day trip.  It’s to continue to improve technique, and frankly to get them to the parts of the mountain that my knees no longer can handle.  My husband took the sport up as an adult, so the kids passed his abilities a few years back - I am holding on to the edge of superiority BARELY. 

So back to my story, skiing for us is the ultimate family time.  No distractions from being together, except lunch!  No tv, blackberry, phones or friends.  Just us.  The kids have come to cherish our together time as much as my husband and I have.  I wonder why other families don’t see the joy in skiing together.  Oh well, each to their own.

By the way, I met a couple on the mountain making their way down gently who were both in their 70’s.  I had to take up conversation with them.  They had skiied out west earlier this year but wanted to get a few more days under their belt for this year.  Wow, I hope I am still on my skiis when I’m 70.

Friendship is a word that we use casually to talk about relationships that we have…”Oh, she’s a friend from…”. Love has a closer more intimate meaning to people.  “oh, she’s a friend, I love her laugh…”

I’ve been watching Heather’s friends and family gather to support her in her battle with ALS and I can’t help but wonder have we told her, and each other how much we value the love and friendships that we have?  The friendships that grow stronger and deeper and more beautiful as each day goes by.

Happy Spring Everyone.  I am honoured to count you all as friends.

Martha

Friendship is a word that we use casually to talk about relationships that we have…”Oh, she’s a friend from…”. Love has a closer more intimate meaning to people.  “oh, she’s a friend, I love her laugh…”

I’ve been watching Heather’s friends and family gather to support her in her battle with ALS and I can’t help but wonder have we told her, and each other how much we value the love and friendships that we have?  The friendships that grow stronger and deeper and more beautiful as each day goes by.

Happy Spring Everyone.  I am honoured to count you all as friends.

Martha

Here’s a fantastic Greg Hoskins Video.  Check it out.  We’ll be seeing him at HH4H 2008. 

It’s been a heck of a winter for snow fall here in Central Canada.  Records have been broken.  We’ve had almost 300 cm of the fluffy stuff so far, and March isn’t yet over.  I can’t complain too much, we have a service that comes out anytime we get a single fall of over 15 cm, and I have managed to ski 32 days this year with another 6 coming a the end of the month at Jay Peak, VT.

It’s so bad that roofs are collapsing under the weight of snow.  A barn went down this week not far from our house.  Dozens of friends and neighbours helped to get the pigs out and relocated.  If you’ve never seen snow being shoveled off a roof you can watch a video of it here.  Basically, a roof isn’t designed to hold this much weight!

Throughout Quebec many school boards have closed schools (as they fear collapse) in order to shovel off the buildings.  Several people have died this winter in Quebec as roofs have collapsed.  If you’ve never seen snow removal in Quebec it is indeed impressive.  Here is a great video of it.  Basically a vacuum machine sucks up the snowbanks and blows the snow into giant tansport trucks that then truck the snow away.  Without snow removal, the streets narrow precariously and the snow banks become so high that they get unstable.

We had a fantastic meeting again…a heavy agenda.  Watch for the minutes to come your way.

Here are some things that EVERYONE can help with.

Also, please remember to let Maria know about any silent auction donations that you get.  She needs a note complete with the description of the item, the donor’s name, address and phone number, and if the donor wants a tax receipt from ALS then we also need a receipt/letter from them detailing the item and its value.

Thanks for all of your hard work ladies…let’s keep up the hard work.

As much as I hate to admit it, it sometimes makes me laugh when other people’s luck runs in the same direction as mine.  It is a well known fact that our family has had a  big little black cloud tethered to it forever quite a while.  We like to think that if it weren’t for bad luck, we wouldn’t have any luck at all!

Now, I am not talking life ending, debilitating bad luck.  Just car/house/job/life bad luck.  Nothing in the grand scheme of things (at least that’s what I tell myself after the first bottle of wine).

So, here’s to bad luck moving on to someone else.  And thanks  for taking over.

There is a very serious case going before the Ryerson University expulsion committee today.  It involves first year engineering student Chris Avenir. 

Chris started a facebook group called The Dungeon/Mastering Chemistry Solutions (that I couldn’t get to on FB) with the intention of swapping tips on chemistry homework questions.  146 of his ‘friends’ joined the group, and it appears that cheating may have followed.  Chris has been charged with academic misconduct for administering the group, and he’s been charged 146 more times for each classmate that used the site.

My question here, as is Chris’ and his Advocate Kim Neale’s, is how is this really any different than a library based study group, or a university sponsored one?  The students get together….the weaker ones benefit from the stronger ones, all benefit from not having to do the entire assignment alone.

I suppose that weeding out the ‘hangers on’, or the non-contributors becomes more difficult for the group, and sponging off the working members of the group becomes easier BUT I think that the university has chosen to handle this all wrong.  Instead of penalizing the student in such a severe manner, Ryerson should be looking at where their own infrastructure falls short.  Why has this (and presumably others) group been created?  Does Ryerson need to create online home work groups that are monitored by staff to support their students?

What are your thoughts on this? 

Just a quick reminder that the planning committee for HH4H will be meeting on March 17th at 7:30 at the Northumberland Street venue.  Please make sure that you bring contact information (email and phone) for all performers who have confirmed with you.  You should have gotten an email from Lynn with all other details attached including the agenda.  Drop her a line if you haven’t.

Remember that Lynn likes red wine, white wine, any wine that you have handy. It looks like a heavy agenda so come prepared to work.

As usual when you aren’t looking for work the offers abound, and when you have the drive to work it dries up… oh well, I suppose that really is a sign of one of two things:

Since the first option is simply too depressing, I’ll embrace my inner home renovater and simply get on with the jobs on hand.  I have to repaint the laundry room, master bedroom, and then there is the master bathroom to tackle.  It needs painting but I can’t do that until I figure out what the heck I am going to do about my shower that leaks.  Tips on ripping out a shower and tiling anyone?

All of this should be done before gardening season begins but I think I can safely say that’s still a ways off given that we had 38 cm of snow in the last 30 hours.

So, I am sure that the minute I pry the lid off the cans of paint I will get an offer for some paid work!  Call me if you need a tech writer, blogger, or website host.  If I don’t answer the call it’s becuase I am plastering, painting or cleaning up a mess. 

It was Richard’s mantra…”Think about scalability, Martha“.  His words still echo in my head.

I have been thinking about scalability a lot lately, but not in the 2.0 context this time.  Rather it’s been in the party planning context. We are taking a party that we threw last year on a farm expecting a few hundred people (2000+ ended up coming) and turning it into a full blown ‘event’.  We hope to have at least as many people come, but with fewer logistical problems than we had.

We began the whole affair with a post-mortem of last year’s party.  We closely examined where things fell short, and where we exceeded expectations.  We then sat down and really thought hard about how to make things better.  I don’t think anyone has ever mentioned that “we got something wrong“.  Rather, we have focused on improvements to a process.  Frankly, I think that this group of people we have planning the event is absolutely top notch.  I think we could make a good living doing event planning, except for the fact the only reason we pull together so well, is for the end cause.   Organizing any big thing is a great exercise to go through and very enlightening on many levels.  We have the event, the process, the motivating forces, the process planning, and revenue generation and advertising all to consider. 

So perhaps I am wrong - this is like planning a social networking site.  We have a ‘hook’.  We need to attract the right people, with the right advertising, to the right venue, at the right time, and we hope not to lose money, or face.  It all needs to happen within an established  time line, and within the established budget.  

David Armano did a great piece on somthing not exactly related to this, but obviously it’s stuck in my head in terms of applicability.  He’s called it Thinking Through the 3 U’s and I’ve put his graphic below.  His piece is about marketing, and he asserts that “Any experience is useful when it’s meaningful and serves a purpose“.   I really like its application to the planning of various types of things that involve human interaction.

Charlie Rose did a fantastic interview with Mike Arrington yesterday.  I was particularly interested with his comments about the problems with broadband access in rural America, and within the schools.

 Thanks to Mike for an outstanding interview.

Okay, I am kidding.  The only warm breezes that we are feeling here come from the central heating. 

Planning continues for the Hootenanny, although reports are that many of the committee are in fact headed to the sunny south for a little rest and relaxation.  Enjoy yourselves ladies, and make sure that Heather isn’t getting into too much trouble!

Annie Leonard has produced an intriguing 20 minute video called The Story of Stuff  about our consumer society, and the impact that we are having on the planet.  She tells the story with keen insight.

It is  reminiscent of Al Gore’s  An Inconvenient Truth that I think you likely are familiar with.  The Story of Stuff explains many of the linkages that people aren’t aware of.

It’s certainly gives food for thought.  Have a look and let me know what you think.  It appeals to the environmentalist in me.

I logged into my Linkedin profile yesterday to see what’s up, make a couple of updates to my profile and for a minute I thought that I had logged into the wrong website.  I thought I was on Facebook.

Not sure whether I like the new format…as with any changes to something familiar it will take a while to figure out where everything went, and to assess whether the changes are in improvement, or just changes to format.  What I don’t understand though is why there seems to be a need to emulate Facebook so closely.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand FB is wildly successful but copying the format isn’t going to make Linkedin more successful - or is it?  We’ll see.  I hope that we don’t end up loosing too much originality in the rush to homogenize format…

The Ernst wrote a good piece on the Next web blog yesterday about this.

I read this article today in the National Post about this guy Pauly Unstoppable who decided to tattoo his eyeballs.  It took over 40 pokes.  Now generally, I have to say that I belong to the “Whatever floats your boat” category of people.  I don’t much care about other people’s idiosyncrasies, orientations, preferences

BUT THIS GUY IS NUTS.

I read today on the CBC homepage that serial murderer Robert Willie Pickton likely won’t be going to trial on the 20 counts of first degree murder that are outstanding against him.  It appears the $100 million price tag for a second trial is the reason.

At this point the despicable creature is locked away for 25 years, and I suspect he’ll never be out of prison BUT the families of his victims deserve justice.  

We’re mentioned on their community news page!!! Yipee and good work.  Let’s keep on listening and see what else happens.

My friend Ceeque who has a lovely (albeit sparse…nudge nudge) blog has tagged me in a reading meme.  The rules are as follow:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

So then, here it goes.  I’ll start by confessing that I didn’t pick the nearest book, that is one on the conjugation of French verbs and concise grammar (I am brushing up *sigh*).  So instead I wandered a little further to the book I read just before Christmas.  It is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  He also crafted the wonderful story The Kite Runner.

Sentences 1-3:

“Why don’t you go upstairs, Laila.  Go on.”  As she moved toward the steps, Laila heard the visitor say to Babi that he had news from Panjshir.

I highly recommend both of the books to anyone who loves to read. Now it’s back to conjugation….

For all of you who’ve been wondering how you can donate now to Heather’s Hootenanny for Hope - I now have the answer!

You can go to the ALS website that Karen set up, and on the page you’ll be able to donate directly to ALS - Heather’s Hootenanny for Hope via a secure link.  Yeah and thanks to Karen.

CLICK HERE to see the site.  Add the address to your favourites now, and you can check it regularly for the schedule of events for August 9th.

I was asked to take on a new project this week.  One that in theory sounds really interesting.  It would have been an opportunity for real career growth and advancement, and would have made me more marketable.  It sounded exciting.  It was a job that would have given me the autonomy that I love, and freedom to execute things and strategize at a meaningful level. 

I gave the offer very serious consideration and spoke at great length with Tim about it.  I respect his opinion, and his perspective is often different than mine.  In the end I realized that as exciting as the opportunity would have been, the actual nature of the work was very unappealing to me.  I would be broadening my skill set, but in a direction that I had no real interest. 

I know myself quite well, and I know that I would embrace and attack the parts of the project that appeal to me, and put off, or ignore those that didn’t.  Unfortunately, that would do the client a great disservice in the end.  On the job training…cutting my teeth at their expense, would likely have been just that.  Had it not been a high profile project I might have considered doing it, but as we all know first impressions are of paramount importance in the 2.0 biz.  I cannot presume to play with other’s livlihoods.

I hope something else exciting comes along soon!

My favourite cousin Matt Mihaly had some absolutely fantastic news today.  He is the founder and CEO of Sparkplay Media and Iron Realms Entertainment. His company has been around for a decade or so, and has been a leader in the development of online text-based role playing games like Achaea .  He also pioneered the sales of virtual goods for real money (you can see what he has to say on that topic here).

He and his company have been developing their first graphics based game, and were looking to raise some capital for the project.  Today he announced that he closed Series A funding in the amount of $4.25 million.

Good work Matt.  I am proud of you, and your hard work.

Well it’s a sad day here … a childhood memory is no longer.  I read today that Polaroid announced that it is going to stop making the instant camera and the film to go with it.  The Boston Globe reports that there is film to supply next year’s demands and that’s it.

For all of us who remember the ‘magic’ of photos appearing before our eyes, we will see the end of an era.  On the other hand, the last time I actually used a polaroid must have been in the 1980’s, so I suppose I don’t have any right to crab about it.  I still have one in the basement somewhere with my first Apple computer, and a manual typewriter….

Six months out from the date and we’re as busy as bees.  The organizing commitee met on Monday night to hammer out plans, and Heather, Karen, Teri and I met yesterday to talk about setting up a second website for HH4H two.  The second site will be more or less static, featuring the important news about the at day…prices, location, list of performers, donation links and SWAG for sale!

This site will continue to have the donation links (coming) the link to the other site (as soon as I’ve got the address) and links to ticket sales (when we’ve got them) and pictures of the SWAG for sale.

I’d like to remind everyone that donations for the silent autcion are more than welcome, just leave a comment on the site and someone will get back to you.  We are able to provide tax receipts for the auction items as long as you can provide us with a receipt for the value of the item.

We are also looking for volunteers.  If you can help before the Hootenanny, for a couple of hours that day, or for clean up please give Libby Barrie a call and leave your name, or contact me and I’ll hook you up. 

This is a great way to get those volunteer hours you (or your kids) need to graduate from highschool!

Keep your eyes on this site for more details to come!!

I had just a fantastic day today.  I was ’supervising’ my daughter’s class trip to the local ski hill Chicopee today, and spent the day skiing and looking like I wasn’t actually with a group of 13 and 14 year old kids. There were about 150 of them.  I’d forgotten how funny that age is.  Not children anymore, but not yet adults.  It was really funny watching them ski and chat, and just be goofy.

While I skiied alone (because I guess I’m just not cool anymore) I bumped into a woman who is a custom bra maker.  I hadn’t ever considered that to be a line of work, much less a business opportunity.  She’s redesigning her website and I am wondering about trading services. I’ll have to get in touch with her early next week.

The next person I met is a former sales guy.  He was telling me how this was the first time in 35 years that he wasn’t working.  He got tired of sales, sold his book to the company, and is taking 6 months to plan his future.  What struck me was that he said,

“this is the first time in my life I am planning the future without being pushed by the past”.

Such a great idea.  I hadn’t ever stopped to consider how often we make decisions not based on the merit of the situation, but based on all of the other things in life ‘pushing’ us to make a decision.  It’s a great idea.

The three of us rode up a few times together, when the salesman asked the bra fitter if she’s ever fitter men.  She said that in fact she has a male client, who has implants, and is in entertainment.  There’s probably a really good story to be had there, but the chair got to the top and we parted ways.

Who would have thought that I’d have such a great time on the chair lifts?

We had a great time ice fishing … that is if catching fish isn’t an integral part of the experience! 

We were out last year on this lake with Bob Izumi.  For those of you who don’t know him, he’s a professional fisherman, and all around genuinely nice man.  We were at a friend’s cottage on the day that Bob was scouting an ice fishing episode for his tv show.  I have rarely met anyone as genereous with his time, equipment or praise as Bob was with the group of 7 or 8 kids that were there.  The day we fished with Bob everyone caught lots of fish and had a great time. 

Bob and Ruth

Ruth and the Black Crappie (1 of 7 fish for her that day)

This year we didn’t catch a single one, but we still had fun out on the ice together.  For those of you who are curious the ice was about 20 cm thick which is considered well withing the standards for safety.  The hockey stick was for safety, the toboggan to keep little bums warm and dry!

We’d like to send a HUGE thank you to JR Taylor at Drumbo Tent for donating the Big Tent for the Big day.  Heather and JR go way back to elementary.  He didn’t hesitate to help.

Please remember to thank and support all of our sponsors and donors if you have the chance.

Here’s a little background on another of our very special guests at HH4H2.  Mr. Zack Werner will be attending!! He is best known or his role as a Judge on Canadian Idol.  He is also the ALS Chair for the ALS walks.  He is most generously supporting our event.  Thank you Zack, we look forward to seeing you in Paris!

We are thrilled that Gregory Hoskins has agreed to perform at HH4H 2!!

You can find out all about Greg at his website, but he is a fantastic performer who just appeared on January 25th on CBC Radio in a one hour version of his concert. Thank you Greg for agreeing to come!  We can’t wait to hear you!

Gregory Hoskins on iTunes
Rob at CandyRat has made sure that Gregory Hoskins recordings are now available for purchase on iTunes. Feel free to buy from there. Currently available titles include
Moon Come Up, Raids on The Unspeakable, The King of Good Intention, and The Beggar Heart.

Please support all the artists who are kindly donating their time and energy to help us raise money for ALS.

So I have had some time to put my web 2.0 experience as the primary researcher, writer (Respectance Blog), and host of Respectance- a Silicon Valley venture capital funded social networking site into perspective.  Here are some of my thoughts on the development, marketing and monetization of such a site.

 As much as the internet pundits hate to acknowledge it, social networking is within the context of the general population, still a niche activity.  General use of social networks is growing daily as broad band and viral penetration continues.  Within the realm of Social Networking there are many ‘flavours‘. There are the big boys FaceBook and myspace, and then there are the myriad of niche sites such as Respectance.  There is something for everyone, but how does any one company find the customers that they need?

Through honest and frank web evangelism I brought our first thousands of members on board.  It was not easy, death and grieving is a taboo subject, to reach out and convince people to share their visceral feelings in order to produce (for our purposes) genuine high value content.  Market research was extensive, design and feel of the site crucial to attracting the target demographic (women 25-50), and of course writing things that people are interested in hearing about in a concise and easy manner.

I ran our SEM campaigns and found that SEM was a great way to bring people in.  Unfortuantely for a startup it’s also a great way to ’send money out’.  The cost/benefit of any SEM campaign must be constantly analysed and CTRs aren’t necessarily the way to measure success.  It may allow you to count the people in the door, but did they stay long enough to have the ‘cup of coffee’?

While I was there we tried many marketing campaigns based on good will agreements with non-profits, attempting penetration of chat rooms, and forums.  Some of the campaigns were successful, many weren’t.  Time lines were tight, budget tight, staffing few.  New people came and brought ideas.  There isn’t a marketing ‘how to’ manual out there yet for this kind of marketing.  What people like, what catches on, it’s all still a very elusive target. 

There is a critical mass of members that any social networking site must have in order to use any of the ‘no fee for service’ monetization models.  Even then it seems making money is not at all easy. (more…)

I don’t know how many of you know about these applicaions, so those of you that so will have to bare with me here. 

One that I use every day is Netvibes .  It’s  an ‘aggregator’ site which allows you to put in the addresses of all of the websites that you like to visit.  So, for instance, all your blogger friend’s sites, and your news feeds.  Once you’ve put them in (which is really fast, you simply paste the address in and Netvibes confirms the feed) then you just go to the Netvibes page and it shows you which feed has been updated.  You can then click on the post, and it’s there to read!

It saves a lot of time and effort over visiting each site individually.  The only caveat is that you should become a member, otherwise all of the feeds will be lost when you log out.  It’s a small price to pay.

The second site, is more of a browser filter.  It will appeal to anyone who has kids of a young age using the internet.  It’s a Firefox add on called Glubble.  It’s still very much in beta, but promises to be a great feature once they’ve worked out all the kinks.

The way it works is that you add this onto your FF browser, and you become the ’super user’.  You then can set up accounts for your children.  They can visit a dozen or so very primary sites like Clifford the dog.  Anything beyond that you must first approve. 

Once you approve a site, the child can visit it at any time.  So, instead of trying to filter content for words like breast, or what have you, it simply blocks all sites.  I tried it out with my kids, and frankly they are beyond the age for which it is useful.  I think you really need to start using it with little ones who only visit one or two sites a time.  Mine were simply ticked that they couldn’t go ANYWHERE on the net.  Mind you one was trying to research the question of whether the restoration of the Parthenon will be a success, and the other was looking for Gameboy Cheats….

One of the really neat features of Glubble is that you can join forces with other trusted Superusers and link into their approved website list.  It may well save time if you trust your friends’ judgement.

 So, now that I’ve had my techie release for the day, try out the sites and see what you think.

Teri has confirmed that Dr. Strong has agreed to come!  He’ll be having a putt off with Zack!

Well we asked Stuart, and he can’t come (shucks).  He supports three charities, and tours 200 days a year.  He generously agreed to send some autographed books and cd’s for the silent auction though!  I’ll pass them on to the committee when they come.

Let’s make sure to be sending all information that you want posted to Martha so she can put it up here, and please make sure to use this address on all publicity and information packages as our ‘one stop’ information portal.

So Heath is dead.  What I say here is not meant to be disrespectful in any way.  I am sure that his death is a horrific loss for his friends and family. 

Not for me though.

It’s too bad, I liked him in Brokeback Mountain, but at the end of the day I don’t think that his achievements warrant the coverage he got in death.  Who does the coverage benefit?  I am sure not his family, not his friends.  It beneifts the media companies that pimped him out to begin with.

What is it that draws us to these stories? 

I think that most of us revel in the stories on TMZ and PerezHilton because it’s fun to watch how people who have “everything” waste it.  Let’s face it, Britney and Amy Winehouse are train wrecks.  They make my problems seem almost funny.  I am honest with myself, I know how mean this perspective is. 

We know that most of the people in the tabloids WANT the coverage.  They profit financially from it.  THere are many very rich and successful actors and musicians who fly under the radar their whole lives.  What do we know about Bono’s life?  Nothing.  That’s the way he wants it.

I think the real question then becomes, do these people in the tabloids know we are laughing at them, not with them? Do they care?

Teri confirmed today that not only do we have a HUGE tent kindly donated, but also that she has confirmed Zack again for our show!  Good work Teri and everyone.

Well, I’ve finished writing another grant application and my hopes are high.  I’ve applied for $15,000 to buy basic literacy support texts for the school one of my children attends.  My hopes are high, as we fit the criteria of the application to a “T”.

So that’s off my desk, and now the Second Annual Hootenany for Hope Planning begins.  Heather is doing well.  We are travelling this road with her.  Some of her friends are beside her in the journey, others like me, are wandering the path showing up regularly to visit.  I admire her strength and valour, and that she is still making everyone laugh.  ALS is such a cruel disease.

I wonder what it is that gives some people such strength in the face of adversity,  Many would curl up and cry.  Is it faith in a God, or the support of friends and family, or something else?  I know she must have her dark times but I haven’t seen one yet.

I’ll keep you posted on that journey from time to time.  Now it’s off to the farmer’s market for me!

Planning has begun for   HHH 2008 with a big meeting tonight.   Thanks to everyone who came in body and soul.

We raised over $35,000 last year to help find a cure.  Let’s try and match that this year! 

We’ve booked the fair grounds so be sure to mark the date in your calendars and to tell your friends and family.  Even though we’re getting ‘off the farm’ we are going to keep our country feel with music and entertainment for kids and adults.  Keep checking back for more details, and let us know if you have any questions or comments!

I realized last week when I was away  for a week and finally checked my email, that I was swamped with notifications from all of the social networking sites that I belong to.  I know that I probably belong to more than the average person, as part of the market research I did for a job included  ‘experienceing’ other sites.  Holy cow though, can you say SPAM?

I’ve gone in and turned off most of the auto messages.  Frankly, when I first signed up to the really popular ones like fb and myspace they were new and very shiny.  Now they are becoming a pain in the butt.

Sometimes more (applications, notifications etc) is just more.  It’s not better.

Thanks to David Armano and his article for making people think about this.

Happy New Year’s to everyone.   I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s filled with friends and family, food and drink, and lots of skiing.

I haven’t posted much this last week as we were in Vermont skiing.  We had a fabulous time, notwitstanding that we left a day early to beat an enourmous blizzard.  We had an extra day that we spent in Montreal, and New Year’s Day found us at the Insectarium and Biodome.  Two incredible attractions, that we all enjoyed.  I’d recommend them highly to anyone who likes natural history.  We met up with our dear friends Mike and Lisa and their three kids in Vermont.  I went to University with Mike, so our friendship runs long and deep.

Unfortunately (or not) I forgot my ‘electronics’ bag that had my laptop and camera in it.  So the downside was no posting or reading anyone else, no photos of a magnificent family holiday.  I also could have used some time to work on the latest grant application that I am writing.

The upside was no distractions from my life. 

This in combination with some buzz in the web 2.0 world about why women aren’t on the development end really got me to thinking about how much I use my laptop, and what for.  It’s a tool to accomplish the usual jobs like banking and emails, but also to keep current and to distract myself from some of the day to day life I live.  I watched a few people using their machines at the hotel (only the lounge had internet).  It seemed the same 2 people who couldn’t relax.  I must say that it brought up the same old discussion that I have with friends and family….is technology a gift or curse?  For our part, H left his crackberry at home and my phone was off.  Our friends who we went with aren’t as wired as we are, for them it’s not an issue.

I am beginning to think there are really three kinds of people.  Those who are completely immersed in the web and all its trappings, those who use it a tool, and those who don’t use it at all.  Three groups with entirely disparate perspectives on technology I suppose. 

I decided that a week away from the internet was a good thing for me - until I got home to 118 emails, and all the work. Oh well!  It was worth it.  I’ll post some photos when our friends send us them.