Movember 2011 announcement
Here’s the promised important personal announcement. As you know, I got involved with a little organization called Movember last year, and somehow managed to raise over $500 bucks for prostate cancer initiatives. The amount might seem small (Canadian contribution to the cause last year topped 22 mil), until you consider that at the time I had under 70 followers, and largely used Twitter+Email to raise awareness. It was a tiny social media experiment with a microscopic megaphone, but the results were pretty amazing:
In defense of Earth Hour
Now that Earth Hour 2011 is behind us, it’s not a surprise to hear that Toronto didn’t do “as well” as in previous years. Here’s an article in BlogTO stating that the city only reduced its energy consumption by 5 percent this year. Compare it to 10% in 2010 and 15% in 2009. I can see a trend in that, and it’s a little upsetting. But what’s more upsetting is the number of naysayers that came out and laughed at the very idea of Earth Hour – just read the comments for the article. Not a friendly bunch. I’d say a rather cynical bunch.
Trickle-down economics of new Charlie Sheen
Do you remember where you were on that fateful Saturday night, March 5th, 2011, at 10PM Eastern, 7pm Pacific? I remember – I just brought in a take out order of dry wings, calamari rings and was getting ice-cold beer from the fridge. The house was quiet, and my wife and I got comfortable in front of … the computer monitor and tuned in to … Charlie Sheen’s streamcast. We knew history was in the making.
Caching external content for site performance
I recently had to re-install some twitter/tumblr syndication modules on a few small sites. Reason: sudden performance issues. The sites were medium-sized, and depended heavily on externally syndicated content. You’ve seen these busy sidebars before: a few recent twitter posts, a few more tumblr pics, another FeedBurner, maybe a dozen of Disqus/Echo comments, Amazon widget. This is all good, and wonderful, to spread your content/community around on multiple platforms, and syndicate them on your site. But keep in mind that all these services – while practical and very responsive – are relatively new technologies. Young start-up companies.
Project lifecycle, simplified
You’ve probably seen this cartoon before (if not, just google it), and if you have – it made you chuckle. Now how many will admit being involved with such challenging projects (web or otherwise)? How many will admit to managing (or rather, mis-managing) something that resembles the above? I hope a few hands are still raised in the air. It’s not fun to inherit such a project, and even less fun to do the clean-up afterwards. But I assume we’ve all done it.
Movember parting thoughts
Hello, everyone
First of all, thanks to each and every one who contributed to Movember Prostate Cancer Awareness. Either through a retweet, or by ‘liking’ the page, or by replying to an email, or by offering to give me cash in person. You even helped if you saw me on the street, noticed the ‘mo, pointed a finger and laughed. It’s still awareness, I’ll take it as a ‘notice’. It would have made me smile. My most favourite moment of the past month – the photo below:
Job growth – good for company?
It started with a quick twitter exchange with @juntajoe. He suggested that employees should evolve in their positions to a higher level, before such a promotion is given by their supervisors. Essentially, step up to a bigger role in the company and then it will be granted. In theory it’s sound and I agree that individuals should always self-improve. But there’s a serious logical consequence in that theory.
Why am I doing Movember
Hi, folks
As you know, November is prostate cancer awareness month. For the last 7 years socially brave men all over the world have been growing out their moustache as a sign of support. Read more about the history of this cause here: http://ca.movember.com/about/
