So, if there is another Kyla or Darla Dampier out there, sorry I’ve got those domains.  I am pretty excited for the day that my daughters want to start up a blog, or launch a website. I know I will be waiting a while. It will be fun handing over www.kyladampier.com and www.darladampier.com to my girls.

Nothing says I love you quite like registering a domain name for your kid. So why not register your kids’ today.

The FoReST Laboratory at Lakehead University is having a public showing on Tuesday May 18 at 7 pm.

The documentary features discussions by a number of thought leaders such as David Orr whose book greatly influenced my view on environmental education a few years ago. Another though leader the documentary features is Gary Vanynerchuk of Wine Library TV. You have to check this guy out. He’s a brilliant wine guy and brilliant biz dev guy as well. In the documentary he talks briefly about soils and their relationship to grapes and wine.

I’ll be emceeing the night and will be joined by local gardening author Graham Saunders and the FoReST Lab’s soil manager Joel Symonds.

Hosted by: Lakehead University Centre for Analytical Services, FoReST Laboratory
Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Location: ATAC 1001, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay campus
Cost: Free

If your organization isn’t on facebook, what’s stopping you?

Here’s an example from “Made to Stick” by the Heath brothers. They demonstrate the power of using a schema. In this example they are attempting to describe a type of fruit.

Description option 1.
A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very tink but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart. Question: If you mixed pomelo juice half and half with orange juice, would it taste good?

Description option 2.
A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.

In your communications can you think of examples where you can make accurate assumptions about your audience’s schemata and adjust your message to capitalize on those assumptions?

Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

The book description claims that “a map, hidden in the gospel of Matthew, is the key to awakening the sleeping giant in the church-men. Sounds like fiction, but it’s true. The apostle Matthew embedded a map into his gospel. History’s greatest men, including Christ himself, followed this map.”

The first half of The Map is a fictional narrative of murder, deception, and greed as an author, vicar and a monk fight to uncover the truth behind the map. It has a bit of a Da Vinci Code feel to it. The narrative kept me reading and dialogue was fairly believable.

The narrative introduces the idea that all men of greatness must embark the Three Jouneys of Jesus (as found in Matthew’s Gospel) in their lifetime:

1. the journey of submision (Matthew 1-7)
2. the journey of strength (Matthew 8-25), and
3. the journey of sacrifice (Matthew 26-28).

The second half of the book uses the narrative in a parabolic sort of way to unpack and apply the three journeys.

The metaphor of a traveller ascending a mountain using switchbacks is the central image in the book. The three journeys are one leg on a switchback, moving the traveller toward the mountain’s summit.

In many churches I have seen soft, and gentle men (Murrow argues these are feminine leaning traits). In other churches, I’ve seen almost militant, an aggressive men whose mission it was to take their city for Jesus – complete with the military metaphors (Murrow argues these are masculine leaning traits). I find both extremes repulsive. And that is the beauty of The Map. The Map gives men permission to journey into feminine and masculine realms.  It is actually quite healthy to journey between feminine traits (Murrow says submission and sacrifice are feminine) and masculine traits (Murrow says strength is masculine).

I think this book is a very important contribution to Christan Spirituality and Men’s Issues and has the potential to give men a renewed sense of mission in the North American Church. In some ways the book re-casts some of the concepts John Eldredge provides in “Wild at Heart.” But it’s different in that the book lays out a framework for how to live those concepts out.

Personal leadership and discipline are important in living a life that benefits humanity, and the overall created order. Men who have an under-girding of submission, who then lives of strength and sacrifice, will have the potential to changed the world.

NOTE: I received a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review from booksneeze.com.

Source: Stock Exchange http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1105487

You’ve been busted! Caught! Maybe you were caught in a lie. Maybe you stretched the truth on your resume and now find yourself in a job you cannot do. Maybe you’ve manipulated people and situations and now are being called on it.

We all have.

The test of a leader is what you do when you’ve been found out. Do you continue to try to smooth things over? Do you try to talk your way out of it? Or do you face the consequences and do the hard work of making things right?

What you’ve been trying to hid is now clearly in the open. “The Emperor has no clothes!” the young boy cries.

The toothpaste is out of the tube and cannot be put back in. Now the mess is obvious. Do you want to to clean it up? Or would you rather draw smiley faces with your dirty little fingers in the globby toothpaste puddle?

What did the chicken restaurant do? They decided to dominate one advertising medium, rather than spread their advertising resources thinly over multiple marketing channels. Doing this and they would likely go unnoticed.

If you want to read the original article, and you are having a hard time tracking it down,  email me and I should be able to help.

In CSI: Miami an XRD was used to determine the materials in a hubcab found at a crime scene.

I am not a physics major, but last time I checked, X-rays are invisble to the human eye. Hmmmmm.

Facebook is much more straightfoward. If you are planning an event, you can set up a facebook event. If you are providing a service line, or promoting your brand you can create a page where people can become your fan. But how can Twitter be used effectively? It’s just a mini-blog right?

I found this pretty straightforward presentation on slideshare.net that gives some pointers on using Twitter… actually 140 pointers to be exact.

Enjoy!