Human

Fundraising like a 12-year-old
Friday, August 20, 2010 - 09:55

At the nomination meeting on Tuesday my nephew once again stole the show. The first time he stole the show was during Dick Hibma's campaign. The story went something like this:

Zach's dad: "Where did all this stuff come from?"
Zach: "It's for Dick Hibma's campaign. They dropped it off here."
Zach's dad: "You know you're not allowed to open the door for strangers!"
Zach: "Dad. He's not a stranger. Everyone knows who Dick Hibma is."

See Zach's also a newspaper carrier. He keeps up-to-date on the things that happen in our area. And he is one of my biggest supporters. During the fund raising portion of the nomination meeting on Tuesday Zach pledge $50 of his own money to my campaign. He's 12.

Want to make Zach's dollar go further? Pledge a few of your own dollars by clicking on this link. If you live in Canada you can even get a bit back come tax time. ... unlike Zach who's too young to get the tax break that comes with his first political contribution.

Thanks Zach, you rock!

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Wanted: "thoughtful fun" activity leaders
Thursday, August 19, 2010 - 11:08

Do you have friends? Do you have an activity in mind that you'd like to host? What can I do to help you make your first activity day/morning/afternoon/evening happen THIS MONTH?

My goal: create a kit for others to host their own "activity day" based on real-life, successful activity days.

The activities should be something that can happen with a group of friends (5-10 people) and hosted at a person's house. Last night I mentioned craft-specific activities such as scrapbooking, DIY t-shirts. But the activities could also be guided nature walks, clean-up-the-park (garbage picking), or ... you name it!! Pick something that's fun and that you already know your friends will enjoy. Add a Green theme to your activity (creating an "outdoor" scrapbook layout, making campaign t-shirts, watching a green-themed movie, making music/jam night etc) and give it a purpose (celebrate the end of summer, celebrate the cherry tomato harvest, you can even make it political if you think your friends would be "ok" with that).

Let me know what your ideas are and let's get this party started!

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Positively Excited
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - 09:12

Last night I won the Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound Green Party of Canada nomination meeting. That means when the next federal election rolls 'round, my name will be on the ballot. This is the speech that I gave last night at the nomination meeting. And this is the audience that's already starting to make the world a better place:

These folks are going to make change happen

 

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More Humanity

Circular Logic on August 4, 2010
Winning Math on August 3, 2010
Transport Canada on July 30, 2010
Environmental Assessment Triggers on July 30, 2010
Public Hearing and Canadian Environmental Assessment Act on July 29, 2010
The Voice Mail Game on July 29, 2010
Is the Storage Fee to Blame? on July 28, 2010
Updated Links on July 28, 2010
Did You Write a Letter? on July 28, 2010
Asking Questions About Nuclear Waste on July 28, 2010

Tech

SEO: Plug your nose and get stuck in
Friday, July 16, 2010 - 13:12

This week I am almost completely consumed by search engine optimization. It's the topic for chapter in my new book on building Drupal Web sites and the topic for an SEO class that I'm teaching at the beginning of August. I've been comparing search results for phrases like "php drupal" and "php drupal help." I've been obsessing over click through rates and conversion rates and I've been studying the competition. And then I got side tracked. Using the little built-in Firefox Google search (so that Mozilla could get a few fractions of a cent from my search) I looked up the following terms:

If we do a little comparison against these four terms we'll see most people use the term "software" with occasional forays into "program" most people have been using the term "software" and that the most popular regions for any combination of these terms are from India, South Africa, New Zealand and the UK. GIMP ranks well in all four search phrases, but only the first link yields a top-ten result for Inkscape. What's up Inkscape? Why aren't you top ten how can we make you do better? SEO to the rescue. Before you get covered in hives and think that SEO is just for marketing wonks let's take a look at how all projects, products and businesses can benefit from a little bit of site optimization.

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Artefacts
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 - 09:47

I have the most interesting conversations while at open source conferences. A few weeks ago at CMS Expo I had a great conversation with Jeff Eaton about open source as it relates to things other than code. I'm not sure where Jeff had come up with the phrase, but he had recently realized that many of our best third party ("contributed") Drupal modules are "artefacts of paid work." Unlikely many other types of open source projects where a developer was "scratching their own itch", much of the Drupal ecosystem of code has been built by people who were paid for their time.

While this could open up the conversation to all kinds of interesting comparisons and rebuttals and agreements and disagreements, let's head off in a different direction instead. Contributing artefacts has made the Drupal code ecosystem incredibly healthy and a wonderful place to dive into when you are looking to deploy a Web site with a shoestring budget. There are, however, two main problems that we've not yet solved: designs can never be artefacts and training people has no residual artefact.

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