I took the materials from that workshop and created the worksheet you see below. It can help you get a listening dashboard setup at your nonprofit. Feel free to download and use it to learn everything you can about your supporters!

I’ve blogged about this over at NetWitsThinkTank.com, but thought I should stick it here too. Enjoy!

• 9 Simple Things Everyone Should Know about Twitter Hashtags
• Find Your Local Social Media Club
• 6 Dogooding Webby Things Your Nonprofit Should Check Out
• Power to Your Peeps! Real-time Fundraising with Twitter
• 15 Clay Shirky Quotes That Blew My Mind at NTC

There. Now maybe I’ll get off my butt and actually finish the dozen or so drafts I’ve written. In the meant time, be sure to check out some quality dogooding tech musings at NetWits Think Tank, Socialbrite.org, or Beth’s Blog.

Ever Googled your own name? When Chris does this, an American Most Wanted page comes up featuring a serial killer by the same name…and from the same home state. What’s a guy to do? Start a blog, and optimize it so it appears near the top of the search results. After just 1 week, Chris’s blog is the #20 results…the very last entry on page 2. With some incoming links and additional activity, it should move up in no time. Good luck Chris!

Chris’s Blog

Here are some notes I jotted down in my Moleskine. Many may seem routine to you, but to me they were eye-opening.

• An acronym is pronounced as a word. “NASA, OPEC, OSHA”
• An initialism is pronounced letter by letter. “NBA, YMCA, NSA”
• Choosing the correct article (a or an) before an acronym is determined phonetically.  Use ‘an’ if it proceeds an F, H, L, M, N, R, S, or X.
• Abbreviate social titles only when the full name is used. “Rev. Jesse Jackson. Reverend Jackson.”
• Abbreviate country names, such as United States and United Kingdom, only when they are used as an adjective. “U.S. Ambassador, U.S. Foreign Policy.”
• Use italics for foreign words when they are not normal.

Here are a few notes on capitalization:

• Capitalize the first word after a colon if it’s a complete sentence; lower if not.
• Do not capitalize the word city in “city of Toronto”.
• Seasons are not capitalized.
• Capitalize African Americans and Caucasians, not blacks and whites.

And finally some notes on using numbers:

• Write the words (1-9) when using them for journalism, science, or business. “Two, nine”
• Write the words (1-99) for literary writing. “Seven, fifty, sixty-one”
• Write the words if they begin a sentence. “Four score and seven years ago…”
• Write the words for decades. “The twenties”
• Write the numbers larger than nine for journalism, science, or business. “29, 88″
• Write the numbers larger than ninety-nine for literary writing. “102, 1054″
• Write the numbers when it’s a mix of these rules, such as “8 to 30 employees.”
• Write the numbers when referring to a part of a book, such as “Chapter 9, page 71.”
• Write the numbers for all dates and times. “21st Century or 10 P.M.”

You can check out other key takeaways here.

After a bracket-gone-wild pre-party, little George Mason showed up at the kegger with some bruises and shoulder chips. LSU, despite post-Katrina chaos raging on, managed to down twelve beers at the wet t-shirt contest before passing out in UCLA‘s hotel room.

I just want to know one thing…who invited the Florida Gators to the Final Four?

Who voted them Prom King way back during fall semester?

Oh, wait, it was me!

While my official bracket was a colossal mess, much like the rest of the nation’s, I managed to tag the Gators as potential champions way back on December 12th. Now, I’m no hoops expert, but maybe Andy Katz and Jay Bilas should start answering my emails. That goes for you too Simmons.

Until November, enjoy your summer MLBcation. (zzzzzzzzzzzzzz…)

I’ve been sifting through books on writing, and have finally found a useful one. Jan Venolia’s Write Right! is the first writing book I couldn’t put down, despite what would seem like the most boring content in the world to a fiction aficionado. It’s straight up talk about grammar, words, style, and punctuation – just the facts ma’am. I’ve learned a lot, and I plan to dedicate three or four posts to my key takeaways.

The first thing I would like to share with you will not be that helpful, other than shedding light on why English is such a frustrating language. Check out these three classifications of similar words…it’s amazing we ever learn to speak at all.

Homonyms – Words that are spelled and pronounced the same but have different definitions. Beet (noun) and beat (verb). Blue (adjective) and blew (verb). I bet this is a huge problem when people learn English as a second language. Check out Alan Cooper’s huge list of homonyms.

Homographs – Words that are spelled the same but have different definitions and sometimes pronunciations. Fair (noun) and fair (adjective). Wound (noun) and wound (verb). Subject (noun) and subject (verb). More information on homographs, and their conservative cousins heteronyms, can be found here.

Homophones – Words that are pronounced the same but have different spellings and definitions. Their (pronoun), there (adjective), and they’re (contraction). Pair (noun), pare (verb), and pear (noun). Write (verb) and right (adjective). You can check out this extensive list for more English homophones.

As I mentioned, I’m not sure how this information can help you in any way, other than arming you with the vocabulary to verbally thrash the English language. Enjoy!

I will continue to add to the Reviews and Parenting categories going forward, and have big plans for Geeking Out, Photography, Hoops, and Music. I have about a dozen articles already penned, and they should start appearing in December.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.