How to Extend Your Social Networks with Ease

I'm a social person—I fully admit it. As I've mentioned in my blog posts before: I love social—the connections, the collaboration, the exposure to new ideas. I'm transparent about my social savvy—my email auto-signature includes links to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, plus a link to my blog.

When I was coaching colleagues on using social media, I found that many people were unsure about who to connect with on the big three social engagement networks: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, so here are my top tips and tricks for making it easy and effective.

Twitter is Best For: Trends, News, and Solutions

Twitter has the lowest barrier to entry, is the most open social media platform, and has the easiest-to-make connections. I don't follow everyone who follows me, but I do follow those who have educational or thought-provoking content, and I engage with their followers. To find interesting people to follow:

• Review the "Who to Follow" recommendations Twitter shares on the right side of your Twitter web client and follow the ones that look interesting. Twitter will continue to personalize and add to that list over time.
• Look for experts in your field.
• Add people you meet face to face.
• Follow journalists and bloggers whose writing you admire.
• Take advantage of the top 100 lists of influencers publications compile and add them to a list.
• Keep an eye on trending hashtags for relevant Twitter voices.

You don't want to be one of those people who only has 25 followers but is following 5000. Follow slowly and thoughtfully. Your followers will grow as you share relevant content and engage with other Twitter handles.

If you have strong political, religious or controversial views on particular topics you intend to share on Twitter I recommend that you consider two handles: One for your professional life and one for your personal life.

Facebook: Personal Connections,  Storytelling, and Targeted Advertising

Facebook, while ever expanding and morphing, it is still the most personal of the big three social networks. Not registering as yourself violates the TOS (Terms of Service), which filters out many of the spammers and trolls you find on Twitter.

Facebook makes suggestions of people you might know. It warms my heart when my friends find themselves interacting with each other about my posts and friend each other.

Because you have the opportunity to openly share your thoughts, opinions, and life events here with your friends, I recommend being discriminating about who you accept as friends. You can customize the "Who can see my posts" settings, but it's best to err on the side of under sharing.

Facebook's powerful ad platform enables advertisers to target with amazing accuracy, so you'll see ads customized to your interests.

LinkedIn: Powerful Professional Connection Tool

LinkedIn is the largest professional social networking site with 467 million members. When you populate your professional profile, there's an added layer of comfort and identification when connecting with others.

 There are two schools of thought about LinkedIn connections. LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) accept connection requests from all. On the opposite spectrum are those who only connect with people they've met face to face.

I'm right in the middle of those extremes. I've created guidelines for myself that are not set in stone, but help me quickly scroll through and act on the 30+ connection requests I receive each week.

• If I've met someone face to face at a networking, professional or social event, I always accept those connection requests.
• I always accept connection requests from One Brick volunteers or TEDxSanJoseCA volunteers/attendees/vendors. Volunteering is a passion of mine, and I love making virtual connections that complement the real world ones.
• Because I've managed different LinkedIn groups for years, many group members request to connect. I rarely accept those. Group members can request to connect with fellow group members. Before you accept, review both their profile and their contributions to the group. If their only contributions are shameless self promotion, feel free to decline. 
• Working for a company as large as IBM means that there are droves of IBMers on LinkedIn and I always accept connection requests from them.
• LinkedIn is optimized for recruiters. If you're open to discussion, accept them.

Ultimately you need to be comfortable with the connections you've made on social networks. If you find someone offensive, delete the connection. If you enjoy their posts, let them know. Virtual or real-life, connecting with people and adding them to your network can expand your world. Give it a try.

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider

As part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders, I blog for the IBM Social Business Insights blog, and repost those blog posts here on my personal blog. Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider, is the second part of a series that was originally published on December 23, 2013, and is owned by IBM. Part 1, Five new social networking applications: Cool or creepy? is here.
I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider

Brandi Boatner, Digital Experience Manager, IBM @ThinkBluePR
Holly Nielsen, Social Media Leader, IBM @HollyNielsen

This holiday season it’s time to tech the halls with boughs of privacy…or maybe not?

During the holidays, many people share gift ideas, wish lists, New Year’s resolutions they have no intention of keeping and a good amount of laughter with family, friends and loved ones.

Last year we took a look at some popular social networking applications that were designed to connect people by sharing only the information the user wanted to share. With thousands of apps being created every day, and as we close out another tech-obsessed year, which apps will stick around in 2014? Let’s look at some recent apps and ask the same question: Are these cool or creepy?

 1. Gym Shamer

Gym Shamer is an app that lets you set your workout goals and then check in at the gym through Foursquare. If you miss a workout, the app tells your entire social graph that you blew it.

Cool/creepy factor: This one definitely falls on the creepy side. We’re good enough at the remorse game ourselves for missing a workout, especially if we list “Get in Shape” as one of our New Year’s resolutions. We don’t need all of our friends, family, colleagues and followers piling on the grief.

 2. Butt Analyzer

Butt Analyzer is, yes, you read it correctly, an app that uses your phone's camera to take a photo of a man’s or woman’s derriere and calculate the attractiveness of that booty on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s only available on Android, so we couldn’t test it out (which is probably just as well), and there’s a share button that enables sharing the results with your social network.

 Cool/creepy factor: This app is one of the highest ranking out there on the creepy scale.

3. Spout

Spout is a new way to look at your social content feeds—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr—in a swirling, moving, graphically interesting format where the words flow and stream across the screen. You can set the theme, mode, display time, animation style and word speed.

 Cool/creepy factor: Definitely cool. Spout is a word lover’s dream. It would make an amazing screensaver. Hint: if the word stream makes you dizzy, try different speeds and animation styles to find the one you like best.

4. CARROT

The webpage for CARROT for iPhone touts it as “the to-do list with a personality.” You create your to-do list, and CARROT berates you for failing to complete items and rewards you when you finish them. “She” has 400 rewards for good behavior at her disposal, but states, "You don't want to make me upset." Personalized gamification, anyone?



Cool/creepy factor: We’re leaning toward cool for this app, as this reviewer could use some help getting her to-do lists completed. But, getting scolded by her smartphone could also result in immediate app deletion. Not sure what an angry Siri sounds like, but do you want to find out?

 5. Tinder

Talk about a well-defined target audience: no smartphone, no Facebook profile, no Tinder dating. If you read the online reviews (which we did) it would appear that Tinder is taking the millennial dating world by storm. Its claim to fame? It finds out who is nearby and connects you with them if you're mutually interested. A photo of someone in your pre-defined geolocation pops up on your phone, and you swipe left if you’re interested, right if you’re not. Or maybe it was right if you’re interested, left if you’re not. Anyway, if the other person also swipes in the yes direction, a chat box pops up and you can chat. After that, it’s up to you.

Cool/creepy factor: This app is cool if you live in a large metropolis and have trouble getting out and meeting people. All millennials have active Facebook pages and smartphones, right?

 6. Slydial

This app sounds like just what it does. Slydial is a voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone’s mobile voicemail, bypassing the ringing. How many times have you dreaded dialing a number and praying the other party on the end of the line doesn’t answer and your call goes straight to voicemail? Now, there’s an app for that.

Cool/creepy factor: This app is actually pretty cool. Users click on the slydial icon and instantly connect with the recipient’s voicemail box. Slydial can be used for practical and efficient communications when you’re short on time, when you’d rather not leave a text and, more important, when you want to avoid life’s awkward moments. This app is currently only available in the US.

7. MedXCom

“Take control of your health and well-being—anytime, anywhere!” is the tag line for this app. The MedXCom Patient app is a patient portal that lets you store and manage all of your health profile with confidence and convenience and instantly share important data and updates with your doctors.

Cool/creepy factor: MedXCom is both cool and creepy. It is a great way for people to manage health information and include as many details as they need to monitor personal health like reminders for taking medication, storing images of health insurance cards (most people lose these cards every year) and the ability to instantly notify health professionals in case of an emergency. However, on the creepy side a feature of the app is called “safe bumping" that encourages dating singles to go to the doctor for regular STD checks. And yes - that information can be shared.  We'll stop there, but it's safe to say we think it's TMI and bit too creepy.

It would seem that the term privacy means different things to different people in the digital age with our evolving interconnectedness. However, two key constants remain with the emergence of social networking apps: user discretion and transparency. Perhaps we can make 2014 the year privacy found its way back from the abyss of mobile applications. That’s one resolution we can all stick to…maybe.

Why I Started a Book Club

Reading a book. It's one of the most educational, mind-expanding, self-caring things you can do for yourself. 

Do you remember when Oprah started her book club back in 1996? She had a powerful effect on reading for pleasure and discussion. In 2008, an article in Time magazine stated about her club, "It's the greatest force in publishing today, with the power to raise authors from the dead (Leo Tolstoy) or crucify them on the national stage (James Frey)."

 I've always loved the idea of a book club. What could be better than reading a book, then talking about it with other bibliophiles? Add some wine and a few appetizers, and you have a close-to-perfect evening right there.

My mother's book club has been meeting for well over thirty years, so it's not a surprise that I would want to follow in her footsteps. I tried a few book clubs at local bookstores, and a club online, but neither option quite jelled for me. So, I decided to start one of my own. I included friends that I thought would mix well. The only requirement? Read the book!

This group of funny, smart, caring, insightful and just plain fun women has been meeting for almost 7 1/2 years. We've had a few members drop out for various reasons, and new members have joined us; so that we're at the comfortable number of 12. We meet once a month at different members' homes, and vote on the books we'll be reading next. One of my favorite things about this monthly meeting is how everyone has bonded over time. We often spend the first half of the meeting catching up on everyone's lives. 

I spend a lot of time online: reading articles, writing, publishing, and collaborating and communicating virtually, so getting offline to hold and read a book, then discuss it face to face is a treat.

 I started "officially" tracking our reading list a few years ago on my Facebook page; sharing it with friends looking for reading recommendations.  What better way to share the power and love of reading and connect with others who feel the same way, than with social networking? So I decided to share our list here on my blog, and solicit your favorite books while I was at it. (Readers are very generous about sharing their favorites.)

Wednesday Night Book Club Reading List (so far)

10/06 When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
11/06 The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
01/07 Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson
02/07 Dispatches From The Front by Anderson Cooper
03/07 Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards
04/07 The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer
05/07 The Secret byRhonda Byrne
06/07 Water for Elephants bySara Gruen
07/07 Thousand Splendid Suns by Kaaleb Hosseini
08/07 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
09/07 Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
10/07 One Good Turn: A Novel by Kate Atkinson
11/07 My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
01/08 Never Let Her Go by Jennifer Tynes
02/08 Away by Amy Bloom
04/08 Nature Girl by Carl Hasson
05/08 Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
06/08 The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman
07/08 The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
08/08 Pigs In Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
09/08 Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson
10/08 The Road by Cormac McCarthy
11/08 The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrel
01/09 Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
02/09 Not a Genuine Black Man by Brian Copeland
03/09 Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall
04/09 The Russian Concubine by Kate Furnivall
05/09 A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
06/09 I Wish I Had a Red Dress by Pearl Cleage
07/09 Funny In Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
09/09 The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle
10/09 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa Lee
01/10 Blessings by Anna Quindlin
02/10 Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan
03/10 A Reliable Wife by Robert Godrick
04/10 Delusions Of A Grandma by Carrie Fisher
05/10 Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
06/10 Middlesex by Jeffery Eugendes
07/10 The Art Of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein
08/10 Magnificent Bastards by Rich Hall
09/10 An Inconvenient Elephant by Judy Reene Singer
10/10 Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny
11/10 Princess by Jean Sasson
1/11 Moo by Jane Smiley
2/11 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
3/11 Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
4/11 Ladder of Years: A Novel by Anne Tyler
6/11 The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
7/11 The Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue
8/11 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel by Tom Franklin
9/11 Just Kids by Patti Smith
10/11 The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain
12/11 Henry's Sisters by Cathy Lamb
1/12 Ape House: A Novel by Sara Gruen
2/12 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
3/12 Catching Fire & Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
4/12 Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music by Judy Collins
5/12 The Cosmopolitans by Nadia Kalman
6/12 Ellis Island: A Novel by Kate Kerrigan
7/12 Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
8/12 A land more kind than home by Wiley Cash
9/12 Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me) by Carol Tavris,Elliot Aronson
10/12 Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas
11/12 Snowdrops by A.D. Miller
12/12 Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity by Katherine Boo
01/13 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
02/13 Run by Ann Patchett
03/13 The Secret Keeper: A Novel by Kate Morton
04/13  Paris in Love: A Memoir by Eloisa James
05/13 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling
06/13 The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
07/13 Butter: A Novel by Anne Panning
08/13 Crashed (Junior Bender #1) (Junior Bender Mysteries) by Timothy Hallinan
09/13 A Street Cat Named Bob: And How He Saved My Life by James Bowen
10/13 The Red Queen (The Cousin's War) by Philippa Gregory
11/13 Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
12/13 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel by Rachel Joyce
01/14 Wild by Cheryl Strayed
02/14 Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Woman's Prison by Piper Kerman
03/14 Beautiful Ruins: A Novel by Jeff Walter

What is your book club reading? What are you reading that you'd recommend to others?  Please share in the comments -- we'd love to know! (Plus I need some recommendations for the next few meetings!)

Image courtesy of Supertrooper / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My Five Favorite Crowdsourcing Projects

 It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of crowdfunding, and that I think it's one of the most impressive outcomes we've realized from the explosive growth of social networking. In fact, I've blogged about crowdfunding multiple times (more than I'd realized):

•  Repost from IBM Social Business Insights: Crowdfunding: Fundraising with a Social Twist
• Repost from IBM Social Business Insights: Crowdfunding: Harnessing the power of social networking to raise money (Part 2 of 3)
• Repost from IBM Social Business Insights blog: Crowdfunding: Harnessing the power of social networking to rasie money (Part 3 of 3) 
• Great Innovations — Crowdfunding with Innovocracy 
• La Strada Verso Olympia — A Crowdfunding Project That's Come to Life
• How Social Networking Won an Election and Paid for Cancer Treatment

 The creativity, vision, audacity and sheer magic that it takes to bring a dream to life inspires and humbles me. And I'm not the only one.

•  Kickstarter, one of the more well-known crowdfunding platform states, "Since our launch in 2009, 5.6 million people have pledged $967 million, funding 55,000 creative projects."
• Indiegogo, another popular platform says it has, "... raised millions of dollars for thousands of campaigns worldwide."

So far I've helped finance (on a small scale) a high school classmate's book of essays, a documentary about Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and California sea otter livestreaming.  I love the updates and excitement of helping to bring someone's creative vision to life.

So my favorite five projects this week:

• Hello Ruby -  A children’s book that teaches programming fundamentals through stories and kid-friendly activities and targeted toward 4 to 7 year old girls.
   
 

• The Butter Churn - A lovely project from a friend of mine who wants to bring a locally-sourced grocery store to her rural Illinois hometown of 800 people, where the nearest fresh food is 10 miles away.
  

• The Lovemark - An actual, physical architectural structure which will be constructed out of thousands of love cube building blocks.
• UpSense - An invisible, ergonomic, and intuitive keyboard which enables touch typing and Braille typing on the touch screen itself.
  

• Cat Town Cafe - A cat cafe in Oakland, California, based on the extremely popular cat cafes in Japan, where cat lovers can go to have a drink and play with adoptable cats.

What an amazing way to connect with other like-minded people, and help them build their dreams. Do you have a favorite crowdfunding project?

5 Social Media Myths That It's Time to Put to Rest

Have you seen this statistic from the Pew Internet and American Life Project's Social Networking research report?

As of September 2013, 73% of online adults use social networking sites.

Regardless of whether you're using social media to keep in touch with friends and family, play games, follow the news, or research goods and services, most of us are logging into these sites multiple times a day. Statistical research has revealed that more than 95 percent of Facebook users log into their account every day. The same number for Twitter is 60 percent and for LinkedIn is 30 percent.

And as with all new technologies, there's a learning curve, and an even steeper curve of understanding before we truly comprehend the impact of social networking. And while we are at the bottom of the social networking curve of understanding, there are five myths that need to be put to rest now.

1. Twitter is about nothing but what people had for breakfast
   That might have been true for the first six months of Twitter, but we've moved past it. News organizations and celebrities are the most followed accounts, but the virality of Twitter means that anyone can start a trend. Two examples? Arab Spring and the Boston Marathon bombing — both hit the world consciousness via Twitter. Breakfast? Not any more.
   
2. No one cares what personal stuff I post; my privacy settings will protect me.
   So there's trusting, and there's foolishly naive. How much do you pay for your Facebook account? Nothing? Well, no, actually you do pay — with your data. Your likes, dislikes, opinions, friends, religious affiliation, political affiliation and more are all tracked, stored and shared. As long as you are aware that you are paying with your data, you can be circumspect about what you say. But to count on your information to remain unused and unshared with advertisers, is well, Pollyannish at best. Every day we hear about another data breach. Your social media data is not immune to hacking.
3. Recruiters / hiring companies don't pay any attention to this stuff.
   Yes, actually they do. According to this survey by Reppler, 92% of recruiters admit to checking out and screening out applicants based on their profiles on social networking sites. For more information, read my blog post, Think Before You Post: Your Digital Footprint Lives Forever.
4. Googling yourself is narcissistic.
   No, it's really not. It's smart. See #3 above.
   
5. Social media is a fad that won't last.
   Will today's social networking platforms look the same in five years? Unlikely. As with all technologies, they will mature, users will mature, and the platforms and how we use them will evolve. The proliferation of smart phones and the millennials' comfort level with sharing their lives online essentially guarantees that the social media genie will not go back into its bottle.

So why don't we let these five most pervasive myths about social media rest in peace. Of course, additional myths are created and perpetuated every day. Which additional ones would you like to see disappear?

How Can Social Help Solve the Food Insecurity and Food Waste Disconnect in the U.S.?

As a member of the executive team, I was involved in the TEDxSanJoseCA TEDCity2.0 event at the beautiful Silicon Valley Capital Club on Friday, where we heard talks from some compelling speakers.

Part of the fun, and breaking with the normal traditional TEDx schedule, was that the attendees were assigned randomly to different tables for breakout sessions on the themes of:

• Food
• Public Space/Art
• Housing
• Youth and Play
• Water
• Health

I was seated at the Food table. We had 15 or so minutes of discussion time to brainstorm some big ideas about creating and sharing our vision of the future city of San Jose around the theme of food. There were some amazing ideas that all centered around bringing food production into local communities.

We had two very different themes going in our brainstorming session:

• How could local communities grow and distribute local food, saving the money and time needed to ship produce across the country or even from continent to continent?
• How could local communities, government, and private businesses address local food insecurity and nutrition with gardens?

And we came up with the following ideas:

•  Work with corporations to replace lawns, trees, and flowers with vegetable gardens and fruit trees
• Work with building owners to add gardens to the top of their buildings in urban areas
• Add gardens to public parks and include free nearby housing for farmers
• Add gardens to already landscaped and watered street medians
• Set up flatbed trucks that could grow and deliver produce to the people who needed it the most
• Teach children how to garden and how to cook what they grow
• Create a smartphone app that connects people who have excess food with people who would like the excess food

And perhaps coincidentally, (and perhaps not), I've seen several articles about food insecurity in the United States just recently.

This one caught my eye first: Trader Joe's Ex-President To Turn Expired Food Into Cheap Meals. "Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, is determined to repurpose the perfectly edible produce slightly past its sell-by date that ends up in the trash. (That happens in part because people misinterpret the labels, according to article from Harvard and the National Resources Defense Council.) To tackle the problem, Rauch is opening a new market, called Daily Table,, early next year in Dorchester, Mass., that will prepare and repackage the food at deeply discounted prices."

This article is the first time I've really seen, and thought about these pretty shocking figures:

• One-third of the world's food goes to waste every year
• In the U.S., about 40 percent of our food gets thrown out

And yet so much of waste may be caused  by the seemingly simple issue of no standardization on use by/sell by/best by dates on our food, as discussed in this article: The (Food) Dating Game: Why Expiration Dates Don't Help. According to this article, "Confusion over dates, according to a survey by the Food Marketing Institute, leads nine out of 10 Americans to needlessly throw away food."

Then there is Ron Shaich, CEO of Panera, who has taken up the SNAP challenge eating  on just $4.50 per day—the average food benefit for recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Shaich is sharing his experiences and thoughts on his blog.

The Feeding America website shares some startling facts about food insecurity in the United States.

So here's a challenge to my readers: How can we use social media channels to solve this problem? We have food going to waste every single day, and people who are going hungry every day. How do we connect the two, and use the first one to help solve the second one?

Think Before You Post: Your Digital Footprint Lives Forever

It's safe to say that 10 years ago no one knew what a digital footprint was, or that everyone who is online has one. Today, of course, it's a very different story, and like many emerging technologies, there are potentially and previously unknown positive and negative results from using the technology — in this case sharing your life online with friends, family, and the world.

The upside?
You create and control the online image or persona that you present to the world.

The downside?
You create and control the online image or persona that you present to the world.

In a recent Mashable article, 1 in 4 Young Adults Regret Social Media Posts, Survey Says:

 Legal-information website FindLaw.com conducted a "demographically balanced" survey among 1,000 American adults, asking them questions about their behavior surrounding Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and other popular social platforms. Among younger adults aged 18 to 34, 29% said they have posted a photo, comment or other personal information they fear could compromise their current or future job prospects.

It's not an irrational fear.

An article on examiner.com, Current and potential employers are looking at your social media pages, points out:

A survey of more than 2000 hiring managers and HR professionals conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder in February of 2012 found that 37% or nearly two in five employers check social media when looking at a potential employee. An additional 11% stated they would like to begin using social media to screen new employees. 

If you google "people who've lost their jobs due to social media mistakes", you'll see quite a few examples, such as:

• In March 2009, a 22 year old thoughtlessly tweeted about a job offer from Cisco.
  "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weight the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."
  Cisco employees saw her tweet, and shared it with her hiring manager. The job offer was withdrawn. Her tweet, and the entire story, went viral.
• Matt Watson lost his job at All City Coffee in Washington, DC after he was outed as the voice behind the sarcastic and snarky comments on the blog The Bitter Barista.
• There have been multiple reports of teachers in conservative school districts who have lost their jobs after posting "private" photos of themselves on Facebook drinking alcohol,  smoking, or posing in revealing lingerie.

As the millennials move into positions of power, everyone will be more digital-savvy and the stigma of a less-than-stellar digital footprint will begin to fade. But until that time, and because the Internet is forever and nothing is truly "private", here are three easy rules to keep yourself out of trouble:

1. If in doubt, don't post it. This goes for your Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram photos, reddit or tumblr accounts, and comments on articles and blogs.
2. If you would be embarrassed if your grandmother or second-line manager saw it, don't post it.
3. Enable the Facebook photo tagging permission so that your "friends" can't tag you without your approval.

The good news? You control your digital footprint, and can put your best foot forward, digitally speaking.

Image courtesy of Simon Howden/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Ways to Get Yourself Unfriended and Unfollowed Fast

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has a list of social networking pet peeves — that  mental list of "Oh, did he/she really say that?" items that tend to annoy.

Here's my list of five social networking faux pas, shared to keep the peace, and when avoided, to help you keep your followers and fans, well, your followers and fans, instead of a string of exes.

1. Never spell check or double check before posting
   Go ahead. Always use "women" when you're talking about just one. Spell quiet as quite. Use your and you're interchangeably or incorrectly. Mix up their, there and they're, and too and to. It's not just the grammar ninjas who notice. It could be your boss, potential employer, or a client who is rubbed the wrong way....


2. Retweet and share without checking the content first
   You see an interesting tweet or Facebook post, and you immediately RT or share it without reading it. And it turns out to be a scam, or an out-of-date/inaccurate article from 1990. Ouch. We follow you for a reason, and while RTing and sharing content doesn't mean that you endorse that point of view or content, it does imply that you've at least read what you're sharing and find it of interest, which means that we might find it of interest too.


3. Drop the f-bomb and other expletives frequently and indiscriminately in your online communications
   So let's just be blunt here. I know a lot of swear words. I use some of them occasionally when I drop something heavy on my toe or someone is chatting on the cell phone and cuts me off on the freeway, but I don't share them with my social graph. Everyone over the age of 11 knows the majority of these words and phrases too. What I don't want, and I'd bet the majority of your fans, followers, friends, colleagues and relatives don't want, is to see them in "print" in your tweets, Facebook updates, or blog posts.  Unless you're writing some gritty dialog for your novel, or directly quoting someone, it's distracting. Drowns out your message. Swallows your voice. Makes people wonder if your vocabulary is so limited that you can't come up with some meaty synonyms. Is that really what you want?
   
   
4. Start flame wars
   Everyone has opinions, and we're free to share them in much of the world. But part of that freedom, is, or at least should be, the responsibility to let others share their opinions, respectfully. You don't have to agree, but let's move past the name calling, okay?


5.  Share your prejudices with your social network
   If you have them, keep them to yourself, okay?
   NPR just posted a disturbing article, Haters Gonna Hate, As Shown On A Map. California State University, Humboldt, geography professor, Monica Stephens, and a team of undergrads spent a year sorting through and mapping racial slurs on Twitter by location. You can argue with her team's conclusions, but the ultimate lesson doesn't change: Don't do it. Ever.

The Internet never forgets, and your digital footprint will exist forever.  Are you presenting yourself the way you want to be viewed and remembered?

Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Marketer's Dream: Content That Goes Viral (a.k.a. Meme)

I'm sure that you've seen an item or two shared in your social channels recently that was meaningful to you or made you laugh out loud.

A friend posted this quotation on her Facebook wall, and it was a classic "duh moment" for me. "This is it! This is what I've been working toward the last few years!" I've internalized it and try to live it, but had never thought to articulate it as a philosophy of living. And because it's meaningful to me, I've shared it with my social networks.

(I always knew Roald Dahl was a genius, but this quotation confirms it.)

By virtue of being a piece of content shared and re-shared over the Internet, this quotation can be considered an Internet meme. Social networks are not only amazingly well suited for sharing these viral Internet memes easily and quickly, but have contributed to the meme explosion.

Note: Meme rhymes with team.

So a little back story here, if you don't know what a meme is:

The "meme" word was first introduced by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, in 1976. "Meme" comes from the Greek word "mimema" (meaning "something imitated", American Heritage Dictionary). Dawkins described memes as a being a form of cultural propagation, a way for people to transmit social memories and cultural ideas to each other. Not unlike the way that DNA and life will spread from location to location, a meme idea will also travel from mind to mind. (about.com)

If you're a social soul, you most likely see multiple memes every day flowing through your feeds like a river, gaining speed and strength before they suddenly sputter to a halt once they reach critical mass and lose shock value. A meme can be almost anything: a quotation (such as the Roald Dahl one above) a photo, video or animated GIF, an animal or person — real or fictional, or even just a symbol or a word. You can tell just how viral a meme is by how many versions you see.

Here are a few of the more viral memes that have made the social rounds.

Tardis the grumpy cat is a great example of an animal meme.

Gymnast McKayla Maroney's "not impressed" face was photoshopped onto thousands of photos, and was so well known that even President Obama jumped into the fun.

                    

The multitude of "Gangnam style parodies created and posted on YouTube last year demonstrate just how fast and furiously viral memes can go.

Most marketers can only dream of having their content go viral like so many memes do every day. Unfortunately for them (and me), there's no single "formula" for what makes a meme go viral, but memes do seem to have some of these characteristics in common:

• They're usually humorous. The humor can be sarcastic, slapstick, dry, witty, rude, juvenile....
• They are something that resonates with people — they can identify with or relate the meme to their own experience or life.
• They can be modified with a basic graphics program.
• Whatever chord they strike in viewers makes the viewers want to share with their social networks.

There have been a few marketing campaigns that have gone viral. Arguably the most viral one is the Old Spice "Smell like a man man" campaign videos, which have had almost 100 million views on YouTube.

                 

Do you have a favorite meme? Why is it your favorite?

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Tardis the grumpy cat
McKayla Maroney and President Obama

How Social Networking Is Helping TED Change the World

I've recently joined the TEDxSanJoseCA team as a volunteer to manage social media, starting with the Facebook page. I'm excited and honored to be involved with this organization because I believe so much in the value TED brings to the world.

(I blogged just a year ago about attending my first TEDx event, The Power of TED — Pay It Forward.)

TED is a nonprofit that started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, and Design.

The TED mission is quite simple: Spreading ideas.
We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. 

And thanks to the popularity of social networking for sharing these amazing ideas and the ease and power of communicating via video, TED has taken the world by storm with the TED website, annual TED conference, TED Active, TEDGlobal, TEDx, TED Talks, TED Fellows, TED Prize, TEDEd, TEDIndia, TEDWomen, TED Salons, TED@, TED Open Translation Project, TED Books, and TEDYouth. (I'm sure I missed a few, but you get the idea...)

To give you an idea of the reach of TED, this TED Talk from 2006, "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity" is the most viewed at almost 16 million views. Many other talks have 7, 8, 9, or 10 million views.



I am committed to my local volunteer work, but I was also searching for a broader community with which to connect and learn, and TED with its current library of 1400 talks and local TEDx events, meets that need.  There is so much truth in this quotation:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/edmund%20lee

Social networking makes it possible and actually quite easy to connect both locally and around the world with kindred souls who are on this mission of changing attitudes, lives, and ultimately the world. You can join TED communities on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+,  LinkedIn and tumblr.

Because making the world a better place has become a core value of mine, becoming involved with TED via my local TEDx organization and surrounding myself with dreamers, doers, believers, and thinkers is where I need to be, and social networking is the conduit enabling me to do that, daily.

La Strada Verso Olympia — A Crowdfunding Project That's Come to Life

In 2012 I wrote a three-part series on crowdsourcing for the IBM Social Business Insights blog:

Crowdfunding: Harnessing the power of social networking to raise money.  (Part 1 of 3)  (Part 2 of 3)  (Part 3 of 3)

I enjoyed researching and writing it, and have been following various crowdfunding projects (and even funding a few).

In Part 1, I reviewed Kickstarter, a US-centric platform. In Part 2, I took a look at ulule, used mostly in Europe, and brought to my attention by an IBM Italy colleague, Nicola Palmarini (@nipalm).

While working on an IBM project in Nettuna, Italy, Nicola met and was inspired by a woman named Eleonora, and decided to crowdfund a personal project on ulule to help Eleonora travel from Nettuno to Paris to attend the concert of The Pooh, her favorite band, at the Olympia.

The way to Olympia: A documentary on barriers between dreams and reality is a wonderful documentary about dreams, disabilities, and accessible travel. The project received 109% of funding, and the documentary is complete and will premiere on Wednesday, April 24, as you can see by the screening invitation below (click on the image to enlarge it).

Translated, the invitation reads:
The road to Olympia
A film (fully funded from the web) by Claudia Di Lascia, Michele Bizzi, Federico Monti
Wednesday, April 24, 2013-12:00
At La Casa del Cinema a Villa Borghese/ Deluxe Room
Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1-Rome
Presented By: Professor Gioa Di Cristofaro Longo, Cultural Anthropology, University "La Sapienza", Rome
Authors and protagonists will be present on stage
The film will be followed by refreshments.

Congratulations to all involved with this labor of love, and maybe I'll have some photos of the screening to share next week. :-)

Follow @olympiafilm on Twitter.

From Advertisers to Teenagers: Facebook's Widespread Reach

Facebook is frequently in the news. Okay, almost daily. Or, if you follow AllFacebook.com, multiple times a day. I follow many of the news stories since I'm a frequent Facebook user / contributor, but today's news seemed especially relevant and broad based, since it races from a new advertising tool to privacy controls to more user functionality to teenage usage statistics. And interestingly enough, I found three of these articles on Twitter, and one on Facebook.  I think the breadth of these four articles shows just how integrated and ubiquitous social networking, and specifically, Facebook, has become in the daily lives of so many of us.

Wall Street Journal: Buy Signal: Facebook Widens Data Targeting

Facebook is officially rolling out a new tool for advertisers that combines Facebook's treasure trove of information about its subscribers and their likes with data partners who will provide information about the items and brands a consumer buys through sources such as loyalty card programs, email lists they subscribe to, and how they're spending their money.

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates are not thrilled. "There's no place to be left alone," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington, D.C., policy advocacy group. He said Facebook's relationship with data partners could become more worrisome if Facebook leverages the location data it passively collects from mobile devices to sell ads.

Read the full Wall Street Journal article.

Time Tech: Facebook Privacy Settings Guide

As the old adage goes, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. You pay for a "free" social media application such as Facebook with your personal data. People either are unaware of the exchange, or are comfortable with it.

Time Tech has put together a thorough little primer that walks you through the latest retooled privacy settings, such as who can see what posts, setting your timeline and tagging settings, blocking, app customization and more.

So now, if your friends post this inaccurate meme on their Facebook walls:

 You can refer them to the Time Tech article, or to the Snopes Urban Legend correction for accurate information.

Fast Company Design: Facebook Opens The Door To Dislikes, With Emoticons

 Image courtesy of digitalart
/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Everyone will soon have access to the new Facebook feeling/emoticon combinations — all 200 of them — on a drop down menu.

Having an alone, angry, or lost day or emotion? There will be an emoticon for it.  Feeling especially loved or great? You're covered.  Read all about it here.

Tech Crunch: Facebook Still Reigns Supreme With Teens, But Social Media Interest Dwindling

The results of the Piper Jaffray study quoted in this article are contrary to my experience. They claim that out of their survey group, 33% of the teens chose Facebook as their most important social network.  The teens I know (including the one who lives at my house) loved Facebook at the beginning, friending hundreds and hundreds of casual acquaintances, posting photos, liking statuses; all the things the rest of us do. And as soon as their parents and grandparents started flocking to Facebook, that was the kiss of death for it as far as teens are concerned. There is some hope that the new mobile Facebook app in the works may bring these younger users back, but we'll see.

15 Questions to Ask Yourself BEFORE Launching Your Social Program

There are thousands of articles, blog posts, ebooks, videos, white papers, presentations, and webinars available that you can and should research to develop your social strategy and build a social program. The sheer volume of information and conflicting opinions and advice can be overwhelming and confusing. A few of my favorite sources (in no particular order) include: MarketingProfs, Social Media Examiner, Jeff Bullas, Paul Gillin, and socialmediatoday.
Once you've done your research and built your program plan, I've distilled what I've learned into a checklist of 15 multi-level questions for you to answer to help you decide if you're launch ready.

1. What do you want to accomplish, that is, what does social success look like for your brand? 
2. How does your social program support your company's business objectives? 
3. How will you measure success? 
4. Do you have a digital strategy? What is it, and how will your social presence complement it and support it? 
5. Who is your audience? What content is going to be valuable to them? 
6. Which social media channels are your audience using? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Google+? SlideShare? What about Pinterest or Instagram? Tumblr? Snapchat? 
7. Which social media channels are your competitors using? 
8. Which are the top two or three channels your audience and competitors are using that you can focus on first? 
9. How are you going to follow who your customers and competitors are following, and listen to the conversations taking place? 
10. Are you going to create a blog and/or can you host your content on your website? Do you have the content and sufficient content creators to support a blog and keep it fresh? Or does it make more sense to focus on placing your content on other's platforms? 
11. Do you have the bandwidth / resources to support a social networking program? 
12. Do you understand the risks of using social media, and do you have a crisis plan for dealing with unhappy customers, trolls, or bad press? 
13. Are there other brands or divisions within your company who already have their social channels set up? Can you piggyback onto their efforts and success? 
14. Does your plan include increasing the amplification and reach of your social program by encouraging your SMEs (subject matter experts) to build their own social eminence and actively participate?
15.  Are you ready to no longer just push content out to your ecosystem — clients, prospects, partners, press, bloggers — but actually build relationships with them? 

Until you can fully answer these 15 questions — don't launch. Don't jump on the bandwagon just because everyone else is riding it. Make sure your social strategy is well thought out and robust. However, with that said, social is no longer an option, but a business requirement, so don't delay too long.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Did I miss something? Did you launch your social program before you answered these questions? What would you have done differently, and what went well?

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mobile is New and Disruptive — How Are You Going to Meet the Challenge?

Harvard Business Review (HBR) published a graphic today with the title, Vision Statement: How People Really Use Mobile, and I've emailed and shared it with hordes of people. It's commonly accepted that mobile is one of the top disruptive technologies (arguably the top), and I think we're all watching and waiting as to exactly where and how far it's going to go. Today's HBR piece was an interesting piece of the puzzle.

In summary, a study was completed in two phases in 2012 by InsightsNow for AOL and BBDO.

• In the first phase 24 users completed a seven-day diary and in-depth interviews. 
• In the second phase, 1,051 U.S. users ages 13 to 54 were surveyed, data on 3,010 mobile interactions were collected, and the mobile activities of two-thirds of those users were tracked for 30 days.

An easy-to-follow infographic was created to show how smartphone users are using their phones and includes the breakdown of the seven primary motivations of phone usage. (The limitations of this blogging platform do not do the graphic justice, so look at the original HBR graphic here for best clarity.)

Harvard Business Review graphic from Vision Statement: How People Really Use Mobile

1. The largest motivation, 46%, is "Me time", where the user seeks relaxation or entertainment such as watching a video, playing a game, window shopping, or reading a gossip site.
2. The second motivation is socializing and interacting with other people, but excludes email, SMS messages and voice calls. Facebook and Twitter perhaps? The study doesn't tell us.
3. Shopping is next, at 12%, 
4. Accomplishing things such as managing health, finances and productivity are a close fourth at 11%.
5. Preparation/planning for upcoming activities comes in at 7%.
6. Discovery/seeking news and information is 4%
7. Self-expression, participating in hobbies and interests comes in at a lowly 1%.

I ws surprised by several of these study results:

1. The majority of users, 68%, are using their phones at home. (Did they exclude maps and directions? Did no one in their study use their phones as GPS devices?)
2. Email and SMS are specifically excluded from the study, with no obvious explanation, and is called out in the comments. And is email really dying the death we keep hearing about? Surely I'm not the only one who checks my email before I fall asleep.... (Or am I?)
3. Where is listening to music on this list? Is it included in "Me Time", or not included? When I was on the Metro in Paris a few weeks ago, half of the people I saw were plugged into their smartphones. What were they doing? Listening to music? Podcasts? My teenager and every teen I know have their music libraries loaded onto their phones, and listen to them constantly. Their smartphones have replaced iPods and MP3 players.

As a top disruptive technology, we can only try to anticipate where mobile is going to go. Brian Solis has a great article, Forget about Social Media for a moment. What’s your mobile strategy? that digs deep and gets to the crux of the matter with these strategic questions all businesses should be able to answer:

Customer behavior is evolving. Technology is evolving. Is your digital strategy evolving? Is it considering shifts in attention, activity, and expectations and designing new experiences to react and lead accordingly?
Who on your team is thinking about designing mobile experiences? How is mobile tied to the overall digital strategy? How is social and mobile complementing your web strategy? More importantly, how are people connecting or attempting to connect with you and how would they define the experience?

Does your company have a mobile strategy? And if not, what are you waiting for?

The Power of Social Networking for Shelter Pet Adoption

I'm an animal lover. Always have been, always will be. My current count of furry children is two dogs and two cats — a good number for my household and taking all of the different personalities into account. (If I had the room we'd have horses and goats, but that's another story, lol.) All of them are rescues. Our newest member is an 8 year old beagle — clearly soul mates with my teenage daughter.

In addition to our own furry rescues, my children and I have fostered kittens for the local Humane Society, an amazingly rewarding experience, and can't wait to do so again when kitten season returns. If you're not familiar with the program, kitten fostering allows young kittens who've lost their mother the time to grow, be safe, and get socialized in a foster family's home. As soon as they reach two pounds, the kittens are spayed or neutered, then put up for adoption. It was heart wrenching to give our three babies up, but we consoled ourselves with the reminder that they would be adopted out to wonderful, loving homes because of our care and love.

And yet, even with all the work done by shelters and rescue societies, the Humane Society of the United States estimates that animal shelters care for 6-8 million dogs and cats every year in the United States, of whom approximately 3-4 million are euthanized. Compared to the 1970s when American shelters euthanized 12-20 million dogs and cats a year, things are better, but the number is still heartbreaking.

I've seen, experienced and promoted the connection between social networking and volunteering, another passion of mine, but until I read an article this morning posted on Facebook, I didn't consciously recognize how perfectly social networking supports shelter pet adoption. I repost and retweet our local animal shelter's success stories and available animals within my social network, but hadn't thought about it much, because it's just something I do.

So I'll warn you — have some tissues on hand before you read this article about Nico, a beautiful, deaf Dogo Argentino whose photo from a Los Angeles shelter kicked off a social networking rescue effort. Also know before you start that this story has a happy ending. :-)

Nico before.

Nico after.

Nico's story so clearly illustrates the power of social networking to instigate and empower social change, that it begs the question — what should be our next target?
Where else can the power of social networking make a life-changing impact?
I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Is Accessibility Finally Becoming Mainstream?

I've been working in the accessibility field for 10 years now. It's amazing and gratifying to get to do something every day that you still feel passionate about after that length of time.

It's been at least five years since I heard someone say, "Blind people can use computers?". You won't catch me arguing that we've resolved most of the accessibility gaps that keep people with disabilities from fully participating in the workplace and society, but I do feel like we've reached the tipping point in the last couple of years.

And here's why. One of my many roles in my accessibility/social networking/web management job is as a content curator. (See this great article from EContent Magazine for more information.) For every piece of content I share on one of my IBM or personal social channels, I probably see 60 or 70. And I've just plucked a few examples as proof points:

•  The Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act was signed by President Barack Obama on October 8, 2010. It requires that unedited, full-length programs shown on TV with captions must also be captioned when they are made available online.
•  Netflix recently settled a lawsuit and agreed that within two years all movies and television shows it streams will be closed captioned. 
• YouTube is now asking its viewers to report when a video is not captioned.
• The 2012 Paralympics in London sold 2.7 million tickets — a new record. 
• Oscar Pistorius became a household name last year, and I suspect most people saw at least one of the photos of him racing along on his high tech blades, like this great one from Fast Company Design:

Oscar Pistorius is amazing.

Here are two mainstream trends I've seen in the last week that I think are tipping point sign posts, especially since they are targeted at children.

American Girl doll with a hearing aid

• If you have little girls or know any little girls, then you probably are familiar with the American Girl dolls. They are diverse and inclusive — there are a multitude of skin, hair and eye color combinations available so that a girl can get a doll that looks just like her. In this article from ABC News, American Girl Dolls Embrace Differences and Disabilities, we learn that dolls can now have a miniature service dog in harness, a hearing aid or an allergy-free lunch kit, in addition to glasses, braces, crutches, a wheel chair, or no hair to represent those who have lost hair to cancer. As the author of this article states, "... it’s hard not to cheer for a doll company that goes out of its way to represent girls from all walks of life and every circumstance." Exactly.

Hercules and Brandeis

•  Canine Companions for Independence, a wonderful organization that provides highly trained assistance dogs to people with disabilities, published an article about Hercules, a Canine Companions dog, who makes an appearance in Episode 43 of Sesame Street. Hercules helps new Muppet character Brandeis find his calling as an assistance dog. I haven't seen the episode, but the video clip is very cute.

So there you have it. When a mainstream toy manufacturer and a children's educational television program encourage children to see and accept people with disabilities as people like them, who have stories and feelings and needs, we are on the right path. Finally.

5 Social Networking Resolutions for 2013

I really dislike New Year's resolutions. I'll just put that right out there. I haven't made any for years. The last couple of years I've been creating dream boards; twisting and morphing and rephrasing the "lose weight" to "get healthy", and "get on a budget and stick with it" to "save for a dream vacation and kids' college". Let's just say it's been moderately successful and leave it at that.

But social networking resolutions — hey I can do those! I've been thinking about them off and on through 2012, and I'm ready to put a public stake in the ground here, and stop my procrastination in its tracks!

1. Switch from Tweetdeck to HootSuite, which many of my IBM colleagues are using. I've been happy with Tweetdeck, but it makes sense to follow the crowd in this case, and take advantage of the best practices with the tool.


2. Put myself on a regular writing schedule. I write for this blog, the IBM Social Business Insights blog, the www.ibm.com/able website, much less frequently on BlogHer. It tends to be hit and miss, because I'm not very disciplined about writing, and do it when I have a deadline or I'm feeling particularly passionate about a subject. (I have a very smart and extremely talented colleague who reserves Friday afternoons for inventing, and it really works for her.)


3. Cross-post guest blogs with other bloggers. (I know, Blogging 101, but it just didn't happen in 2012.)


4. Test a new social app once a week, and share my thoughts on them once a quarter.


5. Do a better job of tying together and writing about my passions: volunteering / making the world a better place, accessibility and social networking. There are so many ways social networking can help galvanize and connect people and ideas, and I'd like to ferret out those connections and possibilities, and share them.

Are you making any social networking New Year's resolutions?  I'd love to hear what they are.

Have a happy and healthy 2013. :-)


Image courtesy of Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sharing the Grief — Connected in Tragedy

My heart breaks and bleeds for the families and friends of the victims of today's elementary school shooting. This is not a political post, even though I certainly have a strong opinion on the topic. This is instead recognition of how social networking is enabling a nation and the world to share prayers and thoughts and news, and ultimately, mourn this tragedy together, regardless of where we're located.

We've seen the power of social networking in the face of natural disasters where traditional communication failed: the March 2011 tsunami in Japan, and more recently Hurricane Sandy on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

I've been watching Twitter and Facebook today and feel connected in my grief for the innocent lives lost, and all of the people whose lives have changed forever. 

I've also seen this mindful and helpful quotation today on Facebook:

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world." ~ Mister Rogers

To those in Connecticut whose worlds changed forever today, please know that while we can't feel your pain, we are feeling pain and anger and sorrow that you've lost someone you love in such a brutal and senseless manner  — something no parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse, significant other, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend, neighbor or coworker should ever have to do.

The Huffington Post has some suggestions about what the rest of us can do to help: Connecticut Elementary School Shooting: How To Help.

And hug someone you love.

Update: Honoring those lost by sharing their names:
Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Ana M. Marquez-Greene, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine F. Hsu, Catherine V. Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison N. Wyatt, Rachel Davino, Dawn Hochsprung, Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Rosseau, Mary Sherlach, and Victoria Soto

Image courtesy of Darren Robertson / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.