gdp's Comments

John McCrory : Is Content Strategy Strategy?

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 15:23:27 +0000

I enjoyed your preso, Mark. (Saw it Tuesday). It's a nice contrast to my more oblique approach to the topic.

Smart Journalism. Real Solutions. Miller-McCune. : Middle School Music Lessons Enhance Algebra Skills

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:25:06 +0000

Questions about the study's methodology can probably be answered by reading Barbara Helmrich's 2008 PhD research dissertation on which the cited article is drawn (recall that it takes about two years from when an article is accepted by a journal to its actual publication). You can get the full text of that dissertation for free via ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing at http://j.mp/aC4ISH

John McCrory : Building a Balanced Brain

Wed, 9 Jun 2010 19:44:41 +0000

Thank you, Tran. I will check that out. In the meantime, I've been exploring information about the brain and traumatic brain injury, as in this map of regions and skills: http://www.neuroskills.com/brain.shtml

John McCrory : How to create a link that will autofill someone's Twitter status

Fri, 28 May 2010 02:05:17 +0000

Thanks for flagging this issue, Erik. I'll look into it and see if there's a fix.

John McCrory : Central NH tweetup for Concord and Manchester-area social media folk

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:48:47 +0000

Great minds think alike!

John McCrory : Central NH tweetup for Concord and Manchester-area social media folk

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:29:47 +0000

Sure! That's a great subject, and it is becoming a real recruiting and retention challenge. I've been thinking a lot lately about how companies and organizations need to genuinely involve employees in the process of crafting a social media policy, and how, to be successful, the company has to communicate their policy in ways that build and reward enthusiasm rather than frustrating employees with legalese and many forms of 'thou shalt not.'

John McCrory : Freestanding shelves

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:57:11 +0000

Thanks, Susan. The shelves stood up quite well for three years, even holding lots of heavy architecture and city planning books. Then I moved to a circa 1930 house with 7" ceilings, so the shelves are too tall to fit and so are in storage. They came apart easily for moving! (FYI, this post dates to 2004, in an earlier iteration of my blog) To answer your other question: I used brackets that were shorter than the shelves are wide. My shelves are 1"x12" planks and the brackets were shorter -- 9" -- so that the edge of the wooden shelf rests against the wall, not the bracket. The tooth or "hook" simply sinks into the soft wood of the underside of the shelf, which I found helpful because it keeps the shelf from sliding from side to side. I gently hammered each tooth into the wood with a rubber mallet. You can also get brackets without teeth, if you like.

John McCrory : When you engage, you are not starting a conversation, you are joining one

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:33:18 +0000

Thanks, Mike. I'm really fascinated by the ways different improvisation techniques play with or against each other to create a converging narrative or a diverging one. There is much to learn there!

John McCrory : When is an unconference better than a conference?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:34:09 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Brian. There's definitely a need for those furthest along the path to share their experiences with the rest of us. I hope there will be venues for such talks and presos sooner than a year from now! :)

John McCrory : 5 Tips for Crafting a Good Social Media Policy

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:32:28 +0000

Great point, Ari. It's really important to practice what we preach about engagement every step of the way. Thanks for contributing that link to the Social Media Policies Superlist, too: Lots of good stuff there.

John McCrory : How to create a link that will autofill someone's Twitter status

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:11:26 +0000

Sorry, Vlad. I am not sure why url encoding a + as %2B is not working for you. It ought to. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding for info

John McCrory : Twitter at conferences is here to stay

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:34:53 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Julius. I think you are right that the backchannel can get messy. It may be that Twitter is not the best tool for it. I know some folks have liked using Meebo for live chats at conference sessions. Or perhaps Twitter itself and various Twitter tools will develop features that improve the backchannel experience. I think Tweetchat http://tweetchat.com/ may offer some of the features you are looking for. Have you tried that? I really like your idea of being able to "mute" selected participants in the backchannel, too. Your point also suggests that the conference organizers themselves have to step up and take more of a role in managing the backchannel, setting the tone and reminding participants to tweet with decorum. In some cases, it may be desirable to encourage a designated a trusted, live-tweeter to give the blow-by-blow to ensure it is done well and avoid a cacaphony of live tweeters. Thanks again for adding your perspective!

John McCrory : How wide should my home page be? Revisiting screen and viewport size

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:08:07 +0000

Hey, Bruno. Thanks for writing in. It's very cool to see your project, presumably working with a much bigger data set! Though I was a bit astonished to see that we'd approached representing the issue of who could see your web page content in such similar ways. Q: I'm assuming you are using screen dimensions, rather than viewport size. Is that right? It doesn't really affect horizontal width, but it does make a difference for vertical height, thanks to toolbars etc. Are you accounting for that in your vertical height data?

John McCrory : Is professional certification a good idea for social media professionals?

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:21:55 +0000

Thanks (again) for your thoughtful comment, Tanya. I think your analogy to SEO is apt. There's legit, good SEO, and then there's an industry of folks just trying to use SEO to make more money off of Google AdSense.

John McCrory : Is professional certification a good idea for social media professionals?

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:17:20 +0000

That's right, Ron. And if there is no standard, how can there be a meaningful certification exam?