Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
5 reasons to blog like it’s the last night of the world
I worry a lot about the world ending. My scenarios usually involve some kind of catastrophic climate change, pandemic virus or global economic meltdown followed by civil collapse. This intermittent tendency to fret over various doomsday is something I try to deprive...
140-character lessons in how to live your real life online
Your online relationships, conversations and creativity are as real as anything you do offline. That's the message I delivered last weekend at Northern Voice, Canada's leading blogging conference. My talk, titled Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, jumped off from...
The dangers of relying on Facebook and Twitter authentication
If you're not going to talk about me to your friends, I don't want to know you. That's the message that your web site is sending if you only accept registrations from Facebook and Twitter users. You can see what I'm talking about at Pinterest, a social network for...
5 ebook features that tap the power of social note-taking
Peter Meyers has a useful blog post on 3 ways to improve ebook note taking over at O'Reilly Radar. As he points out in his post, note-taking is one of the ways in which print books still kick the ass of digital books, since they allow you to "[j]ot notes anywhere you...
5 ways technology can reduce the family stress of business travel
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
This 40th birthday brought to you by Apple
What's the right way for a geek to celebrate the big 40? In my case, as many of you now know, the answer was to spend the previous 40 days blogging. That met my need for ritual, but what about the day itself? I wanted to do something memorable, something that would...
How to quickly remove unwanted tracks from your iTunes smart playlists
I like to create new iTunes playlists for lots of different purposes: for parties, workouts, for a regular day of work. In principle, the smart playlists feature works great for this -- just select a couple of criteria like "added in the past 100 days" and "BPM [beats...
40 tips on how to make the most of your life online
7 lessons about our online future from our online past
Bing helps us search for the meaning in our tech choices
The Harvard Business Review
5 reasons to blog like it’s the last night of the world
I worry a lot about the world ending. My scenarios usually involve some kind of catastrophic climate change, pandemic virus or global economic meltdown followed by civil collapse. This intermittent tendency to fret over various doomsday is something I try to deprive...
140-character lessons in how to live your real life online
Your online relationships, conversations and creativity are as real as anything you do offline. That's the message I delivered last weekend at Northern Voice, Canada's leading blogging conference. My talk, titled Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, jumped off from...
The dangers of relying on Facebook and Twitter authentication
If you're not going to talk about me to your friends, I don't want to know you. That's the message that your web site is sending if you only accept registrations from Facebook and Twitter users. You can see what I'm talking about at Pinterest, a social network for...
5 ebook features that tap the power of social note-taking
Peter Meyers has a useful blog post on 3 ways to improve ebook note taking over at O'Reilly Radar. As he points out in his post, note-taking is one of the ways in which print books still kick the ass of digital books, since they allow you to "[j]ot notes anywhere you...
5 ways technology can reduce the family stress of business travel
When you’ve got kids, business travel is especially stressful. It’s hard for them to have mum or dad away, and it’s hard for you to miss them. Here are 5 ways that technology can help.
This 40th birthday brought to you by Apple
What's the right way for a geek to celebrate the big 40? In my case, as many of you now know, the answer was to spend the previous 40 days blogging. That met my need for ritual, but what about the day itself? I wanted to do something memorable, something that would...
How to quickly remove unwanted tracks from your iTunes smart playlists
I like to create new iTunes playlists for lots of different purposes: for parties, workouts, for a regular day of work. In principle, the smart playlists feature works great for this -- just select a couple of criteria like "added in the past 100 days" and "BPM [beats...
40 tips on how to make the most of your life online
7 lessons about our online future from our online past
Bing helps us search for the meaning in our tech choices
OneZero
TedX Victoria: Stop apologizing for your online life
I'm delighted to be participating in TedX Victoria this November 19th. I'll be speaking about the 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, and look forward to helping TedX participants give up the notion of IRL ("In Real Life"), and learn to embrace RLT....
Bored by your boyfriend? Try having sex.
This is my best effort at scrupulous transcription of a conversation I was fortunate to overhear in the locker room today, between two young women I initially assumed were roommates. I wasn't sure whether the locker room was covered by a cone of silence, so I checked...
Countering the Excuses for Avoiding Social Media (and Video Games)
"I can see why it’s important, but it’s not something I need to be an expert on myself." "I’ve got…
What you can learn from your tech defeats
When I was a small child my mother dropped me onto a hard, stone floor. Miraculously, I was uninjured. As soon as I stopped crying, it seemed, I was as good as new. It would take years before the long-term repercussions of this fall became apparent: the tumble had...
8 secrets to a smarter tech maintenance routine for your blog
This weekend I had one of my periodic orgies of blog maintenance. Now it happens that 14 hours of software upgrades, plugin installs, widget testing and css tweaking is my idea of fun, so giving my blog a weekend of tech love is also a way of giving myself a weekend...
Self-publishing: 5 issues for authors to consider, from Amazon’s Jon Fine and Prof. Tim Laquintano
At the Merging Media conference today, we heard from Jon Fine, Amazon's Director of Author & Publisher Relations. Jon's talk reminded me of the terrific presentation I heard at AOIR from Tim Laquintano, a writing professor at Lafayette College who spoke about the...
Video: Social media, politics & the future of think tanks
Last month I had the opportunity to be part of a terrific day-long discussion on the future of think tanks, hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations. I shared some of my thinking in a blog post...
What is Evernote, and how can it make you a social media power user?
Making effective use of social media isn't about which tools you use, which networks you join or how many followers you have. People who have made social media a valuable, joyful part of their professional and personal lives are people who have made a number of...
JSTOR DAILY
TedX Victoria: Stop apologizing for your online life
I'm delighted to be participating in TedX Victoria this November 19th. I'll be speaking about the 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life, and look forward to helping TedX participants give up the notion of IRL ("In Real Life"), and learn to embrace RLT....
Bored by your boyfriend? Try having sex.
This is my best effort at scrupulous transcription of a conversation I was fortunate to overhear in the locker room today, between two young women I initially assumed were roommates. I wasn't sure whether the locker room was covered by a cone of silence, so I checked...
Countering the Excuses for Avoiding Social Media (and Video Games)
"I can see why it’s important, but it’s not something I need to be an expert on myself." "I’ve got…
What you can learn from your tech defeats
When I was a small child my mother dropped me onto a hard, stone floor. Miraculously, I was uninjured. As soon as I stopped crying, it seemed, I was as good as new. It would take years before the long-term repercussions of this fall became apparent: the tumble had...
8 secrets to a smarter tech maintenance routine for your blog
This weekend I had one of my periodic orgies of blog maintenance. Now it happens that 14 hours of software upgrades, plugin installs, widget testing and css tweaking is my idea of fun, so giving my blog a weekend of tech love is also a way of giving myself a weekend...
Self-publishing: 5 issues for authors to consider, from Amazon’s Jon Fine and Prof. Tim Laquintano
At the Merging Media conference today, we heard from Jon Fine, Amazon's Director of Author & Publisher Relations. Jon's talk reminded me of the terrific presentation I heard at AOIR from Tim Laquintano, a writing professor at Lafayette College who spoke about the...
Video: Social media, politics & the future of think tanks
Last month I had the opportunity to be part of a terrific day-long discussion on the future of think tanks, hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) as part of its 10th anniversary celebrations. I shared some of my thinking in a blog post...
What is Evernote, and how can it make you a social media power user?
Making effective use of social media isn't about which tools you use, which networks you join or how many followers you have. People who have made social media a valuable, joyful part of their professional and personal lives are people who have made a number of...
THE VERGE
11 best practices for working with an editor
My latest blog post for the Harvard Business Review makes the case for adding an editor to your content marketing team. As I note in that post, Content marketing will only deliver on its promise if it’s good enough to deliver customers–that’s why improving the quality...
Homeschooling as a working mom: the pie chart
It's week two of the school year -- or it would be, if we weren't in the middle of an increasingly frustrating (though well-justified) teachers' strike. We're experiencing the school outage a little differently at our house, because this also marks the beginning of...
Choosing research methods for data-driven storytelling
This blog post does not represent Vision Critical. In fact, I think some of my colleagues are going to argue with me vigorously over this one. Rigorous data gathering and analysis can get in the way of effective storytelling by non-profits. That proved to be the most...
Is this an ice cream? A 2×2
It has recently come to my attention that many people seem to be unable to recognize whether their preferred frozen dessert is ice cream. At last! A modern dilemma I can actually solve, thanks to this handy 2x2: Is it ice cream? Butterfat content 10 to...