Look who’s popular

When I opened up my custom Google home page this morning I noticed that one of the most popular del.icio.us links for today was a guide to creating a block hover effect for a list of links. This sounded cool — basically, a neater-looking alternative to links that simply change colour when you mouse over them — so I checked it out.

And what does this popular page turn out to be? A tribute to the brilliant work that NetSquared’s designer, Veerle Pieters, has done in redesigning her own blog. So brilliant, in fact, that somebody went to the trouble of documenting exactly how she accomplished her link rollover effect.

Vancouverites: learn about Open Space

Open Space Technology is an increasingly popular alternative to conventional “talking head” conferences. But a successful open space event involves more than just booking a room. Now, BC-area folks have a chance to learn about how to organize open space...

Choosing your e-mail tool

As we gear up to send out our very first Social Signal e-newsletter, I’m investigating some of the e-mail newsletter tools out there. There’s a lot to be said for using a tool that’s integrated with the rest of your web site — like the NetSquared Newsletter, which is powered by Drupal — but there are some additional bells and whistles that come with a dedicated e-mail tool. There’s a really fabulous round-up of the options over at Idealware.

If you want to see which tool we choose, then sign up for our newsletter. 

10 ways to keep online dialogue on topic

I’ve spent the past two days at a Ohio State for a conference on Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Deliberation, which has been a terrifically productive gathering. One session consisted of an interesting conversation about how to structure online...

Blogs and Dogs

For those of you who suspect that I’m having too much fun at work these days, let me note my upcoming participation in the Banff Centre’s Blogs and Dogs workshop. This is a great chance to learn the basics of blogging, or push your blogging skills in new...

National Conversation now online

Politics Online has launched theNational Conversation project, which aims at engaging Americans in dialogue about major national issues (in the first instance, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina). I like the effort to encourage multimedia contributions, and to allow people to...

More love for Zagat

Ah, the joys of the automatic reply. Zagat canceled my subscription as per my request, and here’s what their e-mail included: If you have a moment, could you let us know why you decided to cancel? Is there anything we can do to change your mind? We rely on...

Coding for deliberation

One of my favourite organizations working on dialogue and deliberation challenges is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). They’ve done a great job of building community among people doing civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation work,...

Amping up for BlogHer

I’m not just the t-shirt girl: I’m going to be live and in person at BlogHer this weekend, facilitating a fantabulous advanced tools session with Marnie Webb and George Oates. Marnie has set up an Advanced Tools blog just for our session. We hope that...