Alphablogs

Here we are again, friends, with Canada 9-5, the showcase for Canadian – well, what kind of Canadian blogs? Business blogs, corporate blogs, blogs by non-profit organizations, blogs about the life of the citizenry. Or, if you’d like a reverse definition: non-cat blogs (which doesn’t mean they’re dog blogs), blogs that aren’t about celebrities or personal experiences, about baby pictures or games or iPhones.

As of this writing, it appears that Canada 9-5 is still the only place where these blogs are showcased on a regular basis. That probably means that we are well on our way to fame …

Let’s see what we one the menu today.

Life balance for lawyers
Laurie Mapp, who runs Halo Secretarial Services somewhere in central Alberta, talks about work-life balance

I think balance is an elusive but achievable goal - it just takes having an open mind to doing things a different way. This is the part law firms struggle with I think - there is often a tendency to do things as they have always been done, since it has worked for so long. But there is a long list of ways to give your employees some flexibility while still achieving the firm’s goals and providing results for the client.

Corporate recruiters: Paying attention to details
Kate Baggott is a recruiter. Her article For the Price of a Cup of Coffee points out that even small details about how recruiters do business can turn an impressive candidate on or off. Read about how one company lost a potential hire over the price of a cup of coffee.

Vancouver online newspaper: Women in jail
The Vancouver Observer is a newspaper done in blog style. It has the feel of a community newspaper (reminds me a bit of the South Vancouver Revue, for which I used to write an environmental column way back when) and thus talks about every topic under the sun. I liked this little interview with Betty Krawzyck, a B.C. senior who had become famous for going to jail for her environmental activism. Here’s an excerpt where Betty talks about her new book:

I also try to illuminate the lives of women in jail. Most women are there because of conditions and abuse that we really cannot imagine – most of us that is. Poverty is the underlying condition that sends a woman into the penal system and of course, when one discusses poverty, one has to speak about the disproportionate number of First Nations women there are in prisons – on average at least 60% - and you have to discern why this occurs.

Green interior design
Next is an interior designer who writes about greening your home. It’s interesting that environmental consciousness has taken such a leap in the last few years; it all happened after Al Gore’s video. From what I hear, his home isn’t very green; I’m willing to bet Betty Krawcyck’s is, though! At any rate, here are some ideas from a list of 10. I think I’m going to go out and get myself an aloe plant, and am going to check into what exactly an organic bed is.

3. Change the light bulbs in your house to compact fluorescents, but as they require replacing, begin to use LED bulbs, which consume very little energy and do not contain mercury, so disposal is less of a concern.

7. Unplug all unnecessary electrical devices when not in use or not needed, including televisions, computers, microwaves, clocks, stereos and lighting. Electrical devices which are instant on use power all the time, even when turned off. For easy on/off operation plug as much as you can into a power bar and turn it off when not in use.

8. Use green plants to clean the indoor air. Aloe Vera, English ivy, corn plant, golden pothos, peace lily and weeping fig are all excellent choices to remove formaldehyde and benzene.

9. Buy an organic bed. A good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed that emits absolutely no toxins is paramount to green living. After all, it is where we spend most of our time at home.

Books on money
Let’s take a sharp right here and go to Canadian Capitalist, one of the top Canadian finance blogs according to The Globe and Mail. Here’s a list of the Capitalist’s top ten money books. These two look interesting to me:

Your Money & Your Brain by Jason Zweig. What happens inside our brains when we think about money? (Full Review)
Unconventional Success by David Swensen. A guide to constructing a portfolio for individual investors.

Communication – or, in this case: miscommunication
Heath Slawner has a blog about persuasion. I’d like to find out a bit more about Heath; it seems to me that someone who clearly uses his blog as a part of his business would do well to tell a bit about himself on his blog. I presume he’s a salesperson – maybe he’ll see this article and will enlighten us. Heath offers a post on the cost of misunderstanding

Have you ever wondered how much a misunderstanding costs? According to a recent report by UK-based consulting firm Cognisco , misunderstandings and miscommunication among workers are costing companies US$37-billion a year.

Masterminds
We’ve had Evan Carmichael from Toronto here before, in our February edition. He has a section on his blog that exclusively discusses Mastermind Groups. What are mastermind groups?

A mastermind group offers a combination of masterminding, peer brainstorming and support in a group setting. The beauty of mastermind groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion. Mastermind group members act as catalysts for growth, devil’s advocates and supportive colleagues. This is the essence and value of mastermind groups.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Hueina Su, one of my blogging friends from Change Therapy, is writing a series of articles here. Having been part of similar success groups myself, this one really spoke to me, about the necessity for commitment in such groups

Some of the members started to miss quite a few meetings, due to other activities and commitments. Others started to question whether they are committed to our mastermind group and see it as a priority. Overall, we were unhappy that some members kept missing our meetings, and it’s a sign of lack of commitment and respect.

Scrape!
Let’s round this off with something amusing. Rob Cottingham from Social Signal, a blog for a Vancouver company that “builds online community with real life impact” (they started the credit union VanCity’s Change Everything site) just wrote a series of articles on blog scrapers. He set a funny little trap for them – well, you have to see for yourself.

That’s it for this time around. The next edition of Canada 9-5 will come out on August 8. If you have or know of a Canadian business or non-profit blog, submit it here so that we can include it!

Here are some amazing blogging statistics collected on the Blog World Expo site. (The big enormous Blog World Expo will be held in Las Vegas this year.) These stats are American only, and don’t even touch the Canadian, or world-wide blogging universe. When I checked their links for the sources of their stats, some of them are of earlier reports, such as Pew dated 2005! So extrapolate that to the present. When I started with wordpress.com, there were already 60,000 bloggers there. Now, we have 3,392,124 blogs with 93,184 new posts today. And that’s only wordpress.com.

So if you are thinking about starting a blog, or have heard about it and wonder what it’s all about, don’t wait any longer to join this tsunami wave of participation. Blogging is no longer a rare or unique activity, it’s decidedly mainstream.

Look at these Blog World numbers!

I hope my friend Raul won’t be disappointed with this, him being Mr. Vancouver restaurant reviewer.

But I need to grab Buzz Bishop’s challenge and tell you that yes, I have eaten at the Brave Bull.

It’s been quite a while so maybe Raul can give an update. Although for a place like the Brave Bull, I’m not sure that six, seven years make a difference.

Actually, the other day I was meeting with one of my old friends from the Downtown Eastside, we weren’t quite sure where to eat – but when I proposed the Brave Bull I could just see a big black question mark form over her heavily furrowed brow.

I only have pleasant memories of the Brave Bull.

For example the time I went there with someone who was later going to become one of my closest friends. The Brace Bull is (was?) a cosy, tucked-away place if you like peace and quiet and that old-fashioned diner feel. It’s one of those 60s mixtures of “Chinese and Canadian Cuisine”, both in décor and food. Which means, of course, watery, pale iceberg lettuce – but you don’t go there for the veggies, do you? That’s what Greens & Gourmet is for.

So anyways, Haedy and I hung out there for two hours or so, I forgot what we ate, the old Chinese lady who’s always been there ever since I first darkened the doors of that establishment would pad over to us once in a while in motherly fashion and refill our coffee. It remains in my memory as one of the pivotal moments in our friendship. Haedy also told me that once in a while she’d take her husband there for a good dose of trucker’s steak.

My husband used to work in that area, just a bit up on Clark in one of the industrial areas, so once in a while I’d truck down to the Brave Bull and we’d have lunch together. Invariably, I’d have their oyster sandwich. I love oysters! Four plump deep-fried oysters with a bit of tartar sauce on a piece of white “bread” – again, don’t go there for your health food. Don’t matter; you know what, I still find myself wanting to go there once in a while, just for those oysters. I even took my educated-palate son there once and he liked it. Oh, and I remember my husband having beef dip there and liking it.

Other times were when I took one of my daughters to volunteer at the SPCA, and I’d make a point of hanging out at the Brave Bull (or the Old Foundry, with their fabulous sign that says EAT) waiting for her, reading a book, slurping coffee, eating – you guessed it – an oyster sandwich.

Now if you’re not into the romance of old greasy spoons where they still don’t use point-of-sale computers, where they haven’t changed the curtains since 1979, and where a salad still means a slice of tomato and three leaves of lettuce – well then maybe the Brave Bull is not for you. But if you like that kind of nostalgia, go and try it out!

(What do you think, Raul, maybe we should go there together?)

(And next time I guess we should go back to regular programming and do a blog review)

(Image by Buzz Bishop)

Okay, Smartypants, you figure it out! Get in there and dig (digg?) - isn’t this what research is all about? Or is it the cool composed review of previously digested information? All you have to do is look for it and list it, right? Well, not exactly.

While working on a research project recently, I’ve been thinking about the nature of research itself.

When I was teaching Research Skills for Writers and Reporters, I shared many tips and tricks of the trade, including the reality of hours of searching that may or may not yield the result that is being sought. A simple research timelog reveals the process. Hours spent in one direction that brings another lead, then several, then the branching out of the mind from item to lead to dead end to lateral correlation to new lead, and so it goes through the windy twisty passageways. Research doesn’t always reveal the answer directly, but through resonance and correspondance leads are found. And sometimes, there is a big pay off! Aladdin’s Cave of treasure: it’s all there for the picking!

I see research as a subtle dance between intuition and intelligence. It helps if your mind has been trained to categorize and make connections. It helps if you can keep track of what you have done, to retrace your steps if need be. And it helps if you can trust a hunch, make a lateral leap of the mind, think poetically to synthesize concepts. Intelligence serves the intuition at that point, and new ideas are formed that make new sense of old information.

The results of research are more than just a list of quotes and places. They are a synthesis of the information. Information is easy to find. The need is to make sense of the information, to be in a position to prioritize that information and to define uses for the most salient aspects of the information. Research is more than finding and keeping, it is a process of sorting and defining that ultimately yields new information that can be acted upon.