MBQ reprints my "Makers" article

MBQ Inside Memphis Business reprinted my article about the MidSouth Makers in its December 

2013 issue. The story originally appeared in its sister publication,  Memphis Flyer, in October.

It's titled "Makers in Memphis," and it should be archived here.  

I've also posted a one-page PDF of the print version here on my site. 

As this tech-influenced DIY community gained momentum, makers began to evolve from hobbyists into entrepreneurs, spawning their own markets and creating new products and services. Despite the movement’s grass-roots, anarchic vibe, these bands of inventive makers equipped with open-source technologies have begun to inspire new innovations in manufacturing, engineering, industrial design, hardware technology, and education.

"Making It in Memphis" my 3rd Flyer cover story: Local emergence of the DIY/tech/inventors Maker Movement

Claudio and his quadcopter, built from parts
he made on a 3D printer, which was made from
parts printed on yet another 3D printer.

read the full article here

The would-be burglar counts himself lucky that he saw an interior light switch on and immediately spotted your shadow moving across the window curtain, giving him time to flee.

... not that anyone was home.
The burglar is frightened away by a cheap motion-detector you plugged into a hobby microcontroller that turned on the electric motor that slowly waved a plastic fin in front of a lamp.

Introducing my free "Twitterglyphics" table

☠⅓☯≠♞+☁♕෴⚐♬♫♪⚾⚒⚙⚛☢

Copy and paste space-saving symbols into your Twitter posts and other tight spots

Social media sites encourage brevity, especially Twitter, with its strict limit of 140 characters and spaces per-post. Many people have simply adopted abbreviations and emoticons from text messaging, but those were developed for speedy replies, not necessarily to fit a word limit.

While Twitter conversations are often fast-paced and held on mobile devices, many posts are thoughtfully crafted. Unicode symbols can shorten the character-count, allowing you to fit more meaning into each message, and when used creatively, they can draw a lot more more attention.

I created this symbol chart because other sites that list such symbols are either too hard to navigate or they list 8 different ☛s, 5 different ✐s but not enough technical characters or other symbols that I sometimes need. I don't post equations or technical data on Twitter, it's just that Ø can mean "nothing" and ≠ can mean "not the same as" and ¶ can denote a paragraph within an article.

My own № 1 symbol is this: … It's an ellipsis that only takes up one character space. I use it to separate sentences or items in a series using only one character-space. (Periods and commas require an additional space after them.)

My software skills map

Simple, graphic approach to explaining what applications I know and how well I know them. 

If you want to be strictly empirical about this, the only thing this chart "proves" is that I know how to render a really crowded slide in Apple's Keynote program and then turn it into a jpeg. 

The real knowledge lies in how to use these tools to turn a buck or edge out a competitor... or do something really extroverted on FourSquare. Note that I always exercise a lot of restraint when doing anything "on the clock" on Wikipedia. It's generally best to let nature take its course there—else the volunteer Hounds of Hell will edit you all the way back to AOL.

UPDATE: The latest edition of Thunder Kitty, or whatever Apple is calling its current operating system (10.8, 2013) does not support Microsoft Office. I now use Apple's Pages word processor and convert the documents into PDF or RTF text files for others to use. I can export something as an Office file, but there are usually formatting irregularities that I can't see on my Mac. 

My 2nd Memphis Flyer cover story (and unexpected cover photo)

Two years ago, I was only dimly aware that my article might be the cover story for the Earth Day issue of the Memphis Flyer, but when I looked for my article and found myself staring back, it was a bit of a shock. Not that I'm complaining!

EXCERPT (Read the rest of the article here)

The oldest evidence of human activity in Memphis — a spearhead designed to slice through a mastodon’s thick hide — was discarded at Nonconnah Creek 13,000 years ago, behind what is now the Sam’s Club on Winchester. The rain of litter on the creek hasn’t slowed much since then.

The newest evidence of human activity in Memphis is a plastic Sprite bottle. And right now, it’s blowing out of the back of a pickup truck on Bill Morris Parkway. During next week’s thunderstorm, it will be flushed down our storm-water system to join thousands upon thousands of other plastic bottles that migrate down Nonconnah Creek and into McKellar Lake.

I followed another bottle flotilla earlier this month, steering my Coca-Cola-red polyethylene canoe down Nonconnah Creek with local environmental activist Scott Banbury.

(Read the rest of the article here)

Content marketing: It works, but remember to include the content

https://soundcloud.com/officialsxsw/moving-from-story-to-narrative

Deloitte's John Hagel: "Moving from Story to Narrative" 

I should be plugging my freelance writing practice right now, but I'm still digesting the slide-free presentation by Deloitte's John Hagel at South by Southwest Interactive last month, entitled "Moving from Story to Narrative."*

Most of my freelance writing practice involves reinforcing companies' marketing strategies with actionable content. So Hagel really got my attention describing how the "old" way of marketing with content—telling stories—has always been less effective than the practice of creating "narratives."

• STORIES are finite and they are about the storyteller or others, not about you. 

Bridgman Pottery is in Southern Living

To honor my wife's birthday, I'm reposting this bit about her spotlight in the January 2011 print edition of Southern Living. Melissa is a potter dba Bridgman Pottery.

Southern Living runs a recurring feature called "Best of the South: Made by Southern Hands," focusing on regional artisans (craft, food, furnishings etc).
This issue's feature is subtitled "Breakfast Time," highlighting food and serving ware made in the South.
An editor at SL was searching on Etsy for breakfast-related crafts last summer and found Melissa's old-school egg cups on her online store there.
I am still very, very grateful that Melissa ignored my advice to make a ceramic rack for microwaving bacon.

Applebee's and a Catch-22 of social media marketing

What happened to Applebee's on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit last week has been described with many metaphors: "implosion," "meltdown," "disaster" and others.

I liken it to the Battle of Little Bighorn that cost General Custer his life in 1876. However, Applebee's isn't going to "die," and the company is not a victim of its own hubris like Custer. But the "action" on the Facebook page may resemble the final hour of Custer's life: Thousands of current and former waiters "circling" the normally bland/cheerful corporate page, furiously pumping arrows and spears into every new post the company made in an attempt to explain its actions during the last week of January.

Slate coverage:
When Applebee’s tried to impose an automatic 18 percent tip last week on the bill of Atlanta pastor Alois Bell, she crossed it out, reduced the tip to zero, and added the note, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?” A waitress posted the receipt online, earning Bell nationwide derision and the server a pink slip for violating Bell’s “right to privacy,” according to Applebee’s. Over the weekend, the restaurant chain suffered an avalanche of criticism. [Note: I neglected to include "avalanche" in my list of metaphors!]