Klout Kollapse

Klout claims they are a way of measuring your influence on-line. My Klout score sits at 56-57 which is considered to be a very high score.

I recently took a three week vacation. While I did answer some emails, I enjoyed eating, drinking, exploring and visiting friends in Europe. My Facebook usage dropper right back and I almost completely stopped tweeting.

The effect on my Klout score has been dramatic. By the end of week one of my vacation, my klout score was 55. End of week two it had fallen to 54 and then 52 at the end of my vacation. It had a slight bounce in my first days back but after a week back at work, it is now 50.

I am interested to know whether it has any more room to fall or if this is it. Now to see if I can become influential again. Will people have missed me? (By the way 50 is still considered to be a very good score!)

Some great rules!

Lives Cut Short

I have been struggling for a title for today's Blog.

It is the opening night for a long awaited movie. You are in the front row of the movie theatre. The emergency exit door opens and a suited figure comes in. He starts firing - something. You think its part of an opening extravaganza. As the bullet hits you, you realise its not an act but the real thing as your life ebbs out of you.

12 ordinary men and women died in a senseless act of calculated violence and 71 were shot:

• Alexander C. Teves pictured here in an undated photo released by his family through AP, aged 24
• Jonathan Blunk, 26,  Navy SEAL goal, certified firefighter and emergency medical technician
• Alexander J. Boik, an 18-year-old known as AJ
• Jesse Childress, 29, Air Force cyber-systems operator
• Gordon Cowden, 51, businessman
• Jessica Ghawi: Recently survived Toronto mall shooting, 24
• John Larimer, 27 Navy sailor
• Matt McQuinn, 27,
• Micayla Medek , Student
• Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6
• Alex Sullivan, 27
• Rebecca Wingo, 32

Rest in Peace.

One reaction to the shooting in Colarado has been a 43% growth in the number of people wanting to buy a gun in the state. It appears, that in the USA, one way that people seem to feel safer is by getting more guns out in the community.  In Australia, people felt safer by removing guns. After Australia's worst ever massacre at Port Arthur, Australians handed their guns back. "The 1996 "Buy Back",  coincided with an end to mass shootings and dramatic decreases in shooting deaths in Australia.
People keep saying guns don't kill but people do. I am not judging one country but last year, 100,000 people in the USA were wounded by guns  and 31,500 died because of a gun. By comparison, 42,636 people killed on US Roads. The probability of being shot is 40 times greater in the USA than in Canada, England or Germany. A fact we saw this week.
My dream is that my nephews and nieces will grow up in a safer world. For me,  a safer world is a world without weapons - anywhere. Why in the 21st Century, are we still killing each other in this way.

Tuesday Tech: The Phone Stack

This is from Get Kempt.com. I loved it. ..I am wondering if there is an opening for this in my trainings?

01/05/12

THE PHONE STACK

We usually take a pretty hard line against phones at dinner, but a new trick just popped up that gives us hope for the future.

It’s called a phone stack, and it’s a buzzing, flashing reminder of every phone-etiquette rule the world seems to have forgotten.

It works like this: as you arrive, each person places their phone facedown in the center of the table. (If you’re feeling theatrical, you can go for a stack like this one, but it’s not required.) As the meal goes on, you’ll hear various texts and emails arriving… and you’ll do absolutely nothing. You’ll face temptation—maybe even a few involuntary reaches toward the middle of the table—but you’ll be bound by the single, all-important rule of the phone stack.

Whoever picks up their phone is footing the bill.

It’s a brilliant piece of social engineering, masquerading as a bar game. It takes the phone out of the pocket—where you can sneak a glance and hope nobody notices—and places it in the center of attention at all times. Suddenly, picking up your phone is the big deal you always secretly knew it was. And more importantly, it comes with consequences.

But if, after the third ring, you decide your call is more important than your lunch tab, we’re sure your friends won’t object.

Update: A Few Problems with the Phone Stack, and a Few Solutions

—R.B.

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Learning

Wow. I was blown away by this. Absolutely amazing. I blogged a few weeks ago about how enough s enough. Doing some reorienting, re focussing and rebuilding right now.  What does this teach you?

This one just blew me away. 

Today's News

Between the news from Aurora, Colarado and Damascus, Syria, there are a lot of hurting people out there today.

What can one say?
What difference can we make?

Back from Holidays Today

I have had a great holiday in London, Berlin, Hamburg and Baja (Hungary). The timing was good because of the processing I have been doing recently.

I have a lot to do professionally and personally over the next few weeks. Lots to think about.

Thank you for your support.

One Week to go

Next week I am speaking at the the Centre for Volunteering's Ignite Conference in Sydney, Australia.

 I am very excited to be at this event. I am doing the Plenary and leading three workshops:

1. Help your Organisation to become a Volunteer Magnet
2. Teamwork in Volunteer Programs and Across Your Organisation
3. Social Networking

In addition, we will be launching my new DVD series. 

I look forward to meeting everyone there in seven days time!

Nelson Mendala's Birthday

Happy 94th Birthday to a great leader. May those who follow in his steps exhibit the leadership needed to keep South Africa the "Rainbow Nation".

Here is an excerpt from his inauguration speech which I blogged on earlier in the year.

Today, South Africans (and others) are being asked to  do 67 minutes of community work, a minute for each year Mandela devoted to public service.

Let Go

Volunteers are not World Changers

Provocative title? Yes! You betcha!!!

During one of my recent trainings, I outlined my concern that we often treat volunteers as second class workers in many organisations.

One of my training participants shared recently an issue they had with a volunteer whose job it was to analyse data pulled off a database. The only issue is that he could not access the data base!
Why not?
Because he was a volunteer
Volunteers in that organisation are not permitted to access the database. Why? Because they are volunteers.

So...he had to wait for a paid staff member to pull the data off the computer. Sometimes the volunteer saw data that was slightly incorrect eg postal code entered into the wrong field or a  mis spelling in city name. The volunteer could report these but not fix them. It was up to the paid staff member who may or may not have time to do fix those errors.

I suggested that the volunteer needed to have access to the database. To my thinking, such access would be more fulfilling, more efficient and produce better results. I got push back from volunteer coordinators who said that volunteers should not have access to the database because "volunteers could do a lot of damage" in this situation.

What are we saying? A volunteer is less trustworthy? Less skilled? Less able that an employee simply because they are a volunteer??

How often do I hear this sentiment that effectively says that a volunteer is a second class citizen? And from the very people who recruit volunteers?

Let me extend that situation I mentioned before.

Lets introduce "Joe" aged 55. He  is passionate about preserving wildlife. Joe has turned his own garden into a nature preserve and donates money to his favourite wildlife charity. It is to this charity that he offers to volunteer. Joe also runs his own IT company.

"Sally"is an employee with the animal welfare charity. She has learnt about the database "on the job". She is not fully confident with using it. She is very busy doing multiple tasks.

Who is better qualified to access the database? The answer for that charity? Sally, of course, simply because she is an employee. I put this example forward to show how stupid this attitude that automatically relegates volunteers to number two spot. Do we really think Joe is going to do "more damage" than Sally? is he going to make more mistakes than Sally? 


If the volunteer does not have the skills or exhibits behaviours that render them unsuitable that is different but refusing to open a job up to a volunteer because they are a volunteer is simply short sighted and stupid. It is time for this nonsense to stop.

How do we stop this nonsense? I believe volunteers are world changers. Lets treat them as such.

Facebook lets you edit posts

Up to last week, you only had two choices with your Facebook comments:

1. delete (and re type it)
2. leave it

Now all you have to do is hover over the right corner of your comment and a pencil icon will appear. This will give you a drop down option of either editing or deleting the comment.

You’ll can also view the edit history of any comment by clicking on the “Edited” button near the date stamp. This means you can roll back to earlier versions of something - typing mistakes and all.

Creating Community-this is brilliant!

Facebook is Norty

Overnight, Facebook changed many of its user's email addressees. They changed them from the ones that they signed up with  to one that said @facebook.com address.

Enough is enough on My Birthday

My last really happy birthday was six years ago before my separation and divorce. From 1982 until six years ago, life had simply got better and better (with moments). I felt very blessed.

For some others, like me, post divorce isn't easy. On top of that, both my parents had heart attacks, and my sister has been very ill. I sold my house, bought a new one and have tried to keep my business operating through some of the toughest economic conditions. I know compared to some in this world, all of this is nothing but for me, the stress o meter has run overtime.


I was struck by this one:
Your life is a gift from the Creator. Your gift back to the Creator is what you do with your life. Billy Mills

So July 2, 2012: enough is enough. Life is going to start getting better again.

Thank you to all of my friends who have supported and loved me.

June at The Cowling Report

Hello from "Sunny" London

The number of readers for The Cowling Report in June edged closer to 7000! The number of followers of the Blog climbed to 52.

More importantly, I had thirty comments (average of one a day). This is the most comments in a month! (the previous record was 25 in May, 2012!). Thank you.

Top Posts read in June were:

Facebook Privacy Notice- wasting your time (June 5, 2012) No More Free Training? (Sept 8, 2011) NCVS Launch (Jun 18, 2012) Lessons from the "Loss" of Vol England (Jun 21, 2012) Friday Facts: Analysing Australia's Volunteer Strategy (Jan 13, 2012)