Boomer writes a fun bit on what it means to be a square peg
I enjoyed reading it and a like the “now way, dammit!” attitude! Needless to say, too many people never get that sense of value from their own uniqueness.
Who’s Guy Kawasaki?
Well, since I mentioned Guy I’ll point you to his blog and a specific posting that is one of my favorite Guy-isms. It’s a version of his commencement address that he’s given a few times and it’s a great illustration of why I read everything Guy puts out.
Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: Hindsights
The rest of Guy’s blog is also some familiar stuff if you’ve already been reading Guy’s books, but I think his blog will be worth following. I’ve certainly got it on my GoogleReader…
Technorati Tags: GuyKawasaki, SquarePegs, business, philosophy
Technorati Tags: GuyKawasaki, SquarePegs, business, philosophy
Technorati Tags: GuyKawasaki, SquarePegs, business, philosophy
Creating Evangelists for our cause
It’s great to see some folks in the Non-profit community paying attention to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki:
Donor Power Blog: How to create charity evangelists
From the beginning, we’ve thought about how to create this sort of commitment and involvement with Square Peg Foundation. We know we have some good success with some individuals. But I always wonder what we might be missing. If you just talk to the folks who are already committed, then you won’t find out what you need to do better if you want to hook the folks who are almost, but not quite, hooked.
Technorati Tags: philanthropy, evangelism, non-profit, SquarePeg
Weather Hold
We are on weather hold here on the coast again. It’s been pouring rain here today, except when it isn’t. The last month has been tough on us because this weather requires that we cancel lessons, and we never quite make them all up. That hurts program revenue and we’re still running pretty tight financially.
The bad weather also means extra work for us. The horses stll need exercise, and we have to be especially careful of blanketing and other care to be sure our buddies don’t all get sick.
Hopefully by next year we’ll have a covered arena, making us at least a little bit more weather-proof!
Technology use in Non-Profits
I’m doing some planning for the second half of our fiscal year (January – June) and I’m finding it very useful to watch the “nptech” tag on Technorati. This allows me to easily see new blog postings and news regarding the use of technology in the non-profit sector. Check out the technorati listing here:
Since many of you are not really techies, I’ll explain a little. A Blog is just a space for regular news or commentary, or items of interest. Some Blogs are very specific (such as Square Pegs blog). A specifically creeated tag like nptech allows the community to identify each other quickly and find new folks. Technorati is a service for “tagging” blogs and finding them according to how they are “tagged”. The bookmarking/tagging service del.icio.us is another system that works a little differently.
The whole noptech idea came from some conversations on Omidyar Network, a wonderful community of people, all committed to making a difference
Acceptance of new ideas
Today Seth Godin posted about inertia and product adoption. So now I’m thinking again about how we communicate about Square Peg Foundation, our mission and our programs.
Of course, the whole idea behind Square Pegs is a bit new for most people, and getting people to accept new ideas, or even small changes to their old ideas, is hard. People don’t pay attention and even when they do, they resist change.
Stories and thoughts
Our work generates stories. Lots of stories. We use these stories to hep people understand what we do, and we also use these stories to do what we do. The best stories work in both ways – supporting the growth of our program, and also supporting the work oof our program.
Our supporters and friends know this, of course. They want more. And we understand that we need to share stories more often and more widely. So that’s the first purpose of this Blog.
The second purpose of this Blog is to share our thoughts and ideas. Sometimes this will be practical questions of expanding our network of support or administering the programs, and sometimes we will share ideas that are more philosophical regarding why we do what we do and how it works.
We will be sharing authorship of this Blog. At first, Joell and I will do the writing. But we hope to have some contrbutions from our students and supporters in the future. If you have ideas about this, please let us know!