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Welcome Payson Area Computer Association! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Payson AZ and meet at the Payson Library. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen. During the meeting I edit it to make it more personal.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 16 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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Welcome Corte Bella! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Sun City West here in the Phoenix area. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 25 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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Welcome EVACC! They are sitting out there watching me give a presentation on blogs as part of the AZACC presentation tour. They are located in Mesa AZ. (By the way, the presentation is being done over Skype. Cool, huh?)

One of the things I am demoing to each group is how easy it is to post a new blog post. All I have done is create a post in OneNote and copy the text over to my blog post screen.

When the presentation is all done, I am hoping that one or more of them will comment and let us know what they thought of the presentation.

There were about 10 people in the audience for this session. If you have a blog you want to share with them, feel free to comment below!

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This afternoon’s AZACC presentation was to Sun City Grand Computers. I did some rework on the slide compared to the morning’s presentation. Maybe one of them will comment and let us know what they thought.

There were about 70 people in the audience. WOW. That’s big for a local user group. Maybe some of them will talk about how they get people to the meetings!

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This morning starts another mini-tour for AZACC. This month, I am presenting an introduction to blogs and blogging to 20-25 groups. Most of the tour will be done over Skype.

This is the second half tour I have done this season. Being able to do them over Skype increases the number of presentations I can do without increasing the stress on my knees. This is a good thing.

As the materials get finalized, I will upload them to the cloud and add them to this post. For now, feel free to comment with blogs and blogging tips that you want to share.

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Just in case you didn’t know it, PodcampAZ is this weekend in Tempe at UAT.  This is, in my mind, one of the best conferences put on anywhere in the US. A free conference full of great speakers, great conversations, and awesome connections.

I’ll be there sharing the process Bruce and I used to update our OutdoorCook.com site. It needed a redesign and we will be sharing the process we went through to get it updated.

Lots of out of towners coming this year, including @Karoli, @GrammarGirl, Scott J., and many others. The usual crew will be speaking as well, but not always on the usual topics. @TSDivaDani will be talking politics, for example!

We have parties too – one tonight at CaHoots, one tomorrow night at Gangplank, and a low key one Sunday (for those with the energy) at Gangplank. We have prizes (everything from books to Disneyland tickets) and surprises.

All in all, it is a weekend not to be missed. And what’s more – it’s the last one – you don’t want to miss the explanation for that!

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Our Mac Plus - Not our first one, but close. It won't boot right now, but it did an hour ago!

I never knew Steve Jobs. I know people who knew him directly, but I didn’t. So, why write a blog post on his passing? Because few people I didn’t know have touched my life for so long in such a way.

I touched my first Apple II when I started my Freshman year at Wartburg in 1980. (Dating myself there.) Wartburg’s main computer programming was done via a dial up to an IBM S/370. (Only way to do input? Punch cards.) However, the fun parts of computing were always the programming we got to do on the Apple II’s in the side room.

I loved playing with the Apple II’s. Unlike the machines we had built in high school, they worked without us doing programming. Sure, we still had to tweak them. But they opened a whole new world to all of us computer geeks.

It will surprise many that Bruce and I owned Macs long before we owned Windows machines. We bought our first one in the fall of 1984. As our computing worlds grew, we bought several more. (In fact, we didn’t buy a Windows machine until well into the 90′s.) What did we do with our Macs? Games, documents, newsletters, artwork, and more. We loved our Macs.

As time went on, we moved further and further into the Windows world. But there was always a part of us that loved the ease of the Mac. The parts that just worked. We have had at least one Apple machine in our house since that first purchase.

If it weren’t for Apple, I probably wouldn’t have fallen as deeply in love with computing as I did. I saw the future in those machines. I saw what could be. I saw the power of what the average person could do without knowing the nuts and bolts of the machine.

Steve Jobs will be missed by many. I will be one of those. When a person with that level of vision leaves this world, we all lose. I hope that his death doesn’t turn Apple from what it has become to an ordinary company. That would truly be sad for all of us.

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Taken by Martin Moucha

Some of the most passionate discussions I have been involved in have occurred during board and organizational meetings for the non-profits I have volunteered with.

In some ways, this is to be expected. The volunteers and board members of most small to medium sized non-profits are there because they believe in the cause the organization represents.

What has never made sense to me is the passion and volume levels of the discussions about the small issues. I know the big issues are easy to agree on, but the details are always the sticking point.

Think about this

Long ago, a pastor friend of mine explained to me why he preferred a mission church to an older established church. Mission churches have been around less time. They are focused on growth and funding the efforts they feel the community needs. The older churches had time and bandwidth to talk about things that are more mundane.

He told me that he had been assigned as a co-pastor at a large established church that needed to do a major remodel. The council had agreed on almost all the details of the remodel. The remaining decision was the flooring.

Believe it or not, that decision almost tore the church apart. The council (and the congregation) split into groups over what to cover the floor with. The color of the carpeting, the style of the carpeting, the padding to use, where to pad… Those details almost tore that church apart. Members left to join other churches. Friends split up.

For real? Carpeting?

I can hear you asking: Over carpeting? Really? That’s what did so much damage? I am here to tell you, yes, really. The decision about the carpeting did that much damage.

At that time, I didn’t really believe him. I knew details could split an organization, but I didn’t believe they could do that much damage.

I now know better. I have watched it happen in many different organizations. The big decisions are easier. People think about them. People work together to get them implemented. People know that a big decision is important. Too bad they don’t know how important the smaller decisions are.

Smaller decisions make people passionate because they are what shows. They are how the organization is known. A non-profit will argue for hours about a $100 expenditure, and then approve a 5K expenditure on one vote.

What do you think?

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Twitter user @ohjennymae has asked for help in getting a Google doc to show in a blog post. She says when she follows these directions, it doesn’t work. All she sees is the embed code.

I think what happened is that she put the embed code in the visual tab, not the HTML tab. (Turns out I was right.)

If I am right, the doc should show in this post. If I am not right, the document won’t show here either. So, was I right?

Update: Bruce tried to view this post on Chrome and it works. However, on IE and FireFox, it doesn’t.