Archive - Dec 2010
December 21st
Random Lunacy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/21/2010 - 04:32Wikipedia starts off describing technological singularity this way:
A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict.
Some have linked the 2012 prophecies to singularity. Meanwhile, we are having an interesting event right now. The total lunar eclipse on the same day of the winter solstice. Granted, the eclipse is at the beginning of the day and the solstice is at the end of the day, but even that hasn’t happened in nearly 400 years.
Outside, it is windy and mostly cloudy. I catch brief glimpses of the eclipse through breaks in the clouds. It isn’t as cold as I expected, but Fiona doesn’t want to get out of bed. We have a couple sets of wind chimes, as do our neighbors, and there is a veritable symphony going on out side.
Inside, I check my twitter feed. It is pretty lively for this time of the morning. Here are a few qutoes:
All of us looking at Eclipse r nerds. All of us looking at Twitter r nerds. All of us tweeting about Eclipse r Mega-nerds
Eclipse is awesome
Red moon rising...creepy beautiful.
Watching the eclipse in a perfectly dark field near new paltz, ny- magnificent!!
Woke the kids to see the eclipse. Really nifty.
Send moon pictures we are so cloudy rainy here in Riverside!
Let's all take a moment of silence for the planet Pluto, who cldnt join us this evening.
and when the night is through, I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you." Wish Dad were alive 2 see the #eclipse. He'd love it.
Everyone who doesn't have clouds covering the eclipse SFU
As I'm sure has been written many times tonight, "Goodnight, Moon." Been really fun seeing friends', Twitter's reactions. G'nite, all.
Everyone simultaneously Tweeting about the #eclipse all over the world right now. For one moment, we are all a community. Literally awesome.
When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.
Meanwhile, it is National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. Wherever You Are Healthcare for the Homeless, a program of Community Health Center, Inc. (CHC), my new employer, will be hosting a memorial services and candlelight vigils in memory of the areas’ homeless residents who died in 2010 today and tomorrow. Then, on Thursday, I will go to the funeral for my aunt and rush back home for a birthday party for my father-in-law.
Between a new job, the loss of a family member, the stress of the holidays, I’m pretty raw. The wind chimes and the moon help a little. All of this returns me to the old Zen story:
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal.
Ryokan returned and caught him. "You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon. "Poor fellow," he mused, "I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
December 20th
Melancholy Music Monday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/20/2010 - 08:21
Last night, I scanned through the Sonic bids submissions to the music review section of this blog. This time around, I’ve gotten much less submissions. During my first period, I had 71 submissions. In the end, I reviewed 16. With one week left in this submission period, I’ve only received sixteen listings to review. I’ve now reviewed 7 of them.
There are a few interesting groups that I am considering reviewing. A couple have interesting videos or interesting backgrounds, but none of them really fit my feeling for this week.
You see, Saturday afternoon, my aunt died. I wrote a bit about it then, and I’m still feeling a bit blue. None of the listings jumped out at me on this. However, several tunes that often rattle around in my head have been with me for the past couple of days.
I like to write about songs that most people have not heard, yet there is one well known song that captures my mood fairly nicely. River by Joni Mitchell.
Two other songs are about bigger struggles that people go through. The first is Chris O’Brien’s “Blood Like Yours”. I first heard Chris at Falcon Ridge this year. His song about struggling with his father’s alcoholism is powerful and comes back to me from time to time.
In the same way, David Silva’s song “It will all be perfect” often comes back to me. David submitted a listing to Sonicbids earlier this year and I featured him in a review. This is a song about domestic violence. It comes from the abused’s perspective with the haunting line, “It will all be perfect baby, please don’t hit me anymore”; the hope that things will be okay when deep down, you know they aren’t, and won’t be without some sort of major changes. I suspect that the broader sense may be something many of us can relate to, even if we have no immediate experiences with domestic violence.
With that, I come to Harpeth rising’s “Can’t find the revolution”. They also came to me via a SonicBids submission. I reviewed Harpeth rising back in June. They will be playing in Middletown, CT in January and I’m working out details for them to appear on Fiona’s Radio Show this weekend to talk about their music and their upcoming show.
Back in June, I mentioned “Can’t find the revolution” as one of the songs that I really like, and it has been coming back to my mind a lot during these past few days. It talks about a woman who used to be a rambler and now she’s trapped inside a swivel chair and that she can’t find the revolution, but she’s looking every day.
When confronted with death, we may stop and wonder how our lives are going. Are we doing something we want to be doing, something meaningful? Have we found the revolution, or are we trapped inside a swivel chair. My new job is still new, and I’m just starting to find the frustrations that I suspect I’ll have to fight, but at least right now, it feels like I’ve found the revolution. But that’s a different blog post waiting to be written.
Ending things off is Calaveras’ “Ready to Fly”. I heard Calaveras at Falcon Ridge in 2009. Their song “Ready to Fly” grew out of some time that they spent with elderly people in nursing homes. “I am not dying, I’m getting ready to fly.” It is an incredibly hopeful look at the final days of loved ones.
So, as I mourn the passing of my aunt, I am spending time with some of my close friends. Just like my human friends, these musical friends might not be the most popular, but they carry incredibly deep meaning, and I hope that everyone spends time seeking similar friendships.
December 19th
The Heroism of Ordinary Life - Susie LeMieux
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/19/2010 - 11:44Susie LeMieux had Parkinson’s disease, as did her father Vivien Cota. Yet the disease took different courses in these two different people. Grampa showed signs of belligerence and spent his final days in a nursing home. When Aunt Susie’s husband, Fred LeMieux went to visit my Grampa, Grampa would ask Uncle Fred if he had brought guns to help him escape. Aunt Susie, on the other hand became peaceful and spent her final days in the loving company of her family.
Yesterday, I received a message on Facebook from one of Susie’s grandchildren. The family new that Facebook was perhaps one of the quickest and most reliable ways of reaching me these days. Aunt Susie died yesterday afternoon. While she had been fighting Parkinson’s disease for some time, her passing was sudden and unexpected. The doctor believes she my have had a pulmonary embolism. Even her final hours reflected Susie’s peacefulness. Her daughter, my cousin Dorian was helping her get ready for a family holiday party. She had just put on a festive sweater and a pretty necklace. Her family was by her side as she died.
Dylan Thomas urged his father not to go gently into that good night. I’m not sure how gently Susie’s father entered that good night, but Susie entrance did not show rage against the dying of the light. Perhaps this too, reflects a bit on Susie’s life.
Aunt Susie, like my mother and their sisters and brother grew up on a small farm on the banks of the Connecticut river during the depression. There is something about the look, the sound of the voice, the mannerisms that say, ‘kin’, to me, and on rare occasions, I’ve run into people with similar mannerism or tones of voice and I’ve wondered if they grew up on the banks of the northern Connecticut River or if they were descendents of the Gordons, Chases, Eastmans, Merrills or Cotas.
My mother often told stories of growing up on the farm during the depression. Life did not sound easy back then, but it sounded as if they managed to find joy and happiness in spite of the struggles. It seems to me that this was a lesson Susie learned early and carried with her through her life.
When my Grampa was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, he and his wife were living with my Aunt Susie. My grandmother, Dorothy Cota, nee Gordon was also advanced in years and fighting her own battles with age. She died a couple weeks after her husband did. These days you hear more and more stories about boomers caring for aging parents. From my perspective, Aunt Susie appeared to be a model for such people. Just like on the farm, she handled the struggles of the day with joy and happiness.
It is a trait that she passed on to her daughter and it seems only appropriate that she should pass on in the loving embrace of her family.
Recently, I wrote a blog post about heroism. Philip Zimbardo has started the Heroic Imagination Project which believes “heroism can be learned by example and reinforced with practice.” Friends have asked if what Zimbardo is describing is really heroism or simply practicing kindness. Heroism, they say shown through extraordinary acts.
Perhaps Aunt Susie embodied what Zimbardo is really talking about. She probably didn’t think of herself as a hero and I suspect that those around her might not have thought of her that way either. Yet in her quiet kindness Aunt Susie showed the sort of heroism of ordinary life that we should all aspire to. Rest in peace, Susie LeMieux.
December 18th
Playing with Email Marketing
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/18/2010 - 11:34Back in August, I wrote a blog piece about Playing with Google Friend Connect Newsletters and other stuff. It turns out that if you have Google Friend Connect set up on your blog, you can use it to send newsletters to people who have opted in. At the time, there were 49 people that had opted-in and I sent them an email.
I haven’t sent another email blast using Google Friend Connect since then. Email blasts just really aren’t a high priority for my blog. Since then, the number of newsletter subscribers has grown to 80 out of the 289 people that have joined Orient Lodge on Google Friend Connect. I’ll probably send them an email about this blog post and random other updates.
At my new job, we’ve been talking about improving our email marketing, so I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at different email marketing systems. I’ve asked a bunch of friends, done a bit of testing and have some initial thoughts and a further request.
The email marketing system that has the greatest mindshare is Constant Contact. If you ask people about email marketing systems, just about everyone will mention them. They are very good. People also mention that they are the strictest. If you want to do anything more than very straight forward opt-in email marketing, they are probably not the folks to use.
The other email marketing system that got a lot of comments was Vertical Response. The comments I received were unanimous. Avoid them. Most of the complaints were about usability. It is just too hard a system to work with.
GetResponse got some good reviews, but I haven’t really spent time exploring them. There was one other system that was recommended called Emma. However, they seemed awfully pricy and I decided not to use them.
The two systems that got the best response and seemed to fit best with what I’m looking at are MailChimp and Mad Mimi. Mad Mimi seems to be better oriented towards building up new lists. They are pretty straight forward about who you can contact:
To add audience, each person must either:
Be a customer, member or subscriber of your organization.
Have asked to get your emails by signing up in some way.
Have bought something from you in the past 18 months.
MailChimp says
No 3rd party lists, no prospects, no lists that you scraped from websites, no chambers of commerce lists, etc
The two statements are perhaps not all that different, other than the tone, but for someone interested in building their lists, they should look at these policies to see which system feel more comfortable.
One other system I started looking at was CoreMotives running as part of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. There are some really interesting aspects of embedding an email marketing system within a CRM, but it probably doesn’t work well for smaller bloggers.
In terms of ease of use, I found Mailchimp pretty nice in terms of constructing nice emails. On a first pass, Mad Mimi doesn’t seem as strong in this area. I also like Mailchimp’s SocialPro. It pulls data from different sites, including Rapleaf and Gravatar so that you can better segment your lists. SocialPro is free until March, but still needs some work. They have some other nice integration with social media, Google Analytics and other tools for tracking and interacting with the system.
Mad Mimi does some really nice social media integration, and may be easier for some sorts of email blasts once you get everything configured just right. I’m told they have some other interesting features that are worth exploring.
Both Mad Mimi and Mailchimp put up the emails as webpages and you can see my first attempts here and here.
So, that’s where I’m at right now with testing these systems. I’ve added sections in the lower left hand part of my blog where you can subscribe via MailChimp and Mad Mimi. If you’re interested in participating in my testing, please consider signing up. Also, if you use any email marketing system to promote your blog, share your thoughts.
December 17th
#ff @chcconnecticut #gedh @andrea_doane @NACHC @LNReynolds #fqhc @aabayasekara #hcct @HealthCampCT
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 12/17/2010 - 04:44An important part of getting up to speed in my new job as Social Media Manager for Community Health Center, Inc., is to start building up connections with people and organizations that can add a lot to the online discussion about how social media can help improve communities’ health. So, I’m looking at who is retweeting @chcconnecticut or tweeting messages of interest to @chcconnecticut and who I can connect with.
One of the big events last week was CHC receiving half a million dollars in grants from GE Foundation’s “GE Developing Health”. Tweets about the GE Developing Health grants used the #gedh hashtag. One person who mentioned #gedh and @chcconnecticut is @andrea_doane. Her profile says she is a “Communication professional with interests in CSR, leadership and engagement” For those that don’t recognize the acronym CSR, by the context, I assume she is talking about corporate social responsibility. Given that most of her tweets are about GE or social media, I suspect she does some sort of social media work for GE or the GE foundation. CSR is very important in my book, and it looks like Andrea is a person well worth following.
Another area that is very important is the National Association of Community Health Centers. They can be found on twitter at @nachc. @LNReynolds describes herself on Twitter as “Government Affairs and Advocacy for the Ohio and National Associations of Community Health Centers”. She liked a post on the CHC Facebook page about Dr. Howard Koh’s appearance on CHC Radio. @chcradio, or Conversations On Health Care, is a CHC project that airs on radio stations across the country. Dr Koh is an Assistant Secreatry for Health at HHS. @LNReynolds has a lot of interesting tweets.
One of those tweets was announcing that @aabayasekara NACHS’s “Tweet of the Week”. @aabayasekara describes herself as a “Bookworm interested in FQHCs, nonprofit management & marketing, and wandering the planet.” The acronym FQHC stands for Federally Qualified Health Center. @CHCConnecticut is a FQHC.
One final account to follow is @HealthCampCT. There are a bunch of interesting people working together to bring a barcamp style unconference about health care to Connecticut. They are tweeting with the #hcct hashtag. Most of the tweets are likely to show up from individuals using the #hcct hashtag. However in some cases there may tweets from the group as a whole coming from the @HealthCampCT account. In addition, it can provide a nice centralized place for lists and other twitter connectivity.
There is a lot going on in social media in health care, and this is just scratching the surface. If you know of other good social media in health care accounts that I should follow, please let me know.
