Successful Blog

SOB Business Cafe 12-29-06

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SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the title shots to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

Writing White Papers returns with the Best Posts From the Best Writers.

Life Beyond Code poses thinking question in a Quought Series.

Writing Great Ezines and Blogs does some coaching on how to fill up a remarkable e-newsletter.

Be prepared to shake hands with Mike Sansone in 2007.

A useful ubuntu guide

Related ala carte selections include

LiewCF has some useful places to see.

Wyome getst mushy for some fun blogs.

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like.
No tips required. Comments appreciated.

Have a great weekend!

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Net Neutrality 12-29-2006 — AT&T Gives Way On Net Neutrality

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

AT&T compromise may get merger approved

WASHINGTON — AT&T Inc. has offered a new set of concessions that are expected to satisfy the two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission and lead to approval of the company’s $85 billion buyout of BellSouth Corp. Approval by the full commission could happen as soon as Friday.

AT&T filed a letter of commitment with the agency Thursday night that adds a number of new conditions to the deal, including a promise to observe “network neutrality” principles, an offer of affordable stand-alone digital subscriber line service and a promise to give up some wireless spectrum.

Final approval still requires a vote of the commissioners, which can happen at any time via computer. The proposed deal is the largest telecommunications merger in U.S. history.

[ . . . ]

Among the promises made by the company:

_An offer of stand-alone, high-speed Internet service to customers in its service area for $19.95 per month. The “naked DSL (digital subscriber line)” offer would allow those who live in AT&T and BellSouth’s service areas to sign up for fast Internet access without being required to buy a package of other services.

_A greater commitment to network neutrality, or nondiscrimination involving Internet traffic. AT&T said it would “maintain a neutral network and neutral routing in its wireline broadband Internet access service.”

_To freeze rates for “special access” customers, usually competitors and large businesses that pay to connect directly to a regional phone company’s central office via a dedicated fiber optic line, for 48 months.

_To “assign and/or transfer to an unaffiliated third party” all of its 2.5 GHZ spectrum currently licensed to BellSouth within one year of the merger closing date.

_To “repatriate” 3,000 jobs that were outsourced by BellSouth outside the U.S. by Dec. 31, 2008, with at least 200 of those jobs to be located in New Orleans.

Ben Scott, legislative director for Free Press, a reform group that has fought the merger, said the network neutrality provision was a “big step forward for the supporters of an open Internet.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

10 Reasons to Write and Publish Every Day

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Connecting to the World

Power Writing Series Logo

Look in a scrapbook. Look in your wallet. You’ll find written messages. Diaries, wedding invitations, resumes, love letters, even our names are written as words. Yet, the best writer — the most prolific, the most proficient — is never finished learning, never finished becoming a writer. We are apprentices every one of us. We’re all in the process of becoming.

We’re all apprentice writers — part ego and part self-doubt. It’s the ego that helps us face down that blank page to say what we have to say. It’s the self-doubt that stops us from casting the movie about what we’ve written.

In this age of noise and clutter, we all need to be writers. Writing and publishing are the way we connect to the world.

10 Reasons to Write and Publish Every Day

We write to record our thoughts . . . and by recording them we think them through, rearrange, and re-organize them. We make our ideas clearer. We make our thinking stronger and more easily understood. We carve a path that a reader, a listener, another person can follow from our minds to their minds, from our hearts to their hearts. Writing is a connection waiting to happen.

Publishing makes the connection more natural and accessible.

Here are ten reasons that writing (and publishing) every day is important.

  1. Writing every day makes us better thinkers. It takes our thoughts out of our heads and challenges us to express them in understandable ways. Effective writing is the opposite of seat-of-the-pants thinking.

  2. Writing every day teaches us how to work with words in print, to construct a meaningful message. Like playing a guitar or doing math, writing takes practice.

  3. Writing every day helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident, and attuned to readers. Everything we write has an audience. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices.

  4. Writing every day improves our ability to craft remarkable prose that people want to share. Every time someone shares something that we write they add value to our ideas — when they change them and when they don’t.

  5. Writing every day gets us comfortable with the conventions of writing and the conventions of writing give our messages credibility. The credibility is how society finds the appropriate place for our ideas.

  6. Writing every day lets us find our personal writing process. We lose our fear of flying and learn our way around our creativity. We get familiar with what to do when we need ideas, how to know what we want to say, what is always going to be hard, and what parts are worth looking forward to.

  7. Writing every day teaches us how to tell our internal editor to be quiet until we need feedback.

  8. Writing every day makes us better, more thoughtful readers. We bring the insights and appreciation of a writer to what we read.

  9. Writing every day connects us to people. We meet more people in print than we can ever possibly meet face to face. Many people will know our written voice as well as they know our names.

  10. Writing every day makes us architects and builders. We record our history, and we imagine the future. We inspire and motivate, both ourselves and others. We make something that changes the world, something lasting. We make a unique contribution that others might use.

Everything written is inherently personal and at the same time dynamically social. In a noisy world, it’s the way we communicate across continents, across living rooms; with folks we just met and with every generation of our families. We write our dreams, our business plans, and ask questions. We read. We respond. We get the ultimate first impression.

Each time we write our voice becomes clearer, more focused, and stronger, until our writing is inseparable from our voice. Everything we write is written about us.

Publishing is how we talk to the world and how the world hears us.

What have you told the world today?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
See Power Writing on the Successful Series Page.

Net Neutrality 12-28-2006

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Net Neutrality Links

I’m adding this link to the Net Neutrality Page.

Net Neutrality/Data in New Congress? Don’t Hold Yer Breath

Of course, the pundits interviewed noted this coming Congress will be preoccupied with other stuff, like, uh, the war and the budget. Oh, and let’s not forget about a little presidential race that’s already gearing up.

My bet is that we won’t see any federal legislation that does any more than pay lip service to the Net neutrality issue. Maybe something in the data security and privacy realm might hit the floor, but the fact is (and call me a cynic) the government wants access to any and all of our data for pretty much ever. That means it will be exempt from whatever laws are put in place, most likely making them moot where civil liberties are concerned. Remember CAN-SPAM, where they conveniently wrote themselves out of the law?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related
NET NEUTRALITY PAGE

Steve Farber Is an Extreme B.A.D. Blogger!

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Blogger A Day Conversation: Hi, Steve. What’s for Breakfast?

BAD Blogger Button

It stands to reason that a Blogger a Day call with Extreme Leader, Steve Farber, would take an Extreme form. A telephone didn’t enter the picture at all. It was breakfast when Steve was in Chicago!

This was going to be an Extreme B.A.D. Blogger connection. I packed up myself and my stuff into my car. I put my wallet in my back pocket. I put my key in the ignition. I turned the music up loud.

I drove past Wrigley Field and headed where the breakfast was planned. I couldn’t help thinking on the drive out there of the extreme birthday brunch I had celebrated at the same place — all chocolate, champagne, and one piece of bacon. I promised myself less embarrassing choices when I met the guy from California, I had wanted to meet since this summer.

Arriving at the atrium lobby, I aimed for the restaurant. Then a voice behind me said, “Liz,” and there he was. Thoughtful man, my mind said. I also thought, great smile, extreme shoulders, and a person who hugs when he says hello. I already like Mr. Steve Farber.

We found a table and soon the server, a lovely lady, who seemed part of our party, made sure that we had what we wanted. Not for a second did her presence seem an intrusion. Steve has a way of making the world feel welcome. He smiles a lot, and everyone notices that.

The conversation for me had started much earlier — in the car in my head driving there. As the coffee was poured, I had questions to ask Steve about the characters in his books, Radical Leap and Radical Edge. As a writer and as a reader, I was extremely curious about knowing about one in particular.

“Tell me. Is there really an Agnes?”

Steve paused for a thought, then said, “Agnes is not a real person.”

I told him as best I could what testament that was to his skill as a writer. I tried to explain that I found it quite something that anyone could deliver such a consistent message written in such a consistently believable human voice. I wanted Steve to know that I felt that way about all of his characters, but Agnes was more than a personal favorite. I still wish that I could meet her.

That’s when Steve and I talked about how his books relate to his leadership coaching. His speaking engagements draw lessons from the stories and the characters. Steve asked me how I would do a speech from “Agnes’s Book” Radical Edge. Almost immediately, I said I would structure a speech around the idea of finding one’s personal frequency — that note, the value that wraps around all other values the person holds dear.

Steve, being Steve smiled back at me and gently said “Of course, you go there because that’s where you are. Other folks chose another point completely.” He went on to say how some folks want him to talk only about the WUP — that’s the Wake Up Pad, where folks keep track of the ideas and implications of life as it happens. The WUP I thought. Can’t leave out the WUP!

The problem is that his books are so rich.

We wandered through ideas from speeches and books, to how Steve started blogging, and where he’ll be going over the next two years, when his next book is due to come out.

Somehow, being the leader that Steve is, he managed to get as much of my story as I got of his. It was his story, my story, and the stories of people we knew — all intertwined while we talked about the business of books, and speaking, and blogs, and websites, and future projects. I told Steve what I was doing with Phil. He added his publishing advice to the mix. It made a difference to the plans for Phil’s book.

By the end of the conversation I felt the power of extreme leadership, even though the words had never been mentioned.

I smiled the whole drive home. I don’t remember what we ate, but I don’t think I embarrassed myself in the choices I made.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

The great, compelling writers are the ones whose voices are unique and whose passion is palpable–whatever the subject. Once I figured that out for myself, the process got much easier and . . . more fun. — Steve Farber

Stop by Steve’s Blog, Extreme Leadership, and say hi!

Thanks, Steve, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar