If you know who Jim Jones was,  you’re probably familiar with the expression “drank the Koolaid”.   Even if you have to consult the Urban Dictionary chances are you know that the phrase refers to followers of the Reverend Jim Jones who committed mass suicide by drinking poisoned Koolaid at their compound in Guayana.   It’s become a meme for folks accepting some too good to be true promise or scheme that someone online is selling them.

I honestly like my friends in the Inspiration niche,  and sometimes I do find some of their posts genuinely helpful,  some of their aphorisms genuinely useful and some of their thinking genuinely compelling.    And yet,  sometimes I really have to wonder if some of these people are really drinking the Koolaid that they are selling.    The thing about using blog comments to drive traffic to your website,  is that you really…

It is kinda fitting that I am writing this Life@42 blog post on the 60th Anniversary of the birth of Douglas Adams. While Douglas Adams was busy writing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, he was often quoted as saying “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

I first read Eve Mayer Orsburn’s The Social Media Business Equation shortly after blogging How the Brantford Library understands “The Social Media Business Equation” by Eve Mayer Orsburn. Since then I have read it three times before actually sitting down and writing this blog post.

The question of deadlines is an interesting element of business. Do you focus on imposed timelines or focus on quality deliverables. As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), I probably should lean towards timelines, but I consistently lean towards the agile side and prefer to focus on incremental deliverables…

Everyone that knows me is aware that I hate the word Guru in general but really in regard to Social Media.   Everyone that is involved in any Internet Marketing and or Social Media type of Industry realizes that this industry is still evolving and we are all on the fast track to continuous learning due to the super fast growth of this technology.  Everyone is trying to move ahead, grab business, compete for projects and set themselves above the many people that are claiming to be social media experts. However there is NEVER a need to use the (shudder) word GURU.

Social Media in regard to business is still a relatively new avenue of marketing a business, although many would argue the point with me if I were inclined to argue, which I’m not. LOL  My point is that businesses are just now starting to realized that…

UPDATE: Tens of thousands of readers have found this post and hundreds of you have commented. A few have said that these analogies were actually taken from other sources and were not written by high school kids at all. Now, we have a link that ends the debate. These analogies are the winning entries in a 1999 Washington Post humor contest, and there are more than 25. Please look at the comments sent August 3, 2008 by “Jiffer” to get to the complete list and the names of the authors.

ORIGINAL POST: I have to share these “funniest analogies” with you. They came in an e-mail from my sister. She got them from a cousin, who got them from a friend, who got them from… so they are circulating around. My apologies if you have already seen them.

The e-mail says they are taken from actual high school essays…

I find myself thinking today that a good blog is actually quite a bit like a good New Orleans seafood gumbo.   It requires a number of different skills (ingredients) as well as considerable knowledge in combining these ingredients into a coherent whole.    Gumbo is definitely not a recipe for beginners.   It also most certainly is not something quick and easy that one can just whip together.   There is a lot of prep work–  cleaning and de-veining the shrimp,  chopping up the okra and all of the other vegetables.    (Choosing host, platform and theme,  designing a layout for visual appeal and usability.)    Once you’re ready to begin cooking,  the work only gets harder–  your arm will literally feel as though it’s about to fall off after stirring the okra for half an hour.    And then finally after all that effort comes the rewards–  an utterly…