I live in an upscale neighborhood near a university. It’s a great older neighborhood with heritage homes, tasteful condos and one of the oldest vegetarian restaurants in the city. There are more Priuses per square foot that almost anywhere in North America. For those of us who don’t own a Prius, there are four Car Co-Op cars in the neighborhood. Outside almost every home is a “Next Time, I’m voting for the Environment” sign, we involved ourselves fully in “no-car Sunday” in June and the Farmers Market is packed every Sunday. Some of us support UNICEF and the major local charities. We’re nice people.

We also have a homeless guy .. WTF? .. He lives in an alley about a half a block from me.  He used to live in someone’s carport, but the house was sold and the new owners built a garage, so he sleeps on the ground. He seems harmless, just wanders around, pushing his shopping cart full of his worldly possessions. AND WE ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN. As far as I know, no-one (including myself) has taken the time to find out how he became homeless, or what we can do to help him. We’re willing to take the time to save the environment, but we’re too busy to save a human being? HOW THE HELL DID WE GET HERE?

My conservative friends from the ‘burbs tell me some bleeding heart years ago convinced the government that warehousing people with mental health issues was inhumane, and that we should integrate them into society. I’m pretty sure that bleeding heart didn’t consider turning them out on the streets without any support humane. It isn’t just people with mental health issues that are homeless, there’s also people who’ve lost their jobs, who are just one paycheck away from being destitute, families .. FAMILIES .. and we sit quietly by and ignore the issue. Surely THEY caused their own downfall. It couldn’t happen to someone like us .. could it?

At Thanksgiving and at Christmas, we see scenes of long lineups at the Union Gospel Mission, waiting for a holiday meal and some of us haul out our credit cards and make a small donation and feel good for another few months. We did our part. Unfortunately, the people who live on the street live there all year long, not just during the holidays.

It’s estimated that between 6 and 8 thousand people are homeless in Vancouver. Between 6,000 and 8,000 people are homeless in the Greater Vancouver area. The provincial government bought a few hotels on the Downtown East Side a few months ago, but that didn’t take anyone off the street, just prevented those who live in these hotels from becoming homeless. That let us all off the hook. The affordable housing that was promised for the 2010 Athlete`s village was too expensive, so the government let the developer off the hook. And we sat by with our hands in our laps. There were a few letters to the editor, but we politely ignored them.

There are a couple of radical groups that care about the homeless. Unfortunately, they choose to get our attention by staging stunts like defacing the 2010 Countdown clock. HOW DARE THEY? Thugs!

Then there’s the drugs .. that’s how they got to be homeless isn’t it? It’s really their fault after all .. Why can’t they just stop taking drugs and get a job like the rest of us?

We endlessly debate whether Safe Injection Sites are effective. Oh, I forgot, the Provincial Government has struck yet another committee .. they found the money to pay some consultant to study homelessness. I think the study is due in a year or so.

Meanwhile the Food Bank is bankrupt, more and more people are made homeless every week, shelters turn away dozens of people every night. When it gets unacceptably cold, the city opens up “emergency” shelters and the community donates warm clothing and bedding. It makes us feel good that we’re “doing something”.

WAKE UP!

Between six and eight thousand human beings live on our streets, they have nowhere to sleep, or shower, to sit down to have a meal .. to relax, to be safe. No one cares about them. Not you, not me, not their families, nor society as a whole.

We have runs to save kittens and puppies, telethons to save Stanley Park, but I don’t remember any fund raising efforts for the homeless.

We’re overwhelmed, so we sit paralyzed. What if we all make eradicating homelessness a priority by supporting organizations that provide services to the homeless and by pressuring the government to provide provide low-cost housing, medical  and social services? Will we turn everyone who lives on the street into the kind of person that makes us comfortable? .. absolutely not .. does that mean that we shouldn’t even try? I think not.

What if we could take even 10% of the homeless off the street in the next 12 months? Would that get you to get involved? To ask questions? To write a letter?

I wish I had answers .. I do know that if we continue to ignore the problem it’s only going to get worse. Find a group that you feel comfortable supporting. Make a donation. Donate your time. Become a Board Member.

This Post is part of Blog Action Day 08 Poverty

Ron Hudson’s Immediate Influence Blog post today listed the 50 Most Influential Women in Social Media. He compiled the list from nominations from people on Twitter, then used their Alexa ranking to place them on the list. (Alexa is used to rank web site traffic)

I recognized at least half of the nominees, and wondered why some others hadn’t made the list (others wondered that too, see comments at the end of the blog).

I’m subscribed to 256 RSS feeds .. there is no way I can keep up with that many feeds, even using the last-in scheme in Ed Dale’s video. Most Twitter users announce when they update their posts, so that’s how I keep up to date with blog entries from bloggers I follow.

Almost all the 50 Most Influential Women had links to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media applications right along side their RSS feed signups. They also had an E-book or Newsletter offer front and centre. You can also sign up for updates by e-mail instead of an RSS feed.

I didn’t have a link to my Twitter or Facebook account from my blog, although both my Twitter and Facebook accounts promote it. Give your readers every chance to stay in touch. I should know better .. almost 30% of my blog traffic comes from Google searches. I created a widget at WidgetBox as soon as I realized what was missing from my sidebar. I’m still having issues with an e-mail subscription for my WordPress blog using Feedburner.

Yaro Starak tells his mentees that content is everything, that we need to write content and market our blogs every day before we spend time on themes and widgets. I’ve taken his advice too literally and keep putting e-mail subscription on the low-priority list. I understand his point of view .. as a geek, I’d spend all my time searching for the perfect theme and fine-tuning widgets.

I need to devote most of my time to my clients and to developing my two other online businesses, but I realize I need to make some changes to the look of my blog and add those pages I’ve been meaning to work on for the past month.

I urge you to take the time to get to know these amazing women. While you’re at their website and blogs, take a look at the information they present and start slowly add features that make sense to you.

Are you happy with the look of your blog?

I’m late to the Twitter party. I’ve been listening to Leo Laporte talk about Twitter on his podcasts for ages. I signed up for an account last year, sent a few Tweets and wandered off to find something else to play with. Way back then, Twitter was still being used as a social network. I don’t care if you’re at a coffee shop in Yaletown … even if you are my friend.

A few months ago the Blog Squad recommended Twitter so I tried it. Okay, now I get it. And the really cool thing is .. you only have 140 characters. This is perfect for word-challenged geeks like myself.

I think and write in bullet points .. I’ve been IM’ing my team mates in the next office to mine for years. I can write a business plan using a mind map (as a matter of fact, I did that on Friday) Ask me to to string words and sentences together and I start to sweat. This blog would have a lot more content if I could just write it in bullet points. Geeks would get it .. the rest of the world would wonder why I didn’t finish the post.

Twitter is perfect for me .. in fact, I often have to shorten my Tweets .. I even get to shorten URLs ..

I use TweetDeck, I tried Twhirl .. it’s just okay. TweetDeck chirps at me when one of my Tweeple posts. I only follow people who have something to say, so if there’s a chirp then I should check it out .. right ??? What does that do to my productivity? You’re right .. drops to zero.

I used to check my e-mail first thing .. now I check Twitter. I don’t even bother with e-mail until I’ve read (and followed all the links) from the last time I checked Twitter .. I’ve counted .. there’s been eight Tweets since I started writing this post .. and I haven’t checked one .. what if someone had something important to say? .. and I missed it .. I’ve almost stopped writing (another Tweet) a few times to check out what’s being said ..

On the positive side, if you have Twitter open all the time, you can be one of the first to comment on your favorite blogger. That’s a good thing isn’t it? (another Tweet) You’re always aware of Twitter Trends, and you’re up to date on what’s happening (at least on the internet). (another Tweet)

Okay .. I can’t stand it any more .. I’m off to check what’s being said since I last checked. It’s almost like not being able to hear what the other kids are saying .. standing on the outside of a group of popular kids …

Are you addicted to Twitter?

I was one of the early adopters of Google Chrome. Even mainstream media was excited about Google’s browser. I’m a Google fan-boy. I’ve had GMail accounts forever, used Google search since the beginning. I like Google Finance, Google Analytics, iGoogle and Google Reader. I had high hopes for Chrome.

I use Firefox 3 and Flock. Firefox seems to be either this amazing browser, or so buggy you want to chuck it. Not sure what’s up with that .. how can the folks that designed such an innovative browser get it so wrong from time to time? Why do they use their users to do Q & A? I am addicted to addons, so any new browser has to have support for addons.

I like the Chrome’s intuitive interface. It uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts .. not such a fan of keyboard shortcuts. In the 30 years I’ve been at a keyboard, I’ve been able to memorize Ctrl/C, Ctrl/X, Ctrl/V, F11, F5 and Ctrl/Shft/Esc .. that’s all ..  I associate keyboard shortcuts to the 1980′s .. I’ve moved on and getting me to memorize a ton of keyboard shortcuts is going to be a tough sell.

I often have 8 or 10 tabs open at any given time. I multitask and I`m not proud to say my virtual desktop looks much like my physical desktop. Not the that organized or neat.

I can`t live without the Roboform addon. I really do have a different password at each of the sites I visit and most of them are random. If I can`t memorize a few keyboard shortcuts, what do you think the chances of my remembering all my userid and password combinations?

The thing that really did Chrome in was .. it slowed down my machine .. no, I mean it SLOWED DOWN MY MACHINE. Not worth the trouble, so I took it off my machine and will wait while other folks voluteer to beta test it.

Are you still using Chrome?

Experience a major shift in your life .. in just three days. That was the tag line in the e-mail invitation I received from Stephanie Hartman to join her Entrepreneur Breakthrough Weekend.

I’m a skeptic .. and I’ve paid lots of money for workshops that didn’t deliver nearly as much as they promised. You get something out of it, but usually there’s an up sell at the end, or you realize the person isn’t the expert they claim to be. I enrolled because Stephanie came highly recommended and I’ve met her at High Output Business Network meetings. I expected a good Marketing course and to possibly get some leads.

Stephanie and Gary de Rodriguez delivered! Stephanie taught Internet Marketing so all levels of technical expertise “got it”. Those that have no idea how it works (yet), left with a good understanding of what to do and why. She taught us to use Joint Ventures. By the end of the weekend, I was involved in three joint ventures. Really GOOD joint ventures ..

Gary is part revival preacher, part shaman, part scientist and one of the most amazing  and caring people I’ve ever met. He as able to help us to see what’s possible for us. Not just more rah! rah! His techniques really do allow you to experience a major shift in your thinking. A lot of what Gary teaches was new to me, but I allowed myself to be open to these new ideas.

In order to run your own business, you need to be honest with yourself and open to learning new skills. There’s no hiding behind 9 to 5 … my boss is a jerk … I’m underemployed … the economy. You have to be on your game every day and have the courage to make changes if what you’re doing isn’t working. I wonder if that’s why over 75% of small business owners fail? An interesting thought.

The lesson we can all learn is to open yourself to new possibilities. What things have you learned about yourself running your own business?

In a June 2008 post, I discussed using an e-mail signature to drive traffic to your blog and website. I’ll admit my design was less than inspired, but it got the job done.

Regular readers know how much I like Firefox and that I’ve reviewed what I consider to be essential addons. Add Wisestamp to the essential addon list. This free utility creates an e-mail signature for your webmail applications (you can copy and paste it into Outlook too).

The simple interface allows you to add a graphic (your logo or photo), insert a hyperlink, change font  style and colour, with fields for every social marketing account you have.

They even have pre-defined signatures that you can customize and that will save you a lot of time.

Just cut and paste the code into the edit window, then personalize and you’re ready to go.

Here’s what my finished signature. I choose between two signatures, or no signature at the time I create the message.

Now there`s no excuse for having a boring signature on your e-mails.

Matthew Bandyk has posted an excellent on his US News and World Report blog entitled “How to Blog Your Way to Small-Business Success”.

I agree wholeheartedly with his main points:

• “Be a Reader of Blogs” – besides reading blogs in your sector, try to read post from the best bloggers, Problogger, Seth Godin’s blog, Daily Blog Tips. Reading these bloggers a couple of times a week will give you a model for successful blogging. (see my post with a link to using Google Reader effectively)
• “Don’t Stress it Too Much” – just start blogging. The more you post, the easier it is .. and if you don’t post 3 to 5 times a week for a while, just start up again.
• “Don’t adspeak” – think of your blog as a conversation with your best client. You have the opportunity to use your expertise and to express your point of view (see next point)
• “Tell a Story Without Ranting” – oh oh .. I’m known to express my opinon .. you don’t have to agree with me and I do warn you when I’m ranting.
• “Keep it Simple With Search Engine Optimization” – Most small business owners don’t have the time or the resources to master SEO, that’s not your job. A good resource for simple and effective SEO for blogs is the 30 Day Challenge training. Sign up for a free account and work through the lessons when you have time.

As a small-business owner, do you have a blog? How often do you post?

As regular readers are aware, I have issues with cellphone plans. I’m Canadian, so our plans are outrageously expensive. Last month I made the decision to ditch my Blackberry 8703e and go back to a dumb cellphone. I love the Sanyo S1. It’s a good cellphone, and doesn’t need to be charged every other day.

I found a plan I can live with. Mostly people call me, so I went for a plan that allows unlimited incoming calls. It’s still way too much money, but compared to the plan I had to support my Blackberry, I was happy.

Imagine my surprise when my cell bell for September was almost $100. Breathe … breathe … It was a good thing I opened the e-bill after hours. No customer service representative should have to listen to me with a full head of steam … AND … they’re not going to go out of their way to help you if you’re unpleasant.

This afternoon I called my provider to ask for the details of a $29.05 charge for “Charges and Long Distance”. Turns out it’s for text advertising. Someone is spamming me and I’m paying for it. Apparently I consented to this .. hmm .. don’t remember doing that ..

While I had my Blackberry I didn’t notice, but now I’ve trimmed my bill back it was obvious. The representative says I had to sign up to be advertised to AND pay for it. I have to wait until the next text message arrives to find out who’se doing this. You can be sure I’ll have something to say to the company.

To their credit, my service provider did credit this month’s charges. I looked at back bills to discover I’ve been receiving these messages for 4 months .. I paid $108.49 for someone to spam me with text messages. Somehow e-mail spam doesn’t seem so bad after all … at least you can create a filter to throw them into the trash.

Stop whining .. do something .. I take a deep breath and ask the representative to block this type of text message .. sorry ma’am, I can only block ALL text messages and we don’t make any money from these messages only the company that’s sending them .. okay that’s a little hard to believe, but she just took almost $30 off my cell phone bill, so I’ll let it slide.

Next month, I look forward to a normal cell phone bill.

Am I the only one that’s been caught by these charges?

At big part of most conferences is the Exhibitors. They get to sell directly to you in return for giving you free stuff.

The free “stuff” at BWE08 was pretty lame. T-shirts and stickers. Since I’ve been in high-tech longer most of the population has been alive, I’ve been given T-shirts, fleece vests and ball caps from every project I’ve worked on and every conference I’ve attended. You better have a nifty logo or graphic on your T-shirt to get me to advertise your company. Didn’t happen there.

Lots of stickers .. stickers .. aren’t those for 8-year-olds? I did take a WordPress sticker, even though I got one at the WordPress camp I attended. Zannell wins the best give-away .. a lime green, yellow and blue yo-yo thingy that’s made out of that creepy plastic they make kids bugs out of. I play with it while I’m talking on the phone .. I can multitask .. the cat is creeped out by it though. Maybe she knows something I don’t. The best free pen award goes to .. SodaHead .. it’s my new favorite free pen.

I did talk to representatives from most of the exhibitors and there are a number of innovative new products for bloggers.

The neat new products I’ll be checking out and writing reviews on are: widgetbox, shopzilla, picapp, Yovia, Outbrain (best T-shirt), commission videos, lijit, and PRWeb. Here’s a hint for networking events and conferences. Write a note on the business card when the person hands it to you, or simply put an asterisk on it if you want to follow up. Makes it easier to sort out all the business cards and material you receive.

The take-away from the exhibitor floor was .. blog addons going to contain advertising. The product is free, but somewhere there will be an ad for something. I predict this will get old very quickly and these folks are going to have to rethink their strategy and start charging for the product.

<rant on> Hint to exhibitors .. Don’t start the conversation with “Are You Ladies Bloggers?” … WTF … What do you suppose we’re doing at a bloggers conference? I’m not sure if they asked everyone that question, but I found it annoying. Surely someone in the Marketing Department could have come up with a better one liner than that. <rant off>

I attended Blog World Expo in Las Vegas last weekend. Two days of being immersed in everything blog. I enjoyed the sessions, got to meet some blogging superstars and learned a lot. I’ll be posting about several of the sessions in the next few days.

I’ve vacationed in Las Vegas several times, but this is the first conference I’ve attended there, so we made a few newbie mistakes. It made sense to stay at a hotel right across from the Convention Centre. (The Marriot Residence Suites) It’s a great hotel, quiet, with no slot machines in the lobby (that’s a good thing) with breakfast and internet access included. On a map, it seems to be close to “The Strip” and there’s a monorail station right at the Convention Centre.

The monorail station is across the street but the system is almost useless, the stations dump you into the shopping area of a hotel that leads to the casino and then into the shopping and casino of another hotel until you finally find sunlight and have to walk another four or five blocks to get to your final destination. That’s okay if you have three days to wander from casino and shopping area to another casino and shopping area. Our free time was limited so we spent a lot of money on taxi’s that didn’t seem to know where the hotel was. Maybe the Marriot folks need to rename their hotels to more unique names.

Next time I go to Las Vegas, I’m going to do some research on their transit system. There seems to be lots of buses, but as a tourist it’s almost impossible to find out any information about routes and schedules. The Deuce bus is efficient, but doesn’t run near the convention centre except for very specific times.

Las Vegas isn’t about $2.95 buffets any more. We found Piero’s the first night we were there. It was some of the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten, even when I was in Italy. The the servers were there when you needed them, answered all our questions, joked with us and generally made us feel like rock stars.

The second night we were off to the BWE08 reception at the Hilton, so we ate at the Buffet at the Hilton. The buffet is Las Vegas tradition, and a reasonable $17.95 for a good selection of food, a surprisingly good roast beef and cinnamon bread pudding that worth going back for seconds .

Sunday night we went looking for a Steak House. We were on the strip and most of the hotels seem to have a good Steak House. Shelley went in search of the Apple store (more about that later) while we waited at the slots at Treasure Island. We were there, tired and hungry so we made a reservation their Steak House. Probably not our best decision. The prices were high end, but the service was impersonal and robotic. The food was passable but nothing to write home about.

We checked out both shopping malls on the strip and Fashion Show is the place to be. Five major department stores and 245 other shops. It’s worth checking out the multi-media display in the middle of the mall near the Apple store.

We’d signed up for a shuttle service through Allegiant Air which turned out to be an exercise in frustration. Showtime Tours dropped us off at the wrong hotel (apparently not the first time they’ve done that) and we had to telephone them 3 times to pick us up at our hotel. They finally showed up 45 minutes late.

Now we know what we’re doing, we won’t make the same newbie mistakes. I’ll stay at a hotel on the strip, near the Convention Centre end, check out the transit system ahead of time and head straight for Fashion Show and skip the other shopping areas.

More in the next few blog posts about BWE08, my observations and what I learned.

When was the last time your were in Las Vegas? What kind of tips do you have for getting around?