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By Griff Wigley, on February 5th, 2010
 I’m working with my Gallomanor colleagues, Shane McCracken and Mary Reid, to deliver a series of one-day community leadership blogging workshops in the UK called Empowering Voices Online (EVO) .
Shane and Mary will be delivering the face-to-face sessions while I concentrate on the coaching and feedback via various tools, including the Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) on Blogging for Leaders.
First up on the 6th of February: participants from the city of Dewsbury in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England. They’ll be meeting at the Ravensthorpe Community Centre.
By Griff Wigley, on January 28th, 2010
 I’ve been working on a blogsite with Gretchen Falck, owner of a fitness studio in Northfield called Forza! Building strong bodies and minds one core at a time.
Forza! features classes that “use Kettlebells, TRX Suspension Training, Resistance Stretching, and Body Weight Exercises.”
By Griff Wigley, on January 2nd, 2010
 I’ve compiled all my web-based info about me using Google Profile. See it at google.com/profiles/griffinjay. (People who are in my Google Contacts can see more info about me than the general public.)
My griffinjay profile comes up at the bottom of the first page of a Google search on my name, Griff Wigley. The word Griff is currently third in a Google search on the word, linking here to my business site, Wigley and Associates. The word Wigleys, currently 1st in a Google search, links to Wigleys of Mendota.
The civic blog site I work on, Locally Grown (aka LoGro and LoGroNo and LGN), is currently 1st in a Google search.
By Griff Wigley, on December 15th, 2009
 I’ve been installing the WordPress plugin WPTouch on all my blogs and many client blogs lately. It “deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to your iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.”
The photo on the right shows my T-Mobile G1 (Google Android phone) displaying the home page of my community blog, Locally Grown.
Comments are visible after clicking on any post. You can add a comment as well. The best way to keep track of comments, however, is to use an RSS reader app on your mobile device and subscribe to the blog’s comments RSS feed. Then if you see a comment that you’d like to comment on, click the link to the comment. It will activate the mobile-optimized view of the web page and position you for typing in your comment.
By Griff Wigley, on November 26th, 2009
 Back in 2004, I helped Rochester, MN neighborhood group, the Kutzky Park Neighborhood Association, set up a new website with a blog using Blogger.
They asked for an updated site this summer so we converted all the old Blogger posts over to WordPress. We gave the admin keys to local volunteer Pam Gjertson who’s been learning WordPress on her own and experimenting with various WordPress themes… currently using one of my favorites, Atahualpa.
By Griff Wigley, on November 3rd, 2009
 I’ve been advising Mike Tikkanen on making some changes to his blogsite, Invisible Children. It’s the blog for his book by the same name, as well as for Kids At Risk Action (KARA), “a non-profit advocacy network focusing on issues related to neglected and abused children.” I first coached Mike back in 2005.
By Griff Wigley, on October 15th, 2009
 
I’ve been working with MN Senate 25 candidate Al DeKruif, setting up a campaign website with a blog and a companion Facebook page. His blog posts automatically get published to the Wall on his Facebook page as well as to an RSS/Blog tab. And his Facebook updates automatically get posted to a Fan Box widget on his website’s sidebar.
By Griff Wigley, on September 29th, 2009
 For over a year now, I’ve teamed up with a UK-based colleague of mine, Shane McCracken (his company is Gallomanor) to work with a federal agency of the British government called the Department for International Development (DFID), now also known as UKaid. It’s “the part of the UK Government that manages Britain’s aid to poor countries and works to get rid of extreme poverty.”
We’ve been coaching a growing group of DFID staff in several countries on how to use blogs to highlight the local work their office is doing. See the DFID group blog for more. We’re about to launch a new crop of DFID bloggers this fall.
 Although we work with several DFID staff at their headquarters in London, our primary colleague there is Simon Davis.
Simon and Shane had a meeting last Monday in the plaza outside the DFID office and I convinced them to take a photo and send it to me. Splendid!
By Griff Wigley, on September 7th, 2009
 I’ve set up a new site called Blogging For Leaders (BLF). It’s an interactive learning environment (ILE) designed to help people use blogs and other social media tools in their roles as leaders.
I’ve been a leadership blogging coach since 2003, and have worked with business and non-profit executives, politicians, government officials, education administrators, small business owners, and community leaders.
I’m taking what I’ve learned (and what my clients have taught me) and putting it into a structured online course. And I will be wrapping an online community of learners around it with a web forum where I’ll moderate the discussions, provide some coaching, and gather ongoing feedback on how to improve the offering.
Currently, the course and forum are only open to those leaders associated with a couple of my client organizations
That will change later this fall.
By Griff Wigley, on September 6th, 2009
 Most of the blog sites I’ve set up for my clients run on WordPress. Late last night, I spent a couple of hours checking and upgrading sites to Version 2.8.4 ASAP because there’s a nasty worm making the rounds this weekend:
I wrote to my favorite web host, Tiger Technologies in California, asking them if they knew about it the worm and whether they could tell if any sites had been compromised. The owner, Robert Mathews, wrote me back within a few minutes:
Continue reading WordPress under attack; sites hosted by Tiger Technologies have been protected for 3 weeks
By Griff Wigley, on September 2nd, 2009
 I’ve set up a blogsite for Re-Pete’s Saloon & Grill in Black River Falls, Wisconsin.
Co-owner Jen Gunning will be blogging Real Soon Now. Her co-owner husband, Jerel Gunning, has been blogging at the Club 95 website for their other restaurant in Hixton, Wisconsin. That site will soon be getting a makeover and Jen expects to take on blogging/site maintenance duties there, too.
By Griff Wigley, on August 27th, 2009
As I noted in a May, 2007 blog post, the Citizens League contracted with me to set up, launch, and run the Students Speak Out (SSO) social network, part of their MAP 150 Project. Over the 5 months of my involvement, Erin Sapp, Lars Johnson, Stacy Becker, Kim Farris-Berg, Sean Kershaw and others working on the project gradually assumed more and more responsibilities for the social network until my work on it ended in the fall.
 The project flourished, including an expansion to Students Speak Out: Milwaukee. Much of this is chronicled in several articles in the July/August 2009 issue of MN Journal, the Citizens League’s newsletter.
 SSO is featured in a paper by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Satish Nambisan titled Platforms for Collaboration (PDF), published in the summer 2009 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review. The RPI press release on the paper, A New Way to Look at Innovation: Rensselaer Professor Outlines Blueprint for Social Change, summarized SSO:
 Nambisan cited Minnesota’s nonprofit Citizens League and its successful use of exploration platforms for its Students Speak Out project, which was launched in 2007 to identify and tackle student issues. The Citizens League invited students to participate in a Web-based forum where bullying emerged as a key concern. The discussion quickly expanded beyond the Web and the students. Parents, journalists, education researchers, school board members, legislators, and city government officials all came together, both online and in offline venues including teacher training programs, student workshops, student video contests, and an annual convention.
The Citizens League developed an issue brief and white paper, and the Minneapolis city government incorporated the students’ feedback in policies to reduce youth violence. In perhaps the greatest indication of SSO’s success, Milwaukee launched a similar initiative in 2008.
By Griff Wigley, on August 3rd, 2009
 Back in Feb. of 2007, I worked with Winds of Peace Foundation CEO Steve Sheppard in launching his leadership blog.
This past month, working with foundation’s do-everything staff person and webmaster Bobbie Jones, we’ve now converted the entire Winds of Peace Foundation site over to WordPress. And we have merged Steve’s blog with the Winds of Peace Foundation news blog. Steve Sheppard’s blog posts are assigned a category by that name within that news blog.
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