Wigley and Associates

Tiger Technologies is a web hosting company based in Berkeley, California.

I’ve used them for all my own web sites and the vast majority of my client web sites (dozens) for over three years now.

New clients often ask me “Why TigerTech in California when you/we are here in the Upper Midwest?”

• They’ve been super reliable, with nary any downtime in three years.

• The internet routing (connection speed and latency) between Northfield, MN (where I am) and their server farm in the Bay area of California has always seemed to be faster than to server farms in the Twin Cities.

• They’re always cost-competitive.

• They’re big enough to have all the sever bells and whistles I need in a web host. (As of a year ago, they were hosting over 3,500 sites.)

• They’re very smart. I know some very knowlegeable geeks who are very impressed with them.

• They’re very personable. These people know how to convey friendliness, both via phone and email. I’m pretty clueless on server-related techie stuff and I’m never made to feel like a doofus.

• They are extremely responsive, both via phone and email, even on weekends and evenings.
  

Robert, Nicholas, Nami, and the rest of the team: I think of you as colleagues, not just staffers at a company who’s a provider/supplier. You’re the best.

Over the weekend, a team of cyclists from the Royal Borough of Kingston in the UK began cycling from the southern tip of the UK to the northern tip (1000+ miles in 15 Stages), in aid of Asian earthquake relief. The event is called E2E4E - End to End for Earthquake.

From my UK travels and involvement in the ReadMyDay project I have colleagues and bloggers in Kingston and so I’ve helped set up a weblog, a podcast, and a photo album to support this event. See the main website, the blog, and considering donating to the cause. And follow the trip as it progresses with regular weblog updates from my colleagues in the saddle, Roy Taylor and Herbie Blackburn.

I blogged back in April about my March meeting in London with Mike Alderson, former UK police officer who now has his own consulting firm, Open Eye Communications. (Photo above is actually from the first time we met in London in2005.)

We’re now teaming up to offer leadership blogging coaching and seminars to the law enforcement community in Europe and the US. See the PDF flyer for more details as well as Mike’s posts about police leadership blogging and our collaboration.

Carole Brown is Chair of the Chicago Transit Authority and maintains a blog called Ask Carole. The blog’s purpose:

“I created this blog to answer some of the questions people have been asking about the CTA’s funding situation. We on the board have asked many of these same questions, and we want to help get the word out. So please feel free to send comments or questions to CTAboard@transitchicago.com, and check back regularly for answers and updates to our efforts to increase transit funding. — Carole”

Brown’s blog seemingly has a much wider purpose than just funding. She tackles all sorts of issues related to the CTA — performance measures, maintenance issues, customer service, equipment purchases, policy changes, etc. Her blog’s purpose statement should be amended.

She’s got an audience of readers who chime in with a dozen or more comments on nearly every post. In part, this seems due to her engaging writing style in which she both teaches her audience and responds to their collective concerns, e.g. here when she writes “There are several great comments and questions in response to the performance measure update…”

She also responds occasionally to critical comments posted to the CTA Tattler blog, for example here when she writes “Kevin O’Neil and many others are continuing to hold our feet to the fire on improving customer communications during service disruptions…” and she actually links to a Tattler blog entry by Mr. O’Neill. This is very gutsy thing to do and adds tremendously to her overall believability, authenticity, and approachability. No wonder people post comments.

She’s recently started to add photos to blog entries, using them to teach in this post (those photos should enlarge when clicked but they don’t) and to recognize/affirm people in this one (photo correctly enlarges.) I hope she continues adding photos to nearly every post.

Overall, this is a very good leadership weblog. It shows what can be done with just one or two posts per month… not enough for a CEO/Executive Director/President who’s a full-time employee but enough for a board chair of a large organization. She’s to be commended.

Some quick recommendations: complete the profile or link it to somewhere where there is one; abandon Blogger in favor of a platform like Typepad or WordPress that allows posts to be put into categories; and link to the blog from several obvious places on the CTA main website. I could only find a link to her blog on the Board Meetings page… there should one on this page and better yet, on a homepage sidebar.

[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]

Karen Christensen is CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, a small (dozen employees) publisher in Massachusetts. I’ve been looking for women CEO bloggers and her Berkshire Blog: a global point of reference weblog is the first I’ve come across. She’s been blogging since late 2004.

In January, 2006, she used this post to explain her reason for blogging: “I love the chance to write about things that catch my eye, without worrying about how they fit into a book, but the point of this blog is really to give our friends, colleagues (many of whom are friends, too), and customers (ditto) a look at what’s going on at 314 Main Street, Great Barrington.”

In that same post, she announced that others from the company were going to be contributing to the blog, but other than a few posts from her editor, Marcy Ross, that effort has apparently failed… a common occurrence with group blogging, for reasons I’ve detailed in this podcast. To her credit, she’s kept up her blogging, with unusual frequency for a small business owner.

The first thing I noticed from her recent posts: she’s very good at incorporating small amounts of storytelling into her blog entries. In this June 20 post, note how the first paragraph is the simple, engaging personal story that sets up the announcement/promo info in the second paragraph.

She even tells a teeny tiny story here, as a way of encouraging her blog visitors to read an article, something I rarely see in a media diet blog post. This is a perfect example of what I wrote in my Guide, “There’s hardly a blog post that can’t include some elements of storytelling. Imagine yourself talking to a colleague or friend about what it is you’re blogging and then bring that tone to your post.”

I could go on about other things I like about her blog, eg, her opinionating about publishing issues, her discussion of company projects in the works, her short personal blurbs about authors she knows. Lots to like about this blogger.

I’d like to see her write more about her employees. And I’d like to see more photos and images. She made a stab at using Flickr back in March but that evidently hasn’t worked. I understand why and that’s my rationale for helping some of my current clients learn to use the blogging application, Zoundry Blog Writer… which I’m using to compose this post.

[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]

Will Weider is CIO of Ministry Health Care and Affinity Health System in Wisconsin.

He calls his blog The Candid CIO and introduces it with this phrase: “This is the place where I share what I have learned through my mistakes and other crazy things in the life of a healthcare CIO.”

I like his conversational tone… at times, delightfully irreverent. He’s good at conveying his knowledge of his industry without getting overly techie. He’s got a knack for storytelling, as conveyed in this post about one of their doctors.

However, that post would’ve been waaaaay better with a photo of the doctor… or at least of the doctor’s hands and/or the fingerprint system. Photos serve a strategic purpose, even for an audience who’s likely to be mainly other healthcare IT professionals.

Although I only scanned his archives quickly, I didn’t see any posts about his staff, peers, or any organization employees. I’m starting to wonder if a leadership blog can be evaluated in part on to what extent it’s a “thought leader” blog vs a “people leader” blog.

I know he’s a client of mine but one leader who uses his blog as a “thought leader” and a “people leader” is Scott Neal, Eden Prairie City Manager.

[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]

David Miliband is the UK’s Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He started an internal weblog in late 2005 when he was Minister of Communities and Local Government and took it public earlier this year.

His “About this blog” statement:

This blog is my attempt to help bridge the gap - the growing and potentially dangerous gap - between politicians and the public. It will show what I’m doing, what I’m thinking about, and what I’ve read, heard or seen for myself which has sparked interest or influenced my ideas. My focus will be on my ministerial priorities. This supplements the existing ways of doing day-to-day business with me and my department.

It appears as though he’s actually authoring his own blog entries, though one never knows for sure. He’s got a personable writing style, posts frequently, and links to other sites to allow his readers to go deeper. Examples: this recent post titled: Environment as Public Service? or this one titled Um…Errr….Errrr….Um…..

I also like it that he often refers to those who attach comments to his blog entries, for example in this entry when he wrote “Many thanks for the comments on the drought in the South East (remember the majority of regions are not suffering). Harry, Holger and others mentioned the idea…”

I’m not going to do a complete analysis of his blog (Hansard Society is doing that) but there are a couple of things I’d like to see him do:

• Include photos of people who he mentions meeting. For example, in this post where he writes I met residents of the Victoria Hostel for the homeless in Westminster yesterday evening… The photo need not include him in the photo — some might accuse him of self-promotion if that’s done too much. Including photos not only makes a blog entry more visually appealing. It’s a good way to recognize/affirm/acknowledge the people who were there. And it encourages people to pass around the permalink of the blog entry.

• Include more posts about what his department staff/employees are doing that reflects some of the strategic initiatives he’s emphasizing, as well as the overall values he espouses. Leadership for someone in his position not only relates to public leadership, but to the many (dozens/hundreds/thousands?) of government employees who are part of his department.

[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]

One of my prospective clients has asked for links to leaders who are bloggers, preferably those who are not my clients.

So this week I’ll poke around the net a bit and blog about some who I find interesting… maybe with a short blurb about what I liked and what I thought could be improved.

If you have some suggestions, let me know by attaching a comment here or using my Contact form.

June 20 update: I’ve added a Weblog Category called Leaders who blog to make it easier to read posts about them.

I first learned about Dan Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age when I met with Steve Borsch a month ago here in Northfield. Steve wrote about the book back in March in his Connecting the Dots blog in a post titled Left Brain or Right Brain? Remixing the World and he features it among his favorite books in his left sidebar.

I was delighted to discover that among the “six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend” that Pink details in his book is Story. He defines it as “context enriched by emotion” and examines “how the high-concept and high-touch capacity to weave events into an emotionally compelling narrative has become an essential aptitude in business, medicine, and personal life.”

Pink includes this quote from Don Norman’s book Things That Make Us Smart.

“Stories have the felicitous capacity of capturing exactly those elements that formal decision methods leave out. Logic tries to generalize, to strip the decision making from the specific context, to remove it from subjective emotions. Stories capture the context, capture the emotions. Logic generalizes, stories particularize. Logic allows one to form a detached, global judgment; storytelling allows one to take the personal point of view, to understand the particular impact the decision is apt to have on the people who will be affected by it.”

I’ve got a Tell Stories section in the How to Blog Effectively chapter of my Guide to Leadership Blogging and Pink’s treatment has inspired me to provide more depth and breadth to it.

I snapped these photos this afternoon of soccer fanatic Scott Neal (AKA Eden Prairie’s blogging City Manager) . He and family and friends were tensely glued to the living room TV at his house during today’s World Cup match between USA and Italy, which ended in a 1-1 tie. Click the photos to enlarge.

Scott was a futbol ambassador during our UK blogging trip last year (right photo). See more photos at the bottom of page 1 of the 2005 photo album and the top of page 2.

WCCO-TV (Twin Cities) crime reporter Caroline Lowe has a Crime Scene Blog.

Last month, she had an entry titled Police Chiefs Blogging in which she informed her readers about Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton’s new weblog… and mentioned a couple of my clients. She wrote:

Bratton is one of the most respected police chiefs in the country. He often has been on the cutting edge of police reforms during his stints in New York City, Boston and Los Angeles. As a blogger, however, Bratton is actually behind the curve. Other law enforcement executives have gotten a jump on using this tool to take their messages directly to the citizens. Here in Minnesota, Eden Prairie Police Chief Dan Carlson and Northfield Police Chief Gary Smith have been blogging for the past couple of years.

In Eden Prairie, Chief Carlson has announced his retirement and is handing off the majority of the department’s operational blogging duties (Dan’s got ideas for a shift in focus for his blog, coming soon) to his successor, Deputy Police Chief Rob Reynolds who posted his first blog entry today. Rob’s eager to get into podcasting, too.

I have a couple of leaders now who are ready to make selective use of the WordPress comment feature.

So I’m experimenting with it here to find the best way to make it easy for the site visitors, yet prevent spammers from abusing it.

Upon the recommendation of this recent message thread in the WordPress forums, I’ve enabled the Askimet, Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma 2 plug-ins, while avoiding the Captcha approach.

I’ve turned on comments and trackbacks on this and all future blog entries to see if it works.

One of my longtime weblog clients is the manager/CEO of a city. He recently received his annual performance review, which included a 360-degree feedback component — comments from his council, his department heads, and miscellaneous city staff.

He generously agreed to share these comments with me, since many of them referenced his blog. I’ve excerpted those comments with his permission, including them here so that other leaders considering blogging can see what an impact it can make. I’ve removed refernces to his name and the city and capitalized the references to blogging:

• [His] attitude towards open communication is wonderful. Examples include his interest in BLOGGING, willingness to take time to attend city events and have interview/meeting time with different groups.
• [He] continues to use his BLOG to inform both the Citizens of [city deleted] and employees
• His BLOG is phenomenal. He uses it as another means to communicate at all levels. It is both interesting and informative to residents of the city, to city staff and business people in the city. Apparently it has become somewhat of a model nationally, and even internationally, for government communication to its citizens.
• I am impressed by his approachability and also by the concise, intelligent way he communicates with people, both verbally and in writing. I always look forward to reading his BLOGS and I am proud to have him represent [city deleted], as I feel his intelligence, integrity and concern and affection for the city and its residents is evident to all.
• I think he interacts great with all people. I see him a lot more at our end of the building which I think is good. He is very approachable. I also think he has done a good job with his BLOG. I try to read it as one way of seeing what is going on.
• He updates his BLOG frequently so people can see what is happening in [city deleted]
• He is diplomatic. Sometimes too quiet — though I think he uses that to his advantage. Also, he BLOGS well.
• He has a great way of communicating information with employees and really the community through his BLOG. He is honest and talks candidly about issues that come up. He is very cordial and approachable
• I wish that I could be more detailed in my responses, but unfortunately my department manager does not pass on information that he gets from the city manager’s meetings at all. Anything I hear about I get from the Friday reports, [his] BLOG and the local paper. So I do appreciate that [he] puts those out there for all to read.

I worked at the magazine Utne Reader (now just called “Utne”) for most of the 90s. Last week, the magazine announced that it had been purchased Ogden Publications in Kansas.

Many former employees gathered at the Kitty Kat Club in Dinkytown on Thursday night. See the dozen photos in this Flickr album set.

Flickr automatically creates several sizes of the photo, up to 800 pixels-wide. If anyone wants one of more of the originals, suitable for printing, let me know.

The May 22 issue of BusinessWeek ran this article:

• Into The Wild Blog Yonder: The once-secretive Boeing opens itself up — to employees, customers, and the public.

And here’s a follow-up on the piece by SixApart, the makers of the Movable Type weblog
platform they’re using:

• “Go Out And Get Better” - Behind the Scenes of Boeing’s Blogs

Of the two external blogs mentioned, I’m most interested in Randy’s Journal, as the consultant describes it as “… the classic senior executive/thought leadership blog.” Randy Baseler is vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle.