Becoming a Facebook Fan
I feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea of setting up a personal fan page on Facebook. It seems a little arrogant to send out a message saying, “Duncan became a fan of Duncan Macleod and suggests you become one too.” And yet that’s the way you’ve got to go if you want to start up a Fan page on Facebook, unless you get your minions to do all the inviting. Promoting your work online requires you to get over your worries about inflated ego. After all, writing a blog assumes that someone somewhere reads what you write and feels OK about it. Writing an annual Christmas letter, perhaps, is the real precursor to the personal Fan page, providing an update on all the a

Technorati Losing Rating Power
Technorati, the blog directory, is shifting focus again after seven years of operation. Technorati ranking has until now been one of the indicators of a blog’s popularity in the blogosphere, measuring the number of links from other blogs. Technorati authority refers to the number of unique blogs linking to the blog over the previous six months. The closer to 1 the Technorati rank got the more popular. It appears as though the Technorati team has finally given up on trying to index the interconnectedness of the blogosphere. The site is now moving towards being a destination rather than a directory, with stories about trends in blogging

New Zealand Confession of Faith
The Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand is working on a shared confession of faith, online at www.webelieve.org.nz. The “Focal Identity Statement” is designed to replace the Westminster Confession (1646), a task started back in 1999. The task group responsible for the process (Richard Dawson, Susan Jones, Bruce Hamill and Murray Rae) is seeking feedback from the wider Church on this and other alternatives being considered. You can submit your feedback online or by email. Confession of Faith – Kupu Whakapono (First Draft) From this land of Aotearoa New Zealand

Things I Can Do to Build Social Capital
Social capital is a sociological concept used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and the social sciences in general to refer to connections within and between social networks. Social capital is built through hundreds of little and big actions we take every day. Here’s a list of actions for Australians, part of a list of “151 things I can do to build social capital”, inspired by the Better Together Report. 1. Organise a street dinner to welcome a new neighbour 2. Attend the ratepayers annual meeting 3. Vote in local government elections 4. Actively support

Liberated from Leadership Tyrannies
I’ve been going through a pile of papers on my desk and found notes for a session on leadership focused on contemporary issues of leadership, focused on liberation from crazy, one size fits all, hero and trend-driven approaches to leadership. Thanks Jenny Tymms for the wisdom! Freedom From Crazy leadership is where you continue to put all your effort into doing something that might have been effective twenty years ago but which has become increasingly ineffective. It’s where you push people harder and harder to continue a program or start a program again, to to behave in certain ways because it has always been done. It confuses the program or method with the m