Saturday, September 13, 2014

Studio Journal Episode 9 - Meeting my Neighbors


As you know from my previous post, I didn’t get into my new apartment until really late.  So I waited until Day 2 to introduce myself.  I made some cookies (premade batter, but it’s the thought that counts, right?) and knocked on the seven doors on my floor.  Only three people were home.  One was on the phone, but was happy to take a cookie.  A second was eating dinner, but he appreciated the thought.  The third told me he was moving out the next weekend, but he loved the cookie.  Oh well – so much for meeting people.  A week later and I still haven’t met anyone else.  Maybe I need to try cookies again. Or go up to the second floor.

When the third neighbor moved out, I saw him about to throw away a whole assortment of blankets, pillows, and other bedding. Much of it looked really warm and in perfectly good condition.  So I asked him if I could take it down to the homeless shelter where I volunteer.  He was happy to let me take everything off his hands so this morning I brought it all over.  Since the weather is starting to turn away from summer, the timing is pretty good, although the shelter will take good winter blankets any time. 

This Week in EID Episode 20



I am really excited to recap this week’s EID.  We had some great posts and a few of them became hot topics of discussion on the Linked In groups where I also repost them.

I was going to start with my favorite one, but looking at the posts I can’t decide which one is my favorite.  So I will go with the one that received my favorite questions.  That is the one onintergenerational games.  I got questions from some K-12 teachers asking my advice on how to use my ideas, and these kinds of games in general, in their classes.  This is the kind of thing that motivated me to take on the huge responsibility of managing the site, so it is really great when it actually happens. 

The one that covered my favorite topic is the Stephen Colbert/Slate article on truthiness.  The Slate author retweeted it, so that helped get some wide distribution.  But what I liked about the post itself is that I went against my usual grain, showing (IMHO) that I do have an open mind.  I took an article on self-delusion and showed how it may not be delusional after all. 

The post on instant gratification was a success for several reasons.  The author retweeted it.  It is about another of my favorite topics – instant gratification.  It involved deep thinking.  It references one of my favorite web sites, so I got to give them some publicity and cross traffic. 

Then last, but not least, was the post on Twitter influencers from Social Media Examiner.  Again, it is a great topic (social media influencers), it was against the grain (an insight from a research study that neither the study authors nor I came up with ourselves), it was an article from a great source (Social Media Examiner), and the insight was powerful (not just for me, but in general). 

So I have to say that this might be my proudest set of four posts yet.  Yeah EID !!