Crain's Chicago Business Focus on Social Networking

Social media works, but be smart about it. Crain's offers basic advice on using social media to boost your business. My favorite: create a place to share info -- then get out of the way.

Web-based collaboration tools

Pete Hybert and Dottie Soelke are Chicago area consultants who put together a comparison table of common web based collaboration tools for an upcoming ISPI presentation in Orlando. They look at the online functions and capabilities of calendars, schedulers, file sharing/storage, online meetings, and project management tools.

David Pogue on TED.com

NYT technology columnist David Pogue is the keynote speaker at this year's Technical Communication Summit. Here is a recent example of his work from TED.com.

Top 100 Tools for Learning

Dr. Jason S. Wrench has posted a list of the top 100 tools for learning based on research from The Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies in Oct 2008.

Learning Technology Products 2009

Brandon-Hall Research has a new and FREE report on all the current software products used to produce and display content for training and education.

Photo Contest Featured Chicago Skyway Sign

This month’s photo contest featured the neon sign located at the Chicago Skyway tollbooth. Travelers apparently like the looks of this Chicago landmark. People can often be seen taking photos of the sign while waiting in line to pay the toll. Many of those photos can be found online at Flickr.com, where a quick search will yield at least 455 results.

Visit www.stc-chicago.org to learn who correctly identified this month's photo and won a $20 gift card from Amazon.com.

How do you prepare for a conference?

STC is providing quite a bit of helpful information in advance of the Summit. Attendees will find most everything they need here.

The question remains, How best to prepare for the Summit? Or any conference for that matter? I recently saw an excellent post by Chris Brogan called 27 Things to Do before a Conference. I like #20 and #21. And then, of course, there's #27:

And this should come first, but remember to give your family a bit of extra love before leaving for the event. Take them out to dinner, and/or give the little ones some extra fun. Make a game of showing where you’ll be via Google Maps, and switch to Satellite or Street View to show them the visuals instead of just the map. Give everyone a chance to connect while you’re on the trip via Skype video, so they can stay in touch. It makes it easier.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Tweet about the Summit

Are you tweeting about the 2009 STC Summit? Don't forget to add hash tag #stc09 to your tweets. Learn what others are saying by reading the latest tweets here.

Newseum for local front pages

Cousin Sandy in Wausau told me about this site, which contains newspaper front pages from large and small cities around the country and the world. I checked out Dubuque, Wausau, and a few other prior residences.

Just put your mouse on a city anywhere and the newspaper headlines pop up; double click so you can read the pdf or click through to the paper itself in the upper right corner. Changes every day.