National Adoption Month: Foster Care Adoption Statistics

URL:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/1...

Here are some alarming statistics on the number of kids WAITING in foster care today!

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It's national adoption month. Tell us your story of adoption here or on our Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=153708258000364 http://amplify.com/u/emfx

Do you love what you do?

I have to say I do. Why do I complain about it. I guess I need lots of attention. I will make an early (or late) New Years Resolution to shut and be grateful for what I have and do. How about you?

Amplify’d from us1.campaign-archive.com

Though it’s not impossible to hate what you do and be good at it, it’s rare. Not to mention, it’s not much of a life (which if I may remind you, is short and you only have one of). Read more at us1.campaign-archive.com

  

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Related articles

• Time to Get (Back) to Work (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Doing what you love [Sacha Selcuk] (ecademy.com)
• When work gets in the way of play (workitmom.com)

Has your business tweeted, linked or liked yet?

I confess I can be slower than most but I am still an early adopter of new ideas, especially social media. I know there are folks still farther down the line than I am even...If you and your business have not embraced social media, NOW if the time for Revolution. Authors Jay Baer and Amber Naslund have written a book called the Now Revolution and listed 7 ways you can change how you do business or suffer the consequences.

Amplify’d from nowrevolutionbook.com

The social web has changed the way we do business forever.

The future of your company is not in measured, considered responses and carefully planned initiatives. Business today is about near-instantaneous response. About doing the best you can with extremely limited information. About every customer being a reporter, and every reporter being a customer. About winning and losing customers in real-time, every second of every day. About a monumental increase in the findable commentary about our companies.

Engineer a New Bedrock: Strip away silos and overgrown business process, and create a culture of NOW

Find Talent You Can Trust: Hire and empower a new type of employee who is adept at pattern recognition, human relations, and immediate analysis

Organize Your Armies: Assemble internal teams for maximum external impact, and empower every employee as a marketer, even if they aren’t

Answer the New Telephone: Listen at the point of need and answer the new calls your customers are making

Emphasize Response-Ability: Travel the Humanization Highway, and respond effectively and persuasively to customer inquiries

Build a Fire Extinguisher: Plan for, find and manage real-time crises

Make a Calculator: Redesign success metrics in a business world that’s increasingly instantaneous Read more at nowrevolutionbook.com

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Related articles

• Is It Time for The NOW Revolution? (convinceandconvert.com)
• The Now Revolution: Jay Baer and Amber Naslund Give Business a Social Media Blueprint (blogworld.com)
• Video: "Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly" Panel at BlogWorld Expo 2009 with Amber Naslund, Robert Scoble and Wayne Sutton (managingcommunities.com)

50K Word Written in One Month?

I might be crazy and truthfully, I haven't made that ultimate committment plunge yet, but I am thinking this is a great way to bust some creative blocks. Have you heard of NaNoWriMo? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and folks call it Nano. Are you willing to take the plunge?

Amplify’d from www.creativity-portal.com

In Praise of NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month

NaNoWriMo is thirty days of all-out writing madness, and only the strong survive. What I love most about November is it gives regular people the chance to write a book — folks who don’t necessarily think of themselves as writers.

an insane task — write 50,000 words in thirty days.

That’s the true beauty of Nano, in my opinion — there’s no time to get in your own way. No time for writer’s block — no time for the Inner Editor to trip you up. You just go.

Don’t expect a whole novel to appear, fully fleshed out with all its parts intact, in thirty days. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the bare bones of a story, a few intriguing characters, and a strong start.

What’s the number one reason novels don’t get published? They don’t get started. What’s the number two reason? They don’t get finished

Think you’ve got what it takes to Nano? Check out their website at www.nanowrimo.org for all the juicy details. You’ll find plot bunnies, fascinating threads and forums, tips on surviving NaNoWriMo with your sanity intact, Nano-bling, a calendar of events for your region, and more. • Read more at www.creativity-portal.com

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Related articles

• NaNoWriMo (aseeofgreen.wordpress.com)
• "Lifehacker Takes On The NaNoWriMo Challenge" and related posts (lifehacker.com.au)
• "NaNoWriMo - it's almost here!" and related posts (trashionista.com)

 

Parenting Paranoia on Halloween

The author quoted below makes a case that Halloween is the safest day of the year. She backs it up with research tested logic. Never the less, I remain paranoid. How about you? Do you send your children out unattended on Halloween? Do you check your child's candy before they eat it. I confess I did and I still would. Share your thoughts on this by clicking the comment link below or posting us a comment on our ParentingToolbox Facebook Group page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=153708258000364

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it's probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take "stranger danger," the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

Then along came new fears. Parents are warned annually not to let their children wear costumes that are too tight—those could seriously restrict breathing! But not too loose either—kids could trip! Fall! Die!

And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes—or sometimes even turning on their lights—on Halloween.

We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn't dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too. Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

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Related articles

• Poisoned Halloween Candy: Trick, Treat or Myth? (livescience.com)
• Nobody Is Poisoning Halloween Candy (slog.thestranger.com)
• Lenore Skenazy: 'Stranger Danger' and the Decline of Halloween (online.wsj.com)

  Search Amazon.com for halloween decor

15 guidelines for trend watching...

clipped from trendwatching.com

Let's face it, the only thing that separates you—passionate CEO, marketer, entrepreneur—from being in the know, is the time that must be devoted to tracking and applying trend content.
And yet, when we ask professionals if and how they spot and apply trends, we're told they're still having a hard time getting a handle on the basics.
So here are 15 trend watching tips, some practical, some more contextual, for you to run with today:

1. Know why you're tracking trends

1. Don’t get your trends mixed up

1. Know a fad when you see (or smell) one

1. Be (very) curious

1. Don’t apply all trends to all people

1. Have a Point of View

1. Benefit from an unprecedented abundance of resources

1. Name your trends

1. Build your Trend Framework

1. Start a Trend Group (even if it’s just you)

1. Secure senior backing or be doomed

1. Don't worry about timing or life cycles or regional suitability or...

1. Apply, apply, apply

1. Have some fun

1. Let others do some of the work for you in 2011