I was young the day John F. Kennedy was killed but I knew the world had changed. I remember my college house mates and I huddled in shock the day John Lennon was shot and killed. Maybe it was the influence of those two tragic events because on the very day I first saw the Internet I thought to myself, “This can help create peace (cre8pc).”

Next year Cre8asiteforums will be 10 years old for me. For most everyone else, it’s younger. But for me, it’s 10 because I launched its first incarnation, the Cre8pc Website Promotion club, in Yahoo! in 1998. Its present forums-like format came about in 2002.

As the forums and I grow older together, something has been nagging me. I am not doing what I set out to do in 1995 when I decided to become a webmaster. I’m not consciously participating in creating a good world. I’m not doing enough of whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing and of course, every day I wonder what the heck that something is.

I decided one day that I’m not alone. There are others like myself who are using the Internet to do good things for other people, places, countries, kids, organizations, clubs, animals, the planet, parents, business support, etc. Who are they? Where are they? What can I do to help? What can they can teach me? How do we connect? Are their efforts worth it?

In January, Cre8asiteforums will have news on our new non-profit forum. We will showcase people and companies devoted to marketing non-profit organizations and web sites. We want to explore who they are, what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and why they care.

But why wait until January?

I Have Great Friends

First, is Elizabeth Able who, despite personal hardships, has a blast rallying for causes and educating along the way. She’s launched a meme, called Tips for Nonprofits Meme.

I’m starting a round of blog tag in support of nonprofits that have an online presence. The idea is to write up one tip for how nonprofits can benefit from an online presence, and challenge others to do the same. Don’t worry about having the same tip as someone else, as long as your take on the tip adds something to the original idea.

This meme comes with four guidelines:

1. Offer one tip
2. Tag three people. Bonus points for including blogs that support or represent nonprofits.
3. Please link back to this page. If you link, I will contact you about including your tip in a compilation of tips generated by this meme.
4. Remember to pass on the guidelines

Unsure how to respond to Liz when she tagged me for this meme, the answer came when I got word from my friend BJ Cook of the soon to launch company, Eleho.org. He’s helping to get the word out about Burma and the genocide happening there. He wrote to me about TheRoadFilm.com

“5 local San Diego young professionals risked their lives to share never seen before footage with us and are now on a mission to bring it to the world.”

The web site is about a journey and following through when you’re called on by that Inner Bonk on the Head. It’s a story of doing, not sitting back and waiting for someone else to take action.

I hope Liz doesn’t mind that my “tip” for nonprofits is simply to find ways to get the word out on your project. All I did was to get an email from a friend about his latest adventure. He was smart to tap me because he knows I love to support my friends. Marketing can start with gentle conversations.

I’m tagging:

I like the conversations from people like Jennifer Laycock and The Lactivist, which supports an Ohio breast milk bank.

Heather Swain, owner of Rememberwell.net, “The spot for alternative death and dying information”.

Seo By The Sea’s, Bill Slawksi, because his post on Green Communities and Social Networks was viewed by a large number of people and is an excellent resource for anyone researching nonprofits and conscious living.

Next year, in addition to the steady stream of usability, user experience design, marketing, search engine, search engine marketing and social media news, there will be one more angle coming from here and Cre8asiteforums.

Inspiration.

Part of me would like to get hysterical over the news that a new search engine wants to index the names of every single person on the planet. The idea that anyone can locate and learn about me at the push of a button freaks me out.

Wait a minute. If you’re reading this, you just did.

What is the reasoning for making every person on the planet with a name available for search on the Internet? Who cares?

With 7 million dollars in startup cash, it would appear there are a lot of people with money to blow on something this illogical. Search engine revs up to look for billions of names describes how Spock.com wants to “track down the names of the world’s six billion people”.

If you visit their site, which is still in BETA, it asks if you’re over 13. What the heck for? The article says,

The founders of Spock.com, which has been under development since 2006 in Redwood City, California, hope the website will eventually provide a search result for everyone in the world.

So. If your children are in the search engine, only those over 13 can find them?

That can’t be right.

It doesn’t say anything about minors, or laws in all the countries, or parental rights over information. It says, “everyone in the world”. Is that your baby they want? What about people who are employed as secret agents? In Witness Protection programs? In jail? Are monks? Who are terrorists? What happens when someone dies?

This can’t be right.

It says “everyone in the world.”

Of course, the information can be removed on your request. I laughed out loud when the article said the search engine could filter out information that would possibly injure the web site’s credibility.

The web site’s credibility.

The article continues …

To index individuals, Spock.com scours through social networking websites such as MySpace, Friendster and Bebo.

But it also allows web surfers to add information about individuals to help Spock.com compile full profiles.

Has someone lost their mind? Sure, for those who WANT to be found, in a community they CHOSE to belong to, they put up their own web site they could control. When did this automatically mean they wanted to be added to search engines?

This is what drives me bananas. Somewhere along the line we seem to have made an unspoken agreement that we want our privacy or basic right of choices for ourselves thrown out the window and it’s perfectly fine for any Internet web site to do whatever they want because they found us.

Bits and pieces of us are leaking all over the Internet. Identities are stolen, and the problem is getting worse. Enormous numbers of people post naked pictures of themselves. I mean, have you LOOKED lately at what’s out there? (Oh stop!) And it’s not just adult oriented sites. Try Flicker and YouTube.

Hey, I’d even do it if my relatives were all blind, I had no friends who would laugh at me, I never planned to run for office and decided to never have any kids. Oh yeah, for those who want to work for the Government or teach in schools, a criminal background check and quick search for you on the Internet will certainly kill your chances if you strut your stuff in all your glory (yes, I know you’re absolutely gorgeous) or, your profile has never been tampered with and you’re perfect.

The thing is, you gave permission (we hope) to show it off.

Did you know there are no laws in the US that say third party sites can’t use the information you put up about yourself? So, have at it.

Spock.com claims to have tons of money for this venture and all I can think of are the millions of people who they plan on indexing who are starving, homeless, jobless, living in refugee camps, abused…there’s so much more to those names and why, oh why, does this not matter?

Like I said, so much of me wants to get wound up and tight fisted-like furious at the people who somehow think it’s okay to put the names of every human being in a search engine. Not only will it index names, but you can add pictures and create profiles.

As if nobody else thought of doing that yet on the Internet. This isn’t even an original idea. There are already names search engines on the Internet. This one, however, claims to look under every rock to find “everyone in the world”.

Where is the sense of all this?

I own several web sites, a forums and a blog. I’ve been online since 1995, blabbing away. My high school classmates have no idea. My best friend emails me all the time, asking how I am, and I keep telling her that if she misses me or worries, I’M ON THE INTERNET. My neighbors could care less who I am or what I do online. My parents, who are both very good with computers, are too busy to care what I’m doing online. They also believe in not interfering.

In other words, I’ve been here for awhile and really, nobody gives a damn.

I wish the money tossed to these search engines was going to FEED, PROTECT and CARE for people, not search for their names.

Looking for a new ISP? My friend, Jimmy Atkinson, has some help for you, especially if you’re an advanced technical person who requires lots of extras and goodies. He’s written 14 Good Hosting Options for Hardcore Developers.

Serious developers are looking for features beyond free templates and cheap domain names. They need high-end servers that are guaranteed with at least a 99.5% uptime, as well as support for various scripts and databases.

Was pleased to see my host, Bluehost, there. They make installing WordPress so easy, even I could do it.

I arrived home last evening from a brief business trip that left me feeling physically drained, as if I’d just been up all night with a sick child and also ignited, as if someone just handed me the keys to a new sports car. Never did I expect the extraordinary comment my husband would say to me when he got home from work.

The topic of women who work in technical fields, successful women and if it matters whether or not you’re a woman, or can just be judged on the quality of our work, all were subjects in the Blogosphere this past week. Again. I am a woman who taught herself web design during a divorce because I refused to ask for child support or alimony. I preferred to support myself and children (because I knew damned well I could if just given a chance to prove it.) These topics interest me.

Men Showed Me How To Fly Out of the Nest, Not Stay Inside It

My teachers and the very first humans who believed in me during my Big Life Shift were, in fact, men. It makes no sense to me, but that is just how it went down.

Women everywhere were furious with me and my choices. How dare I stick my nose up at the laws designed to make me dependent on a man who I didn’t want to be married to anymore? How dare I give him more than visitation rights? What in God’s name compelled me to give him our house? I did so many things “wrong”, in their eyes. Even down to agreeing to 50/50 shared custody and split responsibility in all ways and finding a mediator to divorce us, who let us write out own divorce agreement so we could make it fair and just for ourselves and our situation.

I had no job. No home. I was still nursing our son and I had 6 year old.

So it was the women who despised me. Everywhere. Family? I was officially disowned by the women, except for my mother, who always knew I make my own rules. It was my female neighbors who stopped talking to me. I turned to the Internet, where I met male mentors and eventually other women with my interests who were already out there building web sites, programming, writing books and starting businesses.

On the Internet, I Found my People

My first computer, a 286, was given to me by a male friend because I had so much enthusiasm for learning about the Internet. So he drove the thing to my house, installed it in my kitchen, and I was reborn.

Another man, a friend, taught me how to use it and every time I blew past what the poor machine could handle, he would dismantle it on my kitchen table and upgrade it for me, for free. Once, I accidently uninstalled the entire operating system. He patiently came over one night, fixed it and explained to me why the computer needed that to work.

I learned HTML from men I met online who showed me how to teach myself by studying source code and I hand coded like a champ (still do.) I bought books written by men and one by a woman. Every year, there were more women showing up but by far, my supporters and teachers were men. At home, in the real world offline, I had long since learned to not talk about what I did with other mothers. They were raising babies. I was too, but I wanted so much more.

Men Earn More Money

Once employed in various roles related to web site work, I was paid less than the men because human resources data said that how things are done.

I was never paid based on my performance, despite exceptional performance reviews and constant kudos from managers and coworkers. I was paid what the data says I was worth as a salaried female. Men are paid based on their traditional role as providers for their families. Which technically, as the laws in my state and the IRS eventually dictated, I am as “primary care giver”.

The day I left working for companies for good was the day my department director was instructed to lay off his department’s women first. My male coworkers cried when I left and I’ll never, ever forget it.

It Was. It Is This Way, For Me. It May Not Work For All

Twelve years ago I made a decision to enter a field I was fascinated by, after being out of the work force for 3 years taking care of my children. I had a solid work history before I stopped working to focus on my young children. That seemed like a very important decision, and a good one.

However, a woman who stops working to have kids is practically no longer a citizen of this country. If she wants to raise kids and work, she’s met with more attitude. I survived and did things my way, but of course I suffered. I wasn’t so stupid as to think my way was going to be easy or even possible. It was illogical in some ways, impractical, risky. And yet the gender that was there at every key turning point was a man.

On my business trip this week, there were no women except for the waitress we had in the outdoor bar who was obviously a delightful pleasure for my male coworkers. I’m used to this. There is one lesson I needed to learn about working in a male dominated industry or environment where women are still very much in the minority. Please! Let them be men.

In 2004, I married that man who kept fixing my first computer for me. (He still does, countless desktops and laptops later.) He’s known me for over 17 years. Last evening, after I’d gone through round one of my first brain dump on how things went, he managed to finally get in a sentence. He said he was thrilled I was getting back out there again, learning and having fun.

It doesn’t matter that I’m completely surrounded by OTHER men, or not at home with him or our blended family with tons of pets and constant chaos.

I know how lucky I am. I know I’m surrounded by some of the best and brightest men our technical, Internet related industries offer. I am nothing without them and their devotion. Their love, dedication, trust, their exquisite belief in me. I’ll leave this life never understanding the reasons why I earned it and if I did make sense of it, I likely wouldn’t have the sense to accept those reasons with any sort of grace.

Some of them have introduced me to women whom I wish I’d met ten years ago, but I’m so thankful I know them now.

Today, I see that the power was always inside me; mixed with stubbornness, yes.

That part came from me.

Yet, I may thrive as I move forward, because my husband understands my need to be free.

When was the last time you stopped and pondered your Being? I do this all the time, trying to figure out why I do the things I do. I’m not satisfied to coast along and dip my fingers in waves. I need to create them, ride them, fall in them, drown in them, and paddle close to the cute guy with tanned muscles.

The beauty of having a brain like mine is that I wonder what everybody else is like too. So, when you use web sites or build web sites, I’m terribly curious about your experience. Why did you give up after clicking to that page? What is it about you that makes you like web design? If you promote sites in search engines, what is it about your personality that makes the work fun?

Connected Beyond This Place

Recently, someone had a dream about me. In her dream, we were discussing (debating, really) my inability to charge enough for my usability testing and site audit services. The environment in the dream was filled with Native American colors and decorations. When she woke up from this dream, she was amazed and surprised.

She’s never met me before. She had no idea I have a strong affinity with my ancient Native American bloodlines and my office walls are lined with drums, feathers, mandellas, rattles, rain makers, skins, and a beautiful handmade walking stick with carved eagle’s head made for me by an old boyfriend. She has no knowledge of this, and yet she dreamed it as if being right here.

How she tapped into my long-time joking around with some good friends about my fees is another mystery.

Is the Internet connecting us in new ways?

Who Are We?

Three blog posts appeared today that inquire about who we are, how we behave and why it matters to web developers.

The first is a fun piece written by Miriam Ellis for Cre8tiveFlow called Take the Color Quiz - Diagnose Yourself! She talks about the use of color in web design and what our choices may be communicating. She also just put the challenge out there to find out more about our true selves by analyzing our favorite colors. So of course, I took the quiz.

The results were strikingly accurate, with the possible exception of this first one.

Your Existing Situation

Persistent. Demands what she feels to be her due and endeavors to maintain her position intact.

Did you get the part about “demands what she feels to be her due”? I thought that was interesting, in light of the dream mentioned earlier.

Here are snips from the rest: (My favorite parts.)

Your Stress Sources

Anxious to experience life in all its aspects, to explore all its possibilities, and to live it to the fullest. She therefore resents any restriction or limitation being imposed on her and insists on being free and unhampered.

Oh yeah! This is so on the money it’s scary.

Your Restrained Characteristics

Distressed by the fear that she may be prevented from doing what she wants; needs both peaceful conditions and quiet reassurance to restore her confidence.

Yep.

Your Desired Objective

Has an imperative need for tenderness and affection. Susceptible to anything esthetic.

How do they know this by the colors you choose?

Your Actual Problem #2

Has a fear that she might be prevented from achieving the things she wants.

Heh.

They even give you a nifty thingy so you can explain yourself to everyone who doesn’t believe you about those things you say about yourself. (Lisa!)

cre8pc took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test!“Longs for a tender and sympathetic bond and for a …”Click here to read the rest of the results.

What’s interesting is the colors I chose as my lead off colors for the test are choices I made for headings, links, subheadings and anything I wanted to stand out in several of my past and present websites, including this blog and client work.

How much of ourselves do we put into our site designs that we’re not even aware of? How accurately do we understand those who visit our web sites?

Robert Gorell wrote about personalities in Annoyed by the Sopranos Ending? You Might Be “Type-J. He says,

Here at Future Now, we’re obsessed with Meyers-Briggs (define) typology, occasionally to the chagrin of our loved ones. Be careful, though. Once you’re good at it, qualifying people by personality type can be pretty exclusionary. (One colleague’s girlfriend mocks us as “letter-talkers” for, say, describing an “ESTP” she’s never met.) But it’s important stuff. In addition to helping us to better understand ourselves, it helps us relate to our clients and, more importantly, their customers. It helps us build personas that seem real.

I create user personas in my work and base them on real people with actual personalities. Their habits and behavior are usually easy to nail down, but the exercise falls short because these personas aren’t based on actual data. I create them as a teaching tool to illustrate the importance of knowing target users, their behavior, needs, desires and emotional state. And that’s just for starters.

FutureNow uses Meyers-Briggs data. I decided to take the HUMANMETRICS Jung Typology Test he linked to because my color test proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m relentlessly curious.

Rather than a Type A personality, I’m an ” INFJ”. [Note: See comments. Apparently INFJ is the "rarest of all types, at less than 1.5% of the population."] It would take a while to read about that here and here. I scanned for the good parts that stroke my ego, like “Their amazing ability to deduce the inner workings of the mind, will and emotions of others gives INFJs their reputation as prophets and seers.” Cough.

Just looking at the volume of information and translating it into something like search engine user behavior would be fascinating. This is what Human Factors experts do for breakfast. SEO’s work so hard to get websites indexed and ranked, but there’s no passion for understanding the different kinds of people who find those sites because many web site owners aren’t thinking like this yet.

How We Find Each Other

When I was single, I tried online dating and was a complete disaster at it. Nobody ever presented their true self. They embellished it. Trying to find someone who fit what I wanted was torture because I didn’t trust them, and I didn’t know enough about myself either. At no time did I have the nerve to say to someone, “Hey. Take a chance on me if you love variety and someone who is not a perfect body Barbie doll!” They usually wanted Barbie and to heck with the variety part.

How we make connections online is done in all kinds of ways. One way is via blog comments and the art of dropping into a web site without an invitation to the party (otherwise known as spam.) One wonders at the colors spammers like. I wonder what their personality test results are. What is the label for invasive, rude, self centered jerk?

Link drops have their place, I know. They can be done with class and integrity. I tend to be mean and unforgiving with blog spam. This is because I’m an Administrator for a busy forums and if you saw the volume of spam I see everyday, you might doubt the sanity of most people who call themselves “marketers”. What they do is not even close.

Matt Bailey wrote a terrific piece about his take on a kind of connecting we do in The Rules of the Conversation. He points out,

Much like those networking situations above, the internet tends to devolve people into conversation interrupters. I am not really sure when it became cool to drop a link into someone else’s blog. Link exchange requests have always been suspect, in my opinion, as I have no knowledge of this person, their site, or even their business. Why would I offer a link to a site where I have no knowledge of the content or the purpose?

Matt’s more tolerant with spam than I am. This made me wonder about taking chances. I’m not the kind of person who drops in and link drops and I’ve rarely, if ever, asked for a reciprocal link, especially from someone I don’t know. If I’m not bold, who would get to know me?

Apparently it’s a mute question, since I’m showing up in your dreams.

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