Washington Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE) is holding its 15th Anniversary Gala Thursday, September 22, 2011 from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Please join me in celebrating 15 years of WEAVE’s service to victims of domestic abuse. Your support matters! It might just help save a life.

If you aren’t familiar with this organization, WEAVE provides three critical areas of service to the Washington DC community: legal representation, counseling, and community education. Its mission: engage the metropolitan Washington DC community in the elimination of intimate partner abuse and other forms of gender-based violence through empowering, innovative and holistic services.

With your help, WEAVE assists thousands of survivors of domestic violence every year. By attending this year’s gala or by donating through the WEAVE website, you will help a survivor break the cycle of abuse to achieve a safe, self-sufficient, empowered life. You can also find out about other upcoming events by following WEAVE on Twitter and joining WEAVE on Facebook.

Remember, there is tremendous need for WEAVE services. Just take a look at these staggering statistics from the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

• Domestic violence cases increased 15% from 2009 to 2010 in Washington DC
• In 2010 there was a 26% increase in the number of DC clients served who were pregnant
• There were over 7,000 domestic violence case filings in DC in 2010

Finally, the Metropolitan Police Department received 31,000+ domestic-related calls in 2010, approximately 1 every 17 minutes. That translates to SEVEN different victims in DC calling for help just during this gala. Help make sure they get the services and care that they deserve.

Buy your tickets today!

Beyond engaging with and supporting your community, you’ll also be thoroughly entertained by the music of Grammy nominated recording artist, Carolyn Malachi, and enjoy the amazing new collection of internationally renowned artist Vian Sora. Hope to see you there!

Bathrooms at Russian Children's Camp (1990)

Expecting privacy when it comes to social media is a bit like expecting privacy in a restroom when there are no doors on the bathroom stall. It really doesn’t exist. You may have a little bit of a divider between you and the rest of the world, but your “business” is pretty much out there for the world to see. The questions is: are you going to let that stop you from doing your business? For me, the answer is no. I only share as much as I’m willing to be completely public and I try to conduct myself online in a way that mirrors how I am IRL (in real life). I’m definitely a proponent of transparency. I also think we should take more care in the conversations we are having online and try to avoid saying things that we wouldn’t be willing to say to someone’s face.

A few more words about the bathrooms in Russia.

My best friend from high school called me the other day and told me that she had just run into one of our classmates at the local pharmacy. She couldn’t remember him, but he had quickly recognized her. He was there with his wife and went on to tell his wife how he fondly remembered performing a song together with my best friend in his wild high school days. My best friend was calling to confirm that THAT, in fact, had never happened. I would have remembered it for sure, so I confirmed that he was mistaken. What do you do in that situation? She just smiled and said nothing. I would have been speechless too!

Speechless. Which is what I was for most of my high school days. I was extremely shy and kept to myself. Never went out of my way to join groups, go to parties or meet new people. I had my close group of friends and that got me through those years quite nicely.  So how might I be remembered (if I was remembered at all)? Probably as being far too quiet – a frequent comment in my yearbooks. Or possibly as being a total bitch (who knows).

We all know there is short-term memory and long-term memory. But did you know there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory? The first is encoding or registration (receiving, processing and combining of received information). The second is storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information). I call this our filing system. And finally, you have retrieval, recall or recollection (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity). It is typically thought that our short-term memory limit is 7 items, but new estimates put the number closer to 4-5. Another theory proposes that our limit for relationships is 150 people. Given the shorter and shorter attention spans of Americans, how do we become memorable? Whether we are talking about as people or as a brand.

The answer for me is honesty. The truth is TRUTH is easier to remember. But we all have different filing systems—often a problem for eye witness testimony which can be at times meaningless due to faulty recollection, a person’s bias, or due to lying. When I am being pitched something. say a book or movie from a friend, a song from a reality show contestant, experiences from a job applicant, or a new product from a company, I am always drawn to those that just seem the most honest, the most REAL. In this new age of social media, I truly do believe that we have to be real. I think that the best and brightest will always rise to the top.

Now is the time to have truth in advertising. Cut all the marketing BS. Figure out what you can and can’t do and be honest about it. Don’t oversell. Don’t cover up. The customer is smarter than that. And has a longer memory. We could take a few lessons out of the movie Crazy People. What if your phone company told you the truth? “You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don’t mess with us, because we’re all you’ve got!” Well, maybe not that honest…but you get the picture. Toyota might have had a better chance at recovery from these recalls if they had started with the truth rather than the floor mat story.

So as you head out into this brave new media world, figure out what do you want to be remembered for? And how memorable are you? Be honest with yourself first, it will make it easier to translate the message to others.

Although some may have found her to be abrasive, I was always drawn to the honesty that Hepburn spoke with and to her strength of character. I was very young when I learned about Katharine by watching 1981′s On Golden Pond. It is the only movie of hers that I have ever seen. Even though I have not watched much of her work, I have always been fascinated by the woman. I believe that my grandmother was also a fan of Hepburn, possibly stemming from my grandmother meeting her during her work as caretaker for a small cottage located near Hepburn’s Old Saybrook, Connecticut home.

She lived a fantastic life, was well-educated, won a record number 4 Oscars for her work, even performed her own stunts, all before dying at the ripe old age of 96.  She once said, “With all the opportunities I had, I could have done more. And if I’d done more, I could have been quite remarkable.” Personally, I think she was quite remarkable, more for the person she remained than the persona she became.

Photo courtesy of valentinapowers - Creative Commons license

Disclaimer: I had my mother-in-law do it for me! I had been hoping and wishing and PRAYING that I wouldn’t have to face this bear of a task with my 3 year-old son.  Thank goodness for my mother-in-law (how often do you hear that?)  I kept telling myself “he just isn’t ready”.  And that’s partly true.  He was showing some of the signs, but seemed like he could care less if he was walking around with his diaper dragging.  But then, just recently, my mother-in-law (who watches both of my kids during the day) started putting underwear on him.  Sure she went through a couple of days of extra laundry, but it definitely did the trick.  It’s been two weeks now and only a couple of accidents.  Now, there have been a few times where I’ve had to stop on the side of the road on the way to grandma’s house in the morning.  My standard practice is to open both passenger side doors, prop him in between and use my body to block the view from traffic, while I assist him with upright peeing.  He loves this method of his newly found freedom.  Ah, boys!

Photo courtesy of emmajeann - Creative Commons license

How do we get users to change?  Sometimes it seems like management’s answer to this is…”force them”.  Change is announced in lengthy e-mails and memos with little to no notice before the change is going to occur.  The decisions have been made and money has been already been invested.  But according to Jason Whitehead ”behavior cannot be mandated by others, it is up to each individual to change their own behavior.  Therefore, you need to actively engage individuals in the change process.” Given that I make my living in the world of communications, I believe this is the area where engagement needs to begin.   I would like to see management start a conversation and open the channels of communication with end users.  Identify thought leaders that can help contribute ideas about the implementation process and what success will look like.  There are even more channels of communication available to us today–use them, but don’t abuse them.  Solicit feedback on specific areas of the system change, but only if you are willing to listen, follow up, and show that you’ve responded. If that seems too scary a prospect, you can always fall back one the old standard of ”forcing them”.  At the very least follow-up once the system has been implemented, identify best practices that show the system works for the user, and share them to support greater user adoption.

Last week CNN aired the special, “Black in America 2” which featured a project lead by Malaak Compton-Rock (wife of Chris Rock). The project is called Journey for Change: Empowering Youth Through Global Service and she selected 30 kids from Bushwick, Brooklyn to travel to Johannesburg, South Africa as part of a volunteer project.   It seemed like the key to making this project a success was taking the kids out of their element, giving them an important role to play, and showing them that depsite their humble origins they had the power to make a difference.  I cried my eyes out watching this segment, especially the journey for14 year-old Latoya Massie, who shed her own tears at the prospect of not being able to get the people everything that they needed.  Sometimes change is overwhelming, but at least the seeds have been planted.  The kids that journeyed to South Africa went through a lot of change, the tough part once you get home is to make the change last.

Often times we start out with the best of intentions for making a change in our lives or a critical event causes us to change. But, you can’t change everything all at once. The key to making a change that can last is to focus on the little things, the details, and then always keep your end goal in the back of your mind.  Make one little change today. Then add to it another little change, then another.  Soon those little changes will add up, and a whole new world will open up for you. Oh yes, a change is gonna come.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~ Maria Robinson 

Here are my three biggest reasons for using Twitter:

(1) The Tweeple.  I’ve already met a lot of great people or “tweeple” through Twitter and I’ve only been on it six months. I can only imagine how many more fantastic friends I will make before the year is out.  I started out by attending a couple local events and then I got my first two Tweetups under my belt.  Next week I’ll be attending a girls only, Girlie Tweetup in D.C. and mixing it up with 25 other fabulous women (still 4 spaces left as of this posting).  It’s a casual and easy way to network that can be followed up with face-to-face discussions.

(2) The Knowledge. I’ve decided to use Twitter as another tool to help me learn more about social media.  Despite the numerous so-called “social media experts”, I’ve actually been able to follow a lot of really amazing and knowledgeable internet marketers that offer up a wealth of business wisdom in easy-to-swallow bites.  Even better are the local D.C. techies interested in Gov 2.0, an area that really interests me since I work in government consulting.  I’ve also stumbled upon a series of events called socStardom, short for Social Media Stardom, that have provided me with a wealth of information (free of charge) and since they are limited to 150 attendees it’s easy to make meaningful connections.

(3) The Humor. A true sign of intelligence in my book is a good sense of humor and when you are limited to 140 characters it almost becomes a contest to see how witty one can be.  I get insight from comedian Rob Corddry such as “Watching both kids.  When people say “they grow up so fast” I want to slap them right in their bad memory.” I also found a most intriguing Follow Friday last week with Damian Dayton and his timely blog about the death of MJ (only dedicated to Michael Jordan).  Yeah, sometimes I enjoy twisted humor like that, part of the reason for the name of this blog.

But maybe you have reached your quota of friends, don’t want to have instant access to experts in your field, and could care less where Shaq is on a regular basis.  If that’s the case, then maybe Twitter really isn’t for you.  What it comes down to is Twitter is what YOU make it.  The more you put in to building relationships, the more you will get out of it.

Maybe my three reasons aren’t enough of a case for Twitter.  If that’s true, take a look at the responses I received in  short-order when I tweeted the question:

“What’s the case for Twitter?”

 From @sisarina:

Case for Twitter, it expands your horizons, allows you to create your own feed & gives your business new ways of promotion. I <3 Twitter!

From @bethschillaci:

Mine is to make connections that can be taken offline and to enhance those offline relationships.

From @ctownmarketing:

what I luv about twitter: it’s nimble; has relatively low learning curve; ease of connecting w/peeps; ease of distributing info

From @joshlaughner:

receiving targeted information about things i like or care about

 From @jackholt:

“Community without propinquity.” People I meet here are far more interesting to me than people who just happen to live near.

Because we choose who in the community we interact with, we build a group where *everybody* is someone we enjoy/love/adore.

From @minnemom:

I use twitter for a lot of blogging connections.  I use Tweetdeck to set up groups such as “travel” or “Minnesota” so I don’t miss any of the posts that are really relevant to me.

I’ve also used it to get tech support help from other tweeters who knew, reading suggestions for my son, parenting advice, blog help and more.

I hit it really hard at first to follow people I was interested in and got a lot of followers in return; for my purposes it’s better to have a good following than just a few.

Other people want to keep it very personal so they don’t follow a lot of people. The beauty of twitter is that you can use it however you want.

From @fruitfulvine2:

I use twitter to track info on health and marriage related issues and more. I also tweet about what I’m doing at the moment and any new blog posts I write. I also retweet others a lot because I find very valuable information being shared that others in my tweetstream should know about.

Twitter is very useful for quick promotion of things as well as building valuable relationships with others.

My daddy and me

My father will be absolutely mortified that I’m posting a picture and blogging about him, but I couldn’t help but take today to share this small list of the many things that my father has taught me over the last 32 years.  He doesn’t use the Internet though, so it will be awhile before my mother shows him this.  I want to wish all of the fathers out there a very Happy Father’s Day! I’d also like to applaud another truly amazing father, Dick Hoyt, who competes in marathons and triathalons with his son who has cerebral palsy.  They have one of the most touching stories I’ve ever heard.

And now, just some of the things that my father has taught me:

1.  How to swim at Woodbury Lake in Vermont

2.  That the Cowboys are the best football team and the Yankees are the best baseball team

3.  How to fish, bait my own hook, and row a boat

4.  How to drive a stick shift, parallel park, and check the oil in my car

5.  That everything will be OK, by giving me a hug after my first boyfriend broke up with me

6.  That he is cool to hang out with, letting me talk to guys at an Irish Pub in Massachusetts

7.  An amazing sense of humor and how to laugh at my own mistakes

8.  That being spoiled isn’t all bad

9.  How to be a neat freak, even organizing the refrigerator

10. But most importantly, my dad has taught me what love is all about, by always giving more of himself than he ever asks for in return. 

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!