As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.
Psalm 42:1 (NIV)
This photo of “spring creek” was taken back in 2006, it’s a spring fed creek that runs through the Spring Grove neighborhood of Westerville, Ohio.
Psalm 42:1
The 5000 Year Leap
I’ve not made much of a dent in the stack of books I’ve purchased this year, though I’ve recently begun reading The 5000 Year Leap . It’s a book that reveals some of the principles of freedom that our founding fathers shared.
There is a great quote from John Adams early in the book outlining why it was so important for people to be prepared for service in politics. In a letter to his wife he wrote:
The science of government is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take a place of, indeed to exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Wow what a profound and forward thinking statement! I’m looking forward to reading through the rest of the book to discover the 28 principles of freedom our founders said must be understood and perpetuated by every people. I think the key word there is “perpetuated”.
Cyber Monday
I’ve seen several posts about specials for Cyber Monday and thought I would get into the act… so here goes…
CYBER MONDAY SPECIAL
SAVE $5 PER COPY when you buy Fearful To Fearless
using discount code SSTKEKNC
The discount code is only good at  https://www.createspace.com/3486664
Slow Down And Smell The Kielbasa
Picked up this seasons order of kielbasa from Beekist Meat in Johnstown. I was raised in Toledo where my Polish ancestors settled during the early 20th century. It sounds kind of funny saying that, 20th century that is, it makes it sound so long ago, anyway kielbasa and the holidays just seem to go together.
Dziękuję Beekist!!!
The Alternative Center
Yesterday I began work on a new website for The Alternative Center, it’s an adult education group that supports people with disabilities and their families.
I’ve been fortunate to meet a few of the students and they are some of the most fun loving, honest & generous people I’ve met… we should take a lesson from them.
I’m looking at some of the photos I’ve received to select from and can’t believe some of the cool and fun places and things these guys do!
Super Size It!
Back in the summer of 2007 we made our way up to Northern Michigan and stopped for lunch in Petoskey. There is a small park that sits atop a bluff overlooking the Little Traverse Bay. It was a beautiful day so I proceeded to shoot some pictures with my Nikon D50.
I especially loved how this one picture turned out, so last May I thought it would be perfect to fill the blank wall that sits in front of my desk. In the past I have had good results when enlarging images to poster size (20″ x 30″), but I wanted to do something different with this photo. I wanted to super-size it, not billboard size mind you but something i could mount on the wall at home and have it really stand out.
The D50 comes with a 6.1 megapixel sensor, less than half of what a new DSLR camera comes with these days. I was concerned with pixelization and didn’t want to risk poor quality by go going too big, nor did I want it to overpower the room either. I researched enlargement techniques online to minimize pixel loss and used Adobe software to upsize the image to 54″ x 36″. I worked with the folks at Key Blue Prints in Westerville and they produced an outstanding print. It’s a matte print mounted on black foam core with a .5 mil hot press laminate.
After completing the work on the Fearful To Fearless book I decided it was time to get out, grab the camera and try to capture some of the fall colors in the area. I’ve since upgraded to the Nikon D90 which comes with a 12.3 megapixel sensor. I remembered that my friend Ray Bohac had captured the brilliance of fall in a spectacular shot of the tree lined street in front of Schnormeier Gardens here in Knox County.
With Ray’s photo fresh in our minds Chris and I took a drive out that way a couple weeks ago for a photo shoot. The shot below is one of our favorites from that day, it was taken from a different perspective from the picture Ray took which was from the other end of the road. We liked it so much we decided to have it enlarged. This time we chose a semi-gloss finish and went a little wider and not quite as tall… 60″ x 30″. The order was placed and Key Blue Prints didn’t let us down.
My First Viral Campaign
After publishing Fearful To Fearless
The crux of the campaign was this;
- First, you need to provide your visitors the opportunity of receiving a free gift, something of value. In my case I was offering free copies of Fearful To Fearless to 10 individuals.
- You need to make sure you spell out the rules so there is absolutely no question. My offering required participants to complete the next three steps, and made sure they understood that the decision of who wont was entirely up to me based upon why they wanted a copy of the book.
- First, engage people to have them tell you why they want the product. I directed visitors to enter the information in a comment that is visible to all visiting the site.
- Next, a method for people to provide their contact information so you know where to send the prizes to the winners without the information being publicly displayed. This is important because the name people leave comments as is different than there real names. This is where you need to make sure they provide the name they used for the comment so you can sync up the comment to the real person.
- Lastly, and this is most important, require participants to spread the information on one of their social networks. This info can easily be verified by utilizing some of the functionality already built into many blogging packages, using Google Alert, or many others.
Obviously you can come up with your own requirements but this was a popular method I was already familiar with and easily implemented.
The Results:
Honestsly, it wasn’t quite as successful as I had hoped, although a number of people did submit comments for the free book giveaway which remain on the web page at http://fearfultofearless.com. Perhaps extending it longer would have resulted in increased results, although I suspect that the people who were aware and interested in the offer were a bit older and perhaps less tech savvy than younger folks. I would estimate that only about 30-40 percent of those that submitted comments followed through with completing all of the necessary steps which were intended to be the catalyst for spreading virally. Feedback from others who have implemented similar campaigns report up to 90% of those submitting comments follow through with all of the steps outlined in their offers.
Not that it was unsuccessful either, I have received a considerable amount of traffic and the facebook fan page numbers continue to increase. I’ve got a couple other thoughts and will work on them soon.
