My friends Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer are releasing a new book next week: Open Community, chock full of advice for non-profits looking to use social media to advance their work on a wide range of fronts.

And I got to illustrate it, with a half-dozen or so original cartoons. So I’m pretty psyched. And to celebrate, next week will be Open Community week on Noise to Signal, with a new cartoon from the book every day.

I hope you enjoy them. And I also hope you check out their book – it’s terrific. If you’re already convinced, and you’d like to lay your hands on a copy, the order page is right here.

I had something of a happy mystery yesterday: a huge surge in traffic on one of my Noise to Signal cartoons with no apparent reason why.

That’s the kind of mystery I dearly love to solve. Not just because I’m nosey, but also because I’d like to thank whoever’s responsible. So I donned my deerstalker, broke out the virtual magnifying glass and started an investigation.

I solved that mystery… but discovered something a lot more important in the process.

Here’s how I proceeded:

1. WordPress Stats usually tell me right off the bat where most of my traffic is coming from. But this time, they were as baffled as I was. (It doesn’t help that WordPress Stats can’t tell you the sources of traffic for an individual post.)
2. The cartoon wasn’t recent – in fact, it dates back to March (and Ada Lovelace Day). So that ruled out people who just happened to be dropping by (which wouldn’t have explained the big surge anyway).
3. I dropped in on Google Analytics, which reported the vast majority of the traffic to that page came directly: that is, it didn’t have a referring web page – either on my site or any other one. Normally, that would make me think of Twitter; a substantial amount of my traffic comes from users of mobile devices and desktop apps, clicking on a link from a tweet, and with a few exceptions, that doesn’t offer a referrer.
4. So I ran the URL through Backtweets. But there was only one tweet about it, from a user with a few dozen followers… and posted well after the first wave of traffic arrived. She’d probably picked it up from whatever source was driving the rest of the visitors.
5. I took another look at WordPress Stats and Google Analytics, and discovered something I’d missed the first time. While I couldn’t tell what site most of the traffic was coming from, those few visits that did have a referring URL had something in common: they were all coming from webmail sites.

Conclusion? Whoever linked to me hadn’t done it on the web; they were sharing my cartoon via email, probably a mailing list or e-newsletter, judging by the sheer volume and suddenness of the traffic.

But there the trail ran cold. How could I find out which list or newsletter had the link?

I resigned myself to never knowing who my cartoon’s benefactor was… until Alex pointed me to a killer analytics application.

No, not a web application. Not a server-side analytics package. Not a plugin, script or iPhone app.

“Why don’t you just post a note on that cartoon asking people where they found it?” Alex suggested.

What? Find out more about your incoming traffic by… asking your incoming traffic?

Feeling a little sheepish, I added this at the top of the post:

October 26, 2010: WOW, that’s a lot of traffic today! Thanks for visiting and spreading the word, folks. As far as I can tell, this cartoon is either spreading by email, or was in someone’s (pretty large) email newsletter. Anybody know the source? I’d love to thank them.

In a few hours, I had my answer from a commenter named Patricia Washburn:

This was mentioned yesterday on Systers, an international list for women in technology. Nice job!

Thanks to Alex’s reminder, and Patricia’s kind comment, I learned my cartoon had appeared on a legendary email list called Systers – founded by the even-more-legendary Anita Borg, and dedicated to women involved in the tech side of computing. You might have guessed that I’m pretty psyched about that.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the power of web analytics software to track your traffic – and serve as your personal detective – that you forget that “traffic” is another word for “people”. But as with so much in the online world, even in as number-centric a field as analytics, a little conversation can take you a long way.

Just because we’re north of the border, can’t vote in the mid-terms and at least in theory belong to another country doesn’t mean a lot of Canadians aren’t feeling a little wistful about Saturday’s upcoming joint Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rallies in Washington, DC.

Well, maybe travelling to DC is out of the question for most of us. But thanks to the folks at The Comedy Network, we’ll at least be able to catch the action online:

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert take over thecomedynetwork.ca this weekend making it Canada’s one-and-only conduit to Stewart’s Rally To Restore Sanity and Colbert’s March To Keep The Fear Alive, live from Washington, DC. Streaming live this Saturday, October 30 from 12 – 3 p.m. ET, Canadian viewers have a chance to ‘be there and be scared’ by logging onto thecomedynetwork.ca for a one-time only, online simulcast of the rallies.

Will you be attending – in person or otherwise?

I’ve posted my final cartoon from BlogWorld 2010. It was my most ambitious toonblogging session yet: three straight days of wall-to-wall coverage. (You can check out the results here.)

Nearly all of it was on the iPad, using a Griffin stylus and Autodesk‘s SketchBook Pro. It’s a powerful combination, and the turnaround time can be incredibly short: once I’ve drawn the cartoon, I export it to iTunes on the iPad, sync it to my laptop, drop it into a Photoshop template, play with the text, export it to a PNG file, and post it via WordPress. That’s maybe 15 minutes from putting down my stylus to posting the finished image.

Could it be faster and better? Yes, actually:

• The process of exporting to iTunes and syncing to my MacBook Pro is unusually convoluted for Apple. I’m hoping iOS 4.2 will finally bring a more streamlined, rational file management system to the iPad.
• SketchBook Pro is wonderful, but adding a text tool would make it painfully cool. Add in a template feature and the ability to import fonts from my MBP, and I could circumvent Photoshop completely.
• While we’re on the topic of SketchBook Pro, two or three more features that would make a huge difference:
  • Scrollbars or something similar when you’re zoomed in, so you have some idea of where you’re drawing, and how much room you have left
  • A larger canvas, so I could actually start creating something that approaches print resolution
  • Palm exclusion, so I can rest my hand on the surface when I’m drawing with a stylus
• If I could figure out a way to upload the image to WordPress from my iPad (for the time being, hosting it elsewhere doesn’t really work), along with these other steps, I could skip the laptop completely. Some kind of “upload from DropBox” plugin for WordPress, perhaps?

But set aside that wishlist for now. I had a great time, I cartooned like a madman, and I met some terrific people as a result. Thanks for having me, BlogWorld!