Rob’s blog
Vancouver elections Saturday, Nov. 19; I’m voting for Vision
I'll be voting for Jim Green and the Vision Vancouver team tomorrow, along with several great folks from COPE. (Disclosure: I've been working for the Vision campaign -- and they've made me proud.) After so many years of watching this city struggle under a wet, grey...
Delays, delays, delays…
Waiting isn't easy... TiVo does a great job of recording and playing video... but when it comes to scheduling the beast, it slows to a crawl. Maybe that's because it has a processor speed of only 50 MHz, and 32 MB of RAM. Your average gaming console (such as...
SpeechList Issue 4: Speech structure 101
SPEECHLIST: WRITING TO BE HEARD Issue 4 - November 14, 2005 by Rob Cottingham https://www.robcottingham.ca/ rob@robcottingham.ca (c) Rob Cottingham 2005 IN THIS ISSUE... Opening words Feature article: Speech structure 101 Catch Rob at the Ragan Speechwriting...
Great overview of some newer polling techniques
Mystery Pollster's look at diverging polling results in the runup to California's various referenda is more than just wholesome political geeky goodness. It's also a quick course in some of the latest polling techniques out there, including online panel surveys....
Side effects of drug industry lobbying may include…
When The Karasik Conspiracy hits bookshelves this September, the plot may sound just a wee bit familiar: a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. It...
Blog award season
Any major shift in communication technology goes through these stages: Experimentation Early narrow implementation Establishment of community Enhancement of solidarity in face of establishment backlash Giving awards to ourselves Gosh, is it time for step five again?...
Now that’s what I call social capital
Vancity Credit Union has a dandy idea for extending credit to folks who might normally find it hard to come by: peer lending. From CBC Vancouver: Vancity's Shaheen Tejani says the credit union lends money to groups of people, to allow individuals to start their own...
If I could blog to the animals…
How cool is this? I've been linked to by a Gentoo Penguin webcam blog out of Antarctica! (Apparently they'd been having popup issues thanks to the Webstats4U fiasco reported on here a month ago.) I'm returning the favour by directing you to their post, "When Pengins...
Meet the new software, same as the old software
We're trying a new piece of software, BurnoutMenu 2.0, which we hope will be our long-sought-after way of giving iCal a half-decent to-do list. But this piece of copy on their web site gives me pause: BurnoutMenu 2 is a complete refit of the original idea. Built from...
Home page on the plain: Web 2.0, busted
Damn. A commenter named Tory, responding to a 37signals blog post, has our number: I know exactly what web 2.0 is: pretentious oversized fonts pastel colors buzzwords featureless “user experiences†overly friendly and self-important copy acronyms Basically it’s...
Stop corporate abuse, change the world, live in Boston
One of the first big international campaigns to ever hit my radar was the Nestlé boycott: a successful mobilization of consumer outrage over Nestlé's aggressive -- and destructive -- marketing of breastmilk substitutes to mothers in poor countries. Now the people...
We’re hiring…
You could be the newest member of Social Signal, a Vancouver web company that helps to create innovative online communities. We're looking for a deputy geek and virtual office manager who can pitch in on a wide range of socially-oriented web projects and help with our...
Why, yes — I’d LOVE to speak at your event
Public speaking and speechwriting: the essential guides
Looking for advice on public speaking, speechwriting and leadership communications? Here are some of my most comprehensive posts, on topics that people ask me about most often.
