Bottom Line, Up Front

While the decisions you make may not be life-or-death, you probably also spend a lot of your time communicating with people who are busy, whose time is valuable, and who deserve at least the same level of consideration. That’s why BLUF is such a useful model. Whether you’re writing for your company’s blog, writing Slack messages to co-workers, or writing emails to customers, BLUF can help you cut through the noise and connect.

– BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More Powerful (Animalz)

Nielsen Norman Group does a great job of this with their article summaries.

Crowdfunding = trust

Part of a much longer thread worth reading.

h/t Patrick Tanguay (Sentiers Media) for the referral in his newsletter.

Shoutout: The DEV community

Where programmers share ideas and help each other grow. It is an online community for sharing and discovering great ideas, having debates, and making friends. Anyone can share articles, questions, discussions, etc. as long as they have the rights to the words they are sharing. Cross-posting from your own blog is welcome.

– About DEV

Came across this programmer community the other day. VERY cool.

Reminds me of Glitch. Similar aesthetic.

Empower by GoDaddy

It made perfect sense for GoDaddy to align its vision with its corporate giving program, with the aim of equipping entrepreneurs in underserved communities who lacked the support and resources to learn how to build their small businesses. GoDaddy took the unique approach of partnering not only with national nonprofits but also with local organizations in more than 40 cities across the nation, where programs were developed that met the needs of each individual region and aligned with the missions of the nonprofit partners.

via GoDaddy and Jane Boyd Community House (Ragan)

I have so much respect for my colleagues on the Empower team and what they’re doing to support neighbourhoods around the United States.

Read more…Empower by GoDaddy

12 ways to promote your meetup

I’ve been an active meetup group member and organizer for about ten years.

My first meetup group was LNMG — the Limestone New Media Group — out in Kingston, Ontario. We were a handful of locals interested in the emergence of social media, podcasting, vlogging, et al.

We gathered at local coffee shops (s/o to Coffeeco) to trade notes, share our work, and generally catch up with neighbours who cared about the same things as us.

In 2010, after moving to Toronto, I looked for similar meetup groups to join. WPToronto was one of the first, and as I detailed in my Four years at GoDaddy post, that group became my “home” for a long while.

But that wasn’t the only group I belonged to. I joined other groups for tech startups, digital marketers, web developers, artists, gamers, and civic engagement.

As I hopped from group to group, I noted what they did to get people in the door. Here’s my shortlist.

Read more…12 ways to promote your meetup