Comment Policy

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A big part of the reason the blog exists here at SuccessCREEations, Inc. is to stimulate discussion in the areas of Social Media and Business Blogging. We appreciate and encourage your comments here.

In order to encourage meaningful conversation by everyone we’ve got the following comment guidelines in place. Failure to follow these guidelines will likely cause us to take some action. We reserve the right to edit or delete any comment made on our site as we find necessary to facilitate ongoing discussion by all.

Keep in mind this is our house. You have the privilege of determining whether you will be considered a welcomed guest or not.

If you follow these guidelines you will probably do just fine.

Be Nice

Treat others as you’d like them to treat you. You can disagree with anything found here. Just don’t be rude about it or use personal attacks. If you are unsure how a comment may be interpreted by the person it is aimed at then you probably should consider re-wording it before you hit “Submit Comment”.

No Profanity

Foul language will either be edited out of your comment or may even cause your comment to be deleted. Our mothers have been known to read our blog and we don’t want to scandalize them.

Please use English

SuccessCREEations, Inc. is an English language blog. In order for everyone to see the value in your comment we ask that you keep to English for most of your commenting here.

Don’t Spam

Spam is the scourge of the internet and will not be tolerated here in it’s many forms. We show our appreciation for folks commenting by removing the “nofollow” tag from comment links. We ask in return that your comment adds value to the discussion and is relevant to the post at hand. If you obviously comment here just to get a link back to your site without engaging in conversation you run the risk of your comment being removed or marked as spam.

Names are Preferred

We value you as a person. Therefore it is preferred that you use a name or pseudonym when signing comments rather than business names or SEO type anchor text. We assume you are commenting primarily to engage in discussion and it is harder to talk to Fire Town, Natural Health, Technology, Money Earner, supersmoker, voipBlogger, or Guru (all actual commenters here) than it is a person. While this is not an absolute requirement, perceived abuse may be dealt with accordingly.

Refrain from Gratuitous Spammy Links

Because your comment will be getting a link in the signature block please refrain from adding another link at the end of your comment. The extra link is unnecessarily redundant, a bit tacky and may get removed. However we do encourage links to relevant content on other sites that add value to the discussion.

Link Responsibly

Please don’t link to nastiness. Remember Mom sometimes reads sometimes and we don’t want to send her to some offensive web page. In fact, we don’t want to go there ourselves. So just leave it out.

Stepping Down from SOBCon

This is one of those posts that’s hard to write.

As many of you know, my gorgeous wife Lisa and I were part of the team that founded and put on SOBCon last spring in Chicago along with Liz Strauss, Terry Starbucker, and others.

This past week Lisa and I had a long conversation with the rest of the leadership team of SOBCon. In it we all agreed that the Cree’s would be pulling out of the partnership.

The decision was a very tough one for me to make. We know what a wonderful event SOBCon was last year. And we know how much higher Liz is raising the bar for the experience of all involved this year. Plus, I had a large part in crafting the original idea in the first place.

However, now that Lisa and I are 30 days into the launch of SuccessCREEations, Inc. as a full time venture we are realizing that I had fallen victim of one of the classic business start up blunders: grossly underestimating the amount of time effort and resources it takes to get a new business off the ground. I had this idea that once I left my previous full time employment we’d have lots of extra resources to devote to SOBCon.

I was very mistaken about that. We actually have less. Much less.

So rather than hold SOBCon back we’ve decided to step down from the leadership team.

Liz, Terry & the SOBCon team have a great event planned for everyone. Lisa and I still plan to be there. We just won’t be part of the team that’s running the show.

Joining the High Calling Blogs

I’m excited to announce that SuccessCREEations has joined the High Calling Blogs.

Blog Network

The High Calling Blogs is a new faith based blog network that is setting out to explore the intersection of faith in the workplace. Here’s an excerpt from their about page:

TheHighCalling.org seeks to connect people with the faith that undergirds and sustains all that we do. That’s why it is the high calling of our daily work. Daily work embraces all aspects and activities of daily life—including home, community, leisure, as well as occupation.

There are two options for someone who wants to join the High Calling Blog community. Read more

2008 Will be Dramatically Different at SuccessCREEations

It’s funny how we measure time by the calendar. I mean January first will dawn just like any other day. Here in Savannah odds are pretty good it will be a bit foggy, just like this morning. It’s that time of year.

However 1 January will be a vastly different time for me here at SuccessCREEations. A big part of that change involves me leaving my day job.

Yep. You heard right.

As of the new year I will no longer be employed full time in my old position in the maritime industry. I’m leaving that job to focus on growing SuccessCREEations, Inc.

It is a big step, no doubt. and that is one that Gorgeous and I have been working towards for quite some time.

There have been a myriad of things to get in place, things like health insurance, a car to replace the company car I’m giving up, and a new laptop - again to replace the company one I’m forfeiting.

What it Means

In the next few weeks y’all will see some big changes around here. For starters we will be overhauling the entire site.

SuccessCREEations will transform from a pure blog to a hybrid site that will be our company site with a blog on it. We’ve thought long and hard about the pros and cons to changing the site. Based on the direction we are moving a change is in order.

Gorgeous will be starting her own much anticipated blog here after the first of the year. I’m excited about her joining the blogging community in a more formal way after all her involvement with SOBCon.

I will be writing much more often and in a few new places. I’ll be firing up my personal blog here again shortly after a 6 months or more of neglect and joining in on a couple new projects.

All in all 2008 promises to be dramatically different around here. I’m looking forward to it.

Things are Happening at SuccessCREEations

This has been an exciting week for us here and it’s only Wednesday!

Yesterday we signed the incorporation papers so we are now officially SuccessCREEations, Inc.

We are working on an official logo to replace the lighthouse badges that I’ve been using on the site in places like the Business Blogging 101 series. The new favicon will give you a little hint of the direction we are going with this.

Then, once that’s finished we’ll be working on a complete overhaul to the site here.

With all that going on we are still serving our clients by building out sites and such.

One of my favorite current projects is the Savannah Dachshund Club site. Each year they host the Annual Savannah Wiener Dawg Races. It’s always a hoot and we’re proud to be one of this year’s event sponsors.

Oh, and if you just can’t help your curiosity, head on over there to see an early version of our new logo in the sponsors section!

We’re Blog of the Day at FuelMyBlog!

Just saw the email letting me know SuccessCREEations has been named Blog of the Day at FuelMyBlog.

How totally cool! Thanks, guys!

Even sent me a snazzy new icon to put in my sidebar letting everyone know ’bout it too. So go ahead and click on it and fuel my blog!

Consider Carefully What Name You Use to Comment

Lorell VanFossen has a great post up over at the Blog Herald asking the question What Do You Put in the Name of a Comment Form?

It is something to consider carefully.

As Lorelle points out you have three basic choices of what to enter in that field when you leave a comment. You can type in your name, your blog title, or some key words.

Your Name

Personally I’m a fan of the first choice. After all the field normally has the label “Name” beside it! In my mind it just makes sense to use my name.

Blogging, even business blogging, is first and foremost about people. And unless you happen to be in some weird Tibetan Monk movie we all have been given a name.

Since you are the person leaving the comment, then it makes sense that you would identify yourself with your name.

Now I can understand there are cases where folks may have good reasons to use a pseudonym. Writing is a huge part of blogging and writers have been using pen names for centuries.

It is probably a good idea to be consistent.

You have reasons to use different personas? That’s fine by me.

Just keep in mind that if you don’t speak with a consistent voice with whatever persona you are using at the time you will likely confuse folks and come across as a bit of a flake. Read more

Anniversaries Galore!

Thursday was a big day here at the Cree house.

Gorgeous had a big event Thursday evening to celebrate the first year anniversary of the Savannah chapter of eWomenNetwork. She started the chapter from nothing last year.

Thursday’s event was a smashing success with over 90 people registered and only a handful of no-shows. The keynote speech was presented by Dr. Kimberly Jackson of the Kare Group. Gorgeous outdid herself and the whole thing was a smashing success.

Go figure.

There was even a TV crew there gathering footage for a commercial.

All in all I had a wonderful time attending one of her events for the first time. Way to go, Gorgeous!

Another Anniversary

Thursday was also the very day when SuccessCREEations passed the One Year Old mark.

Pretty amazing to me that a little blog that I started originally as what I called my “opensource self improvement project” is growing into a full fledged business. Read more

Back in the Saddle

I don’t know how your life works. But there are times in my life when things happen that I have very little control over.

Most times it isn’t the big things that get in the way, but a myriad of little things that pile up and push aside those things that I really would rather be attending to. Like, say, my business blog here at SuccessCREEations.

In the current case the primary thing beyond my control was a coworker taking three weeks vacation and my having to pick up the slack. Basically my already busy workload on my day job has doubled.

Between that and keeping up with my clients there has been very little time or energy to do much of anything else.

Blog’s Still Here

One of the beauties of blogging is that your blog will still be there if you take a break for a little while.

Now I don’t recommend taking big breaks like that as a regular business practice. Your stats will drop off like buffalo being chased over a cliff and it will take time to re-build them to where you were before.

Like getting thrown from a horse you have to climb back aboard at the soonest available opportunity. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. Our minds have this weird ability to build up these huge mental barriers to getting started sometimes.

I find more often than not that once I get started on something I’ve let my mind build up into this hard project it turns out to be much less an issue than I imagined. Go figure. Read more

Mac Friday - 3 August 2007

Well it’s now been about 2 weeks since my Mac Mini arrived. And things are going well.

I overheard Gorgeous telling a friend that she doesn’t hear grumpy noises eminating from my office anymore. I take that as a good sign things are going well.

Before I got the Mac I was at the point where I was loosing about 20 minutes out of every hour on my machine waiting for things to process or rebooting. That doesn’t happen anymore.

One Hitch

Well, there was one morning this past week. For some reason my mouse laser stopped registering clicks. It would track around the screen fine, but wouldn’t click on anything.

The scroll function wasn’t working either.

I fought with it a bit to see if I could get it reset easily. I was hoping to figure out if it was something screwy I did or not. Smart money is on operator error.

Finally I just did a hard shut down of the computer, turned off the wireless mouse and keyboard, and powered everything back up.

Things have been purring along nicely ever since. One hitch in two weeks is so much better than the several times a day that I was dealing with that

MS Office Work Around

I don’t yet have much need for MS Office with what I do here on this machine. But occasionally clients will send me a Word document from time to time.

I’ve found a serviceable work around with Google Docs. It is right there alongside my Gmail account and can import and export Word documents just fine. It isn’t perfect. But it does work for those occasional documents you need to get out.

Eventually I’ll probably get MS Office for Mac, although I hear Open Office is pretty good too. Maybe I’ll try that first.

A Mac Resource

Was pointed to a great resource for news on things Mac by a friend. If you are interested in that sort of thing, check out Think Secret. It’s chock full of insider info.

Before I check out this morning, let me leave you with a little PC vs. Mac humor.

Enjoy!

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