A very cool contest for the busy professional who wants to create a strong online presence.
Do you write articles to share your expertise, establish credibility and gain online visibility? Do you blog for your business? Do you read business articles online?

If you do any of these you can win a few cool prizes for business professionals while gaining visibility to your website and business.

Bloggertone has teamed up with bizSugar to bring you the Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest. This contest helps give your articles extra online visibility and rewards your social networking. The Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest is an opportunity for you to win prizes to help you promote your business.

• Anyone can join the competition including current Bloggertoners and bizSugar members!
• You’ll have lots of chances to win
• Prizes valued at nearly $7000

2 Ways You Can Win

#1 Do you write business articles?

Submit a business article to Bloggertone Between Monday March 15^th and Wednesday March 17^th

All votes and comments for the articles will take place on bizSugar, the social bookmarking site for businesses.

#2 Do you like to read business articles?

You too can also win prizes simply by voting and commenting on the Sugartone articles posted on BizSugar.

Top 10 Titles & Top 10 Commenters

There are prizes for two different categories of winners:

• Top 10 Titles – for the articles with the best titles (yepp, the best TITLE)
• Top 10 Commenters – for the people who vote the most and provide the most insightful comments 

Prizes already lined up for busy professionals just like you.

There are prizes for both the Top 10 Titles and the Top 10 Commenters

1^st Prize Winner – TOP 10 TITLES

Lead Page Machine

Lead Page Machine software runs on Windows XP, Vista and version 7.

(valued at 3500€ – this is about $5200).

Lead Page Machine is designed for the everyday non-technical small business to be able to create, launch and manage their own lead pages (aka ‘name-squeeze pages’) to help you build a massive list of email subscribers.

Within 15 minutes or less you can create and launch multiple separate lead pages for each category of customer or client you want to attract.
Advanced ‘Clone’ facility lets you create duplicates of your most successful lead pages and launch an unlimited number of variations for different traffic sources (e.g. different lead pages for Google Adwords, print advertisements, article marketing, forums, etc.)

Lead Page Machine is the brainchild of Ed Rivis, author of The Ultimate Web Marketing Strategy and E-Mail Marketing Dynamite.

Click Millionaires

6 month membership (valued at $174)

This friendly social network is dedicated to helping solopreneurs and small business owners upgrade their online marketing efforts to make more money online.

• “Ask Scott Fox”: Private online access to best-selling author Scott Fox
• Click Millionaire Resource Bank with money-making strategy documents, skill-building articles, research reports, and publications.
• 24/7 Success Coaching Forum personally moderated by Scott Fox
• The e-Riches 2.0 MP3 Interview Library:
• Click Millionaire resources to help online entrepreneurs worldwide to attract more customers.

Click Millionaires is Scott Fox’s private online marketing success coaching community.

5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success

1-Hour CD plus 33 page Report Reveals Exact Tactics You Can Easily Implement to Make Your Blog a Winner! (valued at $97)
When you study this program you will discover:

• Why you need a blog for your business
• 4 keys to creating compelling content
• How to manage your blogging time
• 3 sites to syndicate your blog content to drive more traffic
• An essential tactic for attracting business with your blog

Denise Wakeman is an Online Marketing Advisor and Founder of The Blog Squad. She helps service professionals and small business owners leverage blogs for their business, as well as strategically use social media tools to boost online visibility to get more traffic, leads, customers and opportunities.

1^st Prize Winner – TOP 10 COMMENTERS

Animoto

1 Year Subscription (valued at $249)

Animoto.com is a web application that creates MTV-style videos with the click of a button.

Users simply choose a song and images. Animoto then automatically generates a unique video for them. No two videos are ever the same.

Many of the post-production techniques that the founders used while working as producers for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC are used in Animoto’s patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor and director. The resulting video is produced in a widescreen format, containing the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

Animoto Productions is based in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

Traction Call With Gary Barnes

45 minute call with Traction Coach Gary Barnes (valued at $175)

Gary helps you to quickly get some “sand under your wheels” so you can move forward toward the life you want to live.

• Stop running your business with “one foot on the gas and the other foot on the brake”
• Live a life of vision and purpose, instead of exhausting yourself on the same old treadmill
• Create more financial success and abundance (without working yourself into the ground)
• Learn to market your business with integrity and authenticity
• Have a lot more fun in your business and your life!

Gary Barnes is called The Traction Coach and his mission in life to help people find more creativity, passion, fulfillment, and, yes, wealth in their businesses.

Click Millionaires

6 month membership (valued at $174)

This friendly social network is dedicated to helping solopreneurs and small business owners upgrade their online marketing efforts to make more money online.

• “Ask Scott Fox”: Private online access to best-selling author Scott Fox
• Click Millionaire Resource Bank with money-making strategy documents, skill-building articles, research reports, and publications.
• 24/7 Success Coaching Forum personally moderated by Scott Fox
• The e-Riches 2.0 MP3 Interview Library:
• Click Millionaire resources to help online entrepreneurs worldwide to attract more customers.

Click Millionaires is Scott Fox’s private online marketing success coaching community.

2^nd – 5^th Place Prizes for both TOP 10 TITLES & TOP 10 COMMENTERS

Start-Run-Grow

All you need to start, run, and grow your business included in one software package (valued at $49.95)

Over 45 essential business tools and services for 3 different phases of your business.

Start Your Business: From designing your logo to getting set up online, all the information you need to get up and running is just one click away.

Run Your Business: Improve your productivity and run your business more efficiently. Proven resources and tools help you stay on track and on budget.

Grow Your Business: Good marketing is essential to the health of your business. Bring in more customers, and more profits, to continually grow your business.

Start-Run-Grow runs on the Adobe Air platform so it’s both PC and Mac compatible and can be seamlessly updated as more tools are added.

These prices were kindly donated by Formspring.com

All Winners – TOP 10 TITLES & TOP 10 COMMENTERS

Books

All Top 10 Titles and Top 10 Commenters also get a mini library of 3 books/ebooks which will be chosen at random from this selection

Wordtracker Masterclass: Blogging For Business – 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales by Chris Garrett (5 books valued at $39)
Sociable by Shane Gibson & Stephan Jagger  (5 books valued at $25)
New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg (5 books valued at $16.49)
Guest Posting by Chris Garrett (5 ebooks valued at $10)

Badges

There will be badges for all of the winners to display on their blogs or websites.

Here’s How It Works

Everything starts on Monday March 15^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST.  This is when you can:

• Submit your articles on Bloggertone
• Vote for them on bizSugar.

Article Submission Deadlines: Monday March 15^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST through Wednesday March 17^th 4pm GMT / 9am EST

And to give some extra time to vote on all of the articles, the voting will continue on for 2 more days after the article submission deadline.

Article Voting Deadlines: Monday March 15^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST through Friday March 19^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST

Bloggertone’s standard guidelines outlined here.

Participate In The Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest

Don’t miss your chance to win these great prizes.  Anyone can enter the Sugartone Sweet Business Blogging Contest.  All current Bloggertoners and bizSugar members are invited to join in too!

Start writing your business articles now and be sure to craft an attention grabbing title. Then come back starting Monday March 15^th.

SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLES

Click here between Monday March 15^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST and Wednesday March 17^th 4pm GMT / 9am EST to submit your articles on Bloggertone.

VOTE ON THE ARTICLES

Click here between Monday March 15^th at 4pm GMT / 9am EST and Friday March 19^th 4pm GMT / 9am EST to go to bizSugar to vote on your articles.

Small Biz Bee has a great contest running until February 21, 2010 at 11:59pm PST. Yepp, you only have about a day from when this is posted to take your chance at winning a great HP iPAQ Glisten.

The HP iPAQ Glisten is a pretty cool looking 3G smartphone built for professionals who need to stay connected to the people and information they care about. A former Microsoft employee, I have long been a fan of the smartphone.

This quad-band (read ‘works anywhere’)  world phone, runs Windows Mobile 6.5, easily moves between work and play with advanced mobile email capabilities, multiple connectivity options, built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functionality and rich multimedia features and applications. Once stranded, in 2001, without a network connection I easily connected my smartphone to my PC and used the phone for my computers network connection. Microsoft makes some serious software.

The AT&T 3G network is available in more than 350 major metropolitan areas. AT&T also offers 3G data roaming in more than 100 countries, as well as voice calling in more than 215 countries.

The iPAQ Glisten features a full QWERTY keyboard for fast, easy and accurate messaging, including SMS/ MMS, instant messaging and e-mail.

A touch-enabled AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen delivers a crisp, clear display that easily allows you to navigate through menus, windows, and links at the touch of a finger.

Through HP’s partnership with AT&T and Microsoft, the iPAQ Glisten customers will have access to a wide variety of applications, music, ringtones, games, etc through the AT&T AppCenter and Windows Marketplace.

Go to the Small Biz Bee sight and post a comment and Tweet to enter the contest.

Win a HP iPAQ Glisten From Smallbizbee

From the HP Page

When you’re moving fast, doing a million important things each day, you need a phone that can help you keep up with all of it. You need the HP iPAQ Glisten.

Touch Screen & QWERTY

BOOST PRODUCTIVITY—WITH YOUR FINGERTIPS
• AMOLED TOUCH SCREEN 2.5″ diagonal touch screen not only provides a brilliant viewing experience, it also streamlines the way you work.
• QWERTY KEYBOARD With a five-way directional pad, it works just like a PC keyboard, making email and texting fast and easy.

Key Features

PART PHONE. PART PC. ALL BUSINESS.
• Syncs easily to your PC via Active Sync or Microsoft Exchange1
• Integrated Visual Inbox for more streamlined communications
• A single, consolidated contact list syncs to your PC for easy contact management
• Optimized Web experience lets you work–and even play–on the run1
• 256 MB SDRAM/512 MB Flash for high-speed multi-tasking
• Assisted GPS navigation2 to keep you moving in the right direction

3G with AT&T

KEEP WORKING–CROSS-TOWN OR CROSS-COUNTRY.
Connect faster, and in more places, than ever before. Send email and text at hyper-speed on the nation’s fastest 3G network.1 Take your productivity to a whole new 3G dimension.

Windows Mobile 6.5

WORK MORE EFFICIENTLY ON THE GO.
Microsoft’s latest and greatest mobile OS, Windows® 6.5, offers great new features designed to keep you connected and more productive, including a new touch interface with gesture recognition, an integrated inbox for all your recent emails, calls and texts, and a rich, optimized Web experience with Internet Explorer Mobile 6.1

Microsoft Office To Go

TAKE YOUR OFFICE WITH YOU.
Get more done on the run with the full suite of Microsoft® Office Mobile applications, including all the software you’re used to using, like Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

You might have heard of my friend and blogging consultant, Chris Garrett. He wrote the Problogger book with Darren Rowse as well as three books on programming (Chris Garrett Amazon page).

Chris has a new ebook out (Guest Posting: for Quality Links and Targeted Traffic) that tells you everything you need to know to get quality authority links and a boost in traffic, all through a quick and easy approach to guest blogging.

Right now he is offering it for the introductory price of only $10. The price has already increased once, and Chris said that it is sure to go up again as the reviews and testimonials start to pour in. Make sure you grab your copy and check out all the bonuses fast.

Specifically, you’ll discover how you can …

• Increase traffic
• Get more subscribers
• Boost your exposure and credibility
• Expand your audience reach
• Network your niche
• Build quality links that Google will love and “article marketing” cannot reach!

Check it out.

Chris also runs a forum called The Authority Blogger which teaches you how to grow an audience of people who know, like and trust you, and how to develop and sell products and services your audience really wants.

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 99

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved
by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more
reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this
advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You
will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until
they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at
photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much
possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You
are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying
is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things
that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you
at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with
people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead,
sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s
only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you
succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank
statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with
your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22
what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most
interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them
when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children,
maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the
funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do,
don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it
or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument
you’ll ever own.

Dance… even if you have nowhere to do it but your living
room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel
ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone
for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your
past and the people most likely to stick with you in the
future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people
who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you
soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians
will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll
fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable,
politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust
fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when
either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it
will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over
the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Originally by Mary Schmich
song by Baz Luhrmann

The idea of life without the internet is beyond my understanding.

I am not talking about living without the internet, of course we can all do that. I just can’t imagine how anyone can say that the internet connection that they need – for example, for a home business – is down for a week or more.

Maybe this comes from my work as a consultant building secure data centers and call centers that needed 100% uptime.

The expert drawing to the right is supposed to represent where I live. I don’t actually live in a turquoise rectangle, but you get the idea. I have the luck of living near the boarder where 2 departments – sort of like US states – come together. The red arrow is the path that one telephone line follows from the France Telecom central in the Yvelines and the blue arrow from the central that is part of Seine et Marne (2 different French departments or ’states’).

I have 2 landlines entering the house at different entry points, so if a truck crashes into the house, they can only take one line down, unless the house is totally destroyed I would still have a working telephone connection.Once I built a call center for a French hotel chain who had a similar setup – redundant phone lines, redundant power and a generator. The problem that they had was all the phone and power lines met up in one place in the basement and followed one path to the actual call center on the fifth floor. They had a fire in the underground parking just before I was called in, and the car the burned had the misfortune of being parked under the point where all power and phone lines came together.

They had a great beginning of a plan, with a single point of failure.

Electricity to Run the Internet Connection

I have redundant power in the house. Electricity from the local power company that supports my neighborhood  and a generator with enough fuel to run the house for several months – at least 2 full months in the dead of winter. Having a fuel generator is very common in France, my fuel tank is buried in the back yard and holds 3500 liters of diesel fuel. I need to manually switch over, but the downtime could be one minute or less. Side note, not related to the interent connection, is that we cook using bottled gas. As a backup here, if I forget to get a bottle, we have electric hotplates and an oven that will fill the gap as I wait a day to go get the 2 bottles replaced (haven’t needed to do that).

Then I have 2 mobile phones in the house, from 2 different carriers. Each can be bluetoothed to a hub and give 3G connection to the internet. One phone  is an iPhone 3G that has an app allowing any computer to use the phone as a hub to connect to the interent. The second phone is just a standard phone with an internet connection and it can act as a hub, but I onle get an Edge connection with this carrier.

With the Linux-based Maemo operating platform, 32GB of storage and multiple options of connectivity including access for 3G data networks, consumers no longer need to leave everything that makes them them – their email, favorite websites, social communities, images, music – anywhere but on their Nokia N900. With the Nokia N900, you don’t have to worry about missing that next great moment.

Like I said, the idea of life without the internet is beyond my understanding.

For full disclosure, I don’t actually live in a turquoise rectangle, but that really is a map of the street where I live.

Andrew Rondeau just told me about his first contest ever on building my blogs.

Andrew has some great prizes available for bloggers.  There isn’t much more one can say when faced with such an easy choice.  Simply download Andrew’s FREE Report and either send out a Tweet, Digg the post, or leave a comment and you’re entered to win.

Prize #1. The WordPress Thesis (1.6) Theme (single license value $87) will be given as first prize.

Prize #2. The WordPress Flexx Theme installed on a domain name of their choice (value $79.95)

Prize #3. A personally branded header banner by quixoticmedia, (value $60). This prize has been sponsored by David Alexander.

Prize #4. Domain name and hosting for one year supplied by HostGator (value $59.40)

Prize #5. Keyword analysis research, picking the best 6 – 8 keywords for your blog, (value $50)

Prize #6. Submission of your blog post to 40 Social bookmarking sites, submission of your blog feeds to 30+ RSS directories, (value $40)

Prize #7. 30 Day 125×125 banner ad on WebTrafficROI (value $20).

Don’t miss your opportunity.  Get over to Andrew’s Blog Now!  Whether you win the contest or not.  You win, just by taking heed to his advice.  So go… Enter To WIN

I had a constant problem with Toshiba Flash Cards which interfered with pretty much everything. Windows would crash and I was forced to restart five times (at least) a day. I wanted to disable this ‘feature’ that I never even used.

The Control Panel provides no way to disable this (waste of resources and a constant problem) program.

The Toshiba Utility tool only let me deactivate the Flash Cards. This means that the Flash Cards would not appear on screen, but they still load during startup.

Here are the steps how to uninstall Toshiba Flash Cards for good. A note; at the end of these steps you will get a message asking of you want to restart your computer now, or later. If you are going to do it now, save all your work before doing these steps.

1. Go to your Start menu and select Run
2. Type in msconfig (a window will open)
3. Go to the startup tab
4. Unclick the box in front of Toshiba
5. Click OK
6. Restart you system

No joke, I have been fighting with this for a week and finally have it gone.

I lived in Japan back in 1984 and 1985 while serving in the Marine Corps.  While there I took a ten day vacation around the main island and while in Tokyo I stayed in a rather nice hotel, unfortunately I forget the name. I was on vacation because my dad had come to visit me to try and convince me to not re-enlist in the Marine Corps and he thought that during the 10 day trip would be able to convince me to do pretty much anything except serve in the Corps.

We stayed in a nice hotel and did all the things that tourist tend to do. My father had his first experience with a squat toilet and ordering off of a menu based on pictures. We also got hopelessly lost once or twice and had to rely on a taxi to get back to our hotel.

The Older Generation

One day (like many) we were lost in downtown Tokyo. I stopped an older Japanese gentleman, about 60 years old. I asked, in my horrid Japanese, こんにちは。あなたが失われたの観光に役立つことができます (hello, can you help a lost tourist) and if he knew the museum that we were trying to find. I was able to ask directions, but I was not able to follow the answer that he gave me. I did understand that it was in the direction that we were heading, the opposite direction that he was headed.

After I obviously gave up on trying to understand and I had said the appropriate goodbyes I turned to walk where he had said and would just figure it out as I went along. The gentleman turned with me, took me by the hand and walked me down 2 city blocks, turned left and walked another block. At an intersection he pointed across the street and told me “One” and then “Left”. I asked (or at least I tried to ask) if I go one block and turn left and he answered “Hai!”

Dōmo arigatō sir, we found the museum that we would otherwise not have seen. I’ve often wondered why he helped me. A man in suit and tie, in his 60’s and obviously in a hurry stops to help the tourist. Was it because he was born between 1920 and 1925, prime age to be a soldier during the war, or are all Japanese just so helpful?

The Younger Generation

When we left that museum it was raining so we decided to yet again dare the Japanese metro, this time during rush hour.

I live in the Paris area, and the Paris metro system is no less complex than its Japanese counterpart, but in Paris the signs say things like “La Motte-Picquet Grenelle” and even if I don’t know what the words mean, I at least recognize the letters. The Tokyo metro uses Japanese characters. Of the two images below, which is easier for an American to figure out.

We got more or less to the right area and we could not find our way out of the metro (yes, stupid tourists). I was standing in front of one of the signs, with a blank look on my face I suppose, when a young lady, named Yuki if memory serves correct, approached me and said that it was obvious that we were lost. When she found out where we were going, she offered to take us to the entrance just across from the hotel.

We walked along the metro hallways and she practiced her English – excited that I was raised in Ohio because Ohio means “Hello” in Japanese. After a 10 minute walk we came to the exit, and it was still raining. Only people that have lived in Japan during the typhoon season can understand what a real rain looks like. To those that never had the experience, standing at the metro exit sort of looked like when I was behind Niagara Falls. The rain came down so hard we could not see the hotel that was just across the street.

My new-found tour guide said that she may be late for her job in a different hotel, but she would take us one metro station down the line because there was an exit that came out right in the hotel (see, I told you I was lost).

10 minute walk back to the metro, 2 minute ride and we were home. We said our goodbyes and promised that the next time we were in Tokyo we would stay at her hotel. She said that it was easy to remember because the hotel had a fleet of green Rolls Royce limousines.

The next day my dad and I were wondering the streets and happen to see the hotel that Yuki worked at. My dad had the idea to go in and speak to the manager and compliment Yuki on her being willing to help lost tourists.

We went in and asked for the manager, told our little story and explained that we would stay in his hotel on our next trip and we just wanted to thank him and his employee. The manager was very apologetic and ased us to wait while he got Yuki, becuase he had something to tell her in front of us. We waited and Yuki appeared, red-eyed, with her manager. The manager told us that because Yuki was late the day before he was oblidged to fire her, and he had just done so moments before. Yuki had been in the process of cleaning out her personal effects when we stopped in, saving her job.

Any Generation

I admit that this is just my opinion, but if you get lost in Tokyo, people are going to help you. No matter who you ask, people will help. One thing that really helps is to learn enough of the local language to ask for help, just the phrase “please help me” will probably be enough.

This story is inspired by the competition:

Win a Flip Camera in Our Travel Inspiration Competition

Summer is over so you may have a good “heart-warming” story to share with Fiveamtraveller. If you want to share your stories to enter the competition for the Flip camera the deadline is October 14th.

I like the angle of the Fiveamtraveller blog – it is for people who have to travel… the people that get up at 5am to catch their flights.

Many people begin an international career seeing travel as fun. The reality is often very long days that start bat 5am. When you are over forty 18-hour work days take their toll. I remember how lucky I felt when my telephone negotiating skills got me out of trips during weeks when I did not want to shorten my sleep.

This is the reason why Fiveamtraveller caught my eye… and @fiveamtraveller has some interesting tweets too.

I heard a good comment by a project manager recently which led me to collect a list of Project Management Sayings. Enjoy.

“A wise man does not repeat his mistakes and he does not repeat another man’s mistakes”~ Confucious.

The best nine women cannot deliver a baby in one month.

Work expands to fill the Time

Cost expands to meet the Budget

Schedules are made to be broken

If it is not measurable it is not meaningful.

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it.

Write your deadlines with erasable markers

With enough budget, resources and time, you can do anything.

There are only 24 hours in a day.

Today you idiot proof it…tomorrow a new and improved idiot arrives

Launching a project without a plan, is like climbing a tree to catch a fish

Never confuse enthusiasm with competence.

Coming to a bad decision quickly is not effective management.

Never confuse motion with progress.

None of us are as dumb as all of us.

If you can’t convince them, then confuse them.

If you expect it, inspect it.

Your inability to plan is not my emergency.

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90%.

A poorly planned project will take three times longer than expected – a well planned project only twice as long as expected.

Almost complete is not enough

Measure twice, cut once

Planning is everything and the plan is nothing

There are no good project managers – only lucky ones… the more you plan the luckier you get.

Re-establish work/life balance – begin a new crisis at home

There’s never time to plan, but there’s always time to do over

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

A change freeze is like the abominable snowman: it is a myth and would anyway melt when heat is applied.

I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

It’s faster and cheaper to do it right the first time.

The only certainty in a project is change

I am definitely going to take a course on time management… just as soon as I can work it into my schedule.

A project is complete when it starts working for you, rather than you working for it.

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t have to do it.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

I love deadlines, especially the whooshing sound they make as they go past.

Don’t be afraid to make a few mistakes….heck, even a broken clock is correct twice a day

Previously we would say, “You get what you pay for”. We should now be saying “You hope you get what you pay for.”

No matter how fast you are going, if you do not know where you are going

You always have time to do it right – regardless of the project schedule

You are in such hurry that you do not have time to put gasoline in your car.

There’s never enough time to do it right first time but there’s always enough time to go back and do it again.

On time, Under Budget, Meets Specs–Pick 2.

A fool with a tool is still a fool… Just a more productive one.

If wishes were horses, we’d be knee deep in it by now.

We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now capable of doing almost anything with nothing.

You learn something new every day, if you don’t plan carefully

An issue is a risk who’s time has come.

Given an unlimited budget and resources, an engineer will never finish a project.

Hooray!! We’ve got a plan!! – The plan will save us!!

Fast, Cheap and Accurate. Choose two.

Plan, execute and then blame the consultants.

It’s time to shoot the engineer and release the product.

Cheaper isn’t necessarily better.

Just because someone passes a test doesn’t mean they can drive.

You can have the best model in the world but if it takes hours of training to understand it, then it isn’t worth much

At some point, theory will go out the door and common sense must take over if a project is to succeed.

LinkedIn has groups that you can join. 341,175 groups as I write this.

There are 30 groups in the search results for the word Lighthouse. 1,338 results when you search food. 8 when when search Garrett (but none are directly related to Chris Garrett). With a little effort you will find at least one group, probably at least a dozen, that are directly related to your niche. Sign up to these groups and follow the discussions.

When you are choosing what group to join, look at the About this Group window which will show you the age of the group, and how many members there are. Joining a grop with only 30 people may work for you, but only if they are people that are really interested in you and  in your niche. For each small group yo join, consider joining a larger group, even if it is only partially related to your niche. You will find that a lot of people in a larger group will still be interested in your subject.

Don’t join a group on firefighting, with the intention of writing about knitting. That may seem like something that goes without saying but there are a lot of people that will join the groups with the most members and post garbage. MLM posts in a technical group. Maybe they are right to try, the numbers are more in their favor. The problem is that many group members ask to have people that make posts like this banned from the from the group.

I get the daily update, you might prefer to only see it weekly.

Then there is the answer section. I have IT questions posted on my LinkedIn home page. I only answer those there are really related to me. I avoid answering the open questions that do pop up (“what’s better black or white…”) because opinion questions on LinkedIn, like any forum, can lead into arguments that are just a waste of time.

Once in a group, write a post specifically about the niche that the group covers. I am in a group called “CrossConnects Europe: Telecom & Telephony Sales Professionals Group”. Easy enough for me to write for them. How about “IT Governance” – a subject that most people have not heard of, but was a big part of my job at Microsoft.

Once you write an article targeting that group, create a dicsussion. I’ve found that saying “I wrote a new post” annoys people. If you open a new discussion that relates to your post and link to your blog at the right point in your new discussion, it gets traffic.
I also created 2 or 3 posts about getting jobs. A lot of people who use LinkedIn are looking for work. Once you join a group you can create a new discussion or a new post in the job section. Yo have different people that read both sections, but both get traffic. Since you are only writing good content on your blog, getting a visitor that has already identified themselves as being in your niche, it is just up to you to get them to come back.

I also like to comment on other posts. I have answered off line (no no one else will see my insults) to tell people how to write a better post – or discussion title. “Jobs” does nto really draw me in. “Bilingual IT Infrastructure Senior Project Manager for Paris Area” – hmmm, that sounds a bit more like it cold match me.

On LI you can have connections, like most social media. I joined the Linked In Open Networker (LION) groups. I don’t get the up from these groups, but I go back about monthly and ID myself and ask people to connect to me. Lazy? Yes. But the people that connect with me are actually interested in me in one way or another.

There are a lot of other things to do on linked it, to prepare yourself