I have moved the contents of this blog to a new host. The new contents are now at www.baxterwriteblog.com, which is pretty much the same content. This old version of the material can be reached at www.baxterwrite.com/blog.

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Debra Baxter

We all have gifts and talents, and we can be more successful if we leverage our strengths rather than trying to build on our weaknesses. This was the premise for the presentation at a recent meeting of the Heart of Illinois ASTD in Peoria, Illinois, by member John Munoz. Sounds obvious, right? However, we often look at our strengths and weaknesses and put our time and energy into improving our weak areas rather than plugging in to what we love and are naturally good at. The often dreaded performance review employees go through leads to the same thing–employees are sent to seminars to improve in their areas of weakness. (I’ve experienced that.) John has learned from reading books by Marcus Buckingham that we can be more successful if we focus on our strengths.

John told us about three books that have changed his life in the past couple of years and the way he leads others.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently

Now, Discover Your Strengths

Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance

John described six steps for leveraging your strengths.

1. Bust the myths. For example, as you grow your personality changes with the truth. Instead, when you grow you become more of who you are.
2. Capture, clarity, and confirm your strengths. When you’re doing something, does it make you feel strong or weak?
3. Set your strengths free by asking how you can make the most of your strengths.
4. Put a stop to weaknesses. Either delegate them or do them first each day so you can set them aside.
5. Speak up. Have a  meaningful conversation with whoever you need to in order to be able to use your strengths. Volunteer your strengths to the team.
6. Build strong habits that continue the process of clarifying your strengths.

For more, go to http://marcusbuckingham.com

Embassy Suites Conference Center, East Peoria, IL, June 30, 2009, 5 to 8:30 PM.

Hosted by Doris Symonds.  http://www.talktodorisnow.com

Novus Networking www.novusnetworking.com

Thursday, May 21, 2009, 5:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Location: Peoria NEXT Innovation Center — 801 W. Main Street, Peoria, IL
$10 admission price includes drinks and hors d’oeurves.

A Panel Discussion:
Ross Miller from Bradley’s Turner Center for Entrepreneurship
— Ross offers a check-list of items to know when starting a business.
Rich Gordon of Gordon Instrument Labs
— Rich gives us a first-hand account of managing a business through difficult times.
Linda Krendick of PTAC
—Linda explains the steps to obtaining government contracts for your start-up business.

In a time of layoffs and early retirement, many experienced workers consider starting their own business. But it pays to listen to the experts. Our panel of advisors will help you navigate the choppy waters of entrepreneurship.

Network with training and development professionals at a luncheon hosted by the Heart of Illinois Chapter of ASTD on Tuesday, May 19th and hear John P. Munoz, Assistant Vice President and Manager of Training and Development for Citizens First National Bank, speak about identifying and leveraging your “Strengths” to thrive – not just survive – in today’s climate. The event will be held from 11am to 1pm at the Illinois Central College North Campus in Cedar Hall 102 on University Avenue in Peoria. The cost is $20 for members and $30 for nonmembers. Prepaid reservations are required by Monday, May 11th to guarantee a lunch. RSVP to Amy Pace at amy@astdhoi.org or (309) 253-1669.

Are you part of a small- to medium-sized business? A writer with content to sell? You can set up your own courses in a cost effective way with a learning management system called SimplyDigi. Consider the two options described below.

1) Set up your own university. You get help with setup, but then take care of your own technical support. To see what your university might look like, go to this site for IHN University, which uses SimplyDigi.

2) Set up courses at a site called O3 Learning. The company, Oceans Three, sets up the course with your content and provides technical support. You earn a percentage of the class fee for each student. https://www.o3learning.com/ets/welcome.aspx

To see a site with courses added, go to IHN University. https://www.ihnuniversity.com/ets/catalog/ViewCourses.aspx

Students click on a course to pay for and start the course.

If you would like to have the capacity to track and monitor courses taken, scores, etc., Oceans Three can help you with that too.

If you are interested, please contact me at info@baxterwrite.com.

Debra Baxter

If you’re new to Twitter, as I am, you might wonder “how it could possibly be useful to you as a work tool.”  Here’s how, from Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, copyeditor.

1. Go to your Twitter home page. (If you don’t have one, go to http://twitter.com and sign up.) At the bottom of the page, click the Search link.

2. In the search box, type in the word “copyeditor” (without the quotation marks) and then click Search.

3. The search results will list recent tweets [meaning "posts to Twitter"] that use the word “copyeditor”; some of these, sometimes, will be from people who need a copyeditor. (Lots of other times, people will just be blabbing about something related to copyeditors.) Up in the right-hand corner of the results page, click the link, next to the little orange square, that reads “Feed for this query.”

4. On the page that you’re taken to, click on the “Subscribe to this feed” link, near the top. Then click the Subscribe button in the little box that pops up. Now, every time there are more tweets containing the word “copyeditor,” you will get an e-mail letting you know about them. Reply to any of the tweets that interest you; you might decide to follow [monitor] some of the people in the list of tweets.

5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for related words, such as “copyediting,” “copy editor,” “medical editor,” “medical editing,” “proofreading,” “proofreader,” “indexer,” “indexing,” “translating,” “translator,” “desktop publishing,” and “desktop publisher,” “book designer,” “book production,” and “publishing.” Voila! News of potential gigs will periodically arrive in your e-mail in-box!

6. If there are any subjects that you’re interested in reading about in addition to work-related ones, you can use Twitter the same way for them.

Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, ELS (board-certified editor in the life
sciences)
KOK Edit: Your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM)
http://www.kokedit.com
https://twitter.com/KOKEdit

Author of “Getting Started as a Freelance Copyeditor”
http://www.kokedit.com/library.shtml#gettingstarted

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The next meeting of Spark Freelance for communication professionals will be Thursday, May 14, at Leonardo’s La Gondola, on War Memorial Drive, at 6:00 p.m.  For pizza and soda or a beer, please bring $10. Soda cups are refillable. You can also order individually.  Please RSVP to dbaxter@baxterwrite.com by May 13.

If you have a great resource to share, such as a book or website, please bring it.  Also, Carrie Woodard from Soup 2 Nuts, Websites & Graphics, has volunteered to design a new logo for our group. We may take this opportunity to change the name of our group, so we need to decide on that first.  We will try to keep that discussion brief!

This is a great video showing books being bound.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_s_lS9ysJ4

About 19 years ago, I was thrilled to see the first book I edited for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, Applying AutoSketch, being printed and bound. It was like the video, only the video shows much more detail for the process.

Most of our books were printed at four-color presses in other states, but Applying AutoSketch was a one-color, soft cover textbook (for drafting software) that could be printed locally in the Peoria, Illinois area. Watching all the automated machinery was amazing. The best part of seeing “my” book was watching each copy zip through an automated machine, cover and all. I still have a copy, signed by the authors, John Horstketter and Wayne Elinger. They were two of the nicest authors I ever worked with.

Amazingly enough, it’s still for sale.

Applying Autosketch: A Step by Step Approach (For Autosketch 2.0)

Need tools and resources? Check out these sites.

85+ Tools & Resources for Freelancers and Web Workers

http://mashable.com/2009/03/03/freelance/

100 Top Freelance Blogs

http://www.odesk.com/blog/2009/04/top-100-freelance-blogs/