Whew! With all the serious stuff lately, I haven’t had time to catch up with what’s going on in my little world (like you all are just dying to know). :-) A few things…

Adoption

Melanie and I are sitting on our butts with the adoption. We have finished all of our tasks, but now we’re looking/waiting for a baby. Why am I telling you? We just need one person. Yeah, it’s a little strange for most of you. To y’all, I’m just a guy writing about HR. Well, luckily there’s a place you can go to learn all about the hope for adoption that I share with my wife. Some of my great friends at HRev took the time to ask about how it was going, and I appreciate the sincerity and concern!

HR Carnival

Back when I did my first HR blog carnival, I prepared everyone with a post about how they need to share the stuff with people outside our little bubble. I think it’s pretty darn funny that Lance and Laurie finished off HRev with the same advice. Anyway, I am running the carnival again here this week, and the theme will be the event that I helped to create, so I’m really excited about bringing all that HRev goodness back to the home front. If you would like to contribute but don’t have a blog, I take email submissions!

Oh, the Irony

I just realized something. I wrote a post a while back about how I was so productive and I planned to teach you all a few ideas on how to do the same. Then I never even finished writing the series. Is that hilarious or what?

New eBook Project

I’ve been looking for my next eBook topic. I haven’t written one since Rock the PHR. Nothing has really sounded that appealing to me. But one day last week I had lunch with my web design partner and he mentioned a recent post as a great point of expansion. All that for a teaser, huh? :-)

Getting Out of HR

Check out my Google Reader screenshot above. That’s how I read the blogs and keep up with everything that goes on in the blogging world. I’m cutting HR blogs and adding other subscriptions to my Google Reader (click here to learn how to use Google Reader). I love you guys. Really. But there are two constraints. First, I can’t keep up with everyone. After resigning myself to that fact, I moved on to the second reason. My life is more than just human resources, and I have been trimming my HR blogs and adding more on topics like marriage, relationships, communication, web design, graphic design, search engine optimization, marketing, and sales. Way off topic for the day job, but infinitely helpful in so many ways.

The Breakup

I alerted the people on the free Rock the PHR newsletter this week, but some of the rest of you may be interested. Ning, who has traditionally offered free social network building tools, is canceling their free service. That means I get to scramble for another option or just pay the fee. And due to their customer service flub I mentioned, I think there are better alternatives. Breaking up is hard to do… I’ve used them for almost half  a year to run a network that is a bonus benefit to those who purchase the RTPHR eBook, and now I’m on the hunt again for another option.

Blog Stuff

I had a great chat on blogging tools and tips last week with Charlie Judy of HR Fishbowl. When I had my super-secret Rock Your Blog group running a few months back, I wrote a few articles with ideas on Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Feedburner, and search engine optimization. That’s Greek to most of you, but it’s like heroin for us bloggers. ;-) Anyway, I’m putting them together into a guide and have made some videos showing how to do general stuff with WordPress. If anyone’s interested in learning how to get a blog off the ground, just let me know and I’ll hook you up. Or if you’re wondering if blogging is even a remote possibility for you, I can talk you through that, too. I’m always up for some email.

HRCI-You’re Doing it Wrong

I have to let it go. HRCI (the Human Resources Certification Institute) is stepping into social media and they are going about it all wrong. But instead of being purely negative and jumping down their collective throats, I want to offer some suggestions and positive points. I should have a post up on this by Friday. Stay tuned.

And that’s about all I have going at this exact second… What about you? Doing anything interesting? Don’t forget to stop back by on Wednesday for a great collection of HRevolution posts as I host the HR blog carnival!