Woodward Lecture at MCLA

Tonight, a friend and I went to hear Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, speak at MCLA (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts) in North Adams. (That's an old photo of Bernstein and Woodward at The Washington Post back in 1976 - love the hair and neckties!).

Tonight's lecture was a kickoff of the college's new Political Science major and Woodward delivered the first official Public Policy Lecture for the program. Interestingly enough, I learned that he has authored or co-authored more #1 best selling non-fiction books than any other contemporary American writer! I think it was really a feather in MCLA's cap to have a speaker of such stature and capability come to lecture.

The Church Street Center was filled to capacity and Woodward did not disappoint! (Is it just me, or does he have a striking similarity to George Segal?) As I listened to him talk, several thoughts flowed through my mind:

• Wow - why isn't he hosting a Sunday morning political talk show, like "This Week" or "Face the Nation"? He certainly knows all the players (and then some!), he has the intellect and perception to ask the pointed questions, and the personal presence to come accross well on TV.
• Wow - his keen awareness of the people, the politics, and what's going on with our country really inspired me to keep myself in the know a little better.
• Wow - I'd like to take a page or two from his book (I mean his MANY books!) and challenge my own writing to include topics of greater importance.

I also liked hearing Woodward talk about Katharine Graham and her leadership of The Post. He said that she had what he considered the best management style one could have - Mind On, Hands Off. This is definitely something to aspire to as a manager myself.

Overall, what a terrific event; my mind was stretched, I was personally inspired, and feel motivated to think and write about more challenging topics than I currently do.

Going to Inauguration

Yay - we're so excited!

Ever since election night, we've been thinking about attending the inauguration. My daughter has asked if that could be her birthday gift for her sweet sixteenth, and I've really been hoping I could make it happen.

Well, I'm happy to report, we finally found a hotel in DC! I've been searching online forever, and was only finding hotels at $1,000 a night and up, but I somehow stumbled upon a site that featured a Motel 6 on Georgia Ave. (It's very close to Walter Reed, where I was stationed during my Army Medic training many years ago.) The price isn't toooo bad, and there really doesn't seem to be anything else available and affordable, so we decided to book it!

So, here's the plan:

• Sunday, 1/18 - drive to DC. We've done this before - we visited there a few years ago for our summer vacation, but it's been a while. Mapquest says it should take about 7 hours or so. It will be interesting to see what kind of traffic we hit. This day should be fun, since Road Trips are one of our favorite things. (Reminder to self - have car serviced!)
• Monday, 1/19 - learn how to us the metro system. plan our route to the inauguration site, and scope out the scene at the national mall. We've seen most of the museums and monuments, but it might be nice to visit the Lincoln Memorial again. And, the Washington Monument was closed for repairs the last time we were there. I've been up it, but my daughter hasn't, so we could see if it's open this time.
• Tuesday, 1/20 - the metro will have special inauguration hours on this day, starting at 4 am. I don't know that we'll get up THAT early, but I am thinking we'd like to take it around 5 or 6 am, just to avoid being in crushing crowds during the ride, if at all possible. I've also ordered good binoculars, since I'm guessing it will be difficult to see anything. And, we're bringing lots of hand warmers. There are restrictions on the types of bags we can carry and the items we can bring, but we're hoping to bring water, snacks, cameras and maybe the camcorder - I'd like to interview random strangers and create my own iReport (my daughter isn't wild about this idea!). We're expecting that prices for food and water will be through the roof. Then, our plan is to let the crowds disperse a bit before taking the metro back to the hotel late in the day.
• Wednesday, 1/21 - drive back home, hoping that outbound traffic isn't toooooo horrible; maybe we'll leave early in the am before all of the hotel checkout times go into effect!

So, that's the plan. I do think this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, that the crowds and cold will be a challenge, and that it will be fun to part of the excitement and the event.

Increasing Blog Hits

My main goal with my blog is not to increase hits. It's to:

• Learn how to manage a blog.
• Learn how to work with gadgets and other technical aspects of blogging.
• Build a base of writing, and try to post often to keep my writing skills at least active.
• Discover what type of content is of interest to others out in the world.

That being said, it's still fun when I get a visit from a new state or country, or when I all of a sudden experience an incredible number of hits all at once.

Here's what I discovered about blog hits...New Ideas Welcome averages about 15 visits per day (I know this from my use of Google Analytics - click this link for directions on getting your own FREE account; that's a sample of my Analytics "dashboard" above.) Recently, though, I unwittingly created two blog posts that created an extreme spike in hits. One post referenced Facebook and social media and the other post discussed a prank bomb threat. On each of those days, my visits spiked to an average of 46 hits! That's an increase of 215%!!!! Just from using certain words.

What's also interesting is that the hits didn't come from people searching those terms. I know that from my Feedjit tracking tool, which helps me know if someone found my blog by using a search phrase, arrived directly through bookmarking, or happened upon it by clicking Next Blog. On the days when my hits were off the charts (at least MY charts), visitors found me by clicking Next Blog.

My conclusion from all of this is that certain popular or current words and phrases cause a blog to pop up more frequently during blog browsing. Since I again used those key words in this blog content, it will be interesting to see if I again have such a spike. I'll let you know...

(12/7/08 Follow up note: use of the keywords in this blog post did NOT increase hits. Hmmm...that means it's not the words themselves; it must be something else that I haven't figured out yet.)