Lee Aase | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

A Sobering and Sad Yet Proud Day

I’m not talking about the national elections (except a bit at the end.) I experienced all of these emotions before noon yesterday, as we attended the funeral for my aunt Donna, who passed away Nov. 1 after having Alzheimer’s for about 13 years. A funeral is always sobering, but Donna’s was more so personally because she was my Mom’s sister, and she developed symptoms when she was just 55. I’m only 10 years younger now than she was then. It makes me realize anew how precious each day is.

Donna’s husband Rod has been amazing through the whole process, first caring for her at home and then faithfully going to visit her every day in the nursing home, even when she long ago ceased to recognize him. Rod exemplified “in sickness and in health…as long as you both shall live.” I want to honor him and tell the world how thankful we are for his love for Donna, and how proud we are of him. So I just did.

Another proud moment came in the afternoon, when we returned home and took the family out for our civic experience in voting. My daughter Rebekah cast her first ballot.

Bekah and her parents contributed 3 votes of Sen. Norm Coleman’s (at this writing) 762-vote margin over Al Franken in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. A recount is coming, but we don’t have hanging or dimpled chads like Florida (we mostly have optical scanning of fill-in-the-circle ballots), and the precincts outstanding are from remote areas of the northern Minnesota arrowhead where there probably aren’t enough votes to make up the difference.

So it was a day of mixed emotions, but the big lesson we took from Uncle Rod is that how you handle adversity is what matters most, and from the election we again saw that every vote counted. And in the Minnesota Senate race, it will be counted again.

Facebook 104: Intro to Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are a great way to gather people with a common interest, and have a common space for them to interact.

There are three basic kinds of groups in Facebook:

Open Groups – Anyone can join these, and they can form on a whim. In fact, as you are categorizing you group, one of the choices in the drop-down menu is “Just for fun – Totally Pointless.” Later in the curriculum (Facebook 120) I will show you just how easy it is to create a group. That doesn’t mean it will have any members, but starting the group is simple. And of course if you’re a SMUGgle you really should join the SMUG Facebook group.

Closed Groups – A limited portion of these groups can be seen by non-members, and they can request to join, but group administrators have to invite new members or approve those requesting access. This, for example, was the group type we used to share video and photos of my new granddaughter, Evelyn Grace. So if you want a moderate level of privacy, a closed group is a good option.

Secret Groups – These are quite private, and are not displayed on any of their members’ profiles. As I said here, don’t store bank account numbers or nuclear launch codes in a secret group, but for a fairly secure way of interacting with a defined group of Facebook users, a secret group can work. These are a little harder to form, in that you have to invite Facebook friends; they can’t request to join because they won’t be able to even have access to make the request. A good way around this is to form the group as closed, but then change it to secret once everyone has joined.

Members of groups don’t need to be “friends” in Facebook, so a group can be a way of allowing people with a common interest to interact. So I established Facebook groups for my daughter’s basketball team last year and her volleyball team this year. We’ll do this again for basketball season. So we can share links to news stories and upload video and photos, all without a bunch of high school students needing to be my “friends.”

If the people who are part of your “target population” are already in Facebook, a group can be a great way to bring them together, as we did for this Mayo Clinic Career Festival group, where we added about 350 members in a single day.

If you’re forming a group entirely made up of people from your workplace, a Yammer Group is a much better option than a Facebook group. But if you need to mix people from your workplace with others outside your company, a Facebook group can be a good solution.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…or maybe ahead of you. What if you don’t know how to invite a friend?