Personal | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

A GREAT Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was one of my more memorable ones.

The highlight was watching two of my daughters, Rebekah and Ruth, graduate with High Distinction from Riverland Community College, receiving their AA degrees. They are the third and fourth of our children to take advantage of Minnesota’s Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program, which enables industrious high school juniors and seniors to take college classes for simultaneous high school credit. Like Rachel and Jake before them, these two graduated from the community college before they graduated from high school (Rebekah’s Austin High graduation is in a couple of weeks.) Here’s a picture of our recent graduates with their proud parents:

I also was extremely pleased to receive birthday greetings from my granddaughter in Grand Rapids, MI, via her parents’ blog:

Evelyn Grace Borg wishing Grandpa Happy Birthday

I got a nice call from my son Jake, too. He lives in La Crosse, WI.

From a work perspective, it was a milestone day, as well. The video embedded below, which will be the subject of a future case study, cracked the 1 million mark in total views on YouTube. When I embedded it on our Sharing Mayo Clinic blog on April 7, it had been viewed 1,005 times over the preceding six months. As of this writing it’s at 1,108,201 views (and also was featured on the front page of msn.com yesterday, where it has been seen more than 133,000 times.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI-l0tK8Ok0]

It’s an interesting story that will, as I said, become a future case study…but I have a feeling it’s not done yet. But meanwhile you can get a bit of the back story through this great post on Sharing Mayo Clinic by Jodi Hume, who uploaded the video of the Cowans after her mother, Sharon Turner, a Mayo Clinic patient, shot it. I’ve never been associate with a “viral” video before, so it’s been fun watching the traffic for this one continue to grow.

We also have been delighted to have company for the last three days, as Rick and April Kelley and their children Christian, Gabe, Jake, Elijah, Grace, Ryle and Micah visited us from Louisville. Ruthie and Christian are “exclusive friends,” which is the motivation for the 700+ mile trip, but our families have become close, too.

The many Happy Birthday wishes I received on Facebook and Twitter were touching, too. It’s amazing how these social platforms can bring people together.

Lisa and I are so thankful to God for our many blessings. And if I’ve had a better birthday, I don’t remember it. This is one I won’t be forgetting.

Phillies Fun

As I write this I’m sitting in the press box at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, where the Phillies have just defeated the Washington Nationals 13-11. It was a come-from-behind victory that featured two grand slams by the Phillies (one by Ryan Howard and the other by Raul Ibanez.) Here’s the mlb.com wrap-up of the game.

I was in town to give a presentation on social media to the National Cancer Institute Public Affairs Network, and I got media credentials for the day in order to interview Jayson Werth, the Phillies’ starting right fielder, whose career was resurrected by seeing Dr. Richard Berger, a Mayo Clinic orthopedic surgeon and wrist specialist. I’ll have a post with my interview with Jayson on the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog in the next day or so.

Update: here’s the post with the video interview of Jayson.

But meanwhile, here are a few of the photos from my excellent adventure (click to enlarge):

The statue of Mike Schmidt from outside the ballpark

The view of batting practice from the dugout

The lineups for the game (in the press box)

The grounds crew cleans up after the game

Thanks to the Phillies organization for their hospitality, and to Jayson for being willing to do the interview. He has a really great story, and I look forward to being able to have him tell it in his own words on Sharing Mayo Clinic.

Congratulations, Ruthie!

We now interrupt the regular social media curriculum for a point of paternal pride.

As I’ve mentioned previously (here, here and here at least), several of my kids have been involved in an amazing program called Bible Bowl, in which the participants (at least the most dedicated ones) memorize huge chunks of the Bible (last year it was the Gospel of John, 1-2 Peter and 1-3 John) and then compete in a contest similar to the old College Bowl based on that text. You know, buzz in on the toss-ups, and then if you get them you earn the right to answer additional questions for bonus points.

My youngest daughter, Ruthie, has been our most intense Bible Bowler. It’s her sport. When basketball season is over her siblings (Bekah and Joe) will become more actively involved, but they couldn’t go with her this weekend to the first major tournament of the year, the Kentucky Christian University round robin. Until this point in the year the competitions are all in the local round robins, but this tournament had kids from Minnesota, Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan, Kansas, Florida and Iowa. (No particular order in the list, but I always like to leave Iowa for last) 😉

Lisa and I couldn’t go to the tournament, but it was fun to watch the results come in online as they were posted to the Bible Bowl site.

As you can see from the final standings and her round-by-round results below (click to enlarge), Ruthie got off to a slow start but came on strong to win in the 23-team tournament.

After the tournament was completed, we also got the pleasure of calling Ruthie to tell her that she had received a letter saying she had advanced to Finalist status in the National Merit Scholarship program.

She was pretty excited about that, too. She said, “Wow! This is my lucky day! Things are going so well, I should go out and buy stocks or something.”

Ruthie’s really smart, but sometimes lacks practical sense. I had to remind her it was Saturday, and the markets were closed.

But at least she’s smart enough that she didn’t say she should go buy a lottery ticket.

As a postscript, we learned early this afternoon that Ruthie took first place in what they call the “Brain Test,” which is an insanely difficult 200-point exam covering the entire text memorized to this point. Ruthie scored a 192.

Ruthie’s the one on the left in the picture below (from last Christmas, when she and her sisters received some family heirloom aprons as part of their gifts from my parents.) Rachel, our oldest daughter (and first Bible Bowler) and the mother of our first grandchild, is in the middle, and Bekah (our lady hoopster) is on the right.

Lisa and I are extremely blessed, and this is only the female half of our offspring!

Sunday Drivers

When I was a youngster, people who drove particularly slowly were disparagingly called “Sunday Drivers.” The idea was that they must only drive once a week on the way to church.

The good thing about Sunday Drivers is they rarely got in accidents, and if they did they wouldn’t do much damage at such low velocities.

My wife, Lisa, ran across this video yesterday that shows some motorists who would be well advised to limit their driving to once a week…or less. It’s not really related to SMUG coursework, but I’m sharing it just for fun, and hoping your Sunday driving experience today is better than these:

Continue reading “Sunday Drivers”

Andy Knows Word of Mouth

Andy Sernovitz from the Blog Council understands word of mouth better than almost anyone in business today.

He recently sent a gift to say thanks for participating in BlogWell. He knows that if you send someone a pound of candy, they’re likely to appreciate it. If you send two pounds, they’ll tell their office mates and share the candy.

But if you send a three-pound bag of M&M’s they’ll do a blog post with a photo.

Or at least I will.