This is a wee bitty survey (especially for kids) about how you find new reads and where you get the books. Easy to fill out. All multiple click. It’s so quick, if you blink, you’ll miss it.

No personal information is collected although I promise to make your answers famous when I go to New York.

Click here to take survey

Through the years, as my boys have gotten older, Santa has gotten a bit more clumsy when he visits our house. Spilling ashes from the Chimney. Dropping a worn piece of reindeer harness, complete with bell, in our driveway. Leaving footprints on my rug (not too happy with Santa that year).  Santa even lost his drivers license in our home. Had to send that puppy back to the North Pole and quick! All these mishaps had their desired effect and belief in the Jolly Old Elf ran high. Alas, children age, get curious, pay more attention to where the Christmas list goes and actually look behind the water heater and in the guest room closet. That’s where the internet can help. Check out these sites and see if Christmas Cheer isn’t restored a bit in your house. Oh. And you don’t need to be a kid to have fun with them:

This year’s favorite: The PNP, short for Portable North Pole.

Santa Chat's It Up

Of course you can always track Santa on his epic journey: Norad does a great job!

And then you can Twitter with Santa, and Mrs. Claus.

Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth to Men of Good Will!

Your President: Lisa Qualls – @lqualls4444 She will keep us in line and on task. Lisa has the project management and organizational skills we’ll need and a strong whip hand for when we get too rowdy.

Your Vice-President: Ryan Flannagan – @ryanflannagan If any of us start lagging in energy or motivation, we’ll just ramp up Ryan. He’s got enough for all of us.

Your Awareness Chairperson: Whitney Mathews – @whitneymathews Whitney was born to this medium. With her connections, intellect and savvy we won’t just be on the social media map we’ll BE the social media map!

Your Education Chairperson: Mark Van Baale – @markvanbaale Mark’s already taken on educating big business. Keeping the rest of us up to speed ought to be a cake walk. Tune in to Mark’s tweet stream for great info.

Your Industry Leader/Adoption of Standards Chairperson: Michael Burns – @wrytir Michael has already handled this role for other organizations and has exceptional taste in wine. I’m willing to be lead by anybody who is going to bring me to a good Malbec.

Your Technology Chairperson: Jeff Smith – @jeffisageek I’m pretty sure Jeff managed to UStream his own birth. And when the google cranial implants are available, Jeff will get the Beta invite. We are in awesomely geeky hands here, folks!

Your Advocacy Chairperson: Jenn Bailey – @jennbailey That’s me. All I can say is, I’ll do my best.

This last weekend, the guys and I decided we’d tackle the “Harry Potter series” hidden in the Overland Park Arboretum. It would be great. We’d knock out 7 letterboxes in one go. I printed out our instructions, we grabbed our stamps, books and some water and away we went. In the old days, when the kids were young, I used to do more prep work before we’d head out on a hunt, i.e. read over the directions, make sure the hike and search wouldn’t be too hard, etc. But I’ve got big kids now, 10, 13 and 15. What could thwart us in an Arboretum?

Gathering at the Visitor’s Center we perused the instructions for the 1st box. Half of them were in code. A Vigenere cipher to be exact. Yeah. I had the same blank look on my face. We grabbed a site map, hoping to be able to reason out enough of the clues so we could find the box without having to decode the cipher. After 20 minutes of tracking down one path then another it became pretty clear we needed those coded instructions.

That’s when we thought of the iPhone.

Within a minute we’d found a Vigenere cipher website. We typed in the gobblety gook, provided the key word (answer to a Harry Potter question) and hit “decrypt”. Ta Daa! There were our essential directions. We were on our way.

Until we weren’t. We had to take a compass reading. I scrounged through our pack even though I KNEW there was no compass in there. That’s when my oldest said, “Mom. There’s probably an App for it.” He snatched the iPhone out of its mesh pocket and, yes, found us a compass application from the App Store. And it was free. Onward we go!

The iPhone compass sent us deeper into the forest. Further from other hikers. Which was lovely, because that is why we saw the deer. You can see them too because the iPhone has a pretty good camera (for a phone). As the sun lowered and we grew weary, the iPhone gave us one last treat. A call from home. Kevin (my husband, their dad) said dinner would be on the table in 1/2 hour. Awesome. According to iPhone’s GPS, we could make it in 20 minutes.

So it was a good weekend. A grand weekend. But it could have been crap! Want to turn sad kids into glad kids? The iPhone’s got an App for that, too.

Customers want a personal relationship.

• 78% of consumers use peer recommendations when considering products.
• 90% of people who can TiVo through advertisements do.
• 96% of Generation Y (ages 16 – 27) are on social networks.
• Only 14% of consumers say they trust traditional advertising.

Business. What does this mean for you?

If you refuse to know, like and trust your customers, they won’t want to know, like and trust you. They won’t listen.

If you’re shouting your message at people who have the ability to turn you off, they will.

Your customers aren’t going to go looking for you. You have to go where they are and they are on the internet.

If you’re excited by reaching 14% of your potential, keep doing what you’re doing.

Currently I am sitting at my hotel room, hunched over the desk in the early smog of an LA morning, praying that the wonderful people I taught about blogging yesterday haven’t yet clicked through to this page yet. So sorry, SCBWI-ers. I’ve set a poor example for all of the strong words, opinions and urgings I gave you yesterday. I’ve been using the excuse of the cobbler – so busy fixing other people’s shoes, I’ve had no time for my own. I’m throwing out a last bit of advice on that. (Consider it a bonus for yesterday’s session.)

There are no excuses. Your blog is your baby. You Must feed it and love it.

So, to prove my own renewed commitment to my blog, that it will receive the same love and care I lavish on others, I present this updated post, this apology – “I’m sorry blog” and my shoes. (They may be a little weird looking, but they’re mine and I love them.)

Overheard in Omaha

Jason Fried with 37 Signals – “Planning is really guessing. Don’t focus on planning. Focus on Doing.”

Jason gets some "visual assistance" from Gary.

Joe Olsen with Phenomblue – “Look for opportunities around you. Find other companies that can help you do bigger business.”

Christina Maki with The Social Lites – “They’re throwing a Vegan Feast at the Secret Penguin? I haz a happy!”

Micah Baldwin with Lijit – “Since we’re supposed to be transparent, this is my DNA. Those 3 lines on the left say I’m male. That huge blob in the middle. That’s my brain capacity. And those 3 big lines over there, that’s my penis size.”

Micah gets transparent.

Unknown woman to Simon Kuo with LightThread – “Is this like a Star Trek convention or something?”

Jeffrey Kalmikoff with Threadless – “If your brand was a person, would you be friends with it?”

Gary Vaynerchuk with Wine Library – “Story telling IS the game.”

Gary does his best impression of the ShamWow guy.

Steve Klein – Steve is a self-employed web designer and was nominate by his sister, Linda. She was hoping this would be a way to “give a little back” for all that Steve does for her, their family and others.

Mike Wasmer – Mike is an Autism advocate who is hoping Social Media will help him educate and influence people, communities and lawmakers.

Gentlemen, welcome to the Boot Camp. Now drop and give me 20!!

So, how does that make you a hero? Because we’re offering a scholarship to two deserving people and you get to help us find them. We know there are people out there who could benefit from this training. We also know that, with our current economy, the person who might benefit most, might not be able to afford it. We’re asking you to nominate yourself, or nominate someone else to take part in this in-depth, small group seminar for FREE!  Social Media is all about sharing and empowering the individual. Our three companies have encountered the generosity of this community and we are thrilled to pay it forward.

All you have to do is let us know how you or your candidate would benefit from this training. Comment here, or contact skinkade@aspirekc.com, alicia@thebrandatwork.com or jenn@thesociallites.com by End-of-Business on Friday, April 17th. Scholarship winners will be notified Monday, April 20th and announced here on The Social Lites blog.

Thanks for joining the fun and spreading the word. We can’t wait to give somebody . . . hang on! . . . two somebodies, an awesome opportunity!