Picks of the Week: October 17 - 23, 2010

Website of the Week – Fast Company Magazine Resource Centers of Excellence
Fast Company Magazine has launched two new online resource centers focusing on leadership and innovation. The Resource Centers of Excellence blend new Web-only content, material from the magazine’s archives, and additional tools and services -- including online discussions and polls.. In the future, the magazine plans to roll out additional resource centers.

For innovation resources, go to: www.fastcompany.com/resources/innovation.

For leadership resources, go to: www.fastcompany.com/resources/leadership.


Publication of the Week -- The Five Most Important Questions Self Assessment Tool: Participant Workbook, 3rd Edition by Peter F. Drucker, Leader to Leader Institute
From the publisher: The new edition of this transformational tool offers leaders a critical resource for better understanding their organizations and themselves, honing their skills to become accomplished long-range planners and strategic thinkers. By working through the Participant Workbook, leaders will gain the insight needed to plan for results, learn from customers and clients, and ascertain how to achieve extraordinary levels of performance. The Participant Workbook draws on Peter F. Drucker's The Five Most Important Questions and is grounded in his management philosophies that address the critical aspects that make organizations viable and valuable entities. When leaders answer these questions thoughtfully and address them with purpose, these questions take one down a path to organizational transformation and enlightenment. By leveraging these essential questions, the Participant Workbook challenges leaders to take a close look at the very heart of their organization and what drives it, giving them a means to assess: how to be and how to develop quality, character, mind-set, values, and courage. Drucker's The Five Most Important Questions lead to spirited discussions and action, inspiring positive change and renewed focus. Designed for today's busy professionals, this concise, clear, and accessible workbook for social sector, nonprofit, and socially minded business and government leaders can be used as preparation for a workshop, organizational self-assessment, or as a stand-alone leadership development tool for individuals looking to develop themselves and their organizations. Click to preview this book on Amazon.com.


Trend of the Week – Technology Trends Among People of Color
Here is a summary of recent research highlights by Pew Internet Project Senior Research Specialist Aaron Smith:

• Trend #1: The internet and broadband populations have become more diverse over the last decade, although key disparities do remain. Over the last decade the internet population has come to much more closely resemble the racial composition of the population as a whole. Between 2000 and 2010 the proportion of internet users who are black or Latino has nearly doubled—from 11% to 21%. At the same time, African-Americans remain somewhat less likely than whites to go online.

• Trend #2: Access to the digital world is increasingly being untethered from the desktop, and this is especially true for people of color. Both blacks and English-speaking Latinos are more likely to own a mobile phone than whites. Foreign-born Latinos trail their Native-born counterparts in cell phone ownership, but this gap is significantly smaller than the gap in internet use between these groups. Moreover, minority adults use a much wider range of their cell phones’ capabilities.

• Trend #3: Minority internet users don’t just use the social web at higher rates, their attitudes towards these tools differ as well. Minority adults also outpace whites in their use of social technologies. Among internet users, seven in ten blacks and English-speaking Latinos use social networking sites—significantly higher than the six in ten whites who do so. Indeed, nearly half of black internet users go to a social networking site on a typical day. Just one third of white internet users do so on a daily basis.

For more information including links to relevant research, go to: http://www.pewinternet.org.


Resource of the Week – Overview of Friend-to-Friend Fundraising Tools
Mashable has compiled a useful look at ten different tools you can use to ask people to fundraise for your nonprofit online. Go to: http://mashable.com.


Tech Tip of the Week -- Freeze a Formula into its Current Value

To freeze a formula into its current value:

• Select the formula
• Press F2 (Edit)
• Press F9 (Calc)
• Press Enter

Now you can copy or move the value anywhere you need it. This trick works in all versions of Excel, even 2007!