I came across a great essay in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ sub req) that has one of the best quotes on explaining that blogging isn't just for kids...and that you're not just reaching kids, or moms, or geeks when you target bloggers!

Blogging often is seen as a young person's game. But I think it's a near-perfect pastime for me and others who have retired or are approaching retirement -- and our numbers in the blogosphere are growing daily.

In fact, blogging is also for centinarians:

Now there are thousands -- including 108-year-old Olive Riley, who lives in Australia and blogs at Life of Riley (www.allaboutolive.com.au) with the help of her friend Mike Rubbo.

I talk about this in seminars and events all the time and am even pitching a few folks on the idea that blogging is for the masses (at least, now it is!) and until you do a bit of exploration, you never know who you can reach!

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Chicago working on the new AT&T wireless setup here...thanks, in part to the Starbucks Ideas, AT&T partnered with Starbucks (or, was that the other way around?) to offer 2 free hours of wifi per day with a registered sbux card (I'm sure that certain restrictions apply...). I've been a T-mobile customer for the past year, only because they had the relationship with Sbux... I'm going to drop T-mobile as soon as my agreement is up next month, as I now have no use for them whatsoever.

I still remain a hardcore Boingo fan. The $21.95/month for Boingo has saved me hundreds in Wifi fees at hotels, coffee shops, airports and nearly everywhere else that you can use Boingo. It's really a shame that Boingo hasn't been able to get in cahoots with AT&T or T-mobile (at least not where I'm sitting... Boingo is not a roaming provider option).

Actually, this whole post was prompted by the guy sitting next to me that was just checking in to see if the Wifi was working OK. He's a contractor responsible for shutting down and taking out the Tmobile equipment and finalizing the setup on the AT&T stuff. What a dude. Came by, made sure eveyrthing was cool, checked signal strength & everything (the AT&T stuff works better over the past few weeks than the Tmobile stuff ever has... They must be doing something right!)

Thanks Starbucks & AT&T!

If you're in Chicago between Monday and Wednesday, drop me a line!

I'll be presenting at the ALI Social Media Summit in a pre-conference workshop. Check it out:

How To Use Social Media To Enhance And Improve Your Internal Communications Efforts - And 7 Steps To Take Your Internal Social Media Program To An External Marketing Program

Some people may think that social and emerging media tools are just for customers. However, they can greatly improve your internal communication, peer networking and knowledge sharing and management initiatives if used properly. This workshop will show you how to leverage the most prominent social media tools to strengthen your internal communications processes and improve the effectiveness of any customer-focused organization. If you're considering social media for customer/external communications, this workshop will also give you specific insights and help you to 'eat your own dogfood' before going headlong into social and emerging media & marketing with your customers and prospects.

Each attendee will take away:

• A comprehensive understanding of each and every internal social media tool available to their organization
• Concrete examples of organizations that are employing these tools
• A roadmap of where to start and how to progress in your internal social media endeavor
• Develop the business case to sell internal social media based communication tools to management
• The seven steps to taking social media from an internal endeavor to an external marketing program
• A comprehensive workbook which explains how to learn more about each of the tools discussed