Missions Minded

I could probably come up with a list of 100, but here’s 10 off the top of my head:

1. Always be honest, transparent, and approachable.

2. Lead by example, don’t just supervise.

3. Another way of stating #2: serve in the trenches with your team.

4. “Lead with a Limp” - don’t just admit to your weaknesses as a leader, embrace them.

5. Give your team a clear vision, mission, and goals.

6. Practice what you preach.

7. Provide clear feedback to your team members…and not just when they’ve messed up.

8. Give your team members ownership of the area(s) you want them to drive.

9. Ask for feedback on your own job performance (from people under you, people over you, and from mentors, peers, and friends).

10. Always remember that leadership is an endowment, not an entitlement; a responsibility, not a right; and a burden, not a birthright.

What leadership lessons have you learned along the way?

Record October rains in Nicaragua are causing the rapid erosion of the road to our house. (The busted pipe that’s pouring water down the hill isn’t helping matters! Umm, Water Co., you might want to fix that…) You’ll see some more from Carey on the rainy situation tomorrow. Check out these pictures.

Luckily, we have a 4×4. But we may have to invest in a tank…or a boat!

I planned on wrapping up “Twitter Week” last Friday, but I found a new tool that I really like: TwitWall. Consider today’s post a bonus Twitter tool. I know, I know: it’s just one more social media site created to suck the remaining minutes of fresh air out of my day. But before you pan TwitWall as a useless Twitter knock-off, take a look at this from KillerStartups.com:

It is not inaccurate to describe TwitWall as a kind of younger brother to Twitter, a fact that is underlined by the way its creator defines its uses: “When its too long to tweet, but to short to blog.”

This Twitter companion is the brainchild of a Mr. Micahel E. Carluen, a Twitter enthusiast who looked for a way of posting audio and video files with the practicality and reach of Twitter.

As a result, the provided tool has been put together with ease of use and versatility in mind. TwitWall enables anybody to embed videos and widgets as well as upload photographs and other files while enjoying the social approach as popularized by Twitter.

TwitWall is very easy to use; all it takes is logging in using an existing Twitter user ID to get started. There are no fees of any kind, and in the event you don’t have a Twitter ID you can get one by following the featured link.

Twitteraholics, if you’re not buying it yet, here are a few more selling points from TwitWall FAQ Log:

It’s an easy-to-use random-thought blogging content companion for Twitter.

If you’re signed up for Twitter, you’re already signed up for TwitWall.

The original intent of TwitWall is to provide a ‘space’ for Tweeps/Tweeples who understand tweeting, but do not (i.e. have a or want to) blog. Unlike blogging which are composed formal writings (essays), tweeting are random thoughts. Often however, random thoughts exceed 140 characters, or may not even be just text.

If you are a blogger, occasionally you may have thoughts that may not generally fit the general theme of your blog content. To that, you may want to post those thoughts on your TwitWall as an alternative to your formal blog.

Every newly added TwitWall entry posts a status update on the user’s Twitter timeline.

Comments made by the readers of the entry post an in-reply status on Twitter.

TwitWall inherits most of the user’s Twitter design preferences (background graphic and color schemes).

It’s free.

Now, I’m not sure what I’m going to use TwitWall for yet, but I’m guessing I’ll at least give it a try for pictures, podcasts, embedded videos, and those “in between posts” — too long for Twitter, but not quite blog-worthy. We’ll see where it goes from there.

I did a “blog interview” with one of my favorite bloggers friends, Bill Cecchini, for a series we’re doing on the CFCI-Nicaragua website called “Five Questions on Short-Term Missions with…” The entry is set to post on Monday morning. But I couldn’t wait that long! So the loyal Missions Minded readers get a sneak peak of my conversation with Bill right now! Here you go: “Five Questions on Short-Term Missions with Bill Cecchini”:

continue reading » »

The last Twitter tool I’m going to write about this week is called TwitterSnooze. Their tag line says it all:

Hit the snooze button on your “verbose” Twitter friends.

Twitterholics describes the service like this:

Is a verbose Twitterer getting on your nerves? Or maybe everyone is tweeting about a conference you didn’t attend? Instead of un-following the users, you can just snooze them instead. With Twittersnooze, you simply enter in your Twitter credentials, the user name of who you want to snooze, and the length of time for the snooze, which is in the range of one day to 30 days.

So, the next time one of your Twitter buddies gets a little carried away, just hit the snooze!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my favorite Twitter tools this week. If you have a favorite that I’ve left out, please comment and let me know. If you do, I promise not to ever snooze you!

I’m blogging about my favorite Twitter accessories this week. Hands down my favorite tool — one that I use all the time, but without ever thinking about it — is Twitterfeed.

Twitterfeed performs a very useful service — especially for bloggers like me. It can take almost any blog and feed it into a Twitter account. And it’s automated. Your blog entries appear automatically in Twitter with the following components:

* A prefix of up to 20 characters

* The title OR the title and description of your blog entry

* A link to the post truncated with a service such as TinyURL

Here are the steps for setting up Twitterfeed with your blog (from

1. First set up a Twitter account where you would like to broadcast your blog RSS feed.

2. Go to Twitterfeed and login using OpenID.

3. Set up your Twitterfeed account by entering your blog’s RSS feed.

4. One RSS feed is not limited to one Twitter account, so if you have multiple accounts you can send your RSS to all of them. And vice versa. If you have 10 blogs, you can consolidate all of your RSS feeds into one Twitter account.

5. Choose the frequency of the Twitterfeed. You can send posts every 30 minutes or once a day. If your Twitter account has lots of friends, you may not want to overwhelm them with posts every 30 minutes.

6. You can list the post titles or the descriptions in Twitterfeed.

7. You can also add a prefix to the blog posts. This way, if you have multiple blogs you can label them (e.g. “MissionsMinded.org:” and “CFCI-Nicaragua.org:”)

8. You can set the amounts of updates each time, so if you only want to send one you can, but you are allowed to send as many as five

That’s it! Your blog(s) are ready to sync with your Twitter account(s). Twitterfeed certainly makes my life a lot easier. So if you’re a blogger, sign up for Twitterfeed and start feeding your blog to Twitter!

Here are some pictures from the Nancimí medical outreach in southwestern Nicaragua last weekend. Enjoy!