Postcards Exclusive: Conversation with NORAD’s Santa Tracker

This? Is so cool! Rarely am I *this* excited to publish a post!

ff you’ve been around for a while, you might remember I spent some time working with the Canadian Army. When I was there, I was lucky enough to work with Captain Jennifer Stadnyk, and long after I left we stayed in touch over mutual interests in photography and social media. Capt Stadnyk has since moved from Ottawa to Colorado for what I think is an incredibly cool job – she’s the public affairs officer for the North American Aerospace Defence Command, aka NORAD. Peeps, she works with NORAD’s Santa Tracker team! How awesome is that?

I’ve blogged before about how I’ve always loved the NORAD Santa Tracker program. I remember the sense of wonder and anticipation that was torqued by watching NORAD’s Santa Tracker updates on the evening news when I was growing up in the 1970s. Now the kids and I visit the Santa Tracker website frequently on December 24 to track the Big Guy’s progress around the world.

I gotta tell you, when Capt Stadnyk was kind enough to grant me an interview, I kind of froze. Oh the pressure! What should I ask? How to strike the balance between hard-nosed journalist and fawning fangirl? In the end, her answers totally redeemed my questions – and I’ve been giggling like a schoolgirl in my excitement to share them with you.

DaniGirl: I have been watching NORAD’s Santa tracker as long as I can remember. Tell me a little bit about the program?

Capt Stadnyk: NORAD Tracks Santa traces its roots all the way back to 1955, when the local Sears-Roebuck in Colorado Springs took out an advertisement in the local newspaper inviting children to call Santa’s private line on Christmas Eve. The ad that was printed however, had a misprint and the number given was for the Continental Air Defense Command. Colonel Harry Shoup, who was on duty that night, answered the phone to a child’s voice asking if he was Santa. Once he realized what was going on, he played along, giving the child information about where Santa was and instructed his officers to do the same. Thus an annual tradition was born! NORAD continued the tradition when we replaced CONAD in 1958, and still each year, we track Santa around the globe and tell children where he is and when he’ll be at their house!

DaniGirl: You are a soldier in the Canadian Army. How did you end up at NORAD?

Capt Stadnyk: It is funny, most people think that NORAD is solely Air Force, however there are members from all elements of both the Canadian and American militaries. I definitely feel blessed to be down here and be a part of this incredible program during the holiday season!

Army Maj. Gen. Charles Luckey, NORAD and USNORTHCOM Chief of Staff, prepares to do a media interview via satellite from the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center Dec. 24, 2012. Dozens of interviews were conducted with NORAD leadership to get the word out on how NORAD tracks Santa every year. (U.S. Navy photo by LCDR. Bill Lewis)

DaniGirl: What kind of technology do you use to track Santa?

Capt Stadnyk: We are definitely well-equipped to track Santa, being the bi-national command responsible for tracking and keeping airspace over North America safe! We use the same satellites, radars and fighter jets that we use year round to track Santa. He knows we’re tracking him and often coordinates some of his plans with us! We also have “Santa Cams” strategically placed around the globe so that kids can catch a glimpse of the jolly old elf!

DaniGirl:: How many people are involved in the operation?

Capt Stadnyk: Well, along with our 55 corporate partners, we have over 1,250 volunteers (Canadian & American military, civilians, and members of the local Colorado Springs community) who donate their time on December 24th to answer calls and emails. Planning starts early in the spring of each year in order to ensure the event is a success.

DaniGirl: Have poor weather or other obstacles ever prevented Santa from getting to any locations?

Capt Stadnyk: There have been a few times over the years where Santa has had to adjust his flight path due to poor weather, but he has always been able to make it to every house! He has been flying for centuries, so little snowstorms have nothing on him!

Marine Staff Sgts. Hugh Wood and Randall Ayers, NORAD and USNORTHCOM, take calls at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center Dec. 24, 2012. Wood and Ayers came to the operations center to collect toys for the Marine Corps' Toys for Tots program and took a break to participate in NORAD Tracks Santa. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Thomas J. Doscher)

DaniGirl: Does Santa need permission to fly over Canadian or American air space?

Capt Stadnyk: Santa travels faster than starlight, so if he wanted to, he could fly over our airspace without letting us know, but we have a close relationship with him, having worked together to keep the Christmas spirit alive all these years. He always coordinates his travels with us, although he may not tell us his exact route. Each year, Canadian fighter pilots are chosen to meet Santa as he enters North American airspace to say “Hello” and escort him across the Great White North. This year, Lieutenant-Colonel Darcy Molstad and Captain Sébastien Gorelov from 3 Wing Bagottville will meet him over Newfoundland and pass off the duties near the Ontario-Manitoba border to Captain Rich Cohen and Captain Brian Kilroy from 4 Wing Cold Lake.

DaniGirl: Now that you’re seeing it in action from the inside, what’s your favourite part of the Santa tracker program?

Capt Stadnyk: It’s incredible to see what a large operation the NORAD Tracks Santa program is. There is so much magic involved in Santa’s journey that I kind of expected tracking him would be a piece of cake. Not so much! Tracking Santa becomes our main effort around this time each year, and we all work together at NORAD to make sure we continue to share the holiday spirit with the young, and young-at-heart around the world!

Awesome, right? I KNOW! Even better than a conversation with the Universe, eh?

Want to track Santa with NORAD this Christmas Eve? He’s multimedia – check it out!

On the web: http://www.noradsanta.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/noradsanta
Twitter: @NoradSanta
Phone (starting 4 a.m. MST on Christmas Eve): 877-HI-NORAD
Email: noradtrackssanta@outlook.com

Thank you, Capt Stadnyk, for the exclusive scoop and for making me a cool mom this Christmas in the eyes of three little boys! Warm wishes and thanks to you and and everyone at NORAD for the great work you do with Santa!

In which she clearly illustrates that she is NOT a graphic designer

Hey! Did I mention I’m doing a presentation at Social Capital Ottawa this year? I am so excited about it! And it’s a topic that is becoming more and more dear to my heart – how to find and use images for your website, blog and social sharing without violating copyright and getting sued in the process. It true that I have a vested interest in this issue from a photographer’s perspective, but I also think this is something that should be of interest to anyone who blogs, has a website or has ever shared a photo on Facebook or Pinterest. Here’s the session description:

Royalty-images aren’t free: finding and using images online without getting sued

There’s no doubt that images make web content more compelling. Studies show that content with imagery generates more social shares, more comments and more interaction. But what if it’s not your photograph? How do you find great images you can use, legally and at low or no cost? Can you use photos from Pinterest, Flickr or Google Images on your site — without the permission of the photographer? Can you get sued for doing it? In this session, we’ll answer these question and more.

Here’s a few more questions we’ll examine in this session: Does providing a link or credit to the source allow you to use a copyrighted image? Why aren’t royalty-free photos actually free? What is “creative commons” and how can you use it to find photos you can use? Can you use a photo if you digitally alter it? What do terms like fair use, public domain, attribution and copyright really mean for bloggers, Facebook page authors and website owners?

In this session you will learn strategies for finding great images that you can use on your blog or website, and how to protect yourself from serious legal consequences from running afoul of copyright legislation.

Following this presentation, participants will know how to find quality imagery to augment their blogs and websites, both for a fee and for free. Participants will have an understanding of some of the legal and illegal uses of imagery on blogs, websites and social sharing sites like Facebook and Pinterest. Participants will also have a greater understanding of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) the risks and consequences of violating copyright law in Canada.

I won’t steal my own thunder by replicating my presentation here. That would also presume, incorrectly, that I was ahead of my usual procrastination curve and had the entirely of my presentation ready for public consumption a whole week ahead of when I’m supposed to hand it in. I did, however, want to dazzle you with my mad infographic skillz. I’ve got a vested curiousity about infographics as I’d like to start seeing us use them at work, so this was a perfect opportunity for me to see how easy/difficult it would be to pull one together. (Verdict: difficult to organize the information in my head ahead of time and figure out how I wanted to lay everything out but fairly simple to actually create the infographic. I used Piktochart for this.)

Feel free to pin and share – I designed this one for sharing!

SoCapOtt infographic

My first infographic. I’m so proud! 😉

As we get closer to the conference (it’s June 1, have you bought your tickets yet?), I will leak share a few morsels of the content, and I’ll probably write it all up in a bit more detail afterward. I’m saving the good stuff for the conference, though, so you might as well come!

Yep, she’s still blogging eight years later

A part of me says, “Wow, has it already been eight years since your first blog post?” And another part of me says, “Seriously, it’s only been eight years? Seems like much longer than that.” Well, in a way I suppose it has been. I created my first website dedicated to photos and stories about the kids back when I was pregnant with Tristan (heh, using my mad HTML skills, Front Page and a Geocities site!) so that’s going back about a dozen years. But it’s been eight years this week since I’ve been on the bloggy bandwagon.

Every couple of years I like to haul out the first meme I ever did (memes were good, eh? I miss memes) and use it as an excuse to wax blatantly nostalgic.

15 years ago today I would have been:

  • About to graduate magna cum laude from the University of Ottawa with a degree in Comms, after going part-time nights for six years to get my degree
  • Freshly appointed to a mid-level program management beancounter job and feeling like a young professional for the first time
  • Living in a tiny third-floor attic apartment in the Glebe with Beloved and starting to think about wedding plans for the next year

10 years ago today I would have been:

  • Getting ready to come back to work after my first year of maternity leave
  • Tempering my dismay at the end of mat leave with huge excitement about coming back to a new job: my first job in public affairs (where I still work today)
  • A couple of months away from finding and buying our townhouse in Barrhaven and then finding out I was pregnant with Simon

5 years ago today I would have been:

  • Hugely pregnant and overdue with Lucas, and liveblogging the lack of labour and then, finally, the labour and arrival of the “player to be named later” (the posts from my pregnancy with Lucas still seem like the glory days of the blog community. I miss those days!)
  • Did I mention hugely pregnant?
  • And overdue?

1 year ago today I would have been:

  • Happy to be back with public affairs, this time managing the social media team (I love my job!)
  • Enrolling “baby” Lucas in junior kindergarten
  • Finding my groove and kicking off a very successful year with the photography business

This year I am:

  • Thinking about blog and website makeovers (now taking suggestions!)
  • Contemplating changing the photography business name
  • Feeling busy and involved but (blissfully!) not overwhelmed… most of the time

Today I am:

  • In the midst of birthday season mayhem
  • Feeling much more confident about my parenting skills than I was 10 years ago
  • Happy

Next year I hope:

  • To have saved enough from the photography business for the full-frame camera I’ve been coveting
  • To do more travel with the family
  • To be done with daycare forever

In five years I hope:

  • To be wrangling with Tristan over getting his (gasp!) driver’s license!
  • To be considering a return to full-time employment (to top up my last years of income before retirement!)
  • To have renovated the kitchen and the basement family room

I was going to include a checklist of which prognostications and goals I got right and wrong in prior years but this is getting long, so I’ll save that for another day.

Funny that I’ve now got blog posts in the archives that cover so many of these highlights! I wonder if I’ll ever get to a version where I say, “15 years ago I launched this blog, using (snicker) a keyboard and a PC!” and we’ll all laugh about how quaintly antiquated it all was?

Instagram wants to sell your photos – for free

Yesterday, Instagram announced a change in its terms of service (TOS). It says that from now on, it has the right to sell your photos to third parties for purposes of advertising. That’s right, your Instagram photo can now be used to advertise everything from breakfast cereal to cures for VD – without your permission and without any compensation to you. Seriously Instagram? And you thought people would be okay with this?

I wrote earlier this year about how many photo-sharing services claim certain rights with regard to the photos you post on those services. Those rights are mostly to do with promoting the service itself and the rights necessary to hold and display your photos. That language reads “a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content” (from the previous Instagram terms of service.) I think for anyone not interested on a professional level about the use of their photos, that requirement was on the borderline of acceptable.

Instagram has gone way further than that, though. In agreeing to their new TOS, you are permitting this:

To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

That’s crazy, IMHO. I can’t imagine they could skirt the requirement to have a model release for recognizable people, so the photos from your daughter’s ballet recital or your son’s birthday party are probably (probably!) safe, but the sheer audacity of the rights grab ensures I won’t be posting any more photos to Instagram.

Bloggers in paradise

This makes me very sad, because I have just lately warmed up to Instagram and its social community. Kind of reminds me of the stand I took against Pinterest earlier this year – it pains me to have to stop using a service I’ve come to love, but I’ve managed to survive the year without Pinterest and I’ll find somewhere else to share my Instagram iPhone photos.

If you love the look of Instagram but don’t care about the social sharing, you can continue to use Instagram with your iPhone in “airplane” mode – your iPhone can’t post to Instagram’s servers but does save a copy of the photo to your iPhone’s photo albums. I’ve got my settings programmed to save both the original full-sized photo without the filter and the cropped version with the Instagram filter. There are other options, too — Twitter now apparently has filters on its photo-sharing interface, and Flickr just rolled out a mobile app that has built-in filters as well. (And speaking of that – yay Flickr! The old iPhone app was beyond horrible, but I am really digging the new one!)

I read one article that tried to argue that Instagram photos are meant to be disposible anyway, and people were being “whiny babies” when they complained about the potential use of their photos for advertising – that the right to sell your photos is a fair “price of admission” for the use of the service. They argue that the potential that one of your photos might sell is “infinitesimal” — but I felt that way about Getty Images, too. They have more than 80 million photos for sale, but more than 100 of mine have been sold.

You might wonder how I can be upset about the Instagram rights grab and still license some of my photos through Getty. The difference is that (a) I got compensated for every single one of them and (b) I always have the choice about whether to license an image or not. Two big distinctions, IMHO.

What do you think of all this? Are you bothered by the changes to Instagram? Would you care if your photo of your feet in your favourite fuzzy slippers made it to a billboard somewhere? Or will you shut down your Instagram account?

Oh Internet, how you continue to vex me, you fickle mistress…

Edited to add: so I was interviewed by CBC Radio about this at 3:30 and they were going to air the clip on the 4:30 news, but a few minutes later the reporter called me back and said there was some question about what Instagram was actually saying. A couple of hours later, this retraction/clarification was posted by Instagram. In part:

To provide context, we envision a future where both users and brands alike may promote their photos & accounts to increase engagement and to build a more meaningful following. Let’s say a business wanted to promote their account to gain more followers and Instagram was able to feature them in some way. In order to help make a more relevant and useful promotion, it would be helpful to see which of the people you follow also follow this business. In this way, some of the data you produce — like the actions you take (eg, following the account) and your profile photo — might show up if you are following this business.

The language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question. Our main goal is to avoid things like advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience. Instead, we want to create meaningful ways to help you discover new and interesting accounts and content while building a self-sustaining business at the same time.

Ownership Rights Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period.

Hmm. I am not convinced enough either way to delete my account entirely, but will closely watch how this shakes down.

A lament for comments

Sigh. I just tried to post a comment on a large and popular blog-gone-commercial. I had a long and thoughtful comment typed out, and then I tried to post it. The site wanted me to sign in with a user-ID and password I probably acquired back in 2006 or so, the last time I was motivated to comment on this particular site. Um, long gone from my scabby little memory.

My other options were signing in through a myriad of social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, etc. But in order to do that, I’ll need to authorize an app to access my other social media accounts. I’ve always been kind of leery about this. Or I have to sign up for an account through the proprietary commenting service. Another set of user-IDs and passwords, and another source for spam. Ugh, seriously?

I hunted in vain for the simple, old-fashioned “name, e-mail address and your web site” options but alas, they are no longer available. So unless I want to allow an unknown and potentially unreliable site to have permission to access my social media accounts, my opinion doesn’t count and nobody wants to hear from me. I simply paged away without being able to post my comment.

It makes me sad.

I’ve been blogging a l-o-n-g time, I know. I’m a dinosaur. But I kinda really miss the old days, when you bent over backwards to get comments and when comments were the lifeblood of your blog. I remember how I agonized over capchas and hated that there was that last hoop to jump through. I’ve thought about installing some of the new fangled comment systems that allow you to “like” specific comments, or reply in threads to individual comments. But I always fear they’d make commenting more difficult, and I never want to do that.

The commercialization of blogs doesn’t bother me. The fact that everyone who has a keyboard now has a blog doesn’t bother me. But this one bothers me. Comments are gold and should be treasured; you shouldn’t have to work so hard to post one.

What do you think? Should I stop whinging and just post through my FB or Twitter accounts?

Now appearing on Today’sParent.com

When I started this blog a million years ago, one of the dreams I held was that I might some day have my writing published in a major glossy magazine. My storytelling focus has wandered from my keyboard to my camera over the years, but I have never lost my love of telling a good anecdote. And now, I am super-proud to be able to share this: my first publishing credit on TodaysParent.com!

Click on over and enjoy my contribution to their new feature: Melt-Your-Heart Moments. I wrote about that most amazing parenting moment: watching your child’s first dance recital, first choir concert, or first halting acting performance as the third tree to the left in the school Christmas pageant.

Very timely, too (I love it when the universe is synchronific!) because just today my heart melted into a pile of proud goo at the school talent show where not one but TWO boys took to the stage. Simon and his buddies brought the house down with their dance routine to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem (there are not words nor photos that could do it justice), and Tristan finished off his first year of guitar lessons with a solo on stage.

talent show 2012

Could I be any prouder? I think this is as good as it gets.

Get your 2012 BOLO on!

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know one of my favourite events of the summer is the annual Blog Out Loud Ottawa event organized by the irrepressible Lynn. She has managed to make this event better every single year since its inception in 2009, and I can’t wait until this year’s edition.

We won’t have too long to wait, though, because BOLO has been bumped up from July to a new earlier date this year, with a new location, too. Here’s the skinny on BOLO 2012:

What: 20+ bloggers read their favourite post of the year; photo bloggers display their art
Who: Anyone who likes to hear good stories or see amazing images is invited to attend
When: Thursday, June 14, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Where: The Arrow and Loon, 99 Fifth Avenue

Want to be in the BOLO spotlight this year? (It’s way, way fun! Trust me!) Lynn and her crew of acolytes are accepting submissions until May 14. That’s only a couple of days away, no time to dither! C’mon, you know you want to be like these cool kids! (I’m praying the Arrow and the Loon doesn’t have an evil deep red background wall like last year’s location did!)

198:365 BOLO readers

If you’d like to be considered for a spot on the roster, here’s the deets from the BOLO blog:

Want to read? Here’s what you do:

1.Pick out your favourite post from the past year (May 2011 through April 2012). Note that you must have blogged at least 10 times in this time period.

2.Send the link to your selected reading to lynnturtlehead@gmail.com by Monday, May 14, at midnight.

3.Wait to be notified (via email) on May 21st if you are a selected reader. That’s it!

What kind of post should you pick? We like posts that tell a story, express an opinion, argue a point, capture a moment, inspire passion. All types of topics and subjects are welcome. Just pick something that has meaning for you.

Your selected post should be able to be read out loud in about three to five minutes (I’d suggest no more than 1200 words as a good guideline, but we’re flexible).

How will the readers be decided? Half the spots are selected by a panel of judges (to a maximum of 11 spots). The remainder of the spots are selected by random draw. So don’t be discouraged – everyone has a chance! Everyone is welcome – small bloggers, famous bloggers, new bloggers, bloggers that have been kicking around forever. Come one, come all.

We did a slide show last year, too, with some great shots from our local photography community. If there’s enough interest, we’ll do that again, too, so please let Lynn or me know if you’d like to submit some photos. You’ll have to speak up by May 15 and have your photos to me before May 31 if we’re going to make this work.

In prior year at BOLO, I’ve laughed so hard my sides hurt and wept in empathy and felt every emotion in between. This is a great night out for the Ottawa blogging community and I can’t wait to see what surprises this year’s BOLO might offer.

Will I see you there?

(And speaking of great community events: PS, just a quick reminder that Kym Shumsky’s Les nôtres vernissage for her 100 strangers project is this Wednesday at Irene’s Pub!)

In which she agonizes over Pinterest

I am seriously addicted to Pinterest. I am a natural hoarder, and so I love collecting things that take up no physical space. I love pinning photographic inspiration, crafty ideas, recipes and inspiration for future home renovations and decoration. I found the Star Wars family stickers that so delight me via Pinterest. I’ve got an amazing collection of Photoshop tutorials and ideas to furnish the photography studio I’d like to build in the garage. I truly love surfing and collecting pins on Pinterest.

And yet, as a photographer, I feel conflicted about Pinterest. I had mixed feelings when I saw Lucas’s “puddle jumper” popping up on the site (and the worst part was that the attribution, when it appeared, was usually back to the I Heart Faces site where I’d entered it in one of their competitions before I started licensing it through Getty.) Some photographers are happy to share their work on Pinterest, some are probably ambivalent like me, and some consider it an egregious copyright infringement. I’m happy that people like my pictures, and I share them because I love showing them to you — but when they wander away and become separated from me, from my little “property” here and on Flickr and Facebook, that makes me increasingly anxious.

As Pinterest has started to set the Internet on fire (it’s now getting more than one billion monthly page views, with 10 million registered users) there have been more articles written about how ethical the business model could be that encourages people to share without explicit (or any) permission. Responding to the backlash, Pinterest recently offered a bit of code that website owners can put on their sites to prevent pinning, and Flickr just announced that it has disabled the ability to pin Flickr images for which the user has not explicitly enabled sharing.

What really got me wondering about whether I want to continue to participate as a pinner, though, was this article and a few similar opinions I’ve read about copyright infringement. The author of the blog post (long, but definitely worth reading), who is a lawyer and was inspired to look into the legal aspect of Pinterest’s Terms of Service from a copyright perspective, said:

From a legal perspective, my concern was for my own potential liability. From an artist’s perspective, my concern was that I was arguably engaging in activity that is morally, ethically and professionally wrong. […] Even in light of all of the above, what finally sealed the deal for me as I tried desperately to talk myself out of deleting my gorgeous inspiration boards, was when I thought of some of the photographers whose work I had pinned from other websites. Would they want me posting their images? My initial response is probably the same as most of yours: “why not? I’m giving them credit and it’s only creating more exposure for them and I LOVE when people pin my stuff!” But then I realized, I was unilaterally making the decision FOR that other photographer. And I thought back to the thread on Facebook where the photographers were complaining about clients posting photos without their consent and I realized this rationale is no different than what those clients argue: “why can’t I post them – it’s just more exposure for you.” Bottom line is that it is not my decision to make. Not legally and not ethically.

Aside from the ethical question, the author of the blog post also opines that you as a pinner could be held legally liable for any damages arising from copyright infringement:

[I]f some photographer out there decides that he or she does not want you using that photogs images as “inspiration” or otherwise and decides to sue you and Pinterest over your use of that photog’s images, you will have to hire a lawyer for yourself and YOU will have to hire a lawyer for Pinterest and fund the costs of defending both of you in court. Not only that, but if a court finds that you have, in fact, violated copyright laws, you will pay all damages assessed against you and all damages assessed against Pinterest. OUCH. Oh, but it gets better. Pinterest reserves the right to prosecute you for violations. Basically, Pinterest has its keester covered and have shifted all of the risk to you. Smart of them, actually since the courts are still deciding whether the site owner or the user should be ultimately responsible. Rather than wait for the decision, they have contractually made you the responsible one. And you agreed.

Now I’m no lawyer, but the argument against copyright infringement speaks to me. After seven years of chasing down blog scrapers, and almost as long keeping a watchful eye out for unwarranted use of my photographs, the idea of participating in – of gleefully perpetuating — that kind of infringement is somewhere between distasteful and downright disgusting.

It’s true that some site owners clearly encourage sharing by the use of a “pin this” button, and I’ve seen other arguments that *any* kind of social share button pretty much obliviates the copyright argument (which kind of gives me pause, as that’s certainly not my intention on my own site here – but my poor brain can only handle so many of these arguments at a time!) But do I have the patience to pop over to the originating site of each pin to see if the original creator has indicated that the material is available for sharing? I’m not sure. And you can only click back to the source material about half the time.

I’ve paused my obsessive pinning until I can get this sorted out for my own conscience, if nothing else. I’m flattered when people like my work, in words or in pictures, enough to share. And I love Pinterest as a way to share and collect interesting bookmarks on the Web. But do I have the right to pin someone’s work who feels like I’m violating their copyright in doing so? Doesn’t that put me on the same level as people who think that just because something is posted online it makes it fair game to take and use without permission? A few times I’ve wanted to blog things I’ve found on Pinterest but hesitated for exactly these copyright questions – just because I found it on Pinterest doesn’t mean I can use the images there freely. It is a colossally slippery slope. (Edited to add: And here’s yet another concern, this one finding in the Terms of Use that Pinterest claims the right to SELL any content uploaded to it!!!)

My friend Sue, the erstwhile Mad Hatter Mommy, tweeted a list of ten reasons she’s not a Pinterest fan last night, and I found myself laughing and nodding appreciatively at her criticisms, including: 1. Home decor is not all white, light, airy and devoid of brown. and 3. Life cannot be lived according to aphorism no matter how many aphorisms one collects. and 5. Pinterest lets people feel entitled about web use–like taking home all the shells from the beach. and 9. Don’t even get me started on the appropriation & deprofessionalization of the word “curate.” Clearly, Sue has been perusing my pinboards! 😉

What do you think? Are you a Pinterest fan? Does this make you think twice about using Pinterest?

Happy Bloggy Birthday to Me!

So February is definitely birthday season in our house — Simon last week, Lucas this week, and my mom a couple of weeks from tomorrow. But there’s another birthday squeezed in there — SEVEN years ago last week I wrote my first blog post. Who could have ever guessed where it would lead? I can’t even begin to enumerate all the great things that have happened in my life due to this crazy little blog, but who would have guessed it would have lead to a career in social media and a part-time photography business? Those are no small potatoes!

A few of you have been here from the very beginning, when the blog lived on blogspot and the wayback machine says blog looked like this:

(I don’t miss that design, but it was fun to see my little footprints I loved so much back then!)

If you joined the party a little later, you might remember this design:

I’d almost forgotten about the crayons! And funny, that was my ‘look’ for two years. Tempus fugit, eh?

Speaking of fugiting tempuses, I try to update this “time traveller” meme every couple of years, just because it’s fun to look back and see what a lousy prognosticator I am.

15 years ago today I would have been:

  • Living in sin with Beloved in our tiny two-bedroom attic apartment in the Glebe.
  • About a year away from finishing my degree.
  • Driving an antiquated but dearly loved little black Mazda 323 hatchback everywhere
  • .

10 years ago today I would have been:

  • Fatly, blissfully pregnant and already on my maternity leave in anticipation of Tristan’s arrival one month hence.
  • Fresh from an assignment with Industry Canada, my first official job in communications with the government.
  • Busy teaching myself HTML and building our first family website on Geocities.

5 years ago today I would have been:

  • Trying very hard to get over the loss of one pregnancy and just a few months shy of discovering another.
  • Just about to find out that I would be creating a social media team for the CRA.
  • Blogging about dead iPods and stomach viruses and the search for decent daycare
  • .

1 year ago today I would have been:

  • Working with the Army and becoming increasingly unhappy.
  • Turning my toe anxiously in the carpet as I tried to decide if I was “good enough” to officially try to sell myself as a family and portrait photographer.
  • Blogging about photography and Ottawa and our quirky home in Manotick
  • .

This year I am:

  • So very happy to be back with the CRA where I belong, and extremely happy to be leading the social media team. Again! 🙂
  • Still a little overwhelmed by the success of the whole photography thing — did I tell you I got FIVE bookings this week? That’s almost a third of all the jobs I did in all of 2011!!
  • In shock that Lucas — my baby! — is off to junior kindergarten later this year
  • .

Today I:

  • Feel like I’ve got the world by the tail.
  • Am toying with the idea of a blog redesign.
  • Would like to lose about 10 lbs before summer
  • .

Next year I hope:

  • To continue to grow all facets of the photography business.
  • To be planning a vacation for somewhere that involves an ocean.
  • To get back to blogging more like I used to back in the day
  • .

In five years I hope:

  • To be within a decade of (gasp!) retirement.
  • To stop being freaked out by the idea of being within a decade of retirement.
  • To have all three boys in school full time (gasp! with one in high school!) and free of the daycare dilemma forever!

(You know what I learn from doing this meme every couple of years? I am really good at setting and pursuing short-term goals, but I continue to be a lousy
at making any sort of long-term plan. ENFP anyone?)

This is a fun meme, and it’s fun to look back on where I’ve been and how far off my expectations and ambitions have been! And hey, can you believe I’ve been doing this for SEVEN YEARS?!?

🙂