PTP Blog

Spread the word to all who fit our grantmaking guidelines - PTP’s grants program is now open and accepting applications.

See the grants program page for details, requirements, and application materials.

last week, PTP moved over to a hosted anti-spam solution with Mailfoundry.

The first week, we were very happy with the service - it reduced spam to almost zero messages over pretty much the whole week.

Today has been a different story - in the last two hours, I’ve seen 10 spam messages.  Granted, 10 isn’t a lot given the volume I was getting prior to move to Mailfoundry, but its still more than I want to see.

I know that some days, you’ll be on the positive side of aggregated spam filtering, and other days you’ll be on the negative side, so things will probably go back to a nice low level of spam in the next few hours.  Still, I’d started to hope that the rest of my life would be close to spam free, and even with Mailfoundry, it seems that won’t be the case.

this will make sense after you read the first post about COaTI recipes.

It just occurred to me that it would be really cool if I could define “nutritional requirements” for a COaTI.  Think the food pyramid, but more like this:  1 serving of data merge skills, 2 servings of peer to peer story sharing, 2 servings of hands-on practice with queries, etc.  Then, I’d be able to indicate on each recipe what “nutritional requirements” it fulfils, and the menu function of the software would help manage and keep track of those requirements ensuring that each COaTI met its nutritional requirements.

This probably all sounds a bit crazy, but if you’ve ever managed a large curriculum with multiple goals, seriously give this idea some thought.  I really don’t think its that far off what I do when I design and manage the COaTI curriculum… at least not far off what I’d like to be able to do.

this morning I was thinking about the upcoming COaTI and the work that I’m doing now to try to weave together the different curriculum strands into clearer themes running throughout the three sessions.  All the elements are there, though as always some need more work to get them to a place where I’m happy.

I’m a very visual person, and I love notecards, so I was thinking about writing out a shot description of each session on a notecard and arranging them all on a big table so I could see the whole program and have the ability to move things around to see how the flow worked.  As I was imagining this, my brain thought “hey, this is kind of like having a box of recipes on notecards.”  Followed shortly by “hey, I wonder if I could use recipe software to manage COaTI curriculum.” 

It would work something like this: basically, each session would be a recipe.  Every recipe has a title (session title), description, ingredients (materials needed), and instructions for cooking (methodology).  When its time to assemble the facilitation plan, I’d just select the recipes I wanted in the order I wanted them, and the software would produce:

1. the ”menu” - a list of the sessions and a description of each which would be agenda we send to participants.
2. the shopping list - the materials we need to assemble for the COaTI. 
3. The list of recipes - in this case the facilitation plan for that COaTI.

I think it just might work.  What do you think?

gee, I think I break almost all of these rules for good blog writing.  Of course I’ve never actually claimed to be a good blog writer.  Training curriculum on the other hand. . .

Still, its a good list.  Check it out.

Last year as part of our COaTI program, I set up an account with ifreebusy.com to demo sharing free/busy information, but it wasn’t until just today that I finally figured out where and how I should be using it.

Often, when we’re doing a COaTI, I find that I need to schedule calls with people who are far busier than I am.  What I’ve done in the past is to ask that they send me a couple of times that are good for them, and then I pick a time that is also good for me.  What I should be doing is asking people to check out my public free/busy calendar and tell me when they want to talk to me based on the calendar.

So, starting today, I’ll be experimenting with how well this practice actually works.  We’ve got a COaTI starting in about 2 months, so I’m sure I’ll get lots of chances to use it.