Blogging for dollars… how do they keep up!

I’m relieved that I don’t have to blog for dollars, especially after reading this article in Slate which talks about the pressures that bloggers face to “write what they know, and watch the dollars flow.”

For a few years, I was an editor of an emerging technology magazine in Canada, and though I wrote several articles a week — and felt the pressure too sometimes — it was nothing compared to what professional bloggers must feel, spinning yarns on the fly. What keeps them going? The adrenylyn rush? The promise of a fat paycheck? Or maybe just living the dream.

The business of running the Catholic Church

Of all the organizations you can think of that put together solid business plans to address business strategy, customer retention, best practices for human resources and accounting, the Catholic Church rarely comes to mind. Here’s an interesting look at building a business case for the Catholic Church, the country’s largest religious organization — headed by the former vice-chairman of JP Morgan Chase with input from influential Catholic execs at Adobe, McKinsey and Korn/Ferry… let’s hope its a good one.

A look at incubators in Toronto

Although I’ve been in Southern California for almost a decade now, I still keep tabs on things back in Toronto where most of my family continues to live. My colleagues and I sometimes joke that the market in Canada lags behind the U.S. in technology adoption, but I’m impressed by the innovative approaches to partnering by organizations like the Ontario Centres of Excellence and MaRS.

Operating as a not-for-profit incubator, MaRs pools funding from the government and private investors to help businesses grow. The organization’s goal is to help elevate Canada’s competitiveness in the global marketplace by connecting entrepreneurs with capital and resources in Canada, thereby retaining local wealth and enriching the social and cultural environment.

The OCE is funded by the Ministry of Research and Innovation and the private sector to nurture ideas and collaborations between government, businesses and academic communities. It’s a way to commercialize R&D innovations, building on the investments that startups have made in themselves, or the research output from universities and colleges. The OCE explores everything from communications and IT to earth and environmental sectors.

I find the OCE approach especially interesting since many of their goals run parallel to what I do at alphaWorks, helping emerging technologies gain exposure, market feedback and commercial interest. I’m interested in learning about other groups out there with similar missions to these Toronto-based orgs. If this keeps up, I might have to think about moving back to Canada.