Catherine Gillis, Azul 7 director of marketing and business development, has been elected to the board of directors of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Marketing Association. She will serve a two-year term. Gillis will be the associate vice president for sponsorship and assume the position of vice president of sponsorship during her second year.

The American Marketing Association is the international association dedicated to advancing the field of marketing amongst professionals and students. The Minnesota chapter, with 750+ members is one of the largest in the United States.

I will be speaking at this year's MinneWebCon, the University of Minnesota's web conference, on April 6th, 2009. This is the second year of the conference, providing a full-day of continuing education for web professionals. My session, entitled "It's the Little Things", will cover user interaction and design, and how the smallest of details can change your users' experiences.

This presentation will focus on trends and best practices in design and development conventions for user controls and how they affect the user experience—negatively or positively. Through the course of the session, we will discover various problems affecting smooth user interaction. Then I will identify ways to enhance controls and layouts in order to both speed up required user tasks and make them easier to use.

There are many other great sessions this year and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing and hearing from so many smart colleagues.There's limited space available and it's filling up fast. Head on over to the MinneWebCon site and register to attend today.

Is anyone else out there struggling with Facebook? I'm not talking about issues with their terms and data ownership or their new interface design. I'm talking about the issue of its crossover between work, friends and family. To be honest, Facebook started as a work tool for me. I graduated from college before there were laptops under 20 lbs. so I didn't take it with me from my days in school. I was already on LinkedIn for years thanks to a friend and colleague in San Francisco, which was designed for work and seemed like a sensible tool to try.

I also was coerced to join Plaxo about two years ago. I just kept getting too many invitations to ignore it, though now it seems to have dropped off the radar. I reluctantly signed up on Naymz (notworthgivingtheurl.com) recently to endorse a friend who is looking for a job, but don't waist your time. What a pain! Facebook came after Plaxo and before Twitter. Again, it started to pick up speed to the point where I couldn't ignore it any longer.

First it was friends that were also people I worked with. Then it was old colleagues and a few tech savvy friends. In the last year, it has become more friends, old high school pals and extended family. I knew it was crossing over when my mother-in-law and my nephew connected to me in the same week. The trouble is, I don't know if I like the mixing of these two worlds. I guess it shows my age, or my sense of privacy, or my fatigue at keeping all this going, but I don't know if I want clients to see all the fun, goofy, or political stuff my friends send me. I also don't know if I want to see their stuff either.

I had a ballet teacher who always used to say "distance lends enchantment". You don't want to see the sweat stains on the ballerina's costume. It kind of breaks the spell. I think distance lends enchantment in the work world of work too. Do you really want to know I worship garden gnomes and am devoted to the "Save the Voles" underground network? Really, do you want to know that? I don't know, maybe you do?

I think I'm finally beginning to see what's useful in Twitter. It took awhile. There is still too many "I'm washing my dishes now", or "am working on a deadline" tweets for my taste. But there are some interesting things happening out there.

First, I am able to follow some pretty remarkable people, both local and national, who are tweeting about their areas of expertise [favorites: jowyang, cbensen, nprscottsimon]. I learn more about their thought processes and their observations about what's going in the world right now. There's no delay, less editing and less filters then in almost any other communication channel. I can comment back when I want to and sometimes get a direct response from them, someone who I'd never get a chance to talk to in the "real world." It must be something about the quickness or the newness of Twitter. People are still experimenting with it, so they haven't closed the portals yet.

The other thing I like about it is the ability to see reaction real time during an event. We've used Twitter at speaking events to get realtime audience feedback. I was glued to it during the election. Chris, my biz partner, was tweeting during the Super Bowl. In fact, check out the NYTimes interactive map of the tweets during the game. Notice that words related to the commercials/ads versus the game were most popular in Minneapolis until the 4th Quarter. I think Chris had something to do with that.

Twitter will never be something my mother will use, but it is one of the most interesting things going on in the world of communications right now. We're still experimenting with it. How it will evolve will be something to watch and tweet about [Find Us: Helmin7, Azul7, Verde7, CCortilet].

Joe, Paul, Liina and I started our 4 hour putt journey through the skyway at approximately noon last Friday. We battled through holes with a variety of obstacles - anything from marshmellows, extra large bundt cakes, road blocks to an impound lot. The most memorable hole consisted of a 12-inch wide metal beam. It seemed so simple - all you had to do was putt the ball across the beam and into a plastic 'hole'.

Liina was the first soldier to be wounded with a 10 putt max score, followed by 10 strokes from Joe and another 10 from yours truly. With a feeling of hopelessness setting in, we turned to Paul. Despite the long dreadlocks and sunglasses, Paul shot a hole-in-one, keeping us in the game. Each one of us had miraculous putts that left us with a glimpse of what Happy Gilmore felt: utter accomplishment. The ball may not have always gone in the hole and some balls were lost in the skyway, but there is no doubt that Azul 7 was the most ridiculously good looking team to putt the Skyway Open. Ever.

View additional photos here