Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

Work

Leadership in the Environmental Sector

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Panel photo from Leaders Connect on Environmental Leadership January 2024
Rob Pasick, Dunrie Greiling, Lisa Wozniak, Phil Roos, and Timothy Dekker at the Leadership in the Environmental Sector

In late January, I moderated a panel at Rob Pasick’s Leaders Connect on environmental leadership. The panelists included

  • Phil Roos, the Director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)
  • Timothy Dekker, PhD PE, the CEO of LimnoTech
  • Lisa Wozniak, the Executive Director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters

Each of the speakers shared about their journey to their current leadership positions, their philosophy of leadership, and advice for aspiring leaders. The audience also asked good questions about community involvement and the future and current impact of AI/ML on environmental solutions.

Here’s Rob’s overview of the leadership in the environmental sector panel.

Their advice for aspiring environmental leaders

Lean into what you’re good at and don’t pretend you’re going to be good at everything. Be humble in recognizing where you need to bring in smart people to be part of your team and trust them, give them responsibility that they can own and run with.

Lisa Wozniak, 1:04:50 in video

If you’re a young leader, really spend some time learning how to write. If you can pair your scientific expertise, or your very technical expertise, or your legal or policy expertise with that abiliy to write you really can change the world.

Timothy Dekker 1:07:34 in video

We’re all on a lifelong journey of figuring out why we’re on the planet, what we’re supposed to do, what we’re passionate about, [and] how does that fit with what needs are in the world. And I think it is about constructing for yourself a lot of experiments: ways of trying different things that gradually lead you to that union between who you are and what you’re about, why you’re here, and some pressing issue in the world that needs to be solved.

Phil Roos 1:08:33 in video

Thanks to the panelists for sharing your wisdom and stories. Thanks to Rob for a great morning!

Just Good Enough Websites

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The tools we use to create websites have changed during my marketing career. In the beginning, you had to know a little about coding. Today’s services allow the non-coder to create a more than just good enough website.

Web Dev back in the Day

In the early 2000s, my employer had a small site designed by a professional. The designer handed off images to our team that one of the software developers turned into HTML. Our homepage was a cut-apart image, its pieces reassembled and held in an invisible table. Different parts of that image were hyperlinked to different pages on the site. I edited that website’s content by editing individual HTML pages in a text editor.

Today's tools and services help businesses make just good enough websites

Just Good Enough Websites 2016

We have come a long way since then.

Services like WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace offer simple ways for non-programmers and non-designers to have lovely and functional websites, beyond just good enough. If you subscribe to any podcasts, you’ll hear persistent ads for drag and drop website-making platforms.

I have opinions on platforms (this site is in WordPress and has been since 2006).  Yet all these content management systems make things pretty easy for the non-technical user.

I still use my HTML and jump into the text pane of these platforms if the WYSIWYG editor refuses to format things as I want, but generally these platforms work just fine.

I’ve consulted on several homegrown websites created and operated by entrepreneurs and small businesses. Here’s how to make sure the website is good enough:

Content Optimization Tips

  • Do keyword research, use the words that other people use often, and write to topics in demand that are relevant to your business
  • Before you publish, use a tool to review your content for keyword optimization. On WordPress, Yoast SEO is my go-to, and its free version is very full-featured

Technical Optimization Tips

Cultivate your Connections

  • Interconnect all of your business social profiles with your website. You should be able to move easily between all of your web properties. Make sure there’s a link from every social profile back to your website and be sure to link to all of your relevant, active profiles from your website.
  • Add social sharing to your website. Yes, people can copy any link from your site and share to any of their chosen social sites. Yet, a visual prompt to Pin it, Share it, Tweet it, whatever it helps remind them and makes it easy. In WordPress, plugins like AddtoAny Share buttons automate social sharing.

Any basics I have missed? OR How can I answer your questions?

An introvert’s social reserve – a muscle or a well?

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In March I changed my work setting. I left my job of almost seven years and moved to independent marketing consulting and writing. Although I have my share of meetings at client sites and in coffee shops, I typically work and write in my home office.

What I feared

I’m an introvert. I’m restored by quiet and work productively alone. That means I should like this situation, and I do. Yet, I was worried I might get isolated or isolate myself. The work I do requires me to reach out to others, for expertise, for feedback, for work, so I haven’t gone underground, it’s not possible.

I was worried I’d “go native” with the cats, get even more quiet and watchful. While that’s kind of a joke, I did think that being social was like a muscle. If I didn’t exercise it or keep in practice, I would drop back to previous levels of social awkwardness. In the last few months, I have had my usual share of awkward moments, but I don’t know if it is more or less than before. Probably about the same.

When I left my position, I thought I’d miss my team–I do miss them individually and as a group. I have to make a team or gather input from people less officially connected to my fate and my projects. It is a little more conscious and less spontaneous now, but others are still available. While I’m mostly on my own during the day, I’m hardly solo. Friends, collaborators, and mentors are as close as a phone call, an email, or a drive across town to a lunch date.

What surprised me

I thought I loved our open, collaborative workspace. Yet, I find working in a quiet office has increased my feeling of well-being. When I worked in a leadership position in our open office, I felt I was on-stage and yearned for privacy and quiet in my off-hours. I found myself procrastinating returning personal phone calls on weekends and weeknights. I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the need to be social, engaging, upbeat.

I am finding more social energy now that my need for quiet and privacy are better met. So my social reserve is more like a well, it needs time to replenish, and it is less like a muscle that needs to be kept in shape.

Next Steps

Clients and colleagues have offered me drop-in space at their offices, and Ann Arbor offers a great coworking space, the Workantile. So I have options if I need to work near others. Hasn’t happened yet, but it is nice to have a choice.

Internet Marketing Start to Finish, the book!

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Last fall and winter, several of us at Pure Visibility embarked on a book-writing project. We wrote a book proposal, including an outline, a justification for why our book was different from what was available, and including a sample chapter. And our proposal was accepted! With amazing help and gentle encouragement from our editor at Pearson/Prentice-Hall, we worked through early, rough chapters to later versions of these chapters, to obtaining permissions from clients and media outlets to use illustrations, to final copyediting and tweaking.

And now, the book is going to be in my hands…anyday now. And I could not be more excited.

I’ll write more later about the book and what’s in it. Right now I just want to celebrate a little with this announcement.

Internet Marketing Start to Finish: Drive Measurable, Repeatable Online Sales with Search Marketing, Usability, CRM, and Analytics
Internet Marketing Start to Finish: Drive Measurable, Repeatable Online Sales with Search Marketing, Usability, CRM, and Analytics

Ada Lovelace Day: celebrating women in technology

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To celebrate Ada Lovelace day, today, March 24, bloggers around the globe are celebrating by publishing posts about women in technology they admire.

I mulled this over for a long time, and I just couldn’t choose. So, I’m going to list off several women and how they have inspired me.

Apparently, Ada Lovelace was an early computer programmer – from the early 1800s…

Beeping mac – why I love time machine and the genius bar (gratitude #35)

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So my macbook was beeping, constantly for a day and a half, like this. Besides my sanity, I was afraid, after hearing the same sound from YouTube videos of pre-hard-drive crash Macs, it was going to take out my hard drive.

So, i moseyed on down to the Genius Bar at Briarwood Mall, with an appointment. And although the diagnostics the technician ran said my hard drive was fine, he did say that hard drives can “chirp” before going out. So, he replaced my hard drive, and -aaaaaaaahhhhhhh- no more infernal beeping.

I came to work the next morning and I started to download my backup from time machine and was amazed that everything except the things I’d excluded at the urging of our IT guy (applications and my music) came back after a few hours of pulling down the backup from the server.

This is the second hard drive to go on my MacBook. I got it last June (2007). Last July, I did drop it from a few feet above the ground (long story), so I’m directly responsible for the first hard drive crash (about six months after the drop), but I don’t know what I would have done to cause the second….

Last time, I said it was the best ever hard drive crash. Now I think it was another level easier.

I am thrilled to be able to recover so quickly through time machine and grateful to be up and running again. Now if only my iPhone would allow me to sync my music from the iPhone to my laptop. Looks like I’m going to have to re-rip the CDs I’m interested in having there…