Health Care Fine Art

Linkedin vs. Facebook vs. MySpace

LinkedIn founder and CEO Reid Hoffman

"LinkedIn is the office, Facebook is the barbecue in the backyard, and MySpace is the bar" That is how Reid Hoffman explained the differences between the three major social-networking sites.

That quote is from a recent USA Today article called "Bad news for workers is good news for LinkedIn". According to the article LinkedIn is growing rapidly:

About 1 million people flock to the network every two weeks now, compared with 1 million per month earlier this year. (The site has 33 million members from 8 million two years ago.)

It seems that LinkedIn is the business network of choice, so if you are in the business of HealthCare Art you need a presence here. To get started, here is a link to their website: www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn in Plain English

Linkedin is an important free online tool for people involved with the use of Art in HealthCare. It can help you:

• Find new sources of art
• Reconnect with people you've worked with or studied with
• Find people doing similar work in other cities - connect with them to ask advice
• Get a new job
• Keep your address book up to date as people change jobs and move

This last point (keeping the address book current) to be particularly helpful. It seems that people in the Design world move frequently. If you want to maintain business relationships you need an accurate mail and email address.

Give Linkedin a try; it's free and only takes a few minutes to get started. The first step is to go to www.linkedin.com and register. Then create a profile, and start inviting people to be your connections.

Many people I have talked to don't understand Linkedin fully. The YouTube video above offers a simple introduction. 

Other resources to learn more:

• Wikipedia on LinkedIn: click here
• 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn: click here
• Unofficial Users Guide: click here
• A book on LinkedIn that I can recommend: LinkedIn For Dummies by Joel Elad

I covered LinkedIn on a previous post called LinkedIn - Social Networking for Business

How to use this Website

Sanibel Beach

This website has grown over the last year-and-a-half. There are over 640 "posts" (short articles) on the blog. Here are five tips to help you sort through all those articles to quickly find what you are interested in:

1. Use the Search Feature
2. Look at the Table of Contents
3. Don't miss Older Posts
4. Leave and Read Comments
5. Use Hyperlinks

Search Feature

If there is a topic or person you are looking for, type it into the Search field on the upper right. For example, if you type in "Budget" dozens of references to budget on the blog appear.

Table of Contents

One problem with blogs is that they are arranged by time rather than by subject. The newest posts are always at the top. To help narrow down your search, I created a table of contents. You can find it on the upper right hand side of the page.

If you click the on the word "Interview" you will see a list of the leaders in HealthCare that I have interviewed.

Older Posts

No more than ten posts can appear on one page of this website. But older articles may have the information you are interested in. To see them, when you get to the very bottom of a page be sure to press the >> icon with an underline under it.

Leave a Comment

One way blogs are different than other websites is that they allow readers to leave comments. This can lead to some pretty interesting discussions. To read those discussions you need to click the word "comments" found at the bottom of every post.

If you have an opinion on a topic, please leave a comment. Click here to see an explanation about how to leave comments.

Use Hyperllinks

If you see underlined text, that probably means it is a "Hyperlink". If you put your cursor over the text and cick, you are taken to a website that goes into greater depth on that topic. For example in ther paragraph above this one, I added a hyperlink to the words "Click here."

LinkedIn - Social Networking for Business

LinkedIn is different than other Social Networking sites. LinkedIn is Social Networking for adults; geared toward business.

After  asking "What the Heck is Social Networking" and writing a post on it a couple months ago (Click here) I almost gave up on the the idea.  I concluded that Twitter, MySpace and FaceBook were  for teenagers to stay constantly connected with one another. Places to discuss the latest gossip in High School.

Why I like LinkedIn:

• Keep connections even after people change jobs or email addresses
• It is a form of "Permission Marketing" as described by Seth Godin.
• It is Free
• It is Easy to use
• Online Networking with the people I work with

I encourage you to try it out and create your own profile.
Here is mine: www.linkedin.com/in/henrydomke

If you want a book to help this make sense, consider "LinkedIn for Dummies" by Joel Eland. The website is so simple that you may not need the book, but if you are a novice to Social Networking, it helps.

The website to get started with LinkedIn is: www.LinkedIn.com

Art Business News

I did a Google search today for "Art Business".  Art Business News was 3rd from the top with a blurb that said "Provides industry news, marketing matters and emerging trends that drive sales for art publishers, galleries, solo artists and art-related business."

This free website is worth a look, especially if you are interested in poster art. The URL is www.artbusinessnews.com

Pros

• Podcast interviews with the leaders in Poster Art click here
• Free Online access of featured articles since 2004 click here
• Online video library click here

Cons

• Cluttered look due to advertising links
• No international coverage

The target audience seems to be art consultants and those who run frame shops, not top-dollar New York Galleries.

We are a Featured Blog on TypePad!

I am proud to say that Henry Domke Fine Art is a "featured blog" with TypePad this week.
Click here to see their featured blogs.

TypePad is the largest paid blogging service in the world. I have used TypePad for this blog since I started in early 2007.

I have to say I have been very happy working with them. They have templates which are easy to use and look professional. I never have to worry about coding (good thing, since I don't understand programming).

My two favorite blogs also use TypePad:

• Seth Godin's Blog
  
• Steve May's Blog
  

To learn more about TypePad, their website is: www.typepad.com

HealthCare Leadership: New Resource on Evidence-based Design

HealtlhCare Leadership is a new free website to help you learn about Evidence-based Design (EBD). The URL for the website is: www.healthdesign.org/hcleader

The goal of the website is to "summarize the latest scientific research - also offer practical solutions, action steps and an ROI evaluation framework for healthcare executives who must evaluate and justify investments in new construction and renovation projects."

The site, which is oriented toward the "decision makers", offers a variety of free online tools. For example they have Five "White Papers" on key concepts. These are Acrobat PDF publications which are free for download:

• The Business Case for Building Better Hospitals Through EBD
• Culture Change and Facility Design: A Model for Joint Optimization 
• Implementing Healthcare Excellence: The Vital Role of the CEO in EBD
• Maximizing the Impact of Nursing Care Quality: A Closer Look at the Hospital Work Environment & the Nurses's Impact on Patient-Quality Care
• A Review of the Research Literature on Evidence-Based Design

It is the last one; the review of the research literature that really caught my eye. You can download this essential 76-page document for free. This was just published in the journal HERD. If you are serious about understanding EBD and Evidence-based Art, this is required reading.

The HealthCare Leadership website is a collaboration of the Center for Health Design and Georgia Tech. It is funded from a grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Guild Sourcebook - Now Online & Free

The Guild Sourcebook just went online. The Guild Sourcebook connects the design trade with professional artists and their work. If you are involved with the use of Art in HealthCare, this is an essential reference. 

To see The Guild Sourcebook online: click here

The printed version is great. Filled with large full-color images, you can really see what the art looks like. But it is much more convenient to just look things up on the web, even if the pictures can't match the quality of the printed page. Plus, the website is free and open to all. 

The website is particularly easy to use. It opens up with a full table of contents, all with hyperlink to the different categories:

• Architectural Glass
• Architectural Elements
• Atrium Sculpture
• Public Art
• Non-Representational Sculpture
• Representational Sculpture
• Liturgical Art
• Lighting & Furniture
• Murals, Tiles & Wall Reliefs
• Paintings & Prints
• Fine Art Photography
• Metal Wall Art
• Mixed & Other Media Wall Art
• Fiber Art

You can also search for artists by name. Click here

I covered the print version of The Guild Sourcebook just a few weeks ago. Click here

What the heck is Social Networking?

What is Social Networking and how might it relate to the use of Art in HealthCare?

At this point I have to say that I "don't get" Social Networking. I know it is surging in popularity, especially with young people, but should I pay attention to it?

My good friend Steve Mays insists that it is time to take a look. Steve has a good record as a digital media guru. He was the one who encouraged me to get into Podcasting a couple of years ago. That resulted in 50 weekly interviews on the Living Healthy Podcast. They are still online, to listen to them click:www.livinghealthypodcast.com

Steve was also the one who encouraged me to start this blog (HealthCareFineArt.com). Not only did he encourage me, he helped me set it up and still offers suggestions on how to make it more useful.

Now Steve is telling me to check out Twitter.

It is hard for me to see why I would want to do this; do I really want to stay connected online that much? Why would anyone care about what I'm doing right that second? However, Steve seems to have a good sense of future trends; he might be right.

To test this out I have signed up for:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• MySpace

Could a community of geographically dispersed people interested in the use of Art in HealthCare form an online community? We will see.

The chart at the top of this page reveals one problem.The people using Social Networking now tend to be under the age of 30. Most of the people involved with Art in Healthcare are older than that; I'm 56. Will people of my generation embrace this? I remain skeptical, but I will give it a try.

New: Table of Contents

Today I've added a new feature to this website to make it more useful; a Table of Contents. Please let me know what you think. Does this make it easier to find what you are looking for?

You will find the Table of Contents listed in the upper right hand corner. There you will find 15 groups of topics. You might think of them as chapters in a book:

1. Books & Journals
2. Buget
3. Controversial
4. Evidence-based Design
5. Featured Artists
6. Framing
7. Healing Gardens
8. Interview
9. Murals & Backlit Panels
10. Music
11. Nature Photography
12. Resource
13. Trends
14. Websites, Blogs & Podcasts
15. World Perspective

Now if you are want to read about Evidence-based Design, all you have to do is click that word in the Table of Contents and the titles of 24 different posts (short articles) dealing with that appear.

I have left out about half of the 530 posts on this blog. I've included only those that I thought had staying power.