I was bicycle riding on our Rails to Trails path on Sunday when a small girl, maybe two years old, wandered away from her parents and onto the path. It's a busy area so I stay pretty aware when I ride there, and was fortunate to be able to stop short. When I started again, a rider coming in the other direction shouted, "Good reaction time!" to me.

Normally on the path you only hear mean things. "Watch where you're going!" "Get over!" "Don't you know the rules!" And most of the time those people are guilty of something themselves like going too fast, passing without saying anything, etc. The point is that the nice remark made me feel great, encouraged me to continue my careful riding and made me smile the rest of the spring-like, winter day.

With that said, on this last Daily before Christmas, let's give a shout-out to three nice SIPA folks who are doing their thing well.

Elizabeth Petersen, executive vice president/publisher at BLR, has a great post on LinkedIn titled Do You Think, Maybe, You Could Possibly Read This? If It's Not a Problem? She starts with her own sports career in rugby and moves it into life in general. "...I rarely hear female colleagues, or the women I coached, praise themselves or celebrate personal accomplishments."

A previous male coach doubted her skills and let it affect his strategy: "Well, women generally can't kick well," he told her. In the professional realm, she recalls an executive announcing a new initiative. Instead of immediately declaring her ability to do this, she waited until the meeting ended and told him: "I think I might be good at that."

I'll leave the rest for you to read. It's interesting though that when I go back and edit my stuff, the words I usually end up deleting are "think" and "might." Be bold in 2016!

Greg Krehbiel, director of marketing operations for Kiplinger, has a weekly blog on publishing that deserves to be read. In one recent post, he expounds upon the personalized newsletter of the future. "Content can be fine-tuned pretty well these days, but I think it still has a long way to go."

 His argument is that just because I may like one article in a magazine, one product from Under Armour, one play from a theater company, does not mean that I want to know about everything they do. "Imagine a browser plugin that allowed you to select things no matter where you found them, and allowed you to customize alerts for when something has changed," he writes.

 I'm sure if it's not here already it will be coming. Stay tuned!

And kudos to longtime member, Lisa Anthony of InFaith Publishing Group, for showing her subscribers the social media way. In early 2013, when I asked Anthony if her subscribers—many of them priests and pastors—use social media, she told me: "...some are, and more need to be. We're trying to help them with that. They don't know how to use LinkedIn, and they're intimidated by Facebook. That's more for the parents and parishioners and takes more commitment than Twitter."

InFaith Publishing continues to maintain an active and informative Facebook page with 1,581 likes. I especially enjoyed one post from earlier this month about the holidays: "Before you say, 'Bah, humbug!,' read through the very helpful comments Fr. Martin makes on how to enjoy the season a little more by buying into the frenzy a little less."

And she's even using gamification. "How well do you know the Bible?" one post asks. "Take this cool Bible quiz and find out. You may even win one." It's great when we can show subscribers/members something rather than just tell them. And, of course, InFaith has an active Twitter page with 358 followers. "Here is the Pope's schedule for his U.S. visit. Will you get to see him?" read one tweet.

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…