I’ve written before about the importance of balance between family, work, social life, and alone time. We all know how vitally important it is. Yet we continue to fail remarkably well at it. We go and go and go until we literally collapse, or have an accident, or get sick. Yet once we’re better, despite our good intentions, we get back on our horse and do it all over again. My work life is demanding that I be 150% on top of my game right now. In a little under 5 weeks we are launching a huge project. We’ve got a whole bunch of other projects on the go this summer too. Oh, and we’re producing a TV show to boot (coming soon to an Interwebz near you). I know I know – it’s not about how busy you are. What it is about, is I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to eek out my balance in the next few weeks. There probably won’t be much, but I have to carve out what I can. I’ve had some people ask me why I’m not going to Podcasters Across Borders this weekend. It would have been a great chance to catch up with some of my online friends that I don’t get to see that often. It would have been fun to hang out and chat and explore new opportunities with each other. It’s only 2 hours’ drive from me. But, no offense to you beautiful people, it’s not part of my balance this weekend. What is part of my balance this weekend is the fact that my godson is turning 5 years old. And he’s having a pirate party. And I get to go on a real pirate ship and wear a patch on my eye and say “Arrrr, matey” and have fake sword battles and tickle fights. What is also part of my balance is celebrating Father’s Day with my favourite Dads. My own Dad, of course. My brother. My husband (doting “father” to our 3 furry creatures). We’re all going to have brunch together, and spend some quality time sharing food and stories and being a family. And my final bit of balance, of course has to do with music. Tonight I’m going to a church. At that church, will be what promises to be a magical evening with one of my favourite bands, Great Lake Swimmers. It will be a couple of hours of peace and music and good energy. That’s my weekend prescription – fun with kidlets, laughs with family, and peace through music. Enjoy your time, whatever you decide to do this weekend. And don’t forget to find your balance, even if it’s just for a few moments.
The Grand Experiment of Social Media
On Thursday afternoon I had the great pleasure of attending a talk with Malcolm Gladwell at the National Arts Centre here in Ottawa. It done in a Q and A format and hosted by local journalist Mark Sutcliffe. It was an awe inspiring 90 minutes, to say the least. We laughed, we thought, we even got a little emotional at times. We also supported the United Way/Centraide of Ottawa, so we felt good on many levels. Gladwell told many stories, but the one that has stuck with me over the past few days was “Million Dollar Murray”. If you aren’t familiar with the story, you can go have a read over here. It’s about a homeless man living on the streets of Reno. Murray was an alcoholic, and spent much of his time in and out of treatment, emergency rooms and jail. One day, someone decided to total up how much it was costing the city of Reno to keep Murray on the streets and “manage” him. It turned out that over 10 years, Murray cost the city of Reno over $1 million. You read that right. $1 million and the end result was that after 10 years, Murray was still homeless. The story goes on to suggest that if the city of Reno was to get Murray off the street, into an apartment, and give him the treatment and counselling and support he needed to stay there, that would only cost them about $15,000 a year. You read that right too. Of course, this type of arrangement isn’t without it’s share of challenges, and you can read the article to find out more about those. The point is not what Murray does or doesn’t cost the system. The point Gladwell made in his talk was that by making one small change to how society is looking at the problem of homelessness – by solving it instead of managing it…that there’s enormous potential to make a real difference in the lives of the chronically homeless. He suggested to us that experimenting with different methods to achieve this should not be ruled out. It’s experimentation that I want to talk with you about today. A pinch of this, a dash of that. The online circles I tend to travel in are mostly made up of a mish mash of PR, advertising, media and marketing types. These folks are for the most part extremely good at what they do. I follow them, read their blogs, converse with them, do business with them, and socialize with them. I do it on many levels, with many different tools. I throw in bits and pieces of my own stuff, and share what I know. In return, I get to learn what they know. It creates a very symbiotic relationship. Sometimes I give more. Sometimes they do. In the end, we both have the opportunity to benefit. This is what works for me. The mish mash. I don’t spend too much time with any one group. I don’t just listen to one or two gurus. I find the people that I’m interested in. Everyone’s secret recipe is different. Sometimes the recipe changes. Sometimes you need to experiment, try on different hats. Sometimes you need to be totally engaged, sometimes you need to back away. But in the end it’s your secret recipe, to do with what you please. Lead, follow, or get a life. There are literally thousands of people out here in the social media world that want to give you advice. What’s wonderful is, there are thousands that have extremely good advice to give. Yet it seems to me that we have a tendency to hang on the every word of a select few. And when we’re not hanging on words, we’re following the same select few around to every conference and meetup on the continent just to get a sneak peek or the latest insight (or worse, just to “be in their presence”. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen those kinds of tweets, and I know you have too.). I’m not saying that the upper crust of social media are not worth listening to. Quite the contrary. What I am saying is this. You know how certain types of tropical fish will follow your finger across the glass, no matter where you go? I often imagine that a lot of conferences are like this. One finger flits around the outside of the bowl and the rest of the goldfish follow its every move. Original thought gives way to hero worship, seeing and being seen, and suddenly, the intended value gets entirely lost. This is one of the reasons I’m very particular about which conferences and meetups I attend. The world will always have leaders and followers. If you are a leader, then lead. Be a trailblazer. Nobody’s telling you not to. In fact, we need you. If you are a follower, then that’s great too. A good leader is only as good as the calibre of her following. But there’s following, and there’s just plain silly. Followers, in my book, are there to learn, absorb, then go off and do something real with what their leaders have shown them. The just plain silly aren’t following. They are being silly. Hoping that the leader will notice them, hoping the leader will give them something even though they are offering nothing in return. And, uh, Suze. You’ve totally lost me. So, you say…what does any of this have to do with Malcolm Gladwell and his philosophy about experimentation? Simple. We have at our disposal an entire planet’s worth of knowledge. We have the ability to connect with just about anyone, anywhere, anytime. We can build relationships like never before. Yet for some reason, many people in the online space seem intent on trying to make the rules for everyone. They say: You MUST tweet this way. You MUST choose this Facebook vanity name. You MUST blog this many times per day or week. You MUST
On Being an Entrepreneur
Just recently, our company passed its 2nd anniversary (in its current, full time version – we ran as a part time entity for 4 years prior to that). We’ve come a long, long way in 2 years. We’ve surpassed many of our expectations and are on a course now to exceed even more over the next little while. It’s exciting, exhilarating, and scary as crap. I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting lately on what I’ve learned over the past couple of years, and I’m in the mood today to share some of these things. Too few new entrepreneurs share their lessons with each other. It IS scary striking out on your own. It IS risky. You ARE going to make plenty of mistakes. But for some reason, many of us feel like we need to keep our fears to ourselves. That if we don’t ever say we’ve made a mistake or ten, then somehow we are stronger. In fact, I think the opposite is true. So, here are a couple of things I’ve learned so far. Get Over Yourself. I used to be the kind of person that took EVERYTHING personally. If a clerk in a store was snarky to me, I’d worry about what I’d done to tick them off. Heaven forbid one of my friends or colleagues should disagree with me; I’d feel bad about it for DAYS! When you are running a company, people are going to disagree with you every day. Lots of people are going to try and shoot you down. Others are going to talk behind your back. People will say no to you a lot. The last thing on earth that you should do in any of these situations is take it personally. I’ve learned that taking things personally is actually a sign of self-centeredness. If you stop taking things personally, a really cool thing happens. You are able to start seeing the other person’s perspective. And then, you are able to make rational choices based on that. Suddenly, the naysayers and backstabbers don’t matter anymore. And the people saying no, start to say yes. Ask for Help. I was just about to start in on this entrepreneurial adventure full time when I met the person who was responsible for introducing me to all of this social media stuff. He’s a super busy guy, but he spent a lot of time giving me snippets of advice, feedback on what I was doing, and basically just being encouraging and supportive. For that, I’m infinitely grateful. I remember one day I was struggling with something. It was a technology issue, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to overcome it. I was terrified that my project was going to fail because of it. I sent a message to my friend, to ask his advice. He said something really simple – “why don’t you ask Twitter?” Seems obvious now, however Twitter was pretty new to me (and everyone) two years ago. Always ahead of his time though, my buddy had already figured out the power of the network. I did as he suggested, and posted a message. Within minutes I had advice, contacts, and was on the road to a solution. I wrote back to my friend and said “Wow! It worked!”. He replied with a bit of advice that has stuck with me to this day: “You have a whole network of people available to you now. Use it.” Never, ever, ever, ever be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Successful business ventures are successful because there are PEOPLE behind them. You can’t and don’t (and shouldn’t) possess every skill you need to accomplish everything you need to do. A good leader is someone who can surround herself with good people. Hire people who are better at what they do than you are. Ask your network for advice, contacts, or just their opinion. But don’t forget to give advice and help and time when asked, too (because nobody likes a Needy Nelly). We now have instant access to more help and advice and resources than ever. Use your network. It works. And your business will be better for it. That’s what I’ve learned – what about you?
How Windows 7 Restored my Faith in Microsoft
That’s a pretty bold title, don’t you think? Well, those of you who know me well know that I don’t say things like this unless I actually mean them. And this time, I’m telling you, I mean it. Let me share with you the story of my laptop. About 8 months ago, I bought a Sony Vaio laptop. I’m a Mac user, but I liked the large size and feel of this laptop, I’d heard good things about the brand, and frankly, it was cheaper than what I was willing to fork over on a Mac at the time. The only problem with the laptop is that it came pre-installed with Windows Vista (cue dramatic music here). The darn thing never quite ran right – the hard drive would chug away on invisible tasks, boot up time was much longer than I was used to, and the sheer volume of security notifications just about put me over the edge. I’ve been using computers for 25 years. Vista treated me like I was an idiot. I stopped using the laptop altogether. It sat in the bag, being extracted only when every other computer I had was tied up with other tasks. Even at that it was an exercise in futility. Finally about a week ago, I decided I needed to do something about it. I had an old copy of Windows XP and decided to “upgrade” – at least I’d be able to function again on a stable OS. I happened to tweet my plans and caught the attention of my friend and local Microsoft guy, Rick Claus (@Rickster_CDN). Rick said “No! No! Install the Win7 Release Candidate – you won’t be disappointed.” I trust Rick immensely, he’s never steered me wrong when it comes to advice about Microsoft. He works for them so he knows of what he speaks. He told me to back up my data and the install would take about 20 minutes. But what about drivers? Any other Windows install I’d ever done required me to spend 2 hours after the install to upgrade my sound card, DVD player, and other drivers. He informed me that the driver support was excellent. I took the plunge. With my husband by my side for moral support, I hit the Install button on Win7 RC and listened as my hard drive got wiped clean and the install began. Rickster’s estimate of 20 minutes was a bit light – it actually took about 50 minutes all told (but he’s running a much more powerful machine than I, so the timeframe is totally justified). My Vaio rebooted for the last time, and lo and behold, the password prompt appeared. I set my password, logged in and was greeted, pleasantly, with….nothing. No error messages. No “Windows cannot find the driver for XX”. No constant loading of invisible programs. It just worked. It detected my wireless network right away, I plunked in the security code and…it just worked. Within 15 minutes of the install I’d loaded up Skype, Tweetdeck, and OpenOffice and I was in business. I kid you not. I didn’t even bother to load Firefox because IE 8 was running so smoothly and looked so nice. The interface is slick. Large icons sit in the task bar eagerly awaiting their launch. The resemblance to MacOS did not go unnoticed, but hey, it looks great, so I’m not complaining. I met up with Rick the other day after work and he gave me a run through. I won’t go through everything here but what I really like is what you can do with the desktop. Slamming an open window to the top of the screen maximizes it. Slamming it to the right minimizes it to half screen, so you can do side-by side comparisons. And my personal favourite, if you have lots of windows open, take the top window and shake it quickly back and forth and it minimizes all the windows but that one. Kitschy, I know, but fun – and pretty useful, too. I’m learning how to be a better keyboarder (having done away with my mouse now), and I like how Win7 has integrated keyboard commands. For example, pressing the Windows button and the letter “P” puts you right into the setup for an external monitor or projector, and you can toggle your settings. No more hitting Function F7 a million times! W00t! What I’m most impressed by is how “light” this OS seems to be. It doesn’t seem to be hogging any resources, and program launches are fast and easy. I tend to have lots open at the same time, and I’ve had no issues with this. I’ve had no compatibility issues so far with software or drivers. The only down side I have seen is that sometimes on program close, particularly with Skype and Firefox, the processes don’t all get shut down in the background so I have to go in and do that manually before I can launch the program again. But that might be a compatibility issue that will get fixed up in a future update. All in all, I think that Microsoft is about to change the way PC users work. Windows 7 combines ease of use with a slick interface and FAR fewer clunkiness issues than in the past. To be honest, I’d gotten to the point where I was ready to give up on the PC platform altogether. But thanks to Rick’s good advice, I gave them one more chance and I’m not disappointed. Good on ya, Microsoft. The Windows 7 RC is available for free from the Microsoft site. I encourage you to check it out. It will be free till sometime next year when the full version comes out. Enjoy!
Connecting in the Offline World
There’s an unusual trend happening in my life right now, in terms of how I’m connecting with people. I’m doing a lot of “offline” stuff. Perhaps it’s just the nature of my schedule of late, perhaps it’s intentional, perhaps it’s fate…but I am finding some great richness in the interactions I’m having with the non-geeks in my life. For instance, thanks to my offline friend Ray, I am now on the Board of Directors of a fantastic local organization called SAW Video Co-op. SAW is a place where local video artists have access to resources, training and equipment to produce their own independent videos. It’s a super vibrant community. Yes, you can draw some parallels between video geeks (of which I am one) and Internet geeks (of which I am also one), but essentially this is an offline experience for me. I’m participating in in-person meetings. The events I’ll be attending are happening in a self-contained way – people are physically present, unlike a Tweetathon, a webinar, or a Twestival. Some might argue that an organization like SAW could benefit from some of these online experiences, but that’s another post altogether. Another example of connecting in the offline world occurred last night at my Dad’s 71st birthday party. Other than the fact that my Mom sent an email to us kids to inform us of the time and date of the gathering, the event took place offline. My brother and SIL, my two nephews were there. So were my parents’ close friends, who we consider our aunts and uncles. Everyone was talking all at the same time. We ate birthday pie, and cheescake, and drank vanilla coffee. The kids ran around. I built a Lego house out of the same Lego set we had when I was a kid. My Dad told stories. My Mom giggled in the kitchen with my aunts. We were all there, and present. We spend so much time cultivating our online relationships that sometimes we forget that there is a whole world out there that is not so dependent on connectivity. My parents, and aunts and uncles, though they sometimes use the Internet, don’t RELY on it for their daily interactions. They still pick up the phone. They even mail letters and cards and stuff once in a while. They spend time together, in the same physical space, if they want to connect with friends. Connecting with others online over the past few years has been a life altering event for me. I’ve become close friends with people I’d have otherwise never met. I’ve gotten phenomenal new business opportunities. My life has definitely been enriched by my experience, and the Web will undoubtedly continue to play a major role in my life. However, I am really beginning to appreciate my offline life a lot more. It operates at a much slower pace. It doesn’t require the same kind of immediacy, because people are just more relaxed when they are facing each other. Nothing is left to the imagination when you can see someone’s body language and facial expressions. You get the whole conversation, because you are seeing, and listening, and touching, and ultimately understanding a lot more. I’m not just talking about moving your online world to your offline. We are being conferenced to death right now – there’s all of these events we can go to where we can meet each other in the flesh. That works well for some, and it’s fine. But look around you. Remember those people you knew before the Internet? They are still there. Pick up the phone. Go knock on their door. Have that experience too. And, if you are still unsure about the power of connecting in the physical world, watch Matt. Now that’s how you bring people together.
Revisiting Three Words
At the beginning of this year I did what many others did and came up with three words to help me define my goals and priorities for the year. I thought, since we’re coming up on the six month mark, that now would be a good time to review and see where I’m at. My three words are Connect, Difference and Positive. Connect. The idea with this goal was for me to make sure that not only am I connecting with new people all the time, but that I’m maintaining my connections with those I’ve known for a while. These days, it’s far too easy to get caught up in the online world. Many people struggle to find a balance. Connecting online can be addictive – frankly it’s just so damn cool to have this way to instantly meet, converse and get to know people who are across the world that it’s hard to resist the temptation to do it all the time. I’ve become close friends with people who I’d never otherwise had the chance to meet. It’s astounding and every day I am amazed. But….what about the offline world? I often wonder if I’m doing a good enough job nurturing those connections. This past weekend was very offline for me in terms of connecting. I went to two gatherings…one with a bunch of friends and former colleagues from my old cable TV days, and one with my closest girlfriends. Many of these people I hadn’t seen in months, or even years in some cases. It was like stepping back into a comfortable old pair of shoes. Even though we’ve all grown up and moved on, the connection we made so many years ago endures. Don’t forget to connect with people from your past once in a while. It’s vitally important. It’s fun. And it almost always opens new doors. Difference. My point with this goal was to focus more time on making a difference for others this year. I’ve always been philanthropic by nature, involved in a bunch of different project to help other people. Over the years I’ve volunteered with the Red Cross, The Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada, The Cancer Foundation, CHEO, Foster Parents Plan and more. I get that from my parents. They were highly active in their younger days with various charities. We were always engaged in some kind of way with one fundraising project or another. They showed me at a young age how important it is to help others, and I’ve carried that lesson through my whole life. Over the past few years I’d backed away a lot from making a difference. I was still giving money to various charities, but not much of my time. As fate would have it, Danny Brown came along, and so did 12for12k. I’ve gotten so much out of being involved in this project I can’t even tell you. It’s a great feeling to know we are doing good things to help others. It’s fun, and challenging, but we know what we have to keep going with it, building and growing it. But making a difference doesn’t always have to be about charity. Look around you. Do you know someone who needs your help? Maybe they need someone to help around the house. Maybe they need help with a special project of their own. If you have something to offer, don’t hold back. Reach out your hand, see who takes hold. It’s what life is all about. Positive. This is by far the toughest one for me. Anyone who knows me might be shocked to hear that. I put it on the list because it’s something I need to work on. Some days it’s my attitude that needs work. With so much going on in my life right now, it’s hard some days to bound out of bed and be 100% positive about everything all the time. But it’s not just about my attitude. A lot of my positivity comes through the people I spend time around. I’ve made up my mind to push negative people from my life. Just to do it. I’m not trying to be mean, but I just don’t have time for negative people any longer. Sure, they are still going to try to come at me once in a while, but I’ve learned how to deal with them better now. How to not react, get sucked in. I’ve learned that the best way to stay positive is to stay present. Eckhart Tolle says that “In the present moment, problems do not exist.” It’s a simple phrase, but one that is very hard to understand and abide by. We waste so much of our lives on past and future. The secret to my positivity is presence. I’m far from perfect at it, but I’m trying, every day, to get better. Thanks for listening to this – I feel good that I’ve taken time to reflect on my three words. Now, how about you?
The Big Break
The man on the right side of this picture, the one sitting in the chair with the camera….he gave me my first break. I was 19 years old and ready to take the television world by storm. I thought getting my first job would be easy. After all, I had two years of college under my belt. I’d graduated with honours, one of the top students in my class. I was a shoe-in, right? Wrong. Nobody wanted to hire me because I had no “real world” experience. And I couldn’t get any “real world” experience, because nobody would hire me. I was extremely frustrated. Then one day I walked into the local cable TV station. I signed up as a volunteer. I started doing some work as a camera operator, production assistant, etc. It was fun, but not what I really wanted to be doing. I really wanted to edit and direct and produce. One day, about two weeks into my volunteer run, I was stopped in the hall by the man in the picture. At that time, he was a staff producer at the station. He asked if I wanted to grab a cup of coffee and chat. We sat down in the green room and he proceeded to ask me a ton of questions. “What school did you go to?”, “What kinds of stuff did you learn?”, “What are you interested in learning here?”, and so on. He discovered that not only was I really eager to do some editing, but that I had learned on most of the same equipment that they had there at the cable station. In fact, they’d just gotten some new gear that the staff was still learning about, and I already knew how to use it! It turned out that my new friend was in desperate need of someone to help with editing some segments for his news magazine show. He asked if I’d be interested in that. I jumped at the chance, of course. And from that point on I spent my days for the next little while (I didn’t have a paying job yet, remember) at the cable station, editing stories. I was having the time of my life, and learning a TON. Plus, my work was actually ending up on real TV, which was cool. My parents were proud – so proud, that they recorded all the shows I worked on onto a VHS tape (I wonder if they still have that tape?) About 2 months later I was driving my producer friend home after a show one night. He was doing his usual thing…asking me questions. “How’s the job hunt?”, “What’s your next step?”, “Did you hear about this new paid internship program?” – wait – internship? paid? “I can help you get in,” he said, “I’ll recommend you to my boss.” That was the first day of the rest of my life. It was 20 years ago. Now, I run my own production company. Until last night, I hadn’t seen my friend in about 10 years. We’ve kept in touch off and on, but last night was the first time we really saw each other. We had a small chat, and he’s at it again. He wants to recommend me for something else now, a really interesting opportunity, and a smart next move for me as an entrepreneur. I owe a tremendous amount to my friend. He gave me my start. He’s given lots of other people their starts, too. One person in particular has gone on to become very famous. When defining success, don’t always look at yourself and how you’re going to make it to the top of the heap. Look around you. What my friend has taught me over the years is it’s not always about becoming number one or becoming rich and/or famous yourself. Being a success can also mean raising others up. Noticing those around you, learning about what drives them, what their passion is, what they are really good at, and then giving them a chance to excel. My friend has had a very successful career. He’s very talented, one of the most talented and creative people I know. But a big part of his success is gained by his ability to spot talent in people (by observing), figure out what they want (by asking questions), and then give those people a lift (by believing in them). Thank you Ray. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you believing in me 20 years ago, and for you continuing to believe in me today. And now, dear readers, I leave you with a question…. Who are you going to lift up?
Corn Flakes, Cuisine, and Why You Need to Care About Web 3.0
Sometimes online culture really makes me wonder. This past week the Twittering world was up in arms about a minor change to the functionality of the tool with regards to replies. I’m not going to go into details, the info is all here, and here, and here. Feel free to wear yourself out with it. What’s most amazing to me is that while everyone was busy complaining about Twitter, two incredible things happened that almost nobody mentioned. First, the long-anticipated Wolfram|Alpha semantic search tool was released. Wolfram|Alpha is the vision of scientist Stephen Wolfram. His idea was to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.” In plain English, what he’s trying to do is link all the data in the world together, to create a system of which you can ask nearly any question. The system is designed to work more the way humans think – by creating relationships between seemingly disparate data. For example, let’s say you want to know the nutritional value of your breakfast. Currently, there are tools out there that will help you calculate that. Google will do it. But the problem is, you can’t just ask Google, “How many calories are in my bowl of cornflakes and glass of orange juice?”. If you don’t believe me, go try it. You’ll get results for Orange juice, mostly. You may get some results for Corn Flakes too. But you won’t get your definitive answer without much clicking and calculating. Wolfram|Alpha hopes to change all that. If you go there and type in “calories in 1 bowl of corn flakes + a glass of OJ”, not only will you get the total number of calories, but you’ll get a nutritional breakdown of protein, carbs, fat, and vitamins of the entire meal. This changes everything – and if you don’t agree with me, read on. The second amazing thing that happened this week while everyone was otherwise distracted with their twittering was that Google also announced their first step towards the Semantic Web. Yes, Google. Called Rich Snippets, the concept is to enhance search results with linked data. Currently, when you look up information on a new restaurant in town, you might get a web site link, or a Google map and phone number. If you do a second search for reviews, you may get some links to reviews. You will have to go seek out and look at their menu online to find out if their prices are affordable. You can go to a specific site such as Restaurantica and find even more information. So now you are 4 or 5 searches into things just to figure out if you might want to eat there. The plan with Rich Snippets is to allow for all of this information to appear in one search result. You simply search for the restaurant’s name and the results will include reviews, price points, locations and perhaps even a direct link to make a reservation. Linked data will make it all possible. But…but I went and tried it and it doesn’t work very well. This technology sucks! You know what? You’re right. It’s far, far, FAR from perfect. Half the time you go on Wolfram|Alpha and you’ll and error message that says the system is over capacity (though the W|A scientists do a have a sense of humour – the error message is reminiscent of HAL from “2001 A Space Odyssey”). Google Rich Snippets technology is reliant upon web designers embedding special mark up codes within their content that will allow Google’s linking algorithms to grab the data. That means gaining buy-in and changing behaviours of the development community – no easy feat. But…but I don’t need to worry about this stuff yet. Besides….Twitter! Is the technology a long way out? It’s not as far away as you think. Remember way back when online video was a challenge to deal with? Nobody wanted to use it because it sucked bandwidth, was choppy and low quality at best, and crashed more browsers than it displayed in. That was waaaay back in 2003. YouTube was launched in 2005. That was only 4 years ago, for anyone who may have lost count. Now, how many online videos have you watched so far today? My point exactly. The point is, Web 3.0 is here. Yes, yes…social media is glorious, fabulous, and has fundamentally changed the way we socialize, communicate, do business and interact. But, the Semantic Web is going to be an even bigger shift. If you are even remotely involved or interested in technology, and especially if your business relies on it, do your homework and learn about this stuff NOW. Because in 2 years or less, online communication will have reached critical mass and will be as ubiquitous as the telephone. The world will have moved on from Twitter and Facebook. The next big thing is not social media. Want to be the next thought leader? Then spend your time thinking about this: The next big thing is information and how we use it. That is all.
A Story of Selflessnes
Once upon a time there was a guy named Dom. Dom needed some stuff, to help make his life a bit better – to help him get around a bit more. Dom asked his friends to help him out. But Dom wasn’t content to just make his life better. He wanted to make others’ lives better too. This weekend, Dom and his friends on Twitter raised over $800. Dom is going to get what he needs to make his life better. But he’s also done something remarkable. Of that $800, he’s selflessly given $300 to 12for12k’s May Charity, the Hospice of Peel. I am truly humbled, grateful, and overwhelmed, that someone could work so hard to bring his community together to help, that the community would in turn come to his aid, and that after all that, he would in turn, do something so selfless to give back. Thank you Dom – you’re a truly special person. Your community loves you…don’t ever forget that.
Give Dom a Lift!
My friend Dominick Evans is a remarkable guy. He’s always first to offer to help out a friend, give advice or make someone smile. He’s kind, generous, sincere, and caring. He’s one of the happiest, most positive people I know. If I’m having a down day, I spend a bit of time chatting with Dom and I always feel better. I consider him a very good friend. Dom and I have never met face to face – though we came close back in March when I was traveling through Michigan on a road trip. In fact, Dom and I have never even spoken to each other – our entire friendship has been text-based – via Twitter, email and Instant Messaging. People in the offline world often wonder how online friendships can really work. How is it possible that you can become attached to someone you’ve never met in person? I have a theory about this – I believe that in fact, people become closer to one another more quickly in the online world. Why? Many times, people who are getting to know each other in the physical world rely on one on one interactions. They run through the whole series of typical “get to know you” chatter – what do you do for a living? Do you have kids? What’s your dog’s name? You’re allergic to bees – fascinating! Information is gleaned from each other in small bits and chunks, it’s filtered, and eventually you decide are either good friends or you’re not. In the online world, things are a bit different. First, it’s not really one on one, at least not to start. Social media is many people talking to many people. Sure, conversations branch off, but what you’re seeing is not only how a particular person acts with you, but how they are with everyone. All at once! Not only that, but you are able to cut through the get to know you stuff pretty quickly. I can go to someone’s blog or Twitter feed and get a pretty good idea who they are, what they do, and sometimes I can even find out if they’re allergic to bees. So, with the “get to know you” bits out of the way, I can start to delve into the real meat of getting to know someone. I can learn quickly what drives them, what kind of values they have, what their passion is. They do the same with me. And the friendship becomes much closer, much faster. Dominick has Muscular Dystrophy and is in a wheelchair. He is not out to make people feel sorry for him – far from it. Dom absolutely does not let his MD hold him back. He’s an aspiring filmmaker, a devoted parent and partner, a fantastic writer, and he accomplishes more in a day than many of us do in a week. But, there’s an issue. In order for Dom to get in and out of his bed, he needs a special machine called a Hoyer Lift. The one he has is falling apart and it’s frankly become dangerous for him to use. As a result, he isn’t able to get up out of bed that often right now. A Hoyer Lift costs around $800 US. That’s good chunk of money when you’re trying to work to support a child and a household like Dom does. There are no government subsidies to cover the cost either. So Dom is reaching out to his community – holding a Tweetathon this weekend to raise that $800 so he can get the lift he needs. There are prizes to be given away and everything! But there’s more. Dominick and his partner Ashtyn have decided that just getting Dom’s lift isn’t enough. They have also decided to help out 12for12k’s May Charity, the Hospice of Peel, by donating 15% of all the money they make to 12for12k. Who just got goosebumps? I did. You see, here’s the thing about Dom. He’s not just trying to improve his own quality of life. He’s trying to improve everyone’s quality of life. He isn’t just thinking of himself and the fact that he’s in a wheelchair – he’s thinking of the greater good. And for that reason, if nothing else, I think you should dig in your pockets as far as you can afford to today and give Dom his lift. Thank you.