I know I know I know. I promised not to write any more posts about Twitter. But, one of the things I like to do on this blog, besides breaking promises, is talk about how new media is evolving. And Twitter, well, it’s kind of the evolutionary story of the year, or at least the month, so I thought it was worth talking about. It’s finally happening. Twitter is being taken over by celebrities, the media won’t shut up about it, and the tech-geek early adopter community, who have been on Twitter since the beginning, are freaking out. “Twitter’s going to jump the shark!”, “Twitter’s dead”, and “It’s game over!”, are just a few of the rumblings I’ve seen pass through my stream in the past few days. Some are being downright possessive about it, almost violated at the thought that that Kutcher guy or ol’ what’s her face Winfrey are going to somehow infringe on their ability to use the tool. So, can we just stop this then? I am the first one to admit, I love Twitter. That’s probably pretty obvious to most of you. I’m on it often and it’s been a source of close friendships, fun social times, and new business for me. I find it a very valuable addition to my social and work lives. I’m a fan, and I’m not planning to change that any time soon. Twitter is changing, as we knew it would. Seriously, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world caught on. But the way people use Twitter does not have to change. The reason is simple. If you are in your early late thirties like I am, you probably remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where you would read to a certain point in the book, then have to make a decision about where you wanted the story to go. You’d flip to the page of your choice, and continue reading. It was different every time. I loved those books. Never got bored of them. Twitter is like that – it’s a “choose your own adventure” tool. What I mean is, even though Oprah and Ashton Kutcher and P. Diddy are making tons of noise on Twitter, even though millions and millions of people are following them and talking about them and so on, the fact is, YOU get to choose how you use the tool. YOU get to choose who you follow. YOU get to choose who you talk to, and what you talk about. If you want to follow 50 people, follow 50 people. If you don’t want to follow celebrities, just don’t follow them. If you want to unfollow someone because all they do is follow celebrities, then geez. Just unfollow them. Choose your own adventure in this space. Nobody’s telling you that you can’t. I leave you with the quote of the day, for anyone who thinks that they can make a million bucks shilling advice about social media tools. This is a tweet from my friend Bob Goyetche, and is reprinted with his permission: RT @bobgoyetche: Today, the legions of Oprah-ites join Twitter – your twitter “expertise” = soon to be as valuable as teaching someone to browse the web. But we all KNEW this day would come, didn’t we?
The Day Twitter (or Facebook, or MySpace) Died
I’m watching with interest today a post written my my friend Danny Brown yesterday about a fake Twitter site. You can go read the post, and the comments if you like (WARNING: some of the comments contain some off-colour language). This isn’t a post about the fake Twitter site, and it’s not a post about the silly comments it generated from the fake-Twitter site creators and their friends. This is a post about you. In his post, Danny asks a very pertinent question – what if suddenly, someone took over your personal or professional brand (or your client’s) and started posing on social networks, saying all the wrong things, treating people badly or spreading untruths about you and your brand? Think about it. You’ve worked for months, maybe a year or more, on creating a “social media” marketing strategy for your client. (Forget that you shoudn’t be creating marketing strategies focused on only social media, but that’s another post.) Then one day, a few Google searches reveal that someone is trying to damage you or your client through a fake ID, or a fake site. As Danny points out in his post, it would be pretty easy to do with the kind of thing the fake Twitter site was doing (it’s since been shut down, but that’s another story too). The smart marketers are building contingency and damage control plans into their media strategies to counteract these kinds of threats. I’m not too worried about them. But the whole idea’s got me thinking on an even larger scale. Forget impostors. What if suddenly, Twitter was gone? Or Facebook? Ning? WordPress? Sure, it’s unlikely these tools will just disappear. But what if? Companies, agencies and individuals are putting thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and a ton of blood, sweat and tears into building their marketing strategies around a bunch of free tools, created by a bunch of people they don’t know. What strikes me is that people put all their faith into the tools without a second thought, but when it comes to each other, it’s about building trust and relationships over the long term. Shouldn’t we be subjecting the social media tools we’re using to the same kind of scrutiny to which we subject each other? Why do we have so much faith that these tools are even going to be around next week, let alone next year? Who is to say that they don’t crumple under their own weight, get eaten up by some giant corporation, or simply, that something better comes along? All of these things are happening now – yet people still continue to focus all their efforts around the tools. So what’s the solution? How do we stop relying so much on these tools and get on to the real work? Well, the good news is you don’t have to hire some fancy consultant to figure it out, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Social media is not about the tools.
Why I Like Adversity
This post is a part of Robert Hruzek’s Middle Zone Musings group writing project called “What I Learned From…”. This months’ topic is adversity, and here’s my contribution. We are always told that adversity is something to be feared and avoided. But I disagree. I like adversity. If it wasn’t for adversity I wouldn’t be where I am today. If not for life’s hardships and misfortunes, even the small ones, things would probably be very different. About 12 years ago, I rather suddenly made a career change. I quit my job of 7 years as a cable TV producer, weary from the stress and 90 hour weeks. I went back to school to learn about computers and multimedia. After 7 months of hard work, I was ready and eager to enter the workforce again, feeling confident in my skills, creating high-tech CD-ROMS. The only problem was, while I was busy learning Macromedia Director, the Internet was taking the world by storm. I graduated school with only 1 day of HTML coding under my belt, and quickly found out that in fact, it was web designers that employers wanted, not CD-ROM developers. Oops. I could have given up. Some of my classmates did. I could have written a nasty letter to the college’s department head, telling them that they taught me the wrong skills. I could have gone back to the TV station and begged for my old job back. Instead, I high tailed it down to the local bookstore and bought every book I could find on web design, HTML coding and graphic design. I spent the next 6 weeks, 8 hours a day, learning everything I could about creating and maintaining web sites. At the end of the 6 weeks I was an Internet whiz (by 1998 standards) and an expert in HTML, CSS and FTP. No sooner did I finish my self-induced training, than I got a call from one of my former professors who didn’t teach me about the Internet in my 7 month course. She ran a technology training firm and told me they needed instructors. “To teach what?’, I asked. “Web Design”, she said. Web design? I can do that! I could have given up. I could have complained. I could have gone back to my old life. Instead, I looked adversity in the face and therein found the solution. Adversity is going to happen, no matter what. That’s just life. So instead of fighting against it, or running away from it, perhaps try embracing it. You may just find the answers you’ve been seeking all along.
What Cats Teach Us About Success
I’m a cat person. Oh, sure, I like dogs too. I have two of them. But cats and me – somehow we just understand each other. Well, as much as you can understand a cat. What I love most about being a pet owner is what animals are able to teach me about things. Cats are brilliant this way – they are exceptional teachers. I’ve been thinking a lot about success lately – what it means to be successful, how to become successful, why some people are successful and others aren’t. Then one day, I was watching my cats. And I realized – they are success machines. Here’s why. Cats are extremely solution-oriented. A cat will only do what is most appropriate and comfortable for the cat in any situation. A cat will get to the highest point in the room to get away from the large, smelly dog. A cat will seek out the sunniest, warmest spot in the house to sleep the day away. A cat will only go to it’s owner if there’s something in it for the cat (e.g. scratches, snacks, crinkle toys, catnip). I firmly believe that the number one way to set yourself up for success is to be a problem solver. Don’t have a job? Figure out what combination of skills, networking, positive attitude, and luck you need to land one. Work stressing you out? Figure out what you need to do to take the steps to remove that stressful situation. Money troubles? Come up with a plan and act on it. But do what a cat does – solve your problems as they come up, but make sure you are looking out for number one in the process. Cats are content, and it’s because they consider themselves and their happiness first, and figure out how to remove obstacles that are getting in the way of that happiness. Then the rest just falls into place. Cats are intensely resilient. When one of our cats, Molly, was younger, she loved two things more than anything – to watch the birds out the window, and to chase the laser pointer. Then, about 4 years ago, she was diagnosed with Progressive Retinal Degeneration (PRD). In other words, she’s gone blind. She’s 8 now, and at this point we figure she sees shadows, that’s about it. She can’t see the birds anymore, or the laser pointer. The first reaction many people have when I tell them Molly is blind is “Awww! The poor thing.” But they don’t know Molly. We live in a three bedroom bungalow, with plenty of obstacles like furniture, humans and other pets to navigate. Molly is un-phased by these obstacles. She uses her sense of smell, her freakishly long whiskers and her front paws to feel her way around, to the point where sometimes she gets into and onto places that would be difficult for a sighted cat to get to! My point is, Molly doesn’t care that she can’t see. It’s only other people that care, that feel sorry for her. She can’t see the birds, but her ears definitely perk up when she hears them. She can’t play laser pointer anymore, but the scrunchy ball toy makes noise and that keeps her occupied for hours. Being successful is all about resilience. If Molly falls down, and she does it quite often, she just gets back up and keeps moving. She has a pretty significant limitation, not being able to see. But she’s figured out how to adapt to her situation and it definitely doesn’t hold her back. And she certainly doesn’t give any energy to feeling sorry for herself and her plight. Nothing that’s worthwhile in life comes without effort. The ability to think on your feet and solve problems, and to work around the obstacles that are thrown your way are the two most important skills you can hone in order to achieve success. Cats have been doing these two things for centuries. And you don’t have to spend very long with a cat to realize that they are on to something. P.S. As I was writing this post today, I came across my friend Jennifer Winter’s new blog. Jen and I have been friends since high school. We live on opposite sides of the country now but because of the Internet we’ve been able to maintain a good friendship. One of the things we’ve always had in common is our love of animals, particularly cats. She’s compiled here the “Rules of Cat Ownership” as defined by her cat, Geiger. It’s hilarious, true, and definitely worth the read. Photo: That’s my Molly.
Shut Up and Do Some Real Work
I read two really great blog posts this morning. One was from a person I’ve followed for some time, Kat French. The other was from someone I just met today, Wayne Kelly. The posts at first seem quite different. Kat is talking about 5 social media topics she could do without. Wayne is talking about how working hard and following your dreams is the secret to a happy life. I encourage you to go read them both. What I found interesting is that even though both posts are about different topics, they are two sides of the same coin. Kat points out an issue that she has (and many of us have) with what I like to call the social media bubble – a bunch of yim yams sitting around talking about the social media mumbo jumbo, posing at conferences, and complaining incessantly about inane topics like missing tweets or Facebook interface changes. Wayne on the other hand, writes an insightful and autobiographical post about how he went from being on a career path that wasn’t right for him to being successful and happy after discovering his passion and seizing it. Let’s explore what these posts have in common. Every day, I find myself becoming more and more frustrated with this whole social media thing – to the point where I’m ruthlessly unfollowing and unsubscribing to people who don’t provide me value anymore. Spend all your time on Twitter talking about Twitter? Unfollow. Waste a blog post talking about all the social media “faux-lebrities” you got to drink beer with at SXSW? Unsubscribe. I’m not buying it, people. We’ve all had plenty of time to sit around with our eyeballs on our bellybuttons. Mark my words, if you are still doing it, you’re going to get left in the dust. Things are moving far too fast for you to still be circling your wagons around the possibility that someone’s going to find a viable business model in social media. So what’s the solution? Well, for starters, how about trying to do some real work? Let’s explore what that means for a minute. How To Know When Real Work is Getting Done People who go to conferences just to hang out with rock stars are not doing real work. People who go to conferences because they are speaking at them, representing a client, or ACTUALLY trying to drum up new business contacts are doing real work. People who talk about Twitter on Twitter all day long are not doing real work. People who use Twitter to connect, communicate, collaborate, and even socialize are doing real work. People who sit around and talk all day about how busy they are are not doing real work. They are being busy. The people who are actually making things happen are doing real work. The size of your bank account does not determine how hard you work. There are lots of lazy rich people. However, the amount of passion and drive and conviction you have can SIGNIFICANTLY affect the size of your bank account. And that, takes, you guessed it – real work. Now, let’s take a look at Wayne’s post. Point number one that he makes is the title itself. “Stop Moaning and Make it Happen”. In other words, stop sitting around all day complaining about crap and actually go out and start doing some real work. Wayne goes on to describe the long journey he had to take to wind up where he is now – as a video producer/editor/sound guy. He had to do crappy jobs, flunk out of school, and “in the meantime” jobs. All the while, though, he was doing one thing. Real work. Yup – even though he hated it at times. He still did real work. And while he did that real work, he thought about what he really wanted to do. While he still had that paycheck coming in, he learned to edit, and produce. Fate interjected and allowed him an opportunity to learn from a pro. Note how he seized that opportunity. He now was doing even MORE real work. Wayne says something in his piece that is so true and is the entire point of this post. “Work hard – but on the right things.” That’s real work, people. Does it relate to passion? Of course. Does it mean sometimes it’s a means to an end? Absolutely – but that’s an important part of the process. The real secret to success is not to walk around acting like you are a success. You WILL be found out eventually. The secret is to shut up. Sit down. And figure out what real, actual work you need to do to make stuff happen in your life. If your job is boring (or your don’t have one), then sitting around on Twitter all day is not going to help you. Sure, it might give you some connections. But it’s not going to change your situation for you. You are the only one who can do that. Kat points it out. Wayne proves it.
10 Signs That You May Have Found Your True Passion
My good friend FenderGurl and I went to dinner last night. I love having dinner with her because we always talk about the most interesting things. Sure, we talk about work, kids, relationships, usual girl stuff, but we also go pretty deep sometimes. I rarely come away from a conversation with her without having some sort of new insight. Last night we got talking about our passions. We were exploring what it is that makes us passionate about something, and the question arose “How do I know when I’ve found my true passion?”. Over the past several years, as I’ve moved out of the corporate rat race and into my own thing, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring what it means to be passionate about something and how you really know when you’ve found it. It’s not as hard as you might think. But the signs that it’s actually your true passion might surprise you. 10 Signs That You May Have Found Your True Passion It brings you unbelievable amounts of joy for no apparent reason. It brings you unbelievable amounts of heartache for no apparent reason. It makes you giddy with excitement. It makes you sick to your stomach. You wake up in the morning and bound out of bed because you can’t wait to get to it. You absolutely dread taking the next step towards it because you are too afraid. You sleep like a baby knowing that you are fully living it. You lay wide awake all night worrying about it. People admire you greatly because you are so passionate. People criticize you often because you are so passionate. There’s a common misconception that once you’ve found that thing you are most passionate about, that it’s all going to be sunshine and roses, that life will be perfect in every way, that your problems will just float away on a cloud. Well the thing about finding your passion is, once you’ve found it, it’s actually a lot of hard work. Why? Because your passion is that thing that gets into the core of your being. It becomes everything to you. You can’t exist without it. Some would use the terms “obsessed” or “addicted”, when talking about passion, but I would argue that those terms imply an unhealthy relationship with something. Passion, on the other hand, is fundamentally healthy. Why? Because without your passion, your life would be less full and satisfying. With your passion, you are more whole as a person. Addictions make you weaker. Passions make you stronger. It’s the whole downside of passion that makes it more difficult to find your passion. It’s going to make me feel sick? Lose sleep? Be criticized? Yup. Without a doubt. But that’s okay – it’s how passion works. It brings you the highest high and the lowest low, all at the same time. It makes you struggle and fight for it, and rejoice and celebrate it. Once you find your true passion, you’ll know it. You’ll know it because you feel at once so completely ecstatic and so unbelievably afraid. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.
What a Change of Scenery Can Do
I’ve been on the road this week. Hubby and I have been touring around the American Midwest, spending a couple of days in Indiana, then hopping over to Ohio. We leave tomorrow, to drive back home. It will be a 12 hour-or-so trip. I really like road trips. More than flying, actually. Flying, as much as it gets you to your destination quickly, doesn’t hold the same adventure level for me. On the road, all sorts of things can happen. You get to stop places, meet people, even get horribly lost (which we’ve done a couple of times this trip). But in the end it just gives us more stories to tell. There’s a lot to be said for getting the heck out of town sometimes. I’m not talking business travel here. Business travel still involves too much obligation. I’m talking about taking each hour as it comes, not committing yourself too heavily, and seeing where the road takes you. I’ve been away from home for 5 days now, and I’ve had a few realizations about the benefits of a change of scenery. The world does not stop just because you don’t check your email for 10 hours. Being from Canada and traveling in the States with a crappy cell phone package sucks. Roaming charges are ridiculously high, particularly for data. So, needless to say (or maybe just because I’m cheap) I wasn’t checking my email unless we were in Wifi range. Which usually was only at the hotels, and the odd bar or cafe. Sometimes I’d go 8 or 10 hours without checking. I was pretty concerned at first. What if there was some emergency? What if people were trying to reach me and couldn’t? Well, you know what? The world didn’t end. In fact, the number of emails I got that I actually had to deal with right away were minimal. Most of the emails I was able to either forward to the right person, file to deal with upon my return, or delete altogether. I’ve now turned off the feature on my iPhone that downloads my emails automatically. I am in control of when I check it. Lesson learned, and my time is officially more productive. People who aren’t on Twitter are people too. At the HorrorHound convention we attended there was lots of tweeting going on (hashtag #HHW). But I met several really interesting people who could care less about Twitter. With all the hype that Twitter’s been getting lately, I think we’re going to start to see a drop off of people who are using the tool. I’m talking the early adopter types mostly. The real geeks (like me). We’re ready for the next big thing anyway. Twitter is old news to us. Now we’re talking about how to extend these relationships into other realms. And a good place to start those conversations is with a bunch of people who aren’t using it. I’m looking at what they do, how they connect, commmunicate, collaborate. Life exists outside of this one tool. Perhaps we should learn to as well. Meeting face to face outdoes online any day. One of the reasons we came down this way was to see friends. Some of our friends we’d met before, but lots of others we’d only known via their podcasts, or blogs, or Twitter. I was really excited to meet up with our friends Jon and Nancy on the way down. Jon and I have been friends for almost a year, and he had a really great observation at lunch the day we met. He noted that when you finally meet your online friends face to face, the conversation just continues from the Web to in person. Then after you part, the conversation moves back to the Web. The same conversation just keeps going. Anyone who tries to tell you that online relationships aren’t “real life” or “real friendships” is sorely missing the point. However, the real icing on the cake comes when you do get to meet face to face, when you get to hug someone, shake their hand, and look them in the eyes. Then you know that what you’ve built in the virtual space is actually real. If you haven’t been away from home just for fun for a while, you need to do it. Even if it’s just overnight or for a weekend. Grab someone you love, or head off by yourself – it doesn’t matter where you go, who you go with or even what you do. It will change your perspective. It will make you appreciate the things in your everyday life way more. I know I do.
So Many Problems, So Much Time
Wowee! I’m super excited by the number of responses I’m getting on my last two posts (here and here, if you want to catch up) about making meaning out of the Web. I’ve already connected with some new people over this and am having some really interesting conversations. It’s shown me that people really DO want to start talking about these things, and that where the Web is going is just as important as where we are right now. The one thing I did anticipate were a certain number of comments and discussions around the problems that all of this meaningful Web stuff will create. Every new idea comes with its own set of issues. The bigger the idea, the more hurdles there will be to overcome. That’s the way the Universe works. Here are some of the issues that have been pointed out to me in the past few days (I’m paraphrasing but you can check this tweet, my two previous post comments and Social Media Today for the actual comments): Even if communities and industries DO share data, it’s going to be very difficult to aggregate everything we need. Privacy concerns and identity theft could prevent a real solution from ever taking hold. Could be a while before we have adoption like this across the board. We need to see applications based on examples before we share government data with the rest of the world. All of these things are absolutely true and valid issues. Some of them are big problems, and many of them seem insurmountable at this time. But – where there are problems, there are solutions. This is the exciting part. This is where we get to experiment, explore, talk, argue, and ultimately work towards figuring this stuff out and building real tools that will really help this to happen. The whole point here is to start to figure out how to make meaning out of the Web. How to create tools and standards that connect all of these disparate pieces of information into something that is extraordinarily useful. This isn’t just about making it more convenient to book concert tickets. Connecting information can have planet-altering effects. What do you think the value is of linking ALL of the research in the entire world that anyone has ever done about cancer, and making it available in one place? I mean anything. Medical studies, homeopathic remedies, treatments from other cultures, even information from individuals. Tools can then be created that can intelligently go in and disseminate that information, and possibly find the magic combination that could lead to new treatments, or even a cure. This isn’t a pipe dream. People are actually working on these concepts. Let’s talk some more. I want to hear your thoughts in the comments – and I want to find some other ways that we can keep this dialogue going. My mind is wide open….
Raw Data Now!
Raw Data Now! Raw Data Now! Raw Data Now! This is the phrase Tim Berners-Lee made the audience chant at his recent TED talk. I recommend you watch the video if you want to really understand why he did it. I’ve been trying to understand my frustration with all things online. I think I’m starting to get somewhere. You see, we’re stuck. We’ve come about as far as we can with the current state of the Web. We know how to connect, we know how to communicate, market, brand and sell in this space. Now we’re out there teaching others how to do it too. We’re doing a pretty good job of it, and lots of people are catching on to the power of this new medium. Sure, we’re still working out the kinks. But we’re getting there. To alleviate some of my boredom with social media, I’ve started thinking a lot about data, and about how to make information more meaningful. You see, it’s all fine and well that we have this wonderful Web with billions of pages of information. We have communities, and connectedness, and the ability to access nearly anything or anyone at the push of a button. But there are still really simple things we can’t do. Imagine if you will… You love the musician Beck. You go to his web site. You click a single button that says “Buy Tickets”. The site knows what city you live in. It compares your Google calendar to the concert schedule. It discovers that Beck is playing in your city on August 18th and it just so happens you are available that day. It buys two tickets, sends you a confirmation, and inserts the event into your calendar on your behalf. It does all of this in one click. Here’s one my students came up with…I added the shopping list bit. You are surfing on Flickr and come across a picture of the most delicious looking chocolate cake you’ve ever seen. You want the recipe. You click on the photo, and up pops a list of recipes for chocolate cake. You choose your preferred recipe and the ingredients list is then placed in your shopping list tool on your iPhone. Don’t want to bake? Then just choose to have the cake custom made at your local bakery. The order gets sent directly to them, and all you need to do is go pick it up. The Web, in all it’s glory, cannot perform these simple tasks in it’s current iteration. But it’s possible. And it will happen. What do we need to achieve this? Well, as Berners-Lee says, we need people to start releasing their data. By people, he means governments, corporations, organizations, and individuals. Of course as soon as anyone starts pushing around ideas about releasing data people’s backs go up. They get defensive. They don’t want to give away secrets. They want to hang on to everything and share nothing. But sharing data is what is going to make this new Web possible. We are already good at sharing, right? We share on our blogs, we share on Twitter, we share links, contact info, we share what we know about stuff, and so on. So, it stands to reason then that we should already feel comfortable with sharing our data? Making sense of information is going to be the next big step for the Web. As much as the onset of new media has revolutionized the way we interact, making meaning out of the Web will change things even more. So, where do we begin?
Would the Real WWW Please Stand Up
20 years. It’s been 20 whole years since my hero, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper that would change the world. Now here we are, in the midst of an information, communication and conversation revolution. It’s so exciting that sometimes I can’t sleep. The way we do business, make friends, shop, eat and work has changed exponentially within just a few short years. The Internet is and continues to be the buzzword of the century. Here we all are; chatting, connecting, communicating, networking, personally branding, and marketing to each other. We’re meeting and sharing and creating and celebrating with each other. And it’s great. So why am I getting so sick of hearing about it? Here’s a little moment of truth for you. I’m getting really, really tired of social media. I’m getting tired of the fishbowl and the echo chamber. I’m tired of Twitter, of blogs, of conferences, of gurus and experts. I’m tired of listening to the same stories over and over, and of listening to continuous chatter and seeing little evidence of any real work being done. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that there isn’t anything valuable or relevant going on in social media. There are still lots of people providing value and being extremely relevant. Mitch and Chris are still doing it. Though if you read their stuff you’ll see quickly that they are not really talking about social media, but they’re actually talking about marketing and communicating well. What they are saying is absolutely worth listening to. At the end of the day, I think many people are missing the point of all this World Wide Web stuff. The Web isn’t about following, or leading, or fauxlebrity, or who is hanging out with who at which fancy conference. But these kinds of popularity contests are becoming more and more common, especially as services like Twitter start to hit the mainstream. The value is getting lost in the hype, and people are getting caught up in the wrong kind of attention. I’m ready to start having a different kind of conversation now. Enough with the following, the auto-replies, the selfish expectations and the politics already! Let’s start talking about what we actually want to DO with this tool that Sir Tim gave us. Let’s start talking about how information is going to be distributed and linked together and marketed in the future. Let’s start talking about semantics, and linked data, and how information is actually going to start to become meaningful in this space. We’ve come a long way in a few short years. What’s most important is now, we’ve got each other. We can learn and explore and share and experience and invent together. We’re so fortunate to be in the position we are, because we’re already here. We have a voice. We can help shape the future of information. It’s time to step out of the fishbowl and start doing some real work. Who’s in?