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Monday, July 25, 2011

Newspapers. Do You Get One?

Newspapers. Do You Get One? is a post by Carol Covin, a passionate polymath and a helluva blogger.

She’s an author, a coder, a cancer researcher, a trainer of grandmothers, grandchildren (and those in between), a sharp observer of where we’ve been and where we are going...Nope. This is not going to get it.

Let me describe Carol this way – I have never read one of her posts without being profoundly glad I did. I can’t think of any higher praise. She is the real deal. 

The money quote from Newspapers. Do You Get One? was, “Reading about all the tragedies in the world does not keep you informed. It is just an overload of sadness.” And the rest is also real good.

Carol is going to be a panelist with me at Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9. We’ll be discussing how to develop a high impact repeatable blogging operation that makes a difference.

Please join us!

Friday, July 22, 2011

Taste For Makers

Zach Yates sent over a great quote leading to an amazing 2002 blog post, Taste for Makers

It takes confidence to throw work away … When people first start drawing, they’re often reluctant to redo parts that aren’t right … they convince themselves that the drawing is not that bad, really — in fact, maybe they meant it to look that way. - Paul Graham, Taste for Makers


Taste for Makers is a rewarding, enlightening read. Reward yourself!

Come back and tell us what was the best thing you learned?

Check out Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9, and BlogLab, coming August 16. 

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Integrity


I see three levels of integrity.

Soon after someone learns that integrity is keeping your promises, they reason that if they don’t make any promises, they can have perfect integrity.

Then they discover nobody cares. Some never go beyond.

The next step is to make and keep appropriate promises, depending on what you can handle and your capability.

Finally, because life is a rodeo, integrity is making the promises that need to be made and then finding ways to keep them.

What’s your level?

Check out Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9, and BlogLab, coming August 16.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

LinkedIn Success


Jeff Cole recommended Wayne Breitbarth’s The Power Formula For LinkedIn Success, so I read it. Took about 90 easy minutes.

I have written about improving LinkedIn profiles and given some presentations, so I was interested in how Wayne would approach it.

The good news he is concentrating so hard on being useful, his beliefs don’t show up. Whatever you think you want to make of LinkedIn, that’s what he recommends, and shows you how to do it. He’s obviously got a lot of experience at being effective and the book is a delight to read.

Best thing I learned from The Power Formula For LinkedIn Success? How to have my LinkedIn profile allow more than one email address, so when someone wants to contact me with a different email address, they can. 

Check out Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9, and BlogLab, coming August 16. 

Comments? 

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Summer Reading

I read two strong books last week, and when someone remarked on the quality of my recommendations, I thought I remembered they were found on a blog post.

Sure enough, they were the first two picks on Seth Godin’s Summer Reading List.

Steven Pressfield’s The Profession is a near future social fantasy, much like Makers. These books can take our current situation, extend it, and show probable results.

The concept I took from The Profession is that we are all essentially family first, then tribe, and only the most fortunate get to anything bigger than that. Americans have been lucky to have a national idea, even from before de Tocqueville wrote about it.

Professional diplomats desperately want to see a larger, more civilized view of human aspiration (full employment for diplomats), the trouble occurs when they consistently expect something that isn’t there.

Steven Levy’s In The Plex How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives is my third major Google book. Like John Battelle’s The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture and Ken Auletta’s Googled:The End of the World as We Know It, In The Plex covers the early innings but also adds insights and stories into Google’s six front war. I was reading Levy’s definition of Google +1 just as I became aware of it, History showing the future!

In The Plex has stories of more than a dozen of Google’s top contributors, and we see them going from project to project, how they attack and solve never-before-solved problems, which sometimes work and sometimes don’t. Overall, the side with the bias toward action is the side to bet on.

It’s harder to write about the positive aspects of a situation. Much easier to trash Google’s aspirations because they aren’t complete yet. Still, a lot of Google projects are becoming understood, and even supported by subsequent projects, so the success of setting out to harness the world’s information is becoming evident.

You have to do more work to figure out what is working. In doing so, Levy is also providing a coherent picture of why Google wins, with lessons to emulate.

I am deep into Google, and I was saddened by the “we all know” dismissal of Buzz. I use the heck out of it, it’s a major part of my arsenal, because I’ve figured out what Buzz can do for me that I can’t get anywhere else.

I guess some people have a fear of being too positive, but I now look on any Google failure as “not done, yet.

Reading In The Plex reminds of the mantra of that football team from Green Bay. “Nobody beats the Packers. Sometimes the clock runs out on them.”