Getting Involved and Getting More Than You Bargain For – TEDxBoulder

TEDxBoulder

Nearly 18 months ago, I started working out at Crossfit Roots, where I met a bunch of people who did interesting things, including working out  til they were breathing out their ears (I wish I could claim that phrase but alas I cannot.) It’s there that I met Andrew Hyde, who was heavy into the startup community and was actively working on creating a TED event for Boulder. In between jobs, I offered to help out not really knowing what I was getting into. at. all. But I have to say if most of my spontaneous, why-not decisions brought such unexpected and great experiences I would be living a more amazing life.

This year was the second TEDxBoulder and I think it was really something special.   The whole organizer team comprising:

Jamie Harkin – stage

Ken Fricklas – music

Ef Rodriquez – PR

George Morris – co-organizer

Arthur Nisnevich – slides, projector

Dan Storch – t-shirts, programs

and, of course Andrew

came together and I think helped bring together a lot of ideas and input, the audience (including me) rarely gets the chance to hear and experience.

I enjoyed each of the speakers and there were a number of talks that have really stayed with me but I think the theme of “just doing one thing” to make a change, make a difference, is a concept that I am still thinking about two days later. Like a good book or movie, where the characters or plot stay with you, the calls to get involved by some of the speakers from TEDxBoulder certainly inspired me.

I think I did “do one thing” when I asked to get involved with TEDx and I hope that the experience I had Saturday night, which was so positive and inspiring, was shared by the community in which I live. Certainly not every chance or risk I’ve taken has been so fulfilling but this is one experience from which I have gotten so much more than I could have expected.

Now, it your turn. What will your “one thing” be?

Friday Rant: Social Media, Experts and the Military-Industrial Complex

I’ve been keeping up to date on my social media analytics/technology reading and I have noticed a recurring trend. It seems the social media glitterarti is taking offense to self-designated gurus and experts. Now, to be fair, those who are voicing their issue with these labels are often quick to say “they are not experts”. And I expect they are just trying to keep their audience informed of individual, who may misrepresent their skills and/or achievements. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other as my only true claim to fame is an amazing ability to stand on one leg, with my eyes shut and my hands clasped above my head.

However, I do have strong feelings about word choice, so I can get on board with their issue with the label ‘expert’. If I were to add to the list of things to write a rant about (that aren’t really life-threatening ) it would probably be about the need to explain purely business/technology-related topics as if they are the major military operation.

Maybe I’m overly-sensitive? Perhaps, I’m spoiling for a fight. Either way I am over describing work in terms of a military operations. I don’t operate out of a command center, nor rummage around in my purse for an arsenal with which to lob against my competitor in a fight to the death. I don’t know if this is unique to IT, start-ups, engineering, etc or if this may reveal a gender predilection for explaining office work in terms of a highly militarized, aggressive and armed offensive.

Here are some recent examples:

• Metrics–The Secret Weapon Of Sales Managers??
• Need bigger CRM guns? Add marketing automation to your CRM arsenal
• App Engine: Google’s Cloud-Computing Weapon
• TSA’s new secret weapon: politeness

Why do we use this type of imagery to describe the work we do? When metaphors to military and weapons are used it applies a veneer of life and death significance to business decisions.  Working at a desk in an office does not conjure up images of combat and espionage for me. I wonder if that reveals a lack of imagination on my part or maybe I see what I do through the prism of the contribution I make: blog post frequency, web conversion indicators, content development, etc.

Or does this theme reveal some insecurities about what we do with our lives. The intensity, camaraderie, and higher purpose that people work towards and develop in settings like the military,  fire department or other service-related job may be something we all envy sitting in front of a laptop.

Trends & Observations on Social Media

As I have mentioned before I work for a social media company but these thoughts are my own because who else would want to own them.

I have two observations and maybe one predictions about social media.

Here’s my first observation.

Social Media & Existing Ties

This is probably not new to anyone but me.  I have noticed by peeking in at some of the feeds of followers I have on Twitter or Facebook or some of the other smaller social media platforms that 1) there’s a lot chat between people who know each other and I would suspect have met in-person 2) it seems individuals set up the same network on each platform. So, while there may be some variance in the types of followers an individual has on Twitter vs. Scribd vs. Facebook, I think there is probably a core group, a family if you will,  that exists in some form or another on each platform.

So, this makes me think. If we are following, connecting and sharing with a very similar group of people from platform to platform are we really as open, and engaging and as inspired to share as this whole social media trend implies? Or are we simply reinforcing and nurturing our existing relationships, or when we do invite others in are they very similar in style and taste to our existing network of friends?

I have noticed in my own little social network the overlap of interests between individuals I follow. I’ve also noticed  from within my social network that the  relationships I have with people I have met in-person are strengthened when I reach out using social media. Now, the question for me becomes how quickly or often will a weak tie convert to a stronger tie and does the platform on which the relationship began make a difference?

Social Media & News

I’m a news junkie. Love reading the New York Times (when it was free), the Economist, bbc and I used to read cnn (but it was driving me crazy). When the revolutions began spreading in the Middle East, I found I was getting more and more of my news from Twitter, specifically from Andy Carvin (@acarvin), who is a a senior strategist for NPR. I felt like I could trust his observations because he was vetted in a way because of his work with NPR. From him, I began following other sources (including Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish) and soon I had quite the news feed on Libya, Syria, and most recently Japan. Sometimes additional links were provided and once I had checked out the original tweet, I could guess at the reliability of the content,

And it felt like I was getting real news. Not fake news that cnn churns out. I could almost guess what the CNN headlines were during the nuclear reactor issues Japan was experiencing after their horrific earthquake & tsunami.

• How safe are our U.S nuclear reactors? Experts expect at least one catastrophic failure in the next 100 years.
• What are the chances you were poisoned by radiation walking through the nudie scanners at the airport?
• You may be poisoned by radiation simply be driving through Commerce City, CO

And I am just not interested in their alarm-bells ringing, amped-up, scare the hell out of everyone-type of news. Unless there is really something worthy of an alarm bell. So, my prediction is this I think more and more people will begin to curate their own content to create their own news. This may do a few things like ensure we only read news that conforms and reinforces our world view or the quality of the information we are curating is of such a higher value it gives us a richer appreciation and understanding of world events.

Social Media & Relationships

This topic brings out more crazies than any thing else in social media, unless you bring up Social CRM, which is the technical term for relationship. So, I guess I’ll add my crazy rant but in honor of the royal wedding I’ll conduct my rant in a splendid hat.

I think one of the problems with organizations establishing a relationship with consumers using social media is one of timing.  Like a hormonally-driven teenager, companies are jumping the gun on the level of engagement, wanting to be exclusive when I have only just unwrapped, unpacked or rolled out the service, product or experience I just purchased. Sometimes I’m not sure I want to be on speaking terms until I am certain that the product I’ve purchased lasts, did what the fine print said it could do and didn’t make me look fat in the bathroom mirror (oops! that one slipped in).

For example, a few years ago I bought a Rivendell Quickbeam. I took a huge chance on the bike as I had never ridden a Rivendell before, I purchased it online, which means I had to assemble it myself,  and it was single speed. After about 4 years, I have to say I love that bike, I love the type of company they are trying to create and the types of products they promote, in addition to their bikes. If I ever buy another bike, it will be from them but it took me about a year to really appreciate the company, sign up for their newsletter, earn a discount on their wool tops. But their pacing was right, so the relationship developed at an appropriate speed. There have been times when I have made a purchase and before I have even had the opportunity to spill coffee down the front of said purchase, I’ve already got three notifications for sales, an offer if I go to Facebook, etc. It’s too much, too fast.

Sick, Tired but Headed out on Vakay

Guess Where?

Falling in Love with Reading Full Sentences Again

I work part-time at a super company working in the social/text analytics space. They have some amazing technology and my role is to research and write about social media trends, engage with our customers and develop our analytics strategy. Very. Cool. Stuff. I love how the way we are communicating, sharing and collaborating and using tools that did not exist even 5 years ago is changing how we work and to some degree what we work on.  But sometimes at the end of the day after taking in too many 140 character shots of content, I feel I have all these sparks of ideas/thoughts going off in my head. Not necessarily unpleasant but I do feel  like I need to find a quiet place and sort through all of the data I have absorbed during the day…and make notes of topics I want to remember and think and maybe write more about.

But it might also be why sentences like this rivet my attention and nourish my imagination:

“I remember the moment that I first saw the house. I remember the date, even the precise hour. We drove up into Saint-Cyprien for the first time on a crisp, gusting morning. The tree were turning, leaves spinning up and and off into tossing thickets. The sun was high, the sky that intense Ricketts blue of childhood: brilliant, hard, washed clean by the recent mistral, it sparkled like a polished mirror….I saw, far below, the rippled red-tiled roof of a modest, compact farmhouse, standing four-square to the winds on a green plateau below which spilled terrace upon terrace of great olive trees. Beyond the terrace a little pointed hill crowned by a chapel. Beyond that, a valley. Beyond the valley, golden with fading vines, the jagged line of the Estoril mountains, lilac against the harsh, scoured blue of the sky, and, to the far left, distant, sparkling, dancing in the light, teased by the wind, the mistral-whipped seam creamed with little flickering waves.” (A Short Walk from Harrods, Bogarde Dirk)

BEAUTIFUL. I even enjoyed typing it out – the image of the sea sparkling in the sun made more real for me by typing each word.  Short punches of information that lead to a trail of deeper reading and understanding is wonderful. But creating imagery, characters and scenes with language is both a gift to the writer and the reader.

Now, I’m off to run the furs and get back to studying. I received some great feedback from my plea for suggestions to fill out my curriculum on sustainability, so now it’s time to get stuck in.

Top 5 Things I Learned Since I Was Laid Off

So long, farewell

It’s been several months since I was laid off from Sun Microsystems and I was thinking back over that time and wondered what were the highs and lows of that period. A lot has happened and most of it has been good. There were a  few bits and pieces that were unexpectedly lousy. So, let’s get the lousy lesson out of the way.

#1 Losing Your Job Even When You’re Expecting It is Hard

I suspected I would be losing my job once the Oracle acquisition was announced. I felt like I had survived so many layoffs that really my time had come. So, I knew it was coming. I had also been part of a company that had shed many jobs over the past 5  – 7 years and a number of the people they had let go were superb, so I knew there was no shame in it either. So, I was really surprised when I became a bit down-hearted about the whole thing. I can’t point to one specific feeling I had, there just seemed to be a number of conflicting and competing emotions racing through me: relief that I finally knew I was out of a job, sadness about saying good-bye to a number of great people, who I had collaborated with for years, excitement about the next phase of my life, disoriented because I didn’t have anywhere to be.  Those emotions faded after about 4 months but it was unexpected and something I had to work through.

#2 There’s A Lot Going on in Boulder

Because I had either been racing up to or focused on Broomfield, I had no idea of the number of innovative, energetic, friendly, inspiring people creating start-ups, working on their ideas and sharing information here in Boulder. I started volunteering to write for boulder.me, organizing volunteers for TEDxBoulder,  going to Startup Women and basically talking to people about their efforts. I learned a tremendous amount from these conversations and although I haven’t started my own small business being exposed to that type of creativity encourages you to take risks. Although, I have gone back to work, I am still committed to staying involved.

#3 Community is Critical

However you get involved, whether it’s online, face-to-face, group meetings, the important thing is you’re getting involved. I’ve really enjoyed networking and volunteering at TEDxBoulder, which floored me. I’ve met some real characters and by that I mean energetic and energized people working towards a goal. I’m not normally a joiner type and I can’t give a good reason why so one of my goals while I was off was to get more involved. I’ve met and learned from some great people and have had my eyes/mind open to new technology, music, ideas, events, etc.. This has been the most important lesson I have learned. I was a bit hesitant about getting involved or volunteering, I guess I didn’t know what I truly had to offer.  But my experiences have been great and the people I have met have made me realize how much is out there in the world to learn, help out with and explore.  If you get the chance, get involved!!

#4 Exercise is Not a Cure-All but it Works

I’ve been going to CrossfitRoots for about 8 or 9 months and I am so relieved/thankful I’ve continued with it. I’m not one of those people who love to exercise but the sense of well-being and positive juju I experience at the end of a workout is tremendous. Now, to be honest, there are times I am crawling around on the floor after a workout and the appreciation for that effort comes several hours after but it always does.  The workouts are generally intense and for those 15-20 minutes my mind is on nothing else but finishing; it’s almost like a very uncomfortable meditation but the relief afterward is very calming.  It’s very easy to get into a habit of eating poorly or having a couple of glasses of wine in the evening when you don’t have to be up at 6am but those habits are  much less appealing when you know you have an intense workout later that day.

#5 I’ve Made Some Terrific Friends

I’m very lucky that many of the people I shared my professional career with at Sun, I still have in my life. Smart, ambitious, funny great people I still keep in touch with and am fortunate to call my friends.

There are quite a few other things I’ve learned but these were the ones that first came to mind. Maybe I’ll update it when I have hit a year.

You don’t know Joe, until you’ve been to Monmouth Coffee

Local Access to Global Joe

When my hubby and I travel we are always on the look out for local coffee shops. (I’m not bashing starbucks or the like, we just have more fun and disappointments trying out local places). While in England, we tried ordering an Americano from a variety of places:  little shops, restaurants, etc and for the most part weren’t disappointed. We could never seem to get the barista to half the water but then we can’t get some of our American baristas to lighten up on the water so it’s not cultural. But then we found Monmouth Coffee in Coventry and wow!  This is not a coffee shop, where you order your coffee, sit down, open your laptop and spend the next several hours in focused effort nursing your coffee. Rather you join a communal table if you want to have a cup on site. If not, you can browse the variety of organic coffee that are on offer, which come from single farms, estates and cooperatives. According to both their newsletter and Web site, they take every effort to to know where the coffee they are serving comes from, who is growing it, who is picking it and processing it.

There are a few things I really liked instantly about the place:

• the sitting area is a slightly above the main area, where the coffee is on display and for sale.  The benches are built-in and solid; it’s a snug place so you’ll get close to your neighbors, which isn’t as bad it sounds. It’s a great spot for watching people milling around the beans, ordering, the ebb and flow of new customers.
• the history – they’ve been in Covent Garden since 1978, where they started roasting and offered customers a chance to taste the coffee before buying it.
• the coffee – they do a lot of research and pass on their knowledge about the coffees they are serving, including geographical location, owner details of different farms and the type of coffee grown due to weather and land conditions.

I think they are an excellent example of a company, which offers a global product yet is trying to ensure the sustainability of their product in a very locally-focused and educational way. You can find out as much as you want about the product you are drinking – they provide the information and allow their customers to become better educated. And the Flat White was outstanding!

What Happened to Last Week and Other Musings

I have no recollection of the past two weeks. I mean I have the occasional memory that kicks up some dust and fragments of experiences: events, people and places. I don’t think I have been this busy – or maybe this type of busy – in a long, long time. I feel like I am cramming on ton of newness into my life and on the whole it’s been super. Here’s a run down of the past couple of weeks:

• I got a JOB OFFER and started this week. I have experienced all the emotions inherent in finding a new job: the thrill of an offer, the excitement and nervousness of staring at the learning curve, curiosity to meet my new colleagues, etc. etc. It’s been a satisfyingly challenging week.
• I’ve been writing about start-ups in Boulder for boulder.me, which has been great fun. I’ve met some pretty amazing people taking some creative and business risks to go out on their own and most of them seem to be having a great time – a challenging time but one that seems to energize them. Some of the companies I’ve interviewed are: fidatto, duck duck deal and several others.
• I’ve been helping out with TEDxBoulder, which is this Saturday, August 7th. The speakers at this event are going to be great and I really think everyone is going to have a great time.
• I’ve realized that I really need to start preparing for my upcoming stats class in my MBA program. I know it’s coming, so I may as well get stuck in now so I don’t feel completely marooned in death valley. I picked up a Magna-inspired book about statistics. The drawings are superb as is the story line, and, oh yeah, the explanation about stats is very helpful.

So, that’s it. Well, that’s enough for me, at least.

Is this anyway to run a coffee shop? The Foundry SA

I decided to escape the Colorado heat for a bit and head to Texas to cool off. And what better way to cool off than a piping hot Americano at the local coffee shop. In a scene that is probably replicated across the town and probably goes against the natural order of things, Texans come in from the summer heat to stand in line for a cup of coffee. To be fair, they are probably getting iced coffee, or a frapaphooey, or some other sort of iced concoction but this “coffee-thing” didn’t not happen when I was growing up.

At any rate, a new coffee shop opened up near my mom’s so her and I dove into the humidity and walked on over. We decided upon arrival that the reason everyone one else looked so coiffed and cool was because they drove over and we look like bedraggled mops. The coffee shop is called The Foundry and what an interesting and trendy place for an all-volunteer, fair-trade coffee, Methodist-church supported affair. Yes, that’s right. The staff is volunteer, they make a huge effort to promote the arts and use fair-trade coffee and a portion of your purchase goes to help the church with their outreach programs. But before you (or maybe it’s just me) get all squeemish, the barista behind the bar was dressed in a really nice kilt and had a really nice purple tail at the back of his head; he was completely bald save for this tassel of bright purple.  Here’s the explanation from their Web site:

The Foundry is designed to foster thought, art, conversation, and community in a world that no longer pushes towards our churches. Instead of waiting for people to come to us, we have decided to move into the community and share the Gospel message through the building of relationships. People are going to need different things from us as we go along, and hopefully, we can provide for them as best we know how by showing them who Jesus is by our actions, not just our words.

I have to admit it does give me pause about going back but they do have a really great Americano and it’s nice that they are encouraging people to come together. There wasn’t anyone there pushing an agenda and had I not visited their Web site I would never have known of the church’s influence and I can smell holy water from 10 feet. So, there you go. One group’s way of reaching out into the community in a unique way. And run by volunteers!

Dusting myself off

Ok. I am going to try blogging again. I have left a bit of a trail of unfulfilled efforts but maybe I will find myself more interesting this time around.