Lessons Learned

I love elephants.

I have an obsession with them.

They are pretty damn amazing creators.

My friend once asked me this psychological test: What are your three favorite animals and 3 attributes why you love them.

I don’t want to give away what the test represents (until you’ve had a chance to ponder it) but I will say one of my animals is an elephant.

The attributes I named: they are family-centric, caring creatures who simply walk down the path of life without intentional harm to those in its way.

Now folks can disagree with me but this is what I choose to believe.

Elephants walk – to their goal, their destination: food, water, shelter, family.

So last weekend when I was waiting for my flight at LAX, cruising the isles of the Hudson Booksellers shop, I saw this book by the Harvard Business School Press -

And had to get it.

It’s a really quick read with 14 short story-type lessons. Here are the takeaways from my favorite chapter:

Three Essential Attributes for Career Advancement

* Effective leaders often exhibit high expectations, strong resilience and perseverance, and an affirmative attitude. These are the very attributes you’ll need to develop in order to rise through your organization.

* You shouldn’t hesitate to foster open lines of communications with superiors. They might surprise you with their willingness to assist.

* You must try not to get discouraged by adversity; everyone struggles through difficult times. Try to remain confident no matter what the challenge – and remember it too shall pass.

The lesson was written by Dina Dublon, Former CFO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

I think it’s the combination of Dina being a female, Dina being a female in finance, Dina being a female in finance at a large corporation that I personally dedicated 5 years of my life to… but I liked her lessons a lot.

And in the grand scheme of things – it’s more validation that I’m doing it right. And a supporting reminder to keep on keepin’ on.

me on ReadWriteWeb…

ReadWriteWeb is an established web industry publication / blog  and they just released premium reports for businesses.

I was asked to be an early reviewer and got quoted in the report and in their announcement. Very cool.

It’s hard not to get excited about this when I know how excited editor Marshall Kirkpatrick is about this launch!

And the reality is that there is so much interest in community-building for businesses that it’s the right time for this type of report to surface.

The first 75 pages are a collection of case studies and testimonials – and as Sameer Patel (Pretzel Logic) wrote in his blog post, one can struggle “with the idea of buying a premium report that was largely peppered with quotes from articles that I’ve read before…” but what Marshall has provided is an in-depth and intelligent collection of the most salient, relevant and helpful quotes – scoured from across the interwebs, and from those at the forefront of community management.

You can download a free sample section of the report here.

My Notes on Community Management …

I’ve been telling myself to publish more but I never do. Then I realized today after spending almost 3 hours talking about social media with my CEO and colleagues that I already had written things I could share on my blog. So here are some notes I think are a worthwhile read for anyone who is starting to build a community online.

Established community manager Micki Krimmel gave a great talk at Web 2.0 Expo SF on What Would a Community Manager Do (WWCMD).  And these notes, from a South by Southwest Interactive session I attended this past March, are helpful in framing the mind to think like a community manager. Consider reading it as your step 1 -

From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management

Panelists: Heather Champ (Dir. of Community, Flickr), Mario Anima (Dir. Online Community, Current TV), Matthew Stinchcomb (VP Community, Etsy Inc.), Jessamyn (West Dir. of Operations, MetaFilter), Micah Schaffer (YouTube)

Community Building

Start with an idea of what the community is going to be about but the community is going to have their own ideas on what it is. Empower them and try to cultivate something good.

Constantly evolve:

• You’re going to have to adapt your product and practices
• Redefine how your product, company, service works by addressing the needs of the community
• What is good for the community at one stage, might not be beneficial at another stage

Strategies need to adjust and evolve as communities grow. Most important is to understand HOW the community wants to interact and building around that.

If you give people multiple channels to communicate with you/brand, you are making a commitment that you will respond

Community managers:

All wear multiple hats. You have to ID what those hats are and be quick about running with them

Focus on internal communication; make sure everyone knows what’s going on

Must commit to being there, be ready to hear feedback and answer it honestly

Salient advice for someone starting or engaging within a community

Spend more time online! The more interactions you can create enables and grows ambassadors who do the job for you. Build a team of evangelists. There is no metric to gauge that value but imagine how much farther your reach will be.

One basic rule: don’t be a jerk and everything else comes from that. [Don't be a jerk is ok but I like better, Kill the world with Kindness]

There’s a lot more to this role than moderation and making things pretty

It helps to be an insomniac

You have to be committed, you have to promote the 1-to-1 interactions you do, to make people feel that they are being responded to as an individual

Be able to explain and enforce your rules

Censorship and comment moderation

Sometimes the best action is inaction

10 resonant chamber – this video is amazing.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8lja_10-resonant-chamber_fun

(i’m having problems embedding stuff. boo)

10 Resonant Chamber
Uploaded by Scorpiotistic

Lykke Li: Little Bit

Act Well the Part That is Given to You

We are like actors in a play. The divine will has assigned us our roles in life without consulting us. Some of us will act in a short drama, others in a long one. We might be assigned the part of a poor person, a cripple, a distinguished celebrity or public leader, or an ordinary private citizen. 

Although we can’t control which roles are assigned to us, it must be our business to act our given role as best as we possibly can and to refrain from complaining about it. Where you find yourself and in whatever circumstances, give an impeccable performance.

If you are supposed to be a reader, read; if you are supposed to be a writer, write.

~ Epictetus, The Art of Living

Twouble with Twitter

testing google maps embed

View Larger Map

 

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2009

quirky girls

source: http://xkcd.com/122/

fidelity

love the style of this video. i mean, check out those stockings!

but the truth is i was looking for ‘hotel song’ (which i can play all day on repeat). something about hotel song reminds me of the new wave genre i listened to when i was in junior high.

but fidelity is pretty awesome too.