Finding Fodder for Future Ideas
Filed Under Business Life, Idea Bank, Outside the Box, Productivity, Successful Blog, Writing | 26 Comments
Finding Fodder
Yesterday, Joe of Working at Home on the Internet reminded me of my days going to press runs, when he was talking about his experience as a printer.
Immediately my mind flashed to this story.
I was in the car with my friend KB on the way to a press run. We’d worked 12 weeks straight living in the Marriott New York East Side. Now we’d flown into Chicago and were driving into one of the suburbs. She was driving. I was looking out the window. I was taking in all of the signs of the restaurants and stores as we passed by them.
Then, suddenly out of the blue I heard, “Will you . . . .SHUT UP!”
It seems I had been reading every sign out loud.
“I don’t really need you to read me every sign we pass,” she said. “What was that?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Fodder.”
SWARM — Can You Explain it in 100 Wds?
Filed Under Business Life, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, ZZZ-FUN | 20 Comments
While You Wait for the Party
I was strolling around the Internet and found this most unusual site. It’s called Swarm. The homepage says its a graphical map of how hundreds of websites around the world connect to each other in real time. It is that.
You can chat about a site in forums or you can watch traffic move via red lines.
To answer the question Why use this? the page says Swarm is a useful tool for browsing not searching, to come with an open mind. To get to the homepage click on this screenshot. To actually try it, then click the button that says “Go use Swarm.”
It’s really cool to look at. . . . I’ve been doing that for two days now. Swarm is so beautiful and fun. I’d like to recommend it for a business reason, but I still haven’t come up with a practical use for it. It sure is a fun toy, though. I can’t even tell you what it is in 100 words or less.
Can you tell me?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Find My . . . um . . . Passion — What?!!
Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Writing | 4 Comments
What’s Your Passion?
What’s your passion? These days that seems a too-popular question. If you ask what to write, the answer is Write your passion.
Maybe I’m aN uptight, out-dated, and downright uncreative about that word, but I don’t think of passion in that broader context. My passion involves, um . . . er . . . other activities. When I went looking to write my passion, I found that it didn’t want to be written about. Read more
The TECHNORATI Business Model Revealed
Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Customer Think, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Technorati | 45 Comments
Smoke and Mirrors
Don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Five blogs on an AP website is nothing. Technorati on every one of them is a big deal. Technorati is joining the mainstream. That doesn’t mean bloggers are.
By virture of it’s index of OUR blog posts, and 3 deals in announced in the last 3 days, Technorati is one of the worlds largest content providers with it’s name on every Paramount Classic and AP website.
It sure looks like we provide their content for nothing. Technorati gains plenty of fame and who knows how many dollars?
I was wrong before. The strategy here is brilliant. It’s so far outside the box, I didn’t even see it.
Sorry David, this too clever by half for me to be quiet about. What is it that I misinterpret here? Please set me straight. I really want to believe I have something wrong, but all of the pieces fit as I look at it.
How did this happen? Why doesn’t anyone see this? [links via Bloggers Blog]
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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By Popular Demand Open Comment Night Starts EARLY
Filed Under Comments, Community, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, ZZZ-FUN | 242 Comments
It’s Like Open Mike Only Different
Here’s how it works.
The rules are simple — be nice.
It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. . . . Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
See this post if you want some ideas of things to talk about.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Open Comments Night 2 Mike is On
Tuesday after 7 Chicago Time
Filed Under Comments, Community, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, ZZZ-FUN | 39 Comments
Tuesday Open Comment Night
YES, the mike will be open again tonight. So start collecting your thoughts. Remember, you get to bring what you want to talk about.
The rules are simple — be nice.
We got things going really fast last week. If you missed it, stop by this week, and check it out.
Some things we might talk about could include whether:
- anyone will ever pay for content on the Internet.
- Technorati will quit rolling out new features and get control of its old ones.
- the telcos will win on net neutrality
- anyone has a cool idea for what we should do on the blog this weekend.
AND THE EVER POPULAR, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?
It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here.
Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
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Open Comments Night 2 Mike is On
Open Source Education — GELC
Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments
Open Source
We know open source is only as good as the folks who contribute. It can be as successful and adaptable as Linux. It can be helpful as all of the WordPress plugins.
Open source can also get mired in policy and minutiae — you can trust the definition at that link; it’s by the experts on the subject. Such issues have to be what shut down Zeal.com. I had to take the insane Zealot test four times a day for days, until I passed it. The questions were about such tiny details my mind couldn’t absorb them. (See Dear Wikipedia and try being an editor for the DMOZ.)
Enter the GELC
Enter the GELC, something really exciting. The Global Education and Learning Community. Some really smart, talented, experienced people are working together on it. It has the goal of an open source learning curriculum. It could be as powerful as Linux. I sure hope it is. Right now, Dr. Barbara (“Bobbi”) Kurshan, Executive Director of GELC is trying to prioritize some ideas via her blog. [The formatting is mine.]
Several ideas include
- a repository to build and distribute open source textbooks – which are probably the first curricula ever developed for teaching and learning
- a place for assessing the progress of a learner
- a virtual design center for creating a curriculum from open education resources
- a repository of courses
- and a community for discussion about open source curriculum.
. . . all of these ideas will become part of GELC. But, which one is unique? Which one will make GELC the “thought leader” in the open source curriculum arena?
What would you answer? One comment said, . . . drop this area. It’s a big turnoff currently. Is that what you think?
–ME ‘Liz” Strauss
Related in some way
Dear Wikipedia . . .
Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid
Critical Skill 5B: Sparking Spectacular Ideas
Filed Under Branding, Idea Bank, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Writing | Leave a Comment
Spectacular Ideas
Do you recognize where we are? We’ve been here before. This is the place where I tell you that ideas are already in your head, that it’s a matter of letting yourself have them — not shutting them out. It’s when I remind you that you can be an idea magnet again. I tell you that ideas are waiting for you. I ask you if you’ve started seeing and hearing them.
Whew! Now that the déjà vu is over. We can get on with sparking spectacular ideas.
Caution: Now Entering Liz Think Zone
Critical Skill 5A: 3 Parts of Spectacular Ideas
Filed Under Branding, Idea Bank, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Writing | 15 Comments
Originality
When I compiled this list of ten critical skills, it was an original list — the list came from my head not from the Internet, not from some book. I’ve done continuous work on thinking skills for years so it wasn’t a huge hardship to think some more on the skills I consider critical. Is any one idea original? No. Not one on that list is unique or spectacular. The value-added is that I put them together and pointed the need to have them for success.
Originality Versus Spectacular
Originality is often how we look at things. The most original thought I’ve encountered — that hasn’t been around for years — was my six-year-old son’s drawing of the solar system as if he were standing on Pluto, looking in toward the sun. Even that was just a new take on a picture that’s been around for a long, long time.
True originality –a brand new idea — is hard to come by, but that’s okay. It rarely works in business. True originality is expensive and rarely sells. As good as I am with ideas I’ve learned if I find one that has been done before, tha it’s because of one of three reasons. Read more
How THEY Work — Why the Heck Do I Care?
Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Customer Think, Marketing, Outside the Box, Productivity, Successful Blog | 25 Comments
The Fortune Series
You might have caught the Fortune Magazine piece by Cait Murphy that featured 12 successful individuals at work. It was called Secrets of Greatness: How I Work. The article presents a gallery of leaders and their work secrets, including those of Marissa Mayer of Google, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Wynton Marsalis of the Lincoln Center, and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago. That was followed later by How I Work: Bill Gates.
After I read these articles, I filed them aside. I thought maybe I might find a use for some detail from the profiles some day. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know why.
How Other People Work
Apparently, some folks thought this model was worth exploring. They added to it. Here are two more and one that won’t be happening:
- How I Work: Matt Haughey
- How I Work: Steve Rubel
- It could be my “different drummer” flaring up, but I won’t be posting about how I work. If nothing else the word, greatness, in the title stops me cold. I’m the nice one. Secrets of Niceness: How I Work doesn’t seem to pack the same punch.
Though each profile was only a few paragraphs, I kept wondering, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” I needed something, so I have figured one out. I found a “Liz answer” to the question of how to filter and use this kind of information to build a business and a brand. Read more
keep looking »
