Big Ideas

Making time for yourself

Traditionally, I'm a "workaholic", I suppose.

I'm the type of person who pushes, pushes, pushes. I don't sleep much, I want to be good at everything and I have a really strong sense of responsibility and commitment. I work at being as good as I can be at everything that I do.

What I've learned over the years though, is that sometimes, by wanting to do well at everything, I forget to do well at making time for myself. I forget to stop and spend time really thinking about how I can direct my energies most effectively and in the best alignment with my goals.

Although I've been getting better at doing that, it's time that I allocate more of my time to that endeavor. I'm down in San Diego visiting friends for a few days for just this reason: to disconnect and be more proactive about thinking through where I'm going and what I want to do. You can expect to see more of that in my posts in the coming weeks/months and hopefully, you'll also see some more progress being made on how I'm chasing after the things that I want out of life.

How about you folks - how good are you at making time for yourself? How do you choose to do it?

Technorati tags: personal development, making time for yourself

Sharing experiences: another amazing YouTube video

By way of my friend Damon's blog comes this amazing video of a home crowd at a basketball game. It's incredible to watch how into the game they are and the lack of social fear.

That's right, social fear. Maybe you should think about that for a moment. Do you have social fear? Are you afraid of being yourself in public?

The digitization of our lives is happening. Whether it's Flickr, YouTube, your blog or whatever's coming next, we're becoming more digitally entwined. That scares people. A ton. But it's also good, because you can share these experiences. Watch this video and then think about it like this:

- Imagine that you go to school here and you're trying to tell a friend who doesn't go there about your freshman year. You're telling them how cohesive the student body is, how tied together everyone feels and how much they love basketball. Your friend listens intently, but they don't "get" it. Not just with your words.

- You send them this video.

Then what happens? Maybe your friend picks up the phone and calls you with 5 questions about your school. Maybe they want to transfer there. Or think you should leave.

But, all of a sudden, they've gotten to experience your life more intimately than ever before.

Isn't that what we're really seeking with this stuff? The ability to more fully share who we are, what we think, what we do? Aren't we really try to share the experiences of our lives?

I think so.

You tell me. Tell me what you want out of blogs, flickr, youtube, twitter etc. I'm dying to know.

Technorati tags: YouTube, Sharing experiences, digitization of life, economy of influence, transparency

Proactive Discovery; Find Something You're Not Aware of, On Your Own

Over the past few months, I've had this demo (below) emailed to me several times with comments to the effect of, "Holy crap, this is so amazing. I guess Microsoft can still do cool stuff every once in a while."

I usually laugh when I get those notes.

Ridiculously Cool Technology - Watch more free videos

I've been aware of the Photosynth technology out of MSFT labs for a while now and I'd seen a demo of Sea Dragon as well. So, I laugh because I've already seen it and my friends assume that they're going to shock me. But, I also laugh because of the implicit commentary about Microsoft. I think it's really funny how many people assume that Microsoft is an old, boring, closed-minded company that's not doing anything exciting at all. On a semi-regular basis, I try to peek into their research labs site and see what's going on over there. In short, it's pretty amazing.

As I touched on in this post on perceptions and the media, Google's currently the hot company that everyone's paying attention to in the Internet space (with Facebook starting to give it a run for its money..). Whether it's Microsoft Surface, Yahoo! Answers, AOL Video or any number of other very cool developments from companies not named Google, the crowd seems to be overlooking a lot of it at the moment.

So here's an idea: go find out about something new and cool today that you're not aware of and then come back and tell me about it in my comments. I'd love to see what you find and share it back out with the rest of my readers in a subsequent blog post or two.

Go, now. Do it :)

Technorati tags: Microsoft Live Labs, Microsoft Photosynth, Microsoft Sea Dragon, Microsoft Surface, discovery, Yahoo! Answers, Google, AOL Video

And now, for something completely different!

Lots of longer, more serious posts from me of late (and many more to come, the drafts are coming along :-) ). But, I thought I'd take a break from that and share something hilarious with you:

www.getlistenup.com

Yes, I did actually come across this via a TV infomercial, it's true. I was mesmerized!! The guy who invented this must be a millionaire right :)? And imagine, this powerful, incredibly accurate technology can be yours for only $14.99.

Please, somebody, please, buy this and tell the rest of us about it.

 

Technorati tags: ListenUp, Advertising, Infomercials

Perceptions, the media and opinion-shaping

I am regularly amused by the fact that the public's perception can be vastly different from reality. This isn't a new thing, however, it's just funny to observe. For example, take a look at the following site:

Вопросы и ответы 

Now, if you could read Russian, you'd know the following things:

1. This is a Google site
2. Called "Google Answers"

If you also happened to be somewhat familiar with the tech landscape you'd know that Yahoo! has been cleaning up in this space with it's own product, called, oddly enough, Yahoo! Answers.

You would then realize that Google Answers in Russia is a very close copy of Yahoo! Answers, translated into Russian. Because Yahoo! hasn't gotten to that market yet and Google is quite nervous about the inroads that Yahoo! is making into the search business using community-driven knowledge they decided to copy and launch. 

 

My point here isn't to call out Google and say "hey, you guys are copycats", because I believe that this happens often, by many companies, and isn't a terrible thing. No, my point is this:

No one really took notice of this

I think it's fair to assume that if the situation was reversed and Yahoo! was taking the Google role here, there would be a lot more noise and it might even be treated as a legitimate and coverable story. It might be another in a deluge of "Yahoo!'s in trouble" stories that have come out this past year.

But it's not.

There is passing commentary from time to time that references the fact that Google is currently the media darling. It's only passing commentary however, because most people could care less about media commentary on its own editorial decision-making. However, it plays an important role in what information we consume, our understanding of the events around us and our perception of the subjects of the coverage.

What I'd really like to see happen is that more of us realize that this is the case. We should, ideally, ask some deeper questions when a subject is idolized/demonized and we're taking that story to heart and forming opinions. Realistically, this is of course impossible. But idealistically, I'd like to urge you all to at least contemplate this as you're forming your opinions. Whether it's about companies, people, products etc., your opinion should truly be your own, shouldn't it?

If you believe that, then act that way. Research, develop and test your opinions. Most importantly, take responsibility for making sure that they're as well-formed as possible. Make them yours.

Technorati tags: owning your opinions, Google, Yahoo!, Yahoo! Answers

China Takes Drastic Actions to Improve Food Safety

Whoa.. just came across this news item that China had executed its old food and drug chief for accepting bribes and approving untested medicines that proved to be fatal.

From the State Food and Drug Administration's spokesperson:

We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases. We should step up our efforts to ensure food and drug safety, which is what we are doing now and what we will do in the future...

Now, I'm not a death penalty supporter, so this decision saddens me. But it also strikes me that if you're a country that accepts it and utilizes it (which China does apparently more often than every other country) that they're trying to send a very clear message here. Also from the story:

Yan said the food and drug administration was working to tighten its safety procedures and create a more transparent operating environment. The administration has already announced a series of measures to tighten safety controls and closed factories where illegal chemicals or other problems were found.

Are these the steps a country takes that eventually lead to an improvement of its track record on human rights and public discourse? I don't know, but I do hope so, for all of the citizens of China.

Technorati tags: China corruption, China food and drug safety

Turning Away Customers Should Be Intentional..

I truly believe that the best run businesses are those that are thoughtful about who their customers are and what they'll do to meet their needs. I think it's important to be proactive in creating and refining your products or services and that in doing so, you ignore some opportunities for revenue. This just makes sense to me.

What doesn't, however, is when companies turn away customers out of laziness/ignorance. Which brings me to my point. A colleague of mine sent this site past me: gohooLo.com

Now, if you click through and check this site out, you'll discover rather quickly that the company behind it is offering locally-focused search advertising assistance. But, you'll also notice two other key details:

• The video, which is annoying, plays automatically and has NO STOP button!
• There's nothing clickable on the site to get through to more information, the ability to sign up etc.

It appears that this company is really focused on getting customers to call it up. Which, I think, probably makes sense. They're geared on assisting offline local businesses that are probably not very technologically savvy or familiar with the online advertising world. But what about those potential customers that do find this site? What about the ones ready to sign up right away, or, at the very least, are looking for information?

Apparently, gohooLo has decided those customers aren't who they're focused on serving. Or... they haven't thought at all.

I suspect it's the latter.

Turning away customers on accident is really really dumb.

Technorati tags: gohoolo.com, turning away business, dumb companies

A good reason to blog..

Your comments

I'd like to invite those of you reading this blog to leave me comments. I really appreciate knowing when I've written something that makes sense to you, that inspires thought or that touches you in some way.

A post this past week, Go Fail Yourself, elicited a comment from my good friend Ben that acutely reminded me of this fact. He wrote:

Oh man, if there's one thing I can say with confidence, it's that I'm NOT failing at failing. ;-) I've managed to put myself into a position with huge expectations, facing huge challenges, and non-trivial personal consequences if I fail. And, success is by NO means guaranteed. It's scary just thinking about it. Thanks for making me feel a little better about it, Robi...

Right there, that's why I blog. The fact that something I wrote could make a friend of mine feel better about the risks he's taking in his life, well, there's really not much better than that.

It's tough to always communicate what we're thinking to those who are important to us. It's even harder for us to effectively identify when a friend of ours could use a comment of support and respect. I don't often tell Ben this, but besides being one of my best friends, I really respect the way he's approached his professional career. I've watched him pursue a professional life that aligns with his personal passions and he's impressed me with his willingness to stand up for what he believes in, even if it creates conflict. He, like me, is not one to shy away from conflicts over the things that are important to us.

So to those of you lurking around, please feel free to comment from time to time. And Ben, good job at failing. Keep up the good work :)

 

Technorati tags: Blog commenting, Conversations, Professional integrity, Risk-taking