GREAT ADAPTATIONS

If you’re “Twitter-friendly” already, you might consider sending this to those people in your life who just can’t understand what you’re talking about. You know, they make that face and get all flustered and say “but who has time for this?”

Okay, friends. Relax, take a breath, and imagine:

You walk into this big hall, where you see all kinds of diverse people, talking, working together, laughing. Everything looks so interesting.

As you glance around the hall, you see large, clear signs indicating areas of interest. “Dogs.” “Travel.” “Donuts.” “Star Trek.” “China.” “Autism.” “Wordpress.” “SEO.” “Blogging.” “Boomers.” “Party.” “White Sox.” “Follow Friday.”

A little weird. Seriously all over the map. Seems to be a lot of “following” going on.

In front of you is a console where you can enter your own words of interest. As you do this, all around the room, the signs change. You find you can instantly gather a group of people interested in your topic. Some want to learn from you. Some want to be your peer. Some want to help you with your goals. Some are just annoying old guard sales people, and with a click, you can make them disappear from your radar.

And what about that language? So many strange forms of punctuation. And those acronyms! No matter. Just ask. Someone will delight in explaining. They’re playful, and useful. This is a culture. It has its language.

You stand at your console for a moment, refining your areas of interest, and watching the signs around the room change. Soon you have a selection of topics that absolutely delights your brain. It’s a perfect amalgam of you, your life focus, what you enjoy, what supports you, and where you want to go next. You follow your heart.

As you travel through the various areas you’ve selected, you meet so many people who have surprising similarities of life and love. If you choose, you find people in proximity and you can meet them in person. Sometimes you realize an area of interest wasn’t at all what you hoped. Click! Off the radar with that one too. Mostly, though, you find your own brain expanding with the ideas, innovations, and offerings of others. New perspectives give you a boost in your own creativity. You realize you’re actually on to something.

The difficult thing about it all is the excitement. With the rising tide of possibility, you have to keep refining and making more focused choices. And all those new friends!

But you don’t have to stick around when it gets overwhelming. With a blink, you can find yourself at your familiar desk, getting on with other things. The difference is, you’ve tapped into a big, moving river of possibility, relationship, expansion, connections, innovation, and creativity. It’s there. It likes you. The welcome mat is out.

Get started, it’s not hard. Go on www.Twitter.com, enter the small steps to create an account, and then you can come follow me. Just to get going. I’m @brainmaker there on Twitter. We’d love to see you!

Suzanna Stinnett

Now that you’ve visited the hall, be sure you know about The Twalienator

It could be a masterpiece.

I taught my Dynamic Blogging class earlier this week to a group of people, each one of them with a great deal to offer their readers. Since blogging is basically simple self-publishing, it’s easy to miss what else they can be. And it’s important (at least to me) to recognize the impact they can have. Your blog can change lives.

So here’s the deal. Whether you are one of my blogging class attendees, someone who enjoys learning about the brain and technology, or a new reader wondering what my website is about, you are likely to be a good candidate for a great blog. I want you to recognize that and take a few steps toward realizing your potential.

Step: Ask yourself what your inspiration is for your blog. If you’ve had your blog for a while, do you still feel the same way about your material? Do you still want to write the same stuff? Come up with one thing that is new or different about your motivation now. Consider acting, creatively, on that difference.

Step: Before you go to sleep tonight, run a little suggestion through your head: Ask your imagination to come up with three new ways your blog can be more helpful to your readers. Then leave the thought alone. Your imagination knows what to do while you’re sleeping. You’ll know more tomorrow.

Step: If you’re still thinking about a blog but haven’t started one quite yet, get out a piece of paper. Write on it “I haven’t started my blog because _____” and fill in the blank. Write ten reasons why you don’t have a blog right now. I already know what three of them are. Keep going. Then leave it alone. Your imagination is going to work on that too.

This post is coming out of my own recent inspiration about a new direction I’m starting to travel. I recognize a dramatic difference in my energy for the thousand tasks of blogging and my daily sense of renewal now that I have opened up some new avenues. I’ll tell you more about my new stuff soon. Today I want to trigger some of this renewal in you.

Have you noticed a quiet questioning going on in the back of your mind and heart? Something inside, wondering how things might be different - if…? That’s what I hope you will pay attention to today. Your work - your blog - your creation, might be more important than you’ve yet dreamed.

Tell me something that has inspired you today - put it in the comments below. I’d like to know.

Blessings,

Suzanna Stinnett

How could we quantify the collective experience, skills and knowledge of the baby boomer demographic? This is one massive convergence of time and place, this twinkling, decades-reaching, ever-longer-lived group of - um, shall we say, “seniors?”

The brains of Boomers must be mined. Contained therein are solutions, innovations, social histories, and the wisdom of time, to say nothing of some pretty good grammar.

With the current models coming into play where the average person can put together a website and start downloading their knowledge to a community they proscribe, there’s no excuse for losing all that accumulated savvy and smarts.

Give it up, Boomers! You know stuff, and we want to learn it! We need you! Besides, putting yourself through the brain challenge required to learn a little bit about the Internet will make you smarter too. So skip the crosswords this week and do some research about teaching online.

I’m doing my part with some of these posts. Check out this post about the Blogosphere (click on the blue word), or subscribe to my e-mail list for more articles about learning to blog, being friendly to your brain, and crossing that big fat digital divide. And if you have questions about this groovy world I’m peddling, go ahead and post ‘em in the comments section. That’s what I’m here for.

By the way, I’m updating this post as part of Problogger’s 31-Day Build a Better Blog project. Howdy to all my new friends from the comments and forum over there! I invite you to include your own links in the comments below.

See you in the funny pages,

Suzanna Stinnett

Read about how bloggers are interacting in The Collaboration Code

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For Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and the Seriously Over-Booked

If you’re a blogging entrepreneur, here are some things to think about when you’re thinking about bringing on a virtual assistant. I’ll call her a “she” for the sake of the story, but of course he could also be a he.

Practice appropriate praise
Right off the top, get yourself ready to openly praise the person who assists you. Know that when you are clear about your own goals you should be able to see how much your assistant actually does for you – and actively, genuinely, regularly show that you value those skills. Your VA anticipates your needs, and can tell you what is the most efficient use of her skills according to your goals and objectives. Isn’t she amazing?

Anticipate collaboration
I have new projects I want to launch, but I’m not about to swamp myself with new tasks without collaborators. So I look for a VA who understands collaboration. Her business plan allows for a percentage of her time to be used in the risk-investment required to collaborate for future profits. She doesn’t rely on schemes and scams, but she is enthusiastic and savvy in evaluating a potential partnership. She can help set the proper boundaries and expectations in the agreement the two of us might create.

Taking a look at her readiness

Her own tech skills are readily observable because:

*She has her own blog
*She uses Twitter
*She’s on Facebook
*And besides that, she demonstrates great research skills, she’s creative, and – joy! – she is ORGANIZED. (That’s at least half the reason you need help, after all.)

Her communication skills are evident in her blog, as she describes the following assets clearly.

She sets up her daily calendar to handle clients who need small daily tasks tended. Since she is highly skilled at managing her own time, she is able to meet the needs of a number of clients who have small or sporadic tasks to complete. While she likely has an hour or half-hour minimum, when she has a good client she likes and trusts, she becomes more flexible about the minimum time slots she is willing to bill.

Her level of understanding of How Things Work Online can be seen in the suggestions she makes. She does not wait until it’s too late to tell you she can’t get something done. She’s intuitive and proactive.

She can participate in building our network if we decide to collaborate on a project. (Meaning, she’s connected and knows how to leverage it.)

She has two or three references I can actually call on the phone, since I’m going to be turning over passwords and basically the keys to my kingdom.

Since we’re talking about a dream VA here, by the way, she is also funny, warm, bright, responsive, casual, and energetic. She probably loves dogs and boats and plans to live in France at some point. Or is involved in something fun and off-mainstream. Oh, and she knows everything about chocolate.

I wonder what her dream client would look like? Am I her nightmare or her vision of successful collaboration?

Reader, have you found a dream VA? If you’re a virtual assistant, what is your ideal client? Tell me in the comments.

If you know of a wonderful virtual assistant you’d like to recommend, tell me that too. Around the first of May, I’ll do a new post to highlight all the Dream VAs people love to work with.

Suzanna Stinnett

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Collaboration is a word you should be rolling around in your mouth. Get to know it. Think about what it means. Look for examples of it. Know what it is not. Understand it in relationship to competition. Slap your own definition onto it and wave it around.

Brian Clark and Jon Morrow of Copyblogger just released their “Outsourcing Conspiracy” report. It’s beautiful. Visuals courtesy of James Chartrand and his Men with Pens team (as I understand), this report is a refreshing new band of color in the conversation about entrepreneurship, and a pleasure to read.

Now. About the message. I don’t want to give away their nicely drawn tension, so I won’t reveal exactly what they are presenting and suggesting. But I will say that it’s well worth the short session it takes to read it. I’ll give you the link below.

Entrepreneurs like moi who are riding out the rapids of online communication to build a little empire-of-one’s-own need this kind of straight talk. While “Outsourcing Conspiracy” doesn’t talk about collaboration per se, I know the authors relate to my use of this term. (Right, guys?)

When you are engaging online communication, and you understand enough about it to see the potential for you, your expression, your business and your finances, you’re missing the code if you’re oblivious to the need for collaboration.

What’s this “Collaboration Code” thing? Well, it’s a way of drawing on one of your brain areas where the energy around other “codes” is stored. (Whether you loved or hated daVinci Code, for example, your brain still reserves an area for code-related concepts.) See, words are currency and you need to know the exchange rate. I’m spending my currency to trigger curiosity and engage you.

Naming this “The Collaboration Code” is just a conversation starter. (Like calling the report “The Outsourcing Conspiracy.”) Most of us, even when we’re deep into it, don’t quite get what collaboration means today. Here are a few little keys that unlock the big door. They’re meant to juice up the conversation, so please talk.

>>>See Collaboration as a mind-set. Turn your brain towards the full range of potential relationships involving collaboration.

>>>See Collaboration as sharing ideas. The web, the zillions of blogs, the crush of social media chatter, all of that. Collaborative. Albeit currently unused except for a tiny fraction of a percent of the players who are in it up to their elbows.

>>>See Collaboration as an arrangement with another or a few others helping achieve a common goal.

>>>See Collaboration as the engine behind many more people becoming successful entrepreneurs.

>>>See Collaboration as a playground. You come bounce around with others and see what you can discover.

Toss the code over the fence, we don’t need it. We just need to keep playing.

Now talk. Collaborate with me, with us. Go ahead, write a comment, be playful, and tell me what you’d like to work on together. Be childlike and unreserved in your vision of what we can do together.

Suzanna Stinnett

Brain-Friendly Guides to Online Content

READ The Outsourcing Conspiracy

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I’m so excited to see this article come out on Lateral Action. Mark McGuinness interviewed Roger von Oech about his “Creative Whack Pack” coming out as an iPhone app.

I have the app, of course, as a long-time (way long time) follower of von Oech’s great work. He really was the instigator of my own creativity and imagination workshops. The world needs more whack-i-ness, of this order.

But go read the article - it’s a perfect marriage, Lateral Action and Roger von Oech.

Sweeeet!

Suzanna Stinnett

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(And nine effective actions to take instead)

For all those folks out there pondering a new blog or business name, here are nine tips to keep your creative brain headed in the right direction.

1. DON’T name your business before you purchase the domain name.

The available domain name options will determine what follows.

ACTION POINT: Brainstorm your domain name first. Avoid typing your potential name into a domain-seller site until you are absolutely ready to buy. Once you’re committed to it, find it, buy it, and only then proceed with your business details.

2. DON’T get hung up on dot com.

How critical is the dot com? It is not always an option. Sure it’s very cool, but it is not the holy grail. You can have a fine website that gets plenty of search juice even if it is not a dot com.

So your “dot com” is taken. What next? “Dot info?”

No. Dot info should only be used for certain businesses, in which case it is absolutely perfect. It must be relevant.

Country domains, such as dot UK, will make it look like your business is focused on Great Britain.

To read more opinions about this issue, do a Google search along the lines of “why is a dot com important.” There’s an ongoing debate about it which can be quite informative.

ACTION POINT: If you do have something other than a dot com, you’ll want to include the suffix in every mention of your domain name. Think of dot net, for example, as part of the actual sound and memorability of your domain name.

I wanted a dot com for Great Adaptations, but it was taken. I chose the dot org, and in a very short period of time, my blog was ranking high in Google searches. This is because I post actively and appropriately on my blog. Search engines love fresh content.

3. DON’T use plural words.

People can’t remember that final “s”, even when they are typing straight from your business card.

Exception: If you can capitalize on the “SS,” using graphics or fonts to make it stick out in your reader’s mind, you could work it to your advantage.

4. DON’T be careless with double letters.

If your word string has double letters, one of them is likely to be left out when being typed. For example, “Purple People Eater” is a juicy name, but in the URL it is going to be purplepeopleeater, and that double “e” is risky for human error.

ACTION NOTE: Write your ideas out in the form they’ll take as a URL. All lower case, and no spaces. How many ways can it be misconstrued?

5. DON’T get caught off guard when you have to explain your domain name to potential customers. You may have to articulate it more than once. Learn to do that in a friendly, clear way, with a smile.

ACTION POINT: Try short sentences instead of tricky words. As short names get gobbled up, we’re seeing a lot of creativity with longer names. An actual short sentence can be extremely effective and easy for the customer to remember.

A site that sells rain gear, for example, could be called dontgetwet.net. Hear the rhythm in that? Don’t get wet dot net. In this case, even the suffix is memorable.

6. Don’t create a two-part sentence or hook concepts together. It’s too much to remember. You’ve got to keep it punchy and poetic.

ACTION POINT: Try out adjectives to go with your name. If you want to call your candy company Sweet Treat, and find every option taken, think about Neat Sweet Treat. Complete Sweet Treat. Watch for relevance, and keep testing it by writing it out, no spaces. neatsweettreats. See that? We’ve got a double letter problem here. Keep brainstorming.

7. DON’T make your domain name into a license plate.

If you want to create a site for actors to find practice partners, and you’re thinking it could be called “The Actor’s Cave,” don’t use aktorzKv. Did you know that squirrels hide nuts everywhere but without a system to find them? That’s what happens with quirky spellings. Search engines can’t make sense of them either.

ACTION POINT: Remember that you will be speaking your domain name to people. What will they think first? What’s the spelling they are most likely to visualize when you say the name? Say the name out loud. To friends. Listen to it. How perfectly clear is it to the ear? Does it make you smile – or cringe?

8. DON’T use hyphens or underlines. With rare exception, hyphens only make a name harder to type. If you have a powerful name in mind that is already taken, you are not doing yourself a service by creating it with hyphens. Searches for your name are not going to carry the hyphen, and your search juice is not going to be the better for it. Underlines look like code. That’s not what you want.

ACTION POINT: Play with a short verb before your main words. See what happens when you add “Use” or “Try” or “Get” to your collection. When you research domain names, the site that sells the domains will also make lots of suggestions for you.

9. DON’T follow all these instructions.

You might miss your most visionary moment! These are guidelines, not laws.

ACTION POINT: Use the dictionary, use Google searches, give yourself lots of food for thought. Write down your options, move them around, find different ways to say what your business really means.

Bonus Point: If you’re getting frustrated by the process of discovering a great domain name, you’re probably close to the right one. Take a creativity break: Go bowling, eat chocolate, stay up late, laugh with friends. Come back to it tomorrow.

Let your creative self loose, and gallop along beside it. Go out and romp in the fields – and for vision’s sake, take a recorder!

Happy domain searching,

Suzanna Stinnett

Brain-Friendly Guides(c) to online communication

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Friends,
Walking to Peet’s this morning I was especially aware of spring: Trees stretching their branches as if they are standing on tiptoe, reaching for the sky, with the tender green leaves at the very ends of the new growth.

I admit that almost everything I see in the world around me reminds me of the brain, but today I could feel the mirror of spring growth in my own skull. I keep stretching myself in new ways, pulling challenges toward me that bring me joy and sometimes an astonishing amount of work.

But it’s such good work. I call it “single tasking with multi outcomes,” because thinking that way helps me remember how much good I am really doing for my own future health as I find more and better ways to teach people online communication. It’s all about relationships – languages, cultures, and innovation. Great brain stuff.

Today I am posting an email I wrote to a new reader who asked how to hold off Alzheimer’s in a poignant letter, having watched his father succumb to the disease. I’ve written all of this before, but it bears repeating. When I talk about constant learning below, for me it is this work I do. I want you to know more about why I teach online communication. I think this email says it.

Hello John,
Thank you for letting me know that you found my blog. Regarding Alzheimer’s, my mother died at 72 and had onset in her 50s. Same course as her father. So I have a lot of motivation to do all the things that are indicated to make a real difference in my own outcome. As we’ve both experienced, it is devastating to watch it happening.

All of my current work is connected in some way to brain development that can - might - prevent the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. As you may know, many people who actually have the brain changes of Alzheimer’s do not necessarily ever show the symptoms themselves. This possibility was came to light in the “Nun Study.”
(See http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,999867,00.html)

That’s what I’m after. Regardless of any disease-related change my brain might suffer, I want to have tremendous brain development that gives me the best possible chance to override any effects of disease.

There are three things that contribute the most to this outcome.

One is physical exercise. Daily walks or other mild exercise plus more vigorous rounds a few times a week are essential. (I know sometimes it is not easy. I have the same challenge every day, and I consider it really nuts to go a day without a walk.)

Two is constant learning. Using the brain in a way that it is really reaching and growing will make a huge difference in later years. All the difference. This does not guarantee the disease won’t take hold. But there is plenty of evidence to show that it is working for many, many people. This learning should involve personal interaction - the most powerful brain stimulant. Mentally reaching to understand others, learning other languages (including the language of the Internet), learning other cultures, and doing outreach that helps other people, are all things that grow brain cells like wildfire. Helping others has been shown scientifically to flood the brain with healthy brain-chemicals including endorphins. Interesting, huh?

The third is to manage stress. Cortisol is the stress hormone which destroys the brain. So many people are now under unremitting stress, it is scary to think what is going to happen later on. Even though we live in great uncertainty and in very uncomfortable change all around us, we must adapt to this environment and come to see it as opportunity, so that our brains reach in a positive way rather than retreat in fear. A good way to think about it is if you feel stressed and afraid on a daily basis, your brain is pulling back like the little antennae on a snail. This is exactly what you don’t want.

They are all related, obviously. If you can find a way to help others that makes you feel good, you are reaching out, reducing stress, and learning. This is the perfect environment for brain growth. You must be smart about your “helping” choices, and choose an activity that does not make you feel more stressed out. For example, I offer a community-based class to teach people online communication. I love sharing my knowledge about blogging and social media. That is one way I help people while promoting learning and challenging myself all at the same time.

Meditation can help with stress and is also tremendous for keeping the brain healthy. Quiet time, down time, daydreaming and napping are all very good brain boosters.

I hope this gives you something to work with.

Best regards,
Suzanna Stinnett
More about “brain-friendly” learning

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On this buttery-warm March morning, I took a few minutes to throw some new soil on my teensy garden. The poor fuschia, which has never recovered from my absence last fall, had managed to sprout a few off-color leaves. As I gave it a drink I noticed, stuck point-into the dirt there, a shiny little acorn.

I thought of the tiny squirrel paws that stashed the acorn in this unlikely spot, and smiled. The fuschia, if it keeps trying to grow, will go back to its hanging place under the eave where a squirrel couldn’t quite reach. Instead of being food later on, it’s possible I could end up with a little oak tree in my hanging fuschia. Now there’s an interesting juxtaposition.

This is the kind of uncertainty we engage in the multiple universes of new media. Social networking and its exponential potential can take a seed, whether it’s a thought, an invite, an introduction, or some other creation, off into places we aren’t even aware of.

Doesn’t sound like much of a plan, does it? But it is. It is, because, like the squirrel with all those arbitrarily placed seeds, those multiple universes are intersecting. Our digital imprints circulate through this astonishingly interconnected multi-verse, and return to us with who-knows-who now attached. We talk to one person, they talk to several thousand. Ten or twenty or hundreds become aware of us. Because of that one person.

I don’t know if your brain is following this analogy. It makes a lot more sense if you’re out there experiencing it and it’s more fun that you might realize. In Novato Monday night, I spoke about blogging and social media to a careers transition group of 25 people. Everyone in the room was at a different level. I had a blast.

It is a real pleasure for me to share blogging’s burgeoning potential for connection, community, expression and income with a room full of people who have so far only experienced glimmers (alongside considerable confusion).

We social media users are a bit like mad squirrels, placing our bounty of words in strange places and letting them run their course. Like the squirrel, we don’t know when we’ll see that nut again, or if it will sprout into something big. But we’re in it now, and once you’ve experienced the expansiveness of connecting to great minds in such a deeply human way, there’s no reason to go back.

Happy seeding,
Suzanna

Interested in brain-friendly blogging? Click on the “Brain-Friendly” tab above.

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This is an addendum posted on March 26th, 2009, and related to the resignation letter by Jake DeSantis to the CEO of AIG. I think it is very important to read his letter. If I understand this correctly, at least in his case, he was not receiving a bonus at all. It was deferred payment for many months of long hours he had faithfully put in. Rather than remove my post below, I leave it as an early response to this debacle. If you want to feel more informed, do follow the link and read Mr. DeSantis’ letter.

Jake DeSantis Resignation Letter

Haven’t we had just about enough?

I’m just going to toss this idea out. If you like it, spread it – in that special Internet exponential way. Tell Jon Stewart. He could really do something with it.

So we’re looking at the Sunday Chronicle, and people at the table at the coffeehouse are all up in arms about how “AIG is paying” these huge bonuses to their executives. Everyone feels both enraged and helpless, and that’s a terrible combo of brain chemicals.

I haven’t felt helpless in a long time, at least not where anything media-related is concerned. The more I engage new media, the more empowered I feel. We really can organize now to raise a great big voice (and a stink where stink is warranted) on absolutely any issue before us.

So here’s my idea.

How about we do some research and make a list, go one by one through the recipients of these bonuses. Name them. Talk about them. Interview them. Let us all see, through this big shiny transparent lens called the Web, who the actual people are who would accept these bonuses.

Someone take it a step further. We don’t even need Jon Stewart. You video pros out there. Make a quick, simple video and stick it on YouTube. Take this issue and dramatize it. One idea is to have a young boy or girl asking their dad (their dramatized AIG-bonus-accepting-dad), “Why do we need all that money, Daddy? Why are all those people so mad at us, Daddy?” And, yes, roll those names.

Maybe this is a terrible idea. Maybe it seems like a witch hunt. Your comments are invited – as a matter of fact, if you’re reading this, do me the favor of letting me know by responding in the comments. Tell us what you think about it.

Transparency in new media is powerful. We might even find some CEOs who are NOT accepting these sickeningly huge, irrational, untimely piles of moolah. That would be really great. Shine the big light and see if something good pops out. We could all use that.

Get a little bit more active on social media. It doesn’t have to be a big time sink. Write a simple blog, learn a bit about Twitter and see what’s really happening in that conversation. More voices is a good thing.

To our empowerment as caring citizens,

Suzanna Stinnett

Use the exponential Internet to further this conversation by putting a hash tag in your posts: #AIGangst

p.s. If you find my posts interesting, informative and/or helpful, I’d like you to subscribe in that upper right column so you can become part of my web community. I send my subscribers brain-health tips and other fun items for learning about online communication. Come join in.