GREAT ADAPTATIONS

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The creators of Common Craft, Sachi LeFever and Lee LeFever, are brilliant at lighting up the game pieces of social technology. Using beautifully simple and short videos, they have already built an easy-access library of tutorials on aspects of online communication. Most worthy of mention is the fact that their material will work just as well for a 90-year-old as it will for anyone else. I consider them peers in the ongoing work of bridging generations.

Take a look at their video, “Blogs in Plain English.”

Yeah, I know, Lee talks a little fast. So watch it a couple of times if you need to. Let me point out, too, that as simple as these videos are, they are not oversimplified. Online communication is not really that complicated. The systems people are learning to use it can be daunting, but with a little mental elbow grease and some community support, we can all learn this stuff.

Speaking of community support, I’m going to model what online communication is good at, right now, just for you. I’d like to introduce a cloverleaf.

For good luck?
Okay, let’s back up. There’s a new term for you, most likely. A “cloverleaf” in online communication is where online and onground communities interact. To me, this is the best technology has to offer: mutual enhancement. It’s called a “cloverleaf” because, like the highway device, things move on and off the ramps and go in both directions. On a highway, a cloverleaf provides access to the community and the highway, and it is designed to do that seamlessly. In online communication, the cloverleaf occurs in many places.

The cloverleaf I am introducing is (drum roll!) the Bay Area Blog Society. TA DA!! Rev your virtual (gas free) engines!

The Bay Area Blog Society, or – you got it! – BABS, is now forming in the laptops and brains of a handful of local bloggers and blog-interested individuals. Most of us are in or near the San Francisco Bay area, but people like the LeFevers are so integral to the mission of BABS that I have invited them to be long distant BABS-es. We’ll probably have a lot of those, since it’s ridiculous to take a tool like the Internet and exclude appropriate players by virtue of their locale.

Still, part of the cloverleaf effect is that a regional association allows us to descend from our virtual crowsnests and show up in a room together. That’s a great thing. (Parties, relationships, conferences, that kind of juice.)

BABS in brief
BABS will support the development and responsible use of blogs, helping new bloggers along with local classes and e-material. Along with producing guides for people who are not yet comfortable with the Internet (and sharing ones that already exist), BABS will promote and support audio recording of useful blog material for the sight-impaired. This large demographic is pathetically under-served on the Internet. BABS will set out to solve that problem.

Read the early version of the BABS mission statement. Comments please!

See you soon,

Suzanna

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Today I’m sending you over to my blog on the Examiner site, where I posted today about the desire for challenge and meaning in the Boomer demographic. My Examiner blog is called Web 55.0 Examiner.

Here, I’m posting an inspiring piece by John Gomperts, who wrote the foreword to the study called “Great Expectations.” His perspective on Boomers reaching for meaning and purpose is right along the lines of what I’m up to on this blog. We are seeing a convergence now between the accessibility of online communication and the health and healing of our cultures as well as our tremendous need for innovation in these times. We are reinventing how to take care of ourselves and each other, and the Internet is playing a huge role.

Here’s the foreword:

“The aging of America is likely to be the biggest demographic story of our times. Though the statistics about the changes in the make-up of the American population have become familiar, they are nonetheless breathtaking. The largest generation ever to pass through its 40s and 50s is now moving into its 60s. In five years, 20 percent of the population will be over 60. This will bring profound changes to schools and universities, to health care and housing, to the workplace and civil society, to virtually every institution in our lives.

In 2005, the MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures “New Face of Work” Survey found that boomers have a strong desire to launch a new chapter in their working lives that involves significant social contribution. People over 50, especially adults between 50 and 55, showed a surprisingly high level of interest in making shifts from their intense midlife careers to new pursuits that improve lives in their communities.

The boomer generation is known for wanting choice. And every study to date has found that boomers are not looking for busy work. They are looking for meaning and purpose. They are looking for interesting and challenging opportunities to make an impact on big societal problems, from education to the environment, hunger to homelessness to health care. As the President of Civic Ventures, the CEO of Experience Corps, and a VolunteerMatch Board Member, I am particularly encouraged by the findings in “Great Expectations: Boomers and the Future of Volunteering.” This study underscores the opportunity for nonprofits to engage the time and talent of this exceptional generation and the promise of the Internet as a tool to recruit them.

With knowledge and investment we can transform the aging of the baby boom generation from a potential crisis into an historic opportunity. There are millions of talented, experienced Americans ready to roll up their sleeves. All they need now is a great opportunity.”

See you soon,

Suzanna Stinnett

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Take Your Brain Through the Door

What’s the newest thing you’ve experienced in the past thirty days? Did you meet someone intriguing? Discover that you like digital photography? Grapple with a new language? Notice a flower blooming in the crack in the driveway?

If you can’t think of anything, I’ve got some news for you. Not good news. Your brain, which is designed to reach and stretch and grow, is just sitting there. Tick, tock, like a perpetual clock, mechanically strolling through its daily paces. Stick to this path of blandness and your brain is headed for the Laziness Hall of Fame. There it will be rewarded the Atrophy Trophy.

Boldness Counts

Eric R. Kandel, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2000), puts it beautifully in an article originally published in Scientific American Mind. To paraphrase: “Few experiences excite and stimulate the imagination more than discovering something new, no matter how modest… It is important to be bold. One should tackle difficult problems, especially those that initially appear messy and unstructured. One should not fear trying new things, such as moving from one field to another or working at the boundaries of disciplines — where the most interesting problems often emerge.”

A Craving for the New

Viewed in this light, I realize why I never stop exploring the brain. Mr. Kandel points out that his yen for the messy problem has shielded him from the midcareer malaise some of his scientist colleagues suffered. His friend Richard Axel, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel in 2004, discovered that there are 1,000 different receptors for smell. He speaks about the addictive quality of reviewing in one’s mind new and interesting findings. “Unless Richard sees new data coming along, he becomes despondent…”

What’s behind Door Number 3? The unknown, a new road, a challenge to body or mind? What new data will keep your brain on its growth edge, reaching to understand?

Good cheer,

Suzanna Stinnett

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TO: Boomers and the People Who Love Them

RE: Web 55.0

The Top 3 Absolute Must-Haves to connect with Boomers online.

#1. Language aptitude.

#2. Proficiency with words.

#3. Exquisite grasp of grammar.

Boomers learned language when language mattered. It still matters to us. I take a lot of liberties in my blog writing, but I never forget who could be reading. Actually, that’s one of the problems Boomers have when they start the process of online communication. Educated Boomers tend to write academically.

Perfection, Darling

Let’s take a minute here at this fork in the road. On the right, we have the grassy path of writing as we’re accustomed. Ah, grammar. Isn’t it pretty? See how perfect these sentences are, their shapely form, their perfect spelling? Come, reader! We nancy-dance amongst the darling buds! Sorry, Boomer. You’re going to bore us all to smithereens. Let’s go left into the bog.

Hey, we’re talking here!

Blogs are a conversation. Repeat after me: Blogs are a conversation. Nothing screams “newbie” like a thousand-word four-paragraph full-text post with nary a bold letter. Understand, my sister brother, a blog is not an online venue for printed matter. The human eye cannot traverse a screen as it traverses a page. Cannot, does not. See the right hand, twitching upon the mouse.

Here lies a lesson in reciprocity.

Boomers, step up here, and shake hands with the rest of the online demographic. That’s nice. Now I want you Boomers to promise you will attempt to be conversational, and warm up your blogging prose with some grammatical hijacking. Phrase-pulling. Short and punchy, epithetical delights. That’s right, mix up those words! Swagger around in your grammar pajamars! Tease us with meaning.

In other words, learn a new language out of the one you’ve used all your life. For the love of Pete, have some fun with it.

It’s your turn, you underage laptoppers.

Your assignment’s a bit different. You may hate this, but I’m going to ask you to read. Books. That’s right, I said books. One at a time. Bare minimum, one full book every two months. Fast track to articulate, Boomer-friendly prose: A book a week. And the best sources for your growth in language capacity? Classics. You knew that, didn’t you?

One last assignment for both of you.

Boomers, your job is to post a reply below, listing your recommendation for a book that is guaranteed to benefit language skills. Not too long, please. Youthies, you are asked to suggest a blog that you think demonstrates first-rate readability. Hint: Try to find something that doesn’t flash.

Now play nice, everybody.

Suzanna Stinnett

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Plants respond to changing environments by adapting (if they survive), and so do humans. It just doesn’t look like it sometimes. Stoicism and all.

We adapt as a first response to external information, and then, piggy-backed on the process of adaptation, we innovate. Adaptation is like that initial shrink-back when you touch the feelers of a snail (that might be a Northern-California-centric thing), and then the innovation is when the snail turns slightly to go around you. I’m trying to keep things simple today.

What follows are solutions to problems which affect us all, and while they’re all brilliant, many of them need tending to keep up with the world’s constant morphing.

1. The compass. (China did it, although they were using it to decide which way their houses should face)

2. Paper. (105 A.D. Another bow to China, they pulled this one off. They also created the first newspaper in 700 A.D. Now if they could just figure out free speech.)

3. The use of bamboo in building. (Fast growing, no pesticides, beautiful, strong)

4. Continuous closed loop algae bioreactors as super cost-effective fuel source. (Development from Vertigro, check it out.)

5. Light emitting diode, the LED. (Still coming into its own, probably the light of the future, lasts forever, and is almost cheaper than fluorescent now.)

6. The Earth Charter. (The global consensual statement on the meaning of sustainability, created from the input of over 5000 people from cultures across the world. Completed in the year 2000)

7. Float glass. (1959! The technique that gave us a pane of glass that doesn’t distort. Most glass still made this way.)

8. Locofocos: the early match. (1836 patent granted for friction matches called locofocos, to a guy from Springfield, Massachusetts. Sweden made the safety match, of course, and Joshua Pusey created book matches a few years later.)

9. Smoke detector. (1969. Check your battery.)

10. The ladder fire truck. (It just took a few years after the match was invented for this necessity to arise.) 1868, Daniel Hayes invented the Hayes truck.

11. This is my personal favorite: The application of physics to describe a vacuum as not empty, but actually as highly organizing and constantly communicating. (Nassim Haramein, The Resonance Project, 2001)

Help me build this list – send your favorite adaptation or innovation in the “Reply To” area below.

Happy morphing!

Suzanna

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Reclaimed Materials Sculpture by Patrick Amiot

Sebastopol, California

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It’s the weirdest thing… the evolution of my inner response mechanisms to become an appropriate (successful, productive, effective) interface to my readers (potential, current and eventual readers.)

It’s the weirdest thing. Uncomfortable. Stomach-churning. Fear-inducing.

Moments occur when I think this can be so much easier – if I’m simply candid. “Just be yourself!” Um. Well. “Myself” is not necessarily the most comfortable thing in the world.

Why?

Because, quite frankly, I am not used to people being interested in “Myself.” Personality-wise, I lean more towards the “Oh, I don’t want to bother anyone,” and the “I’d hate to trouble you,” type of gal.

So I’m in “refreshingly candid” training. I’m going to ease into it a bit by telling you about the writers I am learning from and watching daily on their blogs.

Darren Rowse is really out there, working in a number of social media platforms, and doing good, solid content-rich blogging. He has a huge following. He’s a seasoned pro and financially successful with his online businesses. He’s also a theologist, a minister (or once-minister perhaps), a father of wee ones, and, to my assessment, rather private. I trust Darren 100%. (His website is www.problogger.com.)

Brian Clark is super-articulate, a professional writer with a writerly way that I gravitate towards, also likely rather private. Last week he told a very personal story about a head injury that got scary. In the story, we learn that he, too, has wee ones. I respect him, learn a great deal from him, and enjoy his posts. I remember when Brian posted a gag “goodbye” for April 1^st, I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t like it.

Although he came back the next day explaining, my sensory system had “regrouped” around the realization of the fragility and unpredictability of these relationships. I am slightly removed from him because of this.

Later, when he posted the personal-growth-through-near-tragedy article, I found myself wondering if there was a little bit of experimentation going on regarding how his readers respond to emotional content, and this distanced me further. Just a tiny little bit. (His website is www.copyblogger.com.)

NOTE: This is not a reflection on Brian. It reveals how I think and how my readers might also interpret me. I want to learn what grows trust in my own readers – and what might push them away, even a little.

Yaro Starak is my teacher. I know him better than the others, but more by osmosis than anything he specifically reveals. I notice how much more deeply I am engaged now that he has left home and is traveling and writing from his travels. The videos he has posted showing him in the locations he visits are powerful barrier-droppers.

Especially when his crazy hair is waving in the wind and he says “you should have seen some of the ladies’ hair.” I think Yaro is very, very good at being himself and presenting his life out in the open to his readers. I want to learn to do this. He has a beginning blog tutorial here.

Sonia Simone wrote a good piece about being naked, which is what it often feels like when you’re trying to build a community on your blog. Writing academically gets you absolutely nowhere. Tempting as it is, you can’t hide behind the words. You have to use the words to connect. That’s the whole point. Sonia, by the way, is easy for me to trust. It might be because she’s a woman, but probably more because she’s a very good writer and that in itself is a magnet to my sensibilities. She’s got her boat out there in the wide open sea of conversation, and I respect that. (Her website is www.remarcom.com.)

Maybe through these vignettes, I’ve shown you a little bit of who I am. These people encourage me to keep at it. I’m grateful for them. I’m grateful for you, too.

I’ve come up with my own term for the demographic I want as my web family. I call it “Web 55.0”, and that means all you characters born within ten years of 1955. So, readers, I have a question. Please take a moment to tell me something about you:

How do you experience online relationships? What magnetizes you? What kind of connection or community can you imagine having through online vehicles? Be as fanciful or pragmatic as you like, and tell me what you’re thinking.

Tenderly,

Suzanna

Apollo 13 Ground Crew Works it Out

What makes a great adaptation?

Adaptations involve imagination, innovation, creativity, and usually a bit of urgency. Do you know about Apollo 13? It was a mission to the moon that went wrong, and a tremendous drama of relationships, teamwork, and life. (Check out the movie, it’s inspiring.) The crew was facing death by asphyxiation unless the ground crew could quickly and effectively create an adaptation using what was available to the astronauts to remedy the breakdown in their oxygen supply.

It’s a fantastic scene with a whole posse of high-functioning brains working together under terrible pressure. They did it. They innovated, found the solution, and effectively articulated it for the astronauts who were already suffering from oxygen deprivation.

This is a super example of our capacity and potential. Now, most of us are not functioning anywhere near that level of brain use. On the contrary, we’re far below our own potential. Especially in the creativity and imagination department.

Daily routines have a deadening quality, simply because the brain makes no new connections for months on end. Stress takes its toll on brain function and motivation. Too much media is also likely to dampen our spirits. At the end of the day, we’re much more likely to turn to a spoon-fed hypnotic evening of entertainment than any activities which could actually make a difference in our lives.

Maybe what we need is a little encouragement. Here at Great Adaptations, I’m hosting Adapt-athons. And you’re invited!

There will be prizes – so don’t miss out! Find the criteria here, jumpstart your imagination, and discover how innovative you really are.

Subscribers will receive updates and email reminders for the Adapt-athon. Don’t wait! I’ll be looking for your links!