GREAT ADAPTATIONS

The public gazes through a window of possibility

Are you a media-based leader, a media-aware leader, or both?

Media-aware leadership means that the leader understands what is available to her public, and understands how her core demographic is engaging new media. This awareness helps the leader listen. Even if a leader does not personally spread messages through modern media, she must be able to use the tools to listen to her public.

It’s possible to be a media-based leader, that is, able to engage the tools of new media, yet still function at a low level of media-awareness. Again, it is a matter of listening. It’s not enough to “get on Twitter and Facebook.” Leaders have to care enough to keep building their listening skills and grow that brain area to the level they can participate in thought leadership.

If you care, it shows

This profoundly positive shift in marketing is worth embracing as a daily practice. Modern leaders including corporate executives must realize that listening to their public is the cost-effective way to set their compass points. The level of listening now available gives business a whole new playground of connection to their customers. It streamlines everything – once a leader or company acquires the skills (or hires a modern media professional).

MODERN MEDIA IS MESSAGE-GENERATIVE. Topics, outcomes, urgencies, fears, advice, discoveries, and desires are a few of the messages which proliferate, generate and infiltrate the public conversation.

Sort through the noise and listen

When leaders begin to enter modern media, all that proliferation is quite a din. It’s noisy, busy, distracting and confusing. That’s normal. Think of any experience of learning a new language. You can learn hello, goodbye, thank you, and where’s the bathroom, but after that you enter a brain-confused state for a phase of deepening into the language.

If you’re groping your way into modern media right now, I recommend starting with search tools. Play with searches on Twitter, for example, to see how people talk to each other in that universe. Raise your tolerance for seeing incomprehensible characters in your search results. Look for meaning. Relax, drink water, and let your brain grow into it with playful curiosity.

Suzanna Stinnett

Thank you to Valeria Maltoni of ConversationAgent.com (@conversationage), for juicing up my mind on these ideas.

The posts of 2010 often relate to my focus words and/or my manifesto, Cloud Alchemy. This post relates to my focus word “nature,” as the organic nature of leadership deepens in meaning. It relates to Points #5 and #8 in Cloud Alchemy.

Focus Words Post: In progress

Cloud Alchemy: See on Scribd.com

Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a new plateau of collective intelligence.

The brain we have formed through our use of digital communication tools is now functioning. We have thoughts, and we are sharing them in deluges.

I propose we recognize this as a new brain capacity – specifically a global brain capacity – and that we orchestrate our global thoughts with the highest possible intentions.

I propose we recognize that this is what we have already been doing. Through these new media tools we have a thinking heart. This is what fuels my own daily journey as a teacher and articulator of new media.

This huge, benevolent, thinking heart. This heart which pulses through the vast onground servers to the vast online cloud.

Being a practical midwestern gal, I want you to understand what I’m proposing without a lot of folderol. To that end, I have written a manifesto. I call it “Cloud Alchemy.”

The manifesto explains in simple terms what it means to participate in the global conversation through new media tools. I want you to read it. I want you to become part of my conversation. You.

Before I send you to the manifesto, let me demonstrate cloud alchemy. There will be many demonstrations of this force at work. I call these demonstrations “alchemy labs.” Here we go.

Alchemy Lab #1
July 23, 2009

Preface: In my work as an online communicator and teacher, I have the privilege of engaging hundreds of very bright, active minds. New media tools make this possible by delivering the daily offerings of these bright minds in manageable little bits.

Daily I am struck by recognition of special possibilities, if, for example, I could help one mind recognize another.

Now this “connecting” I am talking about could be called networking. It certainly is a form of networking. What makes it cloud alchemy is two things:

1. It can happen instantly, easily, with minimal effort, because of new media tools.
2. I am delving deeper than a simple networking-style “introduction.” I intend to trigger a resonance between two people (or two hundred) by sharing with each person a relevant detail about the other. In other words, I am pulling the thoughts together. Bringing them into close quarters so they can become a new energy source – a spark – recognition – joined thoughts.

That’s the alchemy: My brain wants this brain to know that brain.

Begin the Lab:
I’m beginning these Labs at the top. Today, July 23, 2009, I recognize Dr. Ellen F. Weber as a “brain area” of the first order. I will let you discover more about her work. I also recognize Liz Strauss, a leader and a gatherer. I want to connect these two.

Ingredients:

a. Triggering the thought process, let me point out that Dr. Weber is a brilliant neuroscientist who brings great kindness to her offerings. She teaches leaders how to work in what I call a “brain-friendly” way for maximum positive outcomes. Her website is Brain Leaders and Learners. She can be found on Twitter as @ellenfweber.

b. Now I will bring in a second force, someone I know helps and influences many thousands of people. She is a leader and another force of kindness. Her name is Liz Strauss. The reason I want these two brains to connect is simple. I want the global brain to have a new brain area which is informed by Dr. Weber’s understanding and connected to the social prowess – super high brain connectivity – of Liz Strauss. Find Liz on Twitter @lizstrauss. (For a stellar example of cloud alchemy, see lizstrauss.com and look at her list of Blue Feather Association Tweeters.)

Outcomes:

Many possible outcomes. My work is to tell the story my brain concocts, point Ellen and Liz toward one another, and expose my own audience to this process and these two brains. Sometimes I will persist in deepening the recognition of two people. Other times I simply allow the alchemy to do its own work.

Wrap-Up:

This is one example of an Alchemy Lab. I’d say this is a longish version of the Labs. Tomorrow, I’ll demonstrate a Lab which employs Twitter.

Twitter?
Twitter, by the way, is a supreme form of cloud alchemy. For the people who have engaged Twitter fully, there is a constant thought-share happening. Enormous thinking-heart activity is enacted hour by hour on Twitter. If you blog, you might want to conduct longer Alchemy Labs. You could, however, use only Twitter to connect and electrify powerful new brain areas. That’s some great alchemy right there.

About that manifesto
The manifesto, “Cloud Alchemy,” will clarify your role in the global brain. It invites you with simple steps to become an active part of this conversation.

Boomer Women and Men
I dedicate this first version of Cloud Alchemy to women and men in the vicinity of 55. (That’s a broad vicinity, reaching from the 40 somethings to the 90 somethings. I call that “Web 55.0.”)

Why?

The emergence of Boomer women and men into new media is a real paradigm shift. Mature minds can be enhanced greatly by engaging the learning curves of new technology. Once the challenges are met, these minds can offer up their richness, their decades of experience, skills, and life-juice, to the conversation. The mature mind is needed in order to bring balance to our changing world.

Is it difficult to grasp?
Boomer women and men may find the paths of new media quite obscure. This is natural. We Boomers don’t have brain areas for communication technology. While we were indeed the ones who brought it into existence, we have not, for the most part, engaged the super-charged speed of change as these tools have become integrated into business and social cultures. We have to build these brain areas.

That’s a bit of a problem. But it is not as big an obstacle as it once was. Now, for your learning pleasure, we have teachers and tools which can be engaged quickly. The brain area grows when curiosity and openness are nurtured. The next day, it’s easier.

Cloud Alchemy is for you, my fellow Boomers. It’s for us all. But today it’s for you.

Join my web family. Read Cloud Alchemy. Begin your own new brain area. You are needed.

Sincerely,
Suzanna Stinnett
Please join us: Type your email in the upper right corner and click to receive the manifesto.

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

As many of you know, I developed a big chunk of my sense of what the Internet can be, culturally, as an early participant in an online bulletin board called “Wacco.”

It existed first on Yahoo, and now continues as a newer Yahoo group and a large and growing website, www.WaccoBB.net.

I’d like to hear about other forums which have grown large through an onground community such as the Wacco bulletin board. I know of several which exist to serve a global community, coming together through common interests such as entrepreneurship or working moms, for example, but I’d like to know more about online forums which serve a specific region.

Let me know what you’ve seen out in the clouds. How do regional forums develop? Are people utilizing print material to let their community know, as WaccoBB does?

See more about the term “onground” here at the Examiner Glossary series. Please comment, and subscribe to the 100 day series there at the Examiner.

Suzanna

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If you don’t know about Marc Prensky, let me refer you to this pivotal piece of his in the link below. If you’re a teacher or a parent trying to understand how your child learns, you’ll want to read this six page article in its entirety. Time well spent.

Trained at both Harvard and Yale, Marc Prensky has created a number of games which are aligned with the brains of today’s young student and which teach them in ways they are extremely well prepared to learn. He founded the Digital Multiplier, an organization “dedicated to eliminating the digital divide in learning worldwide.”

Parents and teachers certainly don’t have to reinvent the wheel in order to communicate well with today’s kids. They (we) just have to change our own orientation to what we call “round.” Marc Prensky is making this much easier than it sounds.

Your input is requested for the Glossary of Online Communication we are developing over at the Examiner. Here is the first Examiner entry: Online Communication. I ardently implore you to visit, comment, and subscribe. Give me 100 days to develop this glossary, and I’ll publish it at the end of the year. Let’s all help each other get on the map.

If you’re a Twitterer, feel free to send me your ideas, terms to define, or questions there – you’ll find me as Brainmaker.

Notes from Marc Prensky, (See Part 1, here.)

(Note: This is a guest post by Jenn Givler, as part of my Introductions series while I am away. Enjoy!)

“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi’s words are very wise. And, I’m sure you know that you need to take action, or nothing will change. But, what actions are the right ones? And, where do you even start?

That feeling of overwhelm can really get you stuck in inaction. And then, as Gandhi points out, there will be no result.

It all starts with planning. And, if you’re anything like me, the thought of making a plan sort of feels stifling… or confining. I mean, what’s the sense in planning when you have no idea what’s going to come your way in the next few weeks or months – you want to have the flexibility to take advantage of any new opportunities, right?

I’m not a natural born planner, I had to learn the value of planning, and I had to learn to do it in a way that allowed for a certain degree of spontaneity, but also helped me move forward and feel productive, and fulfilled.

The first thing to realize is that – the plan can change. Anything you develop can (and probably will) change. The second thing to remember is, stay true to yourself and only include things in your plan that feel really good deep down in your soul.

To begin planning for the things you want to accomplish, the first thing to do is paint a big picture vision of where you want to be in 6 months to a year. I often tell people to write an essay as if they were standing in their lives and had everything exactly as they wanted it.

This activity will help you devise the bigger goals, and then you can fill in the details. For example, let’s say you want to leave a full time job within a year. Once you can see that in your mind’s eye, you can start thinking about smaller actions that will get you to that larger goal.

Next, think about how much time you have to work specifically on your plan. Think about what you’ve already got in your schedule, and determine when you can fit your actions in. Set boundaries when working on your plan – if you plan to work for 2 hours, focus and get through the activities you want to get done.

Finally, start looking at what activities are serving you and what’s not. In other words, what are the things that will get you closer to your goal, and what are doing because you feel you should? Start to release those things that feel like “shoulds.”

Planning and goal setting can seem dry and boring on the surface. But truly, it’s the only way you’ll make changes. Just remember, rigidity is not how life works, so allow for flexibility and new opportunities. If you get stuck, get help. There are many, many experts, books, web sites, and blogs out there to help you get what you need and move forward!

About Jenn
Jenn Givler is an Intuitive Business Coach. She teaches holistic business owners and healing arts practitioners how to promote their businesses. Through her Mindful Marketing program, Jenn teaches marketing techniques that help you connect with the people who need you, but don’t make you feel overbearing or aggressive. If you wish you were more courageous about marketing, check out her web site:

Create A Thriving Business

http://www.CreateAThrivingBusiness.com

Note: This guest-post is by Eileen Williams, the owner of “The Feisty Side of Fifty.” It’s part of my Introductions series while I’m touring. Enjoy! And be sure to visit Eileen at her blog.

Many women over fifty complain they become more forgetful. In fact, some have affectionately dubbed this phenomenon “mental-pause,” and there are real physiological reasons behind it. There are estrogen receptors throughout your brain, including the hippocampus, and this is the part involved in certain aspects of memory. So, when estrogen levels drop, your brain and your ability for recall are affected.

In fact, I know this to be true in my own life. Things seem to be slipping through the cracks, and every day brings fresh surprises and more than a few awkward moments. I have to confess to frequently drifting off into my personal, inner space—not certain where that is, but I can assure you it’s well endowed with black holes.

So, are we older gals forever doomed to sending out those embarrassing “I forgot your birthday” cards? Will we never again recall with ease telephone numbers, significant dates, or names of those near to us? Will endless searches for our glasses, important papers, or that great book we were reading be our final destiny? Not so fast—there’s some good news too!

In her book about women’s second adulthood, Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, Suzanne Braun Levine provides us with some exiting data concerning the aging brain. Dr. Francine Benes, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has discovered that there is a growth spurt that takes place in the human brain around the age of fifty. Myelin, which is the fatty layer that covers nerve fibers, actually grows about fifty percent during this time. This coating is responsible for aiding the brain to more effectively synthesize life experiences and to enhance the ability to make thoughtful judgments and prudent decisions.

Even better, the location of this growth spurt is found within the area of the cerebral cortex that is identified with emotional learning. Perhaps, as Levine suggests, this myelin growth factor may likely play a part in creating the highly revered trait that we call wisdom.

So, next time we hunt for our car keys, call our son by the dog’s name, or forget to tell our husband his boss phoned, we have to remember that somewhere in our noggin there’s a whole heap of wisdom going on!

Eileen Williams

The Feisty Side of Fifty

This is a guest post from Gina Gwozdz, CPA.

If you earn income from your website, your blog and/or your writing and you are not in collaboration with others, then for tax purposes, unless you incorporated you are a sole proprietors. The taxes for website owners, bloggers and writers, in this situation, is the same.

• If your website, blog and/or writing is a sideline business, you must have a profit motive in order to take advantage of the sole proprietor deductions. If these activities are writing for any other purpose then your activity is considered a hobby and the rules in this article do not pertain to you (but your income must still be reported).
• If this activity is not a hobby, then your income and expenses belong on Schedule C, “Profit or Loss from Business”. Many writers still make the mistake of recording their royalties on Schedule E, “Rents and Royalties”. The royalties the IRS is looking for on Schedule E include oil & gas royalties and royalties from an estate, not book royalties.
• All income you receive from your activity is considered gross income (includable on Sch. C). This would include advertising revenue, affiliate revenue, first NASR, royalties and royalty advances.
• All “ordinary and necessary” business expenses that you incur while trying to earn a profit from your activity are deductible. Examples of these expenses include office and computer supplies, research expenses, subscriptions, business use of telephone, internet, car, advertising and potentially your home office. In general, an expense is considered “ordinary” if other profitable entrepreneurs incur the same expense. An expense is considered “necessary” if it is necessary to make a profit.
• In addition to business expenses you are also required to capitalize any item that you are able to use for more than one year (desk, computer, printer, etc.). Most of these items you will be able to depreciate in the year of purchase through Section 179 expense, but there are exceptions and limitations.
• As a profitable business you are eligible to set up many tax savings plans, such as retirement plans and medical expense plans.
• Website owners, bloggers and writers who are in the business of writing to make a profit will owe self-employment taxes, in addition to Federal (and possibly state) taxes on their net income as computed on Schedule C.
• When you are a successful sole proprietor and have a net income on Schedule C, you may be responsible for remitting quarterly estimated tax payments. If you fail to make these payments you may have to pay a penalty when you file your tax return.
• If you sell to other countries and collect foreign royalties the foreign country may send you a request for certification that you file a U.S. tax return. If the IRS certifies that you file a U.S. tax return and we have a treaty with that country, they won’t withhold as much foreign tax from their payments to you.

Gina L. Gwozdz is a CPA who specializes in minimizing taxes by helping to educate taxpayer. Visit her blog for more Tax Tips articles (http://GLGcpa.com/blog)

(Note: This is a guest post by Lisa Hunter, as part of my introductions series. Enjoy!)

What if “balance” and “slowing down” aren’t the answers to our overwhelmed lives?

You’re having one of those days. You know, the days where you feel like you’re running on a habitrail of endless to-do’s and not enough time to do them.

Your friends and loved ones keep saying, “You need to slow down. You need to create more balance in your life.” And you agree.

Problem is, you’ve tried countless times and it just doesn’t happen. You keep thinking things like…

“If only I could just get myself to slow down”
“If only I could follow through with being more balanced”

But for some of us, it’s not that simple…

Back when I was a performing singer-songwriter in the 90’s, I was driven with an unstoppable urge to get my music and message out into the world. I had endless energy for it and I was willing to pour that energy full-force into my career. At a certain point, though, I began to burn out. I reached for self-help book after self-help book, only to find them all telling me I needed to balance or slow down.

Among many other things, I tried meditating, deep breathing, yoga, time management, setting boundaries and “being” rather than “doing”. But those approaches never seemed to stick. I’d either do them and then go right back to driven-and-impassioned mode, or I’d forget to do them altogether and then feel like I failed.

If balance and slowing down are so important, why do we keep failing miserably at them?

My belief is that we’re not failing at all. We’re just being our selves. And some of us are high-octane people. Full of ideas, full of drive, full of passion and full of the will to follow through with it. Telling a high-octane person to “slow down” would be like telling a race car going 120 mph to suddenly go 20. The shift would be abrupt. And not very natural. It’s the same for those of us who “fail” at slowing down.

We ultimately would like smooth lives where we’re not crazily running around or working all the time. Most of us ultimately would like to slow down. But trying to slow down is not the way to get there.

I teach whole classes on alternatives to slowing down for busy, stressed-out and passionately-driven entrepreneurs who feel like they’re failing at having balanced lives. So I could go on and on. But let’s get a conversation started instead:

What snags have you encountered with trying to slow down?

And what would be your creative way to get to a place of “slow down” without having to initially slow down?
That second question might first hit as a bit of a brain teaser. But let’s see what we can come up with…

Lisa Hunter

Continue the conversation with Lisa Hunter on her website, Extraordinary Women Thrive.

(Note: This is a guest post by Jennifer Smith, Owner of Eco-Office Gals, part of my Introductions series while I am away. Enjoy!)

Green, Paperless, Eco-this and that, you can’t get away from the green effort these days. NOT growing green in your small business seems so much easier. After all, you’re just a small business, how much damage can you really do?

Regardless of businesses size or type, one fact remains static – the Earth isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but continuing to trash it will make it a hostile environment for every person and every business, no matter how big or small.

This is the realization that came to me as I started Eco-Office Gals. I spent ten years working as a real world administrative assistant not thinking twice about printing, shredding, filing & storing massive amounts of paper. Driving 35 miles each way to an office was an inconvenience to me and my wallet, environment was never a factor. Grabbing my turtle mocha cappuccino and Chinese take out from one of my many choices on Main Street was commonplace. It took reading, learning and willingness to become aware of the impact I had made and what needed to change. I also learned that taking steps, not leaps, was the only way I could make a difference.

Today is a good day for Eco-Office Gals if I didn’t turn my printer on, if I drank my coffee out of the same cup all day and ate last night’s dinner for lunch. Today is a great day for business if it succeeded in making another small business paperless, helped someone start an online business, or shared what I learned about making a smaller impact to anyone that is willing to listen, learn and encourage.

Eco-Office Gals strives to have a great day for business everyday. My mission is to share my green steps, useful information and resources that I find and provide a site where other small businesses can start taking their first green steps and in turn encourage others to do the same.

Eco-Office Gals – Small Businesses Growing Green One Step At A Time!