Above the World
More amazing aerial photography at Smashing Magazine: The World From Above: The Beauty Of Aerial Photography | Smashing Magazine.
Archive for 'Ideation'
Gift Card Giver
What a great idea. From their Facebook group:
THE STORY
Four friends had an idea to collect gift cards and give them to people in need. They went to a gathering and asked 8 people how much money they had in their wallets of unused Gift Cards and walked away with $50 in Gift Cards to help people in need. GiftCardGiver.com was born.
CARD ME
STEP 1: Use as much of your card as you want.
STEP 2: Write how much is left on your card using a permanent marker.
STEP 3: place the card in an envelope and send it to us at:
Gift Card Giver
490 East Side Ave SE
Atlanta, GA 30316
We collect and distribute the cards to appropriate Non-Profit Organizations that can use those cards to help others. We have never used a card for ourselves and never will. Thanks for contributing.
GIFT CARD INDUSTRY
The Gift Card industry has risen to be a 60 billion dollar industry. Ever wonder how many gift cards are unused? Atleast 10%. That means billions of dollars are waiting to be used on Gift Cards.
How many gift cards do you have sitting in your wallet? We guess you have at least $5 of unused gift cards in your wallet or purse right now. What’s 5 bucks going to buy you?
GIVE YOUR GIFT CARD
Five bucks in Gift Cards will buy you a pair of socks…but 10 people giving 5 bucks will buy a kid a winter coat or 100 people giving $5 from Home Depot will give that same kid a warm bedroom to sleep through the night.
Peering over the wall
Data Portability: It’s The New Walled Garden
If you haven't read this post from Michael Arrington (about the current argument between Google and Facebook), take a second or two to do so. I'll wait.
Although I rarely agree with Arrington, I think he has a very strong point here. When it comes to my profile data on any/all of the social networking sites out there (or any commerce site for that matter), it is just that - my data. Why is it mine? Because ultimately, I am the only one who is accountable to any of the claims that data makes about me - history, friends, likes/dislikes, etc. If I'm accountable for it (read: socially responsible for the accuracy of any claim made...like my reputation), I should indeed own it.
I think bigger issue though, is less about data ownership and more (as Robert Scoble points out) about privacy - do we have any online? Most likely, the answer here will be no...and I really hate to say that too.
But this shouldn't be a surprise, should it?
Getting ready for TED2008
Kinda snuck up on me, but starts on Wednesday. What am I looking forward to this year? This year's theme is a big one, because it asks all of the big questions of humanity: Who are we? What is our place in the universe? What is life? Is beauty truth? Will evil prevail? How can we change the world? How do we create? What's out there? What will tomorrow bring? What stirs us? How dare we be optimistic? And the point?
Specifically, this year I am most looking forward to hearing:
- Doris Kearns Goodwin: Historian, writer
- Karen Armstrong: Religious Scholar
- Yves Behar: Designer
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Scholar of Randomness
- Brian Cox: Physicist
- Helen Fisher: Anthropologist
But of course, what is most wonderful about TED are the surprises: the passing conversations, the people in the audience who are as compelling as the speakers and, of course, the run-ins with the big names.
Like last year, I will be blogging from TED. Some of it will be as the conference unfurls, some will occur in the late or early hours...and some (I'm sure) will come as sudden a-ha's days afterwards. Last year I tried this experiment of doing single sentence posts for each speaker which included some fundamental links about them. Not sure I'll do that again, but we'll see where the spirits move me.
Oh...and by the way...there is a really great write up on TED at Portfolio.com, including a history, bio of this year's TED Prize recipients and a bit of a conference preview.
indexed
From what I can tell, Jessica Hagy's blog, indexed, has been around since August of 2006. Go figure how I haven't run across it until now. But thanks to ChangeThis I was introduced to her new manifesto, "Indexing a Career." Think of Hagy as a less caustic version of Hugh MacLeod (the guy who draws cartoon on the back of business cards). Her index cards are witty, elegant in their simplicity and cut true.
You can find more of Jessica's cards at Plenty, GOOD, BBC Magazine Online, Current (soon) and her book through Amazon.
Oh, and by the way, the card above is titled "Entrepreneurship."
ChangeThis
Do you know what ChangeThis is? I've written or referred to it a handful of times before, but I thought I would dedicate some more space to promoting it. ChangeThis is a website (and organization) started in 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu and Michelle Sriwongtong. What do they do? They publish PDFs of well articulated ideas or arguments in the hope that those ideas will spread. In their own words:
ChangeThis doesn't publish e-books or manuscripts or manuals. Instead, we facilitate the spread of thoughtful arguments…arguments we call manifestos. A manifesto is a five-, ten- or twenty-page PDF that makes a case. It outlines in careful, thoughtful language why you might want to think about an issue differently.
If we strike a chord, the manifesto will spread. You can email the manifesto to anyone you like, you can even post it on your website or print it out. A great manifesto says something you've wanted to say for a while, but does it eloquently and simply and saves you the trouble of writing it yourself.
It should be noted that these manifestos are published for FREE and are promoted with a "read it and pass it on" philosophy. To date, ChangeThis has published almost 240 manifestos ranging in topics from technology, culture and politics. It has also worked with a wide range of authors, including Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Hugh MacLeod, and Chris Anderson.
If you haven't read any of these manifestos, start with The Hughtrain (one of my favorites) and go from there. Then subscribe to their newsletter feed so you can keep up on the latest ones.
By the way, thanks for the folks at 800-CEO-READ to supporting this cause and keeping it free.
Know thy gut
Sometimes I get confused between when my gut is telling me to do something (or make a particular decision) and when it is my head. Case in point: Tuesday evening I was asked to speak at a local entrepreneur group near my home town. Weeks ago, and in preparation, I purchased the book Presentation Zen. Even though it just came out, this book had been on my "gotta read it" list for some time. In it, Garr Reynolds gives some basic, no nonsense advise about preparing for presentations. Things like:
- Be concise
- Be enthusiastic when you speak
- And know the answer to this: What is my absolutely central point?
Not rocket science by any means, but certainly stuff it's healthy to be reminded of. The entire book is filled with insights like this, but more so it provides a really great method for thinking about speaking and preparing presentations (so go out and buy this book now!).
Somewhere in the text, or between the lines, Reynolds creates the impression that a great presentation is half method/preparation and half the not-so-simple task of knowing your self. I think he specifically talks about unleashing the creativity we all have, but I equate this to knowing thy self - knowing your abilities and bounds free you to think creatively within those limits.
With that in mind, I certainly didn't listen to my gut nor did I leverage my personal strengths to their fullest extent for this presentation. What was my gut saying? It was telling me to go in with the single slide above. No multi-slide presentation, just a simple one that would leave me with the ability to speak about my passions and riff on a subject. This is what I do best (I think): listen to my audience and tailor my conversation directly to them. No detailed outline and step-by-step dialog to get in the way.
But no...my head told me that I needed more slides by way of introduction of me and Spout to my audience. As a result, I talked more about the details of Spout, had problems following my slide progression and talked less about what I really wanted to discuss. This doesn't mean the presentation wasn't a success. But it certainly wasn't as good as I could have made it. Next time, I'll listen to myself AND my gut.
Anyone need a speaker?
