The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Blogosphere, my joint venture with Troy Worman, is completing 3 months of living in the blogosphere. I keep track of what I have posted out there along with who I have not yet posted and decided to see what we had done thus far.
With a little data available, the quick analysis produced this chart showing the split amongst the male/female/group blogs. Or is it a funky smiley face?
What do you think Troy?
Enjoy!
... Marketing is explained in business school text books about meeting needs and wants. In "Marketing for Dummies" it states that we need to think of creative ways to rethink the underlying needs that a product addresses. Have most products on shelf been reduced to this level and as "SEX" is the underlying need it is used to sell the most amazing range of products.
This made me wonder if in a Connection Economy, where it will matter more about who you are than what you sell, this will change at all?
I pay attention to balance because I think it is key. I think people's character is revealed how they handle struggle, not if they are perfect because there is no perfect. When people sort out difficulties you see their priorities revealed, you see who they are. I know you can not like parts of a person but like the person. I know people can have disagreements and still respect each other. I think we can and have to find balance in every situation, especially difficult ones.
What makes ZabaSearch great is that, at no cost, it quickly and comprehensively places a remarkable amount of data about people right at your fingertips.
What makes ZabaSearch frightening is that, at no cost, it quickly and comprehensively places a remarkable amount of data about people right at your fingertips.
The most interesting conclusion here is one that many modern parents may find disturbing: Parenting technique is highly overrated. When it comes to early test scores, it's not so much what you do as a parent, it's who you are.
It is obvious that children of successful, well-educated parents have a built-in advantage over the children of struggling, poorly educated parents. Call it a privilege gap. The child of a young, single mother with limited education and income will typically test about 25 percentile points lower than the child of two married, high-earning parents.
So it isn't that parents don't matter. Clearly, they matter an awful lot. It's just that by the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, how hard he worked to build a career, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.
The privilege gap is far more real than the fear that haunts so many modern parents — that their children will fail miserably without regular helpings of culture cramming and competitive parenting. So, yes, parents are entitled to congratulate themselves this month over their children's acceptance letters. But they should also stop kidding themselves: The Mozart tapes had nothing to do with it.
... Develop a sincere interest in the other. That becomes easier if we develop that old-fashioned virtue patience.
With just a little patience, we will take the time to find out about the other...
Two, morph emotionally from your goal or agenda to theirs. When we focus on their problem/wants/needs, not our own (such as needing this sale to pay the mortgage) we open that person to us. Paradoxical? Yes, that's the mystery of self-forgetting. As Saint Francis put it, "It is in giving that we receive"...
"The thing about juggling," says Magid, "is it's the most honest theater. It's all out front; there are no wires, no mirrors. And juggling is dropping. It's defined by its failure. And we're OK with that. If there wasn't that tension, it wouldn't exist. To try to have the perfect thing is part of the problem in the world. There is no perfection; there never was. And that's the perfection."
"A sense of place is woven into the being of an elder in ways that adults have a hard time understanding."
As we get older, things go wrong with our bodies, they wear out and we are discouraged from talking about them. Younger people, in the bloom of youth and adulthood, readily hold out their casts for signing or relate the details of a hospital stay, but we older folks keep our ills to ourselves for fear of appearing frail and useless.
Even I, having spent more than a year here at Time Goes By encouraging acceptance of old people as we are and not as society wants us to be, succumbed this week. Last Saturday morning, getting out of bed produced searing pain in my lower back. It subsided to an almost tolerable thrum when I laid down or when I stood. I could walk – sort of – but sitting was excruciatingly painful. Only today am I back to normal.
Until writing that paragraph, however, I acknowledged it to no one. Friends called with the usual greeting, how are you? and I said, “fine.” When one asked about meeting for dinner, I said I had other plans. Undoubtedly, a neighbor who phoned would have picked up some things I needed at the grocery store saving me a painful, slow walk, but no-o-o.
I was too proud to ask, too indoctrinated by the culture into maintainng the pretense of youthfulness to admit an age-related ailment.
Corporate marketing, the corporate citizen, the corporate blog...Imagine a company in Alabama in the 1950s and the dilemma it faced around civil rights for blacks. Would we today laud that company for upholding its shareholder value and staying "neutral" on laws of discrimination that prevented blacks from working at a company, let alone being served as a customer? I think not, though history is a harsh judge.
Not every company should be expected to engage in social reform, of course. But any firm, most especially one as wealthy as Microsoft, is an influential player in civil society. When it takes the higher ground, it elevates the potential for every member of the community.
The posting and article are certainly attracting a lot of passionate
comments.
Initially, having read the whole on a first pass, I'll side
with Chris Costello's summary. And then sleep on it.
Sometimes, the best thinking comes with the new light of day.
"In an economy where style is king, we all need to start thinking and acting more like design."Taking a wholistic approach, I agree that design needs to be recognized more and more as truly important to the product or service being offered.
The upshot, says Martin, is nothing less than the emergence of the design economy -- the successor to the information economy, and, before it, the service and manufacturing economies. And that shift, he argues, has profound implications for every business leader and manager among us: "Businesspeople don't just need to understand designers better -- they need to become designers."McDonald's made price, service, quality and value a commodity. The next "McDonald's" will be successful when they can deliver the same PSQV with a better design.
Reminds me of the Google Futuristic View.I have a feeling that the web will gradually shift from being something that needs to be archived (and the Internet Archive is the vanguard here), to being self-archived—think the kind of versioning control found on wikis. I have the feeling that the future time traveler will be turning to archives of the web to find out what was in the New York Times by looking on the Web.
"I've learned that if I could not be authentic and in integrity (more in the sense of being whole, and reclaiming the disowned fragments of your soul) in business, then that says more about me than it does about the big bad Corporate World.Two current news items reveal individuals who have failed this test.
Personal authenticity is not situational.
Here is one of my tests that applies in business settings: If I would say or do anything differently whether I have $14 or $140,000 (liquid, not 401K or real estate holdings) or $1.4M in the bank account - then it's not authentic. "
