Iterative Improvement: Part II

Tai Chi Chuan by Ponto de Cultura Vila Bruaque

To my classmates:

The past week has seen rapid movement among students to encourage BGI to integrate SW4SX into the MBA curriculum.  A number of creative and passionate voices are already contributing to this effort, making me feel that this endeavor is in very good hands.

So, I'd like to offer another perspective:

Its not the content; its the pedagogy.

Like many of you, I've spent a fair amount of time and effort developing my skills at facilitating and leading meetings in all types of venues.  We all know that an online meeting or even a conference phone call can be an unproductive and confusing experience when not led with techniques that involve and engage the group.  

Upon entering BGI, I was impressed that instructors would spend so much of their teaching time online, since I believe business will demand more and more online communication skills from all of us.  I was then surprised to find few good examples set by my instructors online.  Instead, I've been disappointed that so many of our instructors struggle to teach in the online environment, and worse, I did not see an active endeavor on the part of BGI to help instructors learn and share better techniques.

This impression changed the first time I attended an online class taught by Christopher Allen.  Here was a teacher who had not only thought a great deal about the engagement his students experienced in his online classroom, but he actively experimented with new techniques of making the online classroom more dynamic and experiential.  This is such an important part of the SW4SX experience that it is difficult for me to critique the course and its content without recognizing the success of Christopher's teaching methods.  He provided an excellent example of online teaching, facilitation, and community-building.

A new kind of mentor for a new age of teaching

Like others, I do believe that SW4SX belongs as core curriculum at BGI, either in its current form or integrated throughout other courses such as Marketing, Social Justice, and Leadership & Personal Development.

Still, while working with classmates to communicate this idea, I realized that I don't think the SW4SX class can be easily transferred to another instructor.  Its not that Christopher is an instructor without peers at BGI - we are blessed with many inspired and talented teachers.  Instead, I believe the challenge will be in transferring the unique pedagogy that Christopher practices.

In this light, Christopher's greatest value to BGI may be as a mentor to other instructors.  The experience of participating in Christopher's online classes is an experiential lesson for every student.  Experiencing and studying the pedagogy of SW4SX would be instructive and inspiring to BGI's faculty as well.  

Its not the media; its the messaging.  

Christopher is introducing BGI students to a new pedagogy for a new era of communication, practices that we will now emulate not only in online classrooms, but throughout our increasingly-online lives and careers.

Using the techniques and teaching methods of Using the Social Web for Social Change could help lead a social change and pedagogical change for the better at BGI.  I hope to see it happen.

Iterative Improvement - Part I

Colorful To A Point, by RedDogFever

I came to the class SW4SX to catch up with 'current' and 'next generation' online tools.  While I received this overview, I received something I didn't expect - the benefit of being part of truly successful 'next generation' educational experience.

Online learning was facilitated more successfully than I've seen any instructor accomplish at BGI or elsewhere, and Christopher did this with humility and a sense of group experimentation and engagement.   Beyond learning how to use the social web to inspire social change, I also learned that we need a new learning pedagogy for a new era of communication, one that we practice not only in an online classroom, but throughout our increasingly-online lives and careers.

The value I gained from this class was not so much about media as message, techniques, and pedagogy.

Successes of SW4SX

The combination class (Hunter Lovins' Topics in Sustainability and Christopher Allen's SW4SX) facilitated during our final intensive was a wonderful experience.  The consulting exercise we engaged in was a great way to put new learning to work. As a SW4SX consultant, I  was able to see the other class' projects in a new light: they were notable for their use of systems thinking and inspiring presentation, yet also notable for their focus on describing complex problems while struggling to present solutions.  I was also able to realize the power of implementing the techniques we've practiced this quarter, as our 'scan, focus, act' methodology produced a wealth of inspiring actions in a very short time.  I was very proud of my classmates and the creative consulting skills demonstrated by so many.

Challenges for Improvement

Simplifying the plethora of to-dos.

Techniques for sharing many small bits of information, links, tasks, and feedback present challenges whether online or off.  In this course, those challenges were considerable, and I think that even our web-savvy TAs and instructor have yet to solve these while using the Moodle platform, BGI's Channel, and Google Docs.  I believe the solution will be found by unleashing the assignments and checklists from Moodle, and presenting and tracking them through some other tool that hopefully will help students and TAs manage these many many small assignments without losing their minds.

Integration.

Not unique to this course, but still a common problem I find in today's online experience is the discontinuity experienced when moving between different tools and sites.  Social media and the entire online experience needs better integration to become more usable.  Google plus and the Google services model presents an opportunity to experience better integration, yet I feel that putting too much control of social media in the hands of one company is a disconcerting idea.  I am hoping can we retain the 'New Frontier' quality of today's social web, retain the spirit of entrepreneurship and sense of a level playing field, while also developing tools that help users integrate and simplify their experience.  This, for me, is a new frontier to explore.

Lessons in Social Change and the Social Web

I've had many lessons over the past few months studying social change and the social web with Christopher Allen.  Here are a few lessons I'm taking with me...

a personal lesson:

The first challenge in communicating online or between diverse communities is to

establish your identity and establish your voice.  Personal branding is key to establishing your identity.  Brand yourself with your larger motivations; brand yourself as large as you want to grow.

a business lesson:

Your client understands their problems and their message; bring them your technique.  See past the complexity of their problems to see one gap you can fill.  See the behavior that allows the gap to persist.  Trigger one desired behavior, influence one group, begin one chain of events.

‘The Fall’ by fdecomite http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/       

Some Rights Reserved – Creative Commons 

Focus.  Scan.  Act.

Let go of perfectionism, and trust others to provide the feedback you need.

Fail fast; iterate often. 

And, remember that nothing engages people more successfully than fun.

The Necessary Evolution of Occupy Wall Street

'Sleeping Dragon at Stirling Bridge' by pettifoggist

As Occupy encampments have been dismantled in a number of cities recently, an interesting discussion has ensued concerning how the Occupy Movement might morph into new forms in order to survive.

Not surprisingly, that Old Gray Lady, The New York Times, spent a column wringing her hands and wondering whether Occupy Wall Street could "make news" without a public encampment for the NYT to photograph and publicize.

Funny that as the NYT struggles to adapt their antiquated news model to the new world of online communication, they still cannot manage to see past their own nose for news.  NYT is, of course, covering Occupy because it IS news;  Occupy is not waiting to be blessed and publicized.

I've noticed many parallel stories lately in national politics.  Take, for instance, the traditional reporters scratching their heads over the rise of Newt Gingrich and the popularity struggles of Mitt Romney - the candidate who is performing perfectly according to the standards of traditional political media.  Gingrich was given up for dead by the mainstream press months ago when he fired his entire campaign staff.  Since then, his popularity has grown and his campaign re-emerged on his own terms as he ignored conventional wisdom and made his own news.

How could this happen?  In Gingrich's own words: "We were surrounded by a bunch of guys who had learned politics 25 years ago and they had no idea how the world had changed."

Occupy is no longer an encampment and traditional protest.  It is a movement that makes news by exposing news that traditional media is too compromised to recognize.  Those who are part of the 1% may not be willing to admit who they are, and the NYT is likely blind to their compromised position as a guardian of that 1%.

Perhaps its time to dramatically expand the concept of the flash mob.  After all, pitching a tent on the public square is not nearly as newsworthy as shutting down the Port of Oakland in order to make a statement to the world.

I'm reminded of the success that Michael Moore had with his one-person flash mob in documentaries like Roger and Me and TV Nation.  Back in 1989, Moore didn't have Twitter or YouTube.  It didn't matter.  He turned on his cameras, walked into the offices of the 1%, recorded the news, and made some news of his own.  The most entrepreneurial Occupy protestors are beginning to do the same.  The advantages the movement has are obvious - today we all own the means of spreading our news like wildfire.  

The NYT can go on thinking that Occupy isn't news unless its covered by NYT.  They can try to ignore the news that Occupy is making.  But these mainstream media types trying to get a grasp on how to report about Occupy may be missing an important part of the story: what qualifies as 'news' is not their call to make any longer; they are holding a dragon by the tail.
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Birthing a Social Change Project

The initial idea was simple and profound: build an online application that would allow the user to easily start an online petition campaign and recruit the friends to join.  "Do One Thing" became the working title. 

Beyond this, we wanted to incorporate a number of social web techniques and principles of influencing social chance that we had explored in Christopher Allen's class on Using the Social Web for Social Change.

Soon, with a team assembled and creative sessions begun, the idea began to grow.  What if we could use the social web to spread any simple request for positive change among larger social circles of friends?  What if we could inspire even inactive and apathetic people to stand up and announce their first attempt at encouraging others to do the right thing?  What if we could design a platform from which anyone could successfully launch social change campaigns, and grow them?

As the idea grew, a new name emerged.  Do One Thing was no doubt central to our project, but the potential for influence was growing in our minds.  If doing one thing to start a campaign is a stone thrown into the pond, then its the ripples spreading across the pond that are the waves of influence we want to create with each new campaign.

And so we birthed the RipplCampaign.

The storyboard is a creative tool as old as, well, perhaps as old as paper and pencil.  Good old paper - pencil - crayon - magic marker storyboarding is a technique that doesn't need much improvement with newer technology.  Likewise, sitting down together to share ideas and draw-up a storyboard can produce a group experience that is hard to match by any online tool.  The process is dynamic, interactive, and tactile.

Our team sat down a week ago in a Tacoma cafe, armed with paper and pencil and a slew of ideas. By the time finished our coffee, we had produced a storyboard that incorporated our philosophy, our users, their motivations, our triggers, and our tools.

The storyboard proved to be a great launching pad for the next phases of our project.  Going online at our next meeting, we presented the storyboard using PowerPoint and Blackboard Collaborate.  From here, Dave Ventresca rebuilt the storyboard in PREZI.  Our next step is to produce a video for our second iteration product.

Meanwhile, Dave is coding the Facebook Application. But even without the application in hand, the storyboard allows us to illustrate and consider user behavior, as well as the potential outcomes of using our product.

Key to our social change methodology:

• Help our users overcome their feeling of apathy and sense of inability.
• Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people.
• Allow one small action to spread and influence others.
• Leverage the social network expanding tools in Facebook.
• Track and measure activity, and use these measures to create compelling illustrations of success.
• Remind users of their influence, encourage them to recruit others to their cause, and encourage them to take action again.

We have found a number of organizations that share some of our ideas and methods, but none who have used Facebook quite the way we envision using it.  

Yet another tool is becoming more powerful than I had imagined.  Put to use to help others overcome apathy and become change agents on the social web, Facebook is staring to look like a great platform for positive social change.

UPDATE:
The current products of Team Rippl and the RipplCampaign Project are posted here:
http://makingarippl.blogspot.com/

More Relationships: Weaker Relationships?

(photo by Keoni Cabral)

In her YouTube video "‪Ease Of Losing Community Trust‬",  Nancy White says

"I think when we have relationships based on content its easier to ignore them… the relationship is around an issue, its not an enduring bond.  The relationship comes and goes very freely.  There are times when we that's what we need, and times in our lives when we also need a persistent conversation that keeps going even when its rough…. And I wonder about that balance in this world: Are we going to deepen relationships in the network as we figure out how to do that?"

The video was recorded in 2009.  If I could have a conversation with Ms White today, I would ask her what she's learned about encouraging more persistent relationships and conversations in the online network.

Its become conventional wisdom that online communication produces a life filled with more shallow relationships than in the pre-internet world.  So much so that a Pew Center survey in 2010 seemed quite impressed with its result that as many as 85% of people surveyed agreed with the statement "In 2020, when I look at the big picture and consider my personal friendships, marriage and other relationships, I see that the internet has mostly been a positive force on my social world. And this will only grow more true in the future."

And yet, googling the words "online relationship" or "deeper online relationships", or even "deepening relationships online" each yield results almost entirely devoted to attracting new dating partners or business customers, rather than actually deepening existing relationships.

Fortunately a few greater minds have broached the topic in their blogs.

Gideon Rosenblatt, former Executive Director of ONE/Northwest and expert in CRM tools, offers insight to relationship building in business in his blog Alchemy of Change, saying

"[How] do we integrate the strategies for cultivating lots of weak ties with our strategies for deepening relationships?  When it comes to social change, the problem with online social networking tools has less to do with the tools themselves – and more to do with how organizations fail to connect their social network organizing with their efforts to deepen their relationships with people… deep relationships don’t just appear magically out of thin air. They need to be cultivated over time with thoughtful and deliberate organizational effort and they need to be fed by influxes of new people, which is precisely where online social networks like Twitter and Facebook can play an important role."

And yet, it is those social networks - in their current state - that are adding to our angst.  Christopher Allen, in his Blog A Life With Alacrity, helps define the problem of having too many relationships to manage, saying "social networks can become too large, and many social networking services are causing the problem rather than solving it."  He goes on to suggest that perhaps a "cultural strategy for managing excessive relationships is prioritization. I could prioritize my relationships and focus only on the 100+ or so that might be the most useful to me."  And yet he admits this is not a satisfying solution since this would risk "offending people forever by excluding them today."

I've seen little evidence of social networking tools being designed or used to help cure the problem of weakening relationships.  I hope that this points to the immature state of these as communication tools, rather than a tragic flaw in the technology or a lack of desire for meaningful relationships in today's culture.  I'm inclined to believe that human intention and focus, rather than technical solutions, are what must be better employed by us all to solve this problem.

As for our current state of affairs, I'm inclined to agree with blogger Mark Schaefer:

"The days of conducting business based on these deep relationships is largely over I think — relationships that were built on a golf course, a boat, long dinner conversations — not text messages, online help functions, and customer service tweets. 

Ten years ago, if you had a business crisis, you could probably count on those deep relationships to help pull you through, at least to a certain extent. Today, and especially after the recession, people just don’t have time for relationship-building.  I can’t imagine inviting a customer to a weekend of golfing any more.  Everybody is doing what used to be three jobs. Who has the time for building business friendships? 

Maybe there will be backlash and a re-focusing on deep relationships at some point. 

 There was recently a story about tech start-ups scrambling for office space near Twitter because of the live networking opportunities.  Kind of ironic.  Seeking deeper offline relationships with people dedicated to spreading low-impact online relationships."

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A Video

Rethinking my personal brand caused me to revisit a recurring theme in my life: difficult problems and the opportunities I might not have found without them.

Social Change and the Fun Theory

The article How Psychology Can Help the Planet Stay Cool in New Scientist August 2009 points out that the failure of pessimism to change human behavior has been well recognized.  Environmental groups have already learned some obvious lessons: no one likes to be hectored, and preachiness is not a winning tactic. Positive campaigns like "We can solve the climate crisis", run by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, are a better idea. 

"As social animals, we like to interact with others and take inspiration from their actions. Psychologists are working out how to exploit this to spread behaviors that will help limit climate change. 'My sense is that social networks are going to be important, says Swim."

So what do we do now?  I went in search of web sites and projects seeking to overcome pessimism and embrace optimism, fun and silliness in their efforts to change people's behavior.  

One climate change org that clearly gets the message right is 350.org.  350.org creates unique campaigns and public events that inspire: 

The most amazing thing about this October 2009 event is that it was hundreds of small separate events that were all seen as a "global event" only because they were leveraged spectacularly well through social media.  350.org also maintains strong social media tactics on their website, encouraging members and site visitors to create and share photos showing themselves valuing climate change solutions.

The EcoTipping Points Project (tag line: "models of success in a time of crisis") is dedicated to making the stories of success known.  I found their 100 stories of success very inspiring.  Now we need 100 stories of climate change success.

"Inspiring" is good, and "inspiring" is needed.  But back to silliness…

Halloween: It’s getting scarier by the Climate Reality Project offered this Halloween message on climate change:

1. Climate change is projected to shrink the world’s chocolate supply.

2. Extreme weather, caused by climate change, is bad for halloween pumpkin crops. 

3. There’s reason to believe climate change will ruin the colors of your fall foliage.

Okay, that made me smile.  Plus, all these cute headlines were backed up by data.  I like data, that makes me smile too.

For something sillier, how about some singing climate scientists?

Now that's silly, and silliness is good, right?  Of course, changing people's behavior is what we really need to do.

I think we can learn something from this project funded by Volkwagen.  They call it The Fun Theory!  Enjoy

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Can we change people's behavior through fun?  Let's try.

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Pessimism Has Failed Us

"People have to be persuaded to act on climate change even though the benefit won't be felt for decades", says the opinion piece Positive Thinking for a Cooler World from New Scientist.

"It's hard to find any positive messages: a vegan who doesn't own a car, never flies, takes public transport to work and shares a tiny apartment in a US city would still be told that their lifestyle requires 3.3 Earths. It is hard to see what this is going to achieve, other than disillusioning people who are already doing their bit and telling everyone else that it isn't worth the bother."

Often, negative messages don't work to inspire people to change their behavior.    Intuitively, this has always made since to me.  I went in search of more evidence.  I found this UC Berkeley study.

"Doomsday climate change messages may make the public more skeptical about climate change," says this report published by scientists working at the University of California, Berkeley.  "Far from urging people to take action, such bleak and emotionally-charged warnings over the potential consequences of global warming may have the opposite effect, prompting not only ongoing lethargy but also denial."

"Fear-based appeals, especially when not coupled with a clear solution, can backfire and undermine the intended effects of a message," the report warns.

Study participants were asked to read two distinct versions of a single news article about global warming, each presenting the same factual data on climate change.  One presentation concluding with a positive message highlighting the potential solutions to the problem of global whamming, while the other concluded with a 'doomsday scenario'. 

Notably, those participants who read the more-upbeat version of the story tended to express a greater level of optimism in science's ability to tackle the threat of climate change.

At the same time, those participants who were presented with the pessimistic version of the news story were found to be more skeptical about the threat of global warming - they did not simply respond with a more pessimistic view of the problem, they expressed skepticism that the problem exists!

Pessimism doesn't work; it does not inspire us to action.  NGOs I've worked with have known this for some time.  After all, they read Psychology Today while waiting at the dentists office, just like you and I do.  Still, how to approach thorny nasty problems without being pessimistic eludes most of us, even those of us in the world-changing profession.

Clearly, if pessimism has failed us, what we need is a dose of optimism, fun, and cheer.

Or, as my wife says: "when all else fails, be silly."

I will now go in search of silly approaches to the climate change problem.  I'll report back once I'm laughing hard enough.

Who am I blogging for?

Hal Finney warns us to consider our audience broadly while blogging, because our online content may be more persistent in the future than we imagine.

"These words may be read by some hundreds of people today.  But they will go into the archives and be available for decades.  If only a few people per year read them, then even without great changes, by a hundred years from now the future readers will have outnumbered the present ones."

I'm inclined to take this advice with a grain of salt.  (To use a very old euphemism - one that would probably be too outdated and too culturally-bound for Finney's tastes.)

Not every piece of communication should be prepared for eternal consumption.  Just as there is a place in this word for spontaneous speech, there is a place on the Internet for spontaneous, and short-lived, writing.  My blog may be such a place.

Finney recommends that bloggers speak broadly to all cultures and for all times.  I disagree.  I think that the most important advances on the Internet in recent years have been in usability, and many usability advances have helped us filter, prioritize, and ignore.

On the net, less is often more; the fewer pages I scan while searching, the better.  This means I must filter, filter, filter.

One useful filter is date, another is popularity.  If something old hasn't been accessed and used many times, then perhaps it deserves to go away.  Its just communication, after all.  For most of human history, words died with the person who spoke them.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.  A mother's babblings to her infant are as important as any speech in the world, but they need not be preserved.  Likewise, an amateur philosopher's musings may be interesting in the time and place for which they were written, but the great value of philosophy is in creating thoughts anew, not preserving them forever.

Besides, isn't more valuable to us to communicate naturally, and then use technology to filter, find, and facilitate our communication, rather than forcing ourselves to communicate in the way that happens to suit our current technology?

There is something I appreciate in Finney's advice.  He reminds us to envision our audience, understand who they are, and let them know who we are writing for.  I think all writers would be wise to remember this.

We should write in a way that helps the reader of today understand our frame of reference, and allows the reader of tomorrow to filter.

What am I living for, if not for you,

What am I living for, if not for you,

What am I living for, if not for you,

Nobody else, nobody else will do.

 - Ray Charles

On Steve Jobs, Markos Zuniga, and Bypassing the Gatekeepers

When Steve Jobs died last week on October 5th, I read this quote:

“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste,” Jobs once said, “And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

At first I disliked the "taste" remark as I long ago grew tired of sniping between Apple (a company whose products I admittedly adore) and Microsoft (a company whose products I find frustrating).  Then I noticed in that quote the interesting use of the word "culture".

Most people see Apple Computer as a company contributing 'insanely great ideas' to the computing industry.  Steve Jobs saw Apple's ideas as contributions to culture.

And of those ideas, Jobs most famous victories were designs that made good ideas possible as great products. They weren't always truly new ideas, but were designed in a new way: the iPod, iPhone, and iPad were after all just a music player, a smartphone, and a tablet computer - products that had been envisioned and discussed by others before Apple redesigned them.  Yet when each appeared, it was executed in such a beautiful way, as if no one had thought of it before.  And each fit into the culture of people's lives - a culture in which we were all trying to move faster and share more information without driving ourselves crazy.

The comment on bringing culture into products especially resonated for me because I was reading Markos Zuniga's Taking on the System when Jobs died.  Zuniga writes about 'bypassing the gatekeepers' using the example of peer-to-peer file sharing of music, and how this began to break the grip that a handful of major record companies had over the music industry up through the 1990s, writing "the labels will suffer the indignity of neglect and irrelevance as technology and changes in our culture render them obsolete."

In light of that challenging dilemma for the music industry, I see one of Steve Job's contributions to culture shining more brightly than the others, and for unique reasons.  While launching the iTunes app (again, an MP3 player and not a truly new idea), Jobs was privately negotiating with beleaguered record companies to implement a new kind of digital rights management for selling music.  Once coupled with iTunes, Jobs had engineered an industry shift into selling DRM-free music in most countries across the world.

As a result of these negotiations, Apple's iTunes Music Store birthed a renewed culture of music buyers, music sellers, and music lovers.

The gatekeepers of the recording industry were being bypassed by the file sharers, and although they knew this, someone was needed to help move them toward a new way of doing business.  Jobs, with his proven credibility and vision, was up to the task.  Having helped all us music lovers bypass the gatekeepers, Jobs convinced them to accept a new role in a new culture.  He convinced them to vacate their comfortable seat driving the bus, in order to accept a new seat on the bus next to the artists and customers they were trying to reach.

Culture was moving forward, yet the recording industry felt paralyzed.  Rather than seeking to 'crush the gatekeepers', as Zuniga might suggest, Jobs helped build a needed bridge from a past culture to a new culture, so music lovers and industry could move forward together.

Memes and Memetics

The end of this slide share sent a chill down my spine:
"The idea of memes is itself a meme. You are now infected."

I overheard a conversation the other day.  To be honest it was not really a conversation, it was a podcast, but the meme of podcasts seem pass for conversation these days.  The podcast conversants were all political journalists and bloggers, and they were discussing words that are increasingly overused.

They agreed to never use these words again.  The first they agreed upon was "meme."  The second was "ping me".

I enjoy Richard Dawkins' books; full of fertile ideas:

"When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes.  We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes.  But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations.  Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you [but] as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved.  It does not take long to reach negligible proportions… We should not seek immortality in reproduction.  

But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool."

         - Richard Dawkins, ``The Selfish Gene''

Social Networks and Sociograms slide share - week 3

I have seen sociograms before, used to illustrate communication within or between organizations, but I didn't know the language of "sociograms", "steps", and "hubs".  So this was interesting to learn.

Above illustration from M. C. Kegler's studies at Emory University using network analysis to illustrate how collaboration developed over time among Native American tribal members and US government agencies.

I remember studying a sociogram (source unknown) developed from an analysis of phone and email contacts within a large company.  The startling realization from the sociogram was that the company's managers, thought of as being very important to communication, had fewer connections and communications than people without named management roles.  For example, some administrative employees had the potential to wield influence across the company through frequent communications with people at all levels.

These admins may not have recognized the potential of their communications to be influential, and they were likely not formally empowered to wield influence, but they were undoubtedly positioned to be the chief change agents in their organizations if only they would use their networks.

Personal Branding

At the start of our intensive exercise in branding, we were each asked to speak our personal brand.

"I am a tech-savvy conservationist and business developer.  I manage projects and facilitate teams that excel.  I am looking for the next great idea in clean technology."

As our branding exercise began, I was eager to offer others words to help them brand themselves.  It turned out that others were ready and willing to brand me as well.  Although only six or seven students in class knew me at all before before this class began, I was gifted with no less than fifteen branding words during our exercise.

Words that came back to me from classmates...
skilled, insightful communicator
integrates ideas
deep design background
chooses words well
well spoken
combining
intelligent
care
You are a Rock

I especially appreciated that last one.  Thanks, whoever you are.

What I noticed in this exercise is that while emphasizing skills I want people to know about may be the professional introduction people expect, what others remember are more personal impressions.  Perhaps my next challenge is to introduce myself to professional colleagues in a way that invites a more personal impression, and connection.

Launching my blogs

I am researching two beat blogs.  I may write both, or write one weekly and the other occasionally.

One will be about industry trends and investment opportunities in Clean Technology

Title: "Opportunities Knock for Cleantech"
key words: cleantech,  clean technology, entrepreneurship, investment, investors, venture capital, angel investors, energy, solar energy, wind energy, smart grid, pollution, waste, efficiency

This will be the first time I've committed to keeping up a blog for more than a small audience.  This blog will be public.  Through this blog, I hope to achieve two things.  First, to educate myself on cleantech and investment opportunities - sort of a personal research project.  Being responsible to my blogging audience should be a great way to keep up this commitment.  Second, this blog could help serve my responsibilities in a part-time job I started recently for Keiretsu Forum Northwest, where I am helping to launch a Cleantech Investors Committee to draw new investors and entrepreneurs to the forum.

The other blog I am considering writing would be written through a pseudonym, as I don't want to muddy my online brand I will be creating through the first blog.

Any advice on how I should do this?  I am considering setting up a faux Google profile and using Google Blogger.

Working title or the second blog is "Reflections on an Occupied Wall Street"
key words: occupy, OccupyWallStreet, Wall Street, protests, big business, corruption, corporate influence, inequality

This blog would allow me to post a coherent series of comments and reflections on the occupy wall street movement - something I am having trouble doing while reading and commenting on other blogs and webs out there covering the movement.  Occupy Wall Street is a more or less  amorphous set of demonstrations at this point.  Some of us believe that clarity of message and purpose is needed to help the movement consolidate and bear fruit.  Others insist that this movement cannot and should not be contained by mission statements or specific agendas.  I am curious to explore this, along with keeping tabs on the use of the social web by the movement.

Lifting one light bag, we travel

I've been thinking about all that I want to do online, and feeling a bit overwhelmed. I've also started watching others, particularly those younger than myslef, those who grew up with the internet as part of their daily consciousness. Seeing how younger people move online is instructive, though unsettling. They move with greater speed and agility, and also seemingly little concern for how they position their words and impressions. I am much more deliberate, yet in that deliberation I have too much hesitation and too much uncertainty.

I'm noticing that I need to drop the weight of my own expectations, to put down that weight and travel lighter.

I am resetting my expectations. Its time to unpack my bags.

This reminds me of a poem I read many years ago.

"the photographs, saved so long,

now placed neatly in the trash,

casting off belongings, no longer of need,

lifting one light bag from the street,

and cutting our hair,

we travel"

(unknown)

Unpacking my personal brand

A personal brand is a perception about ourselves that we can generate or influence in order to be more effective. The opportunity to leverage a personal brand online is tremendous, and available to everyone.

I've had a successful career and interesting life, and I'm exploring new and exciting ideas everyday. I also have a talent for marketing. So why can't I figure out how to settle on my personal brand?

My desire to leverage my social network has perhaps been held back by my lack of focus on my goals. Since coming to BGI, the current phase of my life has been about exploring new directions and potential opportunities. While renewing and shifting my career focus, I've become less defined, not better defined.

So, what is the best phrase I could use to introduce myself? No matter where I start, I always feel I'm leaving something out.

For years, my professional brand was "Conservation Information Manager" or "Geographic Information Systems Manager for The Nature Conservancy". Over the past two years of broadening my career path through BGI, my LinkedIN title has evolved to "Information Systems and Management for Environmental Planning and Sustainability". At the same time, I've spent much of my time over the past year writing, learning, developing marketing plans, and strategizing business development. So, how do I introduce myself to others? The answer seems to change, depending on whom I am introducing myself to. For me, one-size does not fit all; I seem to have many selves to brand.

How do brand myself authentically as someone who is actively exploring new career paths, while at the same time introducing myself to prospective employers and partners as an experienced professional? I don't yet know.

I've settled on a google profile that suits me for the time being:

"passionate about conservation, writing, graphic communication, managing teams that excel, and really great guitar riffs"

Packing my bags to begin the journey

I start this online journey in SW4SX feeling ready to upgrade my interactions online. I feel I'm ready to begin shifting my experience on the web from being primarily an information consumer, and sometimes information creator, toward being a stronger collaborator and online citizen as well.

My online brand has been very limited up until now. Other than an active presence on LinkedIN, and active commenter on a few blogs, my online identity has been perhaps more of a lurker than an active personality. Over the past year, I have begun increasing my activity in freelance writing, but most of this writing has been offline. I've purchased a few domains with interest in promoting my personal brand, writing, and consulting, and yet I've been unclear on the best direction for my next efforts.

I'm looking forward to using this exploration to help me clarify how social media and online communities can help me better connect with others to explore my passions.