October 17, 2011

What makes you stand out? (book giveaway)

We all have something unique we bring to the table; something we do differently (and better) than others.

The great irony is that while we can easily see the value of contributions by others, we can sometimes find it hard to figure out what our own strengths are.

To aid you in that effort, I’m giving away a copy of StandOut by Marcus Buckingham.

Read on for details.

Knowing your strengths

Talking to others around you – those you work with, work for, or who work for you – can help give you great insight into your strengths. And you can help them by sharing your thoughts and observations about their strengths.

The challenge in this approach, however, is articulating it clearly and establishing common terminology for these discussions.

That’s where standardized and objective approaches come in handy, like the StandOut book and online test that I reviewed last week.

The book and companion test developed by Marcus Buckingham are based on over a decade of research and analysis of individual strengths, particularly in the work environment.

Playing to your strengths

Once you know your strengths, it can be a great advantage to play to your strengths.

Seeking out the best projects, teammates, and environments to let your best features shine is a great strategy for professional development.

And it’s a refreshing and energizing change from the typical focus on improving weaknesses.

Win a free copy of StandOut by Marcus Buckingham

Want to take the next step?

I have an extra copy of StandOut by Marcus Buckingham (complete with a sealed and unused code for the online test), and I would love to give it to a reader of this blog.

Please leave a comment on this post if you’re interested.

Tell us about your personal strengths, your best tip for professional development, share a fun or funny anecdote, or otherwise add to the conversation.

I’ll leave this open for a few days and then pick an interesting or insightful commenter as the winner.

 

Photo credit: Sara V

Filed Under: Giving back, Strategy Tagged With: , , 3 Comments
September 9, 2011

It’s not about the book

A new book came out the other day, and it almost immediately went to a number one position on Amazon.com. In fact, at the time of this writing it’s still #1 in several categories.

Most people didn’t buy the book for the book, though. They bought it to fund a worthy cause. The book is more like a memento, a gift from 62 renowned authors who contributed essays to the project.

Michael Bungay Stanier put the project together, inspired to do something for a good cause on a global scale. Ending malaria became the goal. The promise of a readily available, affordable solution to a deathly problem is readily available – $10 mosquito nets. And so the book project was born.

Stainer got Seth Godin involved. Godin, a bestselling author, top marketer, and founder of a new publishing company (The Domino Project) got behind the effort and helped to take it to the next level. Now, the Kindle version of the book is selling in the number one spot at about double the normal price for a Kindle book – $20. And all the money goes to the cause. (There’s also a paperback version for $25, $20 goes to the cause.)

It’s pretty amazing to see that sort of clever and impactful campaign in action, emerging suddenly one day and immediately becoming a huge success. And I bet the book is good too (I bought one).

You can buy the book here, and read more about the project here.

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August 11, 2011

The give and take of social networks

There is only so much time in the day, and more to be done than time allows. Still, if you ask the busiest people what is a most valuable use of their time, networking is always near the top of the list. That’s because there is huge value in networks – much is to be learned, gained, and shared.

An illusion of imbalance

Interestingly, in most cases people say they get a lot more out of their networks than they give to them. It can be fun to share your experiences, to feel valued, to help someone. But I think we often underestimate our contributions. It may be because our contributions seem too easy. Sometimes they are effortless and down right a matter of stating the obvious. But what’s obvious to you is not necessarily what’s obvious to everyone else. And therein lies the power of the network. Everyone (or most) find it easy to help and extremely valuable to be helped. The sum seems far greater than the total of the parts.

Augmenting networks online

Professional associations, business groups, and other organizations whose activities center around face-to-face meetings – dinners, conferences, etc. – have lots of infrastructure, filtering, and facilitation built in. Online networks opens up the world and put it at your fingertips, but more effort is required to sift through it all to find and connect with those you’ll find most valuable, and those who will benefit most by connecting to you.

The advantage is that building a network via social media does not limit connections by geography, industry, or any other traditional parameters. A blessing and a curse  - more valuable, but harder to build (in some ways). A little more effort to get established up front, however, can yield lots of dividends down the road.

And nobody says you can’t do both. In fact, you should. You’ll likely be most valuable to, and gain the most value from, the connections where you meet both online and off.

Photo credit: USNavy

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July 26, 2011

Conferences are about relationships and community as much as they are about knowledge and learning

Why go to a conference? There is so much free content on just about any subject matter available quickly and easily online. In every discipline, it seems, somebody is blogging, podcasting or running a webinar. Slideshare has an abundance of presentations free for perusing. And many conferences post video recordings of their sessions.

So, why pay the money, take the time, and travel the distance to be there in person?

Because conferences aren’t just about learning. They are also about sharing, and connecting. They are about establishing, maintaining, and growing personal relationships. And even the vast power of social media cannot replace real-time, face-to-face interactions and the shared experience of attending an event together.

A focus of attention

Most conferences are built around some sort of community. And it’s likely that the community doesn’t meet very often (if ever) outside of conference time, at least not on the same scale. And with that physical gathering comes a gathering of focus and energy. Everyone’s attention is organized around a shared interest, with little distractions of other matters (for the most part). This makes it much easier to dig deeper, explore ideas further, and to learn about things in a more complete way. There is time and attention for it, which is rare outside of the context of the conference.

Personal relationships

Discovering people with shared interests, similar styles, and even in your geographic location is often easier online than with more traditional face-to-face networking. But face-to-face is still the  better way to get to know someone and to develop a stronger relationship.

Even though your collective attention is focused on the subject matter of the conference, conversations revolve around travel, lodging, dining, local sports teams, whatever – the little things that people develop relationships around. And you can meet in groups, too – introductions are made and circles are expanded.

Sharing and contributing

The conference is also an opportunity for you to give to the community – to share your knowledge, insights, and experiences. You can volunteer, which is a great way to really see how an organization works and to get to know the leaders. You can speak or participate in a panel discussion. You can be an active participant. You can tweet out to the world, take photos and write blog posts. All of which will help you further immerse yourself in the community, and all of which will make the community a better place for others as well.

Photo credit: Alex Dunne

 

Filed Under: Giving back, Strategy Leave a Comment
July 22, 2011

Teaching and Learning at WordCamp Boston

WordPress is an amazing open source software success story. Launched modestly in 2003 as a collaboration effort of a handful of people, it is now the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.

Open source is about community, and WordPress has an impressive one. The wealth of design themes, widgets, and plugins that allow for easy customization and enhancements to features and functionality is truly amazing. All of that built by the community.

Community

The WordPress community spans the globe and is accessible online in a variety of forms. But there is also a vibrant users group in Boston that holds monthly face-to-face meetings to help developers and users alike. It’s not uncommon for over a hundred people to gather at the Mircrosoft NERD Center to discuss the latest information, tips and techniques about the platform.

WordCamp

And now Boston is holding its second WordCamp conference this weekend. All the reviews I found online of the last event were great, so I’m looking forward to attending this year’s event. In addition to learning and networking, I look forward to teaching others what I’ve learned about WordPress. I’ll be running a session on my top ten tips for blogging with WordPress. I’ll post the slides and the session will be recorded, so you can check it out later if you’re interested. In fact, all of the sessions will be recorded and shared so that the core information being shared is easily accessible.

My talk will be based on my experience with WordPress, on this site and a couple of others that I run. I’ve written a bunch of posts about WordPress in the past (mostly as part of my Website 101 series). You can find all the WordPress posts here.

Photo credit: Huasonic

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June 29, 2011

Doing it for the money

Groupon is valued at something like 30 billion dollars and is preparing for an IPO. They have about 8,000 employees and tons of revenue ($644 million in the first quarter of 2011). Though still reportedly not profitable, they are growing on the promise to generate even more revenue and eventually tons of profit. Shareholders might benefit immensely.

The daily deal model has been replicated by many other services, but none have reached this scale. The market appears to be huge, and even more revenue and profits on the table. It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes.

CrowdCause

Then there is a tiny little upstart in Rochester, NY doing daily deals a different way. The deals look very similar – great offerings from local businesses at about half off the normal price. The difference here is that the company’s profit – 90% of it – goes to a local charity.

This creates an interesting dynamic of saving and giving, and changes the value proposition for the buyer and the seller. And it takes local to the next level, by giving back to the community where the business operates and where the buyer lives.

They just launched, and the deals seem to be structured in a pretty straight-forward manner. Maybe more creative ideas evolve from this model. People might pay full price for a “deal” if half the money went to a local charity, for instance. Or, specific deals could be coordinated with specific charities to draw natural correlations (between a school supply store and schools, for instance). Maybe people would even buy a “deal” because of the charity it supports rather than for the product or service itself (like when you eat at a certain local restaurant because a percentage of the take supports a local charity).

Two good ideas

People seem to like a good deal. And people seem to like to do good things. Putting these together seems like a brilliant idea. It’ll be interesting to see how this little corner of the internet evolves.

Photo credit: paulamarttila

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June 1, 2011

Social networks are about give and take

Social networks (online or otherwise) are valuable. You can get a lot out of them. But remember to give, too.

And you always have something to give.

You can give time, energy, or expertise. You can give support, encouragement, or the benefit of experience.

The WordPress Community

I’ve benefited tremendously from the WordPress community since becoming active over the last year or so. In fact, the whole platform is built on people making contributions large and small.

Whether building the platform itself, or extending it through a theme, widget or plug-in, many thousands of gifts make the environment what it is today. And beyond the software, members of the WordPress community openly share knowledge and experience.

And that helps. A lot.

So, I’m proud to be giving back this summer by speaking at WordCamp Boston.

If you’re a WordPress user, consider attending this unique event which is replicated around the world. The Boston event is in its second year, and supported by a vibrant local user community. Come check it out. See what you can get, and what you can give.

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December 24, 2010

3 easy ways to give the gift of knowledge

Make this holiday season and the new year a little brighter for someone else by sharing what you know. Your knowledge and experience, put in the right hands at the right time, is one of the best gifts you can give. Here are three easy ways to do it.

Skills-based volunteering

I wrote a post on this a while back (Donate Your Brain). This is the idea that you contribute to a worthy cause or organization with your best skills. If you’re a CPA, help them do the books. If you’re a marketer, help them with branding and outreach. If you’re a technologist, help them improve their systems.

Obvious places to look are your local community organizations, but there are also matchmakers out there. Common Impact does this on a corporate level.

Answer questions on LinkedIn

A while back I did an experiment with LinkedIn Answers and found it to be a vibrant community of people sharing knowledge. This is a quick and *easy* way to get your insights into the hands of someone who could use them right now. Why not go there for a few minutes a week and see if you can help: LinkedIn Answers.

Real-time help

Open up a web browser and go to http://search.twitter.com and type in a few keywords in your area of expertise (add a space and a question mark to limit the search to those posing questions). It’s likely you’ll find someone in those 106 million users with a question you can answer. You may have to work through a bit of spam/off-target stuff, but it can be a great way to expand your Twitter network and influence.

What else can we do?

Got any other ideas for easy, fun, or effective ways to share knowledge? Please add them to the comments below.

Happy Holidays!

Photo credit: tomate d’epingles

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June 13, 2010

Donate Your Brain

Sure, you can give time and money to a variety of charitable causes. That’s great. But what if you could make a larger impact? And what if it was easier to do?

Donate your brain to charity. Give your skills and experience. Both you and the charity or nonprofit organization you help will reap many benefits.

Social media expert? Help them set and implement a strategy. Finance wiz? Help them analyze and revamp their budget. Marketing guru? Help them spread the word or run an event. IT expert? Help them optimize their systems.

You get the point. Skills-based volunteering may be one of the most effective ways you can get involved in your local community. And you’ll certainly learn a lot in the process – working with new people, exposing yourself to new ideas, and gaining new experiences.

Photo credit: cheerfulmonk

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