Hope to see many of you at tonight’s Tweet-Up at the Venango Works Trade Show.
I’ll be speaking at 7 p.m. as part of the Twitter meet-up. Find out how technology is changing our world and changing us. Find out how you can take the fear out of technology. And replace it with FUN!
* Bring your questions and comments about technology. We’ll answer them—or at least we can laugh about them.
* Tell us about the frustrations and successes you’ve had with technology. Encourage others to join the digital jungle even if they have to hack their way through it.
Be sure to visit the exhibitors’ booths, they’ll be there from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. Come out and say, “Hi,” and let’s follow each other on Twitter.
The digital world is waiting for YOU to play your music. No matter HOW funny it sounds!
Just got a tweet from Dave Nelsen, whose website, http://www.get121.biz/ helps businesses develop their online strategy. Dave’s tweet:
“Rule #1 for social media: PIE - that is personality + interesting + entertaining!”
Brilliant! Because it’s much the same mantra that I’ve been writing and speaking about–using your sense of HUMOR in your online strategy!
How do we do this?
1. The beginning of any humor is a grain of truth. However small. Get to the heart of your truth. Your personality. Doesn’t have to be anything pleasant, just true. Then build on that. That is your humor personality.
2. Next, make your message interesting by giving your audiences something to grasp–a surprise, an inconsistency. Or, maybe some kind of paradox.
3. The entertaining part is built on the way you resolve that twist. The way you comfort us with the funny outcome. We can laugh. We can release. We can like you and your products, services, and message more and more.
What share of the PIE are YOU taking today?
What will you do today to make your slice have more impact?
Being “Caught up in the clouds” is a Christian term to describe the Rapture. This vision scares me. It represents being out of control. Caught up by something outside ourselves. Or think of the phrase, “up in the air,” to describe an ambiguous circumstance.
Face it: we like being in control. But two things that are inherent in life requre that we LOVE being out of control–IF we want to succeed.
Those two things are Humor and Technology.
Recently I’ve been looking at Cloud Computing, or Web 2.0 as all the cool kids–and the school librarian–call it. It’s an ephemeral place where bits of information (documents, PowerPoint presentations, notes, photos–anything) exist. You can access this information from anywhere.
Think of it the way a YouTube video explained it:
You can bury money in your back yard. Or you can put it in a bank. In the back yard, you have limited access to your money. But if it’s in a bank, you can withdraw your money whether you’re around the corner or on the other side of the world.
With Cloud Computing, you don’t have to save your information on a device like a USB drive or CD. You don’t have to carry anything!
This sounds like a great idea. But the other side is: Is it safe? What could go wrong?
These doubts bring up the similarities between Humor and Technologies like cloud computing.
–Trust
–Collaboration
–Real time
1. Cloud computing requres that we have TRUST. Just like trusting our sense of Humor to build our relationships and connections, we must trust technology. The cloud computing video mentions that we share open standards. We’re all in this together. We all understand what’s required of us, what’s going on, and what the deal is. So we can relax and let Google take over and organize our affairs.
2. Cloud computing allows for collaboration. We can make connections in ways that aren’t possible if we’re burying our bits of information in the backyard. Humor allows us this, too. Sometimes it’s incidental (like when someone overhears our humor and silently nods approval). But in any case, it’s connective. It puts us all on the same page.
3. Once we’re on the same page, we can be in real-time. That’s the beauty of cloud computing and it’s the beauty of humor. We can access, work on, dissect, and transform situations that are occurring now.
We don’t need to fear being in “the cloud” if we learn to embrace it. If you’ve been applying your sense of humor all along, you’re on your way to fearlessness. Take it up a notch. Transfer those fearlessness skills to the world of technology. Take it from me. A self-described non-techie. When I hear the words math & science I get nauseaus. But I’m willing to give it a shot. And so can you. “Get Your S.H.I.N.E. Together!” ’cause we’re in this together. Somewhere up in the clouds…
“You have to write an e-book!” That’s what most everyone has told me. But there is someone who thinks differently about this: Eoin Purcell, of the blog PublishingPerspectives. http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=13674
He writes that it doesn’t matter which form of media you use. E-books are good, they are popular. But they–like all great ideas–will become obsolete.
If we focus too intensely on the vehicle, we won’t know when it’s time to get on the road. So to speak.
Instead, he advises that we focus not on all the thousands of devices and new technologies that are birthed every day. No—we only need to do 2 things. Focus on the message and on the relationships.
That’s it. Those are the only universal constants in this sea of techno-change that we are swimming, floundering, or drowning in.
This is great news! Because I missed the whole blue-ray DVD genre. I can’t even tell you who won the formatting wars. And all I know about my computer is that it is beige.
But it doesn’t matter. We don’t need to be cutting-edge in order to succeed in this world. We just need to be willing to do these few things:
1. Learn
2. Share
3. Connect
I watched a video clip on comedian Jordan Cooper’s blog. He talked about how the art form of stand-up comedy may be disappearing from our culture.
Technology is allowing and requiring everyone to adapt to change. This includes artists. It’s not enough to paint, write, sing, compose, or create in isolation. Or even in front of a small or big audience.
It’s vital to extend your reach to everywhere in the world. This has the benefit of exposing your creativity to a vast audience. Increasing your inspirational potential exponentially.
But the drawback is that we have to switch our modus operandi. To incorporate media, applications, programs, and other foreign objects. Creative people can adapt. But how well we adapt depends on how willing we are to really create and change.
Thanks to Bill O’Brien for giving us so many entertaining and educational resources at our teachers’ in-service day Friday. Here are some of the Web 2.0 applications to experiment, test your creativity, and promote learning. Try one today!
Bubbl.us-Tool for Brain Storming, including option for Flow Charting
Wordle - www.wordle.net- Generates a word cloud / Spelling / Vocabulary / Analyzes for over used words.
Glogster - www.edu.glogster.com - Digital Poster - Persuasive Writing
Voice Thread
Blabberize - Make any picture talk
Toondoo - Create your own cartoon comic strip - www.toondoo.com
GoAnimate - Create Animated Cartoon - www.goanimate.com
Create a Graph- Easy to use online graph creator
Animoto Education-Create Video slide shows
www.scribelink.com Online White Board
http://dabbleboard.com
Just read a blog post by my friend Dave Nelsen, social media guru. http://davenelsen.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/best-of-feb/
In his post, Dave talked about seeing the movie, “Inglorious Bastards” because a Facebook friend recommended seeing it. “It turns out that what we’re telling each other in these networks is strongly influencing our behavior.” He refers to the trashing of the latest Sacha Baron Cohen movie on Facebook. The day after opening night it was seriously underperforming the experts’ box office projections.
That made me think twice about “experts.” Our culture of media and technology has made everyone a potential “expert.” That may be good or bad. But one good thing about it all is that we are learning to trust our own judgment. We want to tell what we know. We want to share our skills and help other people to succeed.
One of the best ways to do this is to study your personal style of humor. When people really listened to you, what types of things were you saying? What specifically did you do those times when the energy of the room radiated around you? Do you know what you did or said that made someone come up to you after the event and quote your own words back to you?
It takes digging, sweat, years, and humility to do this. But in the end it’s worth it, because by that time the work is done. You can just be yourself.
http://yourshiningexample.com/wp-blog
In the book, “The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference,” author Malcolm Gladwell talks about how ideas become contagious. They need the input of three types of people: the Mavens, the Connectors, and the Salesmen.
What’s interesting is the process that these three peoples use to convert an idea. They must, “alter it in such a way that extraneous details are dropped and others are exaggerated so that the message itself comes to acquire a deeper meaning.”
These just happen to be some of the best comedy-writing tips too.
* Drop the extraneous details.
* Exaggerate something else.
* Make the message (the joke) meaningful to the audience.
The best comedians do this seamlessly. They take an idea, and chop out all the story-telling chaff. They scrape away the details that aren’t very important. Then they polish the message so it has impact, is sharp and pointed, and strikes at their target–the audience.
For instance, take comedian Henny Youngman–please. He was an expert on chopping a bit of humor into something you could survive on for a month in space. For example, He bet on a great horse. It only took seven horses to beat him.
We don’t need to know which racetrack. We don’t care about how much he bet. And we all know what a horserace is.
Humor lets us translate our ideas, as Gladwell says, “into something the rest of us can understand.”
Want to make your ideas and your message contagious? Which horse will you bet on?
http://yourshiningexample.com/wp-blog
CNN asks, “Too little, too late?” No people around. He’s the only one who’s going to talk. What will he say? What would you like him to say?
Answer: Who cares?
The Tiger Woods scandal is one of those items of interest that make me ask, “Why is this news?” In light of all the more vital events, wars, crises, and disasters occurring at any given moment in the world–how important, really, is this man?
We can offer our listeners this same type of schlocky story. Of course it’s popular. But is it substantial? Does it build us up? Or does it distract us from more important matters? Is there anything useful that we can lift from this story?
Answer: No. No. Yes, and No.
Sometimes we are like the Tiger story. In comedy we call this person a hack.
From the word, “hackneyed”: Pronunciation: \ˈhak-nēd\. Function: adjective. Date: 1735. Meaning: lacking in freshness or originality. Synonyms: See trite.
Maybe you’ve seen the hack. Talking about airline food. Or piercings that don’t allow you to pass airline metal detectors. Or maybe viagara jokes that have circled the internet more times than flies over a cowfield.
The problem we have is that it’s very tempting to jump on the schlock wagon. Pronunciation: \ˈshläk\. Variant(s): or schlocky \ˈshlä-kē\ also shlock or shlocky. Function: adjective. Etymology: perhaps from Yiddish shlak evil, nuisance. Date: 1916. Meaning: of low quality or value. It’s the easy way out. It is what’s popular at the moment.
Unfortunately, the popular means, literally, that everyone’s using it. Synonym: Common. Your input will get lost in the fog of nothingness that characterizes schlockdom. And unfortunately it is disastrous to be common in today’s world. It is financial suicide. Business self-mutilation.
If your message is so common, it will be tramped underfoot along with the millions of grains of sand that look like the most popular message of the day. Why not instead choose some better adjectives. Peculiar. Unequaled.
Unusual (= not the usual speaker, message, advertisement, event).
Read in Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin) about the difference between friends and friendlies. The friendlies are the ones you have a digital link to but no real connection. It’s the friend who will be more likely to want to buy from you. Because you do friendly behaviors toward him or her–that is, you write back, comment on their posts, and above all you never send a form letter!
Seth’s blog entry made me think of the role of manners in technology. It’s somehow not enough to just “Be nice” just like on dry land. In cyberspace the usual manners have been tweaked. Now it’s less about our polite behaviors, but rather how we are perceived by those behaviors (or by omitting those behaviors).
For example, if you choose to close off your photos on Facebook to comments, that may be a free choice for you. However, what do your viewer/readers think of you when they see that they are not allowed such free choice? Do you appear to them as insecure; you seem to think we would only comment negatively.
If you don’t respond to your @twitter posts that people write, what impression do you give people about you? Are you suddenly unreliable? Do you #FollowFriday those twitterers who routinely FollowFriday you?
Technology has leveled the playing field–at least in the field of manners and tact. The old excuse, “I don’t have TIME to do those things,” will not fly in today’s world. We all officially have no time for this stuff. But your consistent care to your friends and their posts, their comments, their ideas, their freedom of expression–will show that despite your lack of time, you ARE acting. You are being a friend. You know how to, “Get Your SHINE Together!”
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