Today I’m sharing a video. It’s my first crack at iMovie- Enjoy!

Some Show notes:

Social Media Breakfast DC 2/5/09 with Jeff Pulver

Tweetsgiving

Happy Birthday Is, Risa Herbstman, and Jocelyn Harmon

Q: What would you like organizations you care about to ask of you aside from giving money?

I found this video in a post on Todd Defren’s site PR-Squared where he shared Gary Vaynerchuk‘s Web2.0 keynote.

Gary’s tone and energy match the way I’m feeling now. I’m working on something big and I am pumped. Every conversation about this project has me energized and I’ve taken to saying “Kill It!” as the pieces fall into place. Hopefully I’ll have more to report early next week. In the meantime enjoy Gary.

Note: There’s some not so office friendly language in there.

There are so many gems here including the quote Todd shared that I also liked.

“If you’re pumping out good shit, people will follow. But if you for a second – for a 1/2 second – don’t believe in what you are doing … you need to get out, now.”

Some of my other favorites -

“Hustle is the most important word. Ever.”
“Your great great great grandchildren are going to watch and see everything you’ve ever done.”
“There is never a bad time when you believe, when you work hard, and when you know what you’re doing.”
“The only way to succeed now is to be completely transparent.”

How does this resonate with you?

I want to introduce and thank Stacey Monk who has been a real inspiration and mentor to me.

Stacey runs an organization called Epic Change that seeks to support community change by helping people to use the power of their stories to obtain the resources they need to improve their communities. In its first project, Epic Change is partnering with Mama Lucy Kamptoni expand Shepherds Junior a school in Arusha, Tanzania that now has over 200 students.

I first met Stacey this past May on twitter. She had just posted about a Miracle on her birthday when she guest posted on Sam Lawrence’s blog. As I have gotten more involved with Epic Change, I have learned so much from Stacey and I am thankful to have her as a mentor. Her passion is an inspiration and she works tirelessly to help the people she works with. Stacey is deeply connected to the world around her and acutely aware that distance doesn’t make problems any less significant.

This week Epic Change is issuing holiday cards with the proceeds going to support Shepherds Junior. She’s posted about her excitement about the holiday cards on her blog. They’ll hopefully be available on her site this week.

Stacey is very good at saying thank you. Back in August she entered a competition to win funding for her cause by creating a video of Shepherds Junior students using post it notes to thank Epic Change’s supporters. The video didn’t win the money, but I felt like a million bucks. (See if you can spot my name in there)

Stacey, you’ve taught me so much about gratitude, having a can do spirit, and leading by example. Thank you!

What about you folks? What, or who are you thankful for as Thanksgiving approaches?

This post is a submission to the Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants, be sure to check out the other submissions this week on SocialButterfly.

Update: The holiday cards are now live and smokin’ on the Epic Change site.

Thanks for reading my blog. I’ve enjoyed my my new posting schedule (more of an aspiration really). If you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe in the sidebar. You can subscribe using an RSS reader, or you can receive the posts in your inbox by putting your email into the box in the blog side bar, or type it into this box here and click subscribe.

But what is RSS?

RSS or Really Simple Syndication enables you to subscribe to the content of many websites or blogs so that you can more easily keep track of them without visiting the sites directly. Basically you can receive the posts of many different blogs in an interface called an RSS reader that feels a lot more like email.

Huh? Well maybe the good folks at Common Craft explain it better than I can. They make a living clarifying Web concepts like RSS in fantastic videos like this one on RSS in plain English.

Nifty. It turns out only about 11% of internet users make use of RSS (LINK) so now you are in the know

My RSS reader of choice is google reader because I enjoy a lot of the extra features Google has baked in and some of the customizations I have found from various developers and Google itself.

Shortcuts. Shortcuts make the world go round and google reader has a lot of shortcuts many of which are similar to google’s own gmail shortcuts which I also use.

Sharing. One of the most useful features of google reader is the ability to easily share something you enjoyed with everyone connected to you in the reader. You can even include comments that will be included with the post itself when your friends go to see what you’ve shared with them. The feature automatically culls from your list of gmail contacts to determine who is also sharing on the system, though you can customize sharing as well. Even cooler is the fact that you can literally share anything via google reader even things you aren’t subscribed to by using the sharing notes bookmarklet.

Search and sorting. Like most google products, reader is powered by search so I can find articles easily even if I only a few phrases from the content stick out in my memory. You can also and view the reading list in alphabetical order or view only new items. There is also and All Items view that gives you the option to see things in one river of news the way Robert Scoble describes.

So please subscribe to the RSS feed (by RSS reader or email if you prefer), keep sharing your feedback, and if you enjoy something you see here please do share it with a friend.

For those not in the know, according to its Wikipedia page:

“Parkour … is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.^[2] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment—from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls—and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas.”

Still confused? Check out this video of Parkour at the Fermi Institute. (Thank you google reader and thanks Judy for sharing!)

So what can Parkour teach us about Social Media Adoption?

For those now thinking,  “Avi that was pretty cool, but I don’t need my organization or business to bounce off walls”, let me explain why I think Parkour works as an analogy for social media adoption.

1. Social Media can be very exciting

These days it seems everyone is talking about social tools. A lot of people are talking about the role it played in this year’s historic presidential election both in terms of communicating with supporters and tracking the election results. CNN anchors are reading Twitter on air. It’s definitely gotten some more attention lately.

When organizations first start to see a return on their investment into social media it can be a rush. Once you really start to listen and engage customers, donors, constituents, whoever it can be really exciting. Look! They’re talking about us!

2. You can get hurt

Of course, fast adoption of social media without careful planning and an adequate investment of time and attention can land your organization in hot water. You could make the mistake of throwing your social efforts on one person or department, cordoning off the responsibility and ultimately wind up with burned out and frustrated staff people. Equally dangerous is falling into the trap of being distracted by all the shiny tools, instead of focusing on where you’re going. There is a time to fondle the hammer, but as in Parkour if you’d better know where you are and where you’re going, or you’re likely to run into obstacles, maybe even have some nasty spills.

3. Transparency

With Social Media, as in Parkour, all the action is in public. If your not prepared to tighten your grip on your message and release the conversation to the wild than you ought to think twice before diving in. Of course, deciding that Social Media efforts aren’t the right approach for your organization or business is perfectly valid, but once you’re playing you’d better be prepared. It’s a complex question and there is a lot to consider before you do.

Does my Parkour analogy work? In any case these are some good things to keep in mind. What else should organizations keep in mind about Social Media?

I can’t leave it at that can I? No, did you really think I’d deny you these awesome Parkour links and videos? First off if you have an Xbox you may want to check out the new Mirror’s Edge game which let’s you lay it down on screen.

And another similar phenomenon of people chucking cans.

Friends, election day has finally arrived and I love it. For one thing the threshold for talking to strangers has dropped out of the floor. “Nice sticker man!” to the guy passing you in the crosswalk will win you a big smile from just about anyone today. The elevator ride down from my office, normally a silent affair had everyone chatting about where they were heading out to, or what their experience was like in the morning. I got cheers when I shared that I had sent my absentee ballot off to Florida last week.

An Election of WE

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Seth Godin’s lessons from the election. He write about the centrality of stories. Here’s the section that resonates with me down at the bottom.

“So why didn’t the ads work this time?

The tribe that Obama built identified with him. Attacking him was like attacking them. They took it personally, and their outrage led to more donations and bigger turnout. This is the lucky situation Apple finds itself in as well. Attacking an Apple product is like attacking an Apple user.”

Over over again this election season people speak about how “we’ve have to win” and how “we’re going to pull through”. My grandfather has been using the same WE with me since June and I enjoyed reading about Seth and Jackie’s voting stories from across the pond too.

Track Results

There are a ton of places to track election results tonight. I was also happy to find that MSNBC is streaming their coverage live- the quality is pretty good, so if you find yourself without a tv – never fear! You can get a nice bird’s eye view of coverage at Alltop too and Read Write Web has a nifty Election Day Web Tool Kit.

Also, if you’re into the wisdom of crowds you can check out Daily Kos’ predictions contest though that I’d bet that demographic is skewed enough to negate the theory in this case.

Election Day Schwag

There’s a ton of free stuff around town this election day.
(I’m writing this post from Starbucks across from my office as I enjoy my free coffee.)

Happy Election day everyone!

If you haven’t seen Randy Pausch’s last lecture on achieving your childhood dreams that has been floating around the Internet yet, watch it now. I’ll wait.

What an awesome and insightful human being. Seriously if you haven’t seen it it is worth the hour long investment if only to see hear his wry jokes and see him pull off those one-handed push ups.

One of the most insightful things I learned from Randy is the role of brick walls.

“Brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

What a great attitude. I talked about something similar in my first MeshugAvi Blog post ever. There is no doubt in my mind that Tal Ben-Shahar would have shown a clip of Randy talking about this idea in class for that session. He’s just nailed the right attitude to achieving your dreams on the head and for me it ties in nicely to my earlier thoughts on massive action.

Another quote of Randy’s that gets at the idea of embracing the suck during those times when the needed work isn’t to your liking:

“Don’t bail; the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap.”

So what are the brick walls in your life? How are you going to throw yourself over them or tear them down? What helps aside from massive action?

photo by viZZZual.com

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features a worthwhile article about plastic in the oceans today. The problem is especially alarming in the North Pacific where The North Pacific Gyre, one of five naturally occurring ocean Gyres in the world, causes plastic to accumulate at high concentrations as it rotates in the North Pacific.

Differing Approaches

The article highlights a number of approaches being taken in the environmental community to respond to the crisis.

The mission of the International Coastal Cleanup, an annual project to clean beaches across the world, is focused on raising awareness of the problem by educating volunteers. Other organizations, like GoAK which recently completed a months long project to clean the shore of Alaska’s Gore Point, aim to begin the immense work of actually cleaning up the plastic piece by piece.

Charles Moore, who’s work is also discussed in the article, has been conducting research in the famed “Garbage Patch” reported to be the size of Texas at the heart of the Gyre. I discovered a 12 part video series project that he captained recently along with a professor from the University of Missouri in a post from Social Butterfly.

Also check out this embedded video of some of Moore’s work.

All of this has me thinking much more seriously about where the stuff we throw out winds up. Most of that plastic comes from cities dumping their trash directly into the ocean rather than individuals tossing things overboard from ships and piers. The city of Los Angeles is considering a plan to stop all dumping by the year 2016! That’s great, but what does that mean about what we’re dumping now? We don’t know what happens to our trash. It’s burned, buried, and dumped who knows where, but it still has a consequence somewhere.

Are you blown away as much as I am? Does it make you want to recycle more? Start using permanent bottles and tap water more? I’m curious what people think so do share in the comments.

As I have gotten more into social media and Web 2.0, friends have increasingly asked me what the heck social media is. This fun video from the folks at Common Craft is a fun primer. They’ve done some great videos recently that you can find and view on their site. I love their simple style of using paper to demonstrate complex ideas succinctly. Enjoy!

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Check out DimP now. They’re developing a novel way to view videos with the potential to impact security, forensics, sports, and other fields.