b.cognosco

Breakthroughs Happen in a Social Context

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 16:04:36 GMT

Tuesday night I rode my bike down to Fayetteville, just south of Atlanta, to attend Lisa Haneberg's "2 Weeks 2 a Breakthrough" talk And talk about your breakthrough ideas - Lisa is riding her motorcycle across the country to promote her new book. I feel safe in saying this is the first time a business book has been promoted in such a way. And I'm certain it's the first time ever by a woman. Pretty cool.

So what did I think about the talk? Lisa’s premise for this talk (and the book) is that little things matter. She relates in terms of chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect – which is a little new-agey – but the analogies are for inspiration more than analysis. The main idea is that continual forward progress, even in tiny increments – builds velocity, and forward velocity leads to breakthroughs. To illustrate Lisa uses the consulting mainstay – the 2x2 matrix:

I think many of us spend our lives either in “Dreamer” or “Stuck” modes. Those with adult ADD tend to be in the “Victim” quadrant – confusing motion with progress and paddling furiously but getting nowhere. But where we all want to be is in the “Peak Performer” quadrant.

Lisa offered two points that stood out for me:

Breakthroughs happen in a social context – If you aren’t out actively promoting your goal or idea – discussing it regularly with friends, colleagues, and strangers and sharing your challenges, achievements, and objectives – you aren’t going to make any breakthroughs.
Introverts, no matter how smart, rarely make breakthroughs – Breakthroughs do not happen in front of your face. They happen in the connections and gaps and networks that emerge from constant forward action and focus. [Editor's note: Following a comment from Lisa the above bullet point should read 'Introverts, no matter how smart, rarely make breakthroughs until they breakout of introverted behavior patterns...']

I am a natural introvert. I’m more comfortable sitting alone in my office than I am in a crowd. Over the years I’ve worked hard at developing my extrovert capacity and done a lot of public speaking and presentations. But at my core I’m always more comfortable alone. That makes it easy for me to slip into the Stuck or Dreamer states.

And that’s a dangerous thing. It’s like exercise, or eating habits, or any other behavior you want to modify. What’s required is constant forward progress – even in small steps. If you stop – even for a little bit – getting started again is difficult. The inertia that builds is deadly. This is really the underlying principle behind all behavior modification, from Alcoholics Anonymous to Weight Watchers.

And so it is with Lisa’s program – simple, proven principles packaged in an easy-to-read program and supplemented with specific plans to help you move forward. More important, Lisa is building her own network and cult following. She asked each attendee to contact her by the end of the week and let her know how it was going, and if she could help, she would. Her goal for this tour is to help as many people reach a breakthrough as possible. Lisa has quite a few cities still to visit as she heads back west. Check her travel itinerary and go see her if you get the chance.

How To Think About A Presentation

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Wed, 02 May 2007 14:53:27 GMT

My friend and colleague Sean Murphy, who is a great synthesizer and sensemaker, came up with an excellent presentation idea a while back. He’s done this a few times now and if you’re in the San Jose/Silicon Valley area and have a chance to see Sean’s “12 Books for the Busy CEO” you should do so. Links to his next session is below:

Crucial Marketing Concepts for Consultants @ PATCA May 10
I will be presenting a revised and improved version of the “12 Books for the Busy CEO” presentation on Thursday May 10 at 6pm at the PATCA monthly dinner at the Embassy SuitesÂ Santa Clara - Silicon ValleyÂ onÂ 2885 Lakeside DriveÂ in Santa Clara.

I will cover a dozen books and offer a synthesis of the key marketing concepts (this is not a sequence of twelve book reports) that they offer. I will have an articleÂ on crucial marketing concepts that I will give out for attendees. There is good content here for entrepreneurs, whether they are starting out as consultants or embedding their expertise in software or a SaaS offering.

Spend an hour and leave with a summary of key marketing insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. You may even identify one or two books that you haven’t read that will be worth your time. IÂ will cover a dozenÂ books that form the basis for conventional wisdom on marketing in Silicon Valley. They provide the terms, the metaphors, the parables–in short the language–that successful high technology firms use to develop their plans and monitor their execution. Some of these books are old–most have stood the test of time, which in Valley years is a decade or more–but still provide succinct guidelines for new product introduction and sales.

I want to thank Mark Duncan for helping us turn a set of black and white PowerPoint slides that were primarily text bullets into a colorful and illustration rich article.

Skype 1.4 Much Improved

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 19:28:00 GMT

Just completed a 50-minute Skype conversation with Matt Mower that went flawlessly. Not one drop-out, hang-up, freeze or crash. CPU usage on my machine stayed at 6%-12% - a great improvement over the 50%+ that was common on earlier versions. And the sound quality through my Telex headset was excellent. This was a consumer-grade mainstream experience, not the early-adopter experience I've always had with Skype. Nice.

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:10:06 GMT

Another good idea gets bought. Much like the flickr deal, this one makes sense. Unlike the flickr deal, we shouldn't hear a lot of whining from existing users. Yahoo is unlikely to start charging for bookmarking service, instead working to integrate it into all their other services. And the backing of a BigCo like the Y! means delicious is likely to be around for a long time, so I don't have to worry about my bookmarks disappearing one day.

Yahoo! buys del.icio.us
Yahoo! has bought social bookmarking site del.icio.us for an undisclosed amount. Joshua Schachter posted an announcement to the del.icio.us blog and mentions Yahoo!'s ability to help del.icio.us scale and keep pace with it's growing user base and site usage. Jeremy Zawodny welcomed the del.icio.us team on the Yahoo! Search blog and notes Yahoo! properties My Web and Flickr are natural matches for Joshua and del.icio.us.

Euan Semple Discusses Real-world Use of Blogs, Wikis, and Social Software in Business

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 03:04:35 GMT

Just had a listen to Euan Semple, International Information Industry Awards 2005 Information Professional Of The Year, on BBC Radio Five Live talking about the process of managing internal blogs and wikis within the BBC. Interesting stuff.

Me on the radio
I have just been interviewed by Chris Vallance for the Pods and Blogs section of Up All Night on BBC Radio Five Live. It is meant to be going out live at 2.50 am GMT but when it gets to "Listen Again" I'll post a link.

I listened to the show live. I guess we'll have to wait a bit for the archive link to be posted. I listened to a little bit of the subsequent segments out of curiosity - a bit on Indian music podcasts and some news about UK taxes on oil companies. Pretty good stuff. I rarely listen to news anymore, or watch it on TV. Just too tiresome.

Skype 1.4.0.84 Offers Improved Performance and Stability

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 17:15:16 GMT

The latest Skype version, 1.4.0.84, appears to have addressed several performance and stability issues. I've only just installed it this weekend on both my desktop PC and my ThinkPad, so experience is limited, but the annoying system lockups and 100% CPU usage while doing nothing in particular seem to be gone.

For some reason, I'm still amazed when tech support tells me repeatedly that they've never heard of my problem, never seen it before, have no idea why it happens, and are absolutely certain it has to do with software on my machine. Then all the problems magically disappear when they do some upgrade. Fascinating, that.

Anyway, I'll be turning Skype back on for a while to see how it holds up under use.

Can We Get Socially ORL?

terrywfrazier@gmail.com — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:53:48 GMT

Radio Userland product manager Steve Kirks proposes a new nickname for this weeks geek topic, OPML Reading Lists. I know lots of people hate OPML because Dave Winer thought of it, but I like it (Id love to see a real outliner for windoze that used it) and I like the idea of a standard way of publishing reading lists.

OPML Reading Lists need a nickname
OPML reading lists (an OPML file containing links to selected XML syndication feeds) are the hot topic this month and personally, I'm tired of typing all of those letters. So, in the grandest tradition of the blogosphere, let's find a good way to shorten those words. I'm proposing ORL pronounced "oral". Usage: Person A: "I need new stuff to read. Got any recommendations?" Person B: "Download this "orl" file into your aggregator?" Person A: "What's an aggregator?" Person B: "<SIGH>" ORL isn't the prettiest name, but if I pick something, someone else might make a better stab at it. I'm going to start tagging these types of post with ORL, too.

Nick Bradbury of FeedDemon/TypeStyle/NewsGator fame explains a little more what ORL is about:

In a nutshell, the idea is that you'd subscribe to an OPML document which contains a list of feeds that someone is reading, some organization is recommending, or some service has generated (such as "Top 100" list). Changes to the source OPML document would be synchronized, so that you're automatically subscribed to feeds added to the reading list. Likewise, you'd be unsubscribed from feeds removed from the original OPML.

Then I read where the indomitable Judith Meskill at the Social Software Weblog has finally, unbelievably, indisputably had enough of entering all her stuff into all these different services (I actually felt this way the second time I did it. Judith must have done it hundreds of times.)

Swagroll lists and shares your stuff again
I caught a glimpse of Swagroll last week and saw it again on Emily Changs excellent eHub list of Web 2.0 apps and figured Id mention it here. Why didnt I mention it last week? Well... Im of the same mind as Stowe Boyd -why do I feel like Im doing a lot of work Ive already done elsewhere? Add books, music, movies, and more to your own swagroll - my god, do I have to? Again? Didnt we do this already with Delicious Monster? Havent I done this in iTunes? Havent I done this on Amazon? On All Consuming? On Netflix? I have zero desire to do any of it all over again. Zero. [...]

So I have to ask, isn't there a path here for ORL to capture a "lifestream" that populates all these things and just fills them in as we hop from one container service to another? Now, I know we have FOAF and LOAF and RDF and BFD and whatever, but theyre all so freakin complicated I cant deal with them. OPML I get maybe because it gets rendered as a human-readable outline but I get it. I dont know how this stuff works so maybe its all just so-o-o-o-o-o much more complicated than someone like me can grasp. But Id be happy for people to tell me why ORL cant begin to do what Ive described.