Disruptive Strategies for the Future of Venture at PreMoney 2015

Besides the Fbombs, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure's trademark, investors discussed finance, funding, froth and fundamentals in the startup world.

Here's how the event at SanFrancisco's Intercontinental Hotel in June 2015 went....

Among the field of investors and founders discussing finance, funding, froth and fundamentals in theworld: Marlon Nichols of Intel Capital, Shauntel Poulson of Reach Capital, Heidi Roizen of DFJ, Michael Kim of Cendana Capital, Hunter Walk of Homebrew, Charles Hudson of SoftTechVC, Shadi Mehraein of Rivet Ventures, Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC, Hamet Watt of Upfront Ventures, Diishan Imira of Mayvenn, and Ellen Pao of Reddit.

Dave McClure's 500Startups PreMoney starts with a lot of F-words

Venture is a high IQ, high EQ, hustle business: Alfred Lin, Sequoia

Lunchtime: pioneering family funds, how culture is the invisible rug we trip on

Former Marine Paige Craig is an adrenaline investor

Series A is the new Seed round, declares micro-VC Manu Kumar

VC = product, Founders = customers, says Phineas Barnes

It's obvious, and yet...Black entrepreneurs and ventures hold untapped value

Takeaways: Develop a brand, build a thesis, hustle

Listening deeply: getting to know you, developing products, advising startups

This is my last week at the Storia App by Selfish Inc's headquarters in San Francisco. After more than a year leading early growth, product strategy, community building and operations management of this visual story sharing app at RocketSpace, I’m moving on…

I’ve really enjoyed exploring a new realm of expression with everyone in the Storia development, design and product management team and the Storia user community, the gift of getting to know creative thoughtful people better through your creations in the app, sharing stories with hundreds of people around the world, and all the candid discussions we've had about our life and passions.

I also admire the vision of so many beta testers and content creators for this new storytelling service and its budding community. The feedback shared with me about shaping Storia as a technology that supports your life and most important relationships and pursuits has been insightful, and generous.

To everyone I've talked with in the past 16 months -- whether you used the app or not, whether you're on Android or iOS or only the web, whether we've known each other for ages or just met on the side of the road for a few minutes, believe me, we talked about it -- I thank you for your contributions to the development of this story sharing social network and want you to know that I was listening deeply.

Even as I move on, I'm looking forward to what Storia has planned, and what people everywhere are going to do with Storia in the future.

What's next for me? I'll be around, and engaging with you about where we're headed with content, community, visual storytelling, and all things digital media and startup.

I'll also be talking with startups about chief product or chief community builder roles, and consulting on product, operations, marketing, growth.

On June 4, I'll be holding a speed advice clinic for startup founders in San Francisco.

With CXO advisor visiting from London Shefaly Yogendra -- who recently exited her fine jewellery venture and has two decades of international business building, and has been named a top writer at Quora for the past three years -- in 20 minute slots, we'll listen deeply to your problem and offer possible implementable steps.

Let me know if you want to come that day with a question related to product strategy, content and community building, branding, market outreach, governance, global growth. We'll get you a spot, and tell you where we'll be.

Can A Visual Story Become A Book Proposal?

That's what Toronto celebrity chef Zane Caplansky and I are going to find out, and you're invited to join us.

We're collaborating at Storia.me (formerly named Selfish), the new visual storytelling service where I've been heading content and community for the past year, to create the foundation of a book about his adventures building a deli empire.

Zane's a great storyteller, and his quest for the perfect smoked meat sandwich has taken him on a personal and professional journey around the world, from dive bars and divorce into foodie business ventures on wheels and construction lots, and onto the shelves of Whole Foods and television shows judging donuts and national radio airwaves talking about what makes Canadian food uniquely Canadian.

He's changed his name and returned to his roots and now he's serving handmade, homemade Jewish deli food the way his mother and grandmother taught him, and sharing his biggest lessons about life and how what we crave -- yes, it could be a sandwich -- holds the key to our future.

It's a story we can all enjoy.

In fact, a major Canadian literary agent requested Zane's book proposal.

Two years ago.

Does that sound familiar?

It's a common story and nightmare of many promising writers. You're busy. It's a lot of material to get your arms around. It's overwhelming! It takes time to pick out a narrative, pin down the content you want to draw from when you start writing. It also takes time to compare and contrast other related titles.

So here's what Zane and I are going to try at Storia.me, with its topic-specific, ongoing stories and its moments of photo, video and text:

We'll start capturing chapter ideas for his memoir in an exclusive story, and in this collaborative story Proposing Deli Man we'll walk you through what we’re doing together. Kind of like a blueprint for how we're doing it.

If you're a writer you'll probably find it interesting in a behind-the-scenes-in-publishing kind of way (and you might want to try it yourself, right along with us).

If you're a fan of Zane's food and his life stories, you might like to see him put together this book like he puts together his lovingly made smoked meat sandwiches.

He'll also be sharing about this project on all his platforms -- like a media- and audience-savvy book author needs to -- and inviting people to come peek in and comment. That includes you. We want to hear your thoughts every step of the way.

"It's a good example of collaboration, as well as a brilliant idea and useful for me," Zane says.

We can't wait to get started. So subscribe right now to our behind-the-scenes story Proposing Deli Man, and Zane Caplansky's Storywhere we'll be capturing all the delicious material representing his story, and be sure you're following Zane too so you don't miss any new stories he starts.

If you know anyone who would like to watch this unfold, or take part themselves, share this right now.

See you in the story!

Are You On Flipboard?

Are you on Flipboard? I'm testing it out as a curation platform. Here are my magazines on social justice, "SJW: There's nothing wrong with wanting to right the world", and forward thinking in culture, media, tech & digital life. See what you think!

#FilmHerStory: Anicia Juliana

For women's history month,  #filmherstory, an addictive Twitter meme calls attention to female protagonists and their forgotten, ignored, or too-little-known stories we want to see on screen...there are so so many. As far as I can tell, it was started by  curator Shaula Evans, film producer Cat Cooper, Miriam Bale and film and TV creator Lexi Alexander. Read through the suggestions in that Twitter hashtag, and suggest your own.

#FilmHerStory is a rallying cry for movies about women who shaped history http://t.co/lorDSUWCDX

— Daily Dot Newswire (@DailyDotWire) March 4, 2015

I suggested a story I've been researching and developing for years, the story of a forgotten monumental woman builder who built the most decorated building in the world and spurred an emperor to best her.

An emperor built #HaghiaSophia -- to beat what this 6th c. woman built down the street. http://t.co/tam0mhdXAi#filmherstory — Anastasia Ashman (@AnastasiaAshman) March 4, 2015

Here's where you can see more about my Byzantine princess story in development, including images and research:

• Byzantine Paving Stones For My Istanbul Intern Marina Khonina

• Byzantine Soap Opera

• My Forgotten Footnote to the Haghia Sophia

 Click on this mind map to get the scope of the story:

I’ve been developing this story since, while creating an Istanbul walking tour for National Geographic Traveler, I literally tripped over the foundations of a social grudge between my superlative-but-forgotten 6th century princess and Justinian — which prompted the Holy Roman Emperor to build his world-beating Haghia Sophia Church a mile down the road. The man needed to best Anicia Juliana. See my Pinterest board about it.

Bringing decision-maker and startup mentor Shefaly Yogendra to RocketSpace

"almost all our #decisionmaking issues begin & end with people, we aren't making decisions in a vacuum." ~ @shefaly at @RocketSpace workshop — Anastasia Ashman (@AnastasiaAshman) February 26, 2015

Did you know decision making is a discipline?

Thrilled to be able to bring my longtime friend and global woman entrepreneur peer Shefaly Yogendra, visiting the San Francisco area from her base in London, to speak at RocketSpace.

She'll be leading a decision-making workshop on the co-working campus tomorrow.

Check out Shefaly's answers on Quora, where she's been named a Quora Top Writer for 2013, 2014, and 2015.

And here she is, talking about "risk literacy" after Angeline Jolie announced her decision to get elective mastectomies.

See the photos here at Storehouse.

Key takeaways:

• problems are dynamic, solutions are dynamic
• going with your gut feeling is as good as rationalizing a decision
• we all make imperfect decisions, they are only perfect at that moment in time

I'm doing an AMA on Reddit. Come ask me a question.

EDIT: Here's where you can see my completed AMA.

Wut.

I'm doing an AMA on Reddit this Thursday February 5 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern.

AMA stands for "Ask Me Anything", an interview where everyone can participate.

Come ask me some questions?

My topic is "What's so wrong about being Selfish?" and in true AMA fashion, that's just a starting point for what we'll be talking about. I'll be joined by Brock McLaughlin, manager of the Luke Austin Band and a Canadian Selfish brand ambassador who racks up karma points with his obsession of dressing up his pug Sidney Vicious, and Selfish's iOS project manager Marat Kinyabulatov checking in from the Ural Mountains.

Here's one of my favorite questions from the day: "Do you think the name "Selfish" might turn people off from joining the network?"

My answer:

"Yes, it's a hurdle because our associations with the word are so one-sided. Since childhood we've been admonished "don't be selfish." When someone's breaking up with us, we dread hearing the reason "you're selfish." But we have to put the oxygen mask on ourselves before we can help anyone else, right? And there's also a growing trend that we need to take care of ourselves, and nourish what we care about.

"We have an assortment of interests and relationships and ways of being. Social networking and mobile apps and visual capture tools should be able to map to those realities, and give us the control and power we desire."

How To Become Your Own North Star On The Internet

If you aren’t thinking deeply about how and where and w/whom you appear and interact on the web, you need to start. http://t.co/t5ncPjzIUV — ken_homer (@ken_homer) October 15, 2014

We're all digital strategists now.

In fact, if you aren't thinking deeply about how and where and with whom you appear and interact on the web, you need to start.

Today. You can and should be using your online presence as a 21st century life & work skill to connect with relevant people, information you need and enriching opportunities. I'm going to help, so you can get started today. (And the resources I'm sharing with you are completely free, so if you want to buy something you'll have to go find a different post.) I've been saying all of this for years. Doing it for years. As a content and digital publishing specialist, I've been showing people how to use their own content to connect purpose and action in digital spaces, for 5 years, both in private and group coaching environments. Along with Tara Agacayak and Tanya Monsef Bunger, I built a curriculum at GlobalNiche, a social web training company that's now shifting into an empowered digital life movement, so you can do it on your own, or in groups, wherever you are and whoever you are and whatever you do. If you are a person active online, this training will ask you the strategic questions you need to be thinking about. If you're not yet active or don't love being online, this will help you figure out what makes sense for you. Our combined 25 years of experience, including major expatriate life and work challenges, forced us to tap our backgrounds in culture, info tech, media & psychology to create this network-activating system using the backbone of the social web. We've used this method to survive. No matter who or where you are, you can use it to thrive.

I'm now making that training perfectly free, so you can take advantage of all our guidance immediately.

Want to learn how? It's my gift to you! Start by downloading the handbook

  When you download this powerful free handbook you're going to start to transform what you do, how you do it and with whom. This repeatable, dynamic six-step method will help you become your own North Star on the Internet and bring you closer to the people and things you care about. You'll emerge with inspiration, direction and confidence:

• a vision that lights you up and goals you can measure

• a do-able plan and digital skills you need

• and a practice and peer group you can rely on to keep going

Here's what people who've done it say:

• "I felt I couldn’t catch up. The way GlobalNiche describes social media – it’s about using technology to communicate naturally – clicked for me." ~ paralegal

• “Opened my eyes to my own assets. It has given me the confidence to bet on myself.” ~ work-at-home parent

• “I doubled my Twitter presence just by learning about good Twitter etiquette.” ~ scriptwriter

• “I’m blown away by the possibilities. I now have an action plan. I feel a huge shift in my life." ~ academic

• "For people who are wondering if what they have to say is valuable.” ~ financial officer

• "Helped me to recognize and own how I am being virtually “seen” and make positive and educated changes." ~ landscape contractor

With this non-dogmatic foundational method you'll:

• uncover the real value you've already created: by taking inventory of what you've been doing, detecting the patterns in your activities, gaining insight into what you're drawn to

• put your mountain of natural resources to work for you: by acknowledging all that you’ve created and use it to gain insight into who you are and who you want to be

• show the world how you make sense: by linking what you've done in the past & are doing today with your wider goals

• recognize that you need to become visible to meet people you want to collaborate with, work for, hire

• combine who you are and where you want to go with the tools available to express yourself

• make empowered, focused decisions about how to operate online

• go beyond managing your reputation online to using social media to represent your best self

• meet and enter conversations with your peers, mentors and customers on the web

• get recognized by authorities & peers in your field, recruiters, the media

• identify how to use existing materials as building blocks for future projects

• identify new ways to use social media, which platforms work for you (and which do not), and how to use those platforms to your advantage

• express yourself with the best social web tools available, including how to use Google+, Quora, ScoopIt and Storify to your benefit

• gain a new understanding of the best social media and content management and strategy tools, formats, methods to try

• establish an interactive calling card at a site like About.me

• learn best practices for blogging frameworks like WordPress and Thesis, blogging services like Twitter and Tumblr, social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram

• learn best uses of video and slideshow sites like Animoto, YouTube, Vimeo, Slideshare, email service providers

• grasp a new perspective on yourself as a content creator, realize the energy you generate around your interests IS content

• publish, record, remix, repackage, reformat your content

• design and implement a do-able plan with small steps to get your creations into global circulation in alignment with your larger goals

We're all digital strategists now. Here's what you, personally, need to do to win the Internet. https://t.co/EBxi9xPJhs by @AnastasiaAshman

— E.B. Boyd (Liza) (@ebboyd) October 16, 2014

Want more?

If you want more guidance, get the free multimedia curriculum which expands on the handbook with video coaching and other materials. You'll have lifetime access to the self-paced course, 24/7, on all your devices. I'm making that entire program perfectly free for you, so join with a friend and do it together! 4,700 people already cashed in this free coupon to get connected & effective. Did you? Let me know how you're liking it!

Storytellers with iPhones! Want to be a pioneer?

  I'm heading community and content in a new semi-private social networking tool for visual storytelling called Selfish. We're about to launch our beta iOS apps in Russia and Canada, then in the US and Android a little later, along with our desktop component. Big, global stuff for socially savvy publishers!

We're looking for digital media pioneers and adventurous, creative people to work with us as we get the kinks out of the technology, and gear up for a public  launch. We're a work-in-progress, and we want to pay you for your own works-in-progress.

I'm pleased to announce the Selfish Content Creator Program.

Our paid content creator program runs from August 25-October 25. Those dates may shift, so check it out no matter what. (See full details here, and get the link to download the app on your iPhone. You'll need iOS7 or iOS8 to use the app.)

You'll be using the tool to fashion a short, connected string of posts with photos and brief text on a topic, either alone or with other co-authors.

• You can do this with your friends or family, in fact, we prefer you do it with other people since this is a collaborative tool.
• Use informal language and conversational tone.
• Ideal topics are a weekend road trip; details about your obsessions, hobbies or work or sports you play; attending a special occasion, an event like a concert or a wedding or a conference; events in an interest group you belong to.
• You can repurpose previously published material.
• You can use personal content.

The aim of this program for North American/English language creative communities is to attract diverse content into the app that reflects best uses of the tool.

I'd like to encourage creatives and bloggers out there to try the app and test its capabilities in telling a story that comes naturally to you, including stories that are happening in your life right now. Capturing real time, ongoing adventures is something this app supports well.

Also, we're going to pay you to start a story but you can always continue your Selfish stories after you reach the pay mark. We imagine you'll want to as you realize the value you've created and the new ways you discover to share your life and interests with the people who matter to you.

What are we looking for? The basics of a winning Selfish story in this program are:

• has a good cover/title/story description,
• with coauthors,
• a minimum of 10 moments total of photos and text,
• uses hashtags and geotags and @ mentions,
• with active comments, and
• social shares throughout the creation process.

Presenting our content creator program in a Selfish story (see it here) is an experiment to show you how a Selfish story works, how it's an ongoing thread of small moments, how it's different than a blog post, how it's different than a tweet or a Facebook status or a Facebook photo album, or a Pinterest pin, or an Instagram photo.

As my fellow content creator, communicator, publisher, writer, transmedia storyteller, as my fellow friend, family member, and member of other interest communities, I think you might want to know about this new mobile, social, online option for connecting what you care about with how and what you capture and share, and with whom you choose to share it. If you have questions, just ask me. I'd love to try to answer.

This story about the program shows you sample screens of existing content and creation flows while you consider the guidelines. It also demonstrates what kind of Selfish powers you can expect to harness for your own storytelling goals:

• a Selfish story has one link and is shareable everywhere;
• a Selfish story can have multiple coauthors, all posting into the ongoing story;
• a Selfish story is made of multiple moments of photos and text all linked together;
• a Selfish story is created in the mobile app and displayed on the web;
• a Selfish story on the web is displayed in animated moments with rotating images and blocks of text;
• a Selfish story is interactive, with comments and likes on each moment;
• if you’re a registered user, you can subscribe to any public Selfish story so you get all the moments in your feed;
• and, Selfish is free;
• there's more, because Selfish is all about user controls, but hey this post has to end some time.

Check out the content creator program, or send this link to someone you know who might like to try it: http://bit.ly/SelfishApp

My Complete Handbook On Slideshare

Inspirations & Friends & Mentors = The Kind Of Relationships I Want To Have

@AnastasiaAshman Always learn something amazing from our chats. You're an inspiration, a friend, and a mentor. — billie mason (@DoxyGal) April 5, 2014

 Thanks Billie, you made my day!

Byzantine Paving Stones For My Istanbul Intern Marina Khonina

SO PLEASED to be able to provide this LinkedIn reference to my Byzantinist intern Marina Khonina on her road to applying to grad school!

And what a fun walk down memory lane on my pop cultural/historical project that remains in development...

Marina was a joy to work with in Istanbul on my pop cultural, Byzantinist research project about the Church of Polyeuktos.

Her facility with Byzantine history and exuberant curiosity helped me develop the outline for an art historical saga of interest to a modern audience about a Byzantine aristocrat, Anicia Juliana, and her architectural rivalry with Emperor Justinian which resulted in him building a wonder of the ancient world and seat of Christianity for 1,000 years (Haghia Sophia), and her forgotten.

Marina contributed valuable context and insight into the story’s most compelling themes of religious symbolism and gender roles, including the link between Jerusalem and Constantinople and

• what it meant for a woman to be a non-royal patron of the arts
• what it meant to equate herself with King Solomon and the emperor
• what it meant to claim she was head of the Christian church

...all of which Juliana did in building her edifice.

(You begin to see why I picked this subject to develop.)

Marina added rich new perspective to how Juliana was misrepresented historically vis a vis the lesser-accomplished Empress Theodora, and the daring Chalcedonian statement Juliana made in restoring another woman’s building project.

I’d recommend Marina for inclusion in any advanced research venture.

Speaking About Community Building With Social Media at Exceptional Women In Publishing Conference

Along with behavior design entrepreneur Pamela Day -- who's a researcher at Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab -- and Amanda Barbara from the global crowd-funding publishing platform PubSlush, the "Kickstarter for books" and another pro from a major social media platform you all know about, in March I'll be speaking on a "How to build meaningful community with social media" panel.

This event at the Julia Morgan Ballroom will be the 6th Annual Women’s Leadership Conference with a theme of How to Move Forward: Women Leaders in Media, a day-long event of discussions about successful business and content models of today and tomorrow.

So pleased to be joining speakers including

• Deanna Brown (CEO of Byliner with whom I've recently had a chance to discuss the future of digital reading as an entertainment channel to rival Netflix and HBO)
• my fellow author Sarah Granger (founder of Center for Technology, Media & Society, who has the distinction of being the person I've been following on Twitter the longest and finally we met in person at TEDxBay Area in 2012! Her book "The Digital Mystique" comes out from my own publisher Seal Press later this year.)
• Yumi Wilson (LinkedIn for journalists)
• Rose Aguilar of KALW radio (who came into my world back when I was planning the Expat Harem book tour through the Bay Area!)
• and others from AOL, Flipboard, The Bold Italic, Upworthy, Disney, San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, The New York Times, Sunset, Pacific Standard, Quartz

The day's honoree is Kara Swisher, formerly of the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD and now founder of Re/Code, while the host Michelle Fitzhugh-Craig is an award winning journalist with more than 15 years in print and online reporting, editing, social media and design.

It promises to be a great day. Here's where to register. If you can't attend, follow along on Twitter (starting now!) with the hashtag #ewip2014. Open a window on the day's speakers by following EWIP2014 Speakers Twitter list by Erin Browner.

Watch a video of my panel here, thanks to videographer Stacy McKenzie.

2014 Marks 2 Years Of Offering The GlobalNiche Program: An Update & Shifting Of Gears

An update from me, my GlobalNiche cofounder Tara Agacayak, and our team member Tanya Monsef Bunger. 

Today over 3000 are taking the course, with 13 study group leaders working to bring the program to their own communities of artisans, expats, servant leaders, writers and academics, and women entrepreneurs.

It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to have worked full time on this endeavor for the past 24 months.Today we’re excited to share what we’ve achieved -- as well as how we’re shifting gears.

Back in 2009, we envisioned a professional alliance of people connected online sharing ideas and supporting each other’s work.

We began speaking to groups about how to use social media to develop professionally by building an online web platform. We conducted on and offline seminars and workshops, masterminds and community-building programs.

By committing to work in community, we evolved the GlobalNiche program as an easy, systematic, iterative way to build a platform for opportunity to happen. We realize that our individual platforms open us up to opportunity -- not by magic, but by connecting us with our global community via the social web.

In the past two years, we’ve won an award for our global community-building methodology, hosted 20+ live web conversations with emerging thought leaders on cutting edge GlobalNiche issues, designed, created and delivered email tutorials, program pilots, a self-study workbook, a high-touch 6-week coaching program, on-demand multimedia programs, 2 online study groups, a peer study group training, supported 3 peer study groups with more on the calendar and published a Kindle handbook. We’ve also provided our platform building tutorial to the Global Tech Women conference, become a LeanIn platform partner, spoken at numerous events and broadened the GlobalNiche network to include women leaders, content creators, social business people and entrepreneurs everywhere. We’re proud to have contributed to, participated in, and added GlobalNiche’s definition and practice to these global life/work movements:

• every-day entrepreneurial thinking and acting, creative entrepreneurship as a solution for everyone
• location independence and lifestyle design in populations beyond expats, travelers and life hackers
• recognition of the importance of digital identity, personal branding, digital footprints and online social networking for personal and professional development
• re-envisioning the future of work with online collaboration and co-creation
• the adoption of global communication best practices
• the tidal wave of online content marketing
• the rise of the transformational consumer and transformational online communities

Working on GlobalNiche educated us in what it takes to build a business. We’ve gained a new appreciation for what we know, as well as identified gaps in our own knowledge, skills, abilities and experience.

Our early stage founder experience took us into the startup world. We opened and maintained profiles at accelerator and incubator application platforms like Gust.com, Angel.co, and F6s.  We attended founder events, applied to accelerators, got VC training for elevator pitches, learned the investment landscape. We learned about the role of mentors, advisors, and equity positions.

We tried our hand at investor presentations, worked toward that elusive thing called “product-market fit”, learned about choosing vendors, designed logos and website look & feel, investigated shopping cart and affiliate network solutions until we ran screaming in the other direction.

We worked on what seems like a lifetime about brand messaging - writing taglines and elevator pitches on a weekly basis (and still not there yet).

We discovered what it means to be a globally distributed team managing a variety of time zones, test driving collaboration software.

Looking back on all that we’ve achieved and learned, we realize that we’ve reached our 2009 goal of building an online global support alliance. More than that, we developed a curriculum that teaches people the skills they need to do this for themselves.

Now we’re turning the method over -- to you, and to your communities, and to people far beyond those in our current networks -- to let it grow.

2014’s shift toward a community-based movement not only makes the method available to more people but it also allows the founding team to focus on applying what we’ve learned, what we built, and the skills we developed on new projects and in ever wider communities. This is the next chapter for GlobalNiche thinking and methodology. Tara is leaving her position with GlobalNiche. She is putting her strategy and analytical skills to work doing market research for a London-based company and she has been contracted as project manager on an upcoming socio-cultural book about Turkey.

Anastasia continues to lead the GlobalNiche movement by holding the vision and on-going operations. She has taken a community-building position in a new social storytelling startup being incubated at RocketSpace in San Francisco. As a speaker and consultant, this spring she’ll be talking about platform at the Exceptional Women In Publishing conference, and leading a workshop with Tanya about the GlobalNiche Method at Women’s Startup Lab.

Tanya is continuing business development related to the GlobalNiche movement. She is working with female founders/entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley to accelerate their businesses and has also accepted a professorship at Santa Clara University where she’s exploring opportunities to use the GlobalNiche curriculum. She will act as director of the Global Fellows program.

As we shift gears, we’re grateful and proud of what we’ve created together, how the GlobalNiche movement continues to support our growth through the principles we’ve established in the program and using social technology.

And as ever, we appreciate being on this journey with you.

Another Storytelling Venture Sheds Old Media Constraints For 21st Century Creativity & Context

Blogger and columnist Ezra Klein (formerly of the Washington Post) just announced in The Verge his new news venture "Project X" at Vox Media. It aims to address the question: "why hasn't the Internet made the news better at delivering crucial context alongside new information?" "New information is not always — and perhaps not even usually — the most important information for understanding a topic," Klein writes in The Verge. That's the way news has functioned in the past, often due to space restrictions. "The web has no such limits. There's space to tell people both what happened today and what happened that led to today."

As a 21st century content creator with an old media background, I'm familiar both with the restrictions Project X's founders (including Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias ) have been bristling under and the avenues they want to pursue.

News is a natural field for building a rich new ecosystem of information around content.

For the past decade I've been committed to doing on a personal scale what Project X aims to do for news: Plumbing the content of deep interests and creating transmedia stories that can live and grow online.

Our time is coming!

Curating My Influences On Entrepreneurship, Global Women Entrepreneurs, & Future Of Work

Just started this curation topic at Scoop.it and I've already got more 100 links of evergreen value and cutting-edge thinking.

I've been harvesting all the links I've been discovering, sharing, posting and discussing for the last couple of years in the dark social of email and private (and some now defunct) discussion settings.

That includes material I discovered and shared over the past four years at my LinkedIn GlobalNiche group, my Facebook Creative Entrepreneurs group, my Facebook GlobalNiche graduates group. I'm also posting my original comments on each of those shares.

Expect more as I pull links from more than a year's worth of postings at Basecamp, a collaborative service I've been using to discuss entrepreneurial issues with my GlobalNiche team members.

If you're interested in these topics and the thinking from around the web that has most influenced me, it's easy to subscribe to the collection in one click over at Scoop.it.

1,000 People Just Joined The GlobalNiche Program. Did You?

That's right, 1,000 people around the world said yes to free access to my self-paced training to achieve your potential online.

Were you one of them? No? Got a few minutes and care to get connected and effective in 2014? Do these 2 things NOW.

1) Claim your complimentary seat. That'll give you 24/7 access to our on-demand multimedia curriculum. The training will help you navigate the social web to get closer to who and what matters to you.

Invite anyone you want to bring along with you. Our treat. Just share this link.

2) Then give me a shout on Twitter so I can be sure to add you to our list of your peers. That makes it easy for you to connect and work together! Plus, we're already talking there using the #globalniche hashtag.

...and welcome to all the lovely people I glimpsed in the new roster, including Leslie, Linda, Nicolas, Lindsey, Bonnie, Rachel, Katja, Eleanor, Julia, Chris, Simone, Shirley, Wendy, Christine, Harma, Stephanie, Oshikan, Myrthe, Jonelle, Aisha, Nicole, Kathy, Nilgun, Teike, Milo, Michaela, Monique, Sher, Craig, Jennifer, Karlijn, Roberta, Lynn, Michelle, Suraya, Andrea, Jeane, Bia, Neil, Zlatana, Linda, Laurie, Ebru...

I'm looking forward to getting connected and effective with you this year.

January 26 update: make that 2,600 new people. Welcome!

Here's A Way To Ask For And Get Support For Personal & Pro Challenges, On An On-Going Basis

Graduates of my program are prepping to bring GlobalNiche's online presence & online community building methodology to their own worlds as servant leaders in peer-based workshops (like this group led by Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt starting in November). With this framework, in six weeks the network is connected and has a model to continue working together and a place to do so.

I've also been brainstorming the groups of people in my life I want to connect with more effectively. (You try it. Bet you can name three groups of people close to you that you want to see succeed.)

My groups share a common thread.

We are peers and colleagues and friends and acquaintances -- and we are siloed in what we know, what we are trying to do,  how we do it, and with whom. We don't fully consider or know how to tap the resource we represent to each other.

That's what I'm proposing. A methodology to work in community on our own goals, with a stronger network as a result. A way we can all be cocreators of an effective network using the backbone of the social web. A way to ask for and get help and support for personal and professional challenges, on an on-going basis.

I see you.

You are people whose dreams I've been privy to, whose skills and talents I'm aware of, whose personal and professional pressures I know, whose untapped potential I recognize, and who I feel a commitment to helping put it all together to get where you want to go.

You're also people I would love to be better connected to, and who I'd like to connect better to fellow kindred spirits in my network. People you'd like to know. People who can help you and improve your life.

Groups I'd like to be a servant leader to are:

1) people I've collaborated with professionally or been in peer work groups with, including writers and media pros and publishing world types.

Often coming out of traditional models and feeling the brunt of disruption, I understand your skepticism and why you are slow to adopt today's social web tools and ways of operating;

2) friends whose work and dreams I'm aware of but we've never really brought our full professional selves together to make things happen.

We can go beyond commiserating over coffee and silo-ing the personal and professional in our relationship;

3) people I have a history of interacting with intellectually in the long term, like fellow alumnae of my college;

4) acquaintances who ask me about what I do or how I do it, but don't imagine yourself doing it.

This would include my hairdresser who as an independent professional who moves from salon to salon could use the continuity and discoverability of an online portfolio. The young pilates instructor I met at the Wisdom 2.0 conference who could be establishing her practice with instruction videos online. The woman I met at a cocktail party recently who hadn't heard of local and online gatherings of people who share her cross-cultural experience;

5) people who have followed and appreciated my cultural work like Expat Harem the book and also the blog but don't see how it translates into GlobalNiche's social web training and online community building and personal brand building -- or why any of that is a way to help you live in the world the way you saw glimpses of in my cultural work.

People who haven't yet grasped that your cultural understandings, sensitivities, interests, experiences are assets and guidance you can use to live more fully with the help of social, mobile, and online tools and life. People who don’t yet see how your cultural understanding can help you on the internet, and in fact, give you an advantage online.

I see you, and I can envision what will emerge from our better connection. Don't wait for me to contact you. Reach out right now and let's get started.

Turkey's Top Selling Novelist Elif Shafak Recommends Expat Harem in The Telegraph

Thanks, Elif!

Turkey's highest selling novelist Elif Shafak recommends Tales from the Expat Harem, the anthology I coedited with Jennifer Gokmen, in the United Kingdom's Daily Telegraph.

In "Flights of the imagination: Elif Shafak on books about Turkey", she writes about Expat Harem:

"It brings out the voices of Western and Eastern women in Turkey. Travellers, students, teachers, housewives – the cultural shock that some of them went through, their personal encounters and how they made Turkey, or perhaps limbo, their home."

Elif also wrote the foreword to our book back in 2005 for the Turkish Dogan Kitap editions in both English and Turkish!

Talking Broadway With The Book Of Mormon Director

Dining at Bebek's Poseidon with visiting Broadway musical director Casey Nicholaw (he won the Tony for the satirical Book of Mormon!) and Josh Market (he does actress Jane Krakowski's hair on 30 Rock). We had plenty of entertainment world issues to talk about since I used to work for Broadway & Grammy Awards producer Pierre Cossette when I lived in LA.

Thanks to former Discovery Networks president and founder of Akoo (that's social media television to you) Billy Campbell for the introduction!