Sarah Granger's The Digital Mystique

So pleased to support digital life thinker and my fellow Seal Press author Sarah Granger's launch of The Digital Mystique. In The Digital Mystique: How the Culture of Connectivity Can Empower Your Life – Online and Off, Granger shows us how digital media is shaping our lives in real time.

Long before I moved to SF and met her at TEDx Bay Area's Global Women Entrepreneurs, I was following Sarah on Twitter  (since 2008!) where she was virtually taking me to the conferences and into the conversations I love about how digital life is shaping the way we learn, grow, and thrive. 

Sarah's shared her path to publishing this book and along the way I've been thrilled to share with Sarah my own experiences with the empowerment digital life can bring.

I really appreciate the enriching role she plays in her community, and thank her for recommending me as a speaker for the Exceptional Women in Publishing conference.

The book launch is September 9 in San Francisco at AppDynamics and will feature the viewing of an Emmy-nominated six minute video by Tiffany Shlain, an introduction by BlogHer cofounder Elisa Camahort Page, and remarks by the author.

Check out the book no matter where you are!

At TEDxBayArea Global Women Entrepreneurs, LinkedIn Headquarters - Mountain View

Happy to attend for the second time in two years this TEDxBayArea event organized by Tatyana Kanzaveli to celebrate women leaders around the world.

As Tatyana explains, "Speakers come from diverse backgrounds in the Bay Area and beyond, spanning half way across the globe. Our goal is to highlight a broad spectrum of ideas, thought leadership and business models, addressing a select Silicon Valley audience, while providing an engaging day full of presentations, entertainment and conversation in the renowned TED style."

Joined by Dahlia Krausse Stein (who I met at the 2011 event!), Tara visiting from Istanbul, fellow San Francisco entrepreneur Pamela Day, Google expert Jeris JC Miller, the founder of Tealet at 500 Startups, and speakers Singularity University's Vivek Wadhwa, fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, Sumaya Kazi and finally got to meet in person Whitney Johnson, president of a disruptive innovation investing firm and author of "Dare, Dream, Do."

Formulating My Own Future Of Work

Talking about GlobalNiche with someone considering producing a Future-of-Work-themed TEDx in the Bay Area...this is what I told her.

I'm currently working on putting years of theory and practice into a marketable solution.

Basically, positioning the life hacks of internationals and other operatives who have found themselves at cultural disadvantage as an approach that many many people can benefit from -- from those who've never left their hometown but have dreams they think are impossible there, those who've been retired prematurely or otherwise lost their jobs, to those who just graduated and face a bleak job market, to WAHMs and others in nontraditional work settings.

Custom Creative: The Making Of An Authentic Indie Life

Happy blizzard -- or dense fog in the morning! We've got entrepreneurial social media life/work things to do in the low-visibility season ahead. BTW here's an overview never before available: If you're at all interested you can now peek behind-the-scenes of my top five cultural producing projects related to but not strictly expat+HAREM. Hint: Family culture clashes! Art historic soap operas of imperial proportion! [link removed, no longer available]

+++++ AT expat+HAREM

Our shiny new Facebook page replaces a group set to retire one random day. Don't want to lose you in the shuffle. Please post on our FB wall any kind of culturati link you're liking today.

Do we look older more experienced? We just celebrated our first full year of bloghood! 23 guest bloggers to thank, we're also grateful for 2300 comments which took us to surprising intersections of culture and identity. Here we all weigh in on the posts which affected us the most.

2011 starts with the editor of Matador Life Leigh Shulman contrasting the peregrinations of a fictional exile with her own rolling stone life. Why do we leave the places we know, and is the melancholy of disconnect any different if it's elective or imposed on us?

YOUR PRO GLOBAL NICHE IS A WEB PLATFORM...

Not just a dreamy concept of world citizenship, your global niche is about "blooming where you're planted" in a holistic way, being creative and entrepreneurial to find happiness, growth and success wherever you are and in all your aspects.

In conjunction with creative biz consultancy Turquoise Poppy, expat+HAREM is excited to lead a January 22 demonstration of how to build your global niche through social media.

Not geographically convenient, or complete newbie? Cultural creatives and mobile progressives everywhere can now start learning the web tools, techniques and technology: our new mailing list will get you started with free tutorials and keep you posted about next steps, like our upcoming mastermind program for creative entrepreneurs.

That's a high-impact online course where a supportive set of your international, creative peers will help you build your global niche on the web. +++++ AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB

We loved Dr. Brene Brown's recent TEDxHouston talk on  wholeheartedness and its root in expressing our vulnerability.

But the blog of longtime expat Diana Baur and majorly creative entrepreneur (the American potter is an innkeeper in Italy) sharpens the point for identity adventurers and global nomads like us. "Wholehearted people don't have an externally-driven directive about living correctly."

To live authentically individual lives we need to embrace the parts of ourselves that don't fit anywhere.

Publication to watch --> BETA is an about-to-be-released quarterly print mag from the global online travel network Matador. All about motion, journey and place, apparently the cheeky thing subtitled the topography of living will be sold at "some of our favorite camel markets and opium dens worldwide."

+++++ YOUR THOUGHTS

In the new year we're looking at where others end and we begin. "What are you redefining?" we asked.

Beth Wettergreen, the new liaison between a private university in Istanbul and U of Maryland, is struggling with the concept of 'private life' in Turkey. "Here, one is almost never unobserved. I have a feeling that the notion of a truly private life is reserved for the upper middle class and upper class."

Meanwhile another expat is facing the boundaries of a life vision at odds with cultural expectations of a woman who 'works' from home yet is not a traditional housewife.

"I risk appearing rude and living up to the stereotypes of the self-centered American in order to further myself along the path that feels right to me - even if others can't see it or understand it."

What creative, custom life/work solution are you looking for?