Community

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

Screen Shot 2014-01-26 at 4.09.26 PMBlogger 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!

Turkey-Related Entrepreneurs, Founders & Funders

Screen Shot 2014-01-23 at 5.29.29 PMOut having antique cocktails (that's the San Francisco way) at Comstock Saloon with family and friends. The international (and Turkish-related) set of startup entrepreneurs, founders and funders included Bora Sahinoglu, Burc Sahinoglu (of CratePlayer & HIVEBEATS), Rostem Hairedin (of Selfish.me) and Ersin Pamuksuzer of StartupBootcamp in Istanbul.

Ersin's latest venture was in the news this week, with TechCrunch announcing "As Investor Interest Heats Up In Turkey, Pan-European Accelerator Startupbootcamp Launches In Istanbul."

TechCrunch also reported that heat up this week. Congrats to my friend global VC Cem Sertoglu who's managing the $130 million Earlybird Digital East Fund (EDEF) "to invest in early and early growth startups in Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe."

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

Screen Shot 2014-01-15 at 12.38.28 PMJust 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.

SEO Yourself By Filling Out Your GooglePlus Profile

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Your G+ profile page is a web-wide cheat sheet for you & everyone else.

 

And when it’s time to update your avatar, your bio, your tagline, or whenever you’ve got fresh content to share, it'll help you remember where you are online too.

By hot linking all the places you need to update you’ll make your task so much easier. Since your G+ profile is prioritized by the Google search engine, when someone searches for you, they’ll also find all the other places you exist online too.

That's from my latest guest post for Jan Gordon's Curatti: Editors of Chaos.

I've been writing a weekly series about online community building at this social business and marketing site. My posts so far have incorporated aspects of curation, storytelling, branding, content strategy, conversation, cocreation, collaboration, discoverability, persuasion, fascination and engagement -- as well as highlighting best practices and work of industry figures I see leading the way.

Some of my Curatti guest posts:

Featured By Global Living Magazine As One Of Best Expat Books

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Thanks to Shelley Antscherl for naming Expat Harem among best expat anthologies in the January/February 2014 issue of Global Living Magazine!

I'm proud the book is listed alongside the work of editors like Suzanne Kamata of "Call Me Okasaan: Adventures In Multicultural Mothering", Monica Neboli of "Drinking Camel's Milk In The Yurt: Expat Stories from Kazahkstan", Diane Dicks of "Ticking Along Too: Stories About Switzerland", and Kate Cobb of "Turning Points25 Inspiring Stories From Women Entrepreneurs Who Turned Their Careers and Their Lives Around".

And thanks to Summertime Publishing publisher, Expat Book Shop proprietress and fellow expat writer Jo Parfitt for the review. "A fine bit of not just good writing, but literary writing, and that is due to the fabulous work of the editors."

See what else is in the issue here. Screen Shot 2014-01-18 at 8.38.03 AM Global Living is a luxury lifestyle magazine for global citizens and sophisticated internationals who live, have lived, or may someday will live outside their country of origin.

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

Image 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.

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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!

Prediction: You'll Be Your Own North Star On The Web in 2014

Pleased to be quoted in last night's #GetRealChat 2014 Social Trends with IBMConnect Speakers. Take a peek at the Storify slides from this on-fire tweet chat. Screen Shot 2013-12-11 at 1.00.39 PM

The first question of the night came from social business consultant and #GetRealChat leader Pam Moore. Moore asked Forbes columnist and author of SOCIALIZED Mark Fidelman about the convergence of social, mobile, analytics & the cloud in 2014. "What does this mean for consumers?"

Fidelman replied, "It means intelligent information will be delivered in context, wherever and whenever you want it. People will become even more sophisticated consumers and co-creators of technology and content."

That's my mantra of digital/media/info literacy, purposeful & intentional online presence, and community building through content and culture!

My answer to what's waiting for us in 2014 as our connection to each other strengthens and expands, as we gain insight into and direction from our data, and are relieved of its storage:

Convergence means we'll be our own North Star on the web.

 

Dynamite Waiting To Happen: My Fantasy Speaker List For A Conference On Global Women Entrepreneurs

Thinking about who I'd want to hear from on the topic of global women entrepreneurship, started a list of women whose thinking, feats and contributions in those three colliding spheres happen to bowl me over, and have, for YEARS. And when I write 'global' I don't mean 'outside of the US'. I mean global thinker. Global acknowledger. A woman owning her spot that's bigger than a particular place. Someone who considers deeply on a regular basis what it takes to operate in the world, and in the world today. This incorporates media, and politics, the economy, culture and society, business and tech.Screen Shot 2013-12-09 at 11.44.45 AM

To me, 'global' means people connecting dots that have never been connected before. These global women entrepreneurs are necessarily feminist, they are people pioneering their lives and work in ways we can all learn from.

I'd love to see them all speak together, both separately and in panel discussions.

Female wisdom nurturer, creative thinker and author Justine Musk. Haven't met her in person yet, but will soon, and we will compare some odd overlaps in our lives, like rocket scientist pasts, and writing books influenced by The Great Gatsby featuring characters with multiple personalities. Know her mind and her heart, and her capacity to help us all be who we really want to be.

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Multidisciplinary strategist, educator and jeweler Shefaly Yogendra, whose principled verve and deep perspective I've been enjoying on Twitter and Quora for many years. We've only managed to spend a morning together in London but I know there are many more adventures and discussions yet to have.

My fellow global nomad, Istanbul writing group colleague and author Nassim Assefi, who's the director of stage content for TEDMED'14 as well as a global women's health doctor and single mama extraordinaire. The woman attended at the birth of her own daughter. She wins everything in my book.

Worldwide people connector and super-techy Joyent SmartOS community manager Deirdre Straughan, a fellow international operator I met through a Twitter friend who went to boarding school with her in India. She's forgotten more than most of us will ever know about digital publishing, and the Italian culture. She's also the kind of woman to say, "I rock!" and be quite right.

LadyBits founder and "feminist cyborg" Arikia Millikan, who's pioneering a new media model for writing that tech-savvy women want to read, and she's doing it during a year's trip around the world.

Future thinker Nilofer Merchant, author of the totally prescient Social Era Rules and role model for me in making good use of her resources, and telling us what she wants and what she cares about and what she sees, even (and especially?) when it costs her to do so. Nilofer suggests Al Jazeera politics and economy columnist Sarah Kendzior, whose writing on Central Asia has also captivated me.

More names started coming.

Another Bryn Mawr woman, an immigration and startup specialist who I met through the expatriate network and then in person on the Expat Harem book tour in Washington D.C., Kirin Kalia.

There's global entrepreneurship author of "Steve Jobs Lives In Pakistan" Elmira Bayrasli, who I met through the Expat Harem blog's discussions about our mirror-image lives as she is a New Yorker of Turkish descent. Elmira's launching FPInterrupted, a startup to raise the voices of women in foreign policy.

More insistent names are coming to me.

Like new media-old media-McKinsey social media dynamo Aparna Mukherjee, who I've had the pleasure of being wowed by in Manila, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, New York, San Francisco and Istanbul since we met at an Asia-Pacific college reunion in the 1990s.

Like Michele Wucker, author and president of World Policy Institute.

I think we SHOULD make it happen, Fifi Haroon, mediamaker and political activist. (Fifi was my mate at college and we've been working our way back to each other for 30 years!)

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Network Science Says Info Brokering Between Networks Makes You A Game Changer. It's Also 2nd Nature To People With Hybrid Cultural Identities.

Don't I know it.

My own hybrid, cross-disciplinary, limbo-state life and work is founded on this phenomenon that network science acknowledges.

Screen Shot 2013-12-03 at 8.23.50 PM Michael Simmons, author and cofounder of iEmpact, explains in "Why Being The Most Connected Is A Vanity Metric" at Forbes that your network is a set of clusters and when you manage to broker info between them you're a game changer. And, being an info broker is a way of life, and you have to constantly fight the urge to relax into the comfort of a group you know. He points out being an info broker is a good foundation for entrepreneurship.

It's no coincidence (to me, or anyone else who read, wrote for, or commented at my hybrid identity discussion site expat+HAREM back in 2009! or anyone who's familiar with the principles of my current community-driven, social web curriculum startup GlobalNiche) that this Forbes piece was written by a multicultural, multiethnic hybrid identity entrepreneur whose life has naturally made him an info broker between networks.

Peruse the expat+HAREM discussions on identity and hybridity.  Look at the highlights of Rose Deniz's podcast about living the hybrid life and what you leave behind in order to do so.

That's echoed in Michael Simmons' piece -- the reason why we can't get comfortable in one group if we want to participate in what he calls "the renaissance of network science" -- is because we lose value and impact by staying ensconced there.

We need to move between all our clusters -- online, offline, professional, personal, ethnic, family, school, friends, interests -- bearing rich, precious, communal, resonant information. That's our job (and our lifestyle) as network game changers.

Worry About Who You Follow: Unpacking The Mysteries Of Online Community At Curatti

Your social networks are your window onto the world, and a lens on your market, I write in "Who You Follow Is Important And Here's Why" my first post in a new series at Curatti: Editors Of Chaos. On a regular basis at Curatti I’m going to be unpacking the mysteries of online community, and exploring how to organically grow a network filled with people who are all deriving value from their connection.

In this post I go on to explain that you determine how wide your window is, and how focused the lens. Ultimately, your online connections will color your day, slant your view, and propel your actions.

Take a look at your timelines. They are the fruit of your curation efforts. You selected whom you follow.

Do the people and accounts you follow challenge you (in a good way)?

Read the whole piece here.

Designating Best And Worst Places To Be An Expat Unhelpful Because Expatriate Life Isn't Monolithic

Screen Shot 2013-11-20 at 10.43.02 AMI find there are so many ways to be 'an expat' (economically, socially, culturally) that studies like this one from HSBC that looks at economic opportunities and quality of life in 34 countries don't begin to address, and therefore aren't very useful.

Once a fellow expat came to my apartment in Istanbul with its view and modern appliances in the kitchen and said, "Oh I get it, this is the expat life everyone's talking about."

She lived in a village outside a minor city with the local ladies setting up a couch outside her living room window to 'watch' her like an exotic animal. That was her frugal backpacker choice.

Meanwhile, when I visited consulate- and corporate-package expats who lived in upscale, gated housing compounds and didn't know the name of the street where they lived and didn't eat Turkish food and asked me if it was wise to get involved with a Turkish man, that was a different kind of expat world.

And that range is just anecdotal, and one country. There were many more ways to be an expat in Turkey, with wildly different economic opportunities and qualities of life.

The only way to begin to get meaningful results from a survey of 'expat' experience is if equal numbers of people all along the expat/foreign national scale -- economically, socially, culturally -- participated in each country.

Hearing From Women Startup Founders at Founders Den

Enjoyed this special panel discussion at Founders Den tonight, introduced by a principal in this SOMA coworking space, Zach Bogue (or Mr. Marissa Mayer to you) Screen Shot 2014-01-18 at 1.35.47 PM We heard from women founders of successful startups who got their start at Founders Den. From left to right: MODERATOR: Christina Brodbeck-Co-founder and Managing Partner, Rivet Ventures;Co-founder and CEO, TheIceBreak; Founding team member and first UI Designer at YouTube PANELISTS: Ruzwana Bashir-Founder and CEO, Peek.com; Heidi Zak-Founder and CEO, ThirdLove (which just got $5.6M funding this week); Deena Varshavskaya-Founder and CEO, Wanelo

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Most-Anticipated Launch Of The Season: Jan Gordon's Curatti Editors Of Chaos

New York-based Jan Gordon (a consummate curator on the social business scene) has created a one-stop shop for B2B business people looking for clarity and direction through the digital overwhelm. A longtime Twitter acquaintance of mine, my fellow attendee of GetStoried's Michael Margolis' inaugural 2010 Reinvention Summit and my fellow expert generalist, Jan just launched the Curatti salon.Screen Shot 2013-11-12 at 4.53.22 PM

The site is for entrepreneurial business people looking for meaning in the chaos of all this information, looking to reinvent the way they do things to get better results.

She told me she feels like Gertrude Stein, a catalyst and a conduit to draw together social, curation, content and community thought leaders (like my beloved #Ideachat's founder Angela Dunn) to help entrepreneurs find their own way.

"I live in the digital world, and help people navigate that and reblend it into the actual world," she says. The woman is my doppelgänger.

"We're going to be focusing on how to turn conversation into conversion," Jan says, about today's business quest to reach a moving target online through content and engagement. "Knowing who you're speaking to, setting up great content, and helping them gain knowledge and insights is how you're going to build a following."

The idea for the site came out of her own overwhelm as an early adopter. Now she's facilitating a platform for content, people to watch, news and trends, case studies, tools and training.

"People are desperate for context. That's what data can't give you, context. People want it straight. What do I need to know, what do I not know that you can teach me?"

I'm pleased to say that I will be a content partner to Curatti, charged with supplying a series of provocative thinking about community building on social networks, especially for businesses going through their own second acts (that's my thing, isn't it!?) and offering tips to navigate the disruption.

A Simple Strategy For Building A Global Network Isn't About You. Your Plan Has To Make The Network A No-Brainer For Its Users -- Not Its Builder

Which one of these is a 'simple' strategy for building a global network of people who have a range of digital abilities: a pervasive, cohesive presence with many online doors -- or one room in graveyard of the web?

Which one of these is a ‘simple’ digital strategy (true story!) of an organization that aims to build a global network from a millions-strong list of women it’s loosely associated with:

  • a pervasive, cohesive presence across multiple social networking services, a community with free flow of information -- with windows into other related rooms of your peers and corridors you can go down if and when you are ready, willing, able, that is, when are you motivated and enabled to connect and pursue what appeals to you about this gathered community,
  • OR, one room on a service known for not-loving its group functionality, a service littered with the skeletons of well-intentioned groups, a room that is 'easy' to open?

When you find yourself looking for a simple strategy to connect all your important people so they can finally get off an inert list of names and start to build closer ties, so you can ambiently be aware of your peers on a consistent basis, so you all can see each other and learn what everyone is up to, so you recognize your commonalities and your opportunities to collaborate, and so you can TAKE ACTION on your shared goals using the cost-effective, labor-saving, reach-amplifying online communication tools available in 2013, ask yourself this.

Simple for whom?

Is your plan simple for you, the community builder? Or is it simple for the community waiting to happen?

Toasting Seva Foundation's 35 Years Of Curing Blindness

Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 12.16.48 PMPleased to join the Berkeley-based Seva Foundation in celebrating sight returned to 3.5 million people, at the Beaux-Arts Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco, along with Bay Area luminaries like Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, men in tie-dye suits and women in saris. In keeping with the groovy beginnings of the foundation, each place setting had its own bottle of soap bubbles. The New York Times writes about the evening and the key role of Steve Jobs in helping to start the foundation with a $5,000 gift 35 years ago here.

Apparently 80% of blind people in the world can be cured with a 15 minute cataract surgery, which is what Seva set out to provide on a mass scale.

Seva was founded "by a group of medical professionals, counterculture activists, musicians, and compassionate individuals, all dedicated to the prevention of blindness around the globe" including public health expert Dr. Larry Brilliant, spiritual leader Ram Dass, and humanitarian activist Wavy Gravy.  Dr. Brilliant is the former director of Google's philanthropic arm Google.org.

Actor Peter Coyote was the MC of the evening which was capped by a performance by the Blind Boys of Alabama.  I got chills when they asked the many ophthalmologists who donated their time and expertise over the past three decades to stand up and be recognized.

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A highlight of the evening was founder Dr. Larry Brilliant returning to Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs an Apple 2 which Jobs donated to the cause for use in Katmandu in 1982.

Good to meet young epidemiologist Jen Olsen who's manager of pandemics at Skoll Global Threats Fund established by eBay co-founder Jeff Skoll, where Dr. Brilliant is now president, and Amanda Marr Chung who was just finishing up her work with Seva.

We're All Digital Strategists Now

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With the web's power, reach, and endurance, we're all digital strategists now. And if we go online (or don't go online!) disregarding this fact, we miss the boat, and the point.

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.)

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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.

 

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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;

e+H

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.

Our Grads Are Brand Advocates & Servant Leaders In Their Communities

Screen Shot 2013-09-30 at 10.37.41 AM Excited about a new chapter at GlobalNiche. One year after launching our program, we're equipping our graduates to build out their own communities.

In doing so, we're hitting a major, longterm milestone: GlobalNiche is an online platform to build community. We're equipping our graduates with the infrastructure and support you need to bring our continuity practice to your wider communities....to the very people in your lives you want to build something with.

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Once you have a handle on your own goals for an online presence and you've got some pieces in place, you can help the-people-you-want-to-be-connected-to get connected.

So proud to see the study group Silvana Vukadin-Hoitt is hosting in November for the creative, entrepreneurial and global nomad women in her world. (If this sounds like a work community for someone you know, pass it on!)

As Silvana writes,

"Increasing your online visibility at your own pace, creating a digital presence that looks, sounds and feels like you and that helps you meet your aims is key to the age we’re now living in. In theory, yes, we all want to belong to a productive group of people who understand us and our aims. In practice, it’s difficult to be accountable to your plans and to keep showing up for yourself and for others. What would it be like to have a practical foundation to further your current artistic endeavors?"

When it comes to the business of building an online presence to meet one's goals, you can imagine how the target moves and goals evolve.

 

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That's why, just like me and my cofounder Tara, our graduates see themselves as 'leading learners'.

That's something I heard Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur describe this summer about her role in the Freedom Business movement. It's being the person who's just a couple steps ahead of the people you're making a path for.

You can show others in your life what you DO know, and you can work alongside them learning what you don't yet know.

What a GlobalNiche study group leader does is foster our culture of sharing, and collaboration, and experimentation on the social web, and doing big things in small steps.

 

Part of the GlobalNiche experience is practicing finding what you need by tapping into a network of people ahead of you on the path. Googling stuff to find out how people got answers to the same question you have today.

Our group leaders are also servant leaders. (Thanks to grad Shirley Rivera for bringing this concept to my attention!) Helping the people in your life develop and improve, using a non dogmatic system that you just so happened to find out about before others did.

...being a cocreator of your community by bringing practical, useful, transformative tools to help the group be effective.

Besides the infrastructure we set up for our grads (including access to the multimedia curriculum and material for several-times-a-week prompts, a branded G+ community for their study group, and all the back-end invoicing and payment structure ) we have also created a support community at G+ for study group leaders.

During September's two week training for grads considering leading a study group I believe I was the one who learned the most! Leading learners learn more.

My Advice To 40,000 Professional Services Pros On How to Make Your Digital Strategy Sustainable

Thrilled to contribute my perspective to this month's "Ask The Expert" column on how to combat digital overwhelm in the business-to-business (B2B) space. Screen Shot 2013-10-11 at 2.45.34 PM

I answer this question from the community of executives and services professionals:

"I’m mentally exhausted from my social media responsibilities. What can I do differently with my digital strategy to make it more sustainable? Automation? Passing it to the intern?"

As you can imagine my approach and method for sustainability hinges on making your engagement with your online social networks one that nourishes you rather than depletes you.

Your network should delight and challenge you; bring you fresh insights and curated news you can use; it should activate you and engage you.

Once you start receiving true value from your network by curating your connections, you’ll have a better sense of how to provide value in return.

As your online communities begin to sustain you, participating in them will become sustainable.

 

Thanks to my fellow editorial pro Meryl Evans (who I met on Twitter many years ago!) for the invitation to share my perspective with the 40,000 subscribers of this 11-year-old newsletter for consultants, lawyers, accountants, architects, and other professional services professionals.

Women Have To Reinvent Ourselves & Our Careers, We're Lifetime Learners With Fundamentally Different Outcomes: Sallie Krawcheck, Owner Of 85 Broads

Screen Shot 2013-10-27 at 8.22.10 PMPleased to meet Sallie Krawcheck at her fireside chat at Fenwick & West for the San Francisco branch of 85 Broads (a network of 30,000 trailblazing women in 130 countries) thanks to my friend, colleague and investor member in London Shefaly Yogendra. The feisty Southern Krawcheck -- once called "the most powerful woman on Wall Street" -- recently bought 85 Broads and came to talk to us about what the global network of pro women needs. She told us surveys showed that some members want financial advice, mentors and reverse mentors, while others want to invest in women.

Takeaways from Sallie's far-ranging interview with Shamini Dhana, president of the SF Branch of 85 Broads, included:

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  • Coming out of banking crisis it seems they've double-downed on white middle aged males
  • If you aren't on social media, research shows you look older & less tech savvy
  • Her first news of day comes from Twitter, it's a way to talk to the world
  • There's no career fairy godmother -- it's down to networking and sponsorship
  • Women have to reinvent ourselves, piecing together careers. We're lifelong learners w/fundamentally different outcomes
  • It's economically viable for women to start a biz today using tech & entrepreneurialismScreen Shot 2013-10-27 at 8.16.43 PM
  • Diverse teams outperform more capable teams
  • Women outperform men without home runs and less flameouts
  • Choose a job in your 20s you think you can do in your 30s
  • #1 rule of business success is networking (that means loose connections and you need a ton of them)

Local members I met at the event include (listed by their Twitter handles) executive coach @Barbara Mark; Barbara Kamm, President of the Technology Credit Union@TechCu; Emily Hall @OGemilyhall, president of the Olive Grove which partners philanthropists, entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders;  futurist, future of work visionary and woman after my own heart @ayeletb; user experience expert @MicheleMarut; advisor to the Turkish Prime Ministry's Investment & Promotion Agency Olivia Curran; and Sydney Alfonso, founder of @Etkie_Official, a venture to support women artisans around the world.

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