I'm pleased to be speaking on a panel on The Rise of Turkey for the San Francisco Commonwealth Club's Middle East Forum, along with scholars, a diplomat and a Pulitzer Prize-wining journalist.
I'm joined on the panel by professor of cross-cultural communication Steven West, honorary consul Bonnie Joy Kaslan, and Stanford journalism professor Joe Brinkley.
It'll be recorded and posted on the Commonwealth Club website afterwards. (Listen to the full podcast here.)
A fellow transmedia storyteller I encouraged to try Pinterest just let me know I am "flooding her stream so she has to unfollow".
If you follow too few people or too few boards, you'll probably be like this woman, wanting people to post less so you don't suddenly see a ton of images of one topic or from one pinner if what you want is more variety in your timeline. (Algorithmically, perhaps, like you might expect at Facebook.)
But the beauty of Pinterest is the customizability (for instance, you can follow a pinner's specific pinboard rather than all of that pinner's activity).
And this isn't Facebook where one might be right to worry you're becoming a nuisance (to the limited numbers and strong tie relationships of most people's Facebook accounts) by posting every five minutes.
The reputation I generate on Twitter or Pinterest is going to be about the quality and subject matter of what I share and interact with. I'm much less inclined at those services than at Facebook about whether what I pin or share pleases the people who follow me. That's for them to decide and adjust as necessary. But telling me not to do it, or do it less, however indirectly? Nope. Just go.
This is the exploration of my interests. You can come along if you want, but I won't be curtailing my pinning because someone who follows me can't figure out how to handle it.
Much like at Twitter, at Pinterest I usually favorite images at a fast pace then add them to my boards/share them with my followers at a much slower rate. And I consume much more than I produce. I still may post more than you can handle. At Twitter, I put high volume accounts on a list I can dip into so they don't overwhelm my feed. Pinterest could certainly use more flexibility in this area.
Building your global niche -- the place you belong and operate to your true potential -- is about being both as unique and as big as you can be. This week Global Niche invites you to a live, interactive, online conversation with writer, coach and personal growth teacher Tara Sophia Mohr.
Join us in our Linqto* web room on Friday, January 13th at 10am ***Pacific Time*** [be sure to convert to your local time] to talk about optimizing who and where you are.
Tara Mohr will share the tactical skills she teaches in her upcoming Playing Big program [http://bit.ly/zeasyU] which we can all use to hone our specialties and deepen/broaden our impact in the world.
Have a question for Tara? Post it at our LinkedIn Playing Big discussion here: http://lnkd.in/4JmGgS
If you can't make it to the call, we'll release the recording soon after.
* Instructions for entering the Linqto space - go to http://www.linqto.com/rooms/taraagacayaklive test web cam and mic, if you wish to ask questions on camera enter the room enter a screen name
Here's a calendar of our previous and upcoming events: http://www.globalniche.net/conversations/
This week at GlobalNiche we'll be talking with Tara Sophia on the live web video app Linqto. Participants can ask questions during the call, either on-camera or by typing them into the Linqto chat room while we talk. This will be my firstLinqto call.
Tara Mohr will share the tactical skills she teaches in her upcoming Playing Big program [http://bit.ly/zeasyU] which we can all use to hone our specialties and deepen/broaden our impact in the world.
...excited to get the GlobalNiche year started with such an inspiring topic and expert. I met Tara Sophia in person last month for the first time now that we're in the same city (San Francisco) and she's got a great presence: focused, and serene, and so clear.
What I like most about Tara Sophia is that she balances a desire for results with a gentle understanding of why we might not be getting those results yet. She knows what it's going to take to get there, to "play big". She cracks me up, too. This is the woman who landed a book segment on the Today Show before she even had a book to sell.
Thanks to Tanya Monsef Bunger for inviting me to be among her international guests at the University of Santa Clara gala for Global Women's Leadership Network at the Crowne Plaza Cabana Hotel, Palo Alto.
Among those pictured: Pratima Rao, Shawn Bunger, Sheila Tost, Sigrid Monsef, Sanja Pesich, Bernadette Frager, Dahlia Krausse, Leslie Robidoux.
A case study in the building of a thought leadership platform by Michael Margolis. I personally have enjoyed watching Michael Margolis grow his thought leadership platform for the past year since I took part in his REINVENTION SUMMIT last November.
"McGyverish", as Linda Janssen referred in the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group to Margolis's approach of leveling up internally, certainly describes the pioneering, recombinant approach we all are taking by using the practices and tools at hand, and incorporating new ones being introduced every day. Staying flexible, and iterating.
After tonight's Turkish Women's International Network dinner with TED curator June Cohen, at Pera Palace Hotel, Istanbul.
With Berin Galatalı Aksoy, Nilufer Durak, Managing Director of Endeavor Turkey Didem Altop, lady in silver (and to-die-for shoes) is Sandrine Ramboux, June Cohen, founder of Turkish WIN and TEDx Gotham curator Melek Pulatkonak, Semiha Ünal and Işık Aydın Deliorman.
Earlier in the evening we'd been joined by Turkish parliamentarian and my fellow TurkishWIN speaker Safak Pavey.
I'm pleased to be a member of the advisory board of this network of women with professional, cultural and global ties to Turkey since 2010.
As I relocate from Istanbul to San Francisco, we're crowd sourcing the psychic transition. Whether you're familiar with Istanbul or have a little bit of San Francisco in your past or not, the Global Niche community is full of experts on the growing pains of displacement -- and replacement.
In your opinion, what connects Istanbul to SF, and vice versa? What are the biggest differences?
Care to share your favorite places to see, eat, relax, exercise, work in SF? What Bay Area 'hood can you see a global citizen like me settling in? Suggestions of who I MUST meet in town?
FOREVER GRATEFUL! ....for helping me say my goodbye to Istanbul -- and hello to San Fran. (And be sure to let us know when you need the Global Niche crowd to help you process a displacement of your own!)
GlobalNiche.net
Do you ever feel suspended between multiple worlds -- challenged in your pursuits and interests by culture, geography, language or time zone? Welcome to the club. In fact, after fourteen years of expatriatism and through my cultural identity work as a writer/producer I’ve come to see this psychic limbo state about who we are and where we belong -- familiar to people with transglobal lives and culturally hybrid lifestyles -- as our secret weapon.
To start at the beginning, we’re all born global citizens even if that knowledge gets trained out of us. As we mature, a global identity seems nebulous, and ungrounded. Better to bond with the more concrete: family, culture, nation. Our schoolmates, colleagues, neighbors.
There’s a problem with concrete, though. It cracks over time and in quickly changing conditions, and sometimes even under its own weight.
I’d even venture to say that ‘our people’ today are not who they used to be. We’re unbounded by the communities in our physical midst. Now we can find inspiring new kinship in interest and outlook.
Expats and international types have more reasons than most to find a way to operate independently of where we happen to be physically.
With today's economic uncertainties no matter who or where we are, we all have to embrace an enterprising view of ourselves -- a way to operate unlimited by the options directly surrounding us.
With recent advances in virtual technologies like mobile devices and the social web, we have tools at our disposal to help us live a globally unbounded life.
Now we don’t have to be a tech expert or social media guru to build a micro-yet-global base of operations with a professional web platform and virtual network for continuing education, professional development, and a close-knit but world-flung set of friends. We can be digital world citizens and achieve a cutting-edge state of being -- that is, what I call ‘psychic location independence’.
I coined the concept of a global niche -- defined as a ‘psychic solution to your global identity crisis’-- at expat+HAREM, the online community of global citizens, identity adventurers and intentional travelers I founded in 2009. The group blog was inspired by the global community that gathered around Tales from the Expat Harem, an anthology by foreign women about their lives in modern Turkey that I coedited in 2005 with fellow Istanbul resident Jennifer Gokmen.
Expatharem.com was also informed by the idea of an ‘expat harem’ itself, where all the writers in the book and the readers drawn to them are cultural peers in a virtual realm.
My partner Tara Agacayak, a creative enterprise consultant from Silicon Valley who’s spent the past 10 years in Turkey, and I launched this new work-life initiative here at GlobalNiche.net. We’re applying the innovations we've been exploring in the past few years in our professional communities of creative entrepreneurs and social media proponents along with our expat experiences. We've realized that a robust online presence that helps us reach our offline goals is the most important independent survival skill of international people.
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!
After two magical years, we’ve amassed 175 neoculture discussions and 2,800 insightful, funny, poignant comments from globalists, culturati and hybrid lifestylers like you. Can you believe it? Please accept a huge round of thanks: to our generous guest posters, our lively blog participants, our loyal audience. As expat+HAREM's founder, I recognize the culture and identity issues we’ve tackled at expat+HAREM are evergreen. So I'll be keeping them live and available for you here at expatharem.com during my transition to GlobalNiche.net.
By now you probably have a clue what GlobalNiche.net is going to be. Here’s more.
This hands-on venture is my new life-work initiative to put into practice expat+HAREM theories. I'm calling what we'll be practicing "creative self enterprise for the global soul."
Global Niche is a practical evolution for expat+HAREM and I hope you feel the next step on this journey holds relevance to the life you lead, too.
We’ve identified ourselves and found resonance with each other. Common ground, ways to talk about our lives and experiences with meaning and precision. Now how do we transform?
How do we do whatever we’ve somehow felt geographically or culturally disadvantaged to fully do?
It’s time for action.
I'll be partnering with creative enterprise consultant Tara Agacayak to explore with you (and other mobile progressives, cultural creatives, indie pros and displaced people of all kinds) exactly how to build a micro-yet-global base of operation -- a global niche. I'll also be a guinea pig and sharing my own global microbrand-building results and revelations along the way [eek!]
I hope you’ll choose to stick with us for this exciting evolution. Our approach is going to be email blogging -- that means we'll be contacting you through email, not at a blog on the open web. The best way to stay in touch is to join the Global Niche list. If you're on the expat+HAREM mailing list already, you're covered.
Thanks for your time and your community, I cherish it.
A forensic memoir of best friendship with a multiple personality, a family culture tale that parallels the development of string theory with its multiple dimensions. Both tracks of the story are controversial (and so far unprovable!) cosmologies. Repped by Foundry Literary + Multimedia, NYC.
Please visit my work-in-progress Pinterest board for conceptual images that capture the making of the book and relate to its contents, comparable book and movie titles, elements of the story. It's the best way I've found to transmit the mood and the reach of the work. If you haven't seen a Pinterest board about an author's process, check this one out.
At the bottom of this photo set are some images from my work-in-progress, a forensic memoir of friendship. Hover over the images to see the caption. Click on an image to enlarge. (There are some unrelated images in the below Facebook set for reasons out of my control.)
[fbphotos id="181185521896004"]
As a member of the advisory board, I was happy to introduce Melek Pulatkonak's Turkish Women's International Network to the audience at the TEDGlobal simulcast hosted by TURKCELL headquarters in Istanbul. Melek and I met in Oxford while attending TEDGlobal 2010!
In these images, TED curator Chris Anderson opens the dark side session -- with cybercrime journalist Misha Glenny.
With attendees including TurkishWIN members including creative director Muzaffer Tan and foreign professional women in Istanbul Karen Van Drie and Catherine Bayar.
We had our cocktail hour between 3rd and 4th session of TEDGlobal simulcast from the UK, in which business economist, development professional and policy adviser Anja Koenig makes a point.
Getting out of our head is a fab way to both calm the inner [com]motion, slow down that ultraprecious commodity *time*, and get out into the world...who knew!? +++++ AT expat+HAREM, and AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB
An American erotica artist in Germany Tatiana von Tauber confesses she paints in the nude to get back in touch with her most life-loving senses when expat circumstance (3 kids in a hotel room for a month, anyone?) overwhelms her.
If "the body is the real and final home" as writer Toni Morrison says, a whole troupe of Third Culture Kids find a new sense of belonging when they throw their global souls into this multidisciplinary dance performance. Dancing their way home. Lucky people in Toronto can catch choreographer Alaine Handa's "Chameleon" at the Fringe Festival this month.
And finally, at Psychology Today, creativity consultant and yoga proponent Jeffrey Davis illuminates why feeling at home in the body makes us flexible and inventive, focused and calm, vital and connected to our emotions.
Moving our bodies makes us all the ways we hope to be alive in the world.
It helps us process where we've been, who we are, when and why we were lost, where we're going now. And why we love it. +++++ YOUR THOUGHTS
So many of us are mobile, or in personal or professional transition. How do you make sense of movement and change? How do you retain the assets you've established?
Tell us what question you want to ask a personal branding expert. If I hear from enough of you I'll make a webinar to get you the answers!
In the GlobalNiche LinkedIn group, designer and writer Catherine Salter Bayar shared this piece from the New York Times -- "Got Twitter? What's Your Influence Score" -- and asked the group if we've looked at Klout. I said that I took a look this week (actually checked out Klout a while back -- so now I have an OG badge there....as far as I know "OG" stands for "original gangster" so I'm not sure what they could possibly mean by it, ha)
There are strangenesses, like their claim I am influenced by @GigaOm, which is an account I don't even follow.
Most interesting to me is the STYLE matrix: Today I'm a "broadcaster", yesterday I was a "specialist" and I'd like to be a "tastemaker" like @brainpicker. The change in my score (today is 62) must be due to some large retweets I got today on topics other than the narrow ones they ascribe to me). What models do you aspire to on Twitter and where are they in the matrix of your followed accounts?
Writer and artist Rose Deniz said, "My Klout score is erratic, too, so I don't put a lot of emphasis on it in terms of influence, and I do notice that it's fluid based on your activity level - how sensitive it is to daily fluxes, I don't know."
"I've found Empire Avenue to be a better indicator (and more interesting) - it just tracks more stuff," responded global marketing strategist Kirsten Weiss.
"I think any sort of measurement system is bound to be full of flaws," said social media educator Charlene Kingston.
"At first glance, not sure I love Empire Avenue's verbiage - banking terms repel more than attract me," said Catherine Bayar.
The writer and cultural curator Rose Deniz asked us what happens to our writing when worlds and languages collide.
Even if I don't use Turkish words, the syntax is bound to slip in... like "make shopping" instead of "go shopping", and "arrive to" instead of "arrive at or in".
I know my adoption of the Malaysian "air-con" replaced the American "A/C" and remains hard to shake more than a decade since I lived there.
For globalist writers, like Rose and me and so many of the Expat Harem bloggers, I can only think it adds to the unique definition of our voice.
Announcing Scoop.it. Anyone who wants to demonstrate their expertise in a subject area will benefit from this new tool to scoop web content into a graphically-displayed archive. Takes minutes to get started. It makes those bookmarks enticing rather than a list of text links. I believe this is an improvement on Squidoo's "lenses", it's not as complicated and easier to share. "If you can't be the source, be the resource" is the thinking....but you can also be the source.
Here are some related links:
IS CONTENT CURATION THE NEW BLACK? http://www.jonathanfields.com/blog/curation-is-the-new-content-black/
CONTENT CURATION: WHY THE NEW CURATORS ARE BEATING THE OLD http://curationservices.com/content-curation-why-the-new-curators-are-beating-the-old/
CURATION IS THE NEW CREATION http://lindaziskind.com/curation-is-the-new-creation
And a Scoop-it page of one of GlobalNiche at LinkedIn's creative entrepreneurs: Jan Gordon
Along with Tara Agacayak, I run a private mastermind group on LinkedIn (it’s a subgroup of my Creative Entrepreneurs & Social Media group). She asks, "Now that Round Two has ended, please let us know: how you liked it (what worked, what didn't) and what has changed for you (something you implemented, a transformed thought or behavior...)." Here are my thoughts on the second round, which was a weekly affair.
I liked the swifter pace because I think the longer things are stretched out the more disrupted they have the potential to become. So, the mastermind experience felt more cohesive, and potent to me. The swifter pace also meant it was my turn before I was ready.
I'd call that a bad thing -- except for the fact that it required me to just spit out what would otherwise have been revolving around inside my head for weeks longer, and maybe I would have chosen a different subject matter if I'd had more time to think about it.
So, the faster paced mastermind got me to bring up the Global Niche plan that I meant to work on more slowly (and in a different order), and that led me to make it the focus of the Turkish WIN talk this month, and that precipitated the making of an extended slideshow to support the talk, both of which are now public videos (and on expat+HAREM and SlideShare and Scribd and Vimeo and my Amazon author page and my Facebook pages). And this also precipitated the creation of a Global Niche twitter account, a Global Niche facebook page, a Global Niche logo...see, just got me 'off the pot'.
What I like most about this turn of events (and the FAB discussion of the second round masterminds -- *thank you everyone*!) is that it's forced me to iterate early and often on a big project that now I can let seep into a larger consciousness, while the next step percolates.