Expat Harem Writer Wendy Jean Fox Wins Literary Award And Publishes Her First Book

Congrats to Wendy Jean Fox (you may know her as one of the original Expat Harem writers, her piece is Coming Clean In Kayseri  [read it at that link] about a visit to an ancient hamam bathhouse in central Anatolia where Wendy was teaching). Wendy won the Press 53 award for short fiction for her collection, "The Seven Stages of Anger & Other Stories". It will be published by Press 53, a literary press in Winston-Salem, North Carolina this October. I'm pleased to receive an advance reading copy and honored to blurb it!

The Denver, Colorado-based Wendy also joined the GlobalNiche program.

"The GlobalNiche program has been instrumental in helping me get focused on doing something with all random piles of pages laying around," she said.

"I was already sending out pretty frequently to lit mags, and getting quite a few stories picked up, but GN helped me get better - what do I really want, how do I get there, what do I already have, what do I need to make. I wanted, first, a book. Now I have to get my novel in shape.

"I know this is not a coincidence that I began the program (I'm about halfway through) and that this is happening.

"So, thank you to you and Tara and the entire community. I appreciate your energy and what you are doing -- it's an inspiration."

Thanks a lot, Wendy, and thanks for the Expat Harem shoutout in your bio on the book cover!

Faye Brann Addresses The Gap In The Market For Narrative Expat Literature

Question for the #expatwriters, #expats and #writers out there, do you think expat lit differs from travel writing, if so, how? #research — Ruby Slippers (@rubyslippersdxb) March 27, 2014

@AnastasiaAshman yes, it's what inspired me! What made you specifically speak out about identifying expat lit as a genre in its own right?

— Ruby Slippers (@rubyslippersdxb) March 31, 2014

Thanks to expat author in Dubai Faye Brann for interviewing me about #expat #literature and the #publishing world's opportunities to capture expat lit's readers.  She blogs about it here. Here's the interview as it was conducted on Twitter this week -- which is where Faye and I met!

Faye is working on her first book, There’s No Place Like Home, to "look at the often misunderstood life of the ‘trailing spouse’ abroad". At her blog she explores the gap in the market for narrative expat literature.

Executing Global Rollout Of A New Social Networking Collaboration Tool

Selfish: Capture, collaborate on, and share life's important moments http://t.co/0o2jSACIz4 — BetaList (@BetaList) April 6, 2014

BetaList highlights to thousands of tech-savvy early adopters the upcoming mobile app of Selfish.me, the San Francisco startup I joined in February as director of community...

So fun strategizing and executing the global rollout of this new social networking collaboration tool! Sign up now to be notified as soon as it hits the app store.

Building Meaningful Community With Social Media

Watch a video here, thanks to videographer Stacy McKenzie. Thanks to the organizers, sponsors and participants of the Exceptional Women In Publishing conference. Here's just a tiny peek into an inspiring day. More to come, including resource links to the things we mentioned during the below panel.

Ready to go with the Building Community Using Social Media! #ewip2014 @AnastasiaAshman @pubslush @AmandaBabs1 pic.twitter.com/vV2wj42M03

— Karen Jaw-Madson (@KarenJaw) March 6, 2014

Someone's attention is the most precious thing you can have says Pamela Day @ZibbyZ #ewip2014

— Kristin Brownstone (@kbrownstone) March 6, 2014

Awesome talk w/@ZibbyZ @AnastasiaAshman @AmandaBabs1 on sharing the public & private you via social media to foster community. #ewip2014 1/2

— Frances Lee Hall (@fleehall) March 7, 2014

Who are you following? @AnastasiaAshman says that's most important. Follow the people YOU want to talk to for better engagement. #ewip2014

— Lila LaHood (@lilalahood) March 6, 2014

@AnastasiaAshman great job providing useful, actionable info about building social media community #ewip14

— Lisen Stromberg (@LisenStromberg) March 6, 2014

So true RT @thebubblygirl: One of the best ways to make community online is a @TweetChat @twitter #ewip2014

— Kay (@nappyheadblkgrl) March 6, 2014

Great point by @AnastasiaAshman: the old media view was that you "save your best stuff" for offline media. No longer true. #ewip2014

— Sarah Granger (@sarahgranger) March 6, 2014

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.

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.

Featured By Global Living Magazine As One Of Best Expat Books

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 Points: 25 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. 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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!)

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.

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

I 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.

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.

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?

We're All Digital Strategists Now

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.)

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.

Our Grads Are Brand Advocates & Servant Leaders In Their Communities

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.

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.

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.

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

Pleased 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:

• 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 & entrepreneurialism
• 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.