Serendipity

These are some of the Twitter accounts that I follow either in my main feed or via a Twitter list.

• Michael Hyatt
• Smart Planet
• Kelly Butler
• Marc and Angel
• Seth Godin
• Andy Blumenthal

With the Facebook timeline rolling out it becomes real easy to peer back into the past and remember (or try to forget) activities from your past. In some cases a little bit of culling might be in order. There is just so much information that has been dropped into this black hole.

Early users of the timeline have reported that they are surprised when they look back at the timeline and immediately start on a pruning process. One can hide items from the timeline, delete them permanently or highlight certain events or photos.

Facebook is trying to become the single source or aggregator of you life stream. It will be our choice if they will be given the keys.

It’s so wonderful that we still have stores like this among the masses of media and materialistic things pumped into our lives. If you’re in need of refreshing and uplifting input to your life, visit your neighborhood Christian bookstore.

What meeting?

Wonder why your brainstorming sessions are a bust? Mitch Ditkoff (Ideachampions) gives us some of the most common reasons:

1. Poor facilitation
2. Wrong (or poorly articulated) topic
3. Unmotivated participants
4. Insufficient diversity of participants
5. Inadequate orientation
6. No transition from “business as usual”
7. Lack of clear ground rules
8. Sterile meeting space
9. Hidden (or competing) agendas
10. Lack of robust participation
11. Insufficient listening
12. Habitual idea killing behavior
13. Attachment to old (“pet”) ideas
14. Discomfort with ambiguity
15. Hyper-seriousness (not enough fun)
16. Endless interruptions
17. PDA addiction (Crackberries)
18. Impatience (premature adoption of the first “right idea”)
19. Group think
20. Hierarchy and/or competing sub-groups
21. Imbalance of divergent and convergent thinking
22. No tools and techniques to spark the imagination
23. Inelegant ways of capturing new ideas
24. No time for personal reflection
25. Pre-mature evaluation
26. No follow-up plan

Now that you’ve finished nodding your head 26 times, check out some of the excellent advice to make your next brainstorming session a success. 26 Reasons Why Most Brainstorming Session Fail (and what to do about it)

So what makes a successful corporate blog?

First and foremost is the realization that a blog is for the customer’s benefit – not for the company’s. It’s important to remember readers will only come back if there is value for them. That’s right value for them. Not value for the company. Readers don’t care if you are providing a nice, efficient press release site.

Rick Burnes reminds us of the real reason for corporate blogs in a posting at ZDNet.

Blogs for Customers, Not About Companies

If you look closely at the search results you pull up every day (and even some of the Alltop corporate blogs), you’ll see that an alternative model of corporate blogging is beginning to emerge. Instead of writing about themselves, companies are following the lead of the other company blog in the Technorati Top 100 — Signal vs. Noise. They’re beginning to create content that’s not about their business, but that appeals to their buyer personas.

Whole Foods is going beyond their blog and publishing recipes. American Express is publishing small-business advice. Indium Corporation is writing about thermal interface materials.

In each of these cases, the company is attracting a broad audience by focusing on content that is interesting to the demographic it serves rather than content about the products it sells.

Every company that is considering starting a corporate blog should spend some thinking about how this effort can support their brand. Otherwise publishing the blog could be wasted effort.

In this interview Tom Peters and Seth Godin tell us if you have loyal employees the loyal customers will come.

There are more interview excerpts on the site “Inside the Entrepreneurial Mind”.

• Loyal employees vs. loyal customers
• Let’s hear it for the blog
• Are Gen X employees different?
• The effect of social networking on brands
• Social networking – good for small business

Check out New Perspectives on Business. Also take a look at the other sections: “The Business of Technology”, “How the Biz does Business”, “The Business of Food” and “Richard Branson”.

The site is Open Forum, sponsored by American Express.

Check out this 2-part video blog “Life is not so linear” from Beachwalks.tv.

Part 1

Part 2

Beachwalks with Rox is a great video blog that provides some insightful reflection and personal development. Lots of great episodes on the site.

From: Mahalo Daily

But could you communicate a deep and meaningful thought, a short story in just 50 words (and only 50). Rajesh Setty can. He has published some of his mini sagas together with a fitting photo. Check out Mini Sagas: Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business.

This set has 15 mini sagas – check out “Lost” and others.

Sometimes we are lost

changethis.com is a great site that has a variety of thought provoking manifestos.

Then comes the “call to action” – implement some of these techniques in my everyday life.

The following is a short interview with Veronica Belmont on Mahalo Daily.

From: Mahalo Daily

The blog has regular updates and photos from the village. Donations for the work in Nata can also be made on the site.

Support your teen and let them know about this website and that “It’s No Fun if Your Dead”.

There are prizes for youth who are residents of British Columbia.

The podcast covers basic and advanced topics, has short tutorials on using Photoshop features and has regular interviews with photography professionals. The sound-seeing tours are also quite interesting. The website has a very active forum, with lots of memembers willing to help out. The weekly assignment is a big favourite.