Here’s how I’m playing my part to find a cure

I saw this twice in my newsfeed on Facebook today:

♥-♥♥—-Put this —♥♥—♥♥—On Your —♥♥—♥♥—status —♥♥—♥♥—іf уоυ кnоω —-♥♥-♥♥—-ѕомεоnε —–♥♥♥—–ωно нαѕ or —-♥♥-♥♥—-нαѕ нαd —♥♥—♥♥—Cancer♥ I wish for the cure of cancer. 93% won’t copy and paste this…will YOU?????

No.  No I won’t.  Absolutely, positively never will that be my Facebook status.  Why?  Because it’s all wrong.  I want a cure for cancer too.  Pasting that into my status does absolutely nothing.  How does it raise money?  How does it encourage people to get checked for prostate cancer or breast cancer?  How does it encourage awareness, story telling or healing?

It doesn’t.  It’s a spammy chain letter that’s now made it’s way onto Facebook.  And it’s the worst way you can possibly use it.  And what’s with the guilt trip?  “93% won’t copy and paste this…” Of course they won’t.  There are better things to do with our status updates!  It’s almost as bad as campaigns spamming Twitter with hashtags.. but at least they were raising some money while spamming the rest of us.

I get that you want to make a difference.  I get that you want to feel like you’re doing something… except copying and posting that into your status isn’t actually doing ANYTHING.

Here’s what I’m doing instead.  I have 363 connections currently on Facebook.  My status as of a few minutes ago is the following:

Here is my cancer awareness post: Facebook says I have 363 connections. For each of those connections that shares a memory of someone in their lives touched by cancer by commenting on this status or leaving a note on my wall between now and December 31, I will donate $2 to the Canadian Cancer Institute (I wish I could do more… but it’s a start)..

And those that are contributing are sharing their stories.  Through sharing our stories, we unite more towards a cause and we feel GOOD about it.

Note:  It’s the people who share their stories on my Facebook wall or post that I’ll contribute the $2 for.  When I’m rich enough to be able to make it limitless… well then I surely will.

Story telling.  Sharing.  Engaging. Encouraging.  Making our lives better because of the interactions we’ve had with one another.  That’s at the core the successful use of social media.  Not spammy.  Not leaving people guilt ridden into sharing something that isn’t of use to anyone else.

I get that you want to make a difference.  But think about your networks, and think about what will make an impact… versus what people are just going to ignore.

FREEZE… I’m moving ahead by standing still

I think that if I were to try and count the amount of ideas I have in one day on my fingers… I would soon run out of fingers.  And if I kept going, I would run out toes.  Unless you’re willing to loan me your fingers and your toes to continue counting on…

With so many ideas, it’s difficult to know which ones to pursue, which ones to shelve, and which ones to let go of completely.  Especially if you’ve seen me think.  In an instant my brain can explode all over a whiteboard and so many new projects and opportunities are born that I need to borrow more than just your fingers and toes to keep track of them all.

I believe that I’m not alone in my abundance of ideas.  And also, not so alone in my conundrum of not knowing what to do with them all.  Part of this is the reason I blog, the idea has an outlet, and maybe somewhere down the road I’ll come back to it, or somebody else will find it and do something even more marvelous with it.  This really doesn’t have anything to do with why I started this post, however.

This post is supposed to be about sticking with one idea, although I’ve just figured out the link from the previous paragraph.  People (and by people, I mean me) are figuring out that the web is the place to try out new things, new ideas, new concepts, new inventions, new everything.  The web is the place to try more and fail faster, to move on when something doesn’t work, to tweak, to grow, to get back up on that bike… except the next time it might be a bike, or it might be a horse, or a carriage, or a car… what I’m getting at is that I think people (me) are beginning to understand how easy it is to try out an idea, but I think that they (me) may have so many of them that when it fails, instead of sticking with the same idea, they (me) jump on down the line to the next one.

I’m musing a bit with the concept that the strategy to success on the web might be sticking with one idea.  Letting the rest go into the unknown to find other homes.  Picking one and failing many times with the same one until I find the model that works for it.  It’s still about failing faster, trying new things, innovating, changing and adapting, just a little less all over the map.  So, in an online world where everything changes at lightning speed and people can’t keep up with even what’s out there today, let alone with what’s going to be out there tomorrow… perhaps the people that will be successful are those that stick around in one area for a long time.  As everyone else rushes around to try out everything just because they can, we can be the ones going further by not going everywhere.

Dear web people

I am a person too. Every morning, my alarm is set for 545. I never actually saunter out of bed until 745…

I never have people over to my apartment. Why? Because I hate cleaning and my place is already a mess.

I don’t make my bed in the morning because I think it’s more comfortable when I crawl into an unmade bed.

I don’t like cooking because I believe food tastes better with the TLC from others.

You’ll rarely find beer in my fridge because I believe the most interesting conversations can be had at the pub down the street.

My space is my own and until I trust you implicitly… You will never see where I live.

I believe that trust is earned. But that a certain amount of trust is necessary without question to foster good relationships and steps forward.

I believe that there is enough good in this world to foster the change we all want to see. And I believe the web and social media will bring us that.

I believe that my belief in the good of humanity is strong enough to promote good from others.

I believe that information wants to be free… And in the next 2 yrs it will be so.

And I believe in myself and in you to inspire the change you want to see in others.

I wrote this blog post, what have you done today to inspire a change in others?

People are just FASCINATING

If you haven’t noticed, I write a lot about Twitter.  Seriously.  Look at my tag cloud.  The two main tags are Twitter and Social Media.  And right now I’m going to write about, you guessed it.  Twitter.  I spend a lot of my time online on Twitter.  Well, that’s not true.  I spend some time on Twitter, and a lot of time visiting the destinations I find because of Twitter and the people I follow.  I get a lot of people who just shake their heads at me and say ‘I don’t get it’.  Nor do they want to.  And that’s okay, because Twitter isn’t for everyone.

The thought crossed my mind last week to branch out and check out other social networks, see what people are doing with them.  But I haven’t done that yet.  Why?  Because Twitter continues to fascinate me.  Okay, again, not quite true.  The way people are using Twitter continues to fascinate me.  The first tweet from space came from NASA astronaut Michael Massimo.  It’s incredible to me that the same service that is going to push out this blog post for me, the same service that people were able to see live updates of terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the same service that Best Buy is now using for customer service is also one that can be used in a vacuum.

Twitter started by asking ‘What are you doing?’  And well, people are doing some impressive things (I’m still stuck on tweeting from space… real time from space.  What’s next?).  People do fascinating things, and Twitter gives me a medium to find out about them.  From the best donair places in Calgary, to the guy who just landed on the moon.  One spot, one communication tool. With or without DDOS attacks… how can I not be fascinated by it?

Should and shouldn’t vs. I don’t care anymore

I’m tired.  I’m tired of the same information about what I should and shouldn’t do to help grow my business using social media tools.  I’m tired of other people telling me what coding languages I should be learning if I want to grow my web design company.  I’m tired of people scoffing at each other for calling themselves or others experts, gurus, whatever.  I’m tired of the judgment calls, the negative ‘#fails’ that seem to come out at every turn these days and just complaining in general.

Yes, the internet gives us a voice.  Yes, it gives businesses good insight into what customers are saying about their brand and/or products.  Yes, it allows for more connections and relationship building.  Yes, there is tremendous potential.  Yes, it’s a ton of work to get up and running.  Yes, it is possible to screw things up pretty easily and yes that screw up can easily spread if you’re a larger brand.  But really, where is the use in pointing out yet another#fail unless it’s accompanied with a lesson?  It’s so easy to point out flaws and grumble out our distaste at others actions.  But to what benefit?  How does that get any of us anywhere?

This may very well just be my mindset today.  But it seems that all of this chatter is continuing to be a whole lot of chatter.  Where’s the action?  The follow through?  The results?

I’ve listened and listened.  Now I’m tired.  I want to do, not talk about doing.  The beautiful thing about the internet?  I can DO just that.  I can choose seek out other doers, turn off the complainers (I do realize I am being one of them right now…) and make things happen.  Today, I choose to DO and to create…

What are you tired of?  What do you choose to do about it?