Hi… send me an email (seniacom #at# senia (dot) com) if you’re in Boston on Thurs, Fri. And let me know if you’ll be at the Women’s Congress and want to meet up.
Best,
Senia
Category: ALL POSTS
created as a super-category to the subcategory __(all posts)
Some New Video Projects Online
JUSTIN.TV
This is one guy for the past nine days wearing a video-camera on his head all day, every day. The front page says “he won’t take it off until he dies.” Follow him live at justin.tv. My brother Allan is a big fan of this idea and this project and sees huge value in it. I like the idea a lot. It’s like the most detailed realtime participatory blog you’ve ever seen.
NEWSATSEVEN.COM
This is an NSF grant project of creating news using avatars to tell the news and gather it together. I like that it uses both news stories and blog reactions. That’s relevant to how people actually look at a topic – both in the news and online in blogs. Enjot newsatseven.com.
Both cool sites. I’m especially looking forward to following Justin.
Newness
Just as you think you have something going well and straight and regular, it’s time to shake it up! Really. How long can you keep the same straight, regular going – and have it be enjoyable to you or to your colleagues, your readers…?
It’s got to always have a lot of pizazz! A lot. And you may come up with ideas that don’t work, but you may come up with a lot that do! And you get into the habit of creating newness, creating life.
In the comments are some ways I’m thinking of playing with newness on the Positive Psychology News Daily site.
green lights
A photo somewhere
sometime,
symmetric green lights.
The worst thing ever
This is so absolutely wrong – what’s happening to Kathy Sierra (she received death threats and disgusting things were blogged about her and very disturbing images were made of her on other sites – you should know that if you’re going to click through). There’s an expression, “Throwing diamonds to the swine.”
She has had wonderful posts. She’s a real person. She has been as for the community and for moving the world forward as possible. And then this happens.
Ok, you can say some person is sick. You can say some person is disgusting. But what really, really sucks is that this instills terror in Kathy. How absolutely wrong. How absolutely wrong.
I really hope the police can trace the person and people by their IP addresses, by their posts. So wrong. So wrong for her to be in this situation.
Q FRI: How would you write your quote bio?
Hi, Welcome to Question Friday. I receive daily quotes by email, and below the quote, there is a brief summary of the person’s life.
It’s not easy to summarize our own bios from five sentences to one or two, and here, whole lives are summarized and in a wonderful way too! If you were writing the bio to appear underneath some of your quotes, what would you want the quote bio to say?
Q: How would you write your quote bio?
Here are some examples, and my italics of some great phrases in them:
About Richard Bach
Richard Bach, the American pilot and author, became hugely successful with the publication of the slim novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull a spiritual quest about a bird who loved to fly rather than seeing flight as a means to an end. He was born in Illinois in 1936, a descendant of composer Johann Sebastian Bach. He has been an Air Force Reserve pilot, a flight instructor, and a barnstormer; most of his books involve flight either directly or as a metaphor.
About Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams was the pen name of Thomas Lanier Williams, the multiple-award-winning Southern Gothic playwright best known for his plays Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. He was born in 1911 in Mississippi, where he had a difficult childhood with an abusive father, a smothering mother, and a schizophrenic sister. His emotionally honest plays often feature sensitive souls who don’t fit into a confining culture. He spent most of his adult life in New York City. He died in 1983.
About Virginia Satir
American psychotherapist Virginia Satir played a central role in shaping family therapy. She was born in Wisconsin in 1916. While working as a teacher, she became deeply involved in the lives of her students and their parents. This led to graduate school and a career change. She took on the mission of inspiring therapists to work with families. She cofounded the Mental Health Research Institute in California, where she held the first-ever family-therapy training program. She died in 1988.
What’s your quote bio?!
BTW, do not be intimidated by the fact that these bios above are of well-known people. Write yours as just that – yours!
p.s. Brag! :)
Best,
Senia
Nick-isms: “I don’t spend my energy in battle.”
“You can’t get anyone to change unless they want to.”
“What’s the point of picking an argument? I’ll still have my views and you’ll still have yours.”
“People who push someone to do something usually just wish someone would push them instead.”
“Forgiveness is the lynchpin of humanity.”
“I don’t spend my energy in battle.”
Margaret-isms: “Get it out the door”
A colleague of mine from the MAPP program, Margaret Greenberg, is an executive coach and runs a organizational effectiveness consulting practice. She says some absolutely wonderful things! Margaret emphasizes fulfillment and balance in working with individuals and teams. I am big fan of Margaret’s action-based approaches. Some of my favorites of her quotes:
On concrete tasks:
“What’s the point of spending hours on something until you know what the value of it will be?”
On finishing projects and sending them off for comments:
“Get it out the door!”
And others:
“Start with WHO and WHAT you know.”
“We’re human beings, not human doings.”
Update: More Margaret-isms! (4-5-07)
* Our lives go in the direction we tell ourselves.
* What if it were easy?
* Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
* When all is said and done, more is said than done.
* What would your future self, you 20 years from now, have to say about that?
Sam Bayer-isms: “More than ‘All the world’s a stage'”
Sam Bayer is one of my favorite singer-songwriters. He is one of those rare immediately-caring people that you recognize as soon as he sings a song or talks with you outside the music hall. Sam Bayer writes in his latest newsletter about the roles people play:
Goffman was a brilliant sociologist, and one of his most influential books is The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which can be summed up, pretty succinctly, by mutilating Shakespeare: not only is all the world a stage, but every situation is a performance, and the roles we assume vary according to which play we happen to be in at the time. I think of Goffman a lot; we’re different people to our friends than we are to our coworkers, or our parents, or our spouses, or our children.
Sam is in particular speaking about how we have different roles as a musician and as a host. The audience learns just a few things about you while you’re on stage. Sam writes:
Some people believe that there’s really no room for more than three basic facts about a solo performer: e.g., you’re tall, you’re a cross-dresser, and you used to be a Marine. The other details are just noise; they detract from the focus of the performance. A while back, I settled on three words: Literate. Resonant. Exuberant. They’re on the top of each page of my Web site. They’re the three things I want people to remember about me, and my performance, when they leave.
If you have a chance to see Sam Bayer perform, DO!
Sam also hosts the definitive lists of Boston “open mikes” on his site.
How to Make the Most of a Conference
- Have Fun.
- Be in the Moment.
- ASK!
- Take Risks.
- Go to the Panels you Want to Go To.
- Talk to Those People You Want to Talk To.
- Forget the Sales.
- INTRODUCE PEOPLE TO EACH OTHER!
- Send an Email Later that Night.
- HAVE FUN!!!!!!!
1) Have Fun. Everyone wants to be around someone who is having fun. Have fun – enjoy the people you are speaking to, enjoy the talks you are listening to.
2) Be in the Moment.
At conferences, it can be easy to be distracted and look around. But you’re not doing yourself any favors. If you’re speaking to someone and you’re looking around to see when the speakers from the last panel will come out so that you can say Hi to one of the speakers, the person you’re speaking to will not have a great experience, and you won’t have a great experience. In this case, the grass is not always greener. Solutions? Wait patiently if you’re waiting, and if you’re speaking to someone, give that person your full attention. It is much better to excuse yourself in advance, “Great to meet you, I’m going to go wait for someone right now,” than to be absentminded and preoccupied when speaking with someone.
3) ASK!
This is maybe the most important point. Ask questions. There is no such thing as a dumb question, or anaive question. Ask. You may be in a different field than another person. You may be used to different jargon. Ask. Have fun with asking questions. Be genuinely curious. Asking is fun.
4) Take Risks.
Do it! Just do it! If someone spoke on a panel, and you’d just love to say Hi, or ask something, JUST GO UP TO THAT PERSON. At a conference, everything is fair game. People are friendly. Take a social risk, and just do it. If you don’t tend to enjoy being extroverted, just act it for a few moments, and talk to whom you want to talk to. Remember The More, The More: the more you practice going up to people you want to speak to, the better you’ll be at this.
5) Go to the Panels you Want to Go To.
Every time you think, “let’s do this because I should,” you’re telling your brain, “I am willing to be bored, be exhausted, be broken but do this anyway.” Brains don’t like that – they like to learn, to play, to be ALIVE. Brains like you having fun. Go to a panel that seems the most fun to you in that time slot, the panel that seems most exciting. Any panel can be useful. Any. You can learn something anywhere. Go to the ones where you’ll have the most fun. Then you’ll get the most out of it.
6) Talk to Those People You Want to Talk To.
The points of (#1 Have Fun) and (#2 Be in the Moment) are that you are doing what you want to be doing. You are going to a conference for yourself usually. While at the conference, do what you want to be doing. Don’t go to speak to the technology folks or the finance folks because “it’s what you think you should be doing.” Do what you want to do. Your energy in doing what you want to do will make those interactions just that much more alive and engaging.
7) Forget the Sales.
You are not at the conference to sell. Every sales relationship is exactly that – a relationship. You’ve probably heard this, and it’s true – don’t ever think about closing a sale. Think about opening a relationship. The relationship may not ever lead to a sale. It doesn’t need to. Relationships are about energy, common interests, fun. The sales will happen as long as your product/service is great, and as long as you’re a real, ethical person. It’s too much stress at a large conference – and almost anytime really – to focus on “sell, sell, sell.” Change that to “enjoy, enjoy, ask questions.” After all, life is about living.
8) INTRODUCE PEOPLE TO EACH OTHER!
After (#3 ASK), this is my favorite. If you’ve met Jordan, who is launching a phone-info-online business, and then you meet Sarah, who has opened launched several related phone-info busiensses, suggest to Sarah, “Oh, if I see you and Jordan near each other, I’ll definitely introduce you. I think you’d enjoy meeting each other.” If you meet people who should be in touch with each other, ask the second person you meet whether you can put him in touch with the first person you met. Then ask the first person by email… “can I e-introduce you to so-and-so?”
9) Send an Email Later that Night.
If you meet someone you think you may want to keep in touch with, send an email later that night. Ideally, mention something specific that you and that person talked about – both for the person’s memory, and for yours! Business cards expire. If you don’t use a business card two weeks after you receive it, you might as well throw it away. Really. Business cards make sense if you’re in touch with that person, not to say, “Oh I once met such and such person at a conference.” Business cards make sense if you use them, not as collector art.
10) HAVE FUN!!!!!!!
And why do I emphasize having fun? Because everybody is stressed, everybody has an intense life. Let go, and things will come easily to you.*
* Why might things come easier once you let go and have fun more? Because of Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build emotion theory (that when you’re in a broad, good mood, you see more solutions and opportunities than when you’re in a closed lousy mood). Because of Seligman’s optimistic explanatory style (what you tell yourself about a situation affects how you react to that situation). Try it. It can’t hurt at one conference.
Enjoy the event!
If you see me with my nametag “Senia Maymin Positive Psychology,” come up to me and say Hi! Best,
Senia