Art Discovery At The Beach

An unexpected treat this morning on my walk in Santa Barbara. Our new home is an easy 8 minute walk to the beach. This morning it was clear and chilly and I could see all the way to the islands. Towards the end of the walk and near Butterfly Beach I came upon this stunning set of rock sculptures. I didn't have my camera with me, so I went home, got it (and Kymberlee) and hiked back to the spot where I first saw these statues.



From a distance you notice something, but it is not until you get close do you see that someone spent a lot of time creating these natural sculptures.


There were so many of these pillars, and such obvious care paid towards balance and the aesthetic of them as a collection.

Here is a short clip showing how in addition to the towers, smaller rocks were placed on a very large piece of driftwood.



I was taken with the idea of spending a day at the beach selecting, stacking, and thinking about this work of art - in total it takes up 50 foot of beach.

Amazing

Holiday Feasting - Yes, I really love to cook.

I was lucky enough to host two meals on Christmas for both sides of the family and some friends. Many people only know me from Wavefront or introNetworks and never knew that I was a chef long before I got into software. One of the ideas for this blog was to give me a creative outlet for my writing and to share some of the recipes, tips and tricks that have served me so well.

For Christmas Day we decided on a more appetizer style approach, easy to serve, easy to maintain, fun to eat and great to just have out so people can nibble in-between opening gifts.

Here is the main menu for the day time meal.

• Warmed Marcona Almonds with Herbs
• Baba Ganoush and Hummus with Pine Nuts and Pita Chips made from scratch
• Sliced Pears with 3 Cheeses - Gouda, Gorgonzola and a Blue Brie
• Scallop and Bacon Kebabs skewered on fresh Rosemary sprigs - seared to order
• Mushroom - Red Pepper and Sun Dried Olive Quiche with Gruyere Cheese
• Chicken Florentine - bite sized pieces to scoop into cheesy spinach sauce
• Traditional Pork Tamales (purchased from Los Arroyos, best in Santa Barbara)
• with Tomatillo Salsa, Sour Cream and Queso Fresco

Dessert was an assortment of custom cupcakes from Whodidily in Montecito with some assorted breakfast pastries.

The food was pretty tasty, and the highlight for everyone seemed to be the Florentine, but anything that is goopy and cheesy will always please the crowds. My favorite was the Scallop/Bacon skewer. Wow, the flavor combination was stellar. Just the right amount of saltiness, meshed with the juices of the scallop, crusted into the sprig of the rosemary. I could have eaten many more.

(Pictured two raw skewers after being prepped)

For Christmas Dinner served later that evening I was wanting to have something different (for me), I was not interested in Ham, Turkey, Prime Rib or a Christmas Goose (did that last year). So, I was thinking of a nice Roast of Pork with the great crust you get from slowly roasting it in the over with a great rub on the surface.

Christmas Dinner

• Cocktails - Cranberry infused Gold Margaritas
• Appetizers - a bit of what was left from earlier in the day
• Ceaser Salad
• Roast Tenderloin of Pork with Au Jus
• Spiced Crabapples with Pearl Onions
• Duchess Potatoes
• Steamed Broccoli
• Cauliflower AuGratin
• Fresh Pear Tart with Warm Butterscotch Sauce

The meal was simple to prepare and you can find recipes for all the above in the Joy of Cooking. The innovation for me was in cooking the crabapples found at our local produce market, Tri-County Produce (best in Santa Barbara).

Spiced Crabapples with Pearl Onions

Place 3 crabapples per person in a pan, cover with cold water, add 1/4 cup of vinegar and 1/2 cup sugar. I used raw sugar and organic apple cider vinegar. Bring to boil, cook them for 3 min at most, (you don't want them to get mushy) pull crabapples out of the syrup and set aside.

Meanwhile, cut off the head and tail of 2 dozen boiling onions (white or yellow doesn't matter). Slip them into the still hot syrup and boil for 3-4 minutes. (When complete, pull the onions out and set aside to cool. Once cool, you can pop the onions out of their tough skin by pressing them in your fingers, they will pop out easily.)

Put 2 cinnamon sticks and 1 teaspoon of cloves into the syrup and let the syrup continue to boil until it is reduced by 2/3's, you are trying to boil the water out of it and leave just a thick syrupy sauce. That ought to take 15 minutes - watch it so it doenst burn completely. Once done, pour the syrup into a container that has the crabapples and onions in it. Place in the refrigerator overnight. This allows the flavors to mingle. The combination of flavors, intertwined was a crowdpleaser.

After a day of shopping and preparation and several hours in the kitchen pulling the plates altogether, I was able to relax, enjoy the meals and the great company and celebrate our first Christmas here in our new home.

Question Stream: Social Networking Leadership Strategy, Part 2

Continuing to answer questions from the Relationship Economics webinar. Here's another one.

Q: How do you balance the value of networking against the potential time drain? Sitting at Starbuck's (twitter?) is of no value to me. I perceive a lot of social networking and blogging as a reflection of self-importance.

A: I love this question. It speaks to value of time spent doing anything. Some people like to spend time over a cuppa coffee talking (think of the great Cafe Society in Paris), and now in 2008 that same discussion happens over a Venti Latte, a Smart Phone and Twitter.

I can see where that type of seemingly endless small talk and banter is not useful per se. But it does contribute to our sense of feeling connected, and that is a core human need. Yes, technology has allowed us to experience that connection virtually, very easy. You don't have to be in Paris to have a conversation with someone that is in Paris. Right?

The point about social media being a 'reflection of self-importance' is very true in some cases - though I think it is an unfair sweeping generalization. I follow many people on Twitter and within a day or so, I can sense who is 'self-important' and who has things to say that I need to pay attention to - I then stop following them.

Conversations are happening all around us, the trick is to be engaged in ones that have meaning to you, where meaning can change at a moments notice.

I spoke at the MIT Venture Forum in September here in Santa Barbara and one of the panelists responding to a question similar in tone to this said that the internet has given a very vocal minority access to the largest soapbox in the world. Maybe this is the Web 2.0 version of what they did in London (Speaker's Corner) so that people had a place to espouse their world view.

Social media is just another tool for helping people feel connected, so they can have meaningful conversations, which together create a sense of engagement. Powerful.

Question Stream: Social Networking Leadership Strategy, Part 1

On December 12, David Nour and I jointly presented a webinar on Social Networking Leadership Strategy. During that event we fielded many questions, far too many to answer during the session. We agreed to tackle several questions each over a period of time and eventually answer all of them.

We also decided that there were probably others out there that have the same questions. So, we decided to post them for all to read. You can access David's Relationship Economics blog here, and my blog here.

To set the context, we were focusing on networks that are deployed inside an organization, association or other enterprise, that were designed for business purposes. We also spent a lot of time talking about how to build your own network, using a mixture of methods.

Ok, let's get started.

Q: What are some good ideas for attracting people to your social network?

A: This answer turns out to be one related to the communication of intent. You need to tell people what the network is for. Seems obvious, but many don't focus on this simple thing. Is this a network for personal development, business development, personal interests - spell it out. People do what they are incentivized to do. Are you clearly communicating 'what's in it for me' to them?

If you believe that a principle reason for joining a network in the first place is to connect to people and content, then a clever strategy will be to highlight the types of people in the network you can connect to (potential mentors, study partners, peers, business contacts, etc) and the content that might be appealing (white papers, case studies, best practices, etc).

If you are clear on intent and purpose, then you really only have a communication challenge. How do you reach your target audience, how frequently, how succinct are the messages? You might want to look at how a good marketing communications person would address the problem. Even if you have built this community for an internal audience, they are, in fact, your market, and strategies for MarCom are directly applicable here.

Finally, Larry Winget at a recent Wealth Mastery conference said that business success is actually very easy, "Ask people what they want, then give it to them".

Have you asked your audience what they want?

Managing Meetings - a few tips

Ok, so we are all trying to figure out what to do in these tumultuous times - so what's one of the things we do, we meet. About ten years ago I was fortunate to meet (;-) Andy Blum, a founder of the Trium Group. He was retained when I was at Alias Wavefront to help our team through some tough times. He did great. I would recommend them (and him) for anyone that is struggling with strategy, process and 'getting things done'.

Andy spent a portion of that week long session talking about process improvement and one of the points was how to manage meetings better. He had a simple metric that he suggested be applied to all meeting requests. And it is easy to remember too.

1. Is the meeting Informational in nature? Meaning that we are all gathering to listen and be informed. If so, tell everyone one first. Maybe you can post the information first, so people can do some homework. This is an 'I' nformation meeting

2. Is the meeting where decisions need to be made? If so, this is a 'D'ecision meeting. Letting people know that they will be expected to weigh in on a topic and vote is critical, as they may need some Information first. (Many times you have a hybrid meeting, starts with I and ends with D. How many meetings were D meetings but were cloaked as I meetings. And nothing was decided, and everyone was frustrated as a result.

3. Is the meeting being called to gather ideas? This is a 'B'rainstorming meeting. There are a lot of ways to manage this specific type of meeting, but the outcome and strategy behind it are very different than the other two. Let people know in advance that they may need to do a bit of research first (maybe), but to come with a spirit of creativity (essential for this type of meeting. Don't try to make this into a D meeting, schedule that one later.

4. The final type of meeting is the catch-all and what Andy called the No Agenda meeting. This is what I like meals for. We get together, no agenda in mind, but typicality interesting conversations occur unexpectedly. Sometimes, you need to actually plan for a No Agenda meeting, just to get at the good stuff that is underneath the surface (oh, maybe that's a hidden agenda meeting.)

I was exposed to this 4 part idea over ten years ago and still think about each meeting I attend. I see now that I will start using this in my actual meeting invitation so that people know if it is I, D, B or NA.

I would love to hear if you have strategies for making your meetings more effective.

(Oh, I remember trying to have the meetings standing up... that lasted two meetings.)

Here are some other resources on Effective Meetings

Learning Opportunities Embedded in Social Networking

This article originally appeared in the December issue (page 28) of CLO (Chief Learning Officer) Magazine. You can read the article in context here, or download a PDF of the article only, here.

This past summer I did a lot of reading, writing and interviewing to prepare for this article. One of the outcomes was an ecosystem map that I created for the Learning 2.0 marketplace. One of the my interviewees suggested I publish that work, I may. It clearly informed my writing and subsequently my thinking profoundly. In fact, it would not be an understatement to say that our company has changed as a result of that work.

I will be writing about business ecosystems and how we think about them, and how we have internallised what we learned from James Moore's book - The Death of Competition as a result.

We did a brainstorming exercise today as the kickoff to a week long planning session and used some pretty standard techniques to facilitate the process. We did pretty well on coming up with ideas, but I am wondering if there isn't a better way to winnow down these storms into managable bits of information, quickly. You know how the energy of the storm is all encompassing? How each person is engaged - that seems to wane when you then start to dissect the list.

Is this the hard part then? Are there some tried and true methods that have worked for you in the past? Of course, I have not googled brainstorming to see what information is already out there (link here for the curious)

We did the obvious things, created the list, scored the list, cull and sort, cull and sort. But somehow I feel like we are still missing something.

A bit more about me

I am interested in a lot of things, and have time for only a few. My main hobbies are Miniature Orchids, a Salt Water Reef tank and Martial Arts (Hapkido).

Testing Blogger > Twitter bridge

Found TwitterFeed today (gee am feeling late to the party) - anyway. This is a test.

(note: it didnt work, ugg)

Visualization

One of the things that has intrigued me for over 20 years is how you can use information to make a picture - or how a picture can help you see something that was invisible before the picture existed. I will be using this blog to point out some interesting examples of visualization that I find intriguing.

Starting with An Atlas of Cyberspaces. This is out of date now, but is an amazing resource.

and

The Visual Thesaurus

There are 1000's more examples and I will be posting them in time.

Blame it on a friend

As a social media guy for several years now, why is it that only now, at the end of 2008, am I finally doing a blog? Well, I have been conflicted about competition and transparency. During the summer I did a research project and had a conversation with Mark Oehlert (@moehlert on Twitter) who insisted that I have a blog. Period. And my good friend and collegue Peter Goldie (@jpgoldie) also suggested (insisted) that I start writing about all the stuff that he and I talk about, and the things that I find interesting.

So, here goes.

Playing in our own sandbox

Had a great meeting with my team today to think about how we could use our own smart social network to maximise the value we are deleivering to our current custoemrs in addition to those propsects that find us using Google Search.

Turns out that in a short two hour period I was able to recast the Testdrive (Link Here) to serve as an information portal for our clients, tips and tricks etc, as well as a place for our Partners and Affliates to be a part of the conversation as well.

Now the interesting dynamic is that we know that all of our competitors are in the site as well. So, in an effort to be completely transparent, we let them see how we are taking a leadership position in this type of communication and not booting them out. Ah, one nuance here, we have something we call the Pin Visibility Matrix that allows us to show/hide/cloak any type of user, so we have used that to our advantage. I won't go into who/what we are cloaking - but we are.

Also, we got the idea of using the Pins to show more than just People, and added our Favorite Books to the Community. This has been pretty cool, we are getting suggestions from others on books to add and it just highlights another cool feature of the platform.

Getting started again

It's been a long time since I took time to write. I have been encouraged by several to stop talking and start writing. So, here goes.

I am currently spending most of my time exploring ways in which social networks can help in the Learning process. This has consumed me for the past several months. I have been building an eco-system map of the Learning 2.0 space and will probably start to share those thoughts on this space.

As I am just getting started again, I think it will take me a few posts to get back up to speed. Bear with me.