Stress test – involves imaging w/thalium, treadmill, more imaging.
Wait. Wait. Wait. (no water, no food) Wait.
Hours later doctor comes. “the tests are negative” “if it’s not heart problems, what is it?”
Me: How would I know?
Lunch arrives moments after I sign discharge papers. I eat half of it anyway.
Home.
I could tell you stories though about how wonderful the staff was. There might be some cool things I could tell you about the procedures or the equipment. Heck, there’s always the wheel chair rides.
Love though, that’s what I’ll talk about. The pure outpouring I received from friends via Twitter. I couldn’t get on my computer but I had my Blackberry and Twitterberry. Therefore I had my tweeps.
Offers of prayers, positive thoughts, and more came over the ether. Wow. My wife and I were blown away. Folks offered to come to the hospital even.
To compare? I called coworker last night when I found out I was going to be admitted and left message at work. No one called at all today.
I challenge those of you who think Twitter is just about reporting bowel movements and breakfast to honestly put some effort into building relationships and come back and tell me that you can’t do more than that online.
You’ve just written a world saving blog post or book or both. It’s got to reach the world in short order. How are you going to convince your friends to talk about it to their connections and networks? Is bribery the answer? Offer them some participation prizes? We know that only provides temporary buzz.
It’s war out there. People in your network of friends and business associates are under a constant barrage of information. They’ve seen dozens of blog posts, new books, and freshly launched businesses. Chances are they are weary of it all. What’s a person to do?
Contacts need to become comrades in arms. Their energy and focus on your needs to be such that’d they are willing to help you put the war paint on. When that happens, they’ll be talking up you, your work and more without any prompting.
War paint? Yep. What I found out when working to get to SOBCon08 was more was accomplished by getting folks along side than pushing them to push others. Oh, I did my share of that, but what really worked was bringing my contacts to fight along side for me.
How to get them there is really the question? It’s partially about having something great to say, but it’s equally about sharing your story and making them a part of it.
What really sells people, especially folks like me, is getting involved in the story. What gets me talking about Apple and their products? Oh, good products for sure, but there are lots of good to great products out there. For me it’s the story. I can tell about my Mac conversion; I can talk about how excited Apple is about the users; I can’t help myself.
With my contacts, it’s hard not to share their stories when they share them with me and invite me to be involved. That’s crucial. You can’t just have a story to tell, but it’s got to be one that folks can join in on.
Cancer survivor stories might move us, but how much more moving when told by someone that you know, or someone that asks you to come along side, and lets you know how much it’s appreciated. A story where you get to be part of it.
If you’re paying attention, you’ll realize it’s not really about the book, or the blog post so much. It’s about who you are and how your contacts are part of that. The more involved you can help them to be, the more they are going to want to share on their own.
Honesty and transparency are key. If you’re going to ask folks to get involved, and give you their trust, get them to be part of and share our story, then be up front with them. Ask for their help, tell them the truth, and share the joy of your success.
Do you have cohorts willing to help you put the war paint on and face the world? Are you working on building those types of relationships? Waiting for your best seller to happen? How about getting your support team together while you wait. They are vital to your success.
Want to come along side me? Your support and encouragement is always welcome. Want me along side for you? Tell me your story and get me on board. We’ll go face the world together.
Social networking and media can fool you. Oh yeah, you’ve got a hundred contacts here, a 1000 there, and more folks are friending you on Facebook every day.
But what’s really happening? Is the world knocking your door down? Are these folks really your friends? The hard truth is that most of these folks will engage you in no more than water cooler chat.
Reality can be rough, but this isn’t out of your control. There’s hope and better relationships ahead. We just have to step off the path a bit.
What can you do? How can you turn contacts into partners, associates, and friends? Investment!
The biggest mistake we make is looking for more when we’re not willing to take the first step. As in relationships of any kind, it takes time and effort to form a bond. This is amplified in some ways by the sheer distances across which we reach with the internet.
Investment isn’t about spending more money, or taking out stock in a the latest Facebook copy cat. It’s about investing in those threadbare connections. Turn the water cooler chat into sharing about plans, dreams, and that secret tattoo.
As a person struggling with this every day, and feeling the pressure myself, I’ve set myself on a path to move through this struggle. There are a few things I’ve done to move things forward.
- send postcards – folks really enjoy these, and they give you a chance to send a hand written and personal note to someone, an individual, across miles, and even across oceans. This is the personal touch that gets remembered and says, “I like you.”
- ask how you can support them – I find myself more and more asking how I can support people. Yes, I fail sometimes, but I’m getting better. But it’s about the effort. Get in there and actually support folks. Don’t just cheer on the sidelines! Visit their blog, link to them, send your friends to their site, pimp out their book, or even consider praying for them.
- pick up the phone – if you can’t be there, the next best thing is a human voice. I’ve witnessed first hand how life changing a single phone call can be. It doesn’t have to be a heavy thing, but reach out, touch someone’s life today. You can’t do business either until you connect.
- when all else fails, visit in person – I’d taken the opportunity this year to do just that. I’ve to meetups, lunches, breakfasts, and dinners, blogger meetings, tweetups, and taken photo walks. Heck, we even stayed at a Flickr friend’s house for a week. Wow!
I’m no genius and these aren’t brain surgery level tips. These are simple and practical things you can start doing today.
To show you I’m serious, email me, DM me, send me a private Utterz, call. Tell me about yourself, how we can connect, and where you’re looking for support. Beyond that, I challenge you to reach out today to one of those people you’ve got in your contact list and let them know you’re more than an avatar.
As a real world social networking effort, I’ve asked my contacts to let me reach out to them with postcards. Several folks have opted to participate this time.
This exclusive offer is now closed for more applicants. There will be other opportunities to get a postcard from me with a personal note. I’ll be sending out different kinds of postcards as I find them. This weeks is mostly Austin post cards as I had some left, and a couple of others.
I’ll be putting these out today after I get the last few together. The last ones I sent took a few days to reach their desinations, so I’ll confirm each DM I received for the cards I’m sending out.
What are you doing to really connect with your contacts? Meeting them, phoning them, sending them a postcard?
(PS. Please send one back if you want or share the fun and send your own. If you blog about it, consider tagging it “Social Networking Postcard Project”.)
First there was Scrabulous, more recently Packrat, and now? FriendsForSale. You read the right, Friends For Sale. Go figure that would be popular. What it amounts to is you can ‘purchase’ your friends for game dollars.
Each of your friends that’s never been purchased starts out at the same price. As a person’s persona is purchased, the value goes up. The increments are fairly small at first, but quickly escalate.
Purchasing a person is not a straight buy either. There is a markup factor as well as profit for the current owner. Also, the person being purchased receives a little bit of game cash. This results in those being purchased frequently acquiring a good bit more cash than those that receive few or no purchases. Purchases can be made of unowned personas as well as those owned by others.
Basic play aside there are a couple of camps of folks involved in this game. Those that see it as demeaning, and those that just see it as fun. The demeaning side can be seen in how a person is bought and sold, as some would say, like a piece of garbage sale junk. Even others in that camp just see the game as another way to feed on the cliques and elitism they see happening in social networks and social media across the board.
On the flip side, those just in it for the fun do have a few interesting takes on it. Some treat it like a trading card game, with each trade being more like stealing away someones best rookie card. Some take the fun into more risque things, playing up on the innuendo of ‘owning’ someone. And of course there’s the crowd that just finds it another cute game to play with friends.
The truth, in my opinion, is that neither side is all the way wrong. Elitism is hard at play in this game in a way, but more of elitist worship. It’s the groupie effect. Persons like Robert Scoble and Jeff Pulver bring the most cash for purchase. Yet ostensibly, neither plays the game themselves. But because of hero worship, the one who owns becomes envied. Now is this all bad? Not really, it’s definitely a parallel to collecting trading cards.
Trading cards have value based on how famous the player on the card is, and how hard the card is to get a copy of, and finally, what sentimental value there is. Friends For Sale’s economy behaves the same way essentially, with social media rockstars being generally the most valued cards as it were. However, like in trading card collection, there are a wealth of those collecting their personal friends over the rockstars.
Unlike in collecting trading cards though, there’s one big difference. Any player can buy your cards right out from under you in FriendsForSale. All they need is enough game dollars. This can make the game frustrating to participate in, especially when you play with your friends.
My thoughts on it? If you have time to play more games, this one is a low involvement game, with no clear winners or losers, and the game bucks are free every 4 hours. There are definitely worse games and applications on Facebook.
If you don’t have time for more Facebook games, why the heck did you read this far?
Austin made me feel welcome in more ways than one. Heck, they even named a store after my son, Randall’s. Throughout the week folks were courteous and welcoming.
That and they kept apologizing for the weather. Yes, when it’s below 70 something or the least bit clowdy, they think the weather is bad. Heck, it was flooding in our neck of the woods when we left and cold too boot.
Austin brought Nanna J and I opportunities for dining experiences, cultural discoveries, and making new friends. Simis, a photographer friend, hosted us for the entire week. My favorite shot of her.
During our visit were were able to not just meet with Simis, but with several other contacts of mine from Twitter. We had lunch out with @Orchid8.
We had breakfast with @mikeneumann:
Dinner with Simis:
And then a whole dang tweetup hosted by Kim Haynes.
Several folks turned out for the meetup and made us feel quite welcome. We didn’t just talk about Twitter either. No, we talked about blogging, social media, photography, and social networking. But beyond that, we had opportunity to talk about each other, Austin, and food. You know that last one is dear to my heart. Ha.
As you can see, just meeting folks was a busy week. I’ll have to do another post about the cultural stuff I guess. Expect a post just about the food as well.
For a visual recap of our week in Austin be sure to check out Flickr. I’ll be adding more pics to that set over the next several days.
In summary, the trip to Austin brought me closer to folks in my network than just being virtual friends. We talked, we laughed, and we broke bread together. Those are the makings of a lasting friendship. Heck, in all the excitement, I made some new friends too and so did our friend Simis.
What are you doing with your next vacation? Seeing the Grand Canyon, or closing the loop with friends? Can you manage both like in our Austin trip?
So you’ve joined up on Facebook and Twitter, and the contacts and friends are rolling in. The steady stream of updates has gone from fun to near overwhelming. Your in person friends are getting lost in the shuffle. However, you know all about the latest Podcamp now, and can tell where the next Pulver breakfast is at without even thinking. Is it madness? Too many contacts?
What’s a person to do in this situation? It’s time to trim down my friend. Stop; don’t balk now. You are moments away from relieving the stress of too many contacts. Too many? Yes, too many, and no arguing that there are so many interesting folks out there. Heck, I’m one of those.
Got your attention? Ready to cut down? But how, that’s the question. Who can you cut from your social networks? You can’t leave Aunt Suzie off right? Well how about Scoble?
It’s time to figure out who you’ll be benefit from following. Here’s a few tips to help out:
Unfollow celebrity types that aren’t following you. This one will be the hardest for most folks to follow because of fear of missing out. Here’s a little tidbit; most of the folks are not just putting out their stuff on Twitter or Facebook, they also have a blog or blogs that they are posting too, often daily. Robert Scoble is an excellent example. He not only uses socnets, but all of his real productive work is show on his blog, FastCompany.TV, Ustream.TV and his KyteTv channels. If you want to follow him, follow him there.
Unfollow all non celebrity types that aren’t following you. A little easier sacrifice to make for most of us. These are the folks that you’ve probably added because your friends have them as a contact, or because they are friends of the celebrity types you were following. JUST DROP THEM ALREADY! Apply the rule of what are they doing to move you along your path here. Chances are, very little.
Unfollow companies on your socnets. Unless they are honestly engaged in two way conversation and you are honestly an active participant in that conversation, drop them. It’ll clean up your stream of plenty of stuff you weren’t probably reading anyway. Again, these companies most likely have blogs you can follow via RSS rather than the random Twitter or socnet update.
Unfollow your prolific friends. That’s right, your friends. Question whether they too are engaged in conversation or just sending out tones of updates. Heck, I’m one of those sometimes. I’m very prolific on a couple of my socnets, and some of my friends have had to unfollow me because they can’t see anyone else’s updates or at least they are harder to find in the flood.
If after doing those four things you still have too many updates coming your way, then maybe it’s you that needs fixed. Get yourself some caffeine, a little ginseng boost and dig in. And maybe, just maybe take a reflective look and see if you are one of those that someone else might have to unfollow or unfriend.
Cheers,
Todd, tojosan just about everywhere, follow me if you dare
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First there was Scrabulous, more recently 
