Over the course of the past week two of my daughters returned to the empty nest, my trips to Irvine to drink from the well of networking and business expertise were as frequent as the prior week, and I’ve been cruising through the pages of The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging.
Two wonderful quotes come from the pages of the aforementioned book. The first comes from John Ridley, fellow Milwaukeean, screenwriter, novelist and blogger at the Huffington Post. “Without the unsigned masses who are compelled at odd hours to respond to anything and everything posted on the web, bloggers would merely be Internet writers—which is just the unemployed version of mainstream media journalists.”
The second quote comes from bestselling author, Deepak Chopra, who also blogs at the Huffington Post. “Blogs give you a chance to be misunderstood en masse—and grateful when that one sympathetic reader responds and gives you hope for the future of the mind.” He prefaces this remark by acknowledging one can be misunderstood when “talking person to person.”
No one can expect to be understood at all times by all interpreters. One can safely say this holds true for parents and children, employers and employees, artists and patrons, filmmakers and viewers, and certainly writers and readers. Our interdependence is what brings vitality to the relationship for without it my new acronym would be uvommj as described in the last six words of Mr. Ridley’s quote (see above).
Almost everything this week pointed to the importance of creating a community. At my Experience Unlimited meeting a highly successful public relations and marketing specialist explained how he was able to create a Norman Rockwell life for himself by merging high tech with high touch. By the end of that meeting my community grew to include new member of EU and a longtime member who share my interest in teaching and learning. Later in the week the three of us met again, and my knowledge of vocational opportunities in our shared field grew exponentially despite my prior three decades in education.
Sandwiched between my two Project Success seminars I met with a business technology expert who tempered my entrepreneurial spirit with some pragmatic ideas for creating a community and making my venture profitable. Relationship of a sound business plan and application of various marketing strategies to the development of a community of followers emerged at the previous evening’s session. Expanding on the pragmatic components of building a community my last class dealt with lower and higher investment online marketing strategies. Or simply, to tweet or not to tweet.
Although further investigation and research remains in my path much of what I learned this week leads me to believe a new neighborhood in the blogosphere might enhance the conversation among members of our community. As we approach the 100th step together it may be time to find a new address on a different street. While Blogger has been an extremely friendly place to start my blogging career, and Every Step of the Way has proven a useful name, as someone always looking for the silver lining change becomes inevitable. Please stay tuned. Your comments would be tremendously helpful at this time.
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