The Wild Onion family now has a new tradition:  Secret Santa dinner!

The way it works:  the night before Christmas Eve, someone in the family decides to have the family participate in a Secret Santa exchange.  In our case, it was my 10 year old, who has never had to brave holiday traffic, nor go to the same store every day for a week, each time forgetting to buy that “one more thing” that will make the holidays complete.   Write everyone’s name on a slip of paper, put the papers into one of Mrs. Wild Onion’s cosmetic bags, and walk around the house, announcing that it’s picking time.  Try to grab the slip of paper before it gets added back to the cosmetic bag.  Hilarity ensues when some people furtively read the name on the paper, then quickly shove it back into the bag for extra secrecy.  Appeal to Mr. Onion for verification that no one picked themselves (altho Mrs. Onion was kind of hoping for herself.  She’s a very good shopper, and would be certain to buy just the right thing….)

Once the drama of picking time has ended, shopping time begins.  During a thrifting session, I found this tee:

Perfect for my recipient, the ever popular Playa Pancake Man, who serves hundreds of pancakes to hungry Burning Man attendees.

Wrap it up and maintain secrecy until after dinner on Christmas Eve.

Youngest Onion gave his recipient an entire cheesecake,

which I thought was pretty clever.  He thought of the gift all by himself, and since his brother loves cheesecake above all else save chicken noodle soup, it was an extremely thoughtful gift!  His Secret Santa gave him a gift certificate to his favorite restaurant, where many a Sunday is spent watching the Steelers and eating burgers.

Finally, I received a promissory note for some hand dyed roving (not yarn, but it will be!), which thrills me no end!

We have re-arranged our Christmas traditions just a bit this year.  We have steak and tamales for Christmas Eve dinner, and have substituted “Ed’s Pasta” for Christmas day dinner (and lunch, and maybe even breakfast, as it is a much loved Onion family favorite!)

And now, a new tradition enters our home, via the littlest Onion:  the Secret Santa gift exchange, held post dinner on Christmas Eve.  We love it!

If your inner-12 year old is itching to play with matches, these world festivals might be able to satisfy you. It doesn’t matter if you are into fireworks, effigies, or just a good old-fashioned bonfire, there is a festival for it.

1) Yamayaki – Kasugano-cho, Japan

Fireworks competition at Sumidagawa

The sky lights up in Kasugano-cho, Japan on the second Saturday of January. To celebrate the New Year, an entire 342 meter dormant volcano is lit ablaze. The festival dates back to a land dispute between two rival temples in 1760. Things got out of hand and the whole volcano was torched. As if a burning volcano wasn’t enough, there are fireworks too!

2) Beltane Fire Festival – Edinburgh, Scotland

Every year, on April 30, Calton Hill in Edinburgh is transformed into the Beltane Fire Festival. Based off of an ancient Gaelic celebration of the start of summer, the festival has now grown to having nearly 12,000 attendants. It’s considered a “modern celebration”, but still features various mythological and historical influences. After a large, quasi-ritualistic parade, a giant bonfire is lit to celebrate the end of winter.

3) Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai – Sumidagawa, Japan

On the last Saturday in July, the annual Sumidagawa Fireworks festival will certainly satisfy your pyro-urges. The festival is a competition help between rival pyrotechnic groups battling for supremacy of the skies. The groups are known to be very creative with their explosions, using specially designed fireworks to create new colors and shapes. Events like this are held throughout Japan, but Sumidagawa is the most famous and attracts crowds of nearly 1 million people.

4) Navaratri – Gujarat, India

Navratri is celebrated nationwide on October 8-17, but the city of Gujarat is probably the best place to experience the important Hindu festival. The celebrations vary by year, but it always concludes with the Festival of Joy. There are large public battles of men shooting flaming arrows at giant paper effigies of monsters filled with fireworks. ‘Nuff said.

5) Oudjaarsavond – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Fireworks on Nieuwemarkt

Thousands of people throwing fireworks will definitely warm you up on a bitter cold New Years Eve. Large fireworks displays are held in Dam Square and other plazas, but the real madness happens when people toss firecrackers and roman candles at each other in celebration. Most people on the street get in the action, but make sure you keep an eye out for incoming fireballs. Bike riding is probably not the best evening activity on December 31st.

6) Burning Man – Nevada, USA

The Burning Man bonfire

Burn cream is a must at this clothing-optional artistic festival in the Black Rock Desert near Reno, Nevada. At the end of August, people from all over the world flock to an empty spot in the desert, where they build a unique and quirky art community. The wild week ends by lighting up many of the structures, including a gigantic wooden man. Fire, art and nudity sound like a winning combination to me.

7) Meskel – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Meskel Square, Addis Ababa

On September 27, Ethiopian Orthodox churches celebrate their religious holiday commemorating the discovery of the “True Cross” by Queen Eleni. The celebration includes the burning of a huge bonfire, called a Demera, which is decorated with daises and frankincense. According to the story, Queen Eleni ordered her followers to light a gigantic pile of wood on fire and then follow the smoke as it returned to the ground. The locals say that Meskel Square in Addis Ababa is the best place to check out the festivities… one million people can’t be wrong!

Yes, actually, a small broom and dustpan is a good idea for your tent, unless you’re going to lay down rugs (or carpet squares, etc).

Best thing ever: bring a giant sheet to put over your bed. When you get up in the mornings, tuck it over everything (pillows etc). That way, your bed is clean when you climb into it eventually. Nothing worse than a bedful of playa. But seriously, it gets everywhere, and you get used to it really fast.

Seems rugs would just collect more sand! I will add broom to the packing list. However, I need to, at some point, consolidate with the people I’m camping with…definitely bringing a sheet. My bed is one thing I always try to do nicely, sleep is SO important at a burn for me – and I’ve never done the burn life for so freakin’ long.  I think five or six days is my max (because I go early and leave late). So big-azz sheet, check. Broom, check.

I know several of those people. They’re awesome. Yes, you do want to camp there…although they’re gunning for Center Camp ring placement, and camping around Center Camp can be pretty overwhelming.

As opposed to the rest of it, hm? Ha! I am also working on a confession worthy of entrance into Sinister Minister. A few years ago I was watching footage of burn night, and theme camp names were scrolling across the bottom of the screen. It was more interesting than the burn! I laughed out loud and thought “Man, I could never pick just one!”

And here I am, 12 years after I first heard of it, doing just that.

These pics are great:

Really gave me a good idea, visually, of all the crap I’ll have to lug around all day.

I don’t know if the link will work (being the coding neophyte I am), so check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/62641147@N00/2819604640/ .

And last, but not least,

Rumour has it that trying to meet up with someone you had planned to can be difficult. The sand storms are only one blockade…there’s also the ability of a Burner to take your attention away from your planned activity and whisk you away to something else.

So with that “danger”, I’ve been told that walkie-talkies are the answer.

Don’t suppose you’ve shopped for those yet…?

I looked at them briefly, on amazon.com, to get an idea of prices. However, I don’t really have anyone to give one to. I’m a rogue burner, dontchaknow!

And I’m pretty much expecting to have, well, no expectation at any given time, of where I should be, or what I should be doing.  It would be really fun to have a bunch of them, to just give to random people I met and like, so we can hook up later (by either intent of the phrase).

Cool Neon is having a 2-for-1 holiday shopping sale on party starting luminescence.

Sprite Bombs

For some unknown reason, these babies are not illegal yet, so get’em while you can! Remember those small, paper wrapped bombs we enjoyed as kids? Well, a whole new generation of instantaneous explosive gratification has arrived!!!

Neon Strobing Sunglasses

The name pretty much explains it: “Clear plastic frames with Cool Neon wire wrapped throughout the inside of the frames.” AA batteries not included.

Remote Control Rainbow Lightbulb

It has 16 preset colors including bright white at variable brightnesses and can cycle or morph trough all 16color and the 1000’s of colors in between.

Let us know if you buy any of these.

Follow us @absurddelight

Thanks to Alex H. for the tip.

Wind Dancer Photos created a treasury of gift ideas for “him” on Design Style Guide.  Check it out; it includes my take on the annual Burning Man Festivities with Burning Man’s Heart.

Burning Man's Heart

by jim holt

Here’s a portrait of one of my heroes: a guy my age (old), wearing only a long leather work apron, welder’s helmet and gloves, welding part of a two-story structure in the desert.

It was 1998, my first visit to Burning Man.

The sight perplexed me. The flood of questions that washed up inside my brain (I now realize) surged as part of the ocean of logic I had acquired and cultivated over a lifetime of conventional living.

Why weld naked? Why weld in the desert? Why weld at all out here when everything will be dismantled in less than two weeks? Why such a large structure? Why a structure?

The answers have come to me after a dozen consecutive trips to Black Rock City, most of them intuitive.

The answers, however, if embraced by the bulk of Americans, would serve the country well in its effort to achieve self-sufficiency, to acquire alternative energy, to practice conservation and to perpetuate sustainability.

In one of those early years at Burning Man, I was invited to stop for breakfast by one of my neighbors. It was delicious. Spicy scrambled eggs, some sausages, toast, reggae music (everything smells and tastes better out there).

“How are you powering all this?” I asked.

Answer: a solar panel recharged a deep-cycle battery that, through a power converter, allowed him to plug in his toaster, stove and music box.

Brilliant.

Now, at home I do the same thing daily, powering up my laptop and other wee electronic devices with just a pillow-sized solar panel, allowing me to exit off the grid for at least part of the time.

Also, in the process of “leaving no trace” in the Black Rock Desert, ten days of every year, I’ve learned how to conserve water.

One of my inflatable beds somehow got punctured (don’t ask … could be any number of intriguing incriminating stories) so I rolled up each of the four sides of the mattress and placed it under my outdoor shower to collect the dirty water. Leaving the shower bag of water on the hood of my car all day enabled me to have a nice hot shower at the end of the day.

I just left the collected water exposed during the day and, of course, it all evaporated into the desert air.

I could do the same here at home (and if my neighbors are reading this – relax – I’d put up a curtain).

Before Burning Man and before this lesson in shower water, I never would have thought to water my plants with the greenish collected water that remains after I steam broccoli in a wok. Now, I do and that’s a pint less disappearing into the sewer.

A lot of the conservation and sustainability lessons learned at Burning Man come about due to problem solving. Everything is problem solving out there, miles from anything.

My car battery died one year. I started to panic and worry but then I remembered the lessons I had learned up until that point. I opened the hood, clipped my solar panel to the battery and let the sun do what it does. Problem solved.

Another year, I had to file a newspaper story (that’s before I gave up trying to articulate and describe something that was better left un-described and merely embraced) … but how in the middle of the desert?

I found a burner whose trailer was filled with people typing at laptops, all online.

How so? I asked.

He powered an uplink satellite system with propane. Brilliant. Burning Man is about gift giving so brought him beer. Even more brilliant.

If every American saved their shower water and charged their laptops by the sun a significant amount of oil would stay in the ground and a significant amount of water would stay in the lake. That deserves bringing them each a beer, I think.

I saw a burner on one of the Survivor TV episodes (she wore a necklace that had a pendant of ‘the man’ ) and I thought “that stands to reason … being out there you learn a lot about surviving’. What she learned, she probably shared with others. That’s what I’m thinking.

Me?

I’m enrolling in a welding course at the local college.

As part of our Oasis 47 camp at Burning Man a group of our friends from San Francisco who go by the name Deadly Muppets built the Caveman Caraoke, a caveman-themed, dragon-pulled, karaoke-focused mutant vehicle.

A member of the gang just compiled all the statistics and in the interests of future research into the karaoke preferences of Burning Man attendees vis-a-vis the population at large, and what this says about our culture and community (tell me there’s not a PhD in that!) I am posting it here.

We had 3817 songs available, of which 214 different ones were sung. 58 were sung more than once, for a total record of 274 karaoke performances. That comes to just over 20 hours of singing, or 4 hours per night. Here’s the breakdown of songs which were sung more than once:

7 Janis Joplin- Me & Bobby McGee
6 Grease- Greased Lightning
5 Aerosmith- Walk This Way
5 Journey- Don’t Stop Believing
4 Scissor Sisters- Flithy Gorgeous
4 Eddie Money- Take Me Home Tonght
4 Peter Gabriel- Sledgehammer
4 Davd Bowie- Space Oddity
4 Neil Diamond- America
4 4 Non Blondes- What’s Up
3 Guns ‘n’ Roses- Welcome To The Jungle
3 Abba- Dancing Queen
3 Madonna- Die Another Day
3 Crash Test Dummies- Mmmm
3 The Doors- Touch Me
3 Red Hot Chilli Peppers- Scar Tissue
3 Abba- Gimme Gimme Gimme
3 Aha- Take On Me
3 Madonna- Like A Virgin
3 Joan Jett- I Love Rock N Roll
2 Buddy Holly- Oh Boy
2 The Stray Cats- Rock This Town
2 David Bowie- Life On Mars
2 Carly Simon- You’re So Vain
2 Jet- Are You Gonna Be My Girl
2 Four Seasons- Big Girls Don’t Cry
2 Frank Sinatra- My Way
2 Neil Diamond- Sweet Caroline
2 Elton John- Sad Songs Say So Much
2 Duran Duran- Hungry Like The Wolf
2 Cardigans- Lovefool
2 New Order- Blue Monday
2 The Kinks- Sunday Afternoon
2 U2- One
2 Talking Heads- Road To Nowhere
2 Tears For Fears- Everybody Wants To Rule The World
2 The Lovin’ Spoonful- Daydream (What A Day For A)
2 The Doors- Light My Fire
2 Smashing Pumpkins- Perfect
2 Roy Orbison- Crying
2 The Darkness- I Beleve In A Thing Called Love
2 Marvin Gaye- Sexual Healing
2 Wham- Careless Whisper
2 Dusty Springfield- Son Of A Preacher
2 Carly Simon- You’re So Vain
2 Pat Benatar- Hit With Your Best Shot
2 Depeche Mode- Just Can’t Get Enough
2 Guns ‘n’ Roses- Paradise City
2 Gorillaz- Feel Good Inc.
2 Billy Joel- Big Shot
2 Barry Manilow- Copacabana
2 Jimi Hendrix- Purple Haze
2 Wham- Last Christmas
2 Queen- Killer Queen
2 Def Leppard- Pour Some Sugar On Me
2 Pixies- Monkey Gone To Heaven
2 Donovan- Sunshine Superman
2 Duran Duran- Reflex

]]> http://joshywashington.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/the-dust-motes-of-burning-man/ Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:52:06 +0000 joshywashington http://joshywashington.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/the-dust-motes-of-burning-man/

]]> http://dailymarauder.com/2009/12/08/gay-or-straight-blackbox-republic-attempts-to-answer-the-question-2/ Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:02:11 +0000 Marauder http://dailymarauder.com/2009/12/08/gay-or-straight-blackbox-republic-attempts-to-answer-the-question-2/

GAY OR STRAIGHT?: BLACKBOX REPUBLIC ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER THE QUESTION

“Bisexuality doubles your chances of a date on a Saturday night.” –Woody Allen

Blackbox Republic, a private network for dating and friendships, launched today with a focus on “keepin’ it real” with regards to sexual orientation and relationship style. With hundreds of online dating sites, I hardly saw the need for yet another. I sat down, via phone, with CEO Sam Lawrence to try and figure out what this new site brings to the dating table.

About a year and a half ago, co-founders April Donato and Sam Lawrence packed an RV for a 17-hour drive from Portland, OR to Burning Man in the Nevada desert. That’s one hell of a long time in a vehicle with someone. Left without their digital devices to distract them, they resolved to participate in that time-honored tradition of speaking to each other. They began to chat about relationships from friendships to dating. From mass-market social networks like Facebook, to straight up online dating sites like Match.com, they didn’t feel like there was an outlet that represented what they were looking for in an online meeting place.

Hence, Blackbox Republic came to fruition, aided by $1M in angel funding. In essence, the site allows users to prescribe who they are and what they are looking for with a degree of gay [cough] [cough]…gray. Common American perception leads us to believe that each of us is either gay or straight. Delve a little deeper and you will find that sexual orientation comes in all sorts of flavors. Sam exploded my brain a bit trying to break this all down for me.

From hetero to gay, there are 5 different possibilities. Users provide their selections using Kayak-like sliders on their profile pages. Sam and I discussed one particular example, which clarified the situation for me.

While testing the product out in focus groups across the country, he met a man who, for the most part, identified himself as gay. That said, he did like to have a relationship with a woman from time to time. Typically, this is a choice that is not respected within the gay community and therefore was something that he did not share with most people. On the flip side of the orientation equation, if he were to mention the possibility of dating women to his parents, they would have him mentally married with children in minutes.

His slider would therefore be somewhere between gay and bi. Frankly, these identifications of orientation, status, partners, etc fuel my entire interest in the site. Sam adds, “The only choices before now were advertising-focused public spotlights like Facebook, or online personals sites built around chemistry tests and splintered by race, sexual orientation or religion. We are aiming for something radically different. If Facebook and Match.com had a hot love child it would be Blackbox Republic.” A hot love child that could potentially be halfway between hetero and bi.

Not only does Blackbox allow you the tools to more accurately identify yourself, it provides a walled-in garden so that you could hopefully feel more comfortable sharing these things. The site is subscription-based, intended to weed out the riff raff. A basic subscription starts at $5/month and travels up the scale to $49 depending on features and the number of people joining together. I mean, what better way to get your threesome all using the same social network? In addition, users are verified by the community using a voucher system.

Here’s where I am a bit confused. When I asked Sam the purpose of Blackbox from friendship-based to dating, he responded that the site is intended to provide a place for people to be real with each other. Conversations on the site range from friendship to dating with leads to some confusion on what I would be using the site for. While I may share what orientation I am to potential partners, I wouldn’t necessarily want all friends to know. In addition, the prioritization of orientation on the site leads me to believe that the site is focused on the LGBT community, which after speaking with Sam is certainly not the case. It is true that online dating sites are somewhat splintered by race, religion, etc but that is because those individuals choose to associate with their particular groups, be it the Jewish community on J-date or the black community on blacksingles.com. The site is well designed and easy to use but I still don’t need another online dating site…and that in my mind, is exactly what this is.

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• Half of Americans Know Someone Who Has Dated a Person They Met Online, According to New Study from People Media (prweb.com)

]]> http://aaronrthomas.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/burning-man/ Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:54:00 +0000 noelthomas http://aaronrthomas.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/burning-man/

Aaron has always been good at transforming objects into works of art. Here is a new piece in progress. This started out as a bulletproof bank window, was carved into a human form, and was burnt to add amazing texture and color. Now Aaron is working on painting this piece. More photos to follow.

]]> http://teleomorph.com/2009/12/06/erik-davis-on-the-neotribal-festival-circuit/ Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:08:30 +0000 Evan 057 http://teleomorph.com/2009/12/06/erik-davis-on-the-neotribal-festival-circuit/ http://martinskinner.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/my-new-social-life-learning-to-walk-again/ Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:30:47 +0000 Martin http://martinskinner.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/my-new-social-life-learning-to-walk-again/

My new ’social’ life: Learning to walk again

By Martin Skinner

In many ways I now see myself as having started my life over again in 2009.  I’ve always been a fortunate soul and believe I’m lucky to have a ‘glass half full’ attitude.  Even so, my last ‘life’ concluded painfully after a glorious period I think I’ll call my roaring 20’s.

Magda, I & Gumpert Apollo

My last life

A Nice Group team meeting

With a background in technology, I deserted the world of direct employment in 2003 to embark upon an unforgettable entrepreneurial property adventure.  For seven years I worked hard to build up the ‘Nice’ brand. It began with my own property portfolio followed by a property services group (run together with my partners Paul and Guy) before eventually hitting the heady heights of joint venturing with big City fund managers.  It was a fantastic journey and I met and learned from a great deal of amazingly intelligent people.

Example Nice Room Bedroom

Lettings cars

Tenants' welcome pack

In Nice Group my partners, friends and I had built up a substantial enterprise with a magical atmosphere. Our staff actually wanted to come to work, bold plans were made for creating a new asset class for affordable young professional accommodation – and there was much, much, more to come… until disaster struck in the form of the credit crunch.  After a gruelling period of redundancies through 2008 we were effectively wiped out in March 2009 when our financing was pulled with just 24 hours notice.  Worse still, we were due to hit profitability again that month so heartbreaking stuff.  The following months were not the happiest of times and I don’t dwell too much on them. These things happen, so learn from them and move on. So without further ado I’ll move on to my new life …

My new ’social’ life

I never considered looking for a traditional 9-5 job. I’d got a taste for building up a business and I wanted more.  So I threw myself into helping a couple of friends plan a new business.  Pledging to revolutionise the way fund managers treat their partners and their customers, the concept for Inspired Asset Management was born.  Simon Hussey is the financial services expert and Alistair Britton covers the legal, financial & private equity fund raising bases – and they’re both brilliant to work with.  I look after the branding and marketing, with help from a group of exceptionally talented friends and contractors.

Now I’ve always been a pretty hardcore networker. I love meeting new people and connecting them up with people that can help them – and London is a great place for it. But apart from signing up to a few sites and occasionally chatting to people on Facebook,  I hadn’t really followed what was happening in the world of social networking/media.  I was too busy running my businesses.

But now I suddenly had the chance to immerse myself in an online world where you can meet, connect to and build relationships with pretty much anyone and everyone. Soon I began developing a strategy for Inspired to develop, market and support products through social media.  And it led me to one of the first people to come up with the concept of search engine marketing – David White of Weboptimiser.  His webinar about Twitter got me interested in an application that I had previously thought to be purely for pointless ‘celeb’ chat/following.  David has provided superb and effective online marketing advice ever since – although my genius copywriter Mark will never forgive him for his grammar.  I’ll be forever grateful to David for getting me started and keeping me on the right track.

Around the same time, I met a remarkably helpful American gentleman by the name of John Corey, who appeared to spend his whole time helping property investors, including me, to invest better.  For the [second] life of me, I couldn’t figure out why he would be so generous without trying to sell me something, charging any money or even asking for a role with Inspired.  I later discovered he attracted a considerable following both online and offline – and suddenly everything made sense.  John is a true gentleman as I’m sure those who know him fully appreciate.

Burning Man

By this time it was August 2009 and a long-since-booked first pilgrimage to an event called Burning Man beckoned. I say ‘first’ because it was such an astonishing experience I can’t for a moment imagine it’ll be the last. And I say ‘pilgrimage’ because it provides so much meaning for so many of the people who attend.  Burning Man is a collaborative social experiment that’s been running for nearly 25 years, yet is almost impossible to describe because of its sheer magnitude. Instead, I’ll let you try and make sense of a list of random facts, figures and rumours:

• Started on Baker Beach in San Francisco in 1986.
• 4th largest city in Nevada for one week then vanishes without a trace
• “The Man is a wooden monument to nothing specific, in the middle of nowhere” – The Burning Book
• Highest concentration of billionaires in the world for one week
• 50,000+ people, survival conditions, middle of the desert
• Mix of Mad Max, Hunter S Thompson and The Grateful Dead for all ages
• Astonishing celebration and spectacle of endurance, art, music, comedy, spirituality etc
• Pure gift economy

In my opinion, Burning Man has a lot in common with social media – particularly with its gift economy. I doubt that it’s a coincidence that Burning Man takes place so close to San Francisco and is frequented by so many movers and shakers from there.  It’s a seriously, fabulously crazy place and an experience that will inevitably affect my future endeavours. If nothing else, it’ll make any events I help to organise a lot more fun.

Back to reality and a ‘bump’

Big Little Baby

Wow, the unsung heroine and love of my life, my gorgeous and incredibly supportive fiancé Magdalena is pregnant.  Magda’s indomitable strength and determination have never ceased to amaze me. Combined with my insatiable entrepreneuring, I can’t wait to see what kind of little maniac our offspring turns out to be.  It does up the ante though and will require us to put new foundations down and establish a replacement income pretty quickly.

Both our mums have been superstars.  They’ve helped us financially and emotionally throughout and will be there to help us when the baby arrives.

Adapting fast

I think it’s fairly safe to say that social media is going to accelerate the rate of progress and dramatically change the worlds of education, work and leisure over the next few years.  The way information now flows around the web in real time allows people to learn faster and more collaboratively, so much so that working practices will inevitably have to adapt and evolve.

While investigating opportunities for promoting the first Inspired property fund to financial advisors, I came across Philip Calvert who runs IFALife.com – a very successful social network for financial advisors.  Phil kindly agreed to speak about social media at our launch event in October.  He also recommended Penny Power’s book Know Me Like Me Follow Me.

Penny’s book is a great read and provides a rare heartfelt view into a world of individual capitalists competing on almost equal footing with the big corporates and building their own personal brands.  The stories she tells about learning from her children also give great insights into where the original demand for social networking sites first came from.  After reading the book it only seemed right to join their online social business network Ecademy.com – another superb find that deserves much praise for its innovation and emphasis on sharing knowledge and skills.

Nick Tadd and his wife Vanessa Warwick provide an excellent example of entrepreneurs embracing successful new ways of working in this brave new world.  They’ve founded and encouraged a number of new enterprises and online/offline communities.  They’ve dedicated their property and social media activities to honest sharing and mutual benefit.  In fact, I paid for a days’ coaching with Nick and it was probably been the best investment I’ve ever made.  Even Tim Watts, or the ‘man from the Pru’ as I like to call him because of his natural aversion to technology, was convinced and went away to buy books on blogging.

Tim has joined Inspired after running the largest listed residential property company in the UK and he’s an icon in the industry. It was a real coup to get him onboard, and for me, the first sign that our efforts to brand the business well and create new working practices are starting to pay off.  Coming just at the point where I succumbed to personal bankruptcy, Tim’s arrival couldn’t have been better timed: a vote of confidence that provided me with a much needed dose of fresh inspiration.

The supremely educational meeting with Nick Tadd led to my joining the 4Walls and Property Tribes social networks. I also upgraded my Ecademy membership to Blackstar status and subsequently met some great characters including William Buist, Judith Germain and Clare Gilbanks.  A more supportive group of people would be very hard to find.

Most recently I had the pleasure of joining 10 other social media devotees on a two-day retreat with Thomas Power in Surrey.  Thomas taught us how to clearly express our key personal values and then link them up with our contacts across a variety of different networks.  A rare group of great human beings – I hope to stay in contact with them for a long time.

Learning to walk again

It’s been a remarkable journey so far and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting an incredibly rich and diverse mix of new people, many of whom I haven’t yet mentioned. I’ll make up for this in future blogs.

Yes, I’m still an entrepreneur. Yes, I’m still a residential property investment specialist. But today, sitting here right now, I’m also a social media evangelist.

So how does it all combine? Well, the Inspired Urban Share fund has achieved its first close and can now start buying properties.  We’re working to develop an investment community with financialtribes.com – many thanks to Nick Tadd for the name, and to Jamie Steele who was at the social media retreat and is building the platform for me.  I have some exciting ideas to develop on it including a contribution currency and a decision market.  And our launch event went well with another planned for the 11th February.

In keeping with the gift economy leanings of the social media universe, the Inspired launch event was an educational and entertaining affair.  PowerPoint presentations were banned and we didn’t overtly promote our products.  It went brilliantly and caused a real stir with our audience – and it was great fun too.  Good connections were made all round in the bar and I’m hoping it will be the first in a long line of future events, attracting more and more investors and advisors to our cause.

What I do find slightly bizarre at the moment is finding myself introduced to senior investment and property professionals as a social media expert – a title certainly not yet deserved, but one that demonstrates that opportunity awaits anyone prepared to adapt quickly and incorporate social media into their business and social lives.

So when it comes to reinventing myself I think I can say so far, so good. But I’m not calling it a comeback … not just yet.

Some key messages on social media from my journey so far:

• “The biggest shift since the industrial revolution” – Erik Qualman
• “The group gets better together” – Clay Shirky
• “You should focus on creating a web of findability” – Nick Tadd
• “Be random, open & supportive” – Penny & Thomas Power
• “Serendipity occurs more often in a collaborative environment and more frequently the larger the breadth and depth of your social network” – Penny & Thomas Power
• “Given the right conditions and the right problems, a decision market’s fundamental characteristics – diversity, independence, and decentralisation – are guaranteed to make for good group decisions.  And because such markets represent a relatively simple and quick means of transforming many diverse opinions into a single collective judgement, they have the chance to improve dramatically the way organisations make decisions and think about the future.” James Surowiecki
• And most importantly “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change” – Charles Darwin

]]> http://artpredator.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/ozomatli-headlines-sfs-sea-of-dreams-nye/ Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:27:13 +0000 art predator http://artpredator.wordpress.com/2009/12/06/ozomatli-headlines-sfs-sea-of-dreams-nye/ http://teleomorph.com/2009/12/04/boom-collective-shamanism/ Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:46:18 +0000 Evan 057 http://teleomorph.com/2009/12/04/boom-collective-shamanism/