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There is something about summer - and especially spending a few weeks on the coast of Maine - that makes me want to try new things. I guess it’s the "kid at camp" syndrome where you sign up for riflery even though you’re scared of guns, have never fired one before and probably (hopefully) won’t again.
This year it’s cooking a goose and taking a drawing lesson. And lots of freewriting to warm up for another book. I’ve been talking about that for a while. More below.
My Goose Is [Not] Cooked
I was chatting with the meat man after buying some locally grown lamb chops and steaks at the farmers’ market. He mentioned that he had some fresh geese so I impulsively bought one. My husband loves roasted duck. Goose / duck whatever. Oops. Turns out they are quite different.
I tweeted out a What is your favorite goose recipe? and got some useful replies. Twitter is great, BTW, for asking odd questions and getting useful answers. Particularly if you have a good following and don’t ask too often.
Then I googled around and came up with some not-so-reassuring advice from the ChubbyHubby (Whining, Dining and Marriage) blog:
A [goose] is by no means a dish to be prepared on a whim (despite the fact that I acquired said bird on a whim). You need to have the luxury of time–especially if you plan on serving other dishes with it. I’d liken the process to reading War and Peace. Fortunately, I actually take great pleasure in wading through epic novels.
- Chubby Hubby on her version of Julia Child’s Braised Goose With Chestnuts and Sausage
Eek. Well the damn thing is in the freezer for a few days until my husband gets up here.
A Drawing Lesson
I’m one of those unfortunate folks whose discerning eyes are not connected to my hand when it comes to rendering, say, pine trees on a rocky coast. I can see the beauty. I can write about it. But I can’t draw it. Really. I can’t get the perspective or even the shapes. No matter what I draw it looks like the handiwork of a five-year-old.
So I decided to take a drawing lesson from my sumi-e art teacher, Frederica Marshall. She kindly put up with me last summer for her sumi-e landscape painting workshop. I’ve signed up again. A warmup drawing lesson seemed like a good idea. The course is next week. If I create something that’s not totally embarrassing maybe I’ll post it.
Freewriting
Last summer I experimented with what author and marketing strategist Mark Levy (and others) call freewriting. It means putting your bottom on the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and writing for a set period of time (10 or 15 minutes to start, longer when you’re accustomed to it). You just write. Anything. No editing, no self criticism allowed.
Mark has just published the revised edition of his wonderful Accidental Genius, which I highly recommend. It’s an insightful, useful guide on how to use freewriting to jumpstart idea generation whether it’s to solve a business problem or articulate a book idea. Full disclosure: my blurb is on the back cover. I love this book.
I’ve been freewriting since last summer when I wrote a parody of author John McPhee. This summer I’m concentrating on slowly unpacking my idea for a second book.
I’m not quite ready to talk about the topic yet. Stay tuned.
Listen to six Linchpins who stepped up at the July 21st *Midsummer Madness Sweets and Tweets for delicious pre-Seth Godin cupcakes and to riff for three minutes on how each has made him or herself indispensable at work. Linchpins (and the flip side, self-sabotaging Lizard Brains) are the core concept in Seth Godin‘s newest book, the bestselling LINCHPIN.
Seth Godin was in DC for a rare live event, an all-day seminar (a stop on his road show), at the unlikely venue of the Warner Theatre (photo snapped with iPhone). He announced, in answering a question from the audience, that he doesn’t plan to write any more books.
*Sweets and Tweets is Washington’s most popular cupcake and social media salon, hosted by yours truly. Photos of the 7/21/10 event on our Facebook page.
Here’s why: Seth Godin is coming to town for a rare live seminar in DC on July 22, 2010. And his army of local fans is rumbling and ready.
I’m hosting a Midsummer Madness edition of Sweets and Tweets (only $5) on July 21st, the day before his seminar, from 8 - 9 PM. It’s at the very cool Baked and Wired in DC’s Georgetown. We’ll raise a cupcake to Seth. And some attendees are stepping up to the mike to talk about Linchpins and Lizard Brains. More on that below.
I’m a huge Seth fan and am unabashed about saying so. I’ve known Seth for years, before he became "really famous," in fact. He’s a lovely guy. In addition to being brilliant and consistently provocative, he is generous and fair-minded. He kindly wrote a "blurb" for the jacket cover of my book, THE CORPORATE BLOGGING BOOK. And, through his blog and his books, has quietly, persistently challenged me - and millions of others (his blog is ranked #1 in the world by Technorati) - to think bigger and to think about making a difference.
Five years ago, I attended one of his New York City workshops. It was in a funky walk-up loft in Chinatown, a perfect setting for his informal, in-your-face presentations. (He served weird vegetarian snacks, which seemed very daring at the time.) He doesn’t pull punches. And if he thinks you’re being boring or uninteresting, he will say so. Politely.
At any rate, I introduced myself and said I wasn’t sure what my "brand" was. He took one look at me and said, "Oh, you should be the Mona Lisa of Blogging." I tried that for a while. It didn’t really stick but a cute idea nonetheless.
So here comes Seth to Washington DC after publishing another half dozen New York Times bestselling books. I think his latest, LINCHPIN, is his best. He nails a number of provocative, unsettling ideas in LINCHPIN. One is something he calls the Lizard Brain.
After reading his book, I explain it this way: The lizard brain is the primitive, limbic system that overrides everything else in our brain: it is fear, sex, hunger, etc. Especially fear.
And for many of us, myself included, it’s what prevents us from blogging more, writing a new preface, updating a book, crafting a new presentation, etc.
In a word, you have to push through the resistance to defeat your lizard brain and get things done. Shipping, Seth calls it. Just do it. Ship it.
Linchpins - the flip side of the Lizard Brain, as it were - are people who make themselves indispensable in their organization, who don’t wait to be told what to do and who approach their work as if it were "art," a passion and a creative endeavor as opposed to, well, work. And of course they get things done.
If you’re in DC and reading this I hope you’ll come to my pre-Seth event and raise a cupcake to Seth along with some of DC’s finest digerati. Midsummer Madness tickets, only $5, are going fast. .
I spoke recently with Peter Corbett, CEO of iStrategy Labs and one of DC’s tech celebs. Corbett has been named one of the Most Influential Washingtonians Under 40 and one of 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers by Government Technology Magazine.
DW: 1. Did you have any inkling how much effort and time would be required to pull off DC’s first Digital Capital Week June 11 - 20, 2010? It seems like you and co-creators Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo of Shiny Heart Ventures got more and more organized as you went along, with weekly meetings, a growing team to support you and so on.This is the "If you had known ahead of time what you were getting into, would you have done it?" question.
PC: We knew what we were getting into. It was like knowing you were driving towards the edge of a cliff, but had enough time, resources and capability to be prepared for a safe landing. We did get more organized over time, because the volume of our registration and content grew very quickly.
In the beginning there was no content, no venues, and no sponsors - and as all of those thinks began to ramp up, we began putting in place some really interesting collaboration methods to get everything done efficiently. We did all the organizing even as Frank, Jen and I traveled the world in our normal digital nomad way.
DW: Why DC WEEK? It seems we have a digital event or conference every week in Washington, from TEDx to Social Media Club breakfasts to my Sweets and Tweets. Why did we need a 10-day extravaganza? What did you and your co-creators hope to achieve?
We needed to jam a stake in the ground and put up a flag so that the capital region, the country and the world could see DC as the innovative place that it is.
- Peter Corbett on why DCWEEK
PC: DCWEEK was necessary because all of our individual efforts were not helping DC break through on a national or international level as a hub for innovation. Certainly the DC tech, creative and social community is very vibrant and our individual meetups and conferences are important now and will be into the future. Certainly there are projects/companies here and there that have reached national and international recognition (CrisisCamp, LivingSocial, Apps for Democracy, Clearspring etc. come to mind).
We needed to jam a stake in the ground and put up a flag so that the capital region, the country and the world could see DC as the innovative place that it is. DCWEEK is and will continue to put this place on the map as a hub of innovation. It will bring smart and passionate people here. It will keep talent here. It will grow companies. It will stimulate project that are fun and important. No of this is possible without a big, connected, vibrant community - we have that. And now we’re working on activating in new, bigger ways.
DW: Sex, Lies and Videotape, if you recall, was a 1989 film starring Andie McDowell that is said to have revolutionized the indie film movement. With its plot-within-a-plot video of women talking directly to the camera about their sex lives and relationships, it foreshadowed Reality TV. As well as the world of social media in which everyone is a content creator and publisher and authenticity rules. Without going too meta on you, was there any sex during DCWEEK?
PC: Yes I remember watching it on HBO. I was 9. I’m sure there was plenty of sex during DCWEEK - perhaps there will be "DCWEEK" babies born sometime next March. There was one unconference that I won’t mention by name focused on Sex, Sex Toys, Fetishes etc. that we had on the calendar for a bit but we had some sponsors balk so we told the organizers we had to take it down.
As for me Debbie - I’ll be honest. I had zero sex - I spent most of my time making out with my laptop late into the night, then passing out with my iphone clutched in my hand as i fielded 1000+ emails a day :)
I did hear that McWorm (who crushed it at the closing party at the 9:30 Club) ended up having an after party that included him, a couple band members and roughly 40 girls. I think that’s a solid ratio to go for. Some great pics of the closing party can be found here.
I love the title of Clay Shirky‘s new book: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. What a marvelous phrase, cognitive surplus. It suggests that there is a basic reservoir of cognitive ability in all of us. And now, in our hyperconnected age fueled by social media, there is a surplus.
Interestingly, however, while the digerati prattle away on blogs, Twitter and Facebook, it turns out that more than half of Americans (52 percent) are NOT frequent users of the Internet. That’s the flip side of the oft-quoted statistic that 48 percent of Americans now use the Internet more than one hour a day. If you follow my math, it turns out that the majority of Americans are probably not hyperconnected, perhaps not creative (at least digitally) and possibly not generous either.
And we’re not just talking TV-watching couch potatoes here. I have a surprising number of friends (and a few family) in the 40 to 80-year-old range who are adamantly opposed to participating in social networks or using social media. Why? No reason. A knee-jerk "just don’t want to."
That’s the flaw in this otherwise provocative book.
Reviewer Jason Falls also questions the basic premise, that our cognitive surplus will prompt us to come together to collaborate and solve serious societal problems. As Jason puts it: "his (Shirky’s) possibility world of Kumbaya-building Utopia is a stretch."
Still, I found much to like in Clay’s book: he is both artful and clear with his examples of successful collaborations to date, from Wikipedia (which, despite its success, has sucked up only one percent of the man hours we typically spend annually watching TV) to Napster to Ushahidi (which evolved into a platform that reports acts of violence and other crises in real-time).
Clay looks at music-sharing service Napster in the context of collaboration and then explains: "Young people using Napster weren’t inherently more community-minded; they simply wanted music for free." In other words, it’s not the tools themselves, it’s what we choose to do with them. And the less friction - the easier it is to use the tools - the more likely it is that millions of people will collaborate and create something (a phenomenon) that we didn’t foresee. Twitter is a perfect example.
Shirky’s academic background often shows through in his writing. He points out that the word amateur comes from the Latin amare (to love). The point is that amateurs do what they do out of passion and because they love it. Not because they are paid to do it. That dovetails with his riff on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation - a key concept if you embrace the idea that our cognitive surplus will enable us to create great things together. Side note: I believe Dan Pink uses the same example of an experiment that involves putting a puzzle together to explain intrinsic vs. extrinsic in his new book, Drive.
The last chapter, Looking for the Mouse, is where the rubber meats the road as far as Shirky’s thesis goes. He is at his most appealingly transparent here, admitting:
What matters most now is our imaginations. The opportunity before us… is enormous; what we do with it will be determined largely by how well we are able to imagine and reward public creativity, participation and sharing.
- Chapter 7, page 212: Cognitive Surplus
In other words, it’s still a maybe. There are no guarantees of public good occurring despite the gigantic cognitive surplus we are enjoying and which social media tools are enabling. Shirky also shares a list of his lessons learned (pages 193 - 207) "to improve odds for successfully harnessing cognitive surplus."
Among his tips that resonated with me:
- Start Small (no matter how big you plan to grow your service, it needs to work just as well when it’s small.)
- Ask "Why" (put yourself in the shoes of your user - and be skeptical.)
- Support a Supporting Culture (he uses the Quiet Car on the Amtrak train as an example; when someone talks on his phone, other passengers immediately shush him. And yes it’s almost always a man breaking the Quiet Car rules.)
- Adapting (throw something out there and see how people use it; it may surprise you. Again, Twitter.)
- Try Anything, Try Everything (in other words, experiment. THIS IS KEY.)
Finally, thanks to TLCBooktours for sending me a review copy of Cognitive Surplus and for including me in the list of distinguished reviewers participating in Shirky’s blog tour. A blog tour in and of itself is an example of the kind of "creativity and generosity" that Shirky so gracefully articulates in his book.
I’ve started blogging for the Huffington Post. Here’s how my first piece starts: The only thing bigger than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of BP’s public relations disaster. Just as BP can’t control the oil spill as it seeps further and further, nor can they control what the public is saying. Just to be clear, control is the operative word. >> More
I took an acting class recently at Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company with the intent of learning some new tricks to improve my public speaking. Was it a success? Yes, but not for the reasons I anticipated. The class was an interesting mix of typical Washington business folk (federal agency types, nonprofit advocates, at least one lawyer). And I loved our teacher, Vanessa Buono (2nd from right in white blouse). The class was titled Acting for Business Professionals and it’s offered again this summer if you’re interested. This past spring it met from 7 to 9 PM on Monday evenings and required a schlep across town to Capitol Hill, where the Shakespeare Theatre’s rehearsal studios are. As you can see from the photo, our merry band was pretty small by the last night of the course. Of the original 20 or so students, only about 6 or 7 attended all the classes.
What did I learn about business?
I imagined I’d walk (strut?) away from the course with clever "moves" I could make on a speaking platform. More effective gestures and more confidence in moving around as I speak. I suppose we did learn a bit of that. But the takeaways were much more interesting and they do in fact apply to speaking in business situations. We learned about:
- operative words (the words your listeners need to hear in order to follow your story, especially verbs and nouns)
- knowing your objective (this was a key concept; it means defining the clear, urgent, immediate goal of your speech; what are you trying to accomplish?)
- visualization (you must visualize the emotion and details of your stories and examples while you are speaking)
- obstacles (what lies in the way of accomplishing your goal with your audience? doubt? resistance?)
- point of view (in acting, this is a short visceral phrase like "newly married and in love;" it’s the state of mind from which you speak)
- tactics (what will you do to reach your goal or get what you want out of your speech? persuade? flatter? emphathize? motivate? entertain? scare? bribe? antagonize? piss off?)
What did I learn about acting?
I’ve never done any stage acting and figured it was not something in my repertoire. But with lots of coaching from Vanessa and, frankly, no fear of failure, I mastered one Shakespearean speech: Mark Antony’s Friends, Romans, countrymen from Act III, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar.
For my final presentation I couldn’t resist…
With apologies to Shakespeare, here is my speech to the class. They loved it! (Note: the word ambitious had very negative overtones in Shakespearean usage.)
Friends, Romans, fellow bloggers
Friends, Romans, fellow bloggers, lend me your ears;
I come to blog about Caesar, not to praise him.
Whatever men say online
Lives on forever through Google.
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar desired 5 million Twitter followers like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher.
If it were so, it were a grievous fault.
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men -
Now come I to live blog Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, online and F2F, faithful and just to me.
Caesar has blogged for the Huffington Post Whose many readers did spread the news of his victories
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When the common man hath left comments on Caesar’s blog
He has responded individually, to each one.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that Caesar’s blog ranks number 1 on Google.
I thrice begged him to promote this fact.
Which he did thrice refuse; was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious
And sure, Brutus is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to blog and Tweet what I do know.
You all did friend him once on Facebook, not without cause
What cause requires you now to de-friend him on Facebook and un-follow him on Twitter? O Google, thou are fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason to social networking.
Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar;
And I cannot blog till it come back to me.
Here is the original speech
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried,
Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Most serious writers swear by a routine of writing first thing in the morning. Prolific author and blogger Seth Godin says he has had "ADD his whole life" but he prefers to "enjoy the day first" and then "write whenever writing helps me enjoy the day more." Hmm… Me thinks he is teasing his interviewer, Scott Scheper, with that statement. What do you think?
I have two reactions. First, congrats to the Metro Washington Council of Governments for having the energy and foresight to create a blog for local gardeners. There are lots of us, whether we’re tending to lavish yards or just a few pots on the front steps. And with Washington’s wilting heat and winter freezing, we have plenty of questions.
Second, shame on the Metro Council for not looking in their, er, back yard before hiring a blogger.
Apparently, they advertised on ProBlogger’s job board and thus found the Florida-based writer Betsy Franz. Susan points out that it’s not hard to find local garden writing talent through magazines like Washington Gardener (which has a corresponding listserv on Yahoo groups).
Ouch.
After last week’s amazing Digital Capital Week, it’s difficult to understand how anyone could overlook the breadth and depth of digital talent here in the DC area. I don’t want to get into the specifics of evaluating the bona fides of garden bloggers (I don’t have the chops to do that) but this is an obvious case of not listening locally before launching a local blog. I checked the mission of the blog to make sure the focus is truly local. It is:
"Welcome to the Metro DC Lawn and Garden Blog — your source for all things green in Washington, DC and surrounding areas. If you’re looking to swap tips, share stories, have more fun, and take better care of your lawn and garden, then you’ve come to the right place!"
I’d be interested to hear what the thinking was behind staffing up this new blog with an out-of-stater.
A crowd of well over 100 packed into the very cool Hamiltonian Gallery on U Street on Tuesday, June 15, 2010 to hear a provocative panel discussion about women in technology and to devour 120 deliciously dense cupcakes (at left) from Baked and Wired. Make that 119 because one fell on the floor. The panelists and yours truly, the moderator, were DC members of Fast Company‘s 2010 Most Influential Women in Technology.
By all accounts this special DC Week edition of Sweets and Tweets, sponsored by Microsoft U.S. Public Sector, was a huge success. At left, Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation and Teresa Carlson of Microsoft. Katie Stanton, a former Googler and member of the Obama White House New Media team, urged the audience to go home and read Clay Shirky’s rant about women. His basic point: women don’t promote themselves enough. I agree, BTW.
New Facebook page
You’ll find more photos and write-ups on our new Facebook page. Please visit to read and to join / "like’. Ugh, that is the most awkward phraseology on Facebook’s part.
I spoke with a group of bloggers in Phoenix recently. What I found is that very few had any business from their blogs despite a lot of effort. I have 5 closings and 7 active buyers directly from [our MyST blogsite] in 2008. I know because I ask. One person told me they have been reading my blog for almost a year before they called me to buy a property."
There is something about summer - and especially spending a few weeks on the coast of Maine - that makes me want to try new things. I guess it’s the "kid at camp" syndrome where you sign up for riflery even though you’re scared of guns, have never fired one before and probably (hopefully) won’t again. 
I’m one of those unfortunate folks whose discerning eyes are not connected to my hand when it comes to rendering, say, pine trees on a rocky coast. I can see the beauty. I can write about it. But I can’t draw it. Really. I can’t get the perspective or even the shapes. No matter what I draw it looks like the handiwork of a five-year-old.
Last summer I experimented with what author and marketing strategist 
If you’re in DC and reading this I hope you’ll come to my pre-Seth event and raise a cupcake to Seth along with some of DC’s finest digerati. Midsummer Madness tickets, only $5, are going fast. 
I spoke recently with 
PC: DCWEEK was necessary because all of our individual efforts were not helping DC break through on a national or international level as a hub for innovation. Certainly the DC tech, creative and social community is very vibrant and our individual meetups and conferences are important now and will be into the future. Certainly there are projects/companies here and there that have reached national and international recognition (
PC: Yes I remember watching it on HBO. I was 9. I’m sure there was plenty of sex during DCWEEK - perhaps there will be "DCWEEK" babies born sometime next March. There was one unconference that I won’t mention by name focused on Sex, Sex Toys, Fetishes etc. that we had on the calendar for a bit but we had some sponsors balk so we told the organizers we had to take it down.
I love the title of 
I took an acting class recently at 
