We Wish For You So Many Wishes

Flower Wish - Photo Credit to Dawn at Art StudioTeacher conferences were held at my daughter's kindergarten today (she’s way behind on her calculus homework!) Afterwards I was putting some of her paperwork away and came upon the “graduation day” wishes from her pre-school teachers this past June. Wishes played a central role in the work they did over the past year. The header for my site is a picture of jars filled with different types of wishes they found in the forest. The wishes the teachers shared really touched me then and inspired me again today, so I wanted to share them with you all.

We wish that you will always look and listen closely with your heart to the world around you and take care of it. We know that you are full of wisdom and imagination and that listening and relationships are at the heart of all you do. We wish for you so many wishes!

We wish that you will forever notice details and discover the ways things work

We hope you make new friends while cherishing those you already love.

We wish that you will forever see new ways of doing things - imagine and create new ideas and test them to see if they work.

We hope that you will always laugh a lot and know how good it feels to sing and dance.

We hope that passionate concentration for what you love always makes you happy.

We wish for you endless opportunities and connections....and of course for lots of your wishes to come true.

What have you wished for recently? I wish for you each to take a moment today and wish something inspiring for yourselves or the people you love!

Holding It Down for Content Marketing and The East Coast

If you're a fan of content marketing, then you are probaly in awe of all the infographics, corporate journalism and general social goodness coming from Mindjet. Over the past few months together with Jess3 they've had an on-going series called "Between Minds: An Ongoing Taxonomy of Team Dynamics". They have highlighted optimists vs. pessimists,  left-brained vs. right-brained and my favorite - thought leaders vs. do leaders. When they released their latest post "East Coast vs. West Coast: Bridging to the Coastal Divide"  for the first time I wasn't quickly and clearly on one side. I was born and raised in New England, of course I might still say "wicked" and eat grinders, but my career began in Los Angeles at the start of the 90's dot-com boom. How would I choose? After quite the spirited debate among my coworkers, conclusion was I am an East Coaster in business with some West Coast consensus skills and in my personal life I am West Coast laid back with some East Coast-in-your-faceness. Frankly, I don't think of it as having 2 distinct parts, so guess I've got that work/life integration worked out well. If you believe differently, you should know I was tagged near fisticuffs in the original post below. Guess I might be a bit more East Coast huh? Between Minds: East Coasters vs. West Coasters Names Infographic from Mindjet

How to Raise a Happy and Healthy Community

During curriculum night at my daughter's preschool this week I was struck by some of the recurring themes they had around building community. It reminded me of a brief exchange with Rachel Happe recently following this tweet:Both our preschoolers are in emergent learning or child-led programs and I mentioned I should reread positive discipline to polish up my community management skills. There are so many parallels between the negative tweeter or blogger, forum member etc. and the misdirected child; they both need to be heard, be involved in the solution, share their ideas and they quickly become happy contributing members of the family/community. I took the basics of the philosophy and updated them from child POV to more of a community-focused. Do you think your community meets these criteria?
  1. Helps community members feel a sense of connection. (A sense of belonging and significance)
  2. Is mutually respectful and encouraging. (Guidelines are kind but firm and people know what to expect)
  3. Is effective long term. (Considers what the member is thinking, feeling, learning, and deciding about himself and his community – and what to do in the future to thrive within this or the greater community/industry. Are you facilitating continual growth and learning experiences?)
  4. Supports important social and community skills. (Respect, concern for others, problem solving, and cooperation as well as the skills to contribute to the larger community.)
  5. Invites the community member to discover how capable they are. (Encourages the constructive use of personal power to solve problems and when/how to reach out for assistance when needed)

A Good Intention Clothes Itself In Sudden Power - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every community’s success is based on each individuals understanding of the core values and philosophy of the organization. Whether that organization is a preschool or a global corporation. Each year our daughter's school goes over their intentions - more on this later - and their focus for the year. 2011-2012 brought us:
  • Strengthen the idea of school as a place of collaborative research.
  • Focus on exploring the values, structures and rituals that make up our school community.

Each classroom then decides how they will support those focuses - think taking corporate values and then creating departmental goals. Our class chose exploration around:

  • I am a contributing member of a community. To develop a learning community based on what each individual brings to the whole.
  • I am a communicator. To define and support how children document what is important to them and use their documentation for observation, reflection and sharing.
The teachers also invited parents to share their hopes, dreams and wishes for their child's year. Our wish for our daughter was that she never stops asking questions that don't have easy answers. The conversation following "Does King Tut, my goldfish and Jesus all play together now that they are dead?" has been an on-going discussion that isn't answered with a yes/no.  I've been asked hard questions by members of the communities I participate in over the years and I approach them in the same way- from a place of curiosity and interest. What is the focus for your community? How do you nurture and grow it? What is your "wish" for those communities you are a part of?  

Why Marketers Need to Focus on Facebook

Citizens in the United States are driving the global adoption of social media services such as Twitter and Facebook, according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center in December with over 46% engaged in social networking. Last month they released statistics from another internet snapshot with that number now closer to 59% in the US. The sites that make up "social networking" do vary a bit by country. For example Orkut (by Google) leads the way in Brazil with 8 in 10 people, as a recent comScore study showed. It was also noted that Twitter.com reached 23% of the entire Brazilian online population, making it the highest penetration in the world (the US is about 8%) In May of this year a research report from Nielsen showed Facebook in the clear lead across all web brands and commenting that "Facebook has become synonymous not only with social media, but with the Web..." The report showed users spend 23% of their time online across the top 10 social networks.

And how is that different from recent years? Citi Investment Research shows us how time spent online has changed from Q3 2006 to Q3 2011. Google and Yahoo - watch out!

Community is where your customers or potential customers are and it's not necessarily the site you've built. Knowing that - what does your Facebook marketing strategy look like?