What an amazing experience.
Yesterday I returned from Seattle, WA. I had only been to this city’s airport a couple times but I had never had an opportunity to hang out, meet some people, shoot some photos and eat 800 pounds of salmon. Well I did get to do that but that’s not why I was there.
I was there to attend the 140 Twitter Conference put on by @TweetHouse and the Parnassus Group. Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter) introduced me to Jason Preston (@jasonp107), the man running the show. Jason was gracious enough to give me the opportunity to be involved and share a panel with some super smart and seasoned tweeps that anyone can learn from and should absolutely follow – Jesse Engle @engle (CoTweet), Shauna Causey @shaunacausey (Comcast), H.B. Siegel @twhb (IMDb.com), and Brad Nelson @bradnelson (Starbucks).
I won’t go into a boatload of detail about everything in this post but thought I’d mention some takeaways and things that I had learned that I thought were either useful, funny, or both.
New Things I Learned
During the Media Panel session we were given some great things to ponder and think about when it comes to doing media and news coverage using Twitter. I had never really thought about what the effect of Twitter would be on broadcasting and doing the news. In a world where people use Twitter to not necessarily double check their emotions before posting, Linda Thomas (@TheNewsChick) deserves kudos for being anti-spin and ensuring her facts are straight before tweeting. Major news media outlets would be doing the public a huge favor by employing more people like her.
Ayush Agarwal (@yush) did a killer job moderating the Dev/Biz Panel. Brilliant developers like the ones on the this panel have to keep all of us emo marketing people in check by ensuring that data, and the tools used to gather that data, makes sense and help support our business objectives methodically. Sites like Twitter and Facebook would not exist with these brilliant minds.
On the Brand Panel Shauna Causey and Brad Nelson both reminded all of us that when you are dealing with customers that are frustrated with your brand, spouting off on Twitter because of a bad experience they had, always approach them with positivity and a focus on treating them with respect. Treat them like you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.
One of the most educational moments for me was the opportunity I had to learn about an industry that I’ve never known anything about. Even more intriguing was how these two guys I just met were using social media in an industry that I had no idea would have a use for it. I had the chance at the tweetup hosted at Seattle’s Hotel Andra (@HotelAndra) to learn how the farming industry needed social media. With some tasty local wine in hand, Greg Guenther (@greg_guenther) and I sat down with cattle rancher Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle) and dairy farmer Ray Prock Jr. (@RayLinDairy). These guys are definitely visionary in their approach to use social media as a channel for educating people on the science and process behind where much of our store bought food comes from, how it’s marketed, what we don’t know as Joe Food Consumer, how it’s bought and sold, and the process for monitoring, maintaining and growing a lot of it – meat and greens alike. Great stuff.
Things That Made Me Laugh
Damon Cortese (@dacort) – “People like to click on shit.” and of course DBI, the Douchebag Index. That will be my next t-shirt purchase.
Dom Sagolla (@dom) – His late night red wine-infused Entourage story.
Johnathon Fitzpatrick (@jjtweets) – For his ability to get all “Mike Singletary” on the HootSuite Owl Mascot at 1:00AM.
….and the Magical Unicorn Story of the Night award goes to David Dennison (@DavidDennison) for his mace story. The first, second and third rule of David’s mace story is: “Don’t talk about David’s mace story.” If I told you, I’d have to….well you know.
Onward.
True Philanthropy
Check Your Motivation
True philanthropy only comes from helping others for the sake of helping others, with no internal quest for personal credit, no expectation of social capital gain amongst your peers. I believe that the credit you “expect” to get for helping others is equal to the amount of credit you don’t deserve, on the mere premise that an expectation exists on your behalf.
If your philanthropic work brings you personal monetary gain, directly or intrinsically, and instead of said monetary gain being 100% passed onto another charitable cause or effort, then you have poisoned the well. I would go as far as saying that you are not truly aligned with the purity of “real” philanthropy.
Lastly, helping others out of guilt is not philanthropy as you are only helping to pacify and feed your own demons. This is still “taking.”
A great quote I heard in a very cheesy action movie once was, “A true philanthropist will never put themself in a position where they are taking or personally gaining from those around them.” [Paraphrased]
Little Efforts Make Big Waves
Every day, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there are miniscule opportunities to make a difference in someone’s life, which inturn makes a difference in the lives of others, almost immediately. Little opportunities like these can create a real chain reaction that, while you may never physically see the full result, I guarantee happens on some level, at some percentage. Whether it brightens up someone’s shitty weekday morning, taking that edge off of their workday, or pushes someone else back a few feet from the proverbial edge they may have been on after a slough of things that have gone wrong lately in their life, a menial and quick selfless act on your part can really help tip the scales in a positive direction.
Here are some of the types of things even the busiest people in the universe can carve out time for, supporting a positive paradigm shift in humanity:
1. Offer to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in the morning.
2. Ask or call someone you know randomly and ask them how they are doing and then just listen and validate what they are saying.
3. Anonymously donate $5 to a charity of your choice.
4. Volunteer one hour of your time at a retirement center, home or hospice enviroment and keep an elderly person company for a little bit. Those places are lonely and dismal and our country tends to treat seniors as an annoyance as opposed to respected elders in our communities. It’s a shame.
5. Sponsor a low income or disadvantaged family one holiday season. You’d be surprised what $5 in cheap or donated toys does for a child’s spirit when times are tough. That spirit is contagious enough to lighten even the darkest of households.
We Are All The Same (Still)
There is an energy that exudes from humans every day across the globe, an energy that is constantly trying to synergize and be compatible with itself so that we can all just “get along.” I think in some cases we’ve become so fearful and complacent with one another that our personal insecurities have gotten the best of us. This fear and complacence has gotten us to the point where only physical co-existence is becoming the new “getting along.” What a bummer.
I do believe though that there is more hope in small doses than we are ambitious enough to acknowledge, small things that we, over time, inadvertently take for granted thanks to a perpetually imbalanced “work culture” that drives us full speed on the road to nowhere.
I encourage everyone to randomly and anonymously do something nice for one or more people every once in awhile. It’s easy, cheap, and will start to change you from the inside in a way that, if you aren’t used to it, will surprise you, shock you, make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to feeling vulnerable, and will possibly break you down in a constructive way emotionally that only a few people have been strong enough to accept and experience….and those that have, see the world differently than most of us.
Onward.