He was in Bangalore and his co-presenters were in San Jose, yet Cisco’s CEO appeared live - on thesame stage. How? By using a breathtaking 3D holographic-like technology.They tout it as, “the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Aptly, it’s called TelePresence.

See Sir Richard Branson – live at a London press conference, while standing at Necker Island, his Caribbean retreat. Or preview “the first space age Olympic swim suit.” On Wednesday a Telstra executive in Melbourne, Australia interacted with an audience in Adelaide.

My friend Rick watched a demo and raved about it. Suddenly, this is a competitive space. And, yes, this is Cisco’s big new business, partnering with Musion, yet it will have to cost less to gain traction. Why am I interested in it, aside from the astounding effect of a holographic human presence?

Because:

• The realistic presence it provides means people around the world can gather for what really feels like an in-person gathering.

• The best actors anywhere for a particular play can assemble to enact it, for more people to see - live and later.

• The top experts on a topic can appear on a panel, taking questions from audiences in many places.

• Crowdsourcing becomes easier.

In short, it enables more realistic “face-to-face” group collaboration. Cisco had an I-Prize contest in which anyone could propose novel ways to use this technology. Already it is in 28 countries, lightening the carbon footprint. Five years ago I spoke on Cisco’s global, in-house on-demand TV station. I still get emails from Cisco employees who clicked on their computer to see my presentation when they thought it might help them with a current need. Holographic-like appearances, however takes that kind of live and on-demand capability to a whole new level.

As useage goes up and cost goes down, the world will flatten for more Me2We opportunities. We’ll be able to get a better feel for each other, no matter where we actually are. I can hardly wait to try it.

Skip travel and lodging costs. Meeting Planners’ Alert:

For PCMA, SGMP, MPI, ASAE, NSA,MeCo, MeetingsNet, MiForum and others in the meeting or communication professions: bring the most relevant speakers and panelists to the same stage - no matter where they are standing in the world. Enable “attendees” to talk with them. Encourage convention centers and conference hotels to provide this capacity, offered by Cisco, HP or other firm. Set the bar higher.

First, Cisco CEO John Chambers is providing it for large conferences, concerts, events, awards ceremonies, multi-site meetings, high level briefings, retail, museums and product launches - even movies and soldier/family conversations. Then Chambers wants to bring it to our homes. (Well, not every room, in the home.) Stay tuned.

A big stumbling block in hiring the graphic designer who most “gets” your business is this. You won’t know if you’ll like the design until after you put your money down. The smaller your business and budget the greater the risk it seems.

That’s how it works at two popular places, ifreelance and Elance. Buyer post requests for designs. Designers submit proposals. Buyer hires a designer, then waits to see the results.

This month, crowdSPRING, an online business launched to level that risk. It provides protections for creatives and for buyers.

Here’s how it works. Would-be buyers post a description of their project, the budget and their deadline. Then, according to co-founder, Ross Kimbarovsky, “Creatives from around the world submit actual designs - not merely RFPs. Buyers pick from actual designs.” To demonstrate how it works crowdSPRING posted a $5,000 contract the design of their home page. (I spoke at HOW Design, a conference where attendees could give great feedback on this approach.)

crowdSPRING provides for buyers and sellers such protections as project management, legal contracts, reputation management, online portfolio placement, and intermediary customer service. Adds Kimbarovsky, “We believe that once a buyer purchases creative services using crowdSPRING’s new model - they’ll never go back to the traditional model.” Note, they already have 1,503 members and visitors from 122 different countries/territories. For variations of this approach see GeniusRocket and Criggle.

Kimbarovsky and his colleague Pete Burgeson, said they took this approach after reading about crowdsourcing and communities in Howard Rheingold’s book, Smart Mobs. Crowdsourcing, a term actually coined by Jeff Howe, means, “taking tasks traditionally done by a single person or small groups of people, and farms them out to a global workforce.”

Thanks for the tip Michelle Wolverton. Kimbarovsky and the other co-founder, Mike Samson, “wanted to achieve just three things with crowdSPRING: give creatives a level playing field, offer buyers choice, and protect intellectual property for all.” See what you think.

Usually companies start supporting causes after being in business awhile. Now some are starting a business for a cause. Like Ethos, Newman’s Own and Can Do Kids.

The “do good” message is central to the business model. The cause is as important as the profits. Coaching three start-ups was a joy.Can Do Kids energy bar ceo, Deborah Churchill Luster’s message appears everywhere in her business.

Like Kris Bordessa, she believes in engendering self-confidence, cooperation and competence in young people. Making it fun too.

I met Deborah, today’s podcast guest, when she was president of Annie’s Homegrown. Paul Geffner and I were on the founding board. Those macaroni and cheese boxes grabbed your eye on the grocery shelves, what with the rabbit staring at you from the green, red, yellow and purple packages. Many shopping mothers would pick up a box, see co-founder Ann Withey, read her “Be Green” message, then toss a couple of boxes into their cart.

Deborah and others, including me, were seeking investors for the fast-growing start-up. We’d not done that before. It proved to be a priceless way to get to know each other. Since then, she’s married another entrepreneur and had four children.Then she took what she learned from that first venture, called on the contacts with whom she’s stayed in contact, recruited friends and family and started Can Do Kids.

She and her team work part time to live the work/life balance part of their Can Do message.Here’s some of Luster’s “Can Do” lessons for growing your business and your cause:
1. Have a specific message in which you passionately believe.

2. Sell a high-quality product or service that complements and reinforces your message.

3. Offer supportive products (books, DVDs, bumper stickers, online services) that:

• Your competitors don’t offer, so your company becomes one-of-a-kind.

• Enable customers to be a part of “our” movement and tell friends.

• Attracts the media to the back story of your business.

4. Don’t “just” donate to groups that matter to your customers, get active in them.

5. Provide super easy ways for customers and others to make suggestions and learn what you’ll do about them. (Two suggestions: get rid of the peanuts and bring the price down.)6. Meet regularly, in person, with a small group of your competitors. Deborah meets with other Bay Area-based women ceos of food companies. Hear more in this podcast.

Give away downloadable, eco-friendly house plans – and make money? Others could adapt this startup’s healthy Me2We path to profitability, using their kind of expertise. Plus you could enjoy the camaraderie that comes from collaborating on projects that benefit people around the world.

Here’s the story. Working with the highest-rated makers of home construction materials, FreeGreen, a winning, new company of architects, designers and engineers creates plans for green homes, right down to the last design detail. Plans include 3-D images, alternative design combinations, product reviews including information about energy efficiencies, specific to your choice of plans and products – and to your city.

Just launched, the start-up offers two plans. One, a healthy home for young families and another, a loft for down-sizers or first-time buyers. FreeGreen makes money from the paid placement of products within the plans. Vital to their success, they only pick productsthat have high ratings or reviews from unbiased third parties. Another small revenue stream comes from customizing plans.

FreeGreen will grow as the number of plans they offer grows, they attract more downloads and can justify higher fees for placement. Word spreads fast. Also in recommending another firm for complete customization, they recognize that SmartPartnering generates more value for everyone. This for-profit model and Architecture for Humanity could cross-consult on ways to download plans, reduce the costs of green construction and grow the movement about eco-friendly building.

This is a wonderful opportunity for local, sustainable construction firms to partner with FreeGreen. Offer to construction the homes, as Springwise points out.

Here’s other ways to adapt this Me2We business model. Are you a fan of eco-healthy buildings? Do you own a brick and mortar business such as an inn, childcare center, travel store or pet hospital and hotel. Then you probably went through a learning curve about all the licensing, regulations, systems for conducting your business, from how you plan your day, do you bookkeeping and taxes to promoting your business.

Over the years you’ve bought many products and services for your business, some of which you’ve loved. Every company on your favorites list that can sell, at least nationally, is a possible paid product placement - as are the professional associations to which you belong.

Now, profit from your experience:

• Create a great “how to” guide for others who want to jump-start a business like yours.

• Consider partnering with a local architect with “green” experience. Co-create downloadable design plans to package with your downloadable how-to guide.

• Start a blog about your unfolding business, with an extensive blog roll.

• If you’re the first in your kind of work to create this kind of FreeGreen spin-off then you’ll probably make news. Get slightly famous. Remember to praise FreeGreen for the inspiration. Read more.

Want a window into a preferred way of life(style) at work?

When a hot start-up in San Francisco seeks talented workers who have many choices about where to work - what does it offer?

Call it the google effect. Grockit can’t provide the on-site laundry services, 14 restaurants (and much more) of google. Yet, today it landed 8 million more in funding and can offer:

• Cheap desks, expensive chairs.

• 30 inch monitors, top of the line Mac Pros and ergonomic keyboards.

• A powerful software development tracking tool to manage work throughout the organization from engineering to operations to academics.

• Benefits (health, dental, vision):
Every month we put cash into a HSA for employees. You never lose your HSA money, it sits in a bank account you can access, and you can use the HSA Bank Card to pay for preventative medical care or to cover the cost of deductibles.

• Tasty breakfasts and lunches that are nutrient dense and all most entirely organic.

• Water is filtered through a 10-stage filter.

• For cleaning, we only use non-toxic supplies.

• We recycle and compost far more than we trash, use high efficiency lighting, and purchase our food from local businesses and farms.

Considering that mix of benefits, it’s not surprising this start-up, Grockit is “developing an online learning game where people can teach each other.”

Our learning take-aways - from these benefits - for recruiting star employees:

• How many companies offer a mix of benefits that closely match the profile of employees they most need?

• How many firms describe their benefits in language that reflects the career and sense-of-community interests of their kind of sought-after worker?

• How often do you see benefits written so briefly, in such vivid, specific detail?

Tip: The specific detail proves the general promise. Generalizations are less credible or memorable.

Look for the launch of their game this Fall. GrockIt's approach is radical. While some of their language attacks traditional education, the first step may be more narrow: help in prepping for educational tests.

Co-founder, Farbood Nivi, said last year, "We are trying to turn the global education market on its head. We want students to teach each other rather than going to teachers. The knowledge is inherent within the system. Today’s market is about conformity, order and obedience. Then the teacher will gift you with the knowledge. We’re trying to facilitate student interaction and totally circumvent the master-slave dynamic."

Nivi wrote of his massive plans at LinkedIn, "We aim to utilize the awesome power of the internet to help the world learn. Our first step is leveraging the web to provide live online GMAT test prep classes to anyone with a PC and an Internet connection ...

We are currrently developing a P2P Learning Game that will help students from around the world teach each other ... We are also expanding to include LSAT, ACT, SAT, GRE test prep in Q3 of 2007."

Speaking again of the power of specificity and brevity, Navi wrote: Grockit is founded on a few principles.

1. Learning should be low cost and high quality.
2. Learning should benefit the student, the teacher, and society.
3. Learning should be engaging, and interactive.

Grok has been one of my favorite concepts since childhood. Here’s two of my favorite quotes from Grockit.

• Grockit is a play on the word 'grok', which was coined by Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok means to understand something so well that it becomes a part of you. We created the word Grockit to mean understanding something so well that you can teach it to others. (They practice what they preach, working and learning in pairs.)

• Learning 2.0 is a re-emphasis on learning as opposed to education. Education is an institution while learning is what people do. The 2.o also means that technology, namely the distributed web, is going to help us do that.

This persusion technique probably won’t work on hormonally-hit teenagers (sorry weary parents) yet you could try it on spouses, co-workers or customers. Suppose, for example, you’re tired of the dirty cups in the office coffee nook. Try spraying the air with a lemony scent reminiscent of a cleaning agent. When those sloppy colleagues smell it they are more likely to tidy up. That’s what several psychologists have discovered, including Jonathan Haidt, Henk Aarts, Aaron Kay and John A. Bargh.

It’s called priming. We are unaware of it happening to us. It affects your attention, memories, performance and relationships. It is prompting one towards something, for example taking a certain action, such as cleaning up the nook, or holding a certain opinion. As Yale students who’d volunteered to be part of a study were sent, one-by-one, down a hallway to the study they passed a lab assistant in the hallway.

As the assistant’s hands were full, holding a clipboard, textbooks, papers and a cup of either hot or iced coffee, he asked each student for a hand with the cup. A few minutes later the students read about a fictional person then ranked that individual on a range from warm, thoughtful and social to cold, selfish and less social. You guessed it. Those who’d held the cup of hot coffee were more likely to rank that individual more positively than the students who’d held the iced java. They were “primed” to do so. Bargh and Robert Wyer relate this effect to “the automaticity of everyday life.” As you’ve anticipated, priming can prompt “good” and “bad” behavior.

Read more here.

When conservative radio talk show host Glenn’s Beck’s "butt surgery" was featured on You Tube, the media, bloggers and a wild assortment of pundits had a field day covering it.

Are you ready if someone does something stupid at your organization? What if a fired worker tells a reporter lies about your organization or an accident or act of violence or other kind of harm happens on your site - or your product fails badly? And that's just the short list of possibilities in our new normal world where bad news travels faster, farther and in more directions than ever before.

Here’s my brief primer, tips from Chris Thomas for crisis planning - and Kami’s suggestions to get vital messages out quickly, using social media. Such planning may have saved lives at Virginia Tech.

Consider reading these short articles BEFORE a crisis hits. Don’t wait to be caught like a deer in headlights when people turn to you for guidance – or you pick up the phone to hear that reporter bluntly ask for your response.

Keep your people as safe as you can - and your organization’s reputation protected. Who knows? You may be the hero who gets a career boost.

Want to become your kind of media’s favorite subject matter expert?

Read ten tips with links to real life examples to become catnip for that media to quote you. Thank you Nancy Schwartz for this pithy, spot-on top ten list. Although Nancy is writing for those who run non-profits the suggestions work just as well for any business, government agency, special activity group, club, professional association or soloist. As a former journalist I heartily agree with her approach.

I’d add these suggestions:

• Provide an online list of the kinds of timely and timeless stories where your expertise could be helpful.

• Make your contact information for the media very easy to find throughout your web site, blog, online social network or other kind of Internet presence.

• Make a guarantee as to how swiftly you will respond to someone working under deadline.

• Provide a captioned album of photographs, graphs, diagrams and other images from the activities and other background on your topic. (My addition to tip number two.)

• Provide a list of related organizations and other resources so you become the “go to” site for your category of media coverage.

Intrigued? Then read her excellent suggestions to “Make the Most of Media Queries” and “Make it Easy for Online Readers to Spread the Word.”

Seth Godin’s promise to put 1,000 faces on the cover of his next book, Tribe, reminded me of two other crowd pleasers:

• the top-of-heads photo on Clay Shirky’s insightful book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

• the 60-foot high faces of Chicagoans that appear on the Crown Foundation. See startled passersby watch the lips purse on each face, then spurt water like a modern-day gargoyle.  Steven van Yoder would probably approve of Godin’s offer to make some members of the Godin tribe, “slightly famous.”

Here’s some of my favorite quotes, by the way, from Shirky’s thought-provoking book:

• “We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented….”

• “What we are dealing with now is filter failure.”• “Group action gives human society it particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get thing done will affect society as a whole.”

• The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming “gather, then share” into “share, then gather.”

• Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”
Shirky is walking his talk. During an interview on the Colbert Report, Colbert suggested printing “Colbert” stickers to put on Doritos bags in their nearby grocery stores.

Shirky,  evoking the theme of his book, invited audience members to create their own stickers. Thanks Steve Johnson.

Shirky recommended Jeff Howe’s forthcoming book, Crowdsourcing. Read more

This news is sad, yet not surprising.

As women, we are more concerned about our weight (56%) and eating right (36%) than we are worried about getting one of three big killers for women: cancer (23%), heart problems (20%) or diabetes (18%). That’s what Meredith and NBC Universal discovered in their study, “What do Women Want?”“

Many women are skipping important medical examinations, annual physicals and screenings:

• Less than two-thirds (59%) of all women get an annual physical, even fewer Gen Y women (44%).• Nearly one-third of Boomer women are not getting their annual mammograms, cholesterol checks or physicals.

• 62% of women regularly give themselves a breast self-examination, while only 14% of all women get a skin cancer screening at least once a year.Read more at Meredith. Ironically, Women’s Check-Up Day was earlier this month.

Love yourself? Take care of yourself.

Between self-image and staying alive, this may be our biggest Procrastination Error, as women.

Perhaps Hilda L. Solis, Arianna Huffington, Anna Deavere Smith and Ann Curry can spearhead a “Love Yourself” campaign to inspire more women to get vital health check-ups.

From Me2We, let’s recruit apt allies, including BlogHer, The Women’s Ad Network, WIMN, Our Bodies Our Blog, AMWA and the Downtown Women’s Club. (Have you gotten your check-ups?)

Give away downloadable, eco-friendly house plans – and make money? Others could adapt this startup’s healthy Me2We path to profitability, using their kind of expertise. Plus you could enjoy the camaraderie that comes from collaborating on projects that benefit people around the world.

Here’s the story. Working with the highest-rated makers of home construction materials, FreeGreen, a winning, new company of architects, designers and engineers creates plans for green homes, right down to the last design detail. Plans include 3-D images, alternative design combinations, product reviews including information about energy efficiencies, specific to your choice of plans and products – and to your city.

Just launched, the start-up offers two plans. One, a healthy home for young families and another, a loft for down-sizers or first-time buyers. FreeGreen makes money from the paid placement of products within the plans. Vital to their success, they only pick products that have high ratings or reviews from unbiased third parties. Another small revenue stream comes from customizing plans.

FreeGreen will grow as the number of plans they offer grows, they attract more downloads and can justify higher fees for placement. Word spreads fast. Also in recommending another firm for complete customization, they recognize that SmartPartnering generates more value for everyone. This for-profit model and Architecture for Humanity could cross-consult on ways to download plans, reduce the costs of green construction and grow the movement about eco-friendly building.

This is a wonderful opportunity for local, sustainable construction firms to partner with FreeGreen. Offer to construction the homes, as Springwise points out.

Here’s other ways to adapt this Me2We business model. Are you a fan of eco-healthy buildings? Do you own a brick and mortar business such as an inn, childcare center, travel store or pet hospital and hotel. Then you probably went through a learning curve about all the licensing, regulations, systems for conducting your business, from how you plan your day, do you bookkeeping and taxes to promoting your business.

Over the years you’ve bought many products and services for your business, some of which you’ve loved. Every company on your favorites list that can sell, at least nationally, is a possible paid product placement - as are the professional associations to which you belong.

Now, profit from your experience:

• Create a great “how to” guide for others who want to jump-start a business like yours.

• Consider partnering with a local architect with “green” experience. Co-create downloadable design plans to package with your downloadable how-to guide.

• Start a blog about your unfolding business, with an extensive blog roll.

• If you’re the first in your kind of work to create this kind of FreeGreen spin-off then you’ll probably make news. Get slightly famous. Remember to praise FreeGreen for the inspiration.
Read more.

Usually companies start supporting causes after being in business awhile.

Now some are starting a business for a cause. Like Ethos, Newman’s Own and Can Do Kids. The “do good” message is central to the business model.

The cause is as important as the profits. Coaching three start-ups was a joy.Can Do Kids energy bar ceo, Deborah Churchill Luster’s message appears everywhere in her business. Like Kris Bordessa, she believes in engendering self-confidence, cooperation and competence in young people.

Making it fun too.

I met Deborah, today’s podcast guest, when she was president of Annie’s Homegrown. Paul Geffner and I were on the founding board. Those macaroni and cheese boxes grabbed your eye on the grocery shelves, what with the rabbit staring at you from the green, red, yellow and purple packages. Many shopping mothers would pick up a box, see co-founder Ann Withey, read her “Be Green” message, then toss a couple of boxes into their cart.Deborah and others, including me, were seeking investors for the fast-growing start-up.

We’d not done that before. It proved to be a priceless way to get to know each other.

Since then, she’s married another entrepreneur and had four children.Then she took what she learned from that first venture, called on the contacts with whom she’s stayed in contact, recruited friends and family and started Can Do Kids. She and her team work part time to live the work/life balance part of their Can Do message.

Here’s some of Luster’s “Can Do” lessons for growing your business and your cause:

1. Have a specific message in which you passionately believe.

2. Sell a high-quality product or service that complements and reinforces your message.

3. Offer supportive products (books, DVDs, bumper stickers, online services) that:

• Your competitors don’t offer, so your company becomes one-of-a-kind.

• Enable customers to be a part of “our” movement and tell friends.

• Attracts the media to the back story of your business.

4. Don’t “just” donate to groups that matter to your customers, get active in them.

5. Provide super easy ways for customers and others to make suggestions and learn what you’ll do about them. (Two suggestions: get rid of the peanuts and bring the price down.)

6. Meet regularly, in person, with a small group of your competitors. Deborah meets with other Bay Area-based women ceos of food companies. Hear more in this podcast.

He was in Bangalore and his co-presenters were in San Jose, yet Cisco’s CEO appeared live - on thesame stage. How? By using a breathtaking 3D holographic-like technology.They tout it as, “the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Aptly, it’s called TelePresence.

See Sir Richard Branson – live at a London press conference, while standing at Necker Island, his Caribbean retreat. Or preview “the first space age Olympic swim suit.” On Wednesday a Telstra executive in Melbourne, Australia interacted with an audience in Adelaide.

My friend Rick watched a demo and raved about it. Suddenly, this is a competitive space. And, yes, this is Cisco’s big new business, partnering with Musion, yet it will have to cost less to gain traction. Why am I interested in it, aside from the astounding effect of a holographic human presence?

Because:

• The realistic presence it provides means people around the world can gather for what really feels like an in-person gathering.

• The best actors anywhere for a particular play can assemble to enact it, for more people to see - live and later.

• The top experts on a topic can appear on a panel, taking questions from audiences in many places.

• Crowdsourcing becomes easier.

In short, it enables more realistic “face-to-face” group collaboration. Cisco had an I-Prize contest in which anyone could propose novel ways to use this technology. Already it is in 28 countries, lightening the carbon footprint.

Five years ago I spoke on Cisco’s global, in-house on-demand TV station. I still get emails from Cisco employees who clicked on their computer to see my presentation when they thought it might help them with a current need. Holographic-like appearances, however takes that kind of live and on-demand capability to a whole new level.

As useage goes up and cost goes down, the world will flatten for more Me2We opportunities. We’ll be able to get a better feel for each other, no matter where we actually are. I can hardly wait to try it.

Skip travel and lodging costs. Meeting Planners’ Alert:

For PCMA, SGMP, MPI, ASAE, NSA,MeCo, MeetingsNet, MiForum and others in the meeting or communication professions: bring the most relevant speakers and panelists to the same stage - no matter where they are standing in the world. Enable “attendees” to talk with them. Encourage convention centers and conference hotels to provide this capacity, offered by Cisco, HP or other firm. Set the bar higher.

First, Cisco CEO John Chambers is providing it for large conferences, concerts, events, awards ceremonies, multi-site meetings, high level briefings, retail, museums and product launches - even movies and soldier/family conversations. Then Chambers wants to bring it to our homes. (Well, not every room, in the home.) Stay tuned.

A big stumbling block in hiring the graphic designer who most “gets” your business is this. You won’t know if you’ll like the design until after you put your money down. The smaller your business and budget the greater the risk it seems.

That’s how it works at two popular places, ifreelance and Elance. Buyer post requests for designs. Designers submit proposals. Buyer hires a designer, then waits to see the results.

This month, crowdSPRING, an online business launched to level that risk. It provides protections for creatives and for buyers.

Here’s how it works. Would-be buyers post a description of their project, the budget and their deadline. Then, according to co-founder, Ross Kimbarovsky, “Creatives from around the world submit actual designs - not merely RFPs. Buyers pick from actual designs.” To demonstrate how it works crowdSPRING posted a $5,000 contract the design of their home page. (I spoke at HOW Design, a conference where attendees could give great feedback on this approach.)

crowdSPRING provides for buyers and sellers such protections as project management, legal contracts, reputation management, online portfolio placement, and intermediary customer service. Adds Kimbarovsky, “We believe that once a buyer purchases creative services using crowdSPRING’s new model - they’ll never go back to the traditional model.” Note, they already have 1,503 members and visitors from 122 different countries/territories. For variations of this approach see GeniusRocket and Criggle.

Kimbarovsky and his colleague Pete Burgeson, said they took this approach after reading about crowdsourcing and communities in Howard Rheingold’s book, Smart Mobs. Crowdsourcing, a term actually coined by Jeff Howe, means, “taking tasks traditionally done by a single person or small groups of people, and farms them out to a global workforce.”

Thanks for the tip Michelle Wolverton. Kimbarovsky and the other co-founder, Mike Samson, “wanted to achieve just three things with crowdSPRING: give creatives a level playing field, offer buyers choice, and protect intellectual property for all.” See what you think.

Those mortifying accidents.

Stephen J. Dubner unleashed a pent-up flood of guilt and shame from readers of his New York Times column last month. Ever written an email, then sent it in haste … to the wrong person? Or cc’d people who shouldn’t have seen your candid message? Or mistakenly received an email that was not meant for your eyes?

Within days after Dubner told his tale, 166 readers shared their stories of regret, outrage and in Marci Alboher’s case, a happy ending. Wonder what’s the proper etiquette in this new world of instantly sendable missives? Like advice on avoiding such mishaps? Want to read more stories to feel better about your mistake? Visit the Web site Think Before You Send, for the book, Send, by the New York Times’s Op-ed editor David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, former editor at Hyperion.

Gossip. Billion dollar goof. Mis-directed love notes. Quick-trigger lawyers. CEO’s insults. Doomed convoy. Nope. There’s no retrieve key. Just apology. Done right.

It’s an unavoidably and increasingly transparent world. Some are proudly, vividly telling all in the name of authenticity - often humorously - sometimes attracting a large community (or audience), posting personal or “social” information on several sites, Twittering away throughout day. Some, like Claire, create Great Email Disasters.

“Oversharing.”

It seems we are diving into this new way of public living, even if we aren’t (yet) celebrities. iPhone. Flip video. The tech toys are alluring. (I love them.) And the bravery and exuberance, especially of women, to tell it like it is, inevitably opens the conversations for us all.

Today had its slow moments. Yet life flies by fast. With each year it passes faster. So why not go slow to go fast? Sometimes anyway. Make more moments memorable. Consider your concentric circles of family, friendships, colleagues and acquaintances. Pause to contemplate the most thoughtful ways to reach out, and with whom. Until Facemail arrives, pause again before you send. Preserve reputations.

In this “always on” anywhere, any time, anyone (photo.video.word) coverage of most any situation, consider how you want to connect. Keep confidences. Be trustworthy. Cultivate relationships in a transient, time-starved world.

We need some privacy to be our truest selves. Akin to the old-fashioned notion that fences make good neighbors, our thoughtful lines of privacy may enable us to grow ever closer.

I am a situational extrovert and value my friendss. Yet I look forward to walking and driving without talking on the phone or even listening to music, to notice the world around me, the thoughts and feelings seep that into my consciousness. Anybody else like that? Maybe I’m simply clinging to a world where we choose between solitude and constant contact with others.

Our life is our ultimate art. Found your line of privacy? As someone once said, “In art as in life it is often a matter of where you draw the line.”

Want a window into a preferred way of life(style) at work?

When a hot start-up in San Francisco seeks talented workers who have many choices about where to work - what does it offer? Call it the google effect. Grockit can’t provide the on-site laundry services, 14 restaurants (and much more) of google. Yet, today it landed 8 million more in funding and can offer:

• Cheap desks, expensive chairs.

• 30 inch monitors, top of the line Mac Pros and ergonomic keyboards.

• A powerful software development tracking tool to manage work throughout the organization from engineering to operations to academics.

• Benefits (health, dental, vision):
Every month we put cash into a HSA for employees. You never lose your HSA money, it sits in a bank account you can access, and you can use the HSA Bank Card to pay for preventative medical care or to cover the cost of deductibles.

• Tasty breakfasts and lunches that are nutrient dense and all most entirely organic.

• Water is filtered through a 10-stage filter.

• For cleaning, we only use non-toxic supplies.

• We recycle and compost far more than we trash, use high efficiency lighting, and purchase our food from local businesses and farms.

Considering that mix of benefits, it’s not surprising this start-up, Grockit is “developing an online learning game where people can teach each other.”

Our learning take-aways - from these benefits - for recruiting star employees:

• How many companies offer a mix of benefits that closely match the profile of employees they most need?

• How many firms describe their benefits in language that reflects the career and sense-of-community interests of their kind of sought-after worker?

• How often do you see benefits written so briefly, in such vivid, specific detail?

Tip: The specific detail proves the general promise. Generalizations are less credible or memorable.

Look for the launch of their game this Fall. GrockIt's approach is radical. While some of their language attacks traditional education, the first step may be more narrow: help in prepping for educational tests. Co-founder, Farbood Nivi, said last year, "We are trying to turn the global education market on its head. We want students to teach each other rather than going to teachers. The knowledge is inherent within the system. Today’s market is about conformity, order and obedience. Then the teacher will gift you with the knowledge. We’re trying to facilitate student interaction and totally circumvent the master-slave dynamic."

Nivi wrote of his massive plans at LinkedIn, "We aim to utilize the awesome power of the internet to help the world learn. Our first step is leveraging the web to provide live online GMAT test prep classes to anyone with a PC and an Internet connection ... We are currrently developing a P2P Learning Game that will help students from around the world teach each other ... We are also expanding to include LSAT, ACT, SAT, GRE test prep in Q3 of 2007."

Speaking again of the power of specificity and brevity, Navi wrote: Grockit is founded on a few principles.
1. Learning should be low cost and high quality.
2. Learning should benefit the student, the teacher, and society.
3. Learning should be engaging, and interactive.

Grok has been one of my favorite concepts since childhood. Here’s two of my favorite quotes from Grockit.

• Grockit is a play on the word 'grok', which was coined by Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Grok means to understand something so well that it becomes a part of you. We created the word Grockit to mean understanding something so well that you can teach it to others. (They practice what they preach, working and learning in pairs.)

• Learning 2.0 is a re-emphasis on learning as opposed to education. Education is an institution while learning is what people do. The 2.o also means that technology, namely the distributed web, is going to help us do that.  Read more.

A captivating person + "movie"  demonstrating 2 or 3  ways to bring out others' best side to spiral up into happier & high-performing behavior rather than down into conflict

Bluntly speaking, we are more likely to cooperate in a group when those who don’t get punished. “Darwin had a blind spot. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the role of cooperation in evolution. He just didn’t see how important it is.” Little has changed until relatively recently.

We were raised to compete because we were taught it was a matter of survival of the fittest. Yet, as David Brooks noted, even today, some believe in upfront combat and some in consensus.

Speaking of working together (or not), in many situations experts are not as accurate as a large group can be. “In fact, large groups, structured properly, can be smarter than the smartest member of a group.”

Want more insights on when and how we will act to accomplish something better together than apart? Explore The Cooperation Commons, a project co-sponsored by The Institute for the Future and today’s interviewee, the ever colorful, Howard Rheingold.

Last February this somewhat unconventional Stanford professor won a MacArthur Foundation grant to create a social media virtual classroom, “to show use how and why to use social media. What’s worked and what hasn’t, so far, in this experiment – and how can we learn from his experience, to hone our use of social media? Unlike many other academics, as Rheingold has written, “Talking about public opinion making is a richer experience if you’ve tried to do it.”

A veteran commentator on participatory and social media, he covers Second Life, flash mobs and group swarming that inspired Improv Everywhere, our instinctive desire to participate in a compatible group, ways the faces of political candidates influence voting, civic participation and the proliferation of uses for cell phones to riot, buy, protest, protect and play together.

Following up on how cell phone use is changing us, read the new book, by sociologist Rich Ling: New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion.

More importantly, what’s his secret to attracting exuberant crowds? Can we bottle it? Thanks Garr Reynolds for introducing us to Matthew Harding.

When mentoring goes both ways it’s one of the richest experiences one can have, noted Ben Casnocha inhis book, My Start-Up Life. Crediting a long line of wise guides, Casnocha, who founded Comcate at age 14, called today’s interviewee, Chris Yeh, a mentor’s mentor. We’ll also hear from Kristine Molnar at PBwiki, one of his start-ups.

1. Mentoring in the Most Powerful Way

In today’s interview you’ll hear about the far-reaching benefits of deep, two-way guidance. Some effects ripple out beyond the original mutual mentors as this story demonstrates. My favorite line in this story is about the golden rule of mentoring: “It is wise to help set the course. But the navigator has to find his own way.”

Yeh’s life is saturated with flourishing relationships. An avid family man, friend, high-tech entrepreneur and advisor (Symphoniq, AthenaWork, mail.com, Umaveda, Ustream.TV, etc.) and a writer, he‘s actively involved with former classmates at Stanford and Harvard Business School.

2. Making Collaboration Easy and Fun Online

In this interview, Chris also describes a second Me2We approach, the power of free or low-cost, user-friendly wikis tocollaboratively collect and share information. At PBwiki (hosting over 400,000 business and educational wikis), Chris, Kristine and the rest of the team serves even the non-geek market of people like me and perhaps you.

(Kevin Holland goes further, saying don’t even call them wikis or you’ll scare some people away.) In past posts, we’ve mentioned other Me2We ways to wiki.

If you’re now hungry for more Yeh ideas on connecting well with others, check out Ustream. Use it to broadcast your live video experiences, including athletic event, school play, wedding, talk show … and political convention.

… please read this one. If Gutman, Lasseter and Schofield don’t get a Pulitzer I’ll be surprised. They “traveled to 11 countries to interview 66 freed Guantanamo and Afghanistan prison detainees.”

“No one would accept it if a local prosecutor used sleep deprivation and attack dogs to coerce an inmate’s confession.

No judge, county or federal, would admit hearsay testimony in a trial. No jailer would be allowed to eavesdrop on confidential communications between a defendant and his lawyer.

The reason is simple, and important. No matter how horrendous a crime, the law must be obeyed at every step, from arrest to final verdict. When shortcuts are taken, confidence in the law suffers. Our nation suffers.” So wrote American Bar Association president, William H. Neukom.

What has happened to detainees? Per the Nieman Report, “It’s a stunning bit of reporting … These editors and reporters, of course, are the successors to the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau — the lone mainstream-media organization credited for its skeptical, forthright, consistent questioning and reporting in the run-up to the Iraq war.”

McClatchy summarizes the five-part series: An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.”

As a former journalist and an American I am proud of the courage, tenacity and depth of coverage these reporters displayed, and the newspaper that supported their work. In a country with an independent court, a free press, burgeoning social media and the right to vote, we Americans have the right and the responsibility to vote for the return of the Rule of Law.

… if they lived in communist Russia,” is how an anonymous employee described his company culture. Guess which company.

Also, want to know what your boss’ home is worth?
And how much does she make?

From some of the folks who enabled you to discover the answer to the first question you may now be able to learn the answer to the second.

Taking on two work taboo topics, the start-up, glassdoor, aims is to help job seekers get a real picture of a company. Also, suggests CEO Robert Hohman, “When the annual compensation review comes,” says CEO, “you need to know what your market value is.”

Secrecy is on the way out. People who work or worked at a company can submit reviews of it and of individual employees there plus provide salary information. It is then displayed anonymously for all site members to see. Membership is free. Profits will come from ads aimed at job seekers, a premium level of membership and selling compiled data to HR firms.

You can see who’s on the other side of a glass door. Yet glassdoor’s approach seems less transparent. However noble the founder’s intentions, anonymity can tempt us to castigate under cover or to deceive. From jealousy to enmity, all kinds of dark motivations can move people to submit negative comments or inaccurate salary information.

There are other reasons for contributors to warp the results at glassdoor. When executives find that their firm has a lower rating than a competitor’s they may be tempted to “gently” suggest that their underlings submit high ratings and positive feedback.

The experienced team at glassdoor insist they have built in systems to detect malicious or inaccurate submissions. Certainly, as more people contribute, an “error” is more likely to stand out, unless a group decides to submit it. To spur contributions, you must give information to get access to more detailed reviews.

Even if the information is accurate, as Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr points out, “By providing free access to sensitive salary information and sometimes blunt reviews of companies, glassdoor is bound to upset some employers.” (Guess where software engineers get the most take-home pay – Yahoo, google or Apple?)

Facebook is trying something somewhat similar, albeit on a smaller scale. There’s an undeniable appeal to reading the salaries and anonymous comments about colleagues in your company or at competing firms. Consequently, there’s money to be made from our prurient interest in:

• Money
What’s the salary of prospects, clients, friends and other key corporate people in my life?

• Gossip
What are others willing to say about individuals I know, behind the curtain of anonymity?
Already, despite Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s 89 percent approval rating at glassdoor, a google employee has complained, “Google pushes a highly “googley” atmosphere, which is something akin to what the Brady Bunch would be like if they lived in communist Russia.”

Perhaps, as at TripAdvisor, Epinions and other rating or review sites, as more people rate and contribute, the collective credibility of numerous contributions will add color and depth to the snapshot outsiders get about companies. And lower ratings or review may spur improvements. Perhaps the Wisdom of the Crowds will prevail.

Anyway, since launching (in my village - also home to Federated Media) last Wednesday, glassdoor has already attracted more than 1.2 million page views and over 10,000 new salary reports and reviews submitted.

How do you feel about glassdoor’s approach? Is it a valuable new Me2We tool or is it oversharing or something in between?

From stay-at-home Mom to art teacher to designer of exquisite Ukrainian eggs to author of a book that lands her on The Today Show. That’s quite career ride.

Better still, it led Jane Pollak to her dream job.

Jane provides what’s probably the single most successful Me2We tool you’ll ever find. The mastermind group. She’s belonged to one for 16 years. Now, she organizes and leads them – and you can too. With more people working on their own, the desire for this kind of structured mutual support and camaraderie is growing fast.

Most meet in person, some online or via phone. (My group does all three.)

Does a mix of writing, coaching and/or speaking - and leading mastermind groups appeal to you? Want to learn exactly how to start a profitable mastermind coaching business - serving the niche profession or industry you know best and enjoy most? Dreaming of a lifestyle change? Seeking more independence?

How about a chance to mentor those in your kind of work and facilitate their mutual support so they can grow successful faster and have a balanced life– and enjoy the ride with them?

Many people are now leading mastermind groups. Plus the market for them is growing.

And, for starters, as Vocation Vacations and others have demonstrated, there’s a huge market of boomers who’re exploring new ways to work, play and live - with others - and want help finding their way.

Hear how in this interview.

• “Bank fees are like financial wedgies.”

• “One of the founding fathers of rock and roll has left the building he helped construct.”

• “Eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables.”

Guess which of those colorful one-liners you’re most likely to remember - and repeat to others? Here’s hints for honing your quotability, but first a few more pithy examples.

“Darlings, make blogs, not war.” That’s Adrianna Huffington’s 2007 acceptance speech at the Webby awards. Winners are limited to five words.

Asked to write a six-word short story, Ernest Hemingway gave us, “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Recently, Wired asked sci-fi writers for stories. Life’s too short for long speeches, quickly forgotten, J.K. Rowling told Harvard. In a time-starved world, brevity becomes popular.

Here’s some six-word autobiographies, from the conversation-starter of a book, Not Quite What I Was Planning:

“Changing mind postponed demise by decades.

“Asked to quiet down; spoke louder.”
- Wendy Lee

“Well, I thought it was funny.”
- Stephen Colbert

Dan Pink asked for six-word memoirs for the career advisor, his comic hero, Johnny Bunko. Here’s two:
“Life isn’t a multiple choice test.”

“Followed the rules; wish I hadn’t.”

Some of my favorite, brief classics: “No great thing is created suddenly” (Epictetus), “Love makes the world go round”, “You can’t direct the wind but you can adjust your sails.”

Now, to be more frequently-quoted, here’s five tips, starting with brevity.

1. Be brief

“Bidding starts at 99 cents” announced Meg Whitman when accepting a Webby for eBay.

Calvin Coolidge ( “Silent Cal”), was confronted by a woman at a White House dinner who exclaimed, “I bet my husband five dollars that I could get you to say more than three words.” He replied, “You lost.”

Brevity forces you to choose your main point. The fewer the words the more clear and compelling your meaning can become. Skip the distracting underbrush of opening qualifiers and boring background. Offer your best upfront. Then, as Renée Zellweger’s character famously interrupted the courting Tom Cruise, (in the movie, Jerry Maguire) to say, “Shut up … just shut up. You had me at hello.”

Yes, brevity can be tender or blunt, but never boring. “Silent Cal” - Calvin Coolidge, was confronted by a woman at a White House dinner who exclaimed, “I bet my husband five dollars that I could get you to say more than three words.” He replied, “You lost.”

2. Get specific

Specificity demonstrates accountability and thus create credibility. Which statement would you remember?

• We put our members first.
• For your convenience, we’re staying open on Saturdays.

The specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the reverse.

3. Provide mental pictures from the physical world.

“I still make coffee for two.”
- Zak Nelson

If you knew nothing about either company, it is likely that you’d find Apple easier to recall than Intel, for example.

In descending order of memorability, notice this:
• blue
• ocean blue
• Mediterranean blue

4. Make unexpected comparisons

Bank fees are like financial wedgies.

5. Evoke humor

Accepting his 2007 Webby award, Al Gore said, “Please don’t recount this vote.”

Use Brevity to Make Life More Meaningful and Memorable, Two Tips

1. Start a one-sentence diary, as Gretchen Rubin suggests.
No matter how overwhelmed you get, you can take the time to capture a moment. Akin to noticing more when you carry a camera on an outing, knowing you will be writing about “my day” makes you more present during it. Less chance, perhaps, that your days will be forgotten, carved in sand.

2. From billboards to retorts and headlines, notice the one-liners that stick in your mind, as you go about your day.
Why did you remember them? Probably for one or both of these reasons:

• Innately vivid, perhaps evoking one of the five elements above.
• Relates to something that matters to you, either an upsetting or uplifting.

Through this exercise you’ll become aware of the power inherent in vivid brevity – and what’s on your mind as certain messages you see stick out.

For more ideas on becoming top-of-mind, drop in and say hello at the international conference of IABC where I am speaking this month.

Want concrete ways to become more successful with others than you can on your own? Then adapt a real life Me2We-captured success story and underlying method to your work or life situation. Every few days you’ll find fresh examples here, taken from one of the blogs on Links, our blog roll. Here’s your first one:

Create Community with Maps Mashups and Widgets

Overlay your information on a google map so people you seek to serve can click on geographical places to learn more. Your information-on-a-map creation is a one kind of mashup. Here’s how to make one.

Jump on this wildly popular and versatile find-it tool. For inspiration, see 100 interesting things via google maps mashups. Find, for example, locations for extreme sports, breweries or public toilets (a connection?). And talk about  timely! At Mike Pegg’s blog find the cheapest gas.

What kind of maps mashups could you create that would motivate others to add their geo-based information, generating ever more value as they do so? For example, Paul places real estate listings from craigslist on a Google Maps API. He has many cities up already. Now re-locating home buyers and renters can click on his map to look at their options for a new home. They can explore by price range or geographical area. (Conversely, see 25 Unsafest US Cities.) Paul paid nothing for the information he used. He’s “just” spent his own sweat equity in creating this service.

Then it’s onto Mapplets, 3D and google Earth. Take heart. Creating and using widgets and mash-ups is relatively easy. If, like me, you need someone by your side to learn, then it will be easy to find adept help via your designer or trouble shooter for your blog or web site. Get free help here, here or here or get pro help.

In their book, Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams dub these mashups “platforms for participation.” Learn more ways to start a business or enable your town to flourish in Dave Atkins’ guest blog post at All About Cities.

Get inspired by others’ creative uses of Google Maps at Google Maps Mania. See, for example, at Milbazaar, “the life journeys of Barack Obama and John McCain from birth to … well probably the White House for one of them.” Via a mashup you can submit your own punchline for the famous Dilbert comic strip. Causes and companies can use the same model to invite people to craft a slogan or motto.

Some mashup creators invite others to add and/or rate content to their map, making it more valuable for everyone. See, for example one serving another fervent niche, “1001 Secret Fishing Holes.”

Another kind of mashup you can use to attract others to your cause, hobby or business is a widget. That’s a chunk of web code that can be embedded in your blog or web site. For example, use the widget called ChipIn, “to create a widget stating what you’re collecting for, how much you want to raise, an end-date and how you’d like to receive your funds (credit card or Paypal) … track your progress on your blog or website and invite others to contribute to your cause” suggests Rebecca Leaman at Wild Apricot.

Then use ChipIn’s popular SproutBuilder to create a custom widget to share your “content” on others’ blogs and sites.

Then, to build involvement and discover more about those you are attracting to your blog or site - just ask. Using PollDaddy.com, post a poll that gives instant polling results as AIMS is doing. With this easy, no-cost approach your participants also discover more about each other. That may deepen their involvement at your blog or site, inspiring them to linger longer, contribute, tell others and return.

Like to cover a concert, political campaign or a boycott as you see it, literally?

Want to give your slant on your local back roads?

How about recruiting some friends and creating a weekly show around your favorite hobby or other interest?

YouTube just made it easer to attract an audience to video programs you produce.

Become a part of their new Citizen News Channel. (See the new channel category for “citizen journalists.”) From on-the-scene coverage to your kind of lively interviews to “how to” episodes (or all three in one?) you can create the programs in the genres that match your hottest interests and expertise. Now you can find some of the best news content on YouTube.

Already, on the Global Voices channel, Miyong G. Kuon from South Sudan, is covering the conditions in refugee camps.

The channel’s news manager, Olivia Ma describes who might want to participate and why:

• People who tote around their cameras offering “on-the-scene” coverage of local news and events.
• Students producing their own weekly newscasts.
• Active community members who conduct interviews with local leaders.
• Engaged citizens who love providing commentary and analysis on issues affecting the world at large.
• Professional journalists using YouTube as an additional outlet for their work.

After you put your citizen news story up on YouTube’s new channel, go over to BBC’s Your News, then the Reuters/Yahoo You Witness News and, finally to CNN’s iReport. Put your program up on each of those sites too.

Other than inadvertently becoming part of a scandal, crisis or other notably bad or good news, here’s the most likely method for becoming part of a media story – in a positive way.

Get briefed on stories for which reporters, producers or bloggers are seeking input – right now.For $99 a month, get PR Leads, a daily email of updates, customized for your situation.

Dan Janal is diligent and savvy.  He depends on our happy referrals to get more business. Two other popular media matching services are free.

Publicist (and sky diver) Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO) email gets delivered to you three times a day. At the top of each email is a summary – one-liners on the kind of sources reporters are seeking. Scan it quickly to see if you’re a match for one of the queries.

In just a few months over 10,000 sources signed up, as you can here. Journalists submit their query here.ProfNet, a venerable fee-based service was upset with this upstart.The other free service is Getting Ink Requests. It is run by another social media maven,

Sally Whittle and a large collective of journalists. You can get queries via a daily email or Twitter or add value to your blog by featuring Getting Ink Requests on it.As you review your compilation of media queries from HARO, Gettng Ink Requests, PR Leads or ProfNet, look for strong matches.

Can you offer tips, insights, information, stories or examples that directly relate to what the media person is seeking? Be brief, specific and to the point. See, for example, how Peter got HARO to be a part of this New York Times story.

If you are off-topic or too self-promotional you’ll get be blacklisted by that media person. Here’s Sandra Beckwith’s tips on how to respond. (Don’t get featured on the Bad Pitch Blog.)

Kristen King also writes bluntly about the biggest mistakes some people make in responding to queries. Here’s tips for offering what a reporter needs to cover your story.

Also, if you’re paid for your expertise (or you want to be) then help people find you when they want what you know.

To raise your visibility and value, you may want to emulate Sally Whittle or Peter Shankman’s community-building model. That is offer a social media-based, free compilations/matching service related to your business.

If so, remember this. While Sally actively encourages people to share the media queries she collects, Peter asks that you do not.

So far Peter is attracting far more queries and members it seems.  Ann Hanley sees Peter’s approach as a healthy sign of our social media future.

Erik Sherman describes why Peter should be able to copyright his compilations to preserve the value he is creating for himself while facilitating a service that remains free for “us.” That’s the “Me2We” way.As you can see, taking this “first ever” approach can raise helpful thoughts and competitive concerns among those who are accustomed to having more control.

The downside of this free-for-all future is the weakest link.

The weak links are the aforementioned, irritating off-topic responders who spoil it for the rest of us.That’s why some journalists and others are seeking sources among their existing circle of colleagues, as Shel Holtz describes.

Hint: How many media pros are you LinkedIn to?

Some of the most masterful baristas in the U.S. gathered in a hotel lobby in Minneapolis for their annual competition last month, judged by their peers. But this year was different. More excitement.And pressure. Coffee growers, café owners and other baristas and coffee lovers from around the world can watch them perform. In real time and later. (Congrats Kyle Glansville!) Observers can share comments or photos.

Consider this story a free, mini-seminar: How to involve more people and sponsors in your event. Be the first person in your kind of industry or profession to adapt this approach for your gathering. Your “first ever” might attract media coverage too. Here’s what happened.Rich, a tradeshow blogger and a judge at this coffee contest, describes what the fresh twist on the traditonal barista contest. The Specialty Coffee Association live video blogged the competition, with a real-time chat screen.

“This was the first time either was attempted at this event (last year’s even had some time delayed video, but no interaction). The live video/chat enabled family, friends, colleagues, fellow baristas and coffee growers whose beans were being represented from around the globe as well as curious folks like me to witness the competition with close up camera work while engaging in ongoing conversation as it was happening.

In many ways watching the competition remotely was preferable to taking a seat in the bleachers and watching in person (very little talking inside (kinda rude to do so), poor sight lines, hard to see the details that mattered for scoring).

There was also a conference blog that included video interviews from the show floor, some session reviews and even some light entertainment.” Plus they created a captivating flickr photostream. (Sidebar, if “even” a local coffee shop in Atlanta can attract national coverage for their contest, perhaps you can too?)

As Jemima Kiss notes, live blogging by attendees is now so powerful that some are resisting what they may view as their loss of control. Like Jemima, I feel the participants can’t be stopped - and that is great. Increasingly more people will discover fresh ways to collaborate at conferences and other events. Perhaps The End of Control signals the strength of a more inclusive way of gathering, made possible our new media tools.

Want to Attract More Fans to Your Event?

Do you operate a street fair, game, lecture series, in-person contest or a product demo center at a trade show? In fact are you part of any kind of event that you’d like to grow?

Then would you like:
• To attract an even more people to it?

• Let people watch in real time and any time, anywhere later on?

• Enable more bystanders to see what’s going on?

• Build an ongoing community around your recurring gathering?

• Attract sponsors to cover the cost of the event?

• Get watchers involved in:
- Rooting for and voting for their favorites?
- Inspired to seek permission to participate in the event next time?
- Offering advice for improving the happening next year?

• Build an ongoing record of your events to use in:
- future events
- audio, text and/or or video “how-to” guides
- promotions to attract future audiences, sponsors or members?

You can accomplish all of the above, if not the first time then over time, by finding fans of your kind of gathering who have social media know-how. That’s what the folks at the Specialty Coffee Association discovered. In so doing the social media geeks got a greater taste of coffee knowledge and the coffee experts got a big gulp of blogging and vlogging expertise. That’s a Me2We collaboration to accomplish more (and have more fun) together than apart.

Here’s BBC producer, Robin Hamman’s “10 tips for live blogging a conference or event.” Lee Odden and Sarah Perez offer more suggestions. For covering any event, Anne Helmond helps you choose, “between Twitter, live blogging or fast publishing. ” Get your comprehensive social media “how-to” kit, compliments of Chris Brogan. Robin Good is another generous, reliable “how-to” guide for such tools, including for video publishing.

Many groups could make their event more involving, exciting and valuable. That includes gatherings as diverse as top chefs’ demonstrations, high schoolers’ robotic contests and dog groomers’ workshops.

“Did you go there on vacation?”

“I rode on that bike ride for breast cancer too.”

“Oh, you went to that meeting too?”

Walking around the conference halls, with your favorite tote bag over your shoulder is like carrying a mini-billboard about some special part of your life. Such questions are easy conversation starters. It’s about increased approachability amongst strangers. As when walking your dog, you’re more likely to talk with others walking theirs. One thing leads to another, as you walk into the next session together.

This clever way to reduce the waste generated at meetings also helps attendees get to know each other. MeetingsNet blogger, Sue Pelletier got the tip from Nancy J. Wilson’s blog, Pretentious Musings of a Green Meeting Planner.

Per Wilson, “One of the newest green meeting practices is asking participants to bring their own conference bag instead of a sponsor supplying one. It makes sense, we all have so many. Before you say your participants would find this ‘tacky’ or ‘cheap’, hear me out.

Because, what is actually happening is participants are showing up with bags:

• From an earlier conference.
• From organizations they belong to in their personal lives.
• Imprinted with personal messages such as “Ask me about…”
• Bags From their favorite vacation spot.”

Just as Richard Florida asks, Who’s Your City?, meeting attendees who bring their own bag, can ask each other, “Who’s your bag?” to get to know each other. Next? Name tags. (Reuse them.)
Conference participants: here’s another way to recycle - and do good.

About nine years ago I started bringing home from the conferences where I spoke the inevitable mugs, tee shirts, pens and, of course, conference tote bags. I collect them from six other nearby speakers and take them up to a well-run non-profit here in Marin County.

Once I saw one of “my” tee shirts on a young, pregnant Vietnamese woman (2005 in Orlando ~ American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons) and another time I glimpsed a man carrying two shovels, with a very full tote bag over his shoulder (Intel inside, We Meet Our Goals, 2004).

 I told a friend, with a quicker mind than mine, about these two sightings and he responded, “Too bad we couldn’t switch the shirt and the bag.”

As well, consider bringing home those extra hotel soaps and shampoos (oh, you do, eh?) and donating them to your favorite non-profit. Maybe to help the homeless, or for a womens’ shelter.

Did you enjoy sitting in a classroom, listening to the teacher in front of the room? Farvood Nivi is betting you didn’t. (I daydreamed a lot.)

Nivi has a bleak view of education: “The established method of applying manufacturing assembly methods to students is not working.

If it was, then there wouldn’t be illiterate graduates and almost all students would meet standards.”Venture capitalists are backing Nivi’s “mysterious” yet “better way:” Provide an engrossing online game, “where those looking to learn can meet those looking to teach.” Amazon, iTunes, CNET and Netflix use “If you liked that, then you might also like these” recommendation algorithms, also known as collaborative filtering.

Nivi’s start-up, Grockit is constructing the same approach, “where people can teach each other.” It started out, planning to prep people for taking tests, yet its plans seem to have grown. The tiny firm is right across the bay in S.F.This Fall Grockit launches their massive, multiplayer, online game. As in life, Nivi says, the game will have risks and rewards to spur involvement - in learning together.

Sounds like a Me2We approach.Here’s his enticing offer, to recruit great people as employees.

Alternatively, find nearby instructors or propose to teach a topic - in person - at another smart Me2We start-up in Seattle, David Schappell’s Teach Street. Michael Harrington dubbed it “sort of Yelp for real world classes.” (They’re also hiring.)