Going solo
May 5, 2008It’s time to announce that I’m embarking on a new and exiting phase of my life. My relationship with Anecdote is about to change. From the 16th May onwards I’ll be working freelance. This will give me greater flexibility and allow more freedom to pursue other opportunities.
I remain good friends with Mark and Shawn and we still have plans to stay in touch and do some exciting things together. I’ll just no longer be a full-time employee.
I plan to concentrate my efforts on working as a Facilitator, enabling groups to work collaboratively & effectively in meetings, workshops, conferences, retreats, forums, seminars and other exchanges. I am keeping an eye out for opportunities and new clients.
Making the leap is pretty scary, but it’s also really exciting at the same time. If you have any thoughts or suggestions that might help me, I’d be interested in having a conversation with you. Please contact me.
D.
links for 2007-01-16
January 16, 2007-
Nice list from Hugh Macleod
Blogger takes on the Ocean
September 8, 2006I promised my good friend Nick that I’d post something about his planned solo yachting adventure. I’ve been providing counsel to him about releasing his ideas into the wild, via his blog and we have been musing on the relative merits of a formal, polished approach to his PR for his project, versus a more open, natural and authentic approach. I genuinely hope that the later approach proves to be right and my faith in the whole cluetrain, and global microbrand meme is upheld.
So, to get things rolling, I wrote a press release for Nick to put up on his site in the hope that I can pay it forward for Nick and generate some traffic and interest in his story. It’s probably a little contrived but I honestly believe that this is a story that will be of interest to others. If you agree with me, please digg it, blog it, help out with some link lovin’ to Nick’s site or contribute in some other way to spreading the word, as far and wide as possible.
Community Building
June 8, 2006Over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of clubs, organisations, CoP’s, user groups etc. and I’m currently in the early stages of planning a community of practice for web entrepreneurs. I’ll share the details on this a little later (drop me a note if I’ve piqued you’re interest!).
Whilst doing some research, I came across an elightening piece on the challenge of building communities by Dave Pollard.
I’ve read everything I can get my hands on on intentional communities, and what strikes me most is that their failure, just like the failure of so many new-age business models, is a failure of imagination. The intentions are good. They invest a lot of time and energy in research, and in trying to make it work. But when they run into difficulties, they keep falling back on ‘conventional wisdom’: we need a council, and committees, and voting and non-voting shares, and strategic plans, and legal agreements, and to borrow lots of money; we need to work harder, and to wait until conditions are exactly right. I appreciate that creating a new community is scary, but the social, political and economic failings of the old system are exactly what got us into this mess, and incorporating them into the new models is just asking for the same terrible results.
Whilst the focus of his post seems to be a broader context of intentional communities, I think the same reasoning applies to building communities of practice and social networks. It is very easy to fall into the trap of making things too strucured or formal, and this can stifle creatvity and openness.
To be successful, you have to nuture and create the right conditions for evolution and transformation rather than trying to control and force resolutions. This is the philosophy I hope to take with me into the new venture. Do you subscribe to this philosophy, or do you think I should take a different tact?
IR Reforms and Job Security
April 3, 2006I read an article the other day in the Herald Sun entitled “Insuring against a job loss.” Now, I don’t usually read this type of of trashy, tabloid publication but it’s a no-brainer while you’re on holidays and want to catch up with the latest sports scores, but that’s a whole other story–but this article sparked my interest. It noted an interesting fact that in Australia job turnover is far higher than the net rate of job creation or loss. However, it’s main thesis was that we (the royal we) need to develop appropriate policy responses to counteract the consequences of the government’s new IR reforms.
At the risk of sounding rude … what a load of rationalist crap. For better or worse, the jobs environment of yester year–where there was some notion of stability, structure and security–is gone. And this is not a recent phenomena. It went a long time a go.
What we need to do as individuals is to respond creatively and decisively and take advantage of the situation rather than becoming a victim of it. We need to free ourselves of the master-slave mentality and forge our own path. As quoted here before … “security only comes from controlling your own destiny.”
