If you look at my copy of CauseWired, you’ll see that I’ve marked more than one or two pages out, and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been reading it for quite a while. Reading. Thinking. Reading.

It is worth remembering where I am coming from here. I got into the Internet because I was captivated by the power it had to connect people, and the things that happened when it did. I saw technology as a tool for creating positive change.

The companies I have worked for have lead me into commercial business. I’ve worked to create markets, fund companies, sell companies and buy companies, but in parallel to that I’ve also served on the board of trustees for a charity and run with the occasional social cause. I’m no expert on philanthropy or social action, but I do see it as an essential balance to the activities of the commercial world. It is something that the commercially-minded should be actively engaged in. It is no coincidence that some of the richest people on the planet are the greatest philanthropists.

CauseWired, or rather “CauseWired – Plugging in, Getting Involved, Changing the World,” to give the book its full title, makes a big claim. It is about changing the circumstances of others, through your own actions, something that Tom Watson knows about. This particular Tom Watson isn’t the UK MP (here), he’s this one, the US journalist and media critic (fuller bio on the Changing Our World site). There is a link between them, I’ll come back to. The book charts how social networks, like Facebook and a range of more specialist sites, are changing the world of charities/nonprofits and social causes.

Let me take this post as an example of the new dynamic social media (and social networking) is creating. I found out about the book via twitter, got details via a blog post and contacted the publishers via email. I started following Tom, via twitter, as I was interested in his work. Through Twitter I realised that Tom (US) knew Tom (UK), who I’ve followed on twitter since the New York Digital Mission.

 I usually post pictures of my travels to photo-sharing site Flickr, and recently posted one of my good self reading CauseWired. Tom commented on the photo, tweeted about it and linked to it in a post on his blog [I hope you are still managing to follow the thread!] The Amazon site picked up that blog post, and so, currently, there I am reading in a picture on the Amazon page for the book (here). I’ve just put that link as my Facebook status update, and… To be continued.

Now, none of that has changed the world, although I’m hoping that someone who reads the book as a result will. However, there are now a few hundred people who know we have a shared interest and skills that can be brought to bear on a cause. Connections and conversations on this kind of global scale would have been unlikely before the web, or more specifically before social media came to the web. Activists can amplify their efforts, create awareness and join forces with like minded individuals. That, in essence, is what CauseWired is about: How new communications technology is revolutionizing the flow of money and talent in the third sector.

The book weaves a course across the short history and global geography of the CauseWired phenomenon. The introduction felt a little long, but I have been buried in much of the subject matter for a long time so that may just be me. Once I was through that, I started busily scribbling notes and pondering deep thoughts.

Reading the book was like seeing from the other side of a two way mirror. I know the technologies and many of the causes that Tom uses as examples, but in telling the inside story, he brings them to life with a new freshness. The smaller examples in the book are even more interesting than the larger ones. Traditional broadcast media often leads the rally for the big causes. Social media has created the bandwidth for the smaller ones to emerge, the ones that don’t get big media air-time, in their early days at least. That is a qualitative change in the way that things work.

The big take aways and aha’s for me:

• There is a big difference between being aware or interested and engaged and active.
• We’ve been doing this stuff ‘forever’ – I remember charitable activity on the Bulletin boards in the 80′s – it is the tools and scale that has changed.
• This is yet another inter-generational fault-line.
• The shift from anonymity to authenticity is high-impact. “On the Internet no-one knows you are a dog” was 90′s. “I am…” is the 00′s.
• The powerful stuff happens when the on-line meet off-line and the off-line comes on-line.
• Tom Watson mentions Tom Watson in the book, in the context of UK open government, a slightly surreal moment.
• There’s more… Which I’ll come back to in future posts.
• Reading this book will be expensive – I’ve added lots of the books mentioned on to my Amazon wish list, and found some interesting causes.

If you’re in business, and you plan to hire or work with millennials, you better have a cause and/or be involved in one. CauseWired is a good place to start to understand that world. This book doesn’t aim to dig into the depths of social media. It isn’t going to lose the uninitiated, and experts shouldn’t expect any great revelations in that domain. It does illuminate wired causes, and provide a wealth of illustrations. If you work for a charity or not-for-profit, read this book. Digest it. Then read it again. It is the new shape of your world.

For our own mental well being, all of us need to be involved in something that transcends the ‘me’ and engages with the ‘us’, something that reaches beyond the ‘now’ to the tomorrow and beyond. If you haven’t done that yet, then Tom’s book will give you insight into what can be achieved, together with a list of places to get engaged in a rewarding way.

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The MicroMemo for iPod is a tiny device that plugs into the iPod Nano, providing a microphone, an audio input, and an extra button. Despite the fact that the nano has more processing power and memory than the first supercomputer I used, it definitely lacks a decent ‘input’ capability. The MicroMemo fixes that by turning the iPod into a universal audio capture device. Plug it in, and the iPod jumps to a recording screen. From then on, the iPod is ready to capture every spoken thought at the click of a button.

Getting Things Done and a number of other productivity philosophies promote the idea of recording and collecting all of ones ideas in single place. This is a great hack for improving organisation and creativity. Having a capture device creates a means to seize fleeting thoughts and ideas, before they are lost to the next random incoming call, email or conversation. Never loose another valuable thought or miss a ‘I must do that’ again. May be you will, but now there will be one less excuse for doing so.

Capturing thoughts and ideas rewards and encourages creative thinking. Rather than losing thoughts, you can capture them. Now your mind is free to move on to the next thought, knowing that you can act on the last one later. This is a positive cycle that rewards creative behaviour, because those creative thoughts get turned into action, rather than lost. Of course, you now need a ‘processing’ step to deal with all these new memos. The MicroMemo makes this easy, by syncing to iTunes. The next time I plug in to top up on pod-casts and music, the memos appear in their very own playlist, ready to be played back and acted on.

The MicroMemo isn’t just for short memos. You can record hours of dictation too. This blog post started off as a voice memo on the iPod. If you do use it for dictation, there is the small matter of transcription to deal with. Unless you are an accomplished touch typist, dictation can be a time consuming chore. However, help is at hand, thanks to the outsource your life principle of the 4 hour work week, and a handy blog post by the ever developing Matt. There are some very affordable on-line transcription services (Matt’s post covers some these services and his experiences with them). Isn’t life good?

I’ve used a pen and pad as my main capture device in the past. It works well, and I am sure that I will continue to do so, but voice memos do have a number of unique strengths. Voice memos put the ‘stuff’ that is captured ‘out of sight’. That means less clutter and distractions, reducing the noise from ideas coming back at you off of the page or piles of post it notes. Capturing verbally is also faster that writing and can be done on the move. You speak at around 200 words per minute but write at about 30, and that’s if you aren’t trying to use a pen and paper one-handed as you are running for a train. It is also useful to have an audio capture tool to hand during interesting talks – do ask permission before you record. You can also record your own speeches and presentations – a great way to reflect and improve your communication skills.

See Also: iPhone hits the UK and Information at Your Finger Tips

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Placing your religious (dis)beliefs to one side for a moment, few would dispute that Jesus of Nazareth has been a major influence on world history. So I was expecting some valuable insights into his behaviors and some actionable ideas, as the cover says “learn from the best”. There is no theology or analysis in here, but there are some interesting thoughts and anecdotes. The book consists of a large number of themes mapped to comments about Jesus. Each chapter starts with “With Jesus as your life coach, you will…” but it never seems to explain how to action that

The opening chapter suggests that you “have your tent stolen,” so that you can see the stars and get a new and bigger perspective. I like the metaphor. Things that put life into perspective are great. What is limiting your view of the world? How can you broaden your horizons?

There are a few chapters on keeping your focus and cutting away things that don’t belong, enforcing your “no’s”. This includes a chapter on practicing planned abandonment, knowing when to say ‘no’. As you have probably noticed, this is something of a pet topic for me (Planned Abandonment – Having an end at the beginning), so I won’t say any more here. The book then goes on to dealing with reality; to understand reality, to use open ended questions and to identify the source of light. Where your light comes from changes the shadows and drives how things look. Again, a really nice illustration.

The next section of the book deals more with action. Have your readiness assessed, are you ready and willing? Do you care enough to act? Be Seen. Use your greatest strength. Overcoming procrastination. What are you avoiding? Are you doing what needs doing now? The last set of chapters deals with other life issues. Be prepared to be off to a rough start. Have help to find balance. Do succession planning, think about what you will leave behind. Do leave regret behind. Don’t lord it over others (cf humble leadership) and don’t go where you aren’t welcome (shake the dust off of your feet). Engage in positive confrontation. Stand up and be a voice and not an echo. Have an opinion, but learn to listen and seek feedback. Be fulfilled and come alive with new possibilities. Experience amazement. All great themes.

Much success literature recommends reading the biographies of inspiring people. This book wasn’t quite what I expected, but I should know not to judge a book by its cover. I will go back to one of the gospels and see what I can pick up from there instead.

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How does 43 Things help? It helps in a number of ways, I’ll focus on two of them. Firstly, it helps you to connect with others that are working on similar things. You can add blog-like entries to track your progress, and can see the entries of others working on the same things. This is great for getting occasional tips and sharing with others on the same journey. Very encouraging, although your milage may very. Secondly, you can see what other things like-minded people are working on. This can provide inspiration for new things to go after.

You can also create your own ‘things’. This is a strength and weakness for 43 Things. There are many subtle variations of the same thing and some of the things are not ‘well formed’ – that is they are across a spectrum of aims, goals, tasks and pure randomness. Choose wisely! It is easy to get distracted or overloaded, just because someone else is doing something, doesn’t make it the best thing to be doing. Some of the ‘things’ are actually a life journey, rather than something you can tick off after a few months. That said, I found it helpful for clarifying my real priorities. You can see which things you are actually making progress on, and which are stalled. Be prepared to be challenged.

Once you have completed a ‘thing’, you are offered the opportunity to continue to help others who want to achieve that thing. For example, if you manage to be ‘a famous rock star’, you can help others do the same. A bit of an extreme example perhaps, but you get the general idea. 43 Things keeps a track of the things you have achieved, for you to reflect back on.

The Robot Co-op (the people behind 43 Things) have done a great job of producing a truly social application, it also gives the advertisers a pretty targeted audience! There are a number of sister sites, such as 43places (I was amazed how many places I have been, but how little of the world I have actually seen) and all consuming, which are worth checking out. The downside of 43 Things is that you can end up surfing and reading for hours, with not much output, which isn’t such a good thing. Big style procrastination. That aside, it is a fantastic tool for looking back on what you have done, which can be quite motivating, and a good source of fun. 43 Things is growing in people and functionality all the time. If you want to connect with people from around the world, and get some inspiration for new goals, I’d recommend it as a great starting point.

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