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.

Related Posts

• Replying Via Twitter
• On-line Trust, More than Liking
• Networks and Notworks
• A Perspective on Community
• An Award Winning Performance

WordCamp UK, of course. It was a great event, with The Studio far exceeding my expectations as a venue. It is a fantastic place to hold events in Birmingham, centrally located and suitably post modern. WordCamp gave me lots to think about:

• The technology side of WordPress.
• The content side of blogging (and moblogging).
• And, of course, putting faces and voices to fellow bloggers I have been reading.

It was well worth the travel up to Birmingham – somewhat confusingly, there will also be a WordCamp in Birmingham, USA. This was the Birmingam UK event (we don’t want people getting confused)! I even got to meet both Chris Garretts in one place at the same time (this one and this one).

Now I have no excuse for getting them confused. The links are in the order of the photo, which I promise isn’t photoshopped – check out the full flickr stream to get a feel for the event: WordCampUK photos.

During a break on my journey home I Qik’d a video journal – By the way, Qik is now in public beta, so if you have the right phone, you can sign up and try it out for yourself. You’ll need a good data plan (a large data limit, and watch out for per MB charges). It was a brain dump that turned into a 20 minute monologue, but at least I have captured it all. The video covers the different pieces of WordCamp UK, you can watch it here if you want to hear a full run through of the weekend.:

Video is a surprisingly nice medium for spontaneously dumping thoughts. When you listen back you have the choice of listening to just the audio, or watching the video too. Capturing the facial expressions and seeing what is physically happening adds to the communication – you’ll find out what I mean it you watch the video.

The downside of video is that you can’t skim read it. That was part of an answer I gave during the panel session – I love Q&A panels – always gets the brain going. Chris Garrett caught some of the discussion when he Qik’d from the event. You can hear me telling the story behind WOWNDADI on the video too (thank you Chris):

There are notes and links for some of the content on the WordCamp Wiki, a name check for the event in The Blog Herald and I now have a few hundred gigabytes of audio, video and photos which I will be editting down and posting. Although, embarrassingly, I can’t remember if I videod my own talk!

Special kudos to Sam Bauers of Automattic for flying all the way from Australia and being camera man 2 with a very nifty HDD video camera, as well as fielding a raft of questions. Check out the speakers’ sites to get a feel for a range of WordPress uses:

• My fellow presenters for the Blogging and Journalism session:
  • Bob Jones http://www.thedailynovel.com/ 
  • David Page http://www.expressandstar.com/
• Chris Garrett
• Gurbir Singh
• Ian Covey
• Jonnya
• Mike Little
• Nick Garner
• Peter Westwood
• Rich Boakes
• Richard Williams
• Sam Bauers
• Simon Dickson
• Simon Wheatley
• Tony Scott

Users of WordPress include eBay, The New York Times and the UK Government. More to follow in the coming weeks… It would be great to hear from more WordPress users and bloggers, especially if you are in the UK. Roll on WordCamp 2009!

Related Posts

• WordCampUK, Communities and Goops
• WordCampUK 2008
• WordPress 3.2 Intranets Internet Explorer and The Web
• Building for Accessibility and Getting Ready for HTML 5
• Social Media at a Business Event – But Why?

It seems like a good moment to look back and reflect, before the festivities start and the memories of last year fade away. I’m sharing my notes with the hope that they will provide you with food for thought. I could happily do a full post on any of them.

1. Set good goals.

Write them down and review them on a regular (weekly?) basis. If they evolve over the year, that is great, but if you forget them, that is bad. Very bad. When goals are written down and reflected on, they have a strange habit of being achieved. Nothing mystical about it, it’s just a productivity fact. Make yourself accountable to someone you trust, by sharing your goals with them. You’ll deepen a friendship, or at least get some feedback. At the very least be accountable to yourself, as a gentle but firm task master.

2. Quit stuff. Seriously, quit stuff.

Looking back through the year’s diary/iCal/Outlook and through the mental memory banks provides a good list of things to drop. Deciding what needs to not happen has value too – planned abandonment. Next year will have the same number of days as this. Dissipating less is the only way to make sure that there are more days to invest in achieving those goals (See 1).

3. Live purposefully and be productive.

Live purposefully, every minute. Efficiency is not the same as productivity. It is good to be efficient, but being productive actually starts with doing the right things, not doing the wrong things faster. Be clear on what you are doing and why you are doing it at each transition during the day. What is your intentional outcome?

Once you know the outcome, focus on ACTIONS that will get you there. Set time limits on activities: I’ll stop at 3:30pm and move on to the next thing. Stick to them. Be an outcome-orientated task executor. Focus on outputs and actions that produce things and create external change, rather than on inputs and re-arranging thoughts (see 2). It is great to think about things, but if you want to make a difference in the world, make stuff and make stuff happen. You’ll be happier and you won’t procrastinate.

4. Play lots.

Having fun is a sensible and agreeable outcome (see 3). Plan fun things to do, and make sure that they happen. Plan time out. Join a new community, get involved and do some random new things. Be social off-line as well as on-line. Yes, do work, but do play too.

5. Build up and support your network of friends.

In ways that you can, that they will appreciate, help your friends. Build your close personal network by investing in those people. You’ll most likely find that they support you in return, and that helping them does you a world of emotional good. We have so many ways to stay in touch, from Facebook to IM. Use the richest communications medium whenever you can, free air: meet face to face. Failing that, fire up a webcam or pick up the phone. Turn on some social ambiance, using a private blog, twitter, flickr, Facebook, SMS or whatever works for your network.

6. Commit to learning something new.

Pick a new skill or area of knowledge and learn it. Ideally, pick a topic outside of what earns you money today. What would you love to learn? Buy a good book. It will cost less than a CD and will increase your earning potential, change your outlook and broaden your horizons. Bonus: collect the books together on a bookshelf. People will see them and think you are smart. No, really, they will! Apparently that is a great dating tip. 1 in 4 people in the US didn’t read a book last year (AP Poll), so your bit to make sure your country doesn’t become illiterate. Because I am still a geek at heart, I’ll let reading on a Kindle count (even if Phillipe Starck entertainingly panned it at LeWeb 07). If you really don’t want to read a book, then enrol in a course. You’ll meet people and join a new community (See 4). What got you here won’t get you there, wherever there is. Keep asking questions.

7. Review.

Review your week and your work, regularly. What is getting results and what isn’t? Figure out a way to kill activity that isn’t productive, in order to make room for the things that are. This will create time to learn and build your skills (see 6). Avid followers of David Alan’s Getting Things Done site the weekly review as one of the best aspects of the system. What do you need to get better at? (see 5)

8. Be focussed!

How focussed are you? Trying to do too much means that nothing gets done. The combination of focus and planned abandonment inherently creates efficiency. I know that points 1,2 and 3 already covered this, but I figure on the forth mention it might penetrate my thick skull. With all of the possibilities that are offered up today, you can’t them all. This is really hard, because we know we could do it all, if only we had enough time. We haven’t. Get over it. Some things work better than others (see 7). Attention will likely be the scarcest commodity in the next decade. Start hoarding now.

9. Be committed!

Be committed to the things that are important. Do not waver or slow. Capture and understand your commitments, then execute on them. It you commit to something, write/type it down. Keep these together in one place where you can see them all quickly, and then tuck them away. Be careful not to take on things that you shouldn’t or can’t. Renegotiate your commitments if you need to (see 9).

10. Be thinking and understanding.

In a knowledge economy this will be the key skill and time will be the key resource. Even if you can’t spell them yet, I couldn’t, epistemology and ontology will be your friends in the future. More on them in the new year.

Live the year like it is both your first and your last, but also appreciate the past and plan for your future! What did you learn this year, and what will you carry forward to next? Share your ideas…

Related Posts

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• Caught by CauseWired
• WordCamp UK 2008 – A Qik Look Back…
• Is Broadcasting Something to Shout About?
• How to Deal With Being Overwhelmed at Work 2

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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• Want to Get More Things Done? Go Ahead and Stick Your Head in a Bucket!
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