Archive for category The Noble Pursuit
Seeking Co-Founders for My New Startup
Posted by cheuer in AdHocnium, Insytes, Personal, Social Business, The Noble Pursuit on April 9th, 2013
So I am finally making some of the information about the startup I am developing public, starting with the company profile on Angels List and a simple list of the co-founder roles I am seeking to fill. While in stealth, I am operating under AdHocnium until we go public with the name and the alpha launch.
If you know someone who might be a fit for any of these posiitons, please make an introduction or send them to the job postings on Angels List.
I really don’t need to do the Angels List thing, but honestly, they have done such an awesome job with the site and building the community, I felt compelled to publish the info about us from there and welcome any serendipity that may come from it beyond my network and friends.
Moving on from Deloitte, Returning to Independent Startup Life
Posted by cheuer in AdHocnium, Personal, Social Business, Social Media Club, The Noble Pursuit on March 8th, 2013
Chris Heuer Celebrates by Sabering the Veuve, Photo by Michael O'Donnell
Today is my last day working for Deloitte Digital/Deloitte Consulting as a Specialist Leader focused on Social Business and Digital Strategy. I will be hanging out with my soon to be former colleagues a little bit at our Deloitte Lounge here at SxSW later today and enjoying the rest of SxSWi and all the #badgeless events this weekend. I hope to see you here in Austin and talk to you about what’s next personally, maybe even do some work with you.
I know you don’t have time to read this whole story, especially if you are here at SxSW, so here are the highlights.
- Deloitte was a great experience, but I want to return to my entrepreneurial roots and start something from the ground up.
- I’m a tech/software product guy, who has been advising others on their products for too long, so I will be building an Enterprise SaaS startup to launch into Alpha in the next 90 or so days. Need my technical co-founder now, starting discussions to finalize who this weekend.
- While getting the product ready, I will relaunch my AdHocnium network consulting agency to do Venture Consulting with startups and work with a handful of big brands.
- I will refocus some of my time on making Social Media Club more sustainable, and sharing more insights around Social Business and Social Reengineering with our community.
- I will finally be writing my book, now that I have learned some more discipline, improved my writing skills and realized I have a unique perspective to share not seen/heard elsewhere.
- I am also getting involved in some other community projects to support the great work of some close friends, like John C. Havens and The H(app)athon Project and raising some money for the High Fives Foundation out of Tahoe.
- I need to hire an assistant right away. Looking for one who lives in San Francisco ideally, to manage the other virtual assistants and contractors for me – and to manage me too! Bonus if you are at SxSW this weekend and find me to talk.
I actually have 8 really big ideas, and would love to start a lab to do them all, but I’ve gotten down to one that’s been validated by a few really smart people in the past two weeks. That said, I am still interested in getting my original Insytes idea produced, and from my work with the American Heart Association, I have a health startup in mind too – but ultimately – I will be working over the next few months to get the alpha built, raise funds and gain the market awareness for the concept that we will need to be successful with this enterprise SaaS product. Only time will tell what the startup actually becomes, and what it is called, so stay tuned. I will launch the site soon to get applications for the alpha, and then will be raising an angel round from friends and family.
For those of you unfamiliar with my history, I have been ahead of the curve quite a bit over the years. At my first startup we were doing webmail a couple of years before Hotmail, but unable to pursue it aggressively. My CTO at the time said we just couldn’t run a bunch of corporate sites, our local content network VCN and tens of thousands of free webmail accounts off of the 486dx33 pseudo server we had at the time. I also created one of the first business plans for what is now thought of as social media command centers, then focused on conversational intelligence via Conversal. Ultimately, my dna is in numerous other now big company technologies and failed startups I advised as they were launching or maturing.
My Time at Deloitte
There are so many great people at Deloitte, like Bill Briggs and Mark White, who I worked with on the past two Deloitte Tech Trends as well as both client facing and internal projects. They taught me a great deal. They aren’t just smart, they are cool and passionate – but their gift for explaining complex topics with just the right words amazed me during every interaction. Then there are the Dan’s, Dan Nieves and Dan Elbert, who helped unearth some of the most important insights around the role of engagement and corporate strategy. My original counselor and mentor Matt Law, my close friends Nelson Kunkel and Adrian Chan, the folks at the Center for the Edge, SocBiz PMO Lead Colleen Chan, KM/Community Manager extraordinaire Stan Garfield, head of Deloitte Digital US Mike Brinker and way too many others to list here. While the travel and work was demanding, and at times I allowed myself to be a bit too stressed, it was an invaluable experience which I will cherish fondly, and for which I am forever grateful to John Hagel and Eric Openshaw.
My role at Deloitte was as multi-faceted as my interests, which is why this was a hard decision in several ways, but easier in others – even more so then leaving behind the security of a steady paycheck. I was a change agent. One of Deloitte’s “Social Media Guru’s” (though I still dislike being called that). I was an internal consultant on digital strategy, social media and social business for our firm leadership, the KM group, marketing, public relations, internal communications, enterprise applications, partners around the world, and numerous other special projects. I was a client facing consultant and proposal contributor around social media, social business, innovation, and platform strategy. I supported over 80 sales pursuits with some of the largest companies and government organizations in the world. I was a mentor and informal counselor to many of my junior colleagues. I lead the marketing, communications, training and adoption strategy work thread for our global Yammer roll-out, which supposedly was one of the most successful in the world. I edited or contributed to numerous articles for publication bylined by senior partners of the firm. I participated in webinars through our D-Brief’s program. I spoke at numerous internal and external events. I was published on our Deloitte Tech Blog and even in the CIO Journal. I advocated for enterprise user rights. I collaborated with our innovation teams. I was part of the “digital dozen” team that supported our acquisition of Ubermind and the subsequent launch of Deloitte Digital. I was, and still am, #drivenby_ transformative opportunities. I was a provocateur who stayed within the lines when necessary, and redrew them when necessary. I was, and always will be, part of the global Deloitte family.
But even with all of these contributions, I was most proud to have helped the amazing executive, mission and communications teams from the American Heart Association with the development of their Social Media strategy, and eventually a Digital Transformation Strategy, to seize the opportunity presented by digital engagement strategy to fulfill their mission. During that work we developed some amazing tools that will enable organizations to manage engagement at scale. There will be much more about the Engagement Matrix and Engagement Wheel to come in the book I am writing in the next few months and the blog posts that will lead up to it. I am also now on the American Stroke Association’s Advisory Committee and expect to continue to support AHA for many years to come.
I also worked with some incredibly passionate people from the United States Postal Service, working diligently to find a path to continuing viability in our digital future for one of the hardest working federal agencies I have ever seen from the inside out. They were connecting everyone of our citizens for news, love and commerce way before the internet was here, and continue to provide that service to every door in the United States today. I will be speaking atthe National Postal Forum, on insights around creating Mail Moments using outside in and customer experience design thinking on March 18 in San Francisco.
All in all, there were just so many great moments, teams, clients and experiences, it’s hard to share them all here. In fact, some of the best of them I will never be able to talk about due to confidentiality agreements etc… but it was awesome.
Next Up, AdHocnium
AdHocnium is a network consulting agency I started with some incredible people back in 2009. My title then, as it will be now, is tied to what I believe I do best for clients, I am a Creative Catalyst. The network never really got off the ground as I made some mistakes in the operations and the commitments I requested of the bright people who affiliated together to form it. I know what to do differently now, so I am going to do it and seek someone else to manage the essential operations so I can transition away to my startup full time once I get funding for it but still stay involved in the great work opportunities it will generate working with clients who really get it.
There are a few core ‘services as products’ AdHocnium will offer including:
ADVICE
This isn’t the normal advice you might get from a traditional consultant. This is the holistic kind you will only get from an agency with our unique set of connections, experiences and brain power.
- Amplification (promotion and awareness)
- Digitalization (strategic thinking/planning)
- Validation (of your ideas, products or campaigns)
- Innovation (creative insights and big ideas)
- Connections (business development, alliances and partnerships)
- Education (bringing you the knowledge you need, when you need it)
Venture Consulting
For startups who can’t afford the best and brightest (because they are smart and scrappy and want to use their funds for maximum impact) we will offer reduced fees to a select few clients in exchange for some equity in their company.
Social Business Strategy
We know everyone leading the social revolution and will create a workshop to bring those leading authorities to you to empower you to uncover the transformative opportunities of becoming a Social Business. The scope and scale of these projects range from a one-time workshop to a full blown assessment and strategic plan.
More on all of this will be available over the coming days…
Other Important Work
There are a few other select activities I will be diving into over the coming weeks…
“Serve the Market”
I’ve been putting off the writing of my book for way too long. With the experience of the last two years at Deloitte, and my previously developed insights, I am going to get my book done this year. The working title is “Serve the Market” and will include things like customer experience life-cycles, clearing the trust filter and the engagement curve. It will also feature some invaluable tools you can use to manage engagement at scale and insights on how to better connect your organization for the maximum creation of shared value. More to come on this in April.
Social Media Club
As mentioned earlier, I will be spending some time invested in growing Social Media Club again. I don’t think anyone out there is doing a great job of supporting internal/corporate social media and social business practitioners, so that will be one area of particular focus. I will also work to develop a new SMC media literacy program, which was at the core of what I was trying to accomplish when I founded SMC. I’d also like to support some research projects from other great organizations we have long supported like SNCR and the Community Round Table.
The H(app)athon Project
I am also proud to announce I was asked to join The H(app)athon Project Advisory Board and have accepted. A brainchild of our dear friend John Havens and his colleagues, this is a really big idea, supported by the United Nations and some of the biggest corporations and academic institutions in the world. In short, they are a pioneering group of people who believe that GDP is no longer the best economic indicator of success – that instead, happiness/well-being is a greater overall measure of quality of life and economic prosperity. So Happathon aims to generate ideas, and ultimately an app/service, that fuses together big data, social data, Internet of Things, Quantified Self and a few other ‘movements’ so that we can see, in near real time, a relative happiness score for different regions/countries/states and communities. I am co-hosting the San Francisco kick off event on March 20 at NextSpace Union Square in San Francisco. Join us.
Philanthropic Endeavors
I don’t have enough money yet to be making personal donations to a lot of great causes, nor do I have the time, but I have a network and I have some ideas that might help them. Bringing this all together, I am hoping to help raise more funds for American Heart Association and others.
Right now, I am starting with a little online fundraiser and perhaps an in person party in North Lake Tahoe to support the High Fives Foundation. After meeting and being inspired by the story of Grant Korgan at the #Snowcial conference last week, this great organization came clearly into view. When Grant shared his story of his recovery from near spinal destruction after an accident, it moved me to tears. When I learned how not only his wife, but the founder of High Fives was there for him, to motivate his recovery, I decided I wanted to do something to help others.
Turns out, I won a snowboard in the beginners category of our Snowcial EpicMix Race, so I thought why not raffle it off to raise some funds and some awareness for them. More on that later today, or you can place your advance order for the raffle tickets by emailing me at [email protected]. They will be $10 each and we will be set up to take orders online shortly.
Whew
Well, that seems like a lot of stuff I am taking on once again. Too much for any one person to do perhaps. But I don’t plan to do it alone, nor will I be doing it all at once. I plan to get leverage and I plan to eventually move to focusing 95% of my time on this startup I am building once it gets funding. Turns out, most of the other things I am doing, especially the book, will be very beneficial for the newco.
While it is hard to be leaving Deloitte, right now is the perfect time to seize on these great market opportunities and return to my entrepreneurial roots. While I never really had a ‘boss’ at Deloitte and was given leeway to pursue whatever I thought best with my time, I never really could call my own shots completely either. Ultimately, Deloitte is an audit company and has a responsibility to the public that requires us to have absolute independence, to not speak about the companies we audit positively or negatively. This was really good training and helped me shake off my role of being a ‘vocal critic’, but also kept me out of the last political cycle among other things in which I really would have liked to have been actively participating.
Who knows, I may end up back there someday, but for now, I am excited to be back within the startup community, and working my ass off to change the world for the better using technology, my insights into human behavior and change management. Pay attention to this space, there is a lot that is about to happen…
Memorial Day 2010 – For our right to live free
Posted by cheuer in Leadership, Personal, PicO'daDay, The Noble Pursuit on May 31st, 2010
I didn’t get to visit the local military cemeteries in San Francisco this year, so I made a short tribute to those who have served for a higher purpose in service to our country and our freedom. The photos were all taken by myself over the years at the Presidio, in Washington D.C. and down at the Golden Gate National Cemetery.
Thank you for protecting our freedom, and for reminding us how precious and invaluable it is.
Foundational Fixes For Economy #alt2bailout
Posted by cheuer in BrainJams, Future of Media, Insytes, Leadership, Personal, Social Media Club, SocialMedia, The Noble Pursuit on September 26th, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
This morning over sausages and beer at Citizen Space, the talk inevitably turned to the economy and whether it was going to turn around or tank. The great thing about co-working is the diversity of perspectives you can get in any conversation. Without the corporate silo walls preventing us from interacting, without being organized by similarity of activities performed, and without anything connecting us more then a shared sense of place, we get by the bullshit and get real.
Anyway, I digress, because my point is more about what we really need to change in order to correct for our broader market problems (though I clearly think the silos between us are uber important). What will it take? Less Greed? Sure, but how do we stop one of the most powerful and highly motivating of the 7 deadly sins? We certainly don’t legislate it all away, its an emotionally charged human behaviour. No, we must really start the change from within. Microsharing is perhaps an appropriate meme to leverage – now we need to get on to microgrowing, where we each grow a little bit each day in terms of understanding how connected we are to the world around us and the other people in it.
This was one of the original purposes of BrainJams, and then Social Media Club – to bring together people from a large diversity of backgrounds to see past the differences of culture, style, economic status and intelligence and see into the hearts and souls of each other. To see that as much as we are individuals, we are also all one. We are on this earth together. We are part of this ecosystem less then we are masters over it. We are in it together.
Whether or not you believe in the butterfly effect or chaos theory, you certainly have experienced the impact that another person can have on you and that you can have on them. There is no denying that we are all connected in some way – the homeless man and Donald Trump, George Bush and Cindy Sheehan, and even Charlie Manson and the Benedectine Monks. What we do affects others. Simple. What we do affects the earth. Simple. What others do affects us. We need to be mindful of this impact and find a way to ensure its balance. To balance our self interest and drive with the broader interest of the world around us and its needs for our unique contribution to it.
What we need to fix to help our economy is to not reward greed and excess with tax breaks and bailouts but with meaningful penalties. Perhaps they can use their great talents to serve as community organizers – to solve big problems.
One specific place where a change in perspective can have a potentially big impact is in looking at our unrealistic expectations of investment grade returns of our investment capital after a company has developed a mature market. We probably need to fix the general public perception about investment markets in the US really. We need to get beyond the expectations of constant never ending growth of our investments and look more to the long term. More like the Europeans with a 5 year view of the market instead of a quarterly perspective.
We need to shift our thinking of investments into alignment with reality. At some point, investments in mature markets become consistent profitability instead of a doubling of revenue. The investor reward on this investment has a ceiling, but if it is successful will always reward your risk with income in the form of dividends. Wow, what a concept! So instead of looking for my money to grow exponentially, I realize it is providing me with $250,000 in income each year. That sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.
Wasn’t that how utilities and railroads used to operate?
This is clearly a sociological problem. A psychological problem. So it is hard to imagine any scenario where our government is going to be able to force this sort of change in society. That change needs to come from inside of us. Each and everyone of us. We need to be aware of the world we inhabit, our role in it, our stewardship of it and our responsibilities to each other that when honored will reward each and everyone of us.
It starts simply with microgrowth. Personal development and an acceptance of the reality we are facing as a result of a way of thinking that is not based in reality. Humans Don’t Scale no matter how big our appetite for growth is.
Is it possible for this change in thinking to ever take place? Whats good about it and whats bad about it?
A view of the world in balance with our place in it is all I am seeking, There are many ways to that path. Tag yours with #alt2bailout and lets learn from each other and discuss other issues we need to address along with potential solutions to our problems.
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Living in the Era of Conversation
Posted by cheuer in Conversation, Future of Media, Insytes, Leadership, SocialMedia, The Noble Pursuit on July 10th, 2008
Over the past few months, I have had several opportunities while speaking, to experientially teach people the power of conversation to create understanding between people that goes beyond our choice of words. In each case, someone in the audience (or in a meeting) misconstrued what I was saying because my word choice did not match their own perceptions regarding an intention or point of view around a particular subject. Through the give and take and back and forth of conversation, we were both able to realize we were merely describing the proverbial different parts of the elephant as the blind men might do.
The idea of widespread participation in ‘the conversation’ is a very challenging thing for corporations to embrace because you not only lose control of the message, but also because you risk losing control of the messenger, and their personal judgments and speech. Last night this came into focus more clearly when my colleague Josh Bancroft criticized our efforts with Social Media Club when he wrote a blog post that said we had “nuked the fridge”. Now, we have received some criticism and some praise throughout the day, which to me is good because it means we are no longer in what Kathy Sierra has referred to as the zone of mediocrity, which is where we were for too long (IMHO).
My challenge isn’t with criticism, it is with a set of broader issues which I guess you could consider as the ‘hot buttons’ that set me off. For this, I want to apologize to Josh for snapping back at him, but I also would like to ask you to indulge me in looking at the bigger picture here, which is a bit complex and for which I am afraid my ability to communicate is not sufficient. I don’t mean to call Josh out specifically here, but this incident really has helped to clarify my thoughts around this issue and I think it is a valuable lesson to share.
While this is not a complete list, as I see it today, there are five things we should understand and consider when living in the era of conversation.
First, it is the matter of intention
Second, it is the matter of making assumptions
Third, it is the matter of familiarity and respect
Fourth, it is the matter of ethnocentrism (or technocentrism)
Finally, it is the matter of responsibility
Intentions matter a lot, and for us to disregard this in public discourse and/or in understanding each other through our actions is to completely misunderstand what being social is all about. In a very real sense, at least from my perspective, I was largely given a ‘hall pass’ on the failures of Social Media Club (SMC) because most people know that my intentions are good, that I am living my values, that I am honest and that I am working for positive change despite falling short on occasion. Last night, I was talking to my Conversation Group colleague Eric Doyle (our office Buddha) who was discussing the meaning of influence with someone who doesn’t believe in PR. He mentioned that influence was largely understood to mean manipulation. I pointed out to Eric that influence itself is not inherently good or bad, but rather it was the intentions behind the use of influence that determined whether it was helpful or exploitative. My drinking of a Peroni may have influenced others who joined our group to also drink a Peroni (it was so tasty!) but there was no intention of manipulation there, or for that matter of being helpful – I was just drinking a cool refreshing Peroni 🙂
In another exchange yesterday, a colleague from Intel Kelly Feller pointed out that there were not a lot of corporate practitioners on the SMC Interim Board (there are in fact 6 or 7). I had worked hard to invite a wide range of people to provide different perspectives and was taken aback by this a little. Since I don’t know Kelly all that well (we have only spoken by phone/email a few times, but I clearly understand she has value to contribute and generally ‘gets it’), I was able to keep a more level head. While a bit ‘perturbed’ at this pronouncement, I engaged her in Twitter conversation to determine her intentions and ask if she was interested in helping, to which she answered “who would I be to criticize and then not be willing to help? 😉“
But when Josh decided to say that we nuked the fridge, his use of colorful language, in my mind (and based on prior observed behaviour), was used to draw attention and demean our efforts, not make them better or engage in conversation. This was in stark contrast to the approach that Lloyd Davis took in the comments when noticing that we had made a mistake in claiming 42 interim board members, when in fact there was only 41. Had Lloyd’s intention been anything other than to respectfully get to the facts, he may have written a blog post calling us liars and committing a fraud on the public, though clearly this was a simple, and all too human, mistake.
This leads me into my second issue, which is about making assumptions. Now we all have to do this generally to get by in the world (is this person I am dating ‘sponge worthy‘ for instance), but largely we tend to make assumptions when we should be asking questions and seeking clarifications. This is one of the central points of what I think is the most important book of our time (and my favorite), The Four Agreements. Clearly I am not perfect in this regards because I assumed that Josh was attacking me and SMC for his own gain rather than calmly engaging him and trying to get at the root of his concerns.
In my mind though, this was for a good reason, which brings me to my 3rd point of familiarity and respect. There have been a few times where I have been personally offended by assumptions and statements made by people I know who didn’t bother to respect our relationship by seeking clarification directly before making public statements/posts which in my mind were inaccurate. I had mistakenly thought that Josh understood my intentions here and what we were working to accomplish with SMC, which can broadly be thought of as trying to ensure we use this social medium properly for the positive benefit of us individually and collectively. So when someone published what I perceived as an attacking post instead of asking me for clarification personally first (he does follow me on Twitter despite my original mistake in thinking he doesn’t), it really hit my hot button. As I clearly hit Josh’s when I made another statement on Twitter, and for which I again apologize for upsetting you Josh. Hopefully you can see that there was a point to it here that I was trying to make, one which is clearly taking more then 140 characters to explain.
This of course brings up a larger question of responsibility, my fourth point. We have been given a great power in freedom of speech with these social media tools, and of course in the use of that freedom people are free to do with it as they please and we have little control over it, if any at all (at least in this country). This is why it is so important that those of us, like Josh and myself, have a responsibility to use the power of this medium responsibly. We have a responsibility to not just pass judgement in a hastily formed opinion that could cause harm to others (personal, professional, or otherwise). Journalists have this responsibility to the truth hammered into them from their very early days of ‘J’ school, and by all their editor/mentors over the years. It is a tradition passed on from master to apprentice and it is missing from the ‘art of blogging’ to such a degree that I do think it is one of the biggest issues we face. The behaviour we choose to model for those who follow us will determine what society as a whole thinks is the difference between right and wrong – if we choose to use inflamatory language to draw more attention to our hastily formed opinions which may not be based on all the facts, we are setting a bad example.
In my mind, this is made an even more egregious mistake when such snap judgements are formed about people or situations to which we have direct access to the people involved. It amazes me to think about how many times someone I know has written something that was simply not correct, when a simple email, direct message or phone call could provide clarification about their concerns…
As I am getting rather long and I am afraid people will misconstrue my final point, I won’t dive too deep into why ethnocentrism is an important matter to discuss here, but let me briefly talk about the relevant analogy I am trying to make. In this case, the idea of technocentrism is perhaps more important to discuss. It has its roots in the same general principles of ethnocentrism – the distrust/dislike of people who are not like us and a feeling of superiority – but it is perhaps more divisive in our society today then many realize. As part of my regular speeches I often talk of the chasm of mistrust between technology and marketing folks as being responsible for trillions of dollars of lost value in the economy. I mean it, and I wish I could fund a study to prove it – the number might be even bigger.
The challenge here is that oftentimes when a technologist sees someone in a suit, or with a particular title, or using some of those ‘marketing words’, many will make a snap judgement that this person is not to be trusted. Online, we make similar snap judgments based on the words and writing styles people use. In the situation with Josh Bancroft’s dislike of Social Media Club’s announcement, it had to do with a particular paragraph of text that to him made it sound like we had ‘sold out’ and gone ‘corporate’.
To be clear, I am not perfect here myself. The only reason I know about this or have thought about it is because I have made the same sort of mistakes and faced the same issues personally. Had I not felt the pain that such thinking and behaviour has wrought, I wouldn’t have learned the lessons myself. In fact, for many of these points, I still make the same mistakes, but I am quick to admit when I am wrong or when I realize I should have responded differently.
Why invest so many words in trying to explain this situation? It is not for my sake or for Josh’s, but rather for all of our benefit. If we don’t learn how to live in this era of conversation with one another better, all of the command and control hierarchy people in institutions who don’t want us talking to one another will win the day. This is one of the few places where the group that plays Amanda Chapel is right – seeing the world as it is rather than how it could be – there is little reason why corporations based on the principles of profit and growth should risk their existence by allowing an individual to express a hastily formed opinion or speak out of turn when we are not thinking more conscientiously about what we are saying and how it will be perceived. If we are to really have conversations with companies, and with each other, openly and freely, we have to learn how to talk with one another better. We need to accept responsibility for our actions and our speech.
In short, we need to apply good intentions, stop making assumptions, respect one another regardless of our differing opinions, stop judging books by their covers and embrace the fact that we are all responsible for the communities in which we live.
If we can’t get by these problems as a society and start to move in the direction of open and respectful conversation, we won’t ever realize our full potential or live in the sort of world I hope and pray we can create.
Photo by CC_Chapman under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.
Technorati Tags: conversation, conversational marketing, social media, social media club
Are Bloggers Always Fighting? Are blogs today here because of 9/11?
Posted by cheuer in Personal, The Noble Pursuit on March 6th, 2008
In doing research tonight on Blogs for The Social Media Playbook, I came across this article entitled “A Rift Among Bloggers” from the New York Times, dated June 10, 2002. What struck me most here, and why I am simply quoting it here, is how odd to think that tech bloggers and war bloggers were battling over the purpose, intention and possibility of blogging in the manner they did.
‘The Weblog world before Sept. 11 was mostly inward-looking — mostly
tech people talking about tech things,” said Glenn Reynolds, a law
professor at the University of Tennessee who publishes InstaPundit.com,
a popular site in the war blog camp that attracts about 19,000 readers
on weekdays. ”After 9/11 we got a whole generation of Weblogs that
were outward-looking” and written for a general audience, he said.
Wow. Was it really 9/11 that brought a wider cross-section of our society into blogging?
At the time, my employee and friend David Pruitt, installed Movable Type for me to play with to solve my content publishing dilemma (took a bit of time and I wanted to publish my poetry). I never quite got it looking write in those early days, and only managed to write one post, which I read aloud at the opening night of Northern Voice recently.
That first post, entitled We, together, have a dream…, represents a big vision about what I call The Noble Pursuit, stemming from my optimistic desire for dreaming and making a better world.
Wow. I didn’t even realize it, but my earliest blogging was a response to the war on terror…
Transforming the Heart of Business (My BIL Talk)
Posted by cheuer in Insytes, Leadership, Personal, SocialMedia, Speaking, The Noble Pursuit on March 2nd, 2008
What’s best for the community? Isn’t that the other point?
Posted by cheuer in Leadership, Personal, The Noble Pursuit, Unconferences, Web2.0, Web22, Web2point2 on November 6th, 2006
One of the most important things I have been talking to people about over the last year is how organizations with similar values should support one another but don’t because of their egos or fear of losing mindshare or donor dollars. Instead of really working towards what is best for the community, they work on what is best for their own self-interest, in the name of the community. As I noted in my post on the Importance of Social Media, this is one of the key reasons many of us left the work world – to leave the political BS behind and do the right thing, that is in the best interest of the community.
That sort of political BS is in stark contrast to the wonderful relationships we are building with the Society for New Communications Research and the National Coalition for Deliberation and Dialogue. Where we are constantly looking for ways to expand the conversations, to include more people and to work together towards our common interests. This is one of the core premises of Social Media Club – to support other organizations that are doing good work – not excluding those organizations that are serving similar interests within the community out of fear.
This is why I am excited to see the Portland Social Media Association rise up from the Portland Podcasting Group. Social Media Club will support them, instead of worrying about them competing with us – we will both be the better for it. We need to find people who are doing the right things and support them so that more of that good work is put out into the world and that other people can connect with them. This is very much in line with the work of The Uplift Academy – another organization we want to support in every way possible and with which we share common values.
I guess I should explain where this is coming from – it is a bit about something I have been holding onto for a while and also about the fact that a few ‘community leaders’ have chosen not to support the Web 2point2 unconference we are organizing, and are, according to what some have told me, actively working against it. (This is not, BTW, something between the 2 conferences going on this week – we have nothing against Tim O’Reilly or the Web 2.0 Conference and as far as I know, they are probably just annoyed with us by the contrast and/or laughing about how hard we work for no money.)
The Web 2point2 Unconference is providing an alternative to the expensive Web 2.0 Conference. Web 2point2 is more accessible and more about the people interested in the Web 2.0 era and working hard to make it real. Chris Pirillo really nailed the difference on the head – there most certainly is value in the networking, and the amenities offered at a big hotel are really very expensive, but a lot of that is superfluous to what really matters. We are doing this event because it is the right thing to do for the community and it is representative of our core values. We are doing this because it helps us build the community we want to belong to. We are investing our time and energy because we are passionate about doing so and hope to make a living doing what we love.
I’m not speaking against any individual, but I am calling for everyone in the community to be supportive of efforts like the Web 2point2 Unconference and/or to call out the effort’s shortcomings publicly and fairly – to participate in the community. It is FOR the people, FOR the community, and FOR improving the dialogue around social media and Web 2.0 for everyone’s benefit. Those who have said negative things about these efforts wihtout engaging us in conversation about how it could be improved are really doing a disservice to the community. But as all bloggers know, nothing stays secret forever. Those people who serve their own interests over that of the community will be found out. Those who support the community with their hearts, minds and deeds will be the ones who shape the dialogue of the future.
Don’t raise the torch for a participatory democracy when you’re only really marketing yourself as the one who should be put in charge of who gets to speak and who can belong. From my perspective, that looks a lot like a Stalinist view of the world dressed up in Kennedy rhetoric. That is beyond hypocritical – it is like the atheists battling each other in the most recent South Park episode. We don’t need to tear down the walls of a communtiy or organization only to erect new ones, we need to build better doors between communities and bridges across them.
The Noble Pursuit has begun…
Posted by cheuer in The Noble Pursuit on October 5th, 2004
Those of you who really know me, know that I have a lot to say – some of which is truly insightful, innovative and incredible, some of which is simply a load of shit. Funny shit, but shit nonetheless. Regardless, I never hopped on the Blogosphere with my own thoughts, nor did I invest time in a personal web site until now.
I finally feel that it is time to leave the chaotic existence of alternately traveling in luxury and being stuck eating Ramen noodles to survive.
I finally feel that it is time for me to make a real, sincere, far-reaching mark on this world – to make sure I leave here having made the world just a bit better.
I finally feel that it is time for me to engage in my Noble Pursuit and begin the transformation of the heart of business.
I finally feel ready to share the knowledge I have garnered with the world at large.
While this post seems mostly harmless and mundane, it is much more than that – representing giant leaps forward in my personal development, professional development and spiritual development. Having repressed my inherent potential for so long, it feels great to be here, engaged in right action and right speech.
Watch out world, my spirit has been released….
With love,
Chris
We, together, have a dream…
Posted by cheuer in The Noble Pursuit on May 13th, 2002
We, together, have a dream…
A dream of a better life for ourselves, our family, our community, our religion, our businesses, our nations, our planet and for each other. A dream that will make the Italian Renaissance pale by comparison. A dream that is at once simple in its truth, and far reaching in its scope.
The world does not always have to be like this. If anything is possible, and we have proved this to be true time and time again, then the time has come for us all to bring the dream of a better world into the reality of our lifetime. The time has come for us to choose what sort of world we want to live in. We can choose if we want to continue to live in a world based on fear, scarcity and power, or to transform the heart of the world into one that is based on love, abundance and knowledge.
In a world based on knowledge that is open and available to others instead of being controlled by an elite few, there is no scarcity or limitations on the ability of every human to create value. Each human is unique and capable of contributing in service or in thought to others. When all knowledge, including the knowledge of this dream, is able to be improved and shared with others in ways we can not yet imagine, by word of mouth, by ink and paper, by digital technology, abundance and limitless prosperity is within our grasp.
We have a unique opportunity in front of us today. This change is already happening on a global scale. Every human being on the planet is beginning to wake up to this reality in the wake of the events of September 11, the endless violence in the Middle East and from the Enron scandal. Have we not learned our lessons from past mistakes as to what works and what doesn’t? Or are we doomed to fail yet again.
Things must change soon, and drastically, or, as with every great civilization before us, our time as caretakers of this planet will soon be over.
The good news is that change can happen in an instant, within each of us, once we decide that we don’t need or want to live like this anymore. Once we believe that it does not always have to be this way, we can choose to respect and find strength in our diversity and in the universal truths we all know in our minds and feel within our hearts. To manifest these truths in our lives every day. To make a new set of agreements with ourselves, and then with everyone else.
One modern example of the essence of the new social contract needed to enable this dream is found in the work of Don Miguel Ruiz and The Four Agreements. Rather then continuing to focus on the differences between us all, and our points of contention, it is time for us to first stand together on the common ground shared by all people. The Four Agreements of being impeccable with your word, not making assumptions, not taking things personally and always doing your best, is a wonderful start. Other additions to the new social contract include respecting the unique value of each life, committing ourselves to not hurting others and believing in the power of every individual to change, grow and contribute to the common good.
There are many other agreements on an ever widening common ground that will bring this dream for the planet into existence. So let us talk with each other. With our opposites. With those who are different then us. With those we may today call our enemy. Let us not ask why they are so different, but rather why are they so similar. This is where the conversation, and the better world it represents shall begin:
We, the people of the planet, recognize that the laws we have inherited for governing ourselves and the interactions with other systems of law, are based in a world of fear, scarcity and power. We now desire to make things right and good and just, by changing the social contract we have with ourselves and with each other. The world, and each life on it, is precious, unique and of value. In order to ensure the continuation of our species, we choose to embrace love over fear, knowledge over ignorance, and abundance over scarcity. We enter into this agreement with each other, actively, consciously and from the depths of our very being.
We dream a better world, we dream of doing it together.
It is with this understanding and positive intent that we commit our lives from this point forward to The Noble Pursuit.
Signed by:
Chris Heuer
Chief Idea Guy
NewCoSolutions
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Chris Heuer is the founder of Mentor Bureau, a global collaborative of Startup Mentors focused on #SmoothScaling over #Hypergrowth. He has invested his life in working to create a better society through personal and community efforts that brings people together such as Rysing Tyde and Social Media Club. To learn more about Chris, visit his profile on LinkedIn.