So…in case you missed it, I’m breaking up with Delta Airlines:

For many years, I have been struggling with ‘settling down’ with an airline that would treat me with the same love I give to it. I would marry Virgin America tomorrow if it would only fly out of Montreal (or even Toronto, because I also love Porter). There really is no other airline that has consistently made me feel like I matter…even when I’m flying cattle class (aka Economy). And to note, this experience with Delta wasn’t the first let down. I had a series of snafus from them (lost luggage that didn’t show up for 1.5 days, multiple missed connections with odd and stressful re-routes, longest lineups I’ve ever experienced even when I checked in at home ahead of time, etc.). I understand weather issues, but it’s how a company responds that matters. And not just how they respond to their business class flyers…their economy fliers may be like me and courting an airline to see if that is where they want to camp out permanently.

All in all, I calculate that I travel between 60,000 and 80,000 miles per year (sorry planet!). Tripit, which I’ve been a part of since mid-2006, says that I’ve traveled 274,469 miles since I’ve been part of the site. That’s about 78,419 or so miles per year. For any airline, I’d think that I’m the kind of customer they’d want to have around. Not to mention that I have a pretty strong following of friends around the globe who look to me for recommendations for travel (restaurants, hotels, flights, etc) because they know that I spend a good amount of time in that area. So besides my own $$ spend (according to my Wells Fargo account breakdown, I spent about $10-15k/month in 2007 on travel expenses – now I usually get it covered), I have a bit of influence over the $$ spend of others who tend to travel.

But here is the thing…I have air miles here and there and everywhere (too many airlines have lost my business) and I really don’t relish the thought of starting all over again. Is there a way to leverage my own portfolio and get an airline (hello Continental? Air Canada?) to start me out with an equivalent amount of miles to my abandoned choices? Or at least ramp me up partway there? I don’t need to be a platinum member to start, but I don’t want to start from nil.

And besides me, I’m sure such a program would be a super enticing switcher for multiple travelers! Imagine this…if you are the airline to come forth with a, “You’ve been mistreated too often at the other airlines. We want to rectify that AND entice you to at least see if we are true to our word by offering you equivalent status/miles from wherever you feel stuck now,” I’d bet you would totally kick ass.

In fact, much like the personal data play that the Project VRM community talks about, why DON’T we have the ability to take our miles with us in general? It seems like another unfortunate silo that locks customers in and disempowers us to switch when we are dissatisfied with the service (which should be how you ‘lock’ us in – great experience!).

So…

1. Any airlines that want to be a taker for my nearly 80,000 miles of travel per year? Caveat: must fly out of Montreal.
2. Anyone want to create a mechanism for customers to leverage this type of data in order to have the freedom to move between airlines when they have been wronged?

I think this could be really powerful.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to be part of the large group of attendees at TED who received a free Nexus One Worldphone from Google. Being a loyal longtime iPhone user, I was excited, but skeptical. I’d spent some time with the Blackberry, Palm Pre and various cool Nokia products, only to run back to my iPhone’s open arms. All of these phones are great in their own way, but nothing could compare to my iPhone experience and the overall usability.

But the Nexus One is different. And it is different mainly because of my heavy Google property usage. That is to say, if I wasn’t addicted to using every Google app out there (calendar, mail, docs, maps, etc.), the phone may not have wowed me so much, but I AM a Google girl, so it fits beautifully into my lifestyle.

Calendar

One of the things that frustrated me about the iPhone was the complications with the calendar. I schedule everything through my gCal, not my iCal, and the two have never worked beautifully together. On the N1, though, the calendar is right there for me and immediately synched to all of my gCals that are available. It loads quickly and gives me more options than the web version of gCal.

The calendar made me jump for joy.

Camera

There are several huge advantages to the camera on the N1 as compared to the iPhone:

• There is a flash – I take many of my photos in low light situations, so this makes me happy.
• It auto-focuses – I know this is on the 3GS iPhone, but I didn’t have it on 3G
• It has options like: flash level, white balance, color effects (sepia, b&w, solarized, etc), size (1-5Mpixels), and geo-location (turn on and off).
• Video is a quick switch and has all of the same cool options
• Sharing is quick and simple – depending on whether photo or video, you can instantly upload to any service you have connected to your N1 (Seesmic, YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, mail, etc).

It also takes much better photos in general.

Contacts

Synching with the web rather than having to update through my desktop? Revolutionary! Whatever is in my Google account is automagically on my N1. One simple sign-in to Google and everything is there. No more needing to plug my phone into my laptop to synch. It’s always plugged into the web. This really is the future.

Voice Recognition/Type Correction

This is pretty cool. A feature on the iPhone and the Blackberry that always irritated me was the word suggestion as I was typing…especially when typing something non-standard (acronyms, avatar names or swear words for instance). The N1 has a similar feature when typing, but a whole list of words are suggested for you as you are typing and this makes it a super quick tap to type really long, complex words or you can completely ignore. It’s also pretty simple to add words the engine doesn’t recognize (hold your finger on the ‘misspelled’ word and add it to the dictionary). Like the iPhone, it also learns from words you type enough…the advantage here is that it takes what it has learnt from your gMail activity and already understands, so you aren’t starting from scratch.

The voice recognition is really awesome and, even though it is in beta, it’s not so bad. And when it IS bad, it’s funny. I’ll be using this quite a bit when my fingers are cold! Voice recognition is built in wherever you use the keyboard, so it’s pretty universal (even search).

Multiple Apps Running

One of the things that slowed down my activity on the iPhone was that I’d have to exit one application to go to another one all of the time. This was highly frustrating when needing to copy and paste or remember an address or the like. Moving out of applications, opening another (often with slow load-up time), getting the info, closing that application, then re-loading the original (once again slow loading up) was a pain. Not so much on the N1.

As you can see on the screenshot to the left, the applications all run in the background and notify you of updates even as you are working in different applications. You can do a quick check of what’s coming in by sliding down the top bar. This will reveal new text messages, voice mail, missed calls, tweets, calendar notifications and anything else that you are set up to receive. You can clear them or move in and out of these applications smoothly without having to go to the home screen once. This was one of the features that really won it for me.

Googley Synching

This bit freaked me out a little at first, but because it is so darned useful, I relaxed. I turned my phone to vibrate and went to bed the other night, when I woke up, I saw that my good friend Erica O’Grady had called. Now, this isn’t revolutionary. Erica and I talk all of the time. What was revolutionary is that, being that this is a new phone, I hadn’t programmed Erica’s information into it. On any other phone, it would have shown up as just a number and I would have had to wrack my brain for who that was (I rely heavily on digital address books). But because Erica has her information entered into her Google account, it showed her photo, her number, her email, her location and everything else she has given the g00g. This means I don’t have to start over again with my address book. Anyone I know who I have interacted with on Google who have more information entered will be automagically updated for me. And even better, when my business partner, Cassandra, called, it didn’t recognize the number (she hasn’t put it into her contact information in Google), but as I typed her name into my contacts, it pulled all of her gmail information automagically into the contact form.

Maps works similarly. I noticed that if I have searched and saved a search on my laptop before, that search will come up on my mobile phone. The implication here is that I can search an address at home, save it, then while en route, just pull it up easily from my history.

Speed

When I announced that I got the N1, multiple people tweeted me that I would be disappointed because any SIM card I inserted would be downgraded to the EDGE network instead of 3G. This is true. Both with my AT&T SIM and with my ROGERS SIM, I’m on the EDGE network. However, whether it is the speed of the phone itself or the fact that the EDGE network is no longer overloaded (while 3G, especially in the US is terribly overtaxed), the N1 seems much faster than my iPhone. It loads up apps quickly, switches between screens faster, sends texts, emails, searches and loads up maps faster and hasn’t frozen in the week and a half I’ve been using it (a frequent iPhone issue). All in all, the speed is way superior to the iPhone, which matters even more on a mobile phone than on my computer at home.

Equivalents to the iPhone

There are some things I thought I’d lose by switching from the iPhone, but found out pretty quickly it wasn’t an issue:

• Rich App Store – taking into account that the iPhone has been around for a few years and Droid only for a few months, the app store is super impressive. In fact, there was only one application I couldn’t find in the app store (Wells Fargo), but quickly found out that they had a web version anyway that I could bookmark. Otherwise, all of my favorite apps exist in the Android App Store that I had on my iPhone.
• Maps with compass – Has it. This is, by far, my most frequently used feature on the iPhone and it seems faster and even more accurate on the N1.
• Battery – I’d say the battery life is comparable and even maybe a little better, depending on what you are doing. For instance, I can run the wifi in the background on the N1 without compromising much battery.

A Few More Pluses

There are a few more advantages that shouldn’t matter to me that much, but were lovely details (heart tuggers) and are worth mentioning:

• Screen – wowsers. It’s bright and gorgeous.
• The cute robot – okay, this WAS a gleeful moment. That adorable robot mascot is just too much. It kind of made me love the N1 instantly.
• Animated wallpaper – this is kind of way fun.
• Amazon music store – I generally separate my music device from my phone, but it’s nice to have DRM free music on my N1. I really like this direction as I’ve run out of devices I can actually have my iTunes music on. The store needs work, but for a v1, it’s pretty awesome.
• Speakers – better sound in general coming from the phone on a comparison.
• Worldphone – it’s unlocked!!! Sure, I’d find a way (like I did with the iPhone), but what an amazing thing it is to have a phone that can work on any SIM card automatically!

Downsides

Of course, the N1 isn’t all perfect and there are definitely several ways in which it could improve. Some of the features I’m not crazy about on the N1 that I’d love to see Google improve in future updates:

• Simple Screenshots – currently it is way too complicated. How do you expect us to show off our new shiny phones and apps if you make it so hard?
• Not ‘getting’ the glowy rollerball – Okay, so I *think* that rollerball is to help Blackberry users transition? Or maybe it’s for those of us in cold climates who don’t want to remove gloves? Either way, it takes up too much real estate for what it could be used for.
• The finicky bottom menu bar – (see inlaid photo) when I want to go back, get menu, go home or search, I have to finesse these menu items to do this, but when I’m in the middle of typing something important, I always seem to accidentally hit the buttons and get taken out of the program. I’m improving, but it’s frustrating in the beginning.
• Buttons in general – turning on/off the N1 and adjusting volume is finicky. Too sensitive when I accidentally hit them and too tough when I need them fast.
• Gallery is a little clunky – although it looks cool, it’s definitely not optimized for usability. Having slideshow as one of the shown item features rather than share isn’t logical. The amount of times I’d run a slideshow off of my mobile phone versus using it to share a photo is minimal.

So…there you go. Ironically, about 1.5 days into trying out the N1, my iPhone decided to lay down and play dead (with very little warning), so it’s a pretty good thing that I got the Nexus when I did. The Nexus One isn’t available many places yet, but the worldphone can be bought in the US and brought anywhere with you for $549USD. Not a small price, but this means you aren’t stuck in any contracts, which in the long run will save you money.

Sometimes I think that the only qualification that puts me in front of an audience rather than in the audience when I’m speaking at conferences is faith. Faith that I belong there. Faith that I actually have something to say. Faith that the organizers knew what they were doing when they hired me. And somehow I continue to be asked to speak in front of more and more audiences. I now have over 80 conferences under my belt and within the next 6 months, that will go into the triple digits. In fact, I speak at so many conferences these days that I had to stop consulting (about a year ago or so) and focus on speaking. I couldn’t do both at the pace I was going.

And so it happens that after 80 conferences or so, one gains enough faith that he or she can confidently say, “I’m worth it.” But this state is so very fragile. Times change and it only takes a couple of talks with mixed or negative reviews before I’m saying, “Man, I suck. I don’t deserve to be here.” And it seems that just when I think I’ll be okay, I get a call from my speaking agent that the conference organizers didn’t like my talk with a list of all the things I need to change about myself and my message to be likeable.

And it’s not just speaking careers. Some of the smartest people I know have approached me confidentially to ask what I’m doing right, confessing to me that they are struggling with money and work and negative feedback. These are men and women I believe are 100x smarter and more resourceful than I am. They ask for my advice. Mine! Meanwhile I’m standing in front of my mirror telling myself that I’m good enough, smart enough and dammit, people like me with enough conviction to keep going.

Faith. It’s a tough one when discouragement is so plentiful. There is always someone to tell you how wrong you are or how you aren’t living in the real world. Not to mention the number of rewards there are for people for taking conventional paths. Some days I wonder if it’s a test to see if I’m strong enough. Most of the time I channel Jane McGonigal‘s work and imagine I’m in a video game and these are merely demons I must battle to get to the next level. If I can just find the potion to summon the super ego booster strength, I can vanquish the doubt-monster and level up! And it works.

I envy those people who were born with a strong sense of entitlement and skin as thick as a castle wall. If only I could find the magic golden gonads, I’d win the game. But I suppose the challenges and setbacks are all part of the learning and growth and if everyone loved me and my message, I would have to worry about being obsolete. The journey is as interesting as the destination at the end of the day.

So if you find yourself discouraged by others while on your path, it just means that you’ve chosen to live a life extraordinary. There is no map and no guidebook for where you are going and, well, you may very well be headed in the wrong direction…but it’s a direction that comes from your soul, so it’s worthy. Have faith. It helps me keep mine.

I have several favourite TED Talks from over the years, such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Schwartz, Alain De Botton, Shashi Thooror, Chimamanda Adichie, Phil Zimbardo, Jonathan Haidt, Sir Ken Robinson, Helen Fisher and more…and even the worst TED talks seem to be more thought provoking than the best of most conferences I go to. But there was something about this year that just popped for me. It wasn’t necessarily a single talk – though there were many that made me stand on my feet crying in joy – it was more the thread. It all started when Chris Anderson said, “I’m angry” and though he said it in his very polite, British way, I could tell he was seething and this was going to be a good year.

So though TED 2010 was, as one speaker said, “worth the sum of the whole rather than any individual part” (I believe it was the presenter from Pivotal?), these are my top 10 moments that tied the parts together for me:

1. Sir Ken Robinson

SKR spoke of how we kill passion and that we need to start over again with education (rather than reform, transform). I can’t wait until this video comes out. He gets funnier and funnier and better and better.

2. Philip Howard

Howard spoke of a world without lawyers…or rather…a world in which we don’t rely on lawyers to solve our issues anymore. Connected me seriously to the talk by Schwartz last year on the loss of wisdom.

3. Jane McGonigal

I’m both a friend and fan of Jane’s work and her talk was more awesome than ever. I love her quest to bring more play into the day to day and her research on bringing what creates that sense of euphoric flow to the gaming world into the real world is fantastic.

4. Glenna Fraumeni

Glenna provided the biggest audience tears of the entire conference, but not gratuitously or saintly. She talked about being 25 and having a short time to live and that she was just going to keep on doing what she loves to do: learning. No jumping off of bridges or visiting the Taj Mahal for her. Inspirational and reminds us to savour the everyday.

5. Jamie Oliver

This talk is up! See for yourself why obesity is worse threat to America than terrorism. Really:

6. Dan Barber

When I saw Barber’s talk on happy geese and Foie Gras, he changed the way I look at food altogether (and I stopped loving Foie Gras – it was an expensive habit anyway). This talk about fish he loves was hilarious and mind-opening. And really made me believe we could feed the world on a large scale without damaging the environment, overprocessing and treating animals with kindness.

7. William Li

Before I saw Li’s talk, I didn’t think I would care about something called Angiogenesis, but afterwards I recognize this is an enormous breakthrough in cancer research. Truth is, we all have cancers in our bodies as we age, but they don’t do anything until they are fed our blood, then they grow quickly and kill us. Li explained this and how to stop it from happening beautifully.

8. Daniel Kahneman

When I watched this talk, I was only partially interested, but I’ve found myself explaining it more than all of the others. Kahneman talked about our split selves: our experiencing self and our remembering self. This is pretty revolutionary and also good fodder for jokes (Ze Frank’s was great…and I made one while setting up to speak the other night).

9. Esther Duflo

I think Chris Anderson called Duflo a small French woman…well, she didn’t come across as small at all. The way she questioned assumptions about foreign aid and brought forth her ideas on A/B testing solutions was brilliant. Now we need to listen to her.

10. Temple Grandin

The moment Grandin stepped onto the stage, I fell in love with her. She knows who she is and obviously thinks on a higher plane than the rest of us. The beauty of her talk is that she was able to bring it to a level where even those of us who think conventionally can understand…through identifying with animals. When she said that dogs can get a lot of data off a fire hydrant: “Who has been there” “When” “How many” “What they ate” etc, I had an a-ha moment I’ll never forget!

BONUS: Jake Shimabukuro

Jake isn’t a speaker, he’s a ukulele player…but I think the world needs more ukulele and Jake Shimabukuro. Here is a video from another source:

Most of these talks aren’t online yet, but I’ll be sure to post them on my blog (and update this post) as they come available.

Thanks William of OBX Design Works (who also designed the awesome Whuffaoke site) for the new banner!

2010 was my third year of being a TEDster, although I’ve been watching TED Talks since they first went online in 2007 and first heard of the amazing conference from my friend Austin Hill in 2006 (was following his inspirational posts). And my first two years (one year in simulcast at TED Aspen and in 2009 in Long Beach ‘main’ TED) were pretty epic and mindblowing, so unlike my new TED friend, David Ng, I didn’t have an ounce of skepticism approaching it this year. But unlike my first two years, this year I was heading to TED on a tight budget (I’ve scaled back to writing and speaking only – not as lucrative as consulting, but WAY more rewarding and flexible), so I *did* consider that this may be my last year of trekking to TED (thought about doing the simulcast in my living room for friends). But after being at TEDActive in Palm Springs, I knew that watching from home just wouldn’t be the same, so I *will* return.

Exactly what is so epic about being at TED? Much controversy is leveled at this conference that, first of all, makes you apply for attendance and, second of all, IF you are accepted, pay dearly for the honor of attending ($3,750 for TED Active and $6,000 for TED). Those bits are definitely not the parts of TED I love, but lemme say that *because* of those bits, TED is what it is. As I’ve told many people, the selection process raises the bar on participation. This is not because it only allows fancy people in (hardly…I’m there, right?), but because the application is rigorous and, when and if you get in, you commit to it. I’ve been to hundreds of conferences (well, maybe 120-130) over the years and, for the most part, people who choose to actually sit and watch all of the sessions are often on their email or Facebook. There are very few of these at TED and those who are, well, I’m sorry to say that they may feel a little too entitled to be there. In my experience, you apply, you get chosen, you commit to being a TEDster 100% and year-round (helping with TED Prizes, spreading talks, executing on ideas coming from TED, etc.).

The cost just reaffirms that. Egad, I wish it wasn’t so expensive. The cost makes it out of reach for most people I know. It makes it out of reach for me! But I roomed with three students at TED Active who said they were foregoing parties and concerts to be there it was that important to them (they were also TEDx organizers). But the money isn’t just for the conference. It goes into the TEDPrize, the sponsorships of the TEDFellows and the ability to tape the TED talks in HD beautifully edited versions to post online for free for the entire world to share. And I think it goes towards a reminder that those of us who can scrape together the $3750-$6000 can also scrape together the time and passion to really really make a difference in the world. This is not a conference on how to increase your ROI or create high impact marketing plans. This is a conference on how to solve the real problems of the world. Energy crisis, poverty, obesity, fraud, racism, sexism, diminishing forests, vanishing species, epidemics, education…you name it, there are people speaking at TED who are *really* doing something about it or have a solution that they need affluent, influent people to get behind. The TED talks are just a piece of it, too. Being there sparks conversations that turn into partnerships that turn into action in many cases. I’m proud to be part of this ecosystem.

But as amazing as TED is, I found TEDActive to be that much more amazing. TED created a simulcast version of the conference in 2008 in Aspen, Colorado. I was there and had a life-transforming experience. The next year, I felt incredibly fortunate to be invited to TED (main) in Long Beach. It was amazing and huge and spectacular. For 2010, I got the invite to go back to Long Beach, but decided to return to TED Active (simulcast version) which had moved to Palm Springs for a couple of reasons: #1. money (of course!) #2. I missed the special energy of TED Active. And I’m glad I did. Although TED (main) is fabulous, I had the time of my life at TED Active and plan to return there as long as it exists. Why?

10. Day 1 Excitement

Seriously, watch this:

The excitement was so incredibly high and positive in that room before the first session that it filled me up with joy. I would never have seen people running up on the stage to pose at Long Beach. This was brilliant. P.S. Notice the bean bags. I’m done with stuffy chairs from now on.

9. The Riviera

Aaaaaah….relax. What an amazing place. Gorgeous room and fabulous poolside. Lots of history there, too!

8. The Desert

Colder than I thought, but much more awesome than I imagined, too! Gorgeous landscape and fabulous setting for our activities:

7. Dogs

This is Dewey and his human, Robert:

They weren’t the only dog/human pair. There were at least 4 more and the Riviera and the conference was friendly to them. Next year, I’m definitely bringing Ridley!

6. Nexus One

Okay, everyone at TED got a free Nexus One from Google, but I could tell the excitement in the room at TEDActive was overwhelming…and there were plenty of people there that may not have been able to access it (from around the world) or afford it (many students and activists). I was talking to oodles of people who told me it would be their first smart phone!

I’ll be doing a post on mine soon. I’ve fallen head over heels in love with it.

5. Self-Organized Crazy Games

I can’t pronounce it, but it was quite a popular game at TED Active: KCYMAERXTHAERE. I love that people did this and was going to get involved, but got pulled off into too many awesome conversations on my way there.

4. Flash Mobs

My very first! Thanks to Kenneth Hughes for organizing this!

February 10 – ‘idea spreading’ in action: TEDActive Flash Mob in Palm Springs from saskia wilson-brown on Vimeo.

3. The TEDActive Band with Jill Sobule

I think Jill Sobule is way cooler than Thomas Dolby and Ethel anyday:

2. The Google Group

I don’t recall having a TED google group set up, but we have a TEDActive group set up and there is lots of chatter, coordinating, plotting and generally awesome sharing on that group. Google group = friends for life!

1. The People

I hung out in the hot tub one night with a couple of really nice people I would find out two days later are behind one of my favorite pranks of all time (New York Times Special Edition) as well as many other amazing public actions – and they didn’t tell me! And then I hung out with this other guy who made me laugh a good deal and who had super style only to find out from someone ELSE that he co-founded Just For Laughs (only one of the coolest things to come out of Canada ever!). Oh and there was the ever smiley and fun Krupali Tejura who, I figured out AFTER TED that she is an oncologist and cancer doctor! And she is the most positive person EVER. And what about Marieme Jamme, who approached me with such enthusiasm and insisted I sign my book for her…um…Marieme and her work is MUCH more lofty than mine. She’s creating all sorts of important business inroads into Africa and especially helping African women. She also speaks, like 7 languages fluently.

None of these people or the dozens of others I met had the least bit of an air of importance about them. They were there to learn, to share, to meet and to enjoy TED Active. At TED Long Beach, I felt like I was intruding on most conversations – and to be fair, many TEDsters at Long Beach have been going for years and have long established relationships…I was a n00b – but at TED Active, people were welcoming and friendly and really eager to meet anyone and everyone. Because of that, I was able to relax and absorb. The whole question of ‘What do you do’ rarely came up. It was more, like, ‘What are you most excited about?’ I loved that.

*****

TED is special. It isn’t a conference as much as a gathering of a larger movement. Hats off to Richard Saul Wurman years ago for envisioning and starting it, Chris Anderson years later for taking it over and taking it to the next level and to June Cohen, Kelly Stoezel, Amy Novogratz and everyone else who is part of the TED crew who shapes this awesome event/movement/force of nature/catalyst. It’s a great community to be part of.

One of the messages I’ve been lucky enough to be spreading lately is that of questioning the gap between business and human values. I started thinking about this issue almost two years ago, but wasn’t able to quite shape it into the message I needed to get across until earlier this year when I was preparing to give a workshop at Best Buy HQ for the Social Media Club Reality Check Series in January.

It occurred to me as I finished up The Whuffie Factor and was traveling around talking about it, there were parts of my message that were valued by business leaders and other parts that were glossed over. Those that seemed to make people squirm were the touchy-feely ones like Embrace the Chaos and Find Your Higher Purpose, which IMO are the most advanced ones. They require a major shift in thinking from being very traditional business thinking to being very human-centric. For me, this is a no-brainer. It’s key. Businesses sell to humans, why shouldn’t they align with human needs. But what I discovered as I delivered my message is that I seemed to be speaking a foreign language. And not only was it foreign, but it was undervalued. “Where is the 101? Should we have a Facebook page or a Twitter account or both?” “How do we measure ROI?” was thrown back at me like nothing I said had sunk in. I was told by colleagues that my message was too basic. Huh?

That’s when I began to realize that there is a deeper misunderstanding here than the economics of social currency – which is what TWF is all about and I started preaching in 2006. But as I heard more and more social media types describe these social economics (whether they used Whuffie or Social Currency or Social Capital or…), something wasn’t changing: the business approach to online communities. Social capital wasn’t being described as a currency that works differently, but in tandem with market capital, it was being described as a thing to be mined…a justification for a social media strategy. “Look at all of the social capital we can leverage to make more money!” This was so not my intention.

And then the lightbulb went on! I realized that what was wrong with the whole picture was the gap between the underlying values of business:

• Profit
• Process
• Efficiency
• Return on Investment
• Risk Management & Planning
• Maximize Resources, Minimize Waste
• Reliability
• Accountability
• Growth
• Hierarchy
• Competitiveness & Winning
• Dedication & Loyalty
• Control
• Etc.

…and the underlying human values that drive community:

• Compassion
• Generosity
• Connectedness
• Freedom
• Love
• Truth & Authenticity
• Courage & Fidelity
• Charity
• Wisdom
• Stories
• Openness
• Personal Growth
• Beauty
• Etc.

Certainly, there is reason to some of these value-gaps. As business has grown and the ability to reach wider, global audiences has increased, efficiency and process help drive the planning for expansion. And with profitability at the core of all these values, that is necessary. But as businesses started to move into a very sacred space (and I like to compare our online communities to that of the forests of Pandora on Avatar in my presentation), these values begin to poison the very human interactions we have there. All of a sudden, things shift and the things we hold so dear are being ignored (or de-valued “tweeting about what you are having for lunch is so inane!”), co-opted (community members, themselves, becoming ‘personal brands’ or what I call roboticized) or exploited (community sourcing is the process of exploiting generosity). And this is not the direction we need to go in IMO. I believe strongly that, rather than business injecting business values onto our communities to business ends, we really need to turn the tides and teach business how to espouse human values again…or as Gary Hamel writes in his excellent column, put soul back into business. It is human beings, after all, that are necessary to the success of any business (whether employees or customers).

Which is why I DO mind the gap between business values and human values and why this has become the focus of my most recent work and presentations:

As the presentation states, we humans are growing less and less trusting of where we are spending our money and our time (working), but we still desire that connection. No, we don’t want to be chummy with companies, but we are seeking out those brands that espouse human values to spend our time and money with. And that is the key here. It’s not just a nice thing to do, although I believe that without this shift, the world is going to get a whole lot scarier – think the current economic crisis but worse. It’s also a smart business move. There is much more business can learn from the values driving the growth of online communities than where to target the next generation of buyers. Call it a revolution or a paradigm shift or what you will, but it is happening and it needs to be said over and over until the shift is made universally. This doesn’t just make for a better future for humans, but for business as well. Like it or not, we are living in a consumer society and we may as well make it a harmonious relationship.

So, yes, I DO mind the gap and so should everyone else. We spend a great amount of time on connecting, sharing, being generous and creating beauty. This is incredibly valuable and IS making the world a better place. Let’s keep it move in that direction.

[photos by: shutterstock]

For nearly two years now, I’ve been part of an amazing event that isn’t widely publicized and is, shockingly (for me, anyway), invite only. It’s invite only because it takes place in women’s kitchens and dining rooms and assumes a good amount of trust and intimacy. This event was christened Comfort Food Club because of the original intent to comfort me after a breakup with a nice meal and conversation in a trusted space. Our conversations are private and our bonds are palpable because of the trust. So this post isn’t going to break that bond of trust, but I do want to bring a question forward that I’ve posed in three cities where CFC has taken place:

Do you have to sacrifice love for greatness? And, if so, what would be your choice?

And yes, I do believe that the sacrifice has to be made especially for women. Statistically, the realm of love and family falls more on the shoulders of women according to research from many sources. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, the majority of married household responsibilities still fall on the shoulders of working women (and a larger percentage for those with kids). In Why She Buys, author and expert on marketing to women, Bridget Brennan, discusses the fact that more women are delaying marriage in order to get ahead in their careers and focus on themselves. And a special issue of TIME Magazine on the State of the American Woman in October of 2009 uncovered research that showed that even though 40% of women are the primary breadwinner in the household, they are also the primary caregivers in the household.

And it would be all well and fine to suggest that the role of women in family is necessary to the well-being of the family, their community and the world, but it just isn’t really valued. There is much lip-service paid to the importance of family and child-raising, but when we take a look at the way it is treated in North America, money isn’t put into that realm. I can’t find the article, but over a year ago, I read an article by a prominent business success leader (as described in the intro) who said success required sacrifice: time and chutzpah and really prioritizing one’s worklife (if you can recall this article, please let me know). Then Clay Shirky recently wrote a highly controversial post ranting about women and their lack of taking risks. And though I think Clay was partially right (the more risks I take and the more chutzpah I have, the better I’ve done), women just aren’t socialized to be that public and it’s partially because we spend so much time taking care of our private lives.

And then I take a look at the history of women who have achieved what I deem as greatness: changing the world in significant ways. Women throughout history like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale and Susan B. Anthony were never married and those who were, like Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Indira Ghandi and Katharine Hepburn were very untraditional in their approach to marriage (Amelia Earhart called her marriage a ‘dual control partnership’) and married later on to equally powerful, impressive men. Even our current heroine, Oprah, remains unmarried and focused very much on her career.

And I don’t necessarily conflate business success with greatness, though the two require a similar amount of dedication to one’s goals. That dedication takes a great deal of time and energy – time and energy that most people don’t have after a day of working to get by, then working the second shift at home. Believe me. I’m a single mom and if it weren’t for the help of my family and my son spending many of his early years with other family members (including his father), I wouldn’t have got the leg up on my education and early career I needed to get ahead.

So what is there to choose here? Love or greatness. On one hand, you will have a life partner, someone to lean on and grow old with. Someone to keep you warm at night and share those beautiful moments with – like silently reading together, sharing a crossword or slow dancing in the middle of the street spontaneously. Someone to grow with and share experiences with. Someone you can trust with your deepest desires and secrets and who makes you feel safe and warm even on the coldest winter night. That’s love. Amazing connectedness to one person (and potentially a few little people). On the other hand you take the world on your shoulders. You dedicate your passion, love and energy to many – often to people you don’t even know. You will be told you are doing something futile or, even worse, selfish. You will be told you are wrong. Every day is frustrating and, yet, so rewarding. You connect with many people – but often drift off to sleep alone at night. I think of Spiderman all of the time. He had to do this, right? He had to give up Mary Jane to save the world. Batman had to give up many loves to become the Dark Knight. (and yes, both Batman and Spiderman are obviously men, but they are also fictional) If you are able to be a superhero AND have found the love of your life, rock on. You have a rare experience.

Greatness sounds awful and lonely and like a huge burden. It’s no fun and the hours and pay are bad. You have no guarantee of achieving anything significant in your lifetime. And you certainly never know if what you are doing is 100% right because you have your own idea of justice. Joan of Arc learnt that the hard way. Who in their right mind would choose a path of greatness over love?

Well, I would for one. Not that I don’t think about the love path everyday and envy those who choose it. And when I made that realization, I genuinely mourned letting go of any semblance of normalcy in my life. Whenever I think of dipping my toes into the love pool, I’m reminded that it’s an uncomfortable temperature for me. I can’t help but rant on a first date. I’ve canceled many other dates because I was getting into yet another big project and couldn’t be bothered to dress up. And I’m sure that talking to any number of my exes would bring out stories about the extreme pressure I put on myself and others to meet my ideal of the world. But at the same time, I’m surrounded by amazing people who I love and love me – just not romantically. And I would be miserable on any other path than this one. If I’m not working on something to change the world or talking to somebody about how we should do proceed, I get depressed. I feel lost. Food tastes blah. Colours dull. As soon as I have a purpose, my community of friends and supporters and a path, I come alive. My turn-on is a fire in the belly. My intimacy is a meeting of the minds. And my love is a wide net of compassion and support.

What would you choose?