ver at Worthwile, David Weinberger wrote the best play. It sheds light into the marketing minds behind those in depth phrases that mean so much yet nothing at all like

“Autonomy is the leading provider of software infrastructure that automates operations on unstructured information.”

That does wha??

Before I started down this path of computer and internet enlightenment, do you know what the most confusing product was for me? Oracle. Yeah that big giant of a company. I knew it had something to do with computers but what the hell was it? I would see these commercials that say “we use Oracle”, and “Less down time with Oracle”, but for the life of me I had no clue as to what that meant. When I found out it was a really powerful Database, I remember saying aloud “oh, that’s it?”

Marketing for the internet seems to be like a blackhole. It’s this complete void where only Stephen Hawking of the computer world could possibly come up with a way to make it make sense to the masses (note: there needs to be a “brief history of time” for the computer world and not another “Dummy” book). You’d think that to make the rest of the world understand, companies would hire individuals to their marketing department with these kinds of insights. But instead, from my experience, most companies (that is not fortune 500) have people writing about their product that probably have to call the I.T. line every time they open up attachments that say “click me” and wonder how they got a virus.

When talking to IT people, hire IT people to do it!

But there is a warning! They need to be able to talk to the masses, and not D&D freaks talking to other D&D freaks (no insult intended by the term “freak”, it’s just I never understood the whole thing). IT and marketing need to be a dynamic duo with lots of “BAM”s and “WHAM-O”s (because let’s face it, chances are the 2 people will fight…a lot). As was pointed out by Steve Yastrow on Tom Peters’ site the detriment could be you get phrases like:

“Our CEO is a bigger geek than their CEO”

Which for some is amusing, and might be something to be proud of but for others…? Is that your market or just the people you like?

Well, this morning I had a chance to catch up on some blog reading. When you’ve got so many subscribed, it’s easy for the unread ones to pile up. And this morning it seemed that every post I was reading had some mention to a novel: Blink. So I used it as a sign and went out to purchase it. And I’m glad I did. I’m half way through already, and it’s a page turner into the unconscious mind. And now posts like Tom Peter’s “Eye Sparkle Factor” make so much sense.

Steve Pavlina is easily running up the list in my favourite blogs. Why? Because
with an easy (and yet not easy at all) technique he helped me find my life’s
purpose in about 40 minutes.
Sure, his title says 20 minutes, but you’ve got to have all your personal baggage
in check if you want to reach that kind of speed. And sure enough, as the warning
went, when I was done I was bawling my eye’s out. Ya, I’m man enough to admit
that I was bawling like a kid who lost their first pet. It wasn’t pretty. Even
copying and pasting this little phrase brings a little tear to my eye, which means
I was successful.

To be at home with my head in the clouds and music in my heart

“Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.”

Oh boy!

Secrets are funny little things. Somewhere inside us we like to hold onto the pieces of mystery which only we can answer or understand. Why do we do this? For control. I’ve had my own little secret which I’ve been only letting a few people know, here and there. Well, I’m letting it go. Reason being I’ve got something online. It’s completely at a development stage which means if it breaks, it’s to be expected. Plus, control is only an illusion, when you really take a look, the power is in you, not me.

Because I need to soak in as much feedback as I can get, I’m opening the bag out to you. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present, wherestheshow.com. The blog, blog.wherestheshow.com will be the focal point where I will be posting the updates, and request for feedback. So if you do have a chance to take a look, if you could post your comments here, it would be appreciated.

Sitting down and figuring out your values, assessing them and ranking them is definitely an interesting activity. Not one to go through everyday, but definitely a tool to help you in the right direction. So the outcome is:

Before:

1. Self-Understanding
2. Inner-Peace
3. Creativity
4. Success
5. Love
6. Intimacy

It took some time to even get this far. Originally my list was huge, but most of it was synonyms. Now the tricky part, if I’m going to be an entrepreneur, then I need to skew these a little. Look where “Success” is! That’s definitely not where it needs to be. And where is “Health” in there? I don’t even have it on my radar, which it should be. So….

After:

1. Success
2. Creativity
3. Health
4. Love
5. Intimacy
6. Inner-Peace
7. Self-Understanding

Well thanks to Curt Rosengren and Steve Pavlina, I’m going to take Curt’s suggestion of play with Steve’s reminder of values and goals to create a play date for finding and assessing my values. I have goals set, but no values to help them out. I think I have an idea of why I’m having troubles with this independent venture. As Steve said in his article “If you fail to focus your energy on the goals that are truly important to you, some of them will slip away, and that’s a heavy price to pay.” To make things a little harder what happens when the goals you have complete conflict with the values? Well that’s what I’m hoping to find out today. I’ll keep you posted on the outcome.

A quick thought, organizations should go through this same process. Most big organizations and corporations have a way of creating and reviewing goals, but what happens when those goals conflict with the organizational values of the corporate culture? Probably not a good thing either.

Sure, it took me long enough, and I’ve still got miles to go before I sleep. But I’ve got something up in a development location, dev.wherestheshow.com. Remember this is for development purposes so if something goes completely wrong, it’s to be expected. There is a whack of things still to do especially the reminders feature, which is a really key feature needed before launch.

Oh and one problem, was as I was building this out, the data I had in there is now outdated. So now I need to scramble to add in more listings into the system. If there are any listings you want to see, let me know.

So people, time to hack away. Let me know what sucks and what doesn’t. The more feedback the better.

And they do it again. Apple is on an incredible ride

• iPod Shuffle
• Mac mini

They are finding incredible ways to bring everything to your fingertips, on you fingertips. Nice!

Read an interesting post on Curt Rosengren’s blog about the need to play: Play your way to your best work.

The idea that “work is called work for a reason” and that “work isn’t meant to be fun” is so deeply entrenched in our collective cultural psyche that it actually ends up being a big roadblock for many when they look at pursuing their passions.

It is also, of course, complete nonsense. The only thing that committing to a life of work as a four letter word will do will be to slowly, bit by bit, drain away both your energy and your productivity. A career filled with fun and meaning, on the other hand, can unleash the amazing potential we all have.

I’ve been going through this little energy drain myself. It started to come out in my previous post. Nothing blatant but when you’re having fun, why do you need a trick at all? You see, here I am trying to find ways to “work” when in fact, maybe, I should be finding ways to “play”.

So, thanks Curt for not only giving me a little reminder of things lost, but also introducing me to Bernie DeKoven. I think I’m going to take his site for a quick stroll.

O.k. O.k. As some of my friends have pointed out to me, what good is a blog if you don’t use it. It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. I kind of put little blinders on and focused completely on working and nothing about actually letting people know what’s going on. Half the fun about blogging is letting people know what’s going on and the discussions. So, when I found out how nice WordPress was, I thought, perfect! So here we go.

I’ve been talking about when I should have something up and running for people to see and play with. But I keep coming back and saying to myself it’s not ready. And at the same time, I’m looking around and everyone has there site in beta, which was a plan that I’ve been thinking of doing. But I’ve dropped that idea from my radar. I’m either going to have a site or not. I’m either going to show people what I’m doing or not. I came across a nice quote which was a great kick in the butt.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

So, I’m going to change that. And I’m going to prove myself that I’m actually going forward.