A Simple and Timeless #Truth

You dont need a silver spoon
When you've got a heart of gold.

#Business - Regarding How to Avoid Social Media Overload

About two weeks ago, I read an article by Dorie Clark in the Huffington Post called "How to Avoid Social Media Overload." Her article and that kind of writing want to act as a throttling measure against the speed at which we are now communicating. Do you think we need to slow down? Even if you think this, its not going to happen. We've been building up this speed for a long time. There's no going back. Unless energy reserves run out and Off-line is forced upon us. But Dorie might just have well titled her article "I Can't Do the Computer!"

I'm a child of the Information Age (born last year of Gen X) so picking up the new speed might be an easier affair for me at the outset than, say, my mom. And I admit, getting the groove on in spite of the wonderful spells we cast on each other throughout the SMscape is a little daunting at first. But what form of communication isn't? Took you a little while to develop conversational proficiency with your first and second language, right? What about something slightly less obvious, like those typing skills you had to learn. That took a little getting used to, but now you're humming along at, what, at least 60 WPM, yes? No more search and peck for you.

Learning is in the doing. Your mind adapts to the stimuli you allow it to have,  and you respond more and more efficiently and effectively. You just need to allow yourself the exposure and encourage yourself with the understanding that you will improve. Perhaps you are feeling jaded or maxed out. Truly though, there is no end to how far you can develop if you just continue. Even the greatest living pianists in the world shave time off their chromatic scales if they continue to practice. Even the top 1% of us get better and better--Excelsior is the key.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred True #Klout" by #UsGuys Caveman

Here we are then, #UsGals and #UsGuys,
When our network's reach grasps even the sky
Like Prometheus Unbound in some old fable;
Here we are, in certain well-formatted tweets,
Quick-edited retweets,
Of restless nights in hot-hash tag hotels
and #coffee tweet-ups that #RingtheTribalBell,
Tweets that follow like an #UsBlogs assignment
Of Round-up intent,
To lead #UsFolk to an overwhelming question
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let Us go and make Our visit.

In the room #UsFolk come and go   
Talking (lately only) of MichelKloutago   

A vile fog now rubs its back upon the HootSuite-panes,   
A vile smoke now rubs its muzzle across the TweetDeck-panes   
Worked itself into the corners of Our evenings,   
Festered like pools of street water in drains,
Fell in some magnificent fashion as soot falls from chimneys,   
Slipped onto #IfThen Island, trading nothing cheap,           
And seeing it was a soft eternal night,   
Took over the house and refused to sleep.   

#GreenSM - Find Your Footprint Finalists - Social Media World Take Note!

The National Geographic is holding a contest for 4th and 5th graders to create programs and awareness campaigns that raise awareness of the human footprint on this planet and hopefully increase participation in programs that reduce waste, conserve energy, and protect our environments.

Find Your Footprint
Let's Get On the Same Electronic Page

The contest is called Find Your Footprint. Already there are six finalists. Please take a moment to view these videos and cast your vote. Forward the link on to your friends and ask them to vote and forward as well. Voting ends March 16th.

All the entries are meritorious. Many shared themes and every one includes simple action plans.  As an user in the on-line world, promoter of all things Social Media, I cast my vote for the "Canceling Catalogs"  action plan. I am looking at this from a Green Business perspective.

The business use of paper and water, I am sure is wanton. Being competitive in business means sometimes pulling out all the stops, and "buying eyes" for your product. This includes blanket advertisements, such as a catalog promotions, that force product lines into the market. This practice must come to an end for it is not sustainable and produces too much waste of natural resource and causes too much harm to the environment. And there is now plenty of alternative tools and methods for accomplishing the same goal.

#UsGuys - How to build Off-line Klout: A Real Estate Broker's Perspective

The #UsBlogs Week 3 theme "How Do You build Klout Off-line?" has me smiling. I have to avoid the temptation to say simply "the same way you build Klout on-line." Because what fun is that? I love the theme of SM/IRL correlation. 

I suppose some philosophy and examples are in order.  I tied real estate experience in to my article for the #UsBlogs Week 2 Theme: Leadership in the 21st Century. Figure I might stick with that trend for this article.

1. Introduction - A Real Estate Broker's Take on How to Build Off-line Klout
2. Passion - Believe in What You Do
3. Method - Do What You Do Well
4. Method Part 1- Accomplish Multi-Marketing Goals in Every Task
5. Method Part 2- Participate in Local Business Initiatives
6. Method Part 3 - Keep Team Building
7. Method Part 4- Encourage and Nurture Referral Network
8. Klout -  Inspire Others to Believe in You and What You Do
9. Conclusion - Bringing Off-line and On-line Klout in Harmony
10. Recipe for the Never-Ending Feast
11. #UsBlogs Week 3 Round-up - More Articles from #UsGuys

A Show of Hands: Age-Old Leadership and the 21st Century #UsGuys

"I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fix'd and resting quality, there is no fellow in the firmament." –Julius Caesar, from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

1. A Show of Hands: A Leadership by Example Experiment
2. One Sign Makes Two: The Value of Constant Signal Demonstrated by Real Estate Marketing
3. Social Media Transparency: A New Movement of Leadership by Example
4. Social Media for Business: Adam Singer v. the New York Times 
5. Of the Real and the Virtual: Marketing What is Unique
6. Conclusion: Bringing it Back to Leadership by Example in the 21^st Century

A Show of Hands: A Leadership by Example Experiment

Fairhaven High School

 My junior year in high school, I attended a leadership workshop on a regional level. In one of the workshop modules we devised a simple plan to demonstrate the power of Leadership by Example. We then challenged ourselves to return to our respective schools, put the plan in action, and see it work for ourselves. On behalf of Fairhaven High School, I pledged to carry out the plan.

The next afternoon, I sat in English class. The whole class was silent and busy taking a vocabulary quiz. I finished earlier than my fellow students and this free time gave me the opportunity to execute Plan Leadership by Example. So I raised one hand and held it in the air.

"Klearly a Krock: a Kruel Poem of Klout" #UsGuys

Out, out, oh K.O. Klout!
How klearly a-klanking krock u r!
Oh sure, u kan kloud my eyes
& klaw my nerve energy, u kan,
with ur klunky Klout score klues =P
& all the klattering artikles about u.

But u don't give me ideas about SM,
& u kan't help me write my blog,
& no one komments bekause of u,
& u kan't komment on my behalf,
& u kan't tweet my tweets, like
my likes & retweet my following. (kan u?)

OK (u gave me this 1 kool idea)
still, u r just 1 feather in 1 of my kaps,
which i wear maybe once a month.
So Y do u get talked about so much?
U do so little 4 #UsGuys & #UsGals,
I Kontend: U Kneed 2B Knocked Out!

KO Klout Kwikly

"It becomes him to feel all confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. Let him not quiet his belief that a pop gun is a pop gun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself; add observation to observation, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his own time...free should the scholar be, free and brave." - Emerson, from "The American Scholar"

“Of the Necessity of Confidentiality Agreements”

I am moved to consider lately the necessity of confidentiality agreements in the business world. A scrupulous businessperson should always carefully consider every aspect of a deal he is preparing to negotiate. A deal, as it is known to be called, is in fact a meeting of two or more minds, in which the deal's value to all minds at risk in the deal is agreed to be 100 percent of the transaction leaving no wasteful sum of risk to self or cost to manage risk as remainder. Once a meeting of the minds has been established and the terms of the deal are clear to all parties, the two most important aspects of a deal, after value, are the risk and the cost to manage such risk. The consideration of these two additional factors does itself contain and wield the greatest value of all, for in this consideration clause lay the covenant of absolute truth and the understanding of this establishment derives only from the greatest risk and the greatest cost.

There is a price tag for doing business as well as there is a cost tag in business. The price of business is subject to supply and demand of materials and services in the immediate moment. The cost of business is also a supply and demand subject but spread out over the lifetime of the business relationship and takes into consideration more of the subjective qualities of a business transaction, like the nature of the parties involved. Holding confidential information in the check of confidence can be a great risk factor that adds weight to the overall cost tag of the business transaction. Only well vetted business prospects will have limited risk factors that limit cost factors. This vetting prospect could sometimes add a short-term time cost to the deal in exchange for a long-term limit on risk.

Fast course business, as is regularly practiced in our contemporary American society, does not show due consideration to itself nor to the idea that absolute truth, the kind that limits risk and associated costs, can be attained in the course of a meeting of minds. That is how the use of confidentiality agreements came to be in the first place---Businessperson A warrants to Business person B that the information transacted in a deal will remain confidential between the business parties at hand and held in confidence by no other. The words of this truth will have no meaning if either party has not yet been known to be absolutely truthful. To do business with a person or entity that is assumed to be untrustworthy has become a way of life, a demand supplied by written instruments. Certain contracts are, of course necessary, as written instruments can contain all the memory of a deal, whereby memory tends to fade or scatter. This essay does not challenge the value of written instruments in general, but only specifically challenges that special part of a deal when eyes are meant to look into eyes and hands are meant to lock and form the bond of confidence, the covenant of truth, that is to be the bedrock upon which the entire deal, remembered by written instruments, is laid and erected as a monument of the meeting of minds.

A businessperson who relies upon a confidentiality agreement to secure the value of his assets and limit his liability during and after a transaction is, in fact, no businessperson at all. For the premeditated act of creating a written instrument of insurability against the trustworthiness of another is itself an explicit contract that warrants the self to do business knowingly with another self without first establishing the value of one self in the mind another self and vice verse. This wasteful practice thereby infinitely adds unnecessary risk and cost to manage such risk to the deal that need not be added. Additionally, the value of such risk and cost are both then deducted from the overall value of the business deal itself, often times leaving behind, as net, a worthless venture when compared to a perfect deal. The perfect deal is one in which all parties are entirely agreed of the value of all minds entering the contract, the risk is neutralized by trust, the cost of doing business is neutralized or limited by the zero risk factor.

To take this a step further, no confidentially agreement can ever be truly valid in a court of law, if the court of law first and foremost values the sanity of a mind. Or more generally speaking, the court of law that values the ability of the mind to create a written instrument and do business with another able mind considers only sound and valid thinking from the bodies and minds that are subject to its opinions. The soundness and validity of a contract are rooted in the sanity of the minds which created and entered it. And what sane mind would knowingly covenant with itself to do business of any value with another mind who is assumed to be untrustworthy of knowing value in the thing it sees? This enabling of one sound or unsound mind to do business with another mind that is, by worst case scenario thinking, presumed to be untrustworthy, is the essence of a confidentiality agreement; to protect one mind from the worst case scenario assumed in a deal, that the other mind is insane, or unwilling to honor the sanity of the original meeting of the minds during or after the written instruments have been executed.

I posit the following statements as a reasonably true:

• that no mind able to think can knowingly covenant with itself to make a confidential agreement with another mind it deems unworthy or unable to value itself, first, and its business prospects, second;
• that the act of doing business with such a mind thereby increases the risk to self and the cost to self to manage such risk to an absurd level;
• and whereby proceeding to perform such an agreement is actually a premeditated act, such premeditation constitutes a fundamental flaw of logic and inability to reason a solution for the problem that procures such flaw;
• and, furthermore, that this fact then necessarily disqualifies such a mind by breach of insanity from such a written instrument containing such covenants with self and other in this particular sort of agreement that is intended to arrange a confidential meeting of the minds named therein such a written instrument.

In short the question that stands is “Why would reason allow one mind to enter an agreement that by due diligence of logic need not be entered unless it be that the one mind is unreasonable to begin with?”