Collaborpedia

Written by: Shadeed Eleazer

View video here

The video is an in-depth discussion of the impact of microblogging platform Twitter.com within the SharePoint community. The presentation of the video is a back-and-forth discussion between Quest SharePoint Architect and author of uber-popular blog sharepointjoel, Joel Oleson and Principal Architect for Sogeti Consulting and Co-Founder of the Baltimore SharePoint User’s Group Eric Harlan.

Twitter is a mainstay within the SharePoint community. It has a great impact on conferences, most notably SharePoint Saturday events. It has introduced the community to a growing new crop of speakers that will become the future experts and MVPs of tomorrow.

Mike FitzMaurice (NINTEX) – Building Business WorkFlows with No Code

FitzMaurice is the Vice President of Product Technology at Nintex. He started with Microsoft in late 1997 in Microsoft Consulting Services, often creating collaboration and messaging solutions. Mike was a part of the consulting squad that helped the very first early adopter customers beta test “Tahoe”, which would become SharePoint Portal Server 2001. And was part of a team that authored best-practice deployment solutions for optimal usage of SharePoint Server 2001 and SharePoint Team Services in a corporate intranet. Mike FitzMaurice became a Technical Product Manager in time to bring SharePoint Server 2003 and WSS 2.0 to completion, and has not strayed from SharePoint ever since.

Register HERE

Nintex is a leading global innovator of software products that extend Microsoft technology, with over 1000 customers in 60 countries, including 40 Fortune 500 companies. The company focuses on building software that bridges the gap between that which can be bought from Microsoft today and common functionality requested by customers – with a passionate commitment to innovation and user experience. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Nintex aligns with Microsoft’s strategic and architectural direction to ensure that Nintex and Microsoft products work in harmony, both today and into the future.

5:30 - 5:45 Registration, Food and Beverages, Networking and News

Discussion of events and news in the local SharePoint community.

5:45 - 6:15 Topic: SharePoint Tips and Tricks

Audience: All
Technical Level: 100-200

6:15 – 7:30 Topic: Mike FitzMaurice – Building Business WorkFlow with No Code

Audience: All
Technical Level: 200

7:30 -7:45 Round Table Q and A, Raffles and Giveaways

Round table discussions will be held on specific challenges facing the members. If you have an issue that you would like to have addressed by the group submit your questions to phillysharepoint@rjbtech.com

Where: Microsoft Great PA District Office, Malvern, PA

The meeting is free, but space is limited. REGISTER NOW!! If you have already registered, it is not necessary to register again.

Pennsylvania based RJB Technical Consulting has announced a seminar to be held next Wednesday. The topic will be leveraging social media within the SharePoint platform in the hopes of improving your organization, expanding corporate reach, and lowering costs in a down economy.

The Benefits of Social Media and How it Can Lower Your Organization’s Costs.
July 8th, 2009 (9:00 AM - 12:00 PM)

This seminar will focus on the benefits of social media within SharePoint and how it can help lower your organization’s costs.
Join RJB Technical Consulting and take advantage of this opportunity to learn how to improve your organization by lowering costs while expanding your reach.

Speaker - Russ Basiura

Recommended Audiences:
Technology Executives, IT Managers, Business Executives, Vice Presidents, CEO, CIO, COO, CTO, CFO, IT Directors, Business Managers, Business Owner, Business Professionals, Controller, Business Decision Maker, Technical Decision Makers

Click Here to Reserve Your Spot

Agenda
8:30 AM Breakfast and Registration
9:00 AM Introduction of Social Media
9:30 AM The Benefits of Social Media & How it Can Lower Your Costs
11:00 AM MySites and Social Media Within SharePoint
11:30 AM Panel Discussion, Q & A, and Raffle
12:00 PM Lunch

Registration is FREE, but space is limited. Register now to reserve your seat

Location:
45 Liberty Blvd.
Great Valley Corporate Ctr, Suite 210
Malvern, PA 19355

Phone:
610.834.3900

Collaborpedia Readers,

   At this point, the blog will be embarking on a new direction content-wise. This is why it pays to plan before executing your vision. Using that method, you can immediately detect when your vision is moving off-center.

   We started out as an Event Coverage outlet for collaborative applications and methodologies. I think its time to expand that vision and that’s what the next steps will entail.

Stay tuned for more updates and thank you for supporting Collaborpedia thus far.
Shadeed Eleazer.

Collaborpedia readers! I had the privilege of being an invited speaker at the 2nd Annual Innovative STEM Symposium which was held at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. It is organized by the Clarence M. Mitchell, JR. School of Engineering. Morgan State has an initiative known as the Center of Advanced Microwave Research and Applications which received its initial funding from NASA in 2002. 

It was a 3 day conference which was broken down into 3 components: the MD Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (MD-JSHS), the Innovate STEM Symposium, and the ISC Award of Prominence. 

Below is the ISC Mission Statement: 

ISC is designed to strategically expose, promote, and foster relationships with students and young professionals interested in becoming prominent scientists, technologist, engineers, and mathematicians.

• Bridge the technology gap for underrepresented, but gifted, students in science technology engineering and mathematics; 
• Expose each student to advanced research opportunities and foster relationships with potential employees; 
• Grant funding for research and opportunities with the aid of corporate, government, and private partnerships; 
• Ignite the students placed in the pipeline with cutting-edge and informative programs; and 
• Neutralize myths that “science isn’t fun or appealing” and STEM careers are too difficult to achieve.”

I was scheduled to facilitate two 45 minute workshops so I had two lectures ready to go. I gave the both audiences the opportunity to choose between the two lectures I have prepared. Which would you have selected?? 

Topic#1 

SharePoint Needs You! Entering the SharePoint Job Market After College

Topic#2 

From Intern to Mogul: Successful Hip-Hop Entrepreneur Case Studies and Business Models

I thought topic #2 would be the overwhelming favorite, being that I was dealing with audiences ranging from 16-22, but the group wanted to learn about the fastest growing server platform in Microsoft’s history. 

I kept the flow of the workshops light and fun-filled. I have NEVER laughed w/ my audience as much while doing a presentation as I have during this conference. I really enjoyed the questions, the interaction, and the feedback. 

In between the sessions, I gave brief mentoring sessions with the kids. One high school sophomore introduced himself and asked me “I will be starting my own restaurant business. Is Morgan State Uni a good school to learn business.” What followed was a 20 minute discussion on using the time available NOW by accessing online resources and the library, as well as maintaining a high GPA. I gave him the site URL to the Small Business Association as well. Hopefully the young man follows up and is successful. 

I’m in the works of doing more workshops w/ other universities but I wanted to share this experience. Hopefully my message and information helped someone make a career decision!

-Mr.Shadeed

Came across a “Founder Associate” position at a small, but well-funded company based in the Bay Area called Twitter. The job description seems pretty wide open and is clearly written by someone who is an entrepreneur that praises the “intangibles”.

The benefits of working in a position such as this are endless. Working and building a rapport with the CEO and co-founders of a communication service re-defining how we interact is a dream job.

Many people in their mid-to-late 20s/30s would consider themselves ‘too established’ or even worse, too old to pursue an opportunity as an overqualified assistant for Twitter’s CEO.
If you are already ‘established’ in your current career, do you leave ‘everything’ and go and work for this opportunity?
The real question at the heart of this post is: at what age does opportunity and risk-taking end??

About Us

Twitter is defining a new form of communication that is touching people’s lives across the world. We are small but well-funded and building a company to last. We are currently a team of 25 and looking for a few key people who will help take us to the next level.

About this Job

This is a unique opportunity for an ambitious, multi-talented individual who wants to see the inside of a fast-moving startup and work closely with the founders. The ideal candidate is a future entrepreneur or executive who is willing to work hard and do a wide variety of non-glamorous tasks for a year or two in order to get their foot in the door, learn, and make connections. You will work directly with Twitter’s CEO and co-founders, with the simple goal of saving them time. Which means: The level of work you’ll do is only limited by your capabilities. Are you capable of: Designing a presentation? Researching a market? Creating a financial model? Great, as long as you’re also willing to make copies and run errands. Essentially, you should be overqualified to be an assistant, but not have a problem doing assistant-like tasks. In exchange, you’ll get unique visibility into a unique company, a great learning experience, and the chance to move on to do many other things (in Twitter, or elsewhere—with a strong endorsement).

Qualifications

4+ years work experience
Excellent written communication skills
Strong computer skills (spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, email)
Highly organized and efficient
People person with tact and diplomatic instincts
Track record of trying things
Strong interest in business and, particularly, technology startups
Broad knowledge of the Internet industry
About working at Twitter

Twitter offers competitive salaries and full benefits, including health, dental, vacation, 401k, and stock options. We work in a bright, sunny office in San Francisco. And you’ll be joining a unique group of experienced folks who are doing their best work to create something great.

The position is full-time and is based in San Francisco and will report to the CEO. Twitter is an equal opportunity employer.
Apply for the opportunity in question here

Mr.Shadeed -

As Facebook eclipsed social networking giant MySpace.com recently, the new public consensus is that “everybody” is on Facebook. Facebook has a strange way of connecting people that you actually know (past or present) with people that you may never had the chance to interact with online (parents, elder relatives).

What we are starting to witness is our online lives and subsequent behavior are starting to affect day-to-day life offline. Hiring managers are searching for potential hire history via google.com and other means and methods to get a “clear picture” on what the candidate brings to the table.
In the case of Philadelphia Eagles employee, Dan Leone, he lost his job as a stadium operations worker due to his opinions on the Eagles allowing key veterans to be released to free agency being posted on Facebook.

The post heard round the world:
“Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver … Dam Eagles R Retarted!!

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Leone was very apologetic.
“I apologized for it,” Leone said, according to the paper. “I apologized 20 million times. I never bad-mouthed the organization before. I made one mistake and they terminate me? And they couldn’t even bring me into the office to talk to me? They had to do it over the phone? At least look me in the eye. To get done dirty like this, I can’t believe it. I’m devastated.”

In this era of increased searchability and transparency, we have to be careful or at least conscious of the comments we make online. The world is watching.

Around the Web is photos, posts, thoughts, ideas found while browsing other sites, galleries on the web that inspire debate and discussion that we host here.

Came across a blog post on The Brand Builder Blog which examines the notion that Runners, particularly endurance/distance runners usually make better overall employees. He extends this definition to include long distance cyclists, triathletes, and Ironmen.

As a former cross country runner myself, I can immediately relate to running building
a iron will and determination when on the road. When you find the strength to continue on the course long after your body has depleted its resources is the stuff of legends.

This post highlights the idea that serious runners tend to carry over the same intensity and level of committment to their day to day working lives. The author states that he has “yet to meet an Ironman or marathoner who didn’t take his or her intensity and dedication to their job”

Runners and Good Employment

Valentine’s Day does not only have to symbolize a day where you show love and affection for your significant other or wish that you had a significant other or reminisce on past love if you are single.

Since the theme of Valentine’s Day essentially is love, I think that it is time to use February 14th as a day to mend old riffs, disagreements, or to tell someone in your life exactly why you appreciate them.

It is from this viewpoint that I came up with the Valentine’s Day Challenge. Why is it a “Challenge”? It is not easy to share honest feelings but I think the rewards will be worth the effort.

Collaborpedia is all about people and ideas in the spirit of collaboration and co-working. You cannot effectively work with another person in any relationship, whether business or personal without first working out the conflicts that exist within your own personal life.

So on this Valentine’s Day weekend: I challenge Collaborpedia readers to do one of the following:

V-Day Challenge

• Contact a person in your life that is a friend, family member, and tell them that you love them. Provide one specific action that the person did on your behalf that you’ll never forget.
• Contact a person that you may have recently re-gained contact with after a long period of time, share with them what their friendship meant to you at that time period in life.
• Contact a person that you have had a disagreement, divorce, argument, quarrel, feud with. Let them know that although you disagree with them, you wish them success and the best in life
• Contact a person that does a service that benefits your life. This could be the mailman, dry cleaners, baby sitter, etc. Tell them THANK YOU for all that they do
  and share with them how difficult life would be if they weren’t so darn good
  at what they do.

If you find that you cannot complete the challenge , then call someone and tell them about it. In a world of uncertainty, strife, and confusion, simply letting people in your life know that you care can go a long way.

If you complete the challenge, leave comments on who you contacted and the reaction that they had, maybe I can get some audio of a phone call that I make and post it up as an example, we’ll see. - Mr.Shadeed

The video in this post is my response to the horrible incidents that lead to
the post heard round the world that lead to Michael Arrington’s leave of absence from TechCrunch.com

I also weigh in on my current viewpoints on the current state of blogging as a media outlet and journalistic standards and changes that should be made.

What are your views on the content contained within the video? Agree? Disagree?

The fifth annual Corporate Venture Capital Summit is hosting over 24 Corporate Investors that have volunteered to share their knowledge, perspectives, and standards for those in attendance.

The event is becoming quickly recognized as the premier location for startups to network directly with venture capitalists and Corporate Development Officers.

When:
Tuesday February 24, 2009

Where:
British Consulate
One Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142

Speakers include (but not limited to):
Patrick Chung Managing Director SK Telecom Ventures
Dave Schulte Principal Kaiser Permanente Ventures
Tara D. Butler, M.D. Investment Director Ascension Health Ventures

Early registration save attendees $200 off the at the door fee.
Register Here

Agenda:
(Source Youngstartup.com)
1:00 pm CONFERENCE REGISTRATION & NETWORKING

1:30 pm WELCOME REMARKS & KEYNOTE

Joe Benjamin
Founder & CEO
youngStartup Ventures

2:00 pm BEYOND THE MONEY

This session will explore the benefits of raising Corporate VC and how it yields important dividends that are “beyond the bottom line,” both for the investor and for the startup firm.

Panelists:

Rajeev Dadoo, Ph.D.
Principal
SR One

Mathew George, CFA
Vice President
TELUS Ventures

Julie Gerstenberger
Director, External Alliances
Kodak Ventures

Alan J. Koenning
Fund Manager
UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund

David Nanto
Director of Venture Development
NEC Corporation of America

Ira Nydick
Senior Technology Analyst
Panasonic Venture Group

Lauren Silverman, Ph.D.
Managing Director
Novartis BioVentures

2:50 pm BREAK

3:00 pm COMPANY PRESENTATIONS – ROUND I

3:40 pm
INVESTING IN OUTSIDE INNOVATION: WHAT ARE CORPORATE VCs LOOKING TO FUND AND UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS?

Just as all companies have different strategic goals and interests, so to their Corporate VC divisions have highly varied strategies and approaches. Still, all involve some balance or mix of strategic corporate goals and financial ROI. This session will explore why certain deals and ventures have been historically of interest to corporate VC’s and how this is playing out in the current market space.

Panelists:

Tara D. Butler, M.D.
Investment Director
Ascension Health Ventures

Dan Keoppel
Executive Director, Strategic Investments
Verizon Communications

Jeffrey B. Moore
Vice President
MP Healthcare Venture Management

Jim Peters
Partner
Geisinger Ventures

Jennifer Scholze
Partner
SAP Ventures

Tom Whiteaker
AVP
Hartford Ventures

Kuk Yi
Managing Partner
Best Buy Capital

4:30 pm BREAK

4:40 pm COMPANY PRESENTATIONS – ROUND II

5:10 pm BUILDING THE BRIDGE – CORPORATE & TRADITIONAL CAPITAL

While close to 20% of all venture-backed firms have corporate VC’s on board, it is unusual for a venture to be backed by corporate VC alone. When other investors are required corporate VC interests must be balanced with those of other investors, while at the same time ensuring that the venture moves forward and remains robust. This session will examine these different pieces to the Corporate Venture puzzle and how to best leverage the roles of all players involved.

Panelists:

Patrick Chung
Managing Director
SK Telecom Ventures

Andrew T. Jay
Managing Partner
Siemens Venture Capital

Stephen Knight, M.D.
Managing Partner
Fidelity BioSciences

Lucy Mcquilken
Director
Intel Capital

Jim Sanger
General Partner
ABS Ventures

Dave Schulte
Principal
Kaiser Permanente Ventures

Spencer Tall
Managing Director
Allegis Capital

6:00 pm CAPSTONE PRESENTATION & CLOSING REMARKS

6:15 pm COCKTAIL RECEPTION

8:00 pm SUMMIT ADJOURNS

Jared Goralnick’s presentation centered around A Little Bit of Productivity for a Great Bit of Happiness which fits in perfectly with Collaborpedia’s “Remember the Big Picture” approach to the changes at large within our respective communities. The presentation was quite insightful as were many at Ignite Baltimore’s second event.

Ignite Baltimore is one event where you cannot take the RSVP for granted as it was a waiting list for the standing room only crowd for the second gathering of entrepreneurs, intellectuals, techies, and political figures for a round of 16 speakers sharing their ideas ranging from art changing the world to being more happy and productive.

The Windup Space on W. North Ave was a great host, pizza was served for all, and the attendees were eager to chat, mingle, and make connections offline with many of the greater Baltimore area’s brightest minds.

I think that Ignite is one of the better examples of keeping the “big picture in perspective” alongside entrepreneurial pursuits and the rage that is social media. The networking aspect was a good touch and Ignite kept the “human element” that people are what make a great community in the forefront.

The variety of topics that bounced from each speaker kept the event fresh. The automatically changing slides every 15 seconds maintains the element of surprise.
Collaborpedia was in the building filming in coverage and support of Ignite Baltimore and later on today we will begin to debut the footage from the event.
Proposals are already pouring in for speakers to head up Session #3 which will be held in June.

Social networking sites can build up a false sense of relevance for those individuals and businesses who invest time and energy building up their profiles through consistent content updates, blogging, and increasing their profile’s community by adding more and more friends.

The question we will examine in this post is: What is a social networking friend?

What do we expect from them?
Is there a way to measure a “return” from our online friends?
What are some ways that a passionate, engaged network can benefit your brand?
How do you determine whether you have empty “friendships” online or a real community?
Super-charging your communities online

Friends Offline vs. Friends Online
True friends (offline in the “real world”) define us as people. They are the individuals who laugh, cry, and help us to learn the great lessons of our lifetime. If you get married, your friends will be your best man or your bride’s maids. When you fall, your friends pick you back up and when you win, your friends are there to celebrate. We need friends and as social creatures, human beings need interaction with others.

Online friends (typically) are people who gravatate to your online profile through either common interest or geographic proximity. In many cases, you may never met this individual face-to-face, and if you did, the interactions tend to be awkward at first because they typically are based on a perception (not necessarily a lie) based online.

Is there a way to measure a “return” from our friends?
The main characteristic of an offline friend is answering the call when needed. As a brand, information provider, charismatic individual, musician, or celeb, why can’t I do request the same from my online community? The key determinant of a “return” from your online community is action. Does your community respond to your requests?

Here are but a few reasons why your online communities may be filled with “empty profiles”

There was no foundation or ground rules set when the member joined
You haven’t asked your community to take action
Your update schedule is undefined, rare and/or unpredictable
You don’t “qualify” your friends (I’ll discuss this in greater detail)
You haven’t made them feel welcome or set a level of community/expectation when they
joined

What are some ways that a passionate, engaged network can benefit your brand?
An engaged network can provide phenomenal word-of-mouth promotion for an upcoming product or release from your company. Great friends can provide reviews, serve as site administrators, volunteers, and help you reach your goal towards online dominance in your area of interest.
Most importantly, a great online community is in place to strengthen your offline efforts including meetups, gatherings, and events in targeted markets.

Investing in Online Friendships
I expect my offline friends to want me to be involved in their lives, sporting events, and social gatherings. I expect to be invited and badgered to attend and celebrated when I arrive.
Likewise, in my online communities, I want my friends to share links to events, send me e-vites to gatherings that would enrich my life experience, and share photos of their triumphs in their particular field.

Super-charging Your Communities Online

So you’ve gotten to the point where you have “friends” but they are not active.
Provide active content, encourage sharing.
Send out a notice that you will be deleting “inactive profiles” from the site

Note: If you are not consistent in providing content, it is within the same vein of not practicing what you preach. If you want “me” the member of your site to contribute, then you as the site owner should provide a halfway compelling reason.
There are different schools of thought on deleting inactive profiles, but on profile driven sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Ning, Collective X etc. , it doesn’t benefit the owner to simply have a large network of people. Action is the key.

Your online friends should grow to become actual friendships that you cherish and enjoy if you provide clarity in your profile’s objective, and qualify your community through action and call-to-response.
Share your thoughts in the comments section about strategies that you utilize to maintain online relationships in your communities.

Mr.Shadeed -

Did you start blogging as a New Year’s resolution only to find yourself short on motivation midway through January? Starting to think blogging was a “mistake” and that you’re too busy, tired, distracted to keep it going? You are not alone. In this blog post today, we’ll get the fire re-lit on your blogging habits and get your blog back up and running strong through 2009.

Look for the Reason, Not the Result

You decided to start this blog for specific reasons. In order to regain that focus and motivation to keep your blog afloat, don’t look too far ahead to the future. Instead, look inward and reconnect with the reasons you wanted to kick off the new year in a blogging fury!

What if I didn’t have any specific goals?

Answer the following questions to uncover your motivation:

What are the reasons I started my blog?

What skills and tips do I have to share with my community?

What areas of expertise do I feel comfortable writing about?

Tips to get you back up and running

“Script Your Posts”

This is a great way for me personally to keep blogging when time is limited or motivation could be higher. Simply enter the title of your potential post and save it as a draft. Once you have the title, you can brainstorm ways to put it together throughout your day.

Keep It Short

Keeping it short refers to literally 1-3 paragraphs (or less) on a topic in order to”stay in touch” with your blog. Provide an intro on the topic and add a few links. The End. What I’ve found consistent amongst the best blogs is that there is no specific word count that equals a great blog post. Providing value for your readers is the best litmus test.

Blogs From Around the Web

Create a blog post consisting of helpful links that you’ve found around the web on other sites. It helps your readers by providing them with resources and may help the sites gain new readers. Everybody wins.

Caption This

Utilize photos in your blogging by incorporating a caption to a picture you come across on the web. Inviting readers to provide captions is a community builder that will help new bloggers remain motivated as well.

Bottom Line

January is a month where many new committments to a better lifestyle and increased productivity are in abundance. You may fall off the wagon but keeping a realistic approach and staying in touch with your blog will help you stay afloat and steadily maintain your blogging efforts in 2009.

New bloggers, leave a comment with your name and bloglink so that I may check out your blog and leave feedback on your progress. - Mr. Shadeed

Did your favorite football team make the playoffs this year? Gearing up for the record crowds and hype and hysteria surrounding the inauguration? Is there an annual event that draws tourist traffic from around the world?

What you have with each of these scenarios is the opportunity to build communities around your brand and to associate your business with that particular event. In this blog post, I’ll focus on sports and community and provide some basic tips on what virtually any entity ranging from brick and mortar businesses to a blog authored by an individual can do to position themselves as the official ___________ (brand description here) of your city or town.
The most important thing to remember is that you can easily build brand recognition without buying space on a billboard.

Leveraging Sporting Events to Build Community
Nothing energizes a city more than the hometown team making the playoffs. The playoffs offer a renewed sense of hope that even if the team barely squeaked into the big tournament, everyone involved has a chance to win it all.

Here are a few inexpensive tips.

Tips
1.Giveaways. Partner up with a local sportsbar to do a giveaway of your product or service.
This can also be done in true guerilla fashion by simply handing out material in tailgating areas or in popular downtown districts in your area.

2.Discounts using trivia of renowed sports heroes or discount for wearing jersey in your establishment. Note: For online businesses, a simple promotion using photos of your customers wearing jerseys would do as well.

3.Online Photo Galleries
Time to unleash your inner photographer to help build your brand in your community.
Simply utilize a digital camera to take snapshots of various game-related events, using an online photo sharing service to store photos online. Have fans, viewers vote for the best photo and award a giveaway prize.
Add small watermark with company logo or site URL to the photo.
Submit photos to local newspaper, they might be used as more and more traditional media outlets are accepting a format of user generated content.

Using Web Video - If you are a video blogger, here are some tips to incorporate a hometown feel into your videos.
Film segments using a well-known landmark within your city as a background
Put on a team jersey during your segments
Add the team theme music as your intro song
Use fans as B-Roll for your clips

Why This Works
1. People will be more willing to participate in a cause or idea that supports the local team.
2. Video and photo galleries enable fans to be ‘celebs’ within the local sports community.

What If I Don’t Know Where to Go and Find People??
Turn on the radio for the station that bills itself as “Official Radio Station of your favorite team” and listen for events and make a note to attend.

As a business, brand, blog or enterprise, utilize the events around you to build enhance your business reputation within your community. Slowly but surely, your enterprise will become the official brand utilizing inexpensive tactics to associate yourself with the “big game”.

How do you utilize big events to build your brand recognition???
Leave comments and let’s start the discussion.

Oftentimes in our quest to have our knowledge and resources become the most sought after, downloaded, discussed, and distributed, we tend to lose sight of:

A.) Why we got involved in our chosen field in the first place

B.) Our definition of success, failure, when to move up and when to move on

12-15 hour days combined with an “always online” culture via PDAs, laptops, and more can lead to burnout even for those of us who are absolutely in love with our chosen profession or calling.

It is a common misconception that you always have to be “on” or available at all times. To always be working is a sign of inefficiency. To perform at sustained levels of excellence, it is best to take time away and recharge.

How You Can Carry On a Vacation Mindset

• Don’t worry about events, people, and situations that you cannot change. 
• Take a moment from each day to reflect and take inventory

Reference Material to Build a Vacation Mindset

The books mentioned below would be extreme cases of individuals who took the plunge and live an lifestyle of exotic vacations sprinkled in with day-to-day life. The goal for Collaborpedia readers is not to go on a world tour after reading but to realize that life isn’t all work and most definitely should be enjoyed.

The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Vagabonding

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

My Vacation Strategy

I wanted to get away from computers entirely and focus on dealing with people, good times, and greater experiences.

How the Vacation Helped Me

This vacation was great for helping me slow down the pace of my life. It was excellent for helping me re-evaluate what was important to me at this point in time. I now have ways to approach situations that caused me stress prior to the vacation

I’m currently looking into The Art of Stay-cationing or extended long term travel.

How do you approach vacationing? Share your thoughts on taking time off in the comments section.

Welcome to Collaborpedia and welcome to calendar year 2009. Many of us treat the New Year as a chance for reflection and to envision a more fruitful direction. Another chance to do better and to reach the potential that lies within us and is ultimately limitless.  

Do you plan to carry the “baggage” that lies in past failures, efforts that didn’t go as planned into the New Year? Do you have your resolutions set and ready to launch upon your unsuspecting peers that don’t know that the “new you” is on your way? Many industries actually have the “New Year’s collective optimism and mentality”

My Thoughts on Resolutions

I look at everyday as a New Year, not in the literal sense of celebrating at 11:59pm each night. I’m referring to the idea that everyday that an individual wakes up, you possess an opportunity to live that day better than the next. It is that opportunity to do so that excites me. 

Resolutions and Goal Setting for 2009

In terms of specific goal setting, resolutions tend to be temporary surges of will to improve a temporary situation.

Set A Life Plan

It is important to set a plan for life, or at the least daydream who you want to be and try to live that vision to the fullest extent. Success in business or on a particular project starts with the individual. Figure out your priorities and talents and then set the goals or resolutions to meet them.

Horrible at Keeping Resolutions? My Advice

Figure out who you want to be, do, and have in a six month timeframe. If this doesn’t work, figure out who you absolutely don’t want to be and work from that standpoint

Write it Down. Committing your goals to paper or typing them provides a concrete reference point and allows for a greater point of focus.

Do something, anything e-v-e-r-y single day to reach your goal. It could be the most minimal task.

Answer the following question each morning: How can I become the me I want to be today?

If You Fall Off The Wagon

This happens to us all. There will be days where you don’t feel like going for that morning jog (too cold), or that slice of pizza tastes better than a salad.

• Don’t beat yourself up. Allow for “cheat days” in the beginning. Don’t allow guilt to stop your progress.
• Re-visit and re-connect with why you are on this journey. The “why” is the motivating factor.

The New Year holds the same promise of a better tomorrow for us all. How we get there is our own individual path. What are your individual goals? Leave comments and advice for others.