What Matters Now

Sitting in the train I had time to read 'What Matters Now'.

I loved it. It's a very inspiring read. A great way to tap into the minds of great people. And all that for free! All contributors were asked to write a one-pager about a word. E.g. Power, Harmony, Compassion.

Here's some of the parts I enjoyed most:

• Vision is the lifeblood of any organization. It is what keeps it moving forward. It provides meaning to the day-to-day challenges and setbacks that make up the rumble and tumble of real life. -- Michael Hyatt (This relates nicely to my post about Vision vs Scale.)
• The One Percenters are often hidden in the crevices of niches, yet they are the roots of word of mouth. This year, your job is to find them and attract them. -- Jackie Huba & Ben McConnell
• Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, DIY and UGC - all these digital phenomena are starting to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution gets real. -- Chris Anderson
• Don't worry too much about getting things done. Make things happen. -- Gina Trapani
• Wouldn't it make more sense for both men and women to appreciate each other's strengths so we all work on what comes naturally? -- Marti Barletta
• Educate a girl, and you educate her children and gernations to follow. -- John Wood
• The road to sustainability goes through a clear-eyed look at unsustainability. -- Alan Webber
• After a decade of truly spectacular underachievement, what we need now is less management and more freedom - fewer individual automatons and more autonomous individuals. -- Daniel Pink
• Stop waiting around for bosses and companies to get bette and complaining about how you are treated. Build skills - and use them - that will permit you to create the environment in which you want to live. -- Jeffrey Pfeffer
• When focusing on harmony, success becomes defined by different terms. Contribution. Dedication. Cooperation. -- Jack Covert
• Be compassionate to everyone no matter the level of connection. -- Mitch Joel
• Neoteny is the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. ... It's time we listen to children and allow neoteny to guide us beyond the rigid frameworks and dogma created by adults. -- Joichi Ito
• Robyn Waters, Cheerleader of Possibilities. :-)
• Good dumb ideas create polarization. ... The fiercer the polarization, the smarter your dumb idea. Of course, dumb can be just dumb. You just have to be smart to tell the difference. -- Dave Balter
• Never forget, a small group of people can change the world. No one else ever has. -- Micah Sifry
• I believe the thank you economy will become the norm in 2010 and beyond, and brands that fail to adjust will be left out in the cold. -- Gary Vaynerchuk
• When information is evaluated without context - regardless of highly sophiticated analytics, an infinite amount of compute, energy or time, little if any relevance can be established with certainty. When information is first placed into context with prior observations, relevance can be determined with basic algorithms and insignificant amounts of compute power. -- Jeff Jonas
• You're probably trying to change things at home or at work. Stop agonizing about what's not working. Instead, ask yourself, "What's working well, right now, and how can I do more of it?" -- Chip and Dan Heath
• You grow (and thrive!) by doing what excites you and what scares you everyday, not by trying to find your passion. -- Derek Sivers
• The Mesh is a movement that is taking place all around us and will grow, reform and spread to engage many more of us. It's reshaping how we go to the market, who we partner with and how we find new customers. The opportunity is to embrace the Mesh and hopefully to discover how your current or new business can inspire customers in a world where access trumps ownership. -- Lisa Gansky
• How do you know when you've had "enough?" Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start, finish, or simply maintain. -- Merlin Mann
• Mistakes happen. How you apologize matters. Don't bullshit people - just say "I'm sorry." And mean it. -- Jason Fried
• More people will tell you can't than you can. Don't listen. Anything's possible. -- Aimee Johnson

Trends in the Blogosphere

Well well, I finally had time to finish this post. It's been a while ago since the 'State of the Blogosphere 2009' (SofB) has been published. I'd like to share the things I learned from this great yearly report.

1. I'll start with something I missed in the report: the number of blogs related to the number of active blog (bloggers posting at least once a week). It is mentioned that the levels of active bloggers has remained similar to 2008.
2. This report underlines that the Blogosphere is still strong. Although there has been some discussion if blogging is dead or old-skool, the SofB says the blogging world is changing, but very alive and kicking. The report revolves around 4 types of bloggers: hobbyists, part-timers, self-employeds and Pros. The Hobbyists are the largest group, but the Pros is more influential every year. Another trend is the blog is taken ever more seriously by mainstream media.
3. Interestingly the large part of the bloggers is highly educated and affluent. And two-thirds are male.
4. The bloggers they interviewed have an average of 3-4 blogs.
5. The SofB is published in 5 days. Concluding from the number of retweets, the last day is hardly read. Bloggers love short stories...
6. The bloggers interviewed do not believe traditional media will die soon. 31% believe that newspapers will not be able to survive in the next 10 years.
7. When asked which media bloggers take in, watching TV is done most (about 8.5 hours). Then reading blogs (about 8 hours). Commenting on blogs is done for about 3 hours a week. Reading newspapers takes about 3 hours.
8. Updating blogs from mobile devices is still hardly done (20%). But it growing quickly compared to last year.
9. "Self-expression and sharing expertise continue to be the primary motivations for bloggers, and 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog. Among Pros, however, the leading metric of success is the number of unique visitors." Bloggers have experienced positive career impacts.
10. Most bloggers that have been interviewed post about the same amount of posts as when they started. The reason some blog less is work and family commitments.
11. Most spend about 1-3 hours a week on blogging.
12. A question I don't understand, but found interesting is: Do you support partial content or full content for your RSS feeds? 75% does full. Is the reason not to to get reader to click-through to your blog?
13. Do blogs generate revenue? Yes. Most of the blog-related revenue is realized in the form of speaking fees and payments for contributing to print media or participating in broadcasts. So, blogging provides a platform for revenue.
14. Brands are heavily blogged about.
15. Lots of bloggers also use Twitter. They use it much more than the general population. Reasons to use Twitter: to promote their blogs, bring interesting links to light and to understand what people are buzzing about. Interestingly 25% of the interviewed blogger don't use Twitter. Why? They don't feel the need to broadcast their life and they don't get the point of tweeting, among others.
16. Final quote from the report: "... blogging is the next step in a process of advancing communication from radio to TV to internet messaging. The breadth and depth of the blogosphere allows sophicated information - and special expertise - enhanced range. Comments and follow-up posts allow for original ideas to refined and perfected even as they are spreading around the world. This gives blogs a power that TV and radio simply don't have. A blogger can call for a protest and, within minutes, hundreds of people can RSVP. (...) The next generation of blogs will be more action oriented, not just commenting on real-time events, but driving" them.
17. Interesting quote by Penelope Trunk: "Use your blog to figure our who you are and what you are good at and who the best people are for you to connect with."
18. Interesting quote by Seth Godin: "I don't try to make money from blogging, the same way that I won't say the question 'How do you make money form the telephone' is a silly one for most people."
19. Interesting quote by Duncan Riley: "The sad truth is the more content you produce the more page views you get."

Leading Like a Shepherd

A nice quote taken from Andrew McAfee's article "Shattering the Myths About Enterprise 2.0" (HBR Nov. 2009):

A leader ... is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.