A Bigger Voice

Kim Dority, Part 3: Using Social Media to Build Community

We're hoping to use the social media tools both to talk about what Disaboom is doing, but also to gather information from a broader community as well, which we can then understand, synthesize and make public. --Kim Dority

In this third part of the interview, Kim Dority talks about using social media to grow the Disaboom community even further, from its current base of 90,000 registered users. Listen for Kim's answer to the question of having an online community manager. It's a brilliant approach. This recording is about 6 minutes long.

Are you learning from these interviews as much as I am? I hope so.

In the fourth and final part of my interview with Kim, we talk about the Sustain phase of A Bigger Voice--revenue generation. Of any of the wisdom entrepreneurs who I have talked to so far, Kim has one of the most creative and pragmatic minds on how to do good and do well at the same time. But don't take my word for it. Stay tuned for Part 4, to be posted soon.

More on Three Cups of Tea

Last month, I blogged about Greg Mortenson's decades-long journey as a wisdom entrepreneur. Mortenson is the author of the best-selling book, Three Cups of Tea.

Last week, Mortenson was in the news, having received the Star of Pakistan, Pakistan's highest civil award presented by the country's president, and in our uniquely American way, being named ABC News Person of the Week.

Here's the video from the latter. It highlights very clearly Mortenson's wisdom and as a ending note, Charlie Gibson gives a nod to the sustainability of Mortenson's efforts.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

My thanks to Dave Murphy, who has been with me on my journey as a wisdom entrepreneur since the beginning (December 2007), for pointing out this video. When I am knee-deep with other stuff (e.g., launching the Networking Naturally Program), Dave brings me back to my core purpose in life--to help others turn their ideas and wisdom into a sustainable and scalable movement. Everything else is in service to that.

Kim Dority, Part 2: Building Community, Top-Down and Bottom-Up

How many ways can we complement each others' missions? We are not here to compete but we are here to help everyone in this space. --Kim Dority, talking about how Disboom collaborates with other disability-oriented organizations.

In this second part of a four-part interview, Kim Dority from Disaboom reminds us to look broadly for community members, from the "temporarily abled" to employers to the caregivers of the disabled. She also challenges us to think creatively about collaborators and in the process, shows us what savvy networking can do for a cause.

This second part of the interview is under 12 minutes:

In the interview, I was struck by how Kim looks for stakeholders, community members, and collaborators in many places. She uses both top-down and bottom-up approaches to create a web of mutually beneficial connections. Combine this with a focus on engagement and participation and the results are truly stunning.

Where could you open up your thinking on who is in your community or who to collaborate with?  Provide comments below, so that we can continue to learn from each other.

In the third part of the interview, Kim talks about using social networking to further expand the Disaboom community.

Interview With Kim Dority, Part 1

In this next interview for A Bigger Voice, I talk with with Kim Dority, VP of Content for Disaboom.com, an online community with over 90,000 registered users, for people with disabilities and those whose lives they touch. Disaboom has been widely recognized (by organizations as diverse as the Obama campaign, Business Week, Ford, and major universities) as a voice and a rich resource for the disabled community.

In this first part of a four-part interview, Kim tells the story of Dr. J. Glen House, founder of Disaboom, a for-profit company. Dr. House suffered a ski accident while in his twenties, which left him as a quadraplegic. He went on to medical school, eventually becoming the medical director of a rehab center at a Colorado hospital.  Along the way, he discovered that it wasn't just a matter of helping people learn to use a wheelchair. It was about helping them create a new life. You'll hear Kim talk about Dr. House's wisdom and how that influenced his vision for Disaboom.

This is a beautiful example of how a person's life story connects to his wisdom and vision. The end result is a compelling message that attracts a community. This part of the interview is about 10 minutes long:

Also notice that the story and message is crystallized to the point that Kim is able to articulate it clearly.  We don't need to hear from Dr. House directly to understand the change he's trying to make in the world or why he's doing what he's doing. How well could someone else tell your story to others? 

In Part 2, to be posted later this week, Kim talks about Disaboom's community and community-building efforts.

Networking Naturally

Networking is one of the tools for building a community.  What do you need to know about networking to be more effective?  You'll hear some fabulous ideas in my second interview with Kim Dority, VP of Content from Disaboom, an online community for the disabled and those whose lives they touch. The first part of a four-part interview with Kim will be posted tomorrow.

In the meantime, check out a new program that I've developed to help you network with less stress, more joy, and better results. The Networking Naturally Program, starting on April 8, consists of four teleseminars. You'll learn the principles that successful networkers follow. Other topics covered:

• April 8.   Myths and Beliefs: What You Aren’t Conscious of Can Hurt You!
• April 15. Creating a Meaningful Conversation: What Do I Say?
• April 22. Etiquette, Systems, and Structures:  How Do I Develop Lasting Connections?
• April 29. Integrating Online With In-Person Networking: How Do I Put It All Together?

Photo by respres

What's at stake?  As a wisdom entrepreneur, networking allows you to attract your kindred spirits more quickly, with less effort. Successful networkers know that they can't achieve their goals alone. They must connect with others.

I've purposely made this program affordable ($37) so that more people can take advantage of it, whether you are a wisdom entrepreneur or not.  The need for networking skills has never been greater. At a time when individuals are looking for answers, collectively, we're smarter than any one individual. (Okay, Congress not included.)

Space is limited and this introductory price won't be available after registration closes. To register, go to www.naturalway2network.com

How to Create a Grassroots Movement Using Social Networking Sites

This video talks about some, but not all of the elements of A Bigger Voice:

And for a wonderfully prescient look at today's landscape from Kevin Kelly, ten years ago, click here. 

What new ideas do you have now that you can move into action?

Patricia Ryan Madson, Part 3: Building Community and Moving Into Action

"Bold persistent experimentation. These are the times we are in now."--Patricia Ryan Madson

This is the third and final segment of my interview with Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom. I offer up suggestions on how to leverage her use of marketing, networking, and technology to create a vibrant community, based on the terrific job she's already done in crystallizing her wisdom.

Let's listen in. Recording is approximately 9 minutes long:

If this last part of the interview doesn't inspire you to move into action, I don't know what will! My thanks to Patricia for taking the time to share her journey and wisdom.

Be a part of the conversation. Contact information for Patricia Ryan Madson:

www.improvwisdom.com (a chapter of her book is available at this site)

email: improvwisdom [at] comcast.net

Twitter: patryanmadson

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciaryanmadson 

Facebook: Patricia Ryan Madson

Stay tuned for more insightful interviews with wisdom entrepreneurs. My next interview is with Kim Dority, VP of Content at disaboom.com, an online community for people with disabilities and those whose lives they touch.

Patricia Ryan Madson, Part 2: Staying True to Your Vision

"I think form does matter, along with content and if you've got something really good to say, take the time to put it in the most perfect form you can find."--Patricia Ryan Madson

In the first part of this interview, Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom, talked about how she started on her 20-year journey to crystallize her wisdom.

In this second part, Patricia gives us insight into what it takes to get to the essence of your wisdom and to find your voice. She also provides examples of unexpected results from getting her wisdom out in the world, including helping caregivers for Alzheimer's patients and providing tools for emotionally surviving a coma.  BTW--Notice how Patricia uses stories to draw us in and make us care about what her ideas can do for the world. Stories are powerful, especially in the hands of someone so genuine.

The second part of the interview starts with Patricia talking about staying true to your vision, even as one publisher with very different ideas dangles a large carrot. This part of the interview is under 12 minutes:

In the third and final part of this interview, Patricia and I talk about having visibility vs. having a community and moving into action. Stay tuned for Part 3.

What Girl Geeks Know

I'd hang out with girl geeks any day. Photo by cambodia4kids.org

Last week, I attended the Colorado Front Range Girl Geeks Dinner, hosted by Sun Microsystems in Broomfield, CO. Surrounded by 80+ intelligent, thoughtful women, interested in connecting, is nirvana for me. Oh yes, there was one man, Jeremy Tanner, who is well-known in social media circles in the Denver area. 

While I meant to capture this event with both words and visuals, I neglected to check the batteries in my Flip video camcorder before leaving the house. Someone should invent batteries that last substantially longer than you think you need them for. So text only it is.

Deirdre Straughan, who is an online community organizer as well as videoblogger for Sun, talked about Sun's use of social media. For photos, another perspective on the evening, and Deirdre's slide presentation, see Deirdre's blog post. Some facts and observations:

• A list of the fastest growing web brands is populated with social media sites--e.g., blogs, photo sharing, and social networking sites.
  
• Sun has 4,288 employees who blog. That's 16% of all their employees. It helps to have a CEO who has a popular blog, but still, the numbers are impressive.
  
• There are over 5,000 blogs maintained by Sun with 128,000 posts. 
  
• Sun's "eco-system" on the Internet is as wide-reaching and diverse as I've seen from any company--from company-sponsored wikis, forums, podcasts, and blogs to external sites like Second Life and Facebook. All of this is meant to not only generate content that reaches users, employees, customers, developers, and the general public but make it easy to share. They cast a wide net to engage an even wider community. Sun even has an aggregator function, planets.sun.com, to organize many feeds into one thematic feed.
• Sun seems to have made the leap of faith to walk the talk on transparency. Most companies, with one too many attorneys on staff, worry about user-generated content on wikis, blogs, and forums. Sun relies on a self-policing community rather than putting effort into censoring. It seems to be working.
• Deirdre had this great quote from Jeremiah Owyang: "Your business card is Google. Your resume is your blog. Are you ready?"  Well put and especially appropriate for these times when most people are actively looking for a job or worried about keeping their job.
• Sun's CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, feeds his blog posts to Twitter, which Deirdre describes as a "globally distributed water cooler." Some audience members expressed concern about having to be on 24/7. Some good perspectives from others--treating Twitter as a virtual newspaper with time allocated to read the news, and treating Twitter as a stream of data going by, where people don't expect you to read everything. Both perspectives are ones that I subscribe to.
• More walk the talk from Sun's CEO: financial results for the company are posted on his blog first, before any other public announcement.
• And finally, Deirdre had this to say about the business ROI of social media, "Deals are won against competitors because of social network-based business relationships." 

What does this mean for the wisdom entrepreneur?

• It's not so much the specific tool you use, but rather choosing your tools and using them well and consistently. A large company like Sun has the resources to try many different tools and what they've demonstrated is that all of them have pros and cons and can work well, depending on what's needed.
• Communities thrive on transparency, trust, and authenticity.
• As more companies, not just those in high-tech, use social media to interact both internally and externally, more individuals will become used to these online conversations.  Start one today to begin building your community. 

I'm looking forward to more Girl Geek dinners.My thanks to Deirdre and her colleagues at Sun for hosting this first dinner. I immediately felt at home with women who aren't phased by the question, "What kind of geek are you?"  I had to laugh when someone said, "A fabulous geek, of course!" Later, a friend of mine remarked how she had been surprised at how many upbeat women she had met, even though they were looking for work. Now that's a community I want to be a part of.

Interview With Patricia Ryan Madson, Part 1

Welcome to the first in a series of interviews with wisdom entrepreneurs, innovators doing good and doing well, by transforming an idea into a movement. With each interview, we'll explore what it takes to go through the phases of A Bigger Voice--whether it's Crystallizing, Building Community, or Sustaining. If you know of a wisdom entrepreneur who I should consider interviewing for this blog, please contact me, carol [at] abiggervoice [dot] com.

Patricia Ryan Madson is the author of Improv Wisdom, a gem of a book that I fell in love with as soon as I read the subtitle: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up. I particularly wanted Patricia for this first interview because of her interesting journey in crystallizing her wisdom, over a 20-year period. In this first part of a three-part interview, Patricia gives us a glimpse of the serendipitous path that resulted in her book. You'll also hear why less is more when it comes to crystallizing and how it's okay to ask for help during this phase.

Recording is less than 10 minutes. Let's listen in....

Patricia and I went on to talk about the process of publishing a book. A few lessons learned:

• Publishers want to see book proposals, not full manuscripts, when you are pitching them. People have time to read a book proposal that provides the concept and enough of your writing to know who you are as a writer. They don't have time to read a full manuscript when considering a book.  
• Don't be shy about getting professional help.  As a result of hiring an editor to help shape the book and an agent, Patricia went from initially intending to self-publish to having thirteen publishers bid for her book.
• Don't give up. In Part 2 of this interview, Patricia will tell us the payoff in spending time crystallizing her wisdom to get it just right. As she says, "It's not enough that we just put some good ideas out there. It's worth it to make them just right."

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview with Patricia Ryan Madson.

Contact information for Patricia:

www.improvwisdom.com (a chapter of her book is available at this site)

email: improvwisdom [at] comcast.net

Twitter: patryanmadson

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciaryanmadson 

Facebook: Patricia Ryan Madson