Last Friday night, I attended an unconventional book-signing/networking party in Boston that brought together Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeff Cutler, and Mike Langford along with the usual suspects of the Boston social media scene. I picked up a copy of Gary's book and then--because I missed the earlier train home, had an hour and a half to read it while waiting for the next commuter rail.

Gary is a "rock star" in the social media space because he used Twitter and Facebook to take his video blog, Wine Library TV, to stratospheric levels of popularity. He's an inspirational phenomena of optimism, energy, and attitude whose contagious enthusiasm motivates and inspires.

I have a skeptical streak...and I will not to waste time here critiquing but instead focus on my takeaways. Like so many sources out there...you take what you need; you find the parts that challenge you to think.

People like Gary have aligned their passion with a platform that essentially makes sharing and self-promotion one and the same. The more he talks, the more people want to listen. Are his ideas revolutionary? No. Is there some deep insight in this book that will change your life? No. Is there a plan you can apply to your business idea to make a fortune and replicate Gary's success, including a 7-figure book deal? No. So what is the point?

The point is that social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and blogging give every person the power to both publish their own experiences AND, more importantly, CONNECT with others who share and amplify those passions. Find what you love to do and "Crush it!" Every person can become an enthusiastic authority about something and then, as they draw attention to their passion, perhaps they can "monetize" it. It's not even all about money though really--if you could just afford to live your dreams, would it matter to make $60 million or $60 thousand a year?

But on this path, you really need to "Crush it." To do that, you need to love what you are doing. A hobby blog about something you are kind of interested in is not going to do it. Starting a blog at your company and following the steps to promote it...is not going to do it. It's not that Gary Vaynerchuck has a great video blog about wine. It's that Gary Vaynerchuck is the Wine Library TV guy.

It's not about expert opinions. I don't know if Gary is an expert on wine. It doesn't seem to matter. If you want a professional wine evaluation, I'm sure you can get that from people who are much less famous and making a lot less money. But they are boring. Gary is fun. You can complain that it's not fair (if you are one of those people, for example) or you can realize, hey, it doesn't freakin matter. Maybe if I find the thing I love and share it with everyone, they will love me enough that I can just do that and be happy.

But you've got to Crush it. Can you think of 100 or 500 blog posts you could write about the thing you are excited about? Do you want to scour the internet for information on that topic, commenting on everone else's blog and engaging with everyone you can find? Are you motivated to hustle in this way? If not, don't bother because there can be only one.

You need to find that passion...the thing that keeps you awake at night and is the burning fuel that will sustain you through what others would see as a lot of hard, tedious work. The good news is that social media gives you another tool that has the potential to hit the ball out of the park.

But you also have to pay the rent. That statement is the dream-killing, self-defeating reality check on so many aspirations for so many people. Fine, so pay the rent. Get a job and work 8 hours a day or whatever. But that leaves 16 hours for other things. After family and eating...ok, I guess you need to give up sleep. That's the deal, really.

If you want to turn a dream into reality, you need to "Crush it." You go "all in" on it and when you see an opportunity, you throw everything you have at it. Sunday, the Patriots beat the Titans 59-0 in 3 quarters of football. That sucks for the Titans, but it's what happens when one team gives up against a team that doesn't have a concept of "dialing things back a bit." It does not mean you have a license/excuse to neglect other priorities...but when you are doing the thing you love--you need to give it all you have.

The passion is hard to find.

I found it hard, it's hard to find, oh well, whatever, nevermind.

I don't really know what Curt Cobain was thinking when he wrote that, but for me it symbolizes the fleeting nature of dreams for so many...especially those of us in Generation X who allow our cynicism to truncate promising optimism.

I do not write from the platform of a $60 million wine busines. I'm excited I found a project to do some consulting work this week that could turn into a longer term project. But what keeps me awake at night is thinking about how I can take this topic of active transporation, apply it to my town, and pull together my love of cycling and running, my desire to be a part of civic life, and my analytical and techincal skills to not only support my family, but make my world a better place.

This economic downturn is different from 2002, especially in the tech/internet space because of how people are responding to it. I was speaking with a reporter from TheStreet.com yesterday who was interviewing me about my layoff situation, and it struck me that perhaps my outlook is not uniquely optimistic, but shared by many others. I'm sure there is plenty of negativity to come and that we are only beginning to experience the disruption, but I know my response has been fundamentally different.

In 2002, the website everyone I knew was following was F*ckedCompany.com. Every day, that website published "insider stories" about the unbelievably idiotic things that were going on in companies. It also served as a bellwether of discontent and early warning of impending layoffs. Companies lived in fear: "I hope we don't end up on that site!" Employees could not wait to post their stories of incompetent managers, wasteful company largess, and the doom and gloom stories of dotcom bust and failure.

I visited that site just now and, "Pud" reports, the site is "sorta [F'd]." Good. Who's got time for that kind of self-pitying crap now? I'm sure it's out there, but it is not what I'm seeing.

In 2008 I see people of all ages networking like crazy, emphasizing their positive aspects, working together to help each other, and being optimistic about the future. Maybe it is driven by Millennial enthusiasm and entrepreneurship, but I see it from my generation (X) as well as we go to networking events, join career clubs, and use social media to connect and learn.

It is early in my own quest and I'm still finishing out my time at work until the official layoff happens. But it feels like a much better world than the last time around. I tell people I see massive disruption...whole industries may be lost and millions will lose the jobs they have today. But this is the moment of change. Books like Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat described how things were going to change and Nicolas Taleb's The Black Swan warned us that the future would be unpredictable. There will not be a gradual change, an evolution in the way we live and work...instead change is coming in waves we cannot control, but must struggle to navigate as best we can. There is no time to spend worrying or wishing about what might have been. We must embrace the future and make it ours. That is what I see happening.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle provides another large piece of the puzzle for those confronting the challenge of living a creative, innovative life. While I’m not quite ready to start making my own cheese or plant a massive garden in my backyard, I think the principles underlying the book speak to a deeper need within each of us.

It’s about sustainability. Sustainability is not just conservation—using less—it is about living in a way that is balanced. It’s about thinking of the consequences of our actions and avoiding waste wherever we can. It’s not about being judgmental—it’s about looking within and understanding the tradeoffs we are making and choosing to live responsibly rather than defaulting to what popular culture tells us is acceptable.

Kingsolver and her family decided to spend a year eating only locally-grown food. The book is essentially a diary of that year illustrating what life was like after having made that commitment. They survived and thrived. But it is a significantly more difficult challenge than I think most people are ready to undertake. . Life was not hard for them, but a lot of work was involved and a huge amount of “knowing what to do,” coupled with an even larger “learning what to do next.” But it is not impossible, given enough time.

Time is the killer. How can I shop at a farmer’s market in the afternoon when it is a 30-minute train ride away from my work place? I have to leave early to get to our CSA farm before they close. How could I possibly find the time to grow my own produce, then preserve it for the winter?

Many of us have jobs that pay enough money to avoid having to deal with all the stuff that our grandparents “suffered” through. And perhaps a few “post-materialist” types, secure in their independent means, have blazed a trail back to nature that is occasionally followed by the guilty urbanites for whom green living is the latest fad in a search for authentic living.

I take a swipe at the “superficially green” not to be mean or judgmental, but to challenge us all to look a little deeper and think about a whole new (to us) way of thinking that can help us find more meaning in life. Should I buy a Prius so my commute burns less gas? Or should I say, I need to find a job that doesn’t involve commuting?

The revolution in thinking is to take responsibility for our lives and realize to live is to create, not consume. Trading our time for money so we can spend it on crap that may have a slightly less detrimental impact on the environment is a terribly inefficient life. When our jobs allow us to create, we get the best of both worlds; but if we find ourselves pursuing greater success at the expense of less time, we start to realize we cannot buy the time back.

Last week, I wrote a review at All About Cities about a fascinating book, The Concrete Dragon, about China and how her cities are being transformed, leading up to the 2008 Olympics. It's a powerful book, written in the language and context of architecture and planning, but revealing the magnitude of revolution underway in China--another perspective on the cost extracted from her people and the challenge we face as China spares no expense to challenge us economically. I also highly recommend China Shakes the World.

Along similar economic policy lines, I read MIT's book How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today's Global Economy by Suzanne Berger, but I cannot recommend it. Good substance, but the methodology and completeness of the whole thing is a bit much. Summary: There are many ways for companies to be competitive; no one path guarantees success or is a road to failure. Adapt and keep adapting and maybe you will do well.

I also finally got around to reading Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck. I am about halfway through and am a little disappointed. This book essentially declares war on suburbia. Suburbanites will see it as a polemic, an elitist lecture on the evils of automobiles and how we all secretly want to live in cities. There is good substance in this book as well, but it leaps a bit at times--at one point seeming to argue that perhaps the massacre at Columbine high school was related to suburban planning failures. The book is kind of preaching to the choir...or perhaps simply just a good starting point for materials that are covered in excruciating detail in A Better Way to Zone: Ten Principles to Create More Livable Cities by Donald L. Elliott.

A Better Way to Zone is a tough book to review. The author candidly admits the topic is not a sexy one and the reader will not be surprised by understatement in this regard. However, after reading Suburban Nation, I realize for those who really want to understand the practical details of Zoning--not just spout self-righteous drivel about the ghettos of suburbia populated by degenerate soccer moms driving minivans--A Better Way to Zone gives you the background to do so...but it is kind of like reading university lectures. And there are too many principles, most of which seem self-evident. But the devil is always in the details...and this book delivers those details.

A great story of how and why people are choosing to live where they want--and what those choices may signal for new urban centers--is Richard Florida's Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life. This book is reviewed at All About Cities by Wendy Waters and is part study, part how-to book on choosing your place. It is not as theoretical as Florida's other books.

After reviewing this list, I do not know how I found time to read all these books in the past few months. Many train delays, I guess.

Social Media writers describe how blogging can be used to connect with customers and influencers...and at a personal level, to build your brand and personal network. But so often, they are talking about people who are already established or who have now made it "big." Blogging can be valuable for everyone, even if your objective is not to start a company or become a celebrity. Here are some examples of how valuable my blogging--which reaches an audience of perhaps a few hundred people--has helped me achieve influence at work and within my community.

Read more »

Anne Zelenka's book Connect!: A Guide to a New Way of Working from GigaOM's Web Worker Daily is a roadmap to a way of working life that makes so much sense it is scary. I had only read a few pages when I posted about Career Empowerment on Sunday, but already, I could feel I was channeling the book. For those who work in the online, web, startup-oriented world, this will be kind of book you want your managers to read if you feel the don't "get" you. It is a good companion to Rebecca Ryan's Live First, Work Second which takes a more generational perspective on life/work balance and the changing priorities of the workforce.

The new way of working illustrates how a "bursty" workstyle has emerged to fit the needs of the unpredictable, rapidly changing business dynamics of technology and media companies. The "old" workstyle was "busy" and was focused on internalized, command and control discipline for "knowledge workers" to deliver knowledge material. The new style is more about bursts of creativity and innovation, of putting together the pieces, not creating everything from scratch. That challenge requires a different approach.

This book is full of great comparison tables and illustrations of the old and new styles, but also makes the point that this is not an all or nothing change. There are still times when the old approach--of sitting down and plugging through difficult, frustrating, precision tasks--is necessary to be effective. The book is not a license for workers to become scatterbrained dilettantes. But it does effectively illustrate how we all need to re-examine our assumptions and evaluate whether the "work values" we have based on a prior business model serve us anymore. I found that realism refreshing and helpful--this is a book loaded with resources and suggestions to help workers adapt their working style and identify ways to become much more effective.

My only criticism is that the book attempts to provide almost a cookbook to help workers navigate into this style of work and spends too much time talking about how to set up your remote web office. I think it's quite a leap to 1) recognize the trend and 2) make the leap. Most of use will have to engage in intraprenurial battles against recalcitrant corporate culture--of managers who demand face time (e.g. have limited or discouraged remote work policies), won't approve anything without exhaustive planning and data, and who blanch outright at concepts like "Try agile experimentation and fast failure." Those who, fed up with that challenge, decide to make the leap to start their own business will quickly discover that while the employee world has changed radically, there are still many, many "busyness" principles that are required to make a company work. You can't do payroll and benefits in bursts of creativity and inspiration.

But this is a great reference book that is extremely timely, haven been written and published in the past few months. It inspires me to try out more tools, more social networking sites, and to keep an open mind to what is possible. Six months ago, twitter was another weird site for web bums and teenagers with nothing better to do than update their friends about their daily boring activities. Today, it is being overrun with marketing and technology people who are finding business uses for it. The most fundamental principle this book drives home is the idea that because we really cannot anticipate the future we need to try many things and not be afraid of choice. You never know where something will lead...so act now and adapt as necessary.

This blog is likely to be interrupted for awhile as we are having our 3rd baby next week. Maybe I'll write something at 3am, but I doubt it.

In the meantime, check out my review of Paul Lukez's Suburban Transformations over at All About Cities.

Also, I've started the Selectman candidates talking on WestwoodBlog; now I just need to stoke the discussion fires a bit and promote that site. We have a few months before the election, so I think there is time to pick it up after the next few weeks.

Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers, gave a lecture last Thursday in Waltham, MA about his book and implications of social media for marketers. I read the book several months ago and recommend it to anyone seeking to gain a quick understanding of what's going on NOW with respect to social media. I thought the lecture would simply reinforce the book, but actually, there was significant new information and a host of resources.

• Personal expression through online media to a global audience is here to stay. Gillin predicts that within 10 years, there will be only 5 major city newspapers left. The traditional media publishing model--where content and messages are created by large organizations and then broadcast to the consumer--is being fundamentally disrupted by the reality that millions of individuals are publishing their own content. In this society of publishers, a "remarkably civil" conversation is evolving. In such a world, influence is more important than power. And everyone has the potential to be an influencer.
• Think Small. The greatest success stories come from companies of one or two people. A media-savvy realtor creates a website, facebook profile, myspace site, linked in profile, then blogs about something valuable such as advice on living in Seattle. She leapfrogs her competitors, eventually building a realtor network. Or a guy starts blogging about gadgets and eventually has a website, Engadget, that is more relevant (and has greater reach) than PC Magazine. Again and again, the stories of New Influencers are the stories of individuals who use their passion and creativity to earn a platform of influence that increasingly allows them to be more relevent than multi-million dollar companies and traditional advertising campaigns.
• The point is not to understand it: the point is to do something about it. This point is illustrated by another blog post about the MITX Event last week where "heavy hitters" from social media talked about their companies and schmoozed with the Boston media folks. The reality is that everyone is learning and it is more important to be a participant in the game than to find an expert or become an expert. Nobody knows what they are doing. There is no time to wait for leaders to emerge or worry that your strategy might not be the right one. Just do it.
• Opportunity and Competition. You don't need millions of dollars of VC money to start a company and change the world. See Guy Kawasaki's post about how he started Truemors for $12,000. Of course, it helps to be Guy Kawasaki...but the point is that the new influencer model of marketing creates incredible opportunities that are hard to control. The goal of viral marketing is to find and engage the enthusiasts to turn them into promoters. Message delivery is declining in importance because marketing is more about relationships between trusted individuals than about crafting the right words. This means that individuals and organizations that can become adept at engagement will have an enormous advantage over organizations that simply have money to pour on advertising campaigns. An Army of Davids will beat Goliath. Don't be Goliath.

In a sense, I know I have too many projects half going on. This morning on the train, I sketched out some of the stuff I'd like to do over the next few months. It was interesting to see how I now have no shortage of ideas--a very different state of affairs than about a year and a half ago when I first started blogging and trying to find a new job.

So first, there is job and family. I don't write about the specifics of my job because it is possible some people from work read my blog and while I'm generally positive about it, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot and have something I say here come back to haunt me. But I will briefly violate that rule...

There is clearly more I could do at work. I am in a technical role and it is a role that I have skill and experience in that makes me valuable. But it is not the kind of stuff that I think about in the shower. Technology is just a tool I use to get things done. My dilemma at work is that while I can see so much non-technical, leadership and vision work that needs to be done, I know that I don't have the time and energy to fight for that role. My sense is that for now, I should put my second guessing on hold and just try to be a good team member.

Family is busy. Baby 3 is due in February. Baby 2 is at the "terrible 2" stage. We just have to go with the flow for the next year or so. Everything else is a supporting role.

Exercise: I'm not real big on exercise for the sake of exercise. But I love to run and have joined a couple of clubs that keep me running 3-4 days a week. I'll do some key races next year and do the Baystate marathon again in October. Cycling is pretty much over until spring when I can commute again. Maybe after the baby is sleeping through the night, my wife and I will hire a babysitter and go on some weekend bike rides. I'll pick it up again.

That leaves this blog and special projects I wrote about this morning. Whew.

This blog needs more focus. I feel I've accomplished a lot writing for the past year; when I go back and read some of the early stuff, I think my writing has improved. But it is thematically all over the place. Having written for a year, I can at least outline the themes I would like to cover. If I could hit each of these themes each week--well, that would be a full time job. But I'd like to cover:

• City Survey - with two feet of snow on the ground, running in the dark in sub-freezing temperatures, I kind of wonder whether the Boston area is really going to be our long term home. But the spring will eventually come. In the mean time, I can do a little research on cool cities and write up what I find. A quick perusal of the useless Money Magazine articles or Kiplinger Magazine's Smart Cities article contain gems of idiocy like this:

  Nashville keeps attracting people...The couple was looking for a great place to start a family. Last summer, they bought a three-bedroom house for $230,000 in Gallatin, a 40-minute drive from Nashville's entertainment hot spots, which they frequent on weekends.

  Now actually, I think Nashville might be a cool place to live, based on blogging activity I see coming from there and its rep as a creative magnet. But don't tell me buying a house in Gallatin qualifies as moving to the city of Nashville. That's like saying buying a house in Chelmsford is "moving to Boston."

  These top city lists are utterly bogus and useless; I can do much better just by doing a little web research...

• Social Media - I've blogged about Facebook and Linkedin, etc. before, but I need to make that a regular item here. I work in the technology every day and this is an area where I can leverage my work and this blog together. The field is changing faster than anyone can track--just try setting up your google reader to watch the rss feed from Social Media Today, for example and you will quickly be overwhelmed by the volume of writing on web 2.0 stuff. I have over 1000 unread articles waiting for me there...they will continue to wait...
• Politics - I think the details of Presidential candidate issue statements are less important than how they plan to engage the creative class. So I'm not going to critique the Obama health care plan vs. Hillary's, but rather consider what I can pull out of these communications that might sound remotely like it is comprehending a creative class perspective. This is probably one of those themes that will be infrequently substantive.
• Social Entrepreneurship - I just finished reading How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David Bornstein and it helped me understand that there is so much good going on in the world we just don't know about. I'd like to take some time to profile short stories of the efforts of people like J. B. Schramm who founded College Summit, an organization that helps high school students get to college.
• Book Review - I've written book reviews of Wikinomics and The Missing Class for Wendy Waters blog All About Cities. It's a fun challenge and a natural outlet for the ideas that flow from all my commuter train reading.
• Generational Lens - I'm ambivalent about the whole Generation X (me) vs. Y (Millennials) vs. Baby Boomers motif that powers much of the writing behind my favorite blog, The Brazen Careerist. On the one hand, I think conflict is overstated and the analysis is full of generalizations that don't fit. But I think it can be really helpful to consider that the world is really changing and to see it through the eyes of the next generation. I need to post an article to ypcommons again soon on just that topic...the world really is changing--not just "new to you" based on my gen x perspective to complement the gen y folks who are legion.

So what's the point of all those themes? Shouldn't I just pick one? How can I possible write on all that stuff?! OK, in one (no two!) sentences:

Social media gives social entrepreneurs new, effective tools to make our world a better place than any political action alone could accomplish. Young people, based primarily in cities, will be the driving, trans formative force in our culture and, over the next generation, will solve problems we now think are intractable.

In my spare time, when I'm not trying to fill in all those blanks...there is the local community action I've signed up for...

• I need to kickstart westwoodblog.org and possibly revive westwoodwiki.org as tools here locally. I need to figure out how to find more local news to write about and stir up some interest in people contributing. One idea I had this morning was to blog about the preschool admission process...which actually got me to thinking someone should do a comprehensive news article on the many issues that come out of that...
• I need to generate some action with the Westwood Public Access Cable board that I am on...I've drafted a mission statement and thought up a needs survey that I posted on my westwoodblog, but I need to get the process moving more directly with the other board members before we are scheduled to meet again in late January. I think the westwoodblog and wiki could be great tools in this respect.

So that's what I think about in the shower and on the train. Then it takes me 3 times as long to write it up!