Two entries on Wikipedia that have gotten more traffic this week (dozens of edits vs. 1 edit every couple weeks):
I’m glad people are educating themselves by trying to better understand similar situations in our past.
Category: Economics
Failure – Go out and find it
A Saturday thought on failure…
I’m not kidding in the title. You should be looking for areas to fail in. You can’t succeed without it. If you’re not accustomed to pushing yourself to the limit, you’ll never reach a goal that exists at the limit.
You should put yourself in situations that significantly challenge your ability to persevere as often as possible (without being reckless). Be used to being in this situation. The most successful people are consistently diving in to difficult situations and using the experience to push them to the next level.
It might mean you have to push yourself to the physical limit while running a marathon. It might mean having to cram 14 hours per day of studying to learn a new technology. In the end, the push to overcome potential failure makes you stronger. And in the beginning, you’ve calculated some risk and chosen a course of action to succeed.
Partners, friends, co-workers, and bosses who push your limits are the best kind. They keep you going and stretch your abilities. You’re on the right track with these folks. These people are the ones who will mercilessly help you reinvent yourself and bring you a better career and appreciation for life.
Get out there and find things you could fail at, calculate the risk, and choose the course of action that overcomes.
If you’re that important, they’ll find you again
On Twitter, the numbers for friends (people you follow) and followers (people who follow you) are being misreported. The most common tweet today is about one’s follower count dropping off. This is telling of your personality, and not in a good way.
If you’re complaining about your follower count dropping off without your realizing your friend count dropped too, you’ve probably only been paying attention to building numbers. You’re also describing to the world that you didn’t care about losing touch with your friends.
For the record, I first noticed my friend count dropped. Over the year or two on the service, I’ve built up a friend list of ~6200 extremely interesting people (~2100 follow me). When I saw my friend count dropped, I checked my followers to verify. My tweet was, “Wow – number of people I follow and who are following me just dropped by more than 1000 each. Not good!”
While they reboot the service and get your numbers back to normal, take a moment to consider what matters. If you’re that important, they’ll find you again.
Scoble and Gary in DC
MCCXXIII
.
Last night I headed down to MCCXXIII, a club at 1223 NW. Connecticut, for a DC Social Media meetup. The meetup featured Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) and Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) as guests.
I’ve been following Scoble more than usual this week, as he’s come to DC to interview politicians and government officials with Rocky (@RocmanUSA) and his son Patrick (@pscoble). It’s been a merging of the blogging tech world and the US government (finally!).
The club was jammed, no room to move, great vibe and so packed the A/C was ineffective. It was awesome to see the turnout and feel the energy towards geeks making inroads to Washington.
Scoble described the experience in a single word, “Incredible.” We talked for a while on East Coast vs. West Coast interviews and the whole crew agreed that it’s been a refreshing experience. There’s nothing wrong with it, but the Silicon Valley CEOs are embellishing the value of their company. Here, it was described, instead of an executive power (pun intended), the power is more pure and the answers more honest.
When Robert described the difference in honesty I did a double-take. Seriously? Whoa. He described a few of the interviews, talking about some of his favorite moments and personal opinions. I’ll let you catch those in the coming days at Scobleizer.com and in video on FastCompany.tv.
A highlight he kept coming back to: His son nailed down the FCC chairman on the topic of porn (it wasn’t on video – wish it was). Robert’s eyes beamed with pride as he described his son having the guts to ask the questions.
Overall, a good meetup and cool to have Scoble out here for a few days, doing something different and interesting.
Existing posts on Scoble’s visit to Washington:
- How is technology changing the world of Washington D.C.? (6/24/08)
- Visit NYC & Washington D.C. with us (6/21/08)
UPDATE: Here’s the link for Gary’s book tour ’08: http://tv.winelibrary.com/gary-vs-book-tour-2008/
Gary Vaynerchuk is continuing his book tour, visiting the Rockville, MD, Barnes & Noble for a signing this morning at 9:00AM.
Homeless, Keyless, Wednesday
Today was strange…
Image courtesy of Malingering on Flickr – it is not of either of the homeless men I met today.
.
I started off the day by going for a great morning run. On my way home I realized my house key fell out of my shorts pocket, so I was looking around on the ground for it.
A homeless man asked if I lost something, and immediately followed up asking if it was a water bottle before I could respond. After telling him it was a key he informed me the water bottle he saw earlier was very nice.
I walked away cursing the fact I would have to break in to my house, but also thinking about a man with concern over my loss who didn’t have keys of his own to lose.
Breaking in requires scaling a tall wall, jumping through a window a-la Trinity escaping in The Matrix, and finally possessing the key to our inside apartment (which I still had).
At the end of the day I hit the bank for a friend and locked my keys in the car in the process… Two key losses in a single day. It would have been my first key loss in years if it were only once.
As I waited for my wife, bringing the spare key, a homeless man with a harshly weathered and flushed face approached. The conversation went like this:
- Homeless man: Hello, sir?
- I kept silent, posting to del.icio.us.
- Man: Sir, is that your car?
- Me: Yep?
- Man: <upbeat> Where are you from?
- Me: Here, Philadelphia…
- Man: Sir, I could use a cup ‘a coffee, could ya spare some change?
- Me: …
- Man: <poorly rehearsed> Sir, I’m homeless, hungry, scared, and need something to eat. Anything you can offer will help.
- Me: I’m sorry, but I won’t give cash, but I’ll get us cups of coffee.
- Man: <confused, back pedaling> But I’m hungry. I have 55-cents <jingles pockets> and only need a little more for coffee.
- I twittered
- Man: Sir, pay attention to me. I need some help.
- Me: I’ll buy us cups of coffee and a snack then.
- Man: <pausing again> But… I’m hungry.
- Me: <Genuine smile> Let’s go get a cup of coffee, Starbucks is two doors down.
He turned his back to me and walked off without another word. His “hello, sir?” introduction was repeated to each passerby.