Month: November 2008

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Start a Movement

dripWhat’s a movement?

It’s an idea that you think is either crazy or awesome. 

If you think it’s crazy, or something you wouldn’t dare be a part of, then you’re not.  You’re not part of the movement.  That’s okay. Not everyone is part of every movement.  They can happen without you.

If you think the idea is awesome, then you’re in, you’ve signed up.  It’s something that you are excited about ‘moving’ forward so you tell all your friends about it. Or maybe you just tell those who you think might be interested.  You try to spread the idea, because the more people who are in, or who help the cause, will mean that the cause or the idea will have a larger impact.

So why not start a movement?  Did I mention anywhere how many people are required to start a movement? Or how many people it takes before the movement has accomplished it’s goal?

If you have an idea, and you only need 3 more people to do something to accomplish your goal, then you start a movement to make something happen.  The idea moved from you to 3 others, achieved a goal, and is done.  A successful movement.

That, my friend, is a ‘micromovement.’ 

And you probably create them all day long.  So if it’s that easy to start a movement, maybe you ought to do it more often.

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Is there too much to learn?

I was going to tell you about one presentation on a site called slideshare.net , a place where people can share their presentation slides, but being curious, I found a whole bunch more that looked interesting, so I spent all my time watching cutting edge presentations instead of posting a blog entry.

But I couldn’t quit without accomplishing my goal – to add a new post no matter what.  So here it is. And here are the presentations you should checkout on www.slideshare.net . (NEWSFLASH: Power Point bullets are out, cool pictures are in.)  Check these out and change the way you give your next presentation.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us  by Seth Godin.  It’s really helpful to have the notes for this one (which means you need to create a slideshare account – easy, email and password)

Brain Rules: What all presenters need to know

Sample slides by Garr Reynolds

These are only 3 examples, but as you’ll see, they’ll suggest a bunch of related presentations, that if you’re curious, could keep you going for a long time.

Have fun and keep learning!

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Low Cost of Failure

An interesting concept I learned from Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” is how the internet now enables a ‘publish first, filter later’ mentality.  Which means that most people are launching new ideas, business models, websites, etc. all the time even though many of them never really take off.  But it’s kind of okay if they don’t work because it didn’t really cost anything to launch them in the first place.

In the olden days (a couple of years ago) you had to have everything exactly right before you launched a new initiative, or wrote a book, or created a video because you had some significant transaction costs associated with producing something.  So companies and individuals had limited opportunities for implementing changes based on funding.  But now, with low transaction costs, you can produce practically anything from your home office.

So that’s what people are doing.  And if it doesn’t work, big deal, I can produce something again tomorrow.  And whatever I produced that didn’t work, it just sits out there on the internet getting filtered by search engines.  There are millions of items out there that have probably never been seen by anyone. (Like this blog.)

This low cost of failure allows people and corporations to try more things and new ideas without the risk of sunk costs.  With no risk, the only thing stopping you is your belief that you can do it.

So believe, and produce.  Eventually, one of your ideas is going to be wildly successful.