Stuff is getting smarter and people are getting dumber

Just say you got into a taxi. What's the first thing you're going to say, after "hello" if you're feeling friendly? It's going to be the name of the destination. Surely taxi drivers are aware of this?

After a bumpy flight, the transit through the terminal to the baggage carousel, out to the cab rank, on my big yellow square marked with the number "12" and into a taxi done in under 10 minutes, I thought the vibe would continue.

"Hello. I need to go to the Such and Such hotel on George Street please."

"Where do you want to go please?"

Good grief! Is it any wonder they've made Smart Televisions that take dictation and then send a transcript to ASIO. What I wouldn't give for one of them to be driving my taxi right now, I thought! I'd put my own bag in the boot too.

"The Such and Such hotel on George Street please."

"Where?"

"It's in Haymarket. Hang on, I'll get the street number for you."

"Could you give me the street number please?"

After a sigh that blew the windscreen out, I told him.

"Oh. It's in the Haymarket!"

Seriously.

I called my friend JC (no, not the Messiah). It was essential I do this to preserve the well-being of the driver. Our conversations are exactly like Crabb and Sales on their podcast, except no one else is listening to us. We've been friends since before music theatre summer school and can't understand why we're not stars of breakfast radio or variety television. Anyway, I was so entertained by our conversation about writing, satire, reality TV and Twitter, that I forgot to notice where the driver was going. After the extended instructions I'd given and his epiphanic confirmation at the end, I was confident we'd get there.

Something JC said bored me for a moment and I looked out the window. I was coming from the other side of town. Then I looked at the taxi metre.

"Um, the hotel is over there! Not over here!"

"Oh, you want to go to the Such and Such hotel?" he asked as if I had never mentioned where I wanted to go.

I paid the grossly inflated fare and walked to the hotel.

The carpet was the first thing that hit me when I opened the door to my room. It's like one of those 3D pictures that you stare at for ages and then either see something or faint from dizziness. The carpet is having the latter effect.

I went straight for the airconditioner and was suddenly nervous. It has a PLASMA screen and three pages of instructions on how to use it. I'm sure it doubles as surveillance - that's not a screen, it's a two-way mirror. It might be a smart airconditioner, but it's still too hot in here and it's one of those rooms that is hermetically sealed.

Meanwhile, everything is so minimally designed, I can't find the bed. Or the mini bar.

Can you see the hidden picture?
© 2014 divacultura

A Bruce story and mixed messages from the stadium.

Melbourne was buzzing with Bruce Springsteen stories over the weekend. People were wearing tour t-shirts, old and new, and the name of The Boss could be heard when eavesdropping in cafes.

The Yarraville Festival was on Sunday and before I headed off to see the show, I had a poke around the stalls as there are often some interesting wares to be found. As I asked a stall owner about a dress, she told me that she was very excited because Bruce Springsteen is in town and "everyone is talking about it!" She then asked if she could tell me her Bruce story. Naturally I said yes.

"Well it was a few  years ago and I was at the concert down the front. My boyfriend at the time was six foot four and I'm quite short and was surrounded by really tall people. I couldn't see anything. My boyfriend told me to get up on his shoulders and I did. Anyway, I was there waving my arms around - it was great, I could see everything - and then Bruce paused and started to wave his arms from side to side, then I realised that he was waving at me! I waved back! We did that for about twenty seconds!"

Her excitement over this 20 second exchange was equivalent to the level I would display if I'd been invited for a night cap and a private audience after the show. That wasn't the end of the story...

"And the other day, I came across this video on the internet. It was made by fans, for fans and anyway, I watched the whole thing - it went for about half an hour and then right at the end, there was me waving to Bruce and he was waving back! I reckon they had me there for about 6 seconds! At least I know it really happened!!!"

She laughed as the endorphins surged as she relived the experience. I'd have to call an ambulance if she'd had the night cap.

At the gates to the stadium we went through the usual bag search and noticed that all drink bottles were having their lids removed and anything over 1 litre was being confiscated. I asked why, wondering if was a cynical attempt to boost bar sales.

"Well see that lid?" the security woman held up the pale blue lid of a Mount Franklin bottle of water.

I nodded.

"That's a potential weapon. People were throwing them at Bruce."

Her grim delivery of the message nearly convinced me until I saw the size of the stadium. The world's greatest baseball player would have trouble getting that lid to hit its target. And what kind of fan wants to throw bottle tops at The Boss? A friend later told me that the lids are confiscated so that full bottles of liquid can not be thrown.

As I sat in the stadium before the show began, I noticed all the signs around the stadium.

One sequence that had me puzzled was the invitation to "join the conversation" via this billboard:

© 2014 divacultura

This was immediately followed by severe warnings that photography is forbidden in the stadium. That third icon represents Instagram, the photo sharing social media platform. Most people would obey this sign and ignore the other.

Lastly, there was the sign that said "Text anti social behaviour to [phone number]". The idea of personal safety within a stadium environment is important and while I think it's great to provide a way for people to report bad behaviour, this instruction is very ambiguous. It could mean:

• I send a text message with the words "anti social behaviour".  What happens next?
• I could send a message that is an example of anti social behaviour, for example "$#%^ off". What happens next?
• I could send a picture of someone behaving badly. What happens next?

I suppose what they want is for a text message with details of who, when and where the behaviour is occurring so those fifteen year olds wearing a high-vis vest with the word "Security" emblazoned on the back could receive a message through their ear piece. 

There was no anti social behaviour near me and I resisted the urge to be mischievous by sending pointless text messages.

I hope Bruce wasn't injured by a stray bottle top.

We made it to 2013 - the Mayans were wrong.

Imagine that.  The world didn't end.  Who knows what the Mayans were up to?  The world could have been spared numerous B movies, apart from any angst which may have arisen from the looming end of the world.

I like milestones.  I like to take the time to think about what's next and get my mindset right for whatever is next.  I'm not really a goal setter, but I do like to be purposeful about actions that I take.  My experience over the last few years since I finished full time employment for other people in October 2008 is that things work really well for me if I think positively, don't get tense and worried and continue to act on opportunities.  I also look for opportunities.  They can be sneaky things and can easily be missed if you're not actually looking.

I just checked my New Year post for last year and am very pleased with the alignment I achieved between intention and achievement.  I am pleased with what I achieved.  I haven't tackled my lace knitting yet, but I have signed up to an online class and have the yarn wound and ready to go.  Development as a performer didn't really happen last year, but I'm okay with that.  I've been spending a lot of time developing my skills as an improviser and actor in a teaching and assessment setting.  It's not performance as such, but I'm still exercising my acting muscles.

The spare room is still a disaster - perhaps smaller and a tiny bit more organised than it was this time last year.

I'm very pleased with how my business is developing.  Bookings and interest is very strong right through the first quarter and prospects are already looking very good beyond that. I'm feeling good about 2013.

On a personal level, one of my major achievements in 2012 was quitting sugar!  I made it through the eight weeks of having no sugar at all, just in time for Christmas.  Over Christmas, I have allowed myself to share a small portion of Christmas pudding and last night at dinner I had a dessert that was far too big and far too rich, given that I'm off sugar.  It's interesting that previously I would have been fighting the urge to have seconds, but that doesn't happen anymore.  The quit program has worked and my habits and palate have both changed.  Congratulations to anyone out there who has achieved the same thing!  And if you haven't quite made it yet, keep trying - it's worth it.

My main focus for 2013 is to continue to build my business, using networking and good work as my main advertising tools.  On a concrete, practical note, I do want to get my website up and running.

Incorporating volunteering into my life while I'm working freelance is quite challenging.  Because I am only paid when I work, I need to prioritise paid work over volunteering.  Contributing to my community  is very important to me and I'm feeling a little frustrated that I haven't found a way of volunteering regularly in the way my life is currently running.  I solved that problem in 2011 by knitting for charity.  This worked because it was easy to incorporate into my usual leisure activities and didn't compete for priority with my paid work.  In 2012 I started to crochet a granny square a day and these will be turned into a blanket for someone.  I will explore further charity avenues for my knitting this year.

Floating around in my mind is the idea of going unplugged for a day a month.  I need to think about this idea more and gain clarity about what I mean.  At this stage I'm thinking about it in the context of being offline - that is, not dealing with email, social media and using the internet generally.  I feel like this would be a good thing to do to clear my mind and make sure days aren't sucked into the web vortex.

On the practical side, the spare room has made it onto the list.  I know that I need to be more specific in thinking about this as making a broad statement like "tackle the spare room" really hasn't worked.  At this moment I'm thinking "turn the spare room into a useful, welcoming space, so that it is more than a storage room".  And of course, I need a timeframe.  By 31 August 2013!

I've done fairly well with saving money during 2012, but with no real plan other than to have money to tide me over during the dead period of December and January.  I'm going to put a firm aim in place and put aside 10% of all invoices (after I've taken out tax and GST).

And I want to dance more!

My plans for divacultura are to continue to write daily as much as possible.  This is no longer a chore and I find that most days the inspiration is readily available and the writing happens fairly easily.  If I'm travelling it's often difficult to post each day, but I've decided just to acknowledge that and communicate with my readers.  Given my work schedule I may need to cut back to five posts a week, but I'll let you know if that happens.  With the development of my website for this year, I need to think about the relationship between my business and my blog and make sure I seize opportunities for cross-pollination.

Here are the top 10 most read posts on divacultura:

1. MYKI: it's your key to bureaucratic frustration
2. Quitting sugar - two weeks down
3. That's how you handle a complaint!
4. Emergency services call - communication failure
5. Missing in action
6. Photo a day June - from a low angle
7. If myki is the solution, what the hell was the problem?
8. I've got the public transport ticketing blues
9. Photo a day - June round up & July list
10. 2 Days in New York - giveaway

Post numbers 2 through to 10 were all written this year.  The top post was written in 2011.  There's a strong theme of public transport and community service being subjects of these most popular posts.  And my photos have also received lots of comments and compliments, both here on the blog and on Instagram and facebook.  The one I'm puzzled about is "Missing in action" at number 5...

Phew!  That's a great list and I'm excited about what's to come.

What are you thinking about for 2013?  What's your intention?

Campaigning and bullying are NOT the same thing.

I wasn't going to, but there's something else that occurs to me about this whole Alan Jones thing.  It's prompted by statements labelling the social media campaign protesting against Jones' comments "cyber bullying".

While listening to Jon Faine on ABC 774 yesterday morning, a woman called to object to this label.  She broke down as she spoke about losing a child recently to cyber bullying.  She didn't want what had happened to her child to be diminished by Alan Jones and 2GB co-opting the term.

I don't think that an organised social media campaign can legitimately be characterised as cyber bullying.  Firstly, I don't think that a social media campaign is that much different from a traditional campaign where people write letters, call talk-back radio, gather signatures on paper petitions, organise town hall meetings, go doorknocking etc.  The key difference is that social media tools allow people to speak and be heard by a very large audience.  In fact there is potential to connect on a global level without leaving the home.

Secondly, cyber bullying is bullying, it's just the tools that are different. That's not what is going on here.

I'm happy to disclose that I signed the online petition calling for Jones' removal following his comments.  I will also tell you that I encouraged friends to also sign the petition using Twitter and facebook.  I did more than sign, I've engaged in face to face conversation with people and this is the second piece I've written on this blog.  (You can read the first piece here.)  In days gone by, gathering signatures for a petition required pounding the pavement, setting up a stall on the street, talking to customers coming into your business about signing, passing the petition around at work.  Now it requires some drafting, an online account, the press of a button and a social media network.  Same outcome - names in support of a proposition; different tools and timeframe.

Applying glib labels to dismiss social media campaigns is really an expression of grief and fear at the loss of power.

Before social media, the power to be heard instantly sat firmly in the hands of people like Alan Jones - people who are paid to broadcast their opinions, stir up controversy and incite outrage.  The microphone was their tool and they had the power to speak uninterrupted.  People could engage in the discussion by calling talk-back, but the power still resided with the broadcaster with the power to flick the "kill" switch on any caller without warning.  From my own experience of calling the ABC, my call is first screened by a producer to assess what I want to talk about.  (I'm not in 2GB's broadcast area, and if I was I wouldn't listen and would be unlikely to call.  I have never called Alan Jones and can't vouch for their process.)

Now social media takes out these filters and time lags and gives anyone with access to a computer or smart phone the ability to broadcast or publish without interruption.  Broadcasters and other traditional media, no longer sit in the all-powerful position.  The power has been dispersed and they are just another voice in the population and they will receive feedback immediately and en masse about what they say.

In my opinion, this power shift is exciting.  It's also challenging.  Whenever power is challenged in a society it's significant.

So Alan Jones and 2GB need to suck it up, as they say in the classics.  They need to wear the consequences of their words and actions.  They need to come to terms with this power shift.  If their values genuinely align to their rhetoric about democracy, they should be dancing in the streets!

Bullying of any kind should not be tolerated.

If you'd like to read and sign the petition, follow this link.

Question Time - who is Jenny Peers?

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Jenny Peers.  I'd obviously signed up to her mailing list when I saw her art somewhere.  In a moment of space, I read this email and learned about her Gratitude Card Project.  I had to speak to this woman!  The idea of creating a beautiful way to commemorate a moment of gratitude appealed immensely.  Combining it with social media to explore interconnectedness made the whole thing even more interesting.  I signed up to be an ambassador immediately.

My cards came wrapped in purple tissue paper it was like receiving a gift.  They are gorgeous and I felt a pang of regret at the thought of giving them away.  Then I realised that commemorating a moment of gratitude with something beautiful is significant and generous.  Jenny found the mandalas which are printed on the cards through ordinary sources like nature and textiles.  I can't wait to give them away and show my appreciation to people.  (I regularly thank people, but I think the significance of this can often be lost in the hurly burly of our lives.  And people often aren't very good at receiving thanks!)

We met yesterday at The Hub in Melbourne and had a lively conversation over a couple of hours.  We discovered that our lives overlap in interesting ways.  I learnt a lot!  I hope you enjoy meeting Jenny Peers as much as I did.

What inspired the Gratitude Card Project?
There's no simple answer to that.  It's a confluence of my interests.  I wear lots of hats.  I'm particularly interested in organisational culture.  To create a culture of innovation there needs to be organisational creativity, which needs collaboration, which needs trust which needs emotional maturity. I took myself on a "solo corporate retreat" to do a life review.  It was about exploring what I was put on earth to do.  I devised a set of rules for living.  Gratitude was one of these things

What do you hope to achieve with the Gratitude Card Project?
It's a combination of art, social science experiment and chaos and complexity theory.  I'm interested in the idea that one simple act can cause change.  What happens as a result of that act?  I'm also tracking where the cards go.  The cards are all numbered.  This enables us to note and remember the moment of gratitude.  The facebook page is a place to keep track and share stories.  If you're not on facebook you can still stay in touch via email.

I have this stuck on my fridge to remind me each day:  "Globally, there is a groundswell of opinion that the problems facing our planet can only be fixed in a spirit of creative collaboration, requiring a new way of interacting and being in the world.  So I am stepping up to the plate to do what I can to foster this new way of working, living and finding solutions.  My work will be with individuals, groups and organisations."

What are you grateful for?
Little things: health, my 5 faculties, living in this wonderful city, family, girlfriends, music.  Today.  At the end of each day I think about three things I am grateful for.  Even on the worst day there are always things to be grateful for.

If you were in charge for a day, what's the one thing you would do?
I'd wave my magic wand and rebalance the world's yin and yang.

What's your favourite word?
Curious.

If you could script your dying words what would they be?
"That was interesting."  I'd like that as my epitaph too.

What gets your hanky in a twist?
Ignorance.  Channel 7. Prejudice.  Politicians fiddling while Rome burns.  People talking at me.

If I wasn't doing what I'm doing now I'd be...
...doing something I've already done.  I'd be living out who I am, my life's purpose.  I like to think about a poppyseed.  In that tiny seed are all the instructions to make a poppy - the hairy stem, the petals, the colour, the stamen - everything that a poppy is.  That's what a life is.

Find out more and get a set of gratitude cards at the website: http://gratitudecardproject.com/
Follow and share stories on Twitter: @gratitudecards
Join the conversation on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Gratitude-Card-Project/218709621529387?ref=ts

START A RIPPLE OF YOUR OWN!
Jenny is generously offering five packs of 10 gratitude cards to giveaway to 5 lucky readers.  To be in the running to start a ripple of your own, leave a comment on this post and tell us what you'd like to thank someone for.

Entries close on Friday 7 September 2012 and are open to all readers, where ever you live.

As a geek girl, I rule!

At this exact moment, I feel like I could conquer the world.  I feel like I have gained secret knowledge which gives me special powers.  It has taken a lot of thinking, sweat, frustration, persistence and ultimately dogged determination to arrive at this point.  Having done so, this smug feeling requires some revelling.

It all started on Thursday when I took delivery of my new iphone.  It's the 4s.  I previously had a 4.  I didn't expect that switching from one to the other would be too difficult.  I followed all the instructions, using itunes to transfer everything from the old phone to the new phone.  Simple.

I have three different email accounts which are (were) connected to my iphone so I can access everything on the go.  I remember their set up being very straightforward.  My main account is gmail and every time I tried to access the mail I would get a message telling me that my username or password was wrong.  This was a lie!  My username and password were not wrong.  They were correct.

I tried again.  The same thing happened.  Tried again. Same thing. Again. Nothing happened. 

No other process has the ability to put me into a state of helpless frustration.  I'm a smart person.  I'm not afraid of technology.  I am happy to follow instructions.  The worst thing is that all you are given in this situation is an error message.  There is no ability to ask a question or seek directions about fixing the problem.

I decided I would change my gmail password on my computer and then just input the new one on the iphone.  At the end of this process and carefully triple checking the password, the same error message came up.

I called Vodafone for help.

The woman told me to delete the account, turn the phone off and start again.  Everything would be fine.

Famous last words.  Everything was not fine.  When I turned the phone back on and tried to access my gmail it delivered the same infuriatingly uninformative message.  Talk about computer says "no"!  I put the phone away.  Perhaps if I gave it some privacy it would sort itself out and we could be friends again.

After some dinner and a TV show, I came back and lovingly punched in my brand spanking new password. No.  Again.  For luck.  NO NO NO NO NO!

I called Vodafone again.  The guy told me to do exactly what I'd already done.  We did it again. No. We restored the factory settings.  We tried again. No.  He suggested I log into gmail via the Safari web browser. Hey presto!  I could access the account.  He sighed.  See, I was telling the truth about my password.  Then he did what all good call centre people do when they don't know the answer: he fobbed me off with a rubbish suggestion and blamed me for the problem.  

"It's because you changed your password.  It takes 48 hours for the password to reach the server.  Just wait and try again later."

48 hours? Google doesn't take 48 hours to do anything.  I was suspicious and asked some questions like "how come I can log in on the browser then?".  The answer was to just wait 48 hours.  Everything will be fine.

Everything was not fine.  I turned on my Sony tablet and received the same refusal of entry to my gmail.  Hmmm. Progress. This wasn't an iphone problem.  It was something to do with gmail.

Another Vodafone guy promised to get tech support to call me again this morning.  This didn't happen.  I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I googled the problem.  Thousands (millions?) of people have had the same problem as me!  There were lots of different suggestions about what to do.  With hope in my heart I followed the instructions in the first one.  No. Then the second.  No.  Then the third one.  No.  I struggled for breath as I fought the urge to throw the phone at the wall.

Taking matters into my own hands, I delved into the gmail settings and took a punt on "application specific passwords".  This is part of the two step verification process which is set up on an opt in basis.  I had obviously opted in at some point and here lay the answer.  I could see "gmail on iphone" and "gmail on tablet".  I revoked access on both and then requested a new application specific password.  Now my heart was racing with excitement - I could feel that the end was nigh - in a good way.

I punched the provided password into the iphone and suddenly my gmail account went nuts.  Mail was flooding in! There was no waggling of the finger as I was told that my password was wrong.  My heart sang!

Google has put layers of security on to its log on procedures, and getting a new application specific password would be the first thing to do.  The security is a good thing in my opinion, but it's so easy to forget once it has been set.  Why do the technical help desks not suggest this?  I would ring them back and tell them but I don't think they care.

STOP PRESS>>> Vodafone called me back just now as I'm writing.  I've provided the solution to them.  It was news to them and they seemed pleased to know.  They were even sweet enough to congratulate me.

Now that I have established myself as a geeky tech grrrl, I'm ready to try again in my quest to conquer the wireless printer.  Wireless my eye!  I will get there.  I've hunted down DOS commands to find IP addresses and I'm having fantasies that I'm more savvy than Lisbeth Salander, you know, the girl with the dragon tattoo.  

I'd better not get ahead of myself.  At the moment, the printer has its teeth bared and is laughing its head off.

*******

Something else I've learnt this week is that if your phone company gives you the option to contact them via social media, do it!  Despite the grievances which have arisen with Vodafone this week, I'm impressed with their social media.  Responses on Twitter were fairly instant.  I ended up having the problem resolved via facebook.  Only through facebook was I able to make contact with someone local via email and telephone.  I don't think I'll ever ring again! Thought you might like to know.

The earth moved - rocking the suburbs.

It's not often that I'm sitting in my lounge and the earth moves, but that's exactly what happened last night.  It's probably old news that Victoria was hit with a 5.3 earthquake and the epicentre over in Moe is still feeling aftershocks.

I heard a rumbling and then a slight shudder which felt very odd.  Then there were several bangs and shakes - it felt like a truck was repeatedly ramming the building.  It was very violent and, well, unsettling.  Nothing fell off my walls. I hoped that it might shake my resident mouse out of hiding, but that didn't happen.

Once it was clear it had stopped and nothing was broken I went outside and ran into my neighbours.  We were all looking for confirmation that other people had felt it too and we weren't having some strange hallucination.  We checked to see if anything had fallen off the building and checked to see that everyone was okay.

My downstairs neighbour bid us goodnight with the comment, "It's been nice bonding with the neighbours over a natural disaster!"

I went inside and opened up Twitter and turned on the ABC radio.  My twitter feed confirmed there had been an earthquake.  I was able to gain information and quickly knew the strength of the quake, how widespread it had been.  I received enquiries to check on my welfare from far and wide.

Once it was clear that there had been nothing serious, the twitter conversation turned to humour and a discussion about the challenge twitter poses to mainstream media.  We were all gathering information from each other and knew the story long before stories started to appear on media websites.  That's hard to compete with.


Callers to ABC radio sounded confounded and reached for the words to describe their experience.  One man was quite animated in his description, saying that it was "incredible!" and "The big TV in my room?  Well, it moved a little bit!"


Apparently the quake is one of the strongest experienced in this area.  I've felt a few tremors before, but nothing like last night.  Compared to somewhere like Christchurch, this was a little tickle.  It was enough for me! I can't imagine how frightening it must be to be in a prolonged, strong earthquake.  


Have you ever experienced an earthquake?

In the flow

I've spent most of my waking hours today sharing lunch with a friend of mine.  My friend asked if she could buy me lunch and pick my brains.  Naturally, I said yes.

Over some great food and coffee in one of my favourite Yarraville cafes (the Corner Shop) we spent a few hours talking about our skills and our experiences finding our way in the world as freelance multi-taskers. It's a compliment to be thought of as someone who has something worth sharing and is of value to another person on a similar path. The sharing flows both ways in a conversation like this.

I always find myself thinking about what I've done from a different angle as a result of one of these conversations.  Best of all, it helps me refine my thinking.  I usually know exactly why I've made particular decisions but being asked to articulate this can help sharpen the thinking and gain a different perspective on something.  All of this happened today - and more!

It's great to be in the flow.  You know, when things arise as you need them.  Introductions happen easily. Clients pay on time and refer you to other people. New opportunities land right in your lap. It feels like the ideas come to you.  After some turbulence a couple of weeks ago it feels great to be in the flow again.  Being out of the flow means getting bumped into, wearing a frown and feeling nervous about things.  This is not happy territory and therefore it isn't sustainable.

During the course of our conversation we turned to the subject of our blogs and social media presence.  We each had recommendations for the other to look up.  We both have been conscious about our online presence for a while, so we share a common language.  At one point we both realised we'd been talking about social media contacts as though they are real people...oh, hang on, they ARE real people.  So are we! Even if we've never met each other, there's still an awareness of who they are and what they know.

Yesterday I met a woman who had joined facebook last week.  We pondered this, imagining how different our freelance lives would be without platforms like our blogs, twitter accounts, linked in profiles and facebook pages.  And that's before we even start thinking about our websites and domain names.

There's a lot of discussion about the value of social media and whether it's helpful, healthy or a time waster.  The very strong theme of the discussion I had with my friend today was the notion of "reciprocity".  Here are my top reciprocity tips for creating "flow":

1. My personal practice with every referral I receive from a contact, is to take time to personally thank the person who made the referral - even if nothing concrete comes of it.  And if someone is taking time to forward your material on, say thank you! Appreciation costs nothing and builds goodwill.  Goodwill is another way to think of "the flow".

2. Find out about people in your networks.  Ask them what they offer.  You might not need their services, but someone who approaches you might be looking.  You'll be in a position to give them a referral.

3. Ask for testimonials after you've completed a piece of work.  Linked In makes this really easy to do.  Ask for permission to also publish the testimonial on your website.  People want to know that you can deliver.

4. Don't stand on the sidelines.  I have lots of conversations with people who tell me they don't understand Twitter.  I tell them the best way to learn about Twitter (or any social media) is to participate.  I usually hear that they've joined Twitter, but then they don't say anything - they want to "watch" for a while. Soon they close the account proclaiming that they don't get it and wonder what all the fuss is about. Social media is not for voyeurs.

If you're at the start of this journey, talk to people who are already doing it.  It's worth thinking strategically before you set everything up.  (I LOVE talking to people.)  And I'd love to hear your ideas!

How do you build goodwill and keep it flowing?

*My friend is a whizz at helping people (especially artists) maximise their web presence.  You can pay her a visit over at http://rosewintergreen.com/  Her "Top Tool Tuesday" posts are very handy.  Don't forget to tell her I sent you!