Social Media: Ethics & Best Practices for Attorneys
Like financial professionals, attorneys bear the burden of using good sense and propriety online. Would that everyone bore a similar burden! (but I digress).
Friday morning I co-facilitated a continuing education seminar for the Mecklenburg County Bar on social media with Andy Ciordia and Ted Claypoole . The attorneys asked great questions and the three of us presenting enjoyed the lively discussion.
Peppering his ethics guidance with jaw-dropping anecdotes of ethical lapses by legal professionals, Ted boiled everything down to four categories of concern:
- Talking too loosely
- Improper investigation (pretexting)
- Sites that don’t provide room for proper disclaimers (think: Twitter)
- Advertising Rules
I’m unqualified to say anything about legal ethics, but from a middle-aged lay person’s vantage point, much of what Ted said seemed like common sense and good manners: don’t say anything about someone behind their back that you wouldn’t say to their face; don’t misrepresent yourself or your behavior; and don’t tell a judge you need a continuance because your father died if your Facebook page shows you were getting smashed at your college roommate’s wedding!
Advice for blogging, Facebook and Twitter
Andy and I showed several examples of what to do and not to do on the big three social media platforms:
Blogging: We didn’t need to dwell on the oft-repeated advice to publish frequently — they’d all heard it. We took it further to show how you can subscribe to content feeds to supplement your own articles but also warned to keep non-pertinent content off your site. We showed an example of an otherwise-good blogsite by a divorce lawyer who inexplicably featured an article on SEO and Google.
Huh? Stick to your knitting.
Facebook: We see lots of lawyers using their personal FB profile as a professional site. Some even call it “The Family Law Firm of Jane Doe” or similar appellations — a big no-no and a violation of FB’s terms of service. FB created “Pages” for commercial use. Go to my AUTHOR PAGE of FB and you’ll see how it differs from the personal.
Twitter: The main concern Andy and I expressed here is lack of engagement. Most of what we saw lawyers do is BROADCAST new blog posts or news of the firm. Blech. If you’re not engaging people on Twitter, don’t waste your time with it.
If you’re unsure where to take your social media marketing efforts, reach out. If I don’t have the answers, Andy or Ted will.
Presentation Note Taking
This morning I co-presented a workshop on social media for real estate agents with Andy Ciordia and Beth Griffiths. The Broker In Charge asked us to provide the presentation in advance so that she could print it out for everyone to take notes on.
This is what people ask you to do because they’re accustomed to death by PowerPoint. In such a death, the speaker lards the presentation with bullet points and basically reads them to the audience (like a first grade teacher at story time).
We don’t subject people to so-called presentations of this ilk.
Our presentations lend visual interest to what’s being said and reinforce the points.
Responding to the request
What did we do? We devised a handout for “guided note taking” that gave our audience questions and prompts to go with the slides. For example, Stop thinking about “creating” traffic. With social media, it’s about “getting in front” of it. What are you doing to use web-based sites and tools to get people to notice you?
Try this technique next time and be sure to wind it down with a solid question like these:
- How many homes would I have to sell each month to pay for this service?
- How many more homes could I list/sell if I were doing this?
In case you’ve never seen this video on the proper use of PowerPoint (or any multimedia during a presentation) be sure to watch it here.
March Book Lust
Big news: I’m writing a book with Matt Davio called Tradeoffs: Leveraging the Longs & Shorts of Life. We’ll use the language and practices of those who trade for a living to frame life’s tradeoffs: time for money, freedom for convention, risk for reward, and money for goods and services.
In a post-meltdown world where so many people feel the stakes are higher and the margin for error more narrow than ever before, Tradeoffs will introduce a general interest reader to how traders view “scalp,” “swing,” “directional,” “fade” or “breakout” trading setups, how they mitigate risk, and how they live with the outcomes of their trades.
We have a book agent who’s excited about the project and will help us get the proposal in tip-top shape by the end of April so he can hit the road with it. Stay tuned!
Trading From Your Gut: How To Use Right Brain Instinct & Left Brain Smarts To Become a Master Trader
by Curtis Faith
Reviewed by Dasan: Legendary trader Richard Dennis believed that trading was so simple that anyone with the right training and psychology could do it successfully. After making millions for himself in the commodity, stock, and FOREX markets, he trained complete novices how to trade in 2 weeks. He called them the “turtles.” He was right – a large number of the “turtles” went on to become very successful traders in their own right. Curtis Faith, the author of this book, was one of best of the turtles.
In “Trading From Your Gut” Curtis Faith’s discusses a central aspect of trading success: Intuition. While most mediocre traders let emotions drive their trading, better traders use primarily rational thought. The best traders of all, the master traders, use a balance of intuition and rational thought. Like the experienced poker player that just knows what the other player has, these master traders can identify trend reversals simply by “gut feel” which comes from a combination of experience and underlying rational thought.
This is an excellent book for the intermediate level investor. The author does give a basic explanation of a rudimentary swing trade system, but it is just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I would not recommend this book for a rank novice. However, if you have some experience trading stocks or commodities already, this book is extremely valuable. For me as an experienced hedge fund investor, I found his concepts mainly affirmed in a concise way what has taken me years to learn. In this way, this book could make a moderately experienced trader more successful very quickly.
The main thesis of the book is the importance of intuition in trading, especially by experienced traders who already have mastered their emotions. He says it like this: “A balance between left-brain analysis and right-brain intuition is critical for optimal trading.” He quotes many experts in this book, which adds a lot of value; for example, he quotes Barry Ritholz’s idea that “wisdom is the capability to have `strong opinions, weakly held.’” Faith emphasizes the importance for a master trader to think independently. He writes “If you want to be a master trader, you need to develop your own reasons for making trades.” He illustrates the concept of waiting for the right trade by comparing it to surfing at the beach, waiting for the right wave. The book is full of detailed examples like this, which illustrate his trading concepts. Faith wraps up the book with a discussion on ways to limit risk by being flexible, having a plan “B” and sizing positions properly to avoid overcommitment of your capital.
This book is valuable to any serious trader or investor looking to raise the level of their game. Novice investors have other volumes to read first.
Here’s my co-author Matt interviewing author Curtis Faith:
The Back Channel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever
by Cliff Atkinson
Reviewed by yours truly: This book caught my eye because it grasped a phenomenon I’ve observed at events where the audience gives more eyeball time to their netbooks and smart phones than to the presenter. I figured someday I’d figure out how to harness the power of this behavior, and author Cliff Atkinson beat me to it. Mr Atkinson is THE authority to write on the matter. In addition to writing Beyond Bullet Points, he designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict in the nation’s first Vioxx trial in 2005. Fortune magazine called the presentations “frighteningly powerful.”
For those new to the back channel and the ways of Twitter, never fear. The book starts there, not with boring exposition, but with a real-life event where panelist Guy Kawasaki noticed a critical tweet (Twitter update) about him and asked the tweep (person who tweeted) to step up and explain the remark. After setting the context for Twitter and the back channel with this case study, Mr Atkinson goes into the mechanics of Twitter and other technological means for sustaining an official back channel.
The part of the book that everyone presenting can use (with or without a back channel) describes how to be an editor, curator and taste-maker to your audience. Thinking of yourself in these ways makes it 100% easier to craft a presentation.
Mr Atkinson outlines a strategy for JOINING the back channel’s conversation, including how to manage a “conversational presentation.” Presenters with and without a back channel should follow this advice
You can no longer get away with putting up a slide that lists Agenda or Introduction at the start of your presentation. Nor can you get away with kicking off your presentation with too many details or a list of your accomplishments. In a world in which your audience is accustomed to high-quality media at their fingertips, you need to capture their attention out of the gate. You must engage your audience within the first five slides or at least the first five minutes of your presentation.
The book offers a chapter on how to handle the positive and negative feedback from the back channel. Particularly helpful is the advice that speakers should practice scenarios that put them in a range of difficult situations. He gives five scenarios to practice: “You’re not listening to us;” Your Facts are wrong or misleading;” “Your material is a mismatch for us;” “Your material is boring;” and “You made me mad.”
Finally, relying on an excellent case study from a conference gone snarky via the backchannel, Mr Atkinson shows how Chris Brogan (author of Trust Agents) turned the situation around. Here’s the 10-point checklist for managing an unruly back channel:
- Establish a reputation
- Listen and collect stories
- Dispense with pretense
- Talk to the elephant in the room (if there is one)
- Make it you, you, you instead of me, me, me
- Check in with the audience early and often
- Improvise
- Stay grounded
- Ignore the small stuff
- Keep things in perspective
This slim volume is worth the $34.99 list price and includes a free 45-day searchable online edition. Both of my thumbs are way up.
Why We Make Mistakes: How we look without seeing, forget things in seconds, and are all pretty sure we are way above average
by Joseph T. Hallinan
Publishers Weekly review: Pulitzer winner for his stories on Indiana’s medical malpractice system, Hallinan has made himself an expert on the snafus of human psychology and perception used regularly (by politicians, marketers, and our own subconscious) to confuse, misinform, manipulate and equivocate. In breezy chapters, Hallinan examines 13 pitfalls that make us vulnerable to mistakes: “we look but don’t always see,” “we like things tidy” and “we don’t constrain ourselves” among them. Each chapter takes on a different drawback, packing in an impressive range of intriguing and practical real-world examples; the chapter on overconfidence looks at horse-racing handicappers, Warren Buffet’s worst deal and the secret weapon of credit card companies. He also looks at the serious consequences of multitasking and data overload on what is at best a two- or three-track mind, from deciding the best course of cancer treatment to ignoring the real factors of our unhappiness (often by focusing on minor but more easily understood details). Quizzes and puzzles give readers a sense of their own capacity for self-deception and/or delusion. A lesson in humility as much as human behavior, Hallinan’s study should help readers understand their limitations and how to work with them.
Genius on the Edge : The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted
by Gerald Imber
Intro to a Fresh Air interview with the author: In the second half of the 19th century, New York City’s population swelled from several hundred thousand to just over 2 million people. Conditions were not pleasant: Sewers were virtually nonexistent; piles of manure sat several inches high on sidewalks; and the city was overrun by disease.
Medical practices of the time were crude, at best: If surgical procedures were performed, they were done without sterilizing the equipment or the operating room, and typically ended with the patient losing an entire limb, if not his life.
It was in this environment that Dr. William Halsted began his surgical career. Halsted, who began the nation’s first residency program, pioneered techniques ranging from blood transfusions to sterilizing operating rooms. He also developed the radical mastectomy — also known as the Halsted mastectomy — reducing the local recurrence of breast cancer in patients nearly 50 percent. When Johns Hopkins Hospital opened its Department of Surgery in 1889, Halsted was named its first supervisor.
Though his legacy suggests a medical pioneer who made surgery safer and more precise, Halsted’s life was frequently messy.
That dual life is examined in Gerald Imber’s new biography of the doctor, Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted.
Imber traces Halsted’s journey from a young Columbia-trained medical student to a successful surgeon who secretly suffered from several narcotic addictions. Imber, himself a plastic surgeon, says that while Halsted was a “rigid perfectionist in some portions of his life, [he was] totally negligent and forgetful in others. He could leave a patient in a hospital bed for weeks on end and forget to operate on them.”
Imber talks to Fresh Air about Halsted’s dual lives and about 19th century American medicine. Imber is an internationally known plastic surgeon who specializes in facial rejuvenation and noninvasive surgical techniques.
Please tell me if you have a book to recommend or review for April’s post.
Sharing Deep, Sharing Wide
One of my clients called last week to say, “I love your newsletter but I want your blog delivered to my email too.”
No need. Every blog post for the preceding month is referenced in my monthly newsletter (along with some original content). Why do I do this? My readers have lives of their own and I need to make it easy for them to access my information (duh).
The good people at ShareThis have a little application that can be inserted into blogs and websites. It enables readers to share what they’re reading via email and social media platforms in a couple of clicks/keystrokes. This gives ShareThis a unique vantage point from which to watch sharing behavior.
And what do they know? 46% of shared information reaches its new destination via email, in spite of social networking sites in the aggregate edging email out.
Tweets and Retweets
I owe a great deal of my traffic flow to Twitter, where I actively participate in financial, economic and marketing conversations and share what I’ve written as it’s appropriate. At least a third of my blog traffic is Twitter generated, so I was surprised to read ShareThis stats on this beloved service:
We found that Twitter is the least engaging share platform with users visiting an average of 1.66 pages when they click through to a site, while users coming in off e-mail were the most engaged, visiting 2.95 pages (emphasis mine), and Facebook trailing closely behind 2.76 page views. Of course this varies by vertical and site, but if you think about your own habits, it makes sense. Getting an emailed link from a friend may cause you to pay more attention than the more random discovery that you get on Twitter as you consume quick opinions. We think there is tremendous potential for Twitter to increase its engagement when and if better filters are applied – the type of filters that Facebook has built in from the start.
My best recommendation, even if you devote time to build your presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites, re-distribute your messages with a regular e-newsletter. A belt & suspenders approach to being heard.
End of Email?
Interesting article in WSJ about email’s younger, prettier communication sister: social media.
For those not using Twitter, Facebook and other means of connecting with the outside world, this WSJ quote explains the difference between them and ye olde email: “We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.”
The story quoted Alex Bochannek, curator at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA: “The whole idea of this email service isn’t really quite as significant anymore when you can have many, many different types of messages and files and when you have this all on the same type of networks.”
What’s this bode for email newsletters?
The article doesn’t make my point explicitly, but sets it up well. Email newsletters and all THOUGHTFUL communications have a place OUTSIDE social media. Said another way, to communicate thoroughly, thoughtfully and confidentially, if you can’t meet in person, start with email.
This mirrors my own experience, as a fairly active Twitter(er) who averages 30 daily updates. For those of you not yet using Twitter, don’t take the impression that I have that much to say about myself — my tweets are usually in response to news items posted by other users or part of a conversation with my “followers” (feels a bit Jim Jones-ish calling them that, but oh well…that’s what they’re officially called).
Sure, I occasionally tweet out the odd “gonna clear my head by taking the dog for a walk” message, but the fun thing about social media is how people find you on the basis of these throwaway tweets. I now have a number of followers who send me pet food coupons and even Cesar Millan aka The Dog Whisperer follows me!
Belt & suspenders approach
Back to the topic at hand. For THOUGHTFUL, well-written communications, there is no substitute for email. The only thing that comes close is what you syndicate through your RSS feed. However, people get busy and forget to check their readers. An occasional email poke to check the RSS feed will probably always be in order.
Here’s my belt & suspenders approach to being heard:
- My website is home base. It’s the hub of external communications
- Primary communications spokes
- Blog and its RSS feed
- Newsletter
- Email
- When I post to my blog ( my website is actually a blogsite), it automatically sends a tweet with the title and a link for all the world to see. It also sends out an excerpt of the post through my RSS feed for those who’ve subscribed and to those directories like Alltop, that carry my content. Those who are linked to me via LinkedIn can see this excerpt on my profile page. Anywhere that anyone sees an excerpt of my blog posts, they can click to read the whole thing on my blog.
- I use Twitter to entice the Twitterverse to read my blog posts. With 140 characters per tweet, I use the url shortening service bitly to get the links down to 16 characters, then use what’s left to tease with leads like “Why Email Isn’t Dead.”
- I also use Twitter to ask specific people to read or comment on posts, according to their inclination and expertise. I know who wants to read my posts about SPAM and who wants a financial blog writing prompt and who’s the best expert to comment on one of my posts. If I’m fortunate, some of my followers will “reTweet” what I’ve sent so their network of followers will have the opportunity to read something they would not have otherwise known existed.
- When I get comments on the blog I Tweet that out to keep the conversation going. This helps those who’ve commented get their ideas in front of a wider audience, too. The least I can do.
- My newsletter promises three things every month: something on whole-brain communications, a bit on brevity and updates on topics related to email marketing and newsletters. Eventually everything from the newsletter shows up in the blog. For those who don’t want to read every blog post or remind themselves to check my RSS feed in a reader, they can read my monthly newsletter and click through to anything else that might interest them in the blog. The newsletter is an efficient portal to all the information I offer.
- I reserve email for my most formal and private correspondence. It’s also how I communicate with those not on social media. As the WSJ article says, some things require attachments and confidentiality and email is the next-best thing to a tête-à-tête
OK, that’s my communications methodology. What am I missing that works for you? Do tell (if you comment, I’ll tweet it out)!
Advice for those who need a ghostwriter
As a writer with some tech savvy and a general tendency to extroversion, social media works very well for me and and I’ve found a way to bind all my efforts together strategically. My experience is that those who invest the time in social media will benefit, but not everyone will want to make that investment. Fine.
If you’re a professional of any stripe, start with a custom newsletter written by yourself or a ghostwriter — not something you stick your logo on and call “customized.” No idea what to write? I offer news-driven writing prompts, if that helps.
Keep a consistent publishing schedule and maintain a searchable repository of your articles (not just prior newsletter editions, the individual articles) on your website. One of my clients does this so that we can eventually compile his newsletter articles into feature articles for professional journals. Another client’s newsletter articles go into his blog and will eventually become a book. Re-purpose your material.
My observation is that people are often reluctant to start small when they have big aspirations, but every desert is composed of tiny grains of sand. They add up.
ADDED 10-19-09
Further evidence of the power of Twitter: this morning one one of my tweeps, @derekhernquist, brought this video to my attention:
How to Quench the New Media Thirst?
I’ve got street cred talking about adolescent boys — mine are 17 and 20. So believe me, when it comes to technology, I’m like an adolescent boy learning how to deal with hormones; my ego swells and deflates according to the company I keep.
Last week I addressed a business networking group of small business owners and solo-preneurs. Their program director asked me to speak on e-newsletter marketing, but they wanted to know EVERYTHING about social marketing, from blogs to the proper form for declining a Facebook or LinkedIn invitation without offending.
Since nothing they asked stumped me, my head swelled . Like an adolescent boy, it doesn’t take much.
Getting the job done
Half an hour for Q&A was insufficient; books have been written on each question!
As marketing and media become more granular and everyone’s expected to publish SOMETHING, even a 140-character tweet, there’s an audience for what I have to say about effective business communications and plenty of opportunities to ghostwrite. But I’m a Business Person who writes like an English Major, not a new media guru.
Fortunately for us all there are technology scouts out ahead charting the best path to success. Given the thirst for new media information, I’m going to address the specific unanswered questions of the Charlotte Professional Saleswomen and Entrepreneurs through a series of posts and invite the REAL GENIUSES out there to comment on and enhance what I have to say.
Blog versus Newsletter: what’s the difference?
I love open source technologies, and I love WordPress.
The word “blog” is truncated from web log. Remember Star Trek, with “captain’s log” entries? Well, a blog is a web-based log of thoughts, activities, articles, and whatever else the author publishes in a “post” (as opposed to a web page). Lots of great (and free) software makes publishing a blog easy.
A newsletter can contain the same kind of materials that are published on blogs. Newsletters can be published electronically or on paper, but the blog is called a “blog” because it’s a web log.
If you publish both a blog and newsletter, they should reinforce each other. Your blog should be updated more often than you publish newsletters, so refer to blog posts that take the reader further down the knowledge path of the articles and topics in the newsletter. For example, in my recent newsletter I referred to six blog posts on how to keep your e-newsletters out of the SPAM filters. No need to condense six blog posts in the e-newsletter!
OK, that’s enough from me on this particular question. If you have further questions or want to elaborate on my answer, have at it — floor’s open.
Regulatory Purgatory
Professionally speaking, I grew up in the financial services sector. Literally grew up there (in grade school I did light filing for my father, an insurance agent). After college I worked for insurance companies, a bank, and LendingTree, a financial services firm.
So believe me when I say I understand the need for compliance when talking about other people’s money and
Meaningful Communications: Impossible?
investments. Even more so since the 2008 meltdown.
An acquaintance works for a Mass Mutual general agent. Like most financial services companies, Mass Mutual rules external communications with an iron fist. As a result, her “original” communications options are limited to transaction requests like “Please send me the street address and phone number of the surgeon who removed your gall bladder in 2002. “
How’s a financial representative to compete with so many businesspeople in less-regulated professions who send e-newsletters and blog about their work? She does her best to stay in touch with prospects and clients by sending links to holiday cards. Pretty lame, but keeps her name out there.
Last week she sent this message: “Every few months, I try to keep my clients and friends up-to-date with current financial issues or critical concerns. Here is the latest. This is not a download or an attachment. It is a safeguarded link.”
Ahhh, I thought, now she’s putting some meat on the communications bone.
Clicking through the link I went to what was essentially a six-slide PowerPoint presentation about how awful taxes are and the stunning conclusion that “The IRS collects more tax than many people want to pay.”
When it got to the teaser line that said “Review strategies that can help you reduce, defer or possibly eliminate current taxation,” I thought I was in for some meaningful information on the next slide.
I was wrong. The next slide was simply a text box where I was supposed to talk about my taxation vexation so that an insurance agent could follow up within 48 hours.
The whole thing was sooooooo far from meaningful that I think it did her more harm than good to send that one.
Financial Writing Prompts:
I’m interested in the variety of compliance hurdles financial services professionals face. Wondering whether communications policies are more similar than different from firm to firm. Here, you can write under another name if need be, so cut loose!
- What are you doing to stay relevant in this social media business environment if all your conversations are recorded and written communications censored?
- What are competitors with other firms doing that you think go over the edge?
- Are any changes in sight?
SPAM “Arms Race”
Confession: I’m an NPR junkie. I get a real return on my taxpayer dollar (for once).
Ukraine, World Spam Capitol?
Yesterday they ran All Tech Considered focused on SPAM, which is mushrooming across all media, including mobile phones.
In this segment, Omar Gallaga of the Austin American-Statesman said most email (in volume) is SPAM, but the American ISPs have gotten pretty good at scrubbing it before it hits our inboxes.
But the bad news is that the spammers have set up camps abroad, notably Ukraine, where risk of prosecution is about nil. Spammers constantly adapt to anti-spam efforts. All Tech Considered ran a story-within-the-story interviewing a computer security expert who said “From my perspective, it seems … kind of like the arms race of the Cold War era. We built more bombs. They built more bombs. We built bigger bombs. They build bigger bombs.”
Why this matters to emailers like YOU
Corporate web servers are starting to use “reputation scoring,” which looks at sender, time it’s sent, whether it’s a trusted source aligned with a real person, and other indicators of wholesomeness. This is why it’s so important to send e-newsletters and other digital media ONLY to people who signed up for it.
Mr Gallaga also discussed “Bacn” which is email that might be useful to you but that is not generated by a real person.
Bacn bests Spam
An e-newsletter or social network notification, like who’s following you on Twitter, are examples of Bacn.
The rise in Bacn led to the development of a service called “other inbox“ which separates Bacn from real-people email. With other inbox you can open that notice from your bank when it suits YOU, instead of having it glare from your inbox while you’re trying to do the work that generates the check that pays the overdraft.
I want to know who’s using other inbox, which is apparently included with gmail right now. In your case, does it intuit the Bacn from the real-people-email? Tell me a funny story about what went into your other inbox.
LinkedIn Answer on Business Planning
See how I answered this question for someone in need of a start-up business plan:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/startups-small-businesses/business-plans/STR_BPL/435991-34984446
Social networking is a great way to tap the knowledge of people around the world for free. Give it a whirl.
Friedman and The Onion
Faux news I love
Although it can at times be raunchy, overall I love The Onion. Evidently so does NYT columnist and bestselling author Tom Friedman.
In his recent column he quoted a four-year-old Onion faux story on Chinese manufacturing that seemed to capture American consumption up to last summer.
“FENGHUA, China — Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the “sheer amount of shit Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ … One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity.”
Friedman, who authored both “The World is Flat” and “Hot, Flat and Crowded” brought it back to reality when he cited Australian environmental business expert Paul Gilding, who named this point in history, “The Great Disruption”– when both Mother Nature and Father Greed have hit the wall at once.
“When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’ Often in the middle of something momentous, we can’t see its significance. But for me there is no doubt: 2008 will be the marker — the year when ‘The Great Disruption’ began.”
I walk in entrepreneurial circles, where there’s an uptick in the number of people hanging out their shingle, joining multi-level-marketing schemes and trying to turn a hobby into a mortgage-maker. I honestly believe that all the laid off MBAs, PhDs, geeks and artists in the world today, enabled by social networking sites, will pool their intellectual horsepower and transform the world into something no one can yet envision.
Retooling takes time and takes a toll.
As Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
