Spending time with a Hindu or two has helped me question a few things. Our society’s surface-notion of Karma is a big one. I don’t know what Karma is, probably never will. But I’m beginning to understand a bit about what Karma is not.

Karma is not a bank where you deposit good actions so you can make withdraws during times of selfishness. There’s also no parking Karma. And a tip jar is not a place to work on your Karma.

Most importantly, Karma does not operate independently: it’s connected with many other ways of approaching life that I’ll likely never understand either.

I connect to this the way brands – product, service, or personal – build relationships in networking spheres (traditional or virtual). Aplenty are the opinions about our new media landscape giving anyone the ability to build relationships, market, brand, sell. But brands need to think more broadly about what’s behind the promises.

I think brands need to expand their understanding in a number of ways. Carlos Miceli posted some excellent thoughts on the nature of self promotion in our new social web landscape. At a tactical level, brands also need to think broadly about spamming.

We’re all marketers now that we have access to the tools, but we’re all potential spammers as well. It’s not unlike how the desktop publishing revolution gave non-designers a naive courage to design. And like we were forced to think about design in ways we never did before the early 1990’s, it’s worth some time rethinking what spamming means today.

I’ve come to believe that when brands self promote it isn’t about the latitude a brand has somehow earned from time spent sending links or commenting on blog posts, like some kind of Value Bank from which a brand can make deposits and withdraws.

It seems to me that we’re all patient with self promotion—in fact, we sometimes welcome it and want to support it—if (a) we have a history with the promoter and (b) what is being promoted is perceived to somehow add value.

Value Exchange has become as key a marketing concept as any other in today’s social web landscape. Not only because of the rise of social media’s importance and ease-of-access but also because of mobile marketing’s rise. Mobile marketing isn’t a place over which to salivate because of the eyeballs, great in numbers as they may be. Quite the opposite, brands should move deliberately into mobile marketing because, as Freddie Laker put it in a great post, our mobile devices are “a place of great privacy and perceived intimacy.”

And since a great percentage of our interaction in the social web sphere takes place on our mobile devices, brands have to be even more careful not to be perceived as spamming.

It logically follows, then, that the convergence of relationship building with ease-of-access technologies requires a deeper understanding of what it means to add value to our various communities and how we connect our other activities to build trust. Call it integrated personal branding. Call it authenticity or consistency. (But please don’t call it Karma.)

Are you a spammer? Here are four questions I’d suggest a brand ask itself to determine if it’s spamming. Would love to hear from you: What am I missing?

1. Does your perceived value correlate to your historical value?

The problem with spamming is not so much in the lack of value it promises to add. I’m sure yours is the best deal on the web. Perhaps we will get rich together. It’s conceivable that I actually want thousands of new Twitter follows each week. You actually might hold the secret to public relations in the 21st century. Maybe I will want to attend your free seminar that will blow the doors open on my FaceBook marketing strategy. I suppose I could use thousands of new highly qualified sales leads delivered straight to my inbox every Monday.

It’s not the potential value. It’s the complete lack of value that has been added before the promotion. You know. The stuff that builds trust.

2. Do you know how to recognize a Pollyanna?

If you can’t recognize the affectation in an update like “I love what I do and I hope you do too – follow your heart! Income will follow. God Bless” then might I suggest that you spend some time with the Read Head. Learn how to focus on you, avoid mediocrity, and stay away the small stuff without pretension.

There’s an extremely high level of potential new value in the above update (the promise of divine intervention, especially) but the authentic value factor correlates terribly.

It’s one thing if you’re a cheerful person behind a brand. Be that. Just don’t add any more airs than you need to or chances are good that you’ll be called out as a fake. As fake as… well, Spam.

3. Do you re-post compliments?

This one might be a personal pet peeve, but I think thank you’s should be sent as a direct response. An @ reply, a comment to an update. But not a retweet or re-post with your thank you imbedded in it. This is spam in my stream.

It’s a recurring meme that in my mind is a blatant attempt to self-gloss – self-promote your value – as opposed to letting it happen socially.

4. Could you say what you want to say in a physical networking setting?

This is an easy one. Say your update out loud. Better yet, in a mirror. Look yourself in the eye, say it, and then ask yourself how you’d respond if someone said it to you at a real-life networking event.

This was well put by Alli Gerkman in her blog for lawyers: “Would you really walk up to someone at a reception and say, “I OFFER GREAT LEGAL SERVICES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES–SEE MY WEBSITE FOR INFO!”?

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Image credits

Exactly opposite of athletes and musicians, working professionals spend 99% of their time executing and 1% of their time practicing. It’s hard to find places in business to practice. So when you do, you have to take advantage of them.

It’s not surprising to see Tiger Woods recognize the need to get out in front of stories during a crises. He’s a smart guy. He proves it in this article, where he comments aabout Michael Vick back in 2007:

If you made that big a mistake, you got to come out and just be contrite, be honest, and just tell the public ‘I was wrong’…I think waiting a long time got a lot of people polarized.”

So he knew, just like most of know, how to manage in a crises. But knowing isn’t the thing. Executing is. And he of all people should know that effective execution requires practice.

It supports points I make about social media being new tools that require the same fundamental strategy and approach we all know how to do in traditional networking spheres. Namely (and simply):

• Find communities that are right for you.
• Be nice, ask questions, and be authentic.
• Look to give more than you receive.
• View it as collaboration, not promotion.
• Do it even when you don’t feel like it.
• Do it even when you don’t feel like it.
• Do it even…etc.

The same applies to companies struggling to understanding how to leverage it while afraid of the possibilities if they do. The same questions companies deal with in other areas of their operations apply to the strategic approach they should take to social media.

Culture

• How do we view customers?
• How transparent are we?
• Do we want to have discussions?
• How do we use information gathered?
• Do we believe we can control messages?

Public Relations

• Do we look to add value above and beyond what we charge for? Is everything billable?
• Do we believe that we control messages?
• Or do we believe that we facilitate discussion?
• Do we believe that 5,000 views of a blog is as valuable as a New York Times placement?

Risk Tolerance

• Do we try things to develop context, or do we exhaustively plan before getting involved?
• Do we reward failure?
• Do we have recovery acumen?
• Is believe ever a part of our planning?

Diversity

• Do we seek to incorporate differing backgrounds into the status quo?
• Do we recognize the value of different cultures?
• Do we have a servant leader approach to finding ideas?
• Are we humble enough to listen?

A friend of mine made the point that in the 90’s, companies were worried about what would happen if they allowed anyone in the organization to have an email account. The new tool, it was feared, would generate widespread power of communications, making it impossible to control corporate messages.

Social media isn’t anything new from a strategy perspective.

Apple helps make this point with these two ads.

A recent article from a farmer makes no bones about Michael Pollan and his dilemmic omnivores acting as “Agri-Intellectuals” with no moral authority: one-book experts who think farmers are “too stupid to farm sustainably” and “too careless to worry about their communities, their health, and their families…Enough,” he writes. “Enough. Enough.”

Crocs, once “the quintessential American success story” with their staggering IPO giving a windfall for fashion laymen in Niwot, Colorado is facing a series of oddly brash predictions of their demise. Crocs is “toast,” and needs to “do the right thing” for shareholders and sell. The ugly shoe we love has somehow become the ugly company we hate.

Today, the jam-band festival of the internet, the gathering place for media-intellectuals, the promised land for laymen content creators is under attack. People are happily pointing out the cracks in social media.

Plenty of others have already done the heavy lifting on this topic. @olivermarks digs in and suggests that all of this is just too messy, too noisy, and too many amateurs are involved. He aptly alludes to the desktop publishing revolution, suggesting to me that there’s a learning curve to overcome and metaphorically we need to stop using so many fonts.

@geoffliving points out that the allure of social media is innovation. Not the end state, not the result of the activity, but rather the process itself. And now that the technologies have matured, social media is disinteresting him (in fact, it’s dead to him). Without “What’s Next” there’s “Not Much.”

Increasingly there’s Not Much in social media for younger demographics. If against-the-status-quo campaigns are any barometer younger participants are clearly resisting Facebook (or if you prefer, there’s actual data). And have you checked out Urbandictionary.com’s definitions of Twitter? Here’s the entry with the most Up’s:

A stupid site for stupid people with no friends, who think everyone else gives a s**t what they’re doing at any given time. Also lacks the functionality of other social networking sites, not that it matters because just like Twitter all those sites suck anyway.

(So if I’m on Twitter and Facebook, is my brand Bermuda shorts and black socks? Yikes.)

Yes, the backlash is in full swing. Spam is pervasive. Snake-oil salesmen are accused. Charlatanism warned. Value questioned.

But what does a backlash mean? How and why do backlashes occur? And why is it happening to social media?

Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Faludi wrote a manifesto about a backlash against feminism in the 1980’s. In Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women she suggests that backlashes aren’t coordinated conspiracies “with a council dispatching agents from some central room.” Nor are the elements of backlashes equal in their significance or power, and they aren’t always intentional.

Some manifestations, Faludi suggests, are “generated by a culture machine that is always scrounging for a ‘fresh’ angle.”

Certainly an apropos thought for the social media backlash. Once a brand or idea is perceived as breaking free from the margins (Dave Mathews Band) early adopters flee like frightened sparrows. Once the pragmatists take over, you’ve entered the Early Majority stage. Good for brands looking to scale, but not so good if your core market segment’s identity is on the margins.

There’s another possibility for the social media backlash. Quoted in Faludi’s book, Dr. Jean Baker Miller says backlashes occur when an existing power structure feels a threat. A backlash, Dr. Miller suggests, can be an indication that a new movement is actually having an effect, “when advances have been small, before changes are sufficient to help many people….almost as if the leaders of backlashes use the fear of change as a threat before major change has occurred.”

Do Pollan-ites pose a threat to the agri-business structure? Do small entrepreneurs who break rules and make millions with simple shoes upset the fashion status quo?

We clearly don’t know what kind of effect social media will have on the revenues of Bermuda-and-black-socks media giants. Or exactly what effect it’s had on newspaper closings. But if you’ve even heard of Manufacturing Consent, it isn’t a reach to suggest that there’s more than a little power under more than a little threat.

Systems have a way of casting out agents that aren’t in service to their prime function. All you have to do is come down with a cold to understand how this works. Or watch a few episodes of The Wire.

Or see the power that 140 characters and a YouTube video can have in the midst of a disputed election.

The new age of collaborative information: a threat to power structures or just not cool anymore?

The past few weeks have been powerful. I’ve reconnected with two long-lost friends. One’s a guitarist I met while attending Berklee College of Music, the other a magazine editor I worked with for a short stint in my career.

The guitarist moved back to Israel, the editor moved a few blocks away from me. The guitarist I found on Facebook, the editor I found at the neighborhood frozen custard shop.

International, hyperlocal. The reach of social media, the power of sugar and cream.

Two very different people with whom I shared important times during transitional periods in my life. I learned important lessons from both of them. And the lessons connect.

The guitarist taught me about the importance of technique. That you have to work to get it, that it never comes easy, that it isn’t the end but rather a means to an end, and that you must have it to be great. I’ll forever admire his technique, his work ethic, and his steadfast focus.

The editor taught me about forgiveness. That bad decisions happen and we’ve all made them. And if someone owns it, demonstrates how they’ve learned from it and will change (demonstrating attrition is not enough), then we all have a responsibility to forgive. I’ll forever be thankful to her for forgiving me once, and instilling in me the responsibility to forgive others.

In my professional world I’ve connected these lessons to the recent high-profile marcom gaffs and the discussions that have followed. Mistakes from the likes of Cayne, Ballmer and Judge seem to me to be a function of sub-par technique. Business executives certainly know better, but sometimes they just don’t have the chops to execute correctly.

And it happens to all of us. So we should be able to forgive a brand or a person every now and again if they’re willing to learn and change. I’d suggest that this is a lot more powerful than fanning the flames.

I’ll point once again to this seemingly simple post from @chrisbrogan. What makes it a gem is the last section: This Could Be You.

A guitarist taught me that it doesn’t have to be. An editor taught me what to do when it is.

It’s a simple concept: repeat as many skills within as many contexts as often as possible so when it comes time to execute, you aren’t thinking. You’re fully in service to the prime function of the enterprise and its mission.

It’s precisely the opposite in business. We’re executing all the time with hardly any practice. The results are obvious. Time and again we see gaffs far more destructive than an MJ missed dunk. And we blog about it and pass it around the social media sphere, fingers pointed.

As several recent blog posts have illustrated, discussions about your brand are prototypical examples of unpracticed behavior in the marcom discipline. @chrisbrogan has a nice post in response to Best Buy CMO Barry Judge (with a nice twist that looks at the back side of the issue). @stevetobak turns some problematic statements from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer into productive advice on how to speak about your competition.

(These are the positive examples. Big kudos to these two for providing us with something to learn instead of the too-typical banal jeer.)

For me, there’s always a little voice in the back of my brain telling me these folks know better. That it was poor execution. That maybe they just didn’t practice enough.

And that I need to find more practice fields so I don’t make the same mistakes. Or invent entirely new ones for people to blog about.

There are several leadership thinkers who have written about the concept of practice fields for leaders. Heifetz, Linsky, and Grashow come to mind. As does Kouzes’ advice for finding practice fields in everyday meetings. And the practice field experience is often cited as a key benefit by enterprises offering leadership training programs.

So where to find practice fields for branding and marketing folks?

At first glance, the repetitive nature of new and social media is numbing. How many times can we be expected to read a post about brand monitoring through social media? Sit through a video about search engine optimization? Hear advice about the still-illusive practice of viral campaigns?

I’m beginning to think that new/social media is my practice field. That maybe I can never read or view or hear this stuff enough. That I shouldn’t be so quick to skip a blog post or a snappy quote in my Twitter stream. Maybe the repetition in the new/social media domain is my practice field. Maybe this is where I can hear, again and again, best practices that will make my execution more effective.

And if I involve myself more in discussions instead of glossing over a topic I think I’ve heard before, my assumptions will be challenged. I’ll dig a little deeper. I’ll practice.

Another apropos @chrisbrogan blog post: Five Tasks in the Morning. Seems to me that he’s scheduled time for practice. And he does it every day.

From what little I know about him, he doesn’t miss many slam dunks.

Doug and I had pulled together some links to present at the panel, but never got around to using them. As promised at the panel here they are. Hopefully they’ll prove useful for those in attendance and anyone else who happens across this post.

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Five things lawyers need to know about social media

LexTweet: Legal community members who use Twitter.

SecuritiesDocket.com has a directory as well

Law Memo: A good employment law blog (and good Twitter follow, too)

Law.com’s legal blog watch: a blog roll of legal blogs

The Legal Beat: a portal/aggrevator of legal information and news

LinkedIn Groups sorted by the keyword “legal”

Twitter tracking tools rounded up in a nice blog post

Law schools’ social media best practices blog post

C-Level executives social media usage report from Forbes and Google

A great legal content portal – documents, presentations, more

FriendFeed for lawyers – a blog post by a lawyer for lawyers.

Social networking for lawyers - Socialmediatoday post.

Those last two came to me from a law student on Twitter called Rex7. You can follow him on Twitter, and check out his blog.

Have some more to share? Please add them by commenting on this post.

There’s a book called How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. I haven’t read all of it. And I think it’s excellent. So excellent, in fact, that I can take its principles and apply it to a blog post.

I think the author would be proud of me. Pierre Bayard is a smarty-pants professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and a psychoanalyst. Not exactly a slacker.

The main theme of the book is that there isn’t any possible way to read (defined as complete, beginning to end, comprehended reading) all the books civilized people are expected to read. Especially since there are thousands of new books published every day. It’s an exponential problem. So we’ve created “an oppressive system of obligations” that has generated “widespread hypocrisy.”

(Smarty pants.)

What truly matters is that you understand where great works of literature fit in the cannon. How they’ve contributed to the dialog of our collective library.

And we can do this by not reading well.

Nothing could be more apropos and helpful for those of us who insist on trying to wade through today’s grotesque expanse of digital dossiers. Messy and growing exponentially. Futilely trying to generate itself at the same rate of the life and place it’s trying to document, creating an oppressive system indeed.

Thanks to M. Bayard, I’m inspired to do my part in ending the hypocrisy. To come out of the closet and admit that I don’t read a lot of stuff online.

Liberté! Vive le…. not reading!

Mashable tweeted a link to a story about the five companies that are the biggest threat to Twitter. I didn’t even click it.

A few days later a friend asked me over breakfast what I thought the future of Twitter would be. I really have no idea. But I was able to posit, confidently, that apparently there are several companies posing a threat to Twitter and growth always draws you away from your customers and customer conversations is what Twitter is all about and what has made them great in the first place.

A blog about the top 10 secrets to good search engine optimization? Once I determine if the person who wrote it is legit, I’ll bookmark it (along with the other thousand or so permalinks on this very subject). I’ll to refer it later if/when I have a client project to which it applies.

An exposé on Andrew Sullivan in The Economist? Forget it. That gets barely skimmed, then tweeted in case someone else has the patience. But if someone brings up Sullivan at a networking event, I’m ready.

“The Economist recently wrote a lengthy article on him. How he defies stereotypes, and his very interesting background. Gay, Catholic-conservative, from an off-the-beaten-path town in England. Really defies expectations for someone so immensely popular. Maybe that’s why he is so popular: he transcends categories. Do you read his blog?”

M. Bayard has an excellent way of annotating referenced books in an effort to encourage transparency and quality not-reading. I think we could institute something similar on the web. His system follows, only I’ve substituted “Content” for “Book” and the corresponding “C” for “B:”

UC: content unknown to me
SC: content I have skimmed
HC: content I have heard about
FC: content I have forgotten
++: extremely positive opinion
+: positive opinion
-: negative opinion
–: extremely negative opinion

I’d add to his list:

YC: Yet-to-read/skim this content
DC: Desire to read/skim this content
SEC: Someone else please read/skim this content then blog succinctly about it so I’ll know more of what it’s about.

(And of course, in our world, “read/skim” means, “view/fast-forward through” or “listen to/ fast-forward through.”)

Honest and transparent. Think of the tweets alone:

• Mashable blog post on Twitter competitors. tinyurl/etc. SC+
• Long, in-depth Economist expose on Andrew Sullivan. tinyurl/etc. SEC++
• New tips on search engine optimization. tinyurl/etc. DC-
• @followerofyours You should check out Seth Godin. Lots of posts about naming a company. HC

A friend had a great blog post (++) on de-anonymize-ing Twitter accounts based on data from tweets. He’s as smart of a guy as I’ve ever known. He can absorb information faster than a tweet can tell you what someone’s having for breakfast.

I was unsurprised that he admitted not having read the entire article upon which his post was based. He came clean about it with a sentence, but he didn’t need to.

You’re a mortal, my friend. Reference the article, SC+. Done.

Go pick up M. Bayard’s book. It’s a good skim.

I think what make Seth’s posts so enduring and sticky is his experience in the world. And how he bridges those experiences for his readers to learn from. Stories make ideas come alive.

I attended the Berklee College of Music for a stint. A guitarist friend was getting passed up for gigs, and once asked me to critique his style. I remember struggling with a constructive answer, but finally said “You sound like you’re in a practice room. You gotta get out, man.”

(It took a while for us to get over that one.)

Seth’s ideas come from the world; not books or a stream of updates and links. He’s a sharp observer. And its clear he experiences the world in such a way that he always learns.

So I’m not wondering at all why he’s shying away from Twitter. I went back through the earlier thousand or so of his 2,000+ posts (believe me – there are worse things to do with your time). Have a look at what his adventures might have looked like as a Twitter stream.

Tweeps, it isn’t about what you’re doing. It’s about what you’re learning.

——–

• Met a band in Central Park. Had breakfast with them. #newmusic
• Stranded in New Jersey, went shopping. Was uninspired. #fail
• Travelling across country, had to remove shoes, give up batteries, and remove fleece jacket. WTH?
• Before working out in a Mineapolis hotel, turned off televisions. Business traveler enters and turns on CNN. #jerk
• Can’t pronounce Prius. Bad brand name. #fail
• Driving my Miata. #smile
• Rode some rides at Hershey Park. Read too many signs, dealt w too many people, accosted by bad brass band playing Hawaii Five 0.
• Lunch with friend @Jim who hates his job. Made lunch a little depressing.
• Went to Subway; special on meat sandwiches and they’re sponsoring a heart walk.
• Talked with two Harvard MBA’ers, said small companies don’t interview on campus. Too bad.
• Bought books at a major bookstore. Didn’t give email address. #spam
• Really enjoying some Scharffen Berger chocolate. #chocolate
• Buying socks in sporting goods store, got distracted by dangerous toy.
• Had to fill out annoying form for hotel reservation. Hate that.
• Spent a bunch of money on #GratefulDead stuff. Always a dangerous catalog to receive.
• Went through closet. Lamented the cuff link.
• Nominated for award. Wore tux. Lost to a sock puppet. #lampchop
• In Vegas: check out this statue of liberty facsimile: www.twitpic.com/etc
• Got my picture taken with a clown nose: http: www.tinyurl/etc.
• AA lost wife’s luggage. Returned golf clubs instead. Argh!
• Comparing morning workout and commute mileage is causing too much stress. #stop
• I invented the term “landing page.” Taking arguments on my blog. www.tinyurl.com/etc.
• Gave speech to credit card execs. Stiffs in other conference room had worse snacks.
• Went to Broadway show with the fam. Understudy instead of lead. Bummer.
• Biking in Providence w wife. Ever notice that couples have same helmet habits?
• My interns ROCK!!!!!!!!
• Brunch with friend @Bob. Tivo’s here to stay!
• Note to wife: don’t use Reply All.
• Bought a 5.97 lb lobster. Paid for 6 lbs. #ripoff
• At a music industry conference in Aspen. Man, Bob Lefsetz just doesn’t get me.
• Airport announcements asking everyone to pay attention are useless and annoying.
• Skiing, lost keys to Prius in snow (can’t pronounce Prius, but own one). Searching web for answer is harder than searching in snow.
• Dear Westin Hotel: when I tell you 2X I don’t need a reminder wake up call, I mean it. & when I cancel the call, u don’t need to cancel the reminder that I never asked 4.
• Bronx shop calls itself Yahuu. LOL! www.twitpic.com/etc.
• C’mon. These cookies aren’t healthy! #fail www.twitpic.com/etc.
• In LGA. Security won’t let rat poison on planes. Who’d carry that on anyway? LOL
• My mktg agency signed Pamela Anderson. Woot!
• My 11 yr old is making a stop-action animated movie. So cute!
• At buffet, eating squid soup and brown rice.
• Wow the fire trucks in my neighborhood are clean. Firefighters must be bored.
• There’s a pool table in my room at the Artisan in Vegas!
• Why are all the students at this conference wearing black suits?
• Waiting in line at Vegas airport. 12 deep to buy $2 h2o!
• I miss my Mom.
• Microsoft’s new game system is called Wii. Pronounced We. WTH?
• Overheard @ airline counter after 1st class pass. isn’t accommodated. Man: “Do you know who I am?” ….
• …Counter agent over intercom: “Emergency: man at counter has amnesia. If anyone knows him and can help, please come forward.” LOL
• Wearing my seersucker suit today. People are really noticing!
• In Grand Caymen. No one. Is in. This. Restaurant.
• OMG! Robert DeNiro called me today! (OK, it was a recording. I hung up.)
• LOVE the Pump in NY. Long line today though :( Anyone here? Tweetup?
• Didn’t pre-print boarding pass today. #foreheadmeethand.
• Last tweet for a while: at White Plains airport and can’t find outlet to recharge my phone.
• Hey @friend in NY: sorry for the brush-off. DM me okay?
• Helping son with homework, writing about Extatosoma tiaratum. Thanks Wikipedia! :)
• Had a drop of hair gel left in 5 oz. bottle. TSA made me toss it. Heeeellloo!?! More than half empty!?!?
• Man, that Wii is selling like crazy. Still a dumb name.
• Crazies are out today. Saw guy playing flute while driving. Later, different guy playing flute while driving. #endtimes
• In Radio Shack. Woman sez cell phone didn’t come w charger. Manager sold her one for ½ price. #fail
• Crazy parking at Halloween costume shop. Kid will throw a fit if I don’t get one. Must. Get. Costume.
• Just burned 604.2 calories during my workout today. Ready to get to work! Woot!
• Sitting next to cofounder of BoingBoing at conference. Talk about ADD. Dude – try to focus.
• Hey #Apple: the new iPhone could really use a GPS feature.
• Overheard a parent: Parenting books tell you what to expect, but kids are unpredictable. So true!
• Skipped the caves in Lascaux France. Can’t see them anyway: protected b/c of damage. :(
• Same guy I sat next to on the plane came to hotel gym while I was working out. #freaky
• Got my oil changed. Last time they washed the car. Not this time. And no washer fluid.
• Career Day with 8th graders. Some are into it, some are bored. Fun for me!
• At Union Sq. Mkt. Woman gave egg carton back to vendor for re-use. #sustainability
• Cab drivers in my town are nuts. Avoiding lights does not necessarily mean a short cut.
• Went to trade in my Prius. No record of my appnt. Walked out in 10 minutes. #fail
• Friend @Derren reminds me: your actions today could be tomorrow’s anecdote. Myb I should do something with all this stuff
• My bank pres parks in front. Shouldn’t that be for customers?
• friend & bz owner giving out her product at Zabars. Doesn’t she have people for that?
• Waiting at vet. Ad for ID chips for dogs. That’ll be hard to stardardize, huh?
• At Indian consulate to get Visa. Anyone know an easier way? This is painful.
• A thought: conferences that run over (this one is 50 minutes behind) say: speakers are more important that attendees.
• Accidentally kept a grapefruit on my carry on, made it home with it. LOL
• Went to my publisher today. They didn’t have my book in the display case. Um, I’m kind of a big deal in the book world
• At my mktg agency office. They hang employee art in their hallways. Cool!
• Looking for someone to office share with me in NY. Anyone have any leads?