And speaking of photography, if you haven’t seen Michael Longfellow’s site CapeMayX.com yet, definitely check it out as well. He’s now selling his photo collection via ImageKind and they look spectacular.
If you haven’t heard of Shorpy yet, definitely check out the site. This 1947 photo below of a woman floating in the water at Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida is simply stunning. A larger version of the picture plus the option to purchase the print from Juniper Gallery is also available on the site.
I was up at Book Warehouse the other day and had the chance to skim through a copy of Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman
Really liking the book and the message it communicated, I seriously considered purchasing it. However, when I thought this, I stopped in my tracks because of something I remembered thinking before. Why is it that we often purchase books about things we already know?
I wasn’t too sure about this before but having just recently wrote about being introverted when I was young, I think I realize the answer now. Trust. We don’t trust ourselves. And in purchasing a book about the things we already know about, we are basically confirming our beliefs and our trust in ourselves.
It’s strange because so many people today are afraid of starting relationships with others. Obviously people don’t want to be hurt. They’re fearful of opening up and trusting someone else again. However, by doing this I think we’re forgetting about all of the positive aspects of a relationship. Thus we’re basically severing ourselves from the world because of a few bad incidents.
This is what happens with ourselves as well. We trust ourselves until something bad happens and then we immediately cut ourselves off from our inner voice because of a few bad mistakes. I don’t think we should do this, just as much as I don’t think we should cut ourselves off from the world because of a few bad relationships we’ve had in the past. If anything, I think we’re at a time when we need to be taking more risks and putting more trust in others. And strangely enough, I think the more we start trusting ourselves, the more we’ll start trusting others as well.
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Someone on YouTube created an amazing mashup of dance videos showing the origins of the dance moves in the World of Warcraft. I think this video perfectly relays the importance of needing more ways to express ourselves in these online virtual worlds and communities. For example, I’m guessing a lot of the outfits used on the Warcraft characters were probably quite difficult to obtain in the game and also required level requirements to wear. I find this somewhat absurd, since it would be like walking into a store to buy a simple red t-shirt, only to find out you needed $1000 to pay for it, as well as be a rocket scientist. By creating restrictions like this, you’re only limiting the expressive capabilities of those within your communities which only ends up frustrating them.
Update: BTW I think this is one reason why online community sites like Gaia Online are so popular right now, even though it’s origins were just as a online forum. Here’s a quote from their About Us page that talks about the way their members can express themselves much more so than other typical forum sites or services.
Endless Customization: Gaia revolves around creative customization. Every member can create their own virtual character and dress it up with over five thousand items: clothes, accessories, pets, masks and just about anything else imaginable.
I was just thinking about what I want to do, not only with this site but also with my life in terms of work. Just thinking about this for a little bit, I kept coming back to communities. When I reflected on this some more, I realized what was drawing me to community building was creating the right kind of culture in these communities. And when I focused on that, a flood of memories came back to me.
You see when I was younger, I was highly introverted. While I did have a small handful of friends that I hung out with, I really didn’t interact with others in larger social situations or events that much. Part of this was because I was shy but the other part of it was I just didn’t like the way people treated each other. To some people, things like peer pressure are a normal part of school. To me, it just felt wrong and I decided I’d rather be independent doing my own things rather than tagging along like a dog being subservient to the whims of the social elitists of these groups.
When I grew up, those feelings stuck with me. And as I grew out of my shell, I become more and more vocal in striving to address these issues in any way I could. It’s also why I think I started delving into online communities as well. I was tired of seeing these negative environments around communities and wanted to help people by creating environments that were much more positive. And of course, as soon as I remembered that I realized something very important.
Remember my recent post where I said the words “Connect. Empower. Inspire.” felt right to me? Well I had said that I wasn’t quite sure what “empower” related to so I just assumed it meant technological software that was easy to use for people. Now I know what the word “empower” really means. Empower is about creating the right culture within the communities that I want to help build. In doing so, these positively cultured communities help to empower people, allowing them to do things they’ve never been able to do before, and thus more importantly inspire them to do things that they’ve only dreamed of. What’s that? Inspire them to follow their passions.
Therefore that’s what these trinity of words really mean to me.
So all three are interdependent upon one another but I think the most important aspect of this is really creating the right culture which empowers the people immersed within it to be the best that they can be, instead of being a negative culture that weighs upon them, forcing them to only be what they are told to be (i.e. “This is your cubicle. Don’t leave it.”).
Finally what’s really interesting about this is that this culture isn’t just an online thing. Actually if anything, the type of culture that a company is offline in their work environment will directly influence the culture created around their products online. In effect, they are interconnected and interdependent upon one another.
I made some changes to my site over the past few days but as soon as I made them, something felt “wrong”. I feel like I’m really really close to something but changing the approach of this site to “house” my business activities (i.e. web design, etc) is “wrong”. I just know it deep down in my gut intuitively (which is probably why I didn’t like doing it the first time I tried adding work stuff to it before).
The best way I could describe it is that I want this site to represent my inner core as a person. Not sure if you want to call it my values, culture, or whatever. I just know it’s not about selling something. It’s about giving something instead. It’s about sharing my experiences, feelings, and thoughts about things that are truly meaningful and important to me, whether they make sense to everyone or not. All I know is that in sharing them, possibly someone out there will connect with what I’m saying and it will make sense to them.
As for work (i.e. web design), well I’m still pursuing that but if I set something up, I’ll set it up on another site somewhere else. For now, I’ll keep my portfolio up here but once I get a business site setup elsewhere, I’ll transfer it there.
And for those who have been following my blog for a while and seem to get some insight from it into their own lives, I just want to reiterate something I’ve said in the past on this site and to others directly in emails. I don’t know everything. I’m just like many people in life who are winging it, trying to make meaning of their lives from day to day. I think that’s why I feel so strange hyping my own work (yet as a business I know you’re “supposed” to want to look “perfect” and to have the “spotlight” on yourself). I know some people think my work is great but I just feel like it’s ok and there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing instead.
Actually I’ll reiterate what I told someone else before. I have this feeling deep down inside of me (my intuition again I guess) that’s telling me that all of the skills and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years are not meant to draw attention to myself but instead to be used to draw attention to something else. Again the more emphasis I seem to place on myself, the more I feel like I’m going in the wrong direction. It’s almost as though I don’t want people to be looking at me but at something else that I’m supposed to be working on that is meaningfully important to me somehow in making the world a better place (even if just locally around me).
What is this work? I’m still not 100% sure yet but I feel like I’m really close to it though. For now, the best I can do is keep relaying the meaningful feelings and experiences I’m having because it feels “right” to do so and it seems to maintain my “flow”. Hopefully, with time, more will be revealed. One day at a time I guess (and that seems to be my new favorite phrase lately as I continue to work at putting the pieces of this puzzle together).
For those who have read my blog for a while, you’ll know that I keep reiterating a common metaphor about the “pieces” of a greater “puzzle” that I’m slowly discovering and putting together. And just like sport athletes who hit plateaus in improving themselves, discoveries often come in stages with plateaus afterwards where you may discover nothing for a while. That’s the way I’ve been feeling for a while but I think I may have just stepped off a plateau and started climbing again after discovering a site a couple of days ago.
Steve Pavlina has a very popular site relating to personal development for “smart people” that I’ve never heard of until now. Now I’ve seen people and sites somewhat similar to this before and I’ve always read about a paragraph or two before I intuitively feel this “wrongness” with the person. In effect, they really aren’t out to help but are only interested in your money. With Steve’s site, this feeling immediately changed after reading a few paragraphs of one of his posts and then after reading more than a few of them, I felt that I had stumbled onto something that was just “right” to me. What brought this feeling of “rightness”? Synchronicity.
After reading a few posts, I was somewhat dumbfounded at the similar thoughts I had with Steve. Even more so, these thoughts were ones that I knew deep down where correct but I had been having a difficult time putting them into words for others. Steve, the way he worded things, removed that complexity and relayed my thoughts and feelings with direct simplicity. If I had to compare it to something else, I’d probably have to say it equates to when I first read The Cluetrain Manifesto and was blown away that someone had finally put to words what I have been feeling for so long.
Below are a couple of examples of quotes from Steve’s site. I’ve also bolded synchronous thoughts that match my own (that often go against mainstream thinking).
“Don’t pick a niche just because you think it will make you money. I see many bloggers try to do that, and it’s almost invariably a recipe for failure. Think about what you love most, and then find a way to make your topic appealing to a massive global audience. Consider what will provide genuine value to your visitors. It’s all about what you can give.“
“I don’t think you’ll get very far if money is your #1 motivation for blogging. You have to be driven by something much deeper. Money is just frosting. It’s the cake underneath that matters. My cake is that I absolutely love personal development – not the phony “fast and easy” junk you see on infomercials, but real growth that makes us better human beings. That’s my passion. Pouring money on top of it just adds more fuel to the fire, but the fire is still there with or without the money.”
“Think about the effect you want your writing to have on people. Since I write about personal growth, I want my writing to change people for the better. I want to expand people’s thinking, to raise their consciousness, and to help them eliminate fear from their lives. If my writing doesn’t change people’s thinking, actions, or awareness, then my value isn’t being transferred well enough.”
“Strong content is universally valued. It’s hard work to create it, but in the long run it generates lots of long-term referral traffic. I’d rather write one article I’m really proud of than 25 smaller posts. It’s been my experience that the best articles I write will outperform all the forgettable little posts I’ve made. Quality is more important than quantity. Quantity without quality, however, is easier, which is one reason so many people use that strategy. Ultimately, however, the Internet already contains more quantity than any one of us can absorb in our lifetimes, but there will always be a place for good quality content that stands out from the crowd.”
“If there’s one insider’s secret I can offer to how to become an A-list blogger, this is it: Treat your blog as your primary outlet for contribution to the world. Make it your legacy. Write to pass on knowledge and ideas that you think will really benefit people. Focus first and foremost on providing value. If you can do that, the rest is relatively easy. Value builds referrals. Referrals build traffic. Traffic generates income. Income increases your ability to contribute, which in turn helps you provide even more value. The keys to unlocking this positive spiral are contribution, contribution, contribution.”
“There’s still a potential dark side to this lifestyle, however. I’ve seen many bloggers fall into the trap of turning their blogs into their lives. They sit at their computers all day, answering email, reading RSS feeds, and cranking out posts. That’s not a lifestyle I’d choose to emulate. I had my RSS subscriptions down to just 5 feeds total, and I recently eliminated those as well, so I don’t subscribe to any other feeds at all, nor do I read or watch the news or visit any daily web sites. I prefer to use real life, not cyberspace, as my primary source of inspiration. I also try to limit my email to about 15 minutes a day, 30 minutes max. On weekends I like to get away from the computer and go out with my family. When I want more input, I read books or talk to people face to face. Blogging can too easily devolve into a pattern of Internet addiction, and I want to steer clear of that.”
More than anything though, I think Steve’s articles have gotten me back on a path that I was distracted from. I had previously believed that certain things weren’t possible, without fully exploring them, but now I see that they are possible. It just takes a little bit of perseverance and focus.
Oh and one last thing. Every time I stumble across a site or book that helps me advance my pursuits and passions, I always ask myself the typical question of “Why didn’t I find or see this sooner?” As soon as I ask the question, I know the answer. It was because I wasn’t ready to see it yet. Something in my thoughts or approach was blinding me from it. Therefore, while discovering Steve’s site will help me to learn many things, it’s also important for me to discover what thoughts or approaches were blinding me from it as well. Off the top of my head, I think focus and perseverance, as I just mentioned above, are two factors that I need to focus on.
It’s funny. I remember taking martial arts long ago and after achieving my next belt my master informed me that I still needed to work on my focus. I never fully understood that but I think it’s slowly dawning on me now.
Guy Kawasaki interviewed Penelope Trunk and the first question he asked her was about happiness.
Question: How much money does it take to be happy?
Answer: It takes about $40,000. It does not matter how many kids you have or what city you live in—that’s splitting hairs because peoples’ happiness levels are largely based on their level of optimism and the quality of their relationships. So as long as you have enough money for food and shelter, your optimism level kicks in to dictate how happy you are.
So very true! $40,000 is what I would call a sustainable income for Vancouver. You could easily live comfortably here with it, even with the high cost of rent here.
At the same time, I remembered when I used to work for a web firm in town and they were talking of raising my salary from $45,000 to $60,000 because I helped out so much with the company in so many different ways. What was my response? I said it was nice of them to offer but I’d rather see the working environment improve.
Thus if they paid me the extra money, I’d reinvest it in the people in the company in anyway I could so as to make their work environment more enjoyable. For example, I used to bring in bagels for breakfast, buy birthday cakes, treat staff to lunch, and so on using money from my own pocket. I felt these people deserved some visible form of appreciation, no matter how small or simple it may have been (i.e. bringing in bagels for breakfast). In effect, it wasn’t about the amount of money you had but what you did with it.
JR at Cambrian House forgot his laptop while coming into work a few days ago. Of course, you’d think his world would end without the access and connectivity of his machine? Wrong. Sounds like he had one of his most productive days yet, as the constraints placed upon him allowed him to be more creative with his productivity.
I think this is a perfect example of the irony of computer connectivity. The more connected we are by machines, the less we feel connected inside. That’s why I think we need a balance or harmony between the two (and I kind of hinted at this at the end of my Paradox: In Giving, You Make Yourself Stronger post a while ago). In effect, just as much as we try to find ways to weave our offline activities online, we should also be finding ways to weave our online activities offline.
BTW I’m not saying computers are evil here. I’m just saying that the design of computers hasn’t evolved enough yet to let people interact face to face without the machine still being in the way. Design advancements are being made though, such as Jeff Han’s touch screen displays, that allow people to collectively collaborate together more intuitively, thus maintaining the physical and visual presence of one another while working with computer technology.
Funny, I just remembered a multiplayer gaming center called Bliink Interactive that I used to work at a long time ago before it closed its doors. I think this is the primary reason why I enjoyed the environment of it so much. You had all of these people connected both offline and online, thus you could not only see their actions playing a computer game online but also see their facial expressions and feelings offline as well.
I read on Wikipedia the other day that Dave ‘Zoid’ Kirsch, the creator of Quake Capture The Flag, was working at NCsoft now, so I popped over to their site to check out what they did. Surprised, I realized they were the company behind the popular massively multiplayer game Guild Wars.
Guild Wars
Digging further, I decided to check out their job postings and found one for a Community Manager as well as another for a Web Content Writer/Community Liaison which is a job classification I’ve never heard of before.
The Web Content Writer/Community Liaison will join a team of people working on public NCsoft MMO game web sites that strive to both entice and inform game players about our virtual worlds. This person is responsible for quickly converting content into web pages, and posting them to the appropriate sections of the web site.
Other Responsibilities include:
- Analyzes community information needs and plans for short and long-term site development.
- Writes a considerable amount of new content, some technical and some fictional.
- Will become responsible for several areas of various NCsoft game web sites.
- Maintain those sections, adding and removing content as necessary, including converting other departments’ documents into HTML.
- Work with PR, Community, and Marketing Team members to write and publish content covering new game marketing and sales programs including email marketing campaigns.
- Will need to become very familiar with the MMO industry, NCsoft products, and to be able to write and answer questions about various NCsoft games.
- Regular communication with external community/fan sites, establishing relationships with these sites and pitching NCsoft products and key messages to these sites.
Qualifications:
- 3 years experience in web-related work
- Proven web site design, implementation, and maintenance (include URLs with application) preferably with other MMOs either through employment with a game company, or through third party gaming websites.
- At least 3 samples of previous sites developed REQUIRED.
- Mid-level HTML coding knowledge
- Expert knowledge of English grammar
- Expert knowledge of web copywriting techniques
- Knowledge of website usability
- Experience with Movable Type and Macromedia Contribute a plus.
- Photoshop and other graphics creation/editing skills
- Excellent writing skills (writing samples requested) both technical and fictional
- Ability to understand and learn MMO games quickly
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team
- Ability to correspond with the public, good judgment
Now get a load of what they’d prefer to have in a candidate.
Preferred:
- The ideal candidate will already be familiar and have experience with MMOs and NCsoft games.
- The ideal candidate for this position is a game industry veteran familiar with creating centralized websites for gamers to learn everything they need to know about their favorite game.
- Terms like +4% to INT shouldn’t be unfamiliar or scary to you.
- If you have written player guides, strategy guides, or created intricate stats tables for no good reason other than to help your fellow gamers, you are one of us and we would love to see your work.
- Previous experience as a writer/editor for a computer game blog and/or community site is a big plus.
All in all, I’d say I meet 80% to 90% of this job’s qualifications (and my portfolio work with large game publishers, like Sierra and Activision, as well as my previous community fan site experience displays this). As usual though, the company is based elsewhere (Austin, Texas) and it looks like they need someone to work locally. I find this somewhat frustrating since you’re primarily working in a virtual environment online and thus should be able to work from anywhere, yet I realize the critical aspects of the job are probably internal collaboration within the company and that’s really difficult to do if you’re not face to face (and I’ve had experience with that myself).
On the plus side of things, a job posting like this is really nice to see and gives me hope. To me it solidifies a lot of the work and research I’ve been doing with communities and their cultures. It proves that there are companies out there who value a strong relationship with their customers and are willing to work hard at building a community hub of information and guides with which people can immerse themselves within (versus just creating a ‘brochure site’ that provides no more information than the back of a game box).