It could get worse 2.0 - Marcus Brown

The trail finds itself in Germany today. How it got there, it cannot recall but look what it found!

Marcus Brown has a partner in Sacrum who says:

I have mission! I want to leave Europe and work in Great Empire where advertising goodness happens. So I pack bags and go when called. I apply to your agency and you employ, yes? Yes! You call I come and bring cognitive knowledges and pencils.

Marcus has started week one:

If you've never been here before you may want to read this first. If you can't be bothered I'll tell you anyway. Paul Colman and a friend had a run in with an avalanche and got lifted of a mountain by mountain rescue. I've pleged to paint a painting, document it here and then sell it, with the money going to the gentlemen in a helicopter that saved them. Today is week one.

Check out the work in progress.

Consider adding this site to your RSS Reader.
Consider adding Sacrum to your RSS Reader.

How about that, another 2 for 1 deal!

2000Bloggers

What was once a fun thing to join is now continuing to grow. The count when visiting to draft this posting was already at 1730 pictures and growing. Pretty soon, 2000Bloggers will really be 2000!

Welcome to 2k Bloggers

Ever wondered what the blogosphere looks like? Well, this is what it looks like. See the blogosphere.

We're bloggers from all walks of life, from mommy bloggers to marketing bloggers: Some are SEO experts, some are writers, some are sports enthusiasts, some are affiliate marketers, some are business professionals, some are political... ALL HAVE OPINIONS!!!

We're a community of bloggers dedicated to sharing. Our writers write on various topics; we're all about variety and diversity.

I for one, have appreciated the traffic and the opportunity to go exploring. Were there be one post per, it would take 8 years of weekday posts to cover the 2000! And yet the blogosphere continues to grow...

Add this site to your RSS Reader and appreciate the diversity!

Freaked Out Fathers - Peter Aldin

Sometimes the Hitchhikers don't have to go too far to find a good blog. Sometimes, the blogger finds you. Such was the case when Peter left a comment about Sgt Pepper turning 40. His grandparents gave the album to him when he was 11. Now that is a set of grandparents! It is no wonder that Peter is a remarkable guy.

He writes in his about page:

My name is Peter Aldin, married man and father of two boys. Apart from my contribution to populating the planet, I’m also founder of Great Circle Life Coaching.

My greatest success in life has come from empowering others to succeed. The last 12 years have found me…

• Life-coaching and counseling - over 6 years in areas of business communication, family communication, leadership, motivation, vocational guidance, time-management, personal boundary-setting, instructional design and goal-setting
• Delivering and designing courses and workshops for a variety of participants from professionals to church leaders to parents
  
• Delivering and designing competency-based training in tertiary colleges and retail businesses (for franchisees like Subway, Mitre 10 hardware, McDonalds and Mobil Quix convenience stores)
• Delivering Call Centre induction training (yes, I have a lot to answer for there, don’t I?)
• Developing a youth mentoring network (Nexus Youth Keysborough) - which still operates in my absence
  
• Supporting the needs of a small community of Cambodian migrants through pastoral care
• Co-designing and co-facilitating the Opening Doors program for longterm unemployed - with emphases on motivation, goal setting and jobseeking strategy - with successful placement outcomes

So you get two blogs for one click today. One humorous one at Freaked-out Fathers and one more serious one at Great Circle.

I like the part about

Why “Great Circle”?

Great Circle refers to the method sailors and pilots use to navigate their way around a sphere ( the Earth!). Great circle navigation requires both factual knowledge of earth geography and a willingness to think “counter-intuitively”. In a complex world, instinct and habit often drive us off course rather than steering us toward success and satisfaction. Our instinct is to plot our course in straight lines, but the world simply doesn’t operate that way. Reality often demands that we find ways which run contrary to our instincts when trying to reach our goals and aspirations. This is why some of our best ideas and best intentions are often frustratingly slow to achieve or even - sadly - unrealized. Great Circle is about re-learning and re-thinking our approach to family and business dynamics and relationships. In this way, we actually get to where we want to go and we often do so faster…

Check out Peter's sites. You'll be glad you did!

Teaching with Aloha blog

The Hitchhikers found Rosa Say and her Talking Story blog once upon a time.

Dean Boyer found Rosa and Managing with Aloha once upon a time.

Together they have created "Teaching with Aloha".

Dean writes:

I have always loved school, even my eleven years in college! I had difficult experiences like everyone else but I enjoyed learning. Memories include field trips to Helm's bakery, seaside tidepools and a naval aircraft carrier. Teachers like Mrs. Hurt, who seemed to like you as long as you were not her student, Mr. McClure's plastic bat which he would use as a pointer and "wake-up" tool (the class pooled their money to buy him a new bat at the end of the year), Mr. Steele's "heads will roll" and Mrs. Schweitzer's first day opening comment, "Good morning ladies and gentlemen...and others." Yes, I enjoyed school.

I still enjoy the exciting school atmosphere where hundreds of children's lives collide and blend with each other. After a 30 year career as a teacher, principal and superintendent, I remain energized. I expect schools to provide cultures of transformation, healing, counsel and wonder. For this deeper work to occur, teachers must teach and administrators must lead from their hearts.

Teaching with Aloha encourages educators to do their challenging, inestimable work from the heart so that some day, perhaps 40-50 years later, their students will be able to say, "I loved school!"

Rosa writes:

Teaching with Aloha was created as a resource for all who teach as an expression of the aloha they wish to share with others. If you teach, instruct, educate, train, coach and mentor, Teaching with Aloha is here for you.

We are a collaborative work in progress, just recently created in February of 2007

There have been some thoughtful posts on:

• Ordinary into Extraordinary!
• Valuing the Whole Child
• Lockdown!
• Four Days with Rosa!
• Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Peppermint Patty

If you are any fan of Rosa, you will want to add this site to your RSS Reader. She and Dean are off to a great start. Join the conversation!

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

The trail was winding it was along and came upon this as a link within another blog. Followed the link. Had a devil of a time trying to find out what ASCD was an acronym for? Only was able to find it on the footer of the web site. Anyway, they had a conference in Anaheim, CA recently. There are lots of good postings on their blog which is what we will focus on here.

Recent posts include:

• Stand and Be Heard: Edelman's Ed. Advocacy
• Partnering to Provide Formative Assessments
• The Best and the Bard
• Around the Conference: Sunday
• Shaping the Story of the Whole Child
• Four Acceptable F Words in an Urban High School
• An Inner-City Success Story
• Around the Conference: Saturday
• Why Can't Schools Be More Like Businesses?

If you are interested in maintaining some currency with educators, this would be one place to visit.

episteme - Mike Murray

So, if you're not sending a resume, how do you do it? (I could just stop here and say read my book) Really, it comes down to two skills, which are the opposite sides of the same coin:

1. Build a personal brand: as Jory says in the article, use social media, blogs, podcasts, industry groups, articles, etc. to get known.

2. Meet people who are looking for people like you and find alignment between their needs and yours. This is really the key that leads most people to say that networking is an important job skill. If you know enough people (and enough people know you), you'll be top of mind when it's time to hire someone.

This is how most "successful" (defined by me as "people who are doing what they want to do") people are getting their best jobs.

Read the full posting here.

That was a question asked by Anne in a recent post on Enthusiasm. In context, Anne stated:

"So it all comes down to this: how do you define a whore. I guess you define one as somebody who sells themselves more cheaply than you’d be willing to sell yourself. And where you draw the line depends on the opportunities before you. So those that have tons of opportunities look at those that have only a few and think: “they are whoring themselves” because they’d never sell themselves for so little."

Read Mike's full posting here.

And if these teasers have wet your appetite, then the trail stop here at Mike Murray's episteme might be worth your while and you should consider adding this site to your RSS Reader.

Daniel Goleman - Emotional Intelligence

The trail makes a stop at the blog of Daniel Goleman where his bio reads in part:

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a science journalist, Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books) was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages it has been a best seller in many countries.

His latest book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, was published in September 2006. Social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence, can now be understood in terms of recent findings from neuroscience. Goleman’s book describes the many implications of this new science, including for altruism, parenting, love, health, learning and leadership.

Recent posts were titled:

• The Trouble with IQ
• Inspired Learning
• Resonant Leaders
• The Day Care Debate
• Flame First, Think Later: New Clues to E-mail Misbehavior
• A Safe Haven for Learning
• Emotional Contagion and Customer Satisfaction

Where a good number of author or book blogs are simply placeholders and infrequently updated, this site is active. If emotional intelligence is an area to follow, then this site is a must stop for you!

Behind the Glasses

The trail makes a stop in Croatia where Grigor writes on his about page:

My name is Grigor Ćorić and I was born 38 years ago in Zagreb, Croatia.
There is not much to say about that.
That’s past, anyway.

Now

I still live in Zagreb, Croatia together with my better half Marijana and daughter Tamara.
Part of the day I spend working as an IS Performance Manager in InBev.
Rest of the day I continue trying to improve.
I even bought a recorder (you know: small wooden tube with holes) recently and I learn how to use it.

Someday

I have stared blogging recently in a hope that I can share some of my thoughts and ideas to make both weblife and reallife little better.

Grigor writes about presentations

A better preparation consists of following steps:

1. Prepare the presentation.
2. Prepare the setting.
3. Prepare the audience.
4. Prepare yourself.
5. Prepare the collateral material.
6. Prepare for questions.
7. Prepare for next time.

Of course, know the subject you present.

Read Grigor's full posting here.

Grigor writes about using GTD at meetings:

There is a way to improve the way you conduct meetings in your organization by applying GTD methodology from the other side. In usual GTD implementation you would process items which came to your inbox and decide how should you treat each of them: do something with it, delegate it to somebody else, deffer it or delete it. We can say that you would pull items from inbox and process them. If we look from the other side of the inbox, where the bunch of things exists, we can ask ourselves whether we can use the same method to somehow extract those things that are worth our attention.

Read the full posting here.

Consider subscribing to Grigor's "Behind the Glasses".

TailRank

The trail stops this time at a memetracker called TailRank where their about page says:

What's Tailrank?

Tailrank is a memetracker which finds the hottest posts from thousands of blogs so you don't have to!

How does it work?

We find the hottest stories by tracking conversations between blogs.

Tailrank takes into consideration linking behavior, the text of the post, links in common with other users, text relevance, weblog ranking, past performance, and various other factors for recommendations.

You can review the top memes in General, Technology, Politics, Entertainment, or Video.

For example, did you hear about the USB version of DDR?

Do you want to hear about the latest in politics?

Do you know this was L'Oreal Fashion Week?

If you did not, but want to, then TailRank is the site for you!

Sharp Brains

From a MyBlogLog reference picked up via my review of "This is Your Brain on Music", I find this site and blog focused on the brain and activities to keep it healthy; Sharp Brain.

Recent posts include:

• Training the Brains of Fighter Pilots and Basketball Players
• Training the brain with a computer workout program: MindFit
• Brain Fitness: Shift Happens
• I have to exercise my brain, too
• Brain Teaser: how are Memory, Stress, Exercise, Brain Games, Stanford and Harvard connected?

The mission is:

Our mission is to make Brain Fitness available to all by raising public awareness and helping bring to market neuroscience-based products and programs, a.k.a. "brain gyms".

If you would like to keep your brain healthy, check this site out!

the accidental yogist - joni

The trail takes a turn in Los Angeles where we find joni who writes at the accidental yogist:

i write about all the facets of yoga life in los angeles: the studios, the teachers, the events, and everything else that continues to make LA the yoga capital that it is.

so go ahead and try something new. it just might spice up your yoga practice!

why "the accidental yogist"? after seriously injuring my knee in a skiing accident in december 2004, i started dabbling in yoga classes while taking a prescribed break from long distance running. in time, i found that not only was yoga good for my knee and the rest of my body, but it was also good for my mind. -- this is a chronicle of my journey so far...

joni writes:

after publishing my last post on this weekend's peace march which will mark the 4th anniversary of the war on iraq, i found this piece about how yoga has been helping war vets cope with post traumatic stress disorder. it aired on NPR's morning edition last march 1st.

Read joni's full posting here.

Consider subscribing to the accidental yogist.

From the archives

Dipping into the archives from March 2006, I see that a couple of "finds" from one year ago are still going strong and worthy of the "second light of day".

The Practice of Leadership - George Ambler

Success Begins Today - John Richardson

From the archives

Continuing the dip into the archives from 2 years ago, I find a good group blog focused on design still going strong.

CPH127 - "A blog about the influence of design on innovation"

From the archives

As work has been consuming more time than normal, the trail explorations have slowed down. But have no fear, there are some items in the archives that deserve to see the light of another day.


Hello my name is Blog - Scott Ginsburg
Yes, that is the guy with the name tag!


Legacy Matters - Jill Fallon
Practical advice on legacy

From the Archives

Two years ago, the Hitchhikers found these sites.

They have been buried in the archives but deserve the light of a new day.


Drawn - Inspiration is everywhere
coincidently they had just started on March 3, 2005 (yes, we share the same blogversary!)


Time Goes By - Ronni Bennett
a good blogging buddy!

Jazz Violin - China

The trail turns to a site I had found and posted about when I found the "Water Buffalo Movie". Robert Thompson is the artist behind the movie and this blog.

In his about page we read:

I currently reside in Yunnan, China with my wife and will be back in the US around May 2007 to continue my music career. In 2006, I finished a tour with Cirque, moved to China, got married, bought and designed a house in China, graduated from the Berklee College of Music, bought a car and got a Chinese driver’s license, traveled extensively throughout southwestern China, improved my Mandarin Chinese, snapped over 10,000 pictures and made dozens of movies for my family and friends back home. And, of course, I’m always recording and performing music for my return to the US next year.

How do you get from Cirque to China?
When you are Robert Thompson, you do it with a violin.

Consider adding this site to your RSS Reader. He'll be in China up until May 2007 when he returns to the states. If his violin is anything like his photos, he is quite good!

Advertising Ourselves to Death

The trail turns to Dallas, TX where a group writes a blog called Advertising Ourselves to Death. Their manifesto reads:

The 30-second spot is dead.

Consumers are demanding something new.

The opportunities are sweeping for those willing to pay attention. But many agencies and their clients are too vested in the diminishing returns of brute-force tactics to recognize the fundamental changes that are upon them.

---

Letting the consumer participate in a dialog will require a wholesale shift in the foundations of marketing. It’s no longer enough to simply shout louder than your competitor to break through the clutter. Today’s marketers must find ways to engage consumers and offer them something of value in return for their attention.

That's what we'll talk about here.

So consider adding this site to your RSS Reader and follow what they have to say about marketing and advertising.


Thanks to Blaine Collins for the trail tip!

Dangerously Irrelevant - Scott MacLeod

Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . Innovation is cumulative and the rate of change accelerates. We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms. - Gwynne Dyer

Education today and tomorrow is a subject near and dear to this Hitchhiker's heart. Hence, finding Scott's site is a good one to try and keep current in this area.

I wrote elsewhere about the Did You Know video he tweaked (originaly put together by Karl Fischer). It is impressive!

Consider adding Scott's site to your RSS Reader or don't be surprised if you find yourself dangerously irrelevant!

Happy Blogversary!

I could make the claim that we were so busy celebrating this weekend, we forgot to post and let the world know why we were celebrating, but that wouldn't be the truth.

Work reared its head and required full time over the weekend.

Two years ago, this blog started to explore the 'long tail'.

Sine that time, the Hitchhiker team has expanded. (There are still room on the trail for additional hikers.)

The long tail has not yet been fully explored so there is plenty to do.

Many thanks to all the readers!

Many thanks to all the site creators out there that provide opportunity for us to find you and help to share what you to with the rest of us on the trail!

Follow the money

The trail decided to take the advice of Deep Throat:

---

Bob Woodward: The story is dry. All we've got are pieces. We can't seem to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to look like. John Mitchell resigns as the head of CREEP, and says that he wants to spend more time with his family. I mean, it sounds like bullshit, we don't exactly believe that...
Deep Throat: No, heh, but it's touching. Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
Bob Woodward: Hunt's come in from the cold. Supposedly he's got a lawyer with $25,000 in a brown paper bag.
Deep Throat: Follow the money.
Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where?
Deep Throat: Oh, I can't tell you that.
Bob Woodward: But you could tell me that.
Deep Throat: No, I have to do this my way. You tell me what you know, and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just... follow the money.

Quote source

Others have taken that advice and created a searchable database to track how the money is spent in state politics.

What about Merck's contributions that would lead to the state passes the vaccine for young girls (which Merck happens to sell)? Check out the report on what states (PDF) benefited from $2.4 million in contributions.

Do you have an interesting campaign in your state? Go searching and see what you find!

Debatepedia

Another valuable link found at one of the demo stations as BeyondBroadcasting came to a close on Saturday, February 24th at MIT.

Discover Contribute Decide

Debatepedia is the new free wiki encyclopedia of arguments and debates. As a "wiki", it enables anyone (you included) to easily present and organize the unique arguments made by third-party sources (ie. by scholars, experts, leaders,...) on both sides of a debate. By providing an innovative "logic tree" debate methodology, it enables you to organize debates in the most understandable way. Debatepedia is quickly becoming an indispensable resource for uncovering all the unique arguments in important public debates and for developing a complete and rational position.

A wonderful idea. Check it out!