Jet Setter in Montreal

Greetings from my favourite Canadian city, Montreal. This is our second time in the cultural capital of Canada but our first experience couchsurfing.  CouchSurfing has been fantastic so far, not only as a free place to stay and an introduction to an unknown city, but as the quintessential social media site. It’s very essence is about connecting people in real life.

What is CouchSurfing?

For those of you who don’t know, CouchSurfing.org is a network where travellers can connect and find a place to stay  with a local person in cities around the world. There is no cost for the website or for the couch (bed, room or floor) but it is expected that you are going for the social exchange and not just a free place to sleep.

This is how my wife explained it to her mother, “We are going to stay at a stranger’s house. We found the person on the Internet.” (Very rough English translation. )

Prior to our visit, I must admit we had some apprehensions about staying with someone we have never met. Other than the profile everyone writes about themselves on the CouchSurfing.org site and reviews from other travellers, you really don’t know what to expect on arrival.

Will they actually be there? Is it safe? What etiquette is expected? What gifts should we bring? Many things were on our mind prior to our first meeting our host.

The World’s Greatest CouchSurfing Host

It turns out we managed to find the best CouchSurfing host in the world on our very first attempt. The generosity and trust of our host is amazing. He opens his home to couchsurfers constantly. There is a steady flow of new people living in his house. Each surfer gets the keys to the house and full access. Despite his never-ending kindness, for every one person he accepts, he has to turn two away.

My wife and I have had the opportunity to spend several amazing nights with him drinking late into the evening. We feel like we have gotten to know him more than some of our close friends.

CouchSurfing is What Other Social Media Sites Try to Be

I think many social media critics  associate online friends with superficial connections and banal conversation. That may be true in some cases but CouchSurfing is inherently different. The real value of the site comes from facilitating real life meet-ups. There is little chance that these kinds of connections could have been made before the Internet. Some good relationships can be developed online only but they will never reach the level of in person contact.

This to me is the real promise of social media. We are able to connect with like minded people on a global scale. That is huge!

It takes lots of work to build and maintain relationships but it can be so rewarding. I hope we have started the foundation of a life-long friendship with our host. I am certain we will meet again in different parts of the world.

Many people and businesses are using social media platforms as an inexpensive way to advertise. They try to friend or follow as many people as people with the intention of building a potential customer base. While that is part of life, I hope that it  is going to be a very small part of our social media experiences.

CouchSurfing is Not About the Money

With CouchSurfing there is absolutely no financial transaction, the host is generous without expectation of direct reciprocity. Certainly there are long term benefits of being repaid with future couches to surf, but most hosts seem to give a lot more then they will ever receive. The real reason for giving so much is the social interaction.

That to me is a very powerful idea. We are social animals after all, social connections have tremendous value. That value extends far beyond any financial exchange. We have been conditioned to be consumers over the last 150 years or so. It is important to remember that society wasn’t always like this and it doesn’t have to continue this way indefinitely.

Again, it is my hope that this is all part of the economic and social evolution of mankind. We are reaching for the peak of Maslow’s hierarchy. Life is no longer a struggle for food, shelter and clothing. We are looking for meaning and purpose in our lives. That meaning can’t be bought or consumed. Life is measured by the quality of our personal relationships and contribution to other people. CouchSurfing.org is the best example I have found of that so far. The only downside is that we have been having such a great time that I haven’t been able to get any work done. After the fantastic conversations we have had with our host, I am going to put a lot more effort into meeting people around the world.

I would love to hear about other websites that facilitate human interaction like CouchSurfing for a project I am working on. If you have any good examples or experiences please let me know in the comments or by email.

The Good Old Days (image by Powerhouse Museum)

I am turning 40 years old in a couple of months. There is no more denying the onset of the middle age. I would like to think I am a little wiser for those years, but more important than that I would like to use this post to celebrate how great life really is.

I Walked Twenty Miles to School, Barefoot in the Snow and it was Uphill Both Ways!

When I was a child, I listened to all of those stories grown ups use to tell about how bad it was for them at my age. They were right! Their childhoods were much more difficult. As a child, my grandmother never had electricity or running water. Think about what that means for a moment.

No refrigerators meant that food either had to be canned (actually put in a jar) or eaten immediately. Animals were only slaughtered in the winter when the cold could preserve them for a longer time. My grandmother lived on a farm so there were few stores to buy groceries. Virtually everything was grown or raised on her own farm. Of course, there were no computers, TV or Internet! I could go on and on about the harsh living conditions and back breaking work she endured. Needless to say, her life was considerably more difficult than mine. Grandma Patty always says, “I never wish for those days to come back!”

If You Could Have Seen the Things I Saw

The changes I have personally experienced are equally astonishing.

8-Track Tape (image by felixtcat)

Music used to scratched on black vinyl.

When I was a child, my parents still had 8-track tapes around the house: I even owned a couple. I am willing to bet that many readers of this blog have no idea what an 8-track tape is. I watched as music shifted from records to cassettes to CDs and then iPods. I have 10,000 songs on my iPod now! 8-track to 10,000 songs in my pocket in 40 years! Amazing times!

Television

My family’s first television was black and white. I believe there were only a couple of channels to watch. As I got older, we had color TVs and the program choices started to explode. In about junior high school, Beta and VHS were competing to become the industry standard. DVDs only proliferated in the last decade.

My First Computer (image by Rob Berkers)

Computers
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81. It had 16kb of memory and this was a plug in unit that attached to the back of the computer. To save programs, I had to record them onto audio cassettes. The sound was a squeal just like the older fax machines. The monitor was any TV.

Now the Amazing Part

I am certainly not bragging about how old I am. Getting old actually scares the shit out of me. However, there are not too many days when I am not completely astounded at what the world currently offers.

I can watch US TV programs on demand from my computer in Japan (Email me if you want to learn how). I can cheaply and safely travel around the world. I can make free video calls anywhere on Skype. I can connect with people on the other side of  the world through my blogs, and services like Twitter. I can learn about anything with a quick Google search. There are unlimited tutorials and training for anything imaginable. I can do and be anything I choose!

In my twenties, I never really saw the magnitude of the changes taking place all around me. New technologies kept coming so the innovations were are gradual. However, looking back now offers a perspective I never had before.

The Age of the Jet Set Citizen

If you have been reading this blog you probably know that my wife and I have committed to change countries and careers once again. I have the opportunity and freedom to reinvent myself. My grandmother never had any of these chances. Her life was dictated by harsh economic reality; work your ass off or starve.

I can do any type of work I chose from virtually anywhere in the world. I can go back to school. I can learn new skills. I can engage with people of similar interests regardless of where they live in the world. The opportunities are absolutely endless.

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

This pace of change isn’t about to slow down. The sequencing of the genome and nanotechnology mean that humans are the first species to take control of their own evolution. Humans are actively enhancing and altering our current evolution. Old age is merely a cell disease where our bodies can’t keep replicating cells efficiently. The disease of old age is going to be greatly slowed or even reversed in my lifetime. It is not science fiction any more. I expect to work productively until more than 80 years old. With healthy living and science backing me up, I will probably live to 120 years old or more. Even 150 years old is not unreasonable.

If you don’t believe that scientists will find ways to slow aging, imagine what you would have thought 20 years ago if you heard that you will be able to make free video calls to anywhere in the world. (I used to pay more than a dollar a minute for calls to Canada!) You will be able to store 10,000 songs on a little box the size of the old music cassettes. You will be able to watch TV and movies on a computer screen that was only monochrome at the time. Commercial space flights begin in the next couple of years!

If you told me I would be living in Japan and my articles would be reaching thousands of people around the world, I would have said that you were crazy! It is crazy! These are crazy, amazing times.

Thanks for coming to my wedding, now have I got deal for you!

Mastering social media is not about technology at all. Anyone can learn the tools with a little research and effort. The hard part is really connecting with people. That is what relationships are all about, finding some connection. Getting friends just so that you can sell them something doesn’t work offline so why do so many people expect it to work online? Trust is everything. Where is the trust?

A good way to think about getting good at social media is to consider being the bride or groom at a wedding. Everyone at your wedding has some connection to you or your spouse. Some may be great friends that you have known all of your life, and some might be distant relatives that you hope to never see again. In most weddings there are so many people and such limited time that you can’t possibly give every person much attention. The bride and groom generally go around the room and give everyone a little of their time, but not too much because it is their night after all.

That is exactly what it is like online. You need to talk to as many people online as you can and try to interact with them on a personal level, but you also know that you have to reach a broad audience so you quickly move on to the next person. You need to temper the depth of your communication with each individual to achieve enough breadth over the entire crowd. Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, comments, etc. increase the number of guests at your wedding to anyone in the world with a computer connection.

When you engage someone in your wedding you can say, “It is great to see you. Thanks for coming. What’s new in your life? I see you lost a little weight!” That is the human approach to relationships.

If the wedding was anything like the types of relationships people have online, the conversation would be more like this, “Thanks for coming. Can I get your email address? You may not know that I have this great new consulting company. I am a guru and expert and I have this 20 page ebook that I can sell you right now for only $40. It is for a limited time only and the price will double after the wedding is finished and I get back to my computer. Half the people here already bought it so you would be stupid not too.”

It is hard to argue with results. The people with the second sales pitch are going to get more money out of people in the beginning. That is obvious, because the first conversation is not selling anything. However, what do you think will happen over time? Which approach is likely to earn the trust and respect of people in the long run. Sure it is nice to make some quick cash upfront and constantly keep churning through new subscribers to find the small percentage that can be convinced to fork out cash immediately.

I have to believe that those sales tactics are not going to work for much longer. Every time I see a long sales page with the testimonials, limited time offer, count down clock and guarantee seal, it is an automatic click away. I don’t want to give my email address to start getting two or three sales pitches every week. I don’t want the free ebook with limited content, loaded with affiliate links. It is not worth my attention.

I do have to admit that I am a sucker too. Sometimes those offers are so well written that I just have to give my email address. And, occasionally I am surprised by the quality of free content. However, the purveyors almost always degenerate the social interaction into solely a financial transaction. They are not trying to help me. They are trying to make as much money as they can. Why else would there be so many barriers and intermediate steps to access the free ebooks or reports. If they really wanted to cement a relationship they would have all the information for free on their website and not require an email address unless I feel their content is worth subscribing to. More and more people are being turned off from the sales pitches and endless auto-responders pretending to be your friend. I know those sites will lose effectiveness over time. I just wish it was sooner rather than later.

Of course, the other side to this problem is that we all want and need to make a decent living. People who create great content and resources should be rewarded for their efforts. Should the metrics be maximizing return on investment or maybe we need to think about our connections with fellow human beings in a different way. I am an entrepreneur and I am all for making profits, but maybe the time is coming when we can all become focused on maximizing our contribution to other global citizens.

Genuinely caring about and interacting with other people goes a long way to building trust and rapport. There are so many people online who just don’t get that idea. Hyped up sales pitches, forms to collect personal information and content-less websites are barriers to developing a relationship. Give without expecting anything in return and you just might find yourself with riches beyond your imagination. What do you think would happen to all your friends and relatives if you didn’t talk to them at your wedding?

Introducing IdeaDude

We live in a time of unprecedented opportunity. Huge companies can be created by a couple of people, a good idea and hard work. Money is not even a barrier anymore, with the costs of hosting and developing web businesses at a fraction of where they were just a few short years ago. A unique concept with some creative marketing can spread the world over. The tools are essentially free and at everyone’s disposal. With a little charisma and hustle, fame and fortune are available for the taking. This is the age of the idea. There are no limits for those with a knack for managing ideas.

Look at the stratospheric success of people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble. Essentially, they parlayed their own self-publishing with free Internet tools into international stardom. They didn’t need the support of large corporations, huge investments and high quality production. They just put in the work day in and day out. An individual with enough focus and effort can really do amazing things. The traditional economic constraints of land, labor and capital hardly matter anymore. To succeed in this era you need to be able to nurture, manipulate, deliver and market ideas through all stages of the idea management process.

Get Ideas
You need a lot of input in order to get great ideas. With the internet, access to ideas is no longer a problem. Search out and subscribe to the best blogs you can find on a diversity of subjects and keep filling your head with ideas. RSS feeds make screening large amounts of content much more manageable. Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter can also be a great medium for receiving quality inspiration.

Filter ideas
We are all inundated with far more information than we can possible manage. It is important to create technical and human filters to maximize your chance of finding the best ideas. Subscribe to blogs you trust to deliver good consistent information. Stay away from sites that waste your valuable attention. The best filters are human. Connect with friends and colleagues and let them know the types of ideas you are interested in. If you are “focusing on the ONE” key target of your business life, your friends and colleagues will already be sending you the ideas likely to be of benefit.

Process Ideas
There are many ways to make something unique and absorbing out of all your ideas. Combine existing ideas to make something new. Take something complex and make it simple. Beg, Borrow or Steal! Great business ideas can be found by copying what people are doing in other cities, countries or industries. Break out of your own narrow interests and read magazines or visit stores that you would never go to. See what is working for others and try to apply it to your interests or situation. Creativity can be found everywhere if you are actively looking and thinking.

Develop Ideas
Ideas are useless until put into practice. Everyone comes up with many ideas on a regular basis. It takes a great deal of hard work and persistence to get those ideas to market. No one wants to hear what you are going to do; show the world what you have finished. Get important things done.

Promote Ideas
Consumers are bombarded with a nonstop flood of information. Standing out above the crowds takes unique marketing skills, but more than that it takes a remarkable and amazing idea in the first place. The world doesn’t need the 200th me-too version of anything. Develop an amazingly unique and quality idea, and your followers will market your ideas for you. Most people are too lazy to do truly remarkable things, so roll up your sleeves and out-work everyone else. It doesn’t cost anything but your time. Do you want to spend more time in front of the TV or do you want to build a legacy for yourself?

We live in an age of ideas. Our notions of school, work and play are all changing. There are great opportunities for talented idea managers to change everything we think we know about how we live. The costs of using technology and communicating to the world are essentially free. The only, THE ONLY limits to our accomplishments are our own imaginations. Be a great idea manager!

My Friends

Technology doesn’t change social relationships, it is just a different way to connect with people. People who have many real world friends likely spend a lot of time cultivating those relationships and put themselves in situations to meet and interact with new people.

It is easy to add “friends” to the social media sites you subscribe to but there are different levels of friendship. Thousands of online friends may be a great way to keep score and impress people but they are much more distant acquain-tances than real friends. You don’t mind asking the friends you meet every weekend to help paint your house, but you are unlikely to call your old co-worker from 10 years ago to come and lend a hand.

The same is true for online friends and relationships. Close friends can be called upon for favors, assistance and advice but not before there is a history of mutual sharing and benefit. Asking some stranger online to buy your offering or subscribe to your blog on the first contact is akin to asking a stranger on the street to come and help you paint your house this weekend. The internet is not so different to the real world. Give much more than you ask in return and you will soon find yourself surrounded by real friends that extol your virtues and provide the support you need.

Technology doesn’t change who or what we are, it only amplifies humanity. Nuclear weapons are just a bigger and more dangerous stick to hit people with. Airplanes are just a faster mode of transport, compared to walking. Humans still want to defend themselves or take other people’s possessions, just as most people want to connect with other human beings. Think about new technology as tools that help you become a better person. You can talk to more people, more often. You can get the opinions and ideas of more people faster, enabling you to make better decisions and pursue bigger opportunities. Don’t abuse the friends you find online and you might be able to slowly build an army of supporters.