Consider how people come into a collaboration. First, there is the idealized way; people see an opportunity to create something new that can only be done with help from each other and so they come together to create this greater thing – giving of themselves what they can with that singular goal in sight. 

The other way is the market based collaborative effort.

This market based effort is more about trading one thing (skill, money, goods) for another to create something that couldn’t have been done by one person. This is still collaboration but the end result for those involved is usually less about what they are creating and more about that creation giving them each individually something in return (fame, fortune, a good grade).

The difference is subtle but I think important. When you are considering collaborative efforts are you looking to create a better community or are you looking to exploit the project to expand your revenue stream?

Click thru to see all of the details, the attendee list and get signed up to attend. I’m honored to be a host member for this event because I know it will be an incredible day of sharing ideas and making contacts. Only 125 spots available so get on it pronto!

You may remember that I participated in the National Public Media Camp last year in Washington, DC. That event was incredible as well and this is meant as a local extension of that event. If you’d like to read more about the original event here is my review – Community Engagement via Un-Conferences and here is a write up about my presentation there – Conversation Hosting Primer. You can also check out the Public Media Camp Wiki and other links from the original event here – PubCamp.

For current information and updates consider following @PubCampOhio – http://twitter.com/PubCampOhio on Twitter.

The work I’ve come into has helped to focus what it is that I hope to provide to my clients and it has better focused what I hope to accomplish in my consulting life. For that reason I’m going to take some time off from my regular Monday-Friday schedule of posting to this site. I’ll continue to keep you up-to-date on what I’m doing but it will be less frequent. The schedule for this is the month of March and April; after that I’ll return to a more regular schedule.

During this time I plan on doing some retooling around here while I continue to work with my clients on meeting their needs. As always I’ll be looking for feedback – my community always knows best.

If you aren’t currently subscribed to my RSS feed I would recommend you do so now so that you don’t miss anything that pops up over the next 2 months. You can grab that here:

http://andrew-miller.com/feed/

Thanks again for your interest, your support and your business. As always, if you’ve got a project you need help with or need a speaker for your event please contact Andrew Miller Consulting by clicking here.

Have a great spring!

To frame these questions I want you to think about different parts of your life: could be work, home, volunteer or hobby. In any one (or all) of these parts of your life where do you find yourself – or someone just like you – showing leadership. Particularly when they aren’t in a traditional leadership role (like a manager, elected official, etc.).

1) How do view the idea of a non-traditional leader?

2) What is one example of leadership from a non-traditional position of power that you have experienced?

3) May I follow up with you about your answers?

Thanks ahead of time to those of you willing to participate!

Right now businesses are taking advantage of this information as a way of luring new customers and rewarding loyal customers. One Facebook friend posted:

Attentive businesses will use this information to their advantage in this way. I think that’s great. There is a problem though – many people are very leery of using a location based application that gives away their position so freely. In fact one enterprising organization – Please Rob Me - is using its cynicism about location based tech to invite would be criminals to watch for when you are away from home.

So what would I look for in a next generation of something like Foursquare? Well, why not put the ownness on businesses to accurately map their location using GPS co-ordinates. By doing this you, as an individual, could sign up for this type of service and just by having your phone enabled the application could pick up on what business you were patronizing. By using an anonymous id businesses could instead push rewards to you instead of waiting for you to announce yourself. Keeping with the anonymous id the application could inform other users of how many people are currently at any given location. This doesn’t mean you would have to make everyone anonymous; like how the applications work now you could allow people to share more of their personal location information if they choose too. The key however is that the anonymity option would still allow businesses and users to connect without a direct, transparent relationship.

I believe these tweaks would greatly open up the use of location based applications to a broader user base. What do you think?

The topic was basically about making your offline presence (particularly as an organization) much more responsive and flexible to the needs of your supporters and community – the way it is with your online presence. Here are the slides:

Growing up I watched a lot of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (watch here) and I’ve always had a love for the show and the man behind that show, Fred Rogers. The thing about this show and the man himself is that he wasn’t interested in teaching people what actions specifically are “wrong” and what actions specifically are “right” – he instead nurtured an understanding of how our actions affect others and how our feelings have an effect on our own self.

I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately, about how quick we as a culture are to get angry and point fingers and choose sides; I’ve been witness to where that leads – we all are. Crisis after crisis because we aren’t satisfied to let cooler heads prevail.

Well, today in my RSS feed I found this nugget courtesy of Coudal Partners: it is Fred Rogers testifying before Congress about PBS funding. Listen not just to the words he has chosen but to the calmness of his delivery. He doesn’t need to get his ire up because his words reflect the deeper honesty of his being.

I’m grateful for the chance to continue to learn from Mr. Rogers, no matter what age I am. If you haven’t seen the video take the 6 minutes to watch it and really let the ideas settle into your mind.