When life gets tough it's often helpful to remember how lucky you are and that ultimately means, how much you have to be grateful for. I am fortunate to be a very lucky person and I am grateful for many things.
Thanks to my family, friends, colleagues, students, vendors, service professionals and my personal heroes.
To Mum, Dad, Ali, Simon, Chris, Andrew, Timothy, Mart, Bonnie, Jade and Evan, thanks for your unconditional love and support. You mean more to me than I can adequately express and I feel extremely honored to have you in my family. Thank you.
To Michelle, thanks for putting up with all my nonsense, for encouraging me to find myself, for giving me time and space and for showing me how spectacular the natural world is. You have taught me so much and I look forward to continuing the learning for the rest of my life. Thank you.
To my family at iArchitects, Ellen, Jim, Jennifer and Larry, you are some of the most generous and reliable people I know and I am honored to work with all of you. An extra specially big thank you to iArchitects for hosting the Classes for Causes web site and for allowing Jennifer and I to work on it in our "spare" time.
Thanks to the Classes for Causes Board of Directors and Advisory Council:
Jennifer, not only have you been a driving force behind getting website up to speed, but you have been a tower of strength to me throughout the journey from idea to implementation. I wouldn't have been able to get this far without you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Michaela, you are someone I admire, respect and am honored to have as a friend, colleague, advisor and client. You are all kindness and love and I appreciate all the time you have given me and Classes for Causes over the past year. Thank you.
Isabel, thanks for pushing me to follow my dreams and continue moving forward step by step. You have taught me more than you realize and I don't think I will ever be able to return all the favors you have bestowed on me. I am lucky to know you, fortunate that you are my friend, and I welcome your ideas and insight. Muchas Gracias!
To Mark, you have been a constant source of encouragement for getting things done without stress. You are an honor to know and I really appreciate your authenticity, love and support. Thank you.
To Lisa, you are amazing. You have more energy and enthusiasm than anyone else I know and you are so generous with your time, your ideas, your space and your contributions. Amit is a friend in a million for introducing me to you and I thank you also for recruiting Frank to the board. I am very excited about your involvement on the board and I hope we will make you proud. Thank you.
To Frank, thanks for your straight-shooter attitude and for always being a friendly and reliable face at board meetings. Your concern for the organization's well-being is much appreciated. Thank you.
To Kim, thanks so much for your excellent contributions to our strategic planning and also for your outstanding efforts on the business cards. I hope we can continue collaborating in the future and we welcome your participation in whatever capacity you are able to provide it. Thank you.
To my students in all the SFSU classes I teach, thank you for teaching me to teach and inspiring me to learn. Thank you.
To MD, thank you for inspiring me to teach and for being a grounding friend. Thank you.
To my colleagues at SFSU - Lauren, Kim, Michaela, Susan, S.J., and Henry, I am honored to have served on a faculty with you and thank you for your support and assistance building programs. Thank you.
Thanks to Richard Sinrich, who always knew how to make me smile through carefully crafted emails.
Thanks to Craig Abaya for reaching out and making me feel like a special person at SFSU.
Thanks to Cindy, Burky, Orah and Sandra for always believing in me and being there for me when I fall.
Thanks to Landmark education for opening my eyes to a whole new way to look at life. Thanks to Nic for introducing me to Landmark and for being such a great friend for the past 17 years.
Thanks to Peter for believing in me enough to introduce me to someone important enough to get me back into music.
To Joe, thanks for being my Wednesday night date of choice and for your big heart. You are the king of coaches. Thank you.
Thanks to all my friends at track, and in the orchestra. You are all fantastic people and I am privileged to have you in my life. Steve, Jeremy, Ben, Ben, Amy, Nathan, Marlyss, Nancy, Meredith, Glenda and Chuck - you know who you are and I thank you.
To my clients, thank you for believing in iArchitects and our team. You have been very generous to us and we really appreciate your loyalty. Thank you for teaching me all about your business and letting me show you a bit of mine.
Thanks to all the teachers that inspired me to learn, took me under their wing and made me feel special - Christine, Becky, Larry, Laurie, MD, Michael and S.J. I admire you so much and thank you for looking out for me. Thank you.
Thanks to everyone I forgot to mention, because if I forgot you it probably means you are the so important that I take you for granted. Nathan! John! Ashley! Dom! Monica! Leanne! The names come streaming in... and I feel so lucky to have all of you in my life.
Last but not least, thanks to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, Danny, Neil, Rand, Michael, Ev, and Seth. You have enabled me to connect to other people and learn in ways I hadn't dreamed possible. Thank you.
Today on Twitter I discovered a post confirming my belief that we need to create ways for people to give. At Classes for Causes, we're offering a new way to give by enabling people to teach and learn while raising money and awareness for various causes and our hope is that we are providing something of value to our community and all the causes we as a community support.
All three are important, but I believe donating time is the biggest gift you can give. If you don't have money or food, you can still donate time. If you're anything like me, I bet your time is worth a lot to you and often a lot more than the monetary value your occupation has placed on it. Donating time means giving much more than time as well. It means giving skills, sharing knowledge, compassionate, building comraderie and connecting with your fellow human being. Donating time teaching a class could feed a lot more people than your donation of $25 to the local food bank. Of course we encourage giving of all kinds and absolutely want you to donate to your local foodbank and all the causes you support. Just consider how much more you can contribute by donating some of your precious time.
I've been saying this for quite some time now and today I was very happy to see someone I really admire saying it too.
While his title is "How to Make Money on the Internet," many of his points are apply to success in any business whether it is for profit or not for profit.
Of the several ways of "connect[ing] the disconnected to create value" that Seth recommends, my favorites are:
Connect those seeking similar.
Connect to partners and those that can leverage your work.
Connect people who are proximate geographically.
Connect like-minded people into a movement.
and I add the following:
Connect teachers with learners
Connect givers with fundraisers
Connect donors with causes
Connect ideas and make them happen
Connect inventors with venture capitalists
Connect passion with empowerment
By connecting people with other people around similar and also sometimes very different interests powerful things happen. Think about chemical reactions. There is chemistry when people connect and interact and that chemistry could be tried and tested or it could be a completely new experiment.
I learn by experimenting and connecting with others speeds up the process. How are you connecting?
I do too and it's not a trend, it's a movement. If teaching and learning are not for you, check out Change.org. There are many causes to support and infinite ways to do it.
Last month I attended the Craigslist Foundation Non-profit Bootcamp in San Mateo. It was a day full of keynote speakers, non-profit vendors, seminars, networking and being inspired. Below I share some of the notes I took (in blue) with my comments and thoughts in black. These are words that impressed me the most, words that I wanted to remember and words that I want to take to heart and share with all of you.
There are 1.5 millions nonprofits in the U.S. That means each organization is competing with 1.499 999 other organizations for donations and support.
Seek first to collaborate and only then to lead. Partnering with other organizations is the best path to rapid growth and we should all look around us and make sure there aren't other organizations doing what we want to do before starting another nonprofit.
We are collectively greater than the sum of our parts. We all share the belief that informed citizens working together can make the world a better place. This is a core statement in support of the mission of Classes for Causes. We believe that connecting people and giving people new ways to give can have positive impacts in the world. Our mission is to enable people to connect and share their passion for causes through teaching and learning, bringing people together to make a positive difference. This week for me has been all about education, connection and collaboration.
Education People need to be educated in order to understand what amending the California Constitution means. People need to be educated about what climate change means to their lives and the lives of their children and grand children. It's not about the environment. It's about you, yes YOU and your children and grand children. People need to be educated to understand that they can make big differences in small ways by collaborating, connecting and working for causes.
Connection I am reading a book called Group Genious and it's all about the power of collaboration and how we associate and build upon each others' ideas. Connecting with other people and embracing collaboration through brainstorming, discussions and simple conversations about ideas fosters innovation. While by ourselves we can dream up interesting concepts, together we can make great things.
Collaboration In Group Genious the author talks about why the Silicon Valley had such great success in such a short time period and one of the key reasons is that the people shared ideas and moved around from company to company sharing secrets with each new job. Group Think is the result of the iterative process. So much of technology is about creating one version and then continuously making improvements to it. Those improvements come from the collaboration between people using the software or product, people testing the the product and developers making adjustments to improve the usability. In the digital world this kind of development process is easy and rapid.
Citizens have a role to play in making our communities better. Act locally. What can you do today that will have a positive effect in your community? One day last year I randomly made chocolate chip cookies and went to some of my neighbors and gave them each a small batch. I had never really spoken to them, but wanted to introduce myself and the cookies seemed like a good idea. I can't tell you how much of an impact that made. My neighbors now know my name and will go out of their way to help me. They also feel more connected to the neighborhood and part of a community. Small things can make a difference.
Understand what your audience’s interests are. Understand what they care about. Meet people where they are. Match people with the right people.
In terms of marketing in general the above four sentences speak volumes. So much depends on our understanding of each other, what we like, what we dislike, what we want, what we don't want and why we do the things we do.
Feeling good and being effective are not the same thing.
Just because it feels good doesn't mean it is having a positive impact. Giving a dollar to a homeless person might feel good, but they might be saving it to buy a bottle of booze. Giving a sandwich to a homeless person actually satisfies their need for food.
My good friend Amit passed along this great site today. They are called Tonic and like Classes for Causes, their goal is also to make it easy for you to do good things. For example, have you ever wondered when someone would create a way to prevent so much junk mail? I certainly have and here's one solution: GreenDimes by Tonic enables you to specify who you wish to receive mail from and who you don't so that you can save a bunch of trees. By using their service you can stop getting up to 90% of your junk mail, save yourself time and save the planet. I've signed up already!
You can also do some holiday and/or birthday gift shopping while being socially conscious - they have some very cool looking T-shirts and bracelets. Or you may want to check out Tonic Events and plan special events to raise money for good causes.
Thanks to Amit! Oh and by the way, Amit is drummer extraordinaire in a cool Israeli band called The Peatot. I heard them in Palo Alto a couple of months ago and they rock.
I gave my students in the Internet Marketing Now the assignment of writing one blog post per day and look what happened. They did the assignment and I did not, since I haven't posted since November 6th. I am both the most delinquent student in the class and also a very proud teacher. My student's blogs are amazing. I am so impressed with the creativity, dedication and time that each person has put into their blog and the assignment. Tomorrow we'll discuss how it's going and how to use a few other tools to spice up the blogs and increase online visibility. I am excited to spend another three hours with the class connecting and collaborating. Oh, and I also promise to post something every day for the rest of the duration of the class, even if it is only four more days.
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a Green Building - Gourmet Dinner and Discussion hosted by "Chef by Night." I was particularly intrigued by the invitation because I received it through LinkedIn and didn't know the host at all. I was curious about the event, not only because I am interested in anything green, but also because of the unique method of bringing people with similar and diverse backgrounds together for dinner. It's a great case study for my Internet Marketing class as well. <grin>
Ordinarily I would think it would be challenging to get a group of about 20 people together at a stranger's house for dinner, but this event seemed to happen with ease and lots of guest enthusiasm guests. We even helped make the dinner! It was well organized, entertaining and fun and most importantly the food was delicious. They even made a chocolate mouse for dessert which was vegan (I like to think especially for me,) and absolutely delicious.
Peter Kuperman is the owner of QED Benchmark Management by day and a self-titled "Chef by Night" and hosts these dinners once a month around topics that interest him. He invites a special guest to each dinner and this person talks a little about what they do. Tonight's special guest was Kevin Surace of Serious Materials. He was very personable and articulate about the R-rating of windows and where we are heading in terms of climate change. By 2017 things may look very different at the poles and only time will tell what impact that will have on all of us. Kevin said that the building industry hasn't evolved much over the last 100 years because no money has been put into research and development. This is completely the opposite of the information technology sector which has expanded exponentially due to significant funding over the past two decades. My understanding from Kevin is that the building industry as a whole contribute 51% of the carbon emissions due to outdated manufacturing techniques and materials. Compare that to passenger cars in the U.S. which only contribute 9% of emissions and you get an idea of the importance of changing the way we work with the building industry. It's time to demand changes.
There were several very interesting people at the party and I enjoyed meeting Patrick Freeburger, President of BuildFast, a company that won the 2007 California Cleantech Open Google Green Building Prize. His designs and pre-cut panels allow emergency shelters to be built in hours and these structures can be converted to permanent earthquake and typhoon resistant hours in a week. Wow!
I invited my friend Jeremy who is an extraordinary athlete, designer and all-round swell guy to join me and we had a really good time mingling with all the green building industry people. What a treat. I feel honored to have been invited to the event and I am really happy I went. Very big thanks to both Peter Kuperman and his special events manager, Erin Reeser. These two know how to throw a 21st century dinner party.
Left to right: Peter Kupeman, Susan Barnes and Patrick Freeberger
Left to right: Susan Barnes, Meridith Ware, Patrick Freeberger, Amy Anderson and Jeremy Alden
Salmon with Almond butter, Vegetable Quinoa and Salad
Tonight I started teaching another Internet Marketing Now: New Tools and Trends class for SFSU's Integrated Marketing Program. I am always a bit nervous before I start teaching, but when I am in class I have such a wonderful time. I just love all the ideas that the students come up with and the experience of other people enjoying the subject matter is really special.
Teaching is challenging too. There are always different levels of experience in the classroom and different perspectives. I love how much I learn every time I teach and I am so grateful for the opportunity to connect and share with my peers.
As a potential nonprofit I am not allowed to voice opinions about politics. However I can't help but echo the sentiments of our next president elect tonight when he said: "Don't just look out for yourself. Look out for your fellow citizens." Find ways to make a difference. Work for change. It's time for change. It's time to get involved and it's already happening. The numbers of people voting is evidence that we care, we believe in something, we ARE willing to work for something. It's important NOW to take action and Yes We Can. Small contributions do make a difference.
When life gets tough and the economy is rough, it's even more important to find ways to dig deep and find ways to support the causes you believe in.
"All things are possible." Nothing is impossible. Yes we can.
Social bookmarking is a great way to collect and share websites that offer content about what you are teaching. Here's a great tutorial from Lee LeFever on The Common Craft Show about how to use the social networking tool known as delicious. In terms of usefulness it is certainly yummy! Enjoy.
"If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon." Emil Zatopek, Czech legend who won four Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952.
Sometimes I feel like life is a marathon. It's easy to do a few sprints here and there, but to really get the most out of life you have to be in it for the experience.
Last year at around this time I canceled a fund raising event due to lack of attendees. It was heartbreaking. I posted the following letter to the people I invited and now I'm here, still in the race. With a year to reflect I know I was being a little ambitious with that magical green bus adventure, but now with 20/20 hindsight I have a much better picture of what it takes to start something and finish strong.
Nov 1, 2007
Dear friends, colleagues and clients,
I regret to inform you that I am canceling the party due to lack of guest availability. I would say lack of interest, but I don't believe it. We are all too busy. It's time to slow down and appreciate what we have. Saturday is just not the night.
There will be another time to celebrate in 2008. In the meantime, please think about what you may want to teach or take a class in and contact me to discuss.
To those who were planning to attend, thank you so much for your interest and support. To those who sent donations, thank you for your generosity and for believing in Classes for Causes. Your checks will be returned so that you can save your money for the next fundraiser. To those who couldn't make it this weekend, you will have another opportunity to party with us next year.
I am a marathon runner, endurance is my game. While it winning isn't everything, finishing injury free and enjoying the race are the goals. This is the right decision.
See you on the treadmill of life, Susan
P.S. "So much of modern culture is characterized by stories of self-indulgence and self-destruction. So much of modern politics is focused not on honest differences of policy but on personal attacks. So much of modern media is dominated by people who earn fortunes by demeaning others, defining them by their worst moments, exploiting their agonies. Who's happier? The uniters or the dividers? The builders or the breakers? The givers or the takers? I think you know the answer. There's a whole world out there that needs you, down the street or across the ocean. Give." -- Bill Clinton at the end of his book: "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World"
