Actually, I already went... but it's still a great badge!

A few days ago I went to my first social media/online business conference.  SOBCon (Successful Online Business Convention) is the brainchild of Liz Strauss and Terry St. Marie (aka Terry Starbucker).  The subject matter of SOBCon doesn’t align completely with the topics we talk about at Thoughtwrestling but the experience of participating in a well-run event like SOBCon does have a lot to do with stimulating your mind.

SOBCon’s subject matter is important, but the way that your brain really gets stimulated is by meeting new people and hearing what they have to say.  SOBCon attracts 150 attendees to each Chicago convention.  As far as social media/technology/business conferences go, it’s small.  That’s a very good thing because the small size creates a more intimate experience.

It’s simple, really:  if you want to stimulate your thinking and get out of a rut, go somewhere different, meet different people and do different things.  SOBCon is a great place to do that.  The conference organizers work hard to create a positive, nurturing environment and that’s reinforced by the large number of returning attendees.  This is something that I haven’t seen in some of the other conferences that I’ve attended.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on how I made my experience worthwhile:

1. The stranger on the train might be heading to the same place as you, so it pays to introduce yourself. Thanks Becky!
2. Make something personal and share it. I made 20 business cards by hand and treated them like collector’s items, even though a six year old could have made them. People seemed to like them, though.  I saw some really awesome professional and slick business cards and it would have been nice to have some.  At the same time, my hope is that seeing something handmade (I even wrote on them in pen) will spark a memory and a positive association with my and my work.
3. It’s good for you to be around people you don’t know: just think of how much you might learn.  If you’re like me and you’re on the shy and introverted side, it feels uncomfortable to be around people I’ve never met in person before.  This is a good thing:  doing something that’s uncomfortable is a sign that your brain is being challenged and it will need to helpful new connections.
4. It’s good for you to know people you don’t know before you meet them in person: it’s getting easier to learn about the people you might meet.  Event registration software (e.g. Eventbrite) lets you see who’s going to attend and you can find out stuff about them, which makes it easier to start conversations (see 3. above).
5. Manage your energy according to your needs – depending on your personality type, you might need to build in some downtime to recuperate.  I snuck in some downtime to allow me to handle evening events better.  On the other hand, I suffered an energy slump during the middle of the second day and I wasted some time sitting when I could have been meeting other people.
6. Look for the awesome in the people around you.  It will inspire you.  I was inspired many times during SOBCon and, more often than not, it wasn’t the presenters or the organizers (who were all great), but my fellow attendees who impressed me.  Listen, look, and listen.  Understand. It’s all very important.
7. If you’ve only learned what’s on the conference program, you’ve missed a lot. This is a mistake that I’ve made at other conferences.  It’s the conversations before, between and afterward where many of the riches lie.  SOBCon was an incredibly good experience for me in this respect.
8. Karaoke is fun if you can tolerate it. You don’t have to have the microphone to sing. It’s fun and encouraging to see people having fun and being decent to each other.
9. Speakers and presenters are often better after they speak – you never you know what else you might learn.  If you can pick out something they did well or add something that they might not have covered, they’ll almost always appreciate that.
10. Follow up afterward so the connections don’t die.  I only got to speak to about a third of the attendees but I’m planning to reach out to just about all of them in some way.  I hope we’ll all stay connected.  I think I made a few new friends for life, which is worth many times more than the cost of the conference.

And finally… don’t be afraid to hug someone, especially if they hug first. It’s not just about the information; it’s about the connections.

Don’t be afraid to leave your home base and experience something new.  It will stimulate your mind and nourish your emotional side.  With some preparation, care and a little bit of courage to put yourself out there to be seen and heard, a good conference can be a pivotal life experience.  It has been for me.

Final note: in addition to getting some time to speak with Terry and Liz, I also want to shout out to some other wonderful people that I spent some quality time with during SOBCon:

Chris Garrett

Michael Martine

Nacie Carson

Kristi Daeda

CV Harquail

Allen and Jessie Mireles

John Haydon

Steve Sherlock

Andy Hayes

Chris Guillebeau

Chris Brogan

Laura Petrolino

Geoff Livingston

Angela Maiers

Derek Halpern

Elisabeth Marshall

Zena Weist

Jonathan Fields

Alli Worthington

Margo Millure

Paula Lee Bright

Mary-Lynn Foster

and many other deserving people that I have failed to mention…

I was also fortunate to get a few moments to talk to authors Michael Port and Steve Farber about their great presentations.

Let’s go a little stream of consciousness for today’s post.  From the control room of Thoughtwrestling, here are some ideas that I hope will be helpful to you (or at least interesting):

• Always go to the original source when it’s important enough to be right.
• You are a biological machine and so am I. We need to do the right maintenance to keep working well.
• Consciousness may be an illusion, but it’s compelling enough to matter.
• Does the person who just used that figure of speech really understand what it means?
• Assume nothing.
• Editing is hard at first but extremely worthwhile.
• Things to write about appear at the most inconvenient times.
• Nothing beats plain English (or the language that you’re actually writing in).
• Don’t be afraid to write long pieces, even in blogs.
• One star and five star ratings are meaningless most of the time.  Three star ratings are indecisive.  Two star or four star ratings require some serious thought.
• Look for the uncommon voice for the well thought, passionate and noteworthy uncommon idea.
• Everyone can make a positive contribution.
• You don’t need the latest, greatest or more expensive thing, no matter how much you think you do.
• Walking away is sometimes the fastest way to get to your goal.
• Know the consequences before you try it.
• Don’t echo:  it means that you have nothing original to say.
• Communicate clearly.
• Sometimes it’s not worth it to try to figure out who said it first.
• Just keep typing.  Or writing.
• What are you trying to say?

Do you have anything to add to this list?  Please leave a comment!

If you’ve ever wondered about the different parts of the brain… here’s a neat short video (just over 2 minutes long) that will give you a guided tour.  Note:  the video has no sound, in case you were wondering.

Note: if you don’t see the video below, click on this link to go to YouTube and watch the video there.

Or, if you’d like a lighter presentation… here’s Pinky and the Brain presenting the brain…

Dear Thoughtwrestler:

I’m republishing this post, the first ever post at Thoughtwrestling, just as a reminder to both of us what this is all about.

Thanks for being here!

What is thoughtwrestling and why is it important to you? Read on…

Thoughtwrestling comes from the phrase wrestling with your thoughts, just like you might expect. But it doesn’t mean the same thing. Throughtwrestling is an active, positive verb. This blog, Thoughtwrestling, is an active, growing, positive resource to help people get outstanding, excellent, and remarkable things done.

When your thoughts wrestle with you

When a person is wrestling with their thoughts, it means that they are overwhelmed and panicked by the thoughts in their mind. Someone who is wrestling with their thoughts – or being crushed by them, depending on how you look at it – feels psychically blocked and unable to make progress. They feel scared, worried, and anxious.

Image by Adam_Baker

Above all, having your thoughts pin you down into an unbreakable hold is frustrating.

Sometimes it’s just a case of being overloaded. You may have too many ideas, too many concerns, and you don’t know how to figure out what will work and what won’t.

The road from beginning to end may seem impossible to travel when you are unable to focus your thoughts to take the steps you need to be successful.

Sometimes the world just makes things harder, too

Your life has an impact on your work which can make it harder to concentrate and create good things.

Image by pasukaru76

Problems in these areas of your life can contribute to your thoughts’ ability to wrestle you down:

• Work (when it’s especially stressful)
• Family and friends (when you’re having problems with these relationships)
• Health (just another thing to make it harder to get things done, right?)
• Money (you can never get enough)
• Organizations and institutions (they seem to exist to make themselves bigger and stronger, often at your expense)
• The perceived threat of change (just when you’ve got it figured out, hey – it’s a new game and there’s no rulebook yet, if there ever will be)
• Uncertainty or the unknown (you just don’t know what’s going to happen and it worries you)

Haven’t all of these things plagued us at one time or another?

It’s hard to do good work (especially complex stuff) even when you aren’t plagued by distractions. You need all the help you can get. You need effective approaches to solve problems and to get things done.

Great things happen when you thoughtwrestle ideas into shape

Thoughtwrestling, as we think of it, is the process of taking ideas, data points and opportunities (the politically correct word to use instead of problems) and turning them into projects, products, services, and solutions. On one hand, thoughtwrestling is devoted to creating new things. It’s also about problem solving. And, finally, it’s about self-actualization.

The ability to turn chaos into order is an invaluable skill.

So are:

• the ability to solve problems;
• to keep an open, creative mind;
• and to keep your mind clear, orderly, and focused.

Image by jurvetson

This blog is a resource to help people who want to make things and to solve problems, especially problems related to creative projects, businesses, organizations, and work processes.

• Are you struggling with the next step?
• Are you stuck in an unproductive rut?
• Do you need help with a project but you’re not sure where to go next?
• Do your thoughts have you pinned down and are the other problems in your life loaded on top of the pile, making it impossible to get up and wrestle some projects into match-winning shape?

Take heart!

Image by lrargerich

We’re here to help you. We’ll be featuring articles, case studies, product reviews, and other valuable content to help you turn chaos into order. We will learn and practice the art and science of thoughtwrestling together. We will help empower you to do great work.

Welcome to Thoughtwrestling. We believe this is the start of something great and we’re so glad you’re with us at the start of this journey!

Subscribe to Thoughtwrestling by E-Mail or RSS reader for more useful insights – even better than the remote control!

I’m suffering from manifesto envy.

Or so I think.

Because I came up with a way to make it interesting to write a manifesto.

November is NaNoWriMo and NaNoBlogMo and…  whatever you want to do, November seems to be the month to do it.  Maybe it’s to burn off the pre-holiday jitters.  I don’t know.

I’m not into writing novels and I already write a lot of blog posts.

But I haven’t written a manifesto yet.  So I’m going to this November.

November is:

Global (I prefer to think beyond a single country)

Manifesto

Writing

Month

So here are the rules that I’m setting for myself:

1. Write at least 333 words per day.  I was going to go with 1,000 words a day, but that’s a 30,000 word manifesto.  Anyone who can write a 30,000 word manifesto is… probably not safe to be around.  Just shy of 10,000 words is good enough, I think.

2.  The only exception to 1 is if I come up with a cool chart or infographic or some kind of related image.  In that case, a picture is worth 1,000 words (literally!)

3.  I have to publish a copy of my manifesto on the Web by January 1, 2011.  It probably won’t be the original because I’ll want to take some of the crazy out of it…  I mean tidy it up a bit…

EDITS:

4.  You don’t have to be perfect (at all) on the first try! The goal here is to have a document (good or bad) at the end of November, just like the way that NaNoWriMo works.  Once you finish the first draft you sit back, read it and revise it until you feel ready to share it with the world.  Over 80% of your first draft could be absolute crap.  And that’s perfectly fine!!!!!!! The goal is to get your ideas out of your head, not to create something beautiful and perfect on the first try.

I reserve the right to revise these rules as needed but I think GloManWriMo is definitely doable.

I want to make this a challenge for the entire Thoughtwrestling community.  Are you up for it?

Can you create a 10,000 word manifesto in one month?  What would you say?  What would you tell the world?  And what would you do with it afterward?

Writing a manifesto is a great way to work on your thoughtwrestling skills, wouldn’t you say?

Come on, don’t let me be the only freak out there in November (Kat French is excused because she’s committed to NaNoWriMo, of course)…  who’s with me?

Maybe it’s a small step towards changing the world…

Bonus incentive: we’ll link out to every GloManWriMo manifesto that’s published in the new year and you can provide the descriptive text.

So get with the manifesto problem!  You can do it!