When the conversation is mere speculation what do we gain?

Emerging into a world of transparency with new technology that allows any conversation in almost any venue, we may forget what would hurt us, still hurts others.

Today's reflective post is from Guest Contributor Jennifer Green. This piece first appeared on Green Parrot under the title Speculation.

I listen to PDXSucks. People who actually love Portland. “We think Portland, Oregon is just about the finest city on the face of the earth. We’re just more than a little frustrated in the path that Portland seems to be taking to become a ‘big city’ and we can’t keep quiet about it anymore.”

I frequently listen later, cause I’m not up at 8:00 AM, one of my most favorite benefits of unemployment. But I do miss being able to interact in the little chat box with the show by not listening at broadcast time. Today, (podcast of 12/22/09) they discussed the death of Brittany Murphy. I 100% absolutely agree with their conversation.

The instant someone famous dies, it starts.

Speculation.

Brittany Murphy, as they pointed out, is someone’s daughter, cousin, niece, granddaughter and friend. And now her family and friends will forever have the week of Christmas, when they lost a loved one, to remember as a time of devastating tragedy.

Speculation is mean, cruel and an opportunity for the Focus Puller to grab attention. I’ll call it the ‘Gloria Allred Syndrome.’ These are people so desperate for attention they will speculate on something that they know nothing about in order to appear on the news, get a book deal—or the ultimate—a show about nonsense on a plethora of cable channels.

How about this, she died.

We won’t know the cause of death for 4-6 weeks. At that point, if the family is inclined to release the results, we will know why.

Yes she was a public figure. Yes she chose a career that put her in the spotlight. But she was a person and she had a life and a family. Doesn’t that fact of humanness somehow allow her a level of privacy when it comes to the most intimate part of her life? Like her death?

It’s times like this that I become embarrassed for some. Yes, I’m interested in people and what they do, but not to this degree.

This is just cruel.

---

Edited by Carol Doane.

Cut and Paste. It's kindergarten all over again

Since inception of my Twitter account, @TheClassicCarol, I have had a blog. It's a department manual and a catch all for discussions and meetings. It was self-defense. No one remembers everything I say. It serves to prove the point, "Yes, I did share that...more than once."

The blog is on lock down due to information only helpful to the sales staff, and honestly, no one cares about the pictures from our budget making breakfast, a study of contract terms, our criteria to order a polybag, the law behind alcohol promotion, how to pull canned reports, schedule a dynamic ad, or who's responsible to fill out the position book.

Now, that I'm blogging in public I'd like to be consistent with filling the space. But who has time for THAT? So, anyone besides Larry Chiang believe in cut and paste? And would you like to cut and paste your content and be a guest contributor at 360 Convos?

Apply below. In the comment section, leave a link to a favorite post you've written and we'll talk. I'll be the one with the scissors...approaching gently. You bring the paste. Don't spill.

pssst, it's helpful if the post has something to do with a conversation

How I use Twitter

Ever followed someone and been disappointed when they did not follow you back? If it was me, I'd like to explain what may have occurred and at the end I'm hoping you'll appease my curiosity and share your philosophy and how you found me.

In communication auto-anything usually leads to auto-fail. I've noticed I do not always receive an email alert for everyone who follows me. I assume that is because they are doing some other-world, massive following program that misses the direct Twitter communication option. Without an alert how do I easily discover you? I don't. I suggest you go one-on-one with the people you are most interested in.

Participation in the venue is important. I review each Twitter email alert I receive and am disappointed if I don't see an Avatar. I want you to care enough about your online brand to include a picture that represents you. If you don't care... should I?

A close follow-to-follower ratio gets a thumbs up. If you follow 800 but only have 8 following you, I'm not likely to follow back. My goal is to encounter people who desire a conversation. Massive growth doesn't lend itself well to conversation (in my experience). Evenso, I scour  the list of who you are following to see if I can find my avatar. If I have to hit "Next" 4, 5, 16 times I assume you want numbers not people and I move on.

Conversation is interesting, information push is a turn off. I also read the tweets on your first page. If you only indulge in an information push, i.e. never re-tweet anyone (RT), never respond to anyone else's tweet (@TheirTwitterName), I pass.

Make money with someone else, please. If every fourth or fifth tweet is a duplicate that tells me how to make money or get white teeth I encourage you to keep trying, just not with me.

Web-sites say exactly what you think.  I'm excited to preview your Web-site and have found some very noteworthy bloggers among my following, but if yours is a money making scheme or a pop up window I have to click close before I even get to or through the first page, I understand my value to you is how much money I can make you. This is a relationship economy, relationships establish rapport, investment could be time or money. Value both, but don't knock me out with either one.

Speak, please. If you have no tweets, or only one tweet, try again later when you've developed your voice. If I've followed you and you're only lurking, i.e., you never tweet, that would be a reason for us to part ways. Participation, conversation, engagement... I weight these heavily.

You say BC, I say Washington. If you're from Vancouver, BC I'll wonder if you realize I'm not in Canada, but I may follow back cause we're Vancouver-Cousin-Cities.

There's always hope. Twice a year I check to see who's still following me. If you've hung on that long I'm likely to check you out again and give you a second chance.

Speak to me, anytime. If I choose not to follow you, but you draw me into a conversation I'm extremely likely to take notice and follow you. How do you start that conversation? Find something that I'm interested in and draw my attention to it. You can check out my bio for what's a hot topic for me.

So that's how I use Twitter. Now's your chance! Leave me a note on your Twitter rules, and appease my curiosity and tell me how you found me. Thanks!

Twitter Feed: 30 Hour Day to stock the food bank

Portland podcasters begin a global conversation to stock the Oregon Food Bank, to offer computer assistance to low income residents via Free Geek, and to collect Toys for Tots.

It's Live. It's Streaming. It's Entertainment. It's 30 Hour Day.

A local team has gathered international celebrities including international nonprofit tech consultant Beth Kanter, author Tara Hunt, Mayor Sam Adams in a pre-recorded interview, and other local online and offline celebrities.

The 30 Hour Day Web-site notes an evolving schedule with updates promised, and a timeline that is 'ish.'

Twitter capture (see below for link to podcast):
 
Click for Live Streaming of 30 HOUR DAY

REFERENCES:
30 Hour Day Event Web-site
@30HourDay Twitter account
ReadWriteWeb Blog of web trends and products

Gist: 360 Biz of the Month

                                                                                                                    

For a generation taught to demand privacy from the companies it transacts business with, Boomers have readily abandoned that concept and joined Gen Xers and Gen Y in a very vibrant, public information sharing performance. Transparency is touted as the answer to what ails us and everyone is encouraged to step out on the information dance floor and boogie.

With each rotation of the mirrored information globe the dance hall twitters with life and we attempt to catch the flickers and make sense of them. In one ear interesting voices chirp in 140 characters, in another social media presentations sing. Associates are LinkedIN, family and friends are Facebooked, and everyone wants to know where and when via Plancast, Foursquare or Gowalla, and we blog all about it.

We share a lot, but most of it is lost in the mayhem.

Garnering salient information about the people who are important to us, especially in business, can be as illusive and dazzling as chasing the mirrored reflections of the disco ball. Gist, a Washington State corporation founded by T. A. McCann, created software for "relationship-centric professionals" to address our need to sort and prioritize the dazzling information mayhem.

For its unique, relationship deepening, innovation, Gist is my choice for 360 Biz of the Month.

I was introduced to Gist by a fellow Twitter-mate turned real-life friend, Ed Borasky (@znmeb). Boraksy is geekedIN and has enough online influence to beta test new products. He received a first round Googlewave invite and tossed one my way before I barely knew what a wave was. Right on the heels of Googlewave Borasky gifted me with Gist.

I like being among the first to know things and seeing the big picture puzzle in a comprehensible map. Gist provides me with all that and a scorecard. My relationship with the people and businesses in my database are weighted or scored based on a proprietary algorithm. A yellow or red alert tells me when too much time has passed between interactions with my inner circle. A detail screen offers an in-depth look of who our shared contacts are, and constant information monitoring keeps me abreast of their blog posts and news mentions.

Gist integrates inside Outlook, Salesforce, and the iPhone, and allows me to focus on my contacts one at a time—in order of their importance to me.

It's most valuable asset is that it saves me time. Instead of me plowing through a sporadic stream of Twitter submissions to find the person of the hour I want to connect with, then tracking down the latest piece of news on them, or signing up for constant Google alerts, Gist allows me to review that individual’s entire online interactions and news spotlights in a date sort that includes a company profile from Dow Jones Business & Reltationship Intelligence. Gist creates a clear portrait, a complete dossier of my contact, and reduces the time needed to pull the varied pieces together to the time elapse of a log-in. The information can be browsed lightly or explored deeply by following provided links.

Gist can be used as a brand monitoring tool, too. I had no intention of using it for this, but it unearthed a dozen copyright infringements for the company that employs me.

Because I have a native bias of Washington State businesses, I took the time to reply to the emails Gist sent asking for feedback. As a result, I connected with Greg Meyer, Customer Experience Manager. He was easily coerced into doling out a generous number of Gist invites for my network. Don’t be shy. Gist is ready for more people to test its beta product. And it’s offered free to my blog readers.

Click the link for complimentary Gist invite:
https://beta.gist.com/signup/360ClassicCarol

Congratulations Gist and T.A. McCann for earning 360 Biz of the Month for January 2010 status. I was too enthusiastic about your product to hold this post until after the first of the year. Wishing you much success in product development.


REFERENCES:
About Gist Corporate Web-site
T.A. McCann Gist Profile
Microsoft Case Study: Gist Document published October 2009
Testimonial: Michael Michaels, recruiter at Verticalmove and organizer of Seattle Job Social YouTube 

NOTE:
I receive no remuneration for the companies I recommend. You can’t buy me. You can wow me.

To start a blog is easy, to keep it going ...

is work.

How many blogs do you have?

How often do you post?

Supported, uncovered, volunteered, stayed... what I should have done

I'm only beginning to get comfortable with mixing online with real life, and my associates laugh at me when I confess I'm trying to keep my professional life separate from my online commentary, because, let's face it, no one wants to be Danah Boyd'ed. Shudder. So, we do what we can to protect our fragile egos, which sometimes means we fail to attach our real names to our e-trail.

But.

A recent post from a co-worker captured my professional name in reference to this blog. So, I'm working on exposing myself and testing it in small venues.

A comment left on Oregon Media Central in reference to my post regarding the We Make The Media event essentially said, huh? "Maybe I needed to be there." Ouch. The event was organized to build a new 'community journalism enterprise' for the Portland metropolitan region. My bad for hitting that send key before corralling clearer and more salient thoughts.

Of course, I realize, it's bound to happen: every blog post is not perfect and someone will create entertainment at  my expense—whether they know me or not. (Note to self: Get over it).

That was not the intention of the Twitter Corner—to create entertainment—as they reacted to the key-note speaker and organizers of the November 2009 WMTM event and texted gut reactions (and not all negative). Nor, was it the intention of the organizers to ignore ideas and feedback from the corner, but, well, we are what we are and we don't always hear everyone's voice as they enter the conversation, and it was with dismay that Abraham Hyatt noted on the #wmtm Twitter stream many voices... exiting.

After the event I arrived home drained and not able to shake off the experience. I'd met well-spoken, thought provoking people and in trying to capture what had distressed and overwhelmed me, that not all the voices were heard, I scrambled my thoughts together and blasted out a post. Then I went twitter-hunting for someone of like mind and connected with Alexander Craghead right after he posted his thoughts on Civics 21.

There is a vast gap in our ages, (I'm estimating), but our #wmtm experience felt oddly similar and our experience of the event began to echo throughout the community. This disenfranchised storm grew and gathered in the Twitter #wmtm stream and pointed fingers at 'old white dudes' who cut off the comments of most of the women, and the younger people in attendance of either gender.

Welcome to the newsroom.

Right about now, you could assume those pale-stale-males do NOT want to have a conversation with me. In reality, that's not true. From what we've experienced in the public-arena-aftermath, those white dudes who were criticized have tip-toed into the fray, some (at least one) have dove in and literally broadcast, blogged and tweeted about what went right and self reflected on what went wrong.

What management has taught me, or to be precise my current director: people who can self-reflect and own their errors are people you can build a team with. I would like to be counted among those self-reflectors, so, here's my confession, borne out of my desire to get what's bugging me (about me) out of the way, so we can work on the real task at hand, crafting our future:

• I should have gravitated to the arena I am not familiar with instead of falling back on what I know. I attended the revenue generation break-out session, but what did I learn that I didn't already know? Had I chosen unfamiliar ground it would have situated me as a listener-learner, and not a 'you need my expertise' persona which I fear I may have projected.
  
  
• I should have supported (interrupted) the male facilitator of our group and directed him toward better practices. Number one: introduce everyone. That should have been required before launching any discussion. We were only asked who we were if we commented. Our group included a gentleman from the music industry, an arena which has faced almost identical concerns of 'content' ownership and distribution issues. (Brilliant post on the music industry woes: Dear Musicians, Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way, by Dave Allen). What could we have learned from his reflection had we uncovered his voice sooner?
  
  In addition, I'm left to berate myself on the voices we may have neglected to encourage because they were too timid to speak. Introductions would have given value to everyone's voice.
  
  
• I should have discovered on the front end who thinks differently. Mid-way through our discourse we discovered there were those who believed we should not sell any ads to support the emerging journalism enterprise. One of the guys proposed a subscription based concept, and also noted he had crafted several successful Facebook ad campaigns. Now, I'm forced to wonder, 'why did he think that? What does he know/think that I have not considered?'
  
  Had we introduced ourselves and given a one sentence hope for our outcome we could have flushed out opposing concepts on the front end and been able to explore alternative paradigms immediately, instead of finding half-way through we were not of the same mind. A missed opportunity for all of us to crystallize our thoughts and seek deeper understanding.
  
  
• I should have volunteered to take our discussion points back to the main group. Our facilitator did a 6o second summary of ... I'm still trying to figure that out. I photographed our flip chart and will capture our notes and reproduce them on the blog. But clearly, he was ill prepared to represent our discussion and scurried through his task as if we were running out of time, or as if he wasn't comfortable speaking in front of a crowd.
  
  We would have been better served had we taken five minutes to summarize our discussion, vote on what we felt the most valuable thoughts, and ask who would be willing to represent it to the group. I seldom skirt the limelight, but ran out of the room with the rest of the crew and left it in our facilitator's and scribe's hands to figure out the next step. (Note to self: boo, bad girl!)
  
  
• I should have stayed to the bitter end and headed to the bar with the rest of the 'hell raisers.' Some of the best ideas come over a beer. Therefore, I owe you all one. How about a pitcher after the next event? Heck, this blog should host the after-party.
  

Let's talk. Let's listen to each other and seek mutual benefit, and I promise we will craft a very interesting, if not engaging and profitable future.

We Make The Media Follow-ups: 

• Alexander Craghead: On cities and citizenship in the 21st century
• Abraham Hyatt: We Made The Media: What went right — and wrong
• Becca: We Make the Media conference
• Becca: WMTM Still Going Strong
• Bill Lascher: Making the most of making the media
• Carla Axtman: Walking the tightrope of talking about race
• Carol Doane: 360 Convos: Building a new model may require listening
• Christopher J. Miller: Journalists, unite!
• Colin Mulvany: Will the touch tablet save professional journalism?
• Digital Journalism Portland: It's time for social hour
• Electrotainment|Podcast: Abraham Hyatt on We Make the Media
• Jeff Bunch: No one-size-fits-all for new journalism model(s)
• Jennifer Petty: We Make the Media
• Jennifer Willis: We Make the Media conference
• Jennifer Willis: A News/Media Incubator 
• Jennifer Willis: Freelance writer vs. entrepreneurial journalist
• Joe Wilson: My views on WeMakeTheMedia event – after the hangover
• Marie: What I think happened at #wmtm (We Make the Media)
• Matt Davis: Too Close to the Sun? | Portland Mulls Nonprofit Media Startup
• Michael Andersen: Why this isn’t a media revolution
• Michelle Rafter: WMTM followup: A Portland journalism incubator, and more
• Oregon Media Central: Update: ‘We Make The Media,’ but who’s ‘we?’
• Oregon Media Central: More Post Conference Posts
• Our PDX Network: The WMTM Roundup
• Our PDX Network: WMTM Redux: Founder Ron Buel Responds
• Portland Media Lab: We Make the Media conference looks at nonprofit models
• Steven A. Smith: We Make the Media” in Portland
• Steven A. Smith: Seeking a better term than ‘hobby journalist.’
• Steve Woodward: The futures — plural — of journalism | Nozzl Medi
• T.A. Barnhart: I'm an "old white guy" too
• We Make The Media: Home Page: 
• Z Twitter Transcript: Transcript for #wmtm – What the Hashtag?!

Other
Fast Company: Automated AOL News: Heralding the Future of Online News Writing?
FTC Workshop: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?
Mediactive: Journalism's slow, sad suicide
News Inkubator: What is News Inkubator?
TechCrunch Comment: What Robert Scoble Would Pay for News via Twitter
The Faster Times: A New Type of Newspaper for a New Type of World
The Nation: How to Save Journalism
Vancouver Observer: The Death of Journalism

Days Until Christmas

Days Until Christmas

My favorite interview question

Thanks everyone for sharing your favorite, or non-favorite question. I’m going to continue to collect them. I’m especially interested in interview questions—that would be Phase One of my project. Phase Two will be analyzing how candidates, who were hired, answered those questions, and Phase Three will be whether the hire was a success.

I’ve had a rich and varied experience myself, in both asking and answering questions. I know through analyzing my own interview performance and feedback (throw their first two reasons out, people who don’t hire you have to warm up to the process of assistance and disclosure) why I think I connected or why I did not.

I was briefly mentored by a former NIKE Human Resource manager who taught that everything you need to know about the prospective candidate is right there…if you choose to pay attention. I have not always hired the best candidate. I would like to.

While I collect the questions, I thought I’d share my favorite interview question, the one I ask every prospective candidate. Instead of just blurting it out I’d like to make this fun. This comes from a manuscript currently in progress. The scene involves Jae-Chun Lee, a California real estate developer who owns a chain of commercial sales and leasing offices in three states, his wife, the outgoing manager of one of the satellite offices, and Michael, the regional manager, who has had them both fly in to interview a candidate to replace Lee's wife. This is in the wife's voice.

I rested my interview questions that my secretary had printed on the portfolio I’d snatched from a surprised brokers desk and readied the fake Mont Blanc pen I grabbed from the hands of another. “Patricia, if Mr. Lee offered you the job, what is your plan to set the tone of the office and get off to a good start?” Start wide, Mr. Ward my mentor had taught, move in closer with each progressive question and don’t be afraid to ask something unexpected. This wasn’t vague and she better think fast.

She smiled, reached into her laptop bag and pulled out neat binders. “I thought about that and crafted a strategy.” She walked the men through it, while I said, shit, in my head.

“What would your peers say about you?” Helpful, hard working, focused. “Your manager?” Driven. “What do you like about your present manager and what would you like to change?” His abundance of knowledge, but limited time to collaborate. “What motivates you to put forth your best effort?” I like to win, I’m competitive with myself, and I want to make my dad proud. Gag.

“How do you determine or evaluate your success?” By my achievements. Let me share my past year. “What career aspiration would this job satisfy for you?” I’d get closer to Michael’s job. I observed him, he showed no sign of fear. Silly boy. “What do you do when you know you’re right and your boss doesn’t agree?” Lee’s pencil flew over his pad and he nodded a couple of times at her answers. Silly man. “What gets in the way of your job performance?” People who don’t hold my same commitment.

“When is it appropriate to steal from your employer?” That brought the room to a standstill.

Her face blanched. “I would…never… I can’t imagine.” She swallowed. “Could you repeat that?”

“Sure, when is it appropriate to steal from your employer?”

She blinked a couple of times. “I guess when you’re ready to be fired,” she paused, “Or you’re the company attorney.”

The men laughed, even if a little nervous. “You like that question, don’t you?” she asked smiling, her garnetfrost lipstick holding its perfect line.

“I do,” I said. “I’ve had some interesting answers.”

And I have!

Invite to Google Wave

I just received a message from Google Wave with a handful of invites.

I'm offering them up.

Leave a comment of your favorite interview question—either one you ask a job candidate, or a question you've had to answer in an interview.

Love or hate.

 I'll choose best responses by Thanksgiving, notify you so I can capture your email (required to submit request for invitation), and then submit your invitation order.

Invitations are not sent immediately, but should arrive as my Christmas present to you.

Good luck!

Building a new model may require listening

After spending seven hours with brilliant, articulate people I feel bereft. I thought breaking journalists out of stank newsrooms where same-o, same-o pushes their creativity into square holes, or opening an avenue for laid off reporters to vent about what would have made the journalism world better, that we’d be humming with energy and ideas. Even if they were impossible.

What are we afraid of? What are we not seeing? What do we need to do differently, radically counter to culture, backstream, upstream, jump out of the stream that will rock this world and make rockstars out of investigative reporters, that will nurture citizen journalists to fill needed gaps, that will energize and create an engaged, vibrant community? Maybe listen.

Passionate people conceived of bringing together the journalism community to brainstorm, propose and walk away with a plan on how to create a new community-driven news project, a sustainable journalistic model.

Here’s my advice: listen, people. Listen.

When a member of the audience stood and asked the session leaders, "When I arrived I had a clear idea of what the break out sessions would cover. After hearing them speak I’m confused. Could you summarize in two sentences your topic?" The answer was, I don’t have anything to add to what I said.

Okay, say it like I’m simple. Except, you can’t?

These are the people we invest our subscription fees in to report the news, to take a world of information, break it down and serve it up in bite size doses that are thoughtful, interesting, and understandable. They work on deadline. I thought they’d be able to think on their feet. Maybe they can only type, not talk, maybe they should have been tweeting.

An outspoken participant took the organizers to task for not reaching into the community of color and marketing the event to them to draw them into the conversation. Whoa, baby. We all came with agendas, and that wasn’t mine, but at least it got people to think.

Okay, perhaps I’m being too hard. Let’s look at the break out session. I have photographs of  eight sheets of notes. The guy who spoke on behalf of our group, our facilitator, mentioned absolutely nothing that we spent an hour and half discussing. Even if everything said in the group was lame you could still put a nice spin on it, but it wasn’t lame.

We had representatives from Portland, Vancouver and Seattle media in our group, and not only from the news side but from the advertising side of the house, and not just from journalism but from the music industry. But nothing we captured was shared with the big group. Our group’s scribe jumped into the plenary session fray and tried to pull out information from one of our group members, but that got shut down by the overall facilitator who wanted to stay on time.

Yes, we started on time and we ended on time. We ended with 25% of the original participants.

Here is the bad news: journalism is not what it was. Newspapers television, and radio are not what they were. And the really bad news: the legacy media will never be what they were again. Ever. That means that we need to be different.

What are we going to do, to be the new media, the new journalism, the new future? And how are we going to get there if we're not paying attention?

My intentional conversation with an unintended audience

In an office environment communication commonly follows a sequential pattern of interaction. The boss says something, the employees listen—occasionally take notes—and take action.

Only it doesn’t work that way.

When I first became a supervisor I realized the best tactic for our group to stay on track during a meeting was to have an agenda. I carefully crafted the notes, boiled them down to an easy to follow agenda, typed the neat schedule and passed it out to each attendee. I thought if the staff knew how faraway we were from the end, it would limit the odd duck question and verbal meandering, and give them a visual clue of how close we were to concluding, thus assuring them the meeting would eventually end.

Only it didn’t last.

I got comfortable with my role, maybe too comfortable, still typed my notes, but stopped preparing an agenda. Here’s what I discovered--I had inactive listeners, I had overactive participants, I had meetings that went on too long, and no one was taking notes. In addition, I found I had to repeat the same things approximately every three to four months. ‘Yes, you can. No, you can’t.’

I decided to create a record of our meeting notes and filed them in a folder on a shared drive. This was an unending WORD document that I added to each week. This was boring. No one references boring, (except me to prove the point, “Yes, I did tell you that. I announced that on February 19, 2009”). I thought making the meeting notes more interesting would solve the not-paying-attention issue. I created a blog: If it's in writing, we'll remember. Because proprietary information was shared on the blog, I locked the public out and announced to the staff they needed to sign up for a free gmail account to access the site.

Oh, my lord, that was a HUGE issue.

Granted, a couple (two, to be exact) jumped on board and said, “This is great!” The others didn’t want to do it. Somehow, having too many passwords floating around in the internet-sphere would cause funds to leach out of their savings. Seriously, a staff member confessed that to me. A handful more got together and made a pact that they wouldn’t sign up. Only one followed through with the pact. Gawh. I had no idea a blog could create that much dissension. A blog, folks, a blog.  Look at it. Does it look divisive?

I decided I would keep doing what I was doing and eventually the staff would figure it out. I decided I would make the online experience fun and add a Twitter account and tweet their successes. Thus, the birth of @TheClassicCarol.

Only I was the only one on Twitter.

@TheClassicCarol started gathering followers. Sheesh, now what do I do? I decided I ought to tweet something that might be interesting to someone other than my intended audience. Then my new un-intended audience wondered why the blog posted on Twitter went nowhere.

After a half year of excluding you I decided to create 360 Convos, my outlet to have an intentional conversation with the unintended.  Welcome, blog visitor!

Now, what have you tried at work that had unexpected outcome?

Oh, and by the way, I’m preparing an agenda for that afternoon sales rep meeting.

Bio Carol Doane

Hot pursuit of a career in advertising landed Carol a job in one of the largest newspapers in Southwest Washington. After numerous years of hacking out ad copy, selling print and online ads, and making friends with everyone in her path, she can now claim connections in the highest echelons of covert government (former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency) Hollywood (VP at MGM) and the janitorial staff (she works late).

She led a sales team of high powered media reps at the newspaper, moved to a start-up which can be summarized in one word: chaos. And looking for renewal she reinvented herself and emerged in the digital world of online advertising. Amazing stuff.

Not content to leave her future in the hands of what some say is a perishing industry—legacy mdeia—she decided to take advantage of everything she's learned (seriously) and throw her hat into the 'safety' of the book publishing arena. She's finished her first second women's upscale, multicultural (Asian) fiction manuscript, and launched herself like a Kamikaze pilot into an historical fiction novel. The history of the Pacific Northwest offers abundant ground for her story about a young Native American woman.

She spent a college summer on the road in a performance group (yay, song and dance!) which steered her away from a career in the music industry. Her art is on public display in a permanent installation in Vancouver, Washington (see photo). It is a portrait of her daughter.

A cum laude graduate of a private college in Oregon, she's been around the world, living in Europe, and traveling in Asia and throughout North America, which has nothing to do with her current manuscript or her job.

You'll find Carol on Twitter as The Classic Carol, on LinkedIn, on Facebook and on Google phone: 503.893.4609.

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Last updated August 22, 2013

What I should have learned in management school

My current reading includes how leading organizations use social media to engage employees. That was not the topic when I studied management. We were focused on Kaizen, the Japanese strategy of continuious improvement, on human resources law, on the costs to train new employees versus investing in current staff. After we slogged through the technical stuff, including creating work flow charts, we were told to relax and be real--interject humor into the workplace. Hence my foray into publication, a chapter in Laughing Nine to Five: The Quest for Humor in the Workplace.

What we should have studied? Strategies to ferry companies through the information deluge, tactics to survive reorganization, i.e., Chapter 11, or skills to retain Gen Y's attention so they can get some work done before they leave to go home and call in sick tomorrow to go skiing.

We should have been taught Plan B, what to do when sound marketing practices are shattered by everyone scampering into social media. We should have been raised to scrooge every penny for a rainy day. Today. The day of the new economy.

Or, not.

If we knew the future we wouldn't like it. If I was building a house from scratch I wouldn't enjoy it as much as remodeling. How creative can I get with this space?

That remains to be seen, by you.

Welcome to my blog, 360 Convos.

Let's see who changes who first.