Cam Findlay

Archive for the ‘Communities’ Category

Below shows some activities in my life where I experience “Flow” that being a place where my skills and challenges meet to allow me to perform at my very best. It also shows some of my core values and sense of purpose around these activities.
(Click the diagram to enlarge)

These are just 3 of many areas in which I find a sense of flow there are many more but focusing on these ones for now they have helped (and continue to help) me become more integrated and differentiated in my life by:

Participating in communities are various types gives me both a place to learn from others and a place to share my skills to help advance the goals of that community. I find that there is a sense of community in just about everything I do. Being part of the “Dance Music Community” and helping run events and share my music with others as a DJ and music producer. On the web development and coding side of things I am part of the “Open Source Community” where ideas around building great websites, producing reusable code that anyone can use, modify and make better drive this movement and foster a place where I can again learn from other open source participants and at times contribute back so that others may learn and make use of what I have learnt.  I am also part of a community with my Iaido training which is a subset of the greater community of people doing martial arts (Budo) in a quest to build character, mind, body and spirit in their lives.
I find that for all of my broad range of skills, talents and hobbies there is a community of people (either online or offline) that can benefit from my participation and contribution into that community.

Show that young people are a positive part of your community

Celebrate International Youth Day and Hoodie Day by holding a mufti day at your school or orgnaisation on Wednesday 12 August, and raise funds for young people and older people in NZ.

Donate the funds you raise to Hoodie Day organisers NZ Aotearoa Adolescent Health and Development (NZAAHD) to show your support for other young people in NZ. NZAAHD works to support, inform and connect organisations that work with youth across New Zealand . NZAAHD will pass on 10% of funds raised to their partner organisation Age Concern – to help show that young people care about their older people! Age Concern work to serve the needs of older people in NZ.

I came across this great article and video through a friend of mine on friendfeed.com and just had to post it up on my blog.  I think any budding entrepreneur or online community should be able to take something from this as it just shows that we have resources greater than we can even imagine just waiting for us to tap into them! I would love some comments and feedback about what you think of the video and article.  What do you think you would do with the $5?…  Enjoy.

I brought up the “5 whys” exercise back in the lecture 2 post last week but to recap the basic idea is to think of an important event that has occurred in your life and ask yourself why that was important.  Then take your answer and again ask yourself why that answer was important.  Repeat 5 times.  The idea being that after digging down to why an event was important to you you should start coming across some ideas or themes that could potentially be your core values or your purpose in your life. On a side note you can also use this technique for finding root causes for problems by digging down through symptoms.

So here is a brief run down of the three events that I chose:

Important Event 1: Winning my Iaido Competition
1. Why was winning this important?
Because it showed that I have a talent or aptitude for my chosen martial art.

2. Why is it important to show your talent?
Because I put a lot of hard work, learning of new skills and mental discipline into practice.

3. Why was it important to do all that hard work and mental discipline?
Because it helped me overcome my nervousness and fears while performing my Iaido Kata in front of an audience.

4. Why was it important to overcome your fears/nerves?
Because I was able to show confidence and believe that what I was doing was bigger than the fear.

5. Why was it important to believe in what you were doing?
Because I want to be more honest with myself and be able to do anything I put my mind to and grow my character.

Important Event 2: Being able to attend the X:Media:Lab Conference Workshops as part of my work at Rock Star Recipes.
1. Why was it important to attend the workshop?
Because I got to network and talk about our companies ideas with some of the worlds best digital media gurus.

2. Why was it important for you to network with these people?
Because I was able to make some great business contacts and mentors and gain insight on our ideas.

3. Why is it important to you to build these relationships?
Because it builds a community of support around the work I am doing and our companies vision.

4. Why is it important to build support in the form of a community?
Because it seems the nature of business is changing and that engaging and building a community around your vision/product/organisation and engaging in real dialogue with those in the community.

5. Why is it important to understand this change in the business environment?
Because I want to help businesses understand how to talk to their community and conduct themselves more openly and honestly.

Important Event 3: Returning to Universit y to study part time
1. Why was it important to return to your study?
Because I want to finished the degree (BCom) that I started several years ago.

2. Why I it important to finish your degree and learn more?
Because I want a greater understanding of my work and the business environment that I operate in and where this environment is going in the future.

3. Why is it important for you to have a greater understanding?
Because I feel by understanding and gaining more knowledge I will find more purpose and meaning in my work.

4. Why do you want more purpose and meaning?
Because I want to enjoy what I am spending a lot of my time doing, I want it to be more that just a job.

5. Why do you want to enjoy and have more than just a job?
So I can share my excitement and enthusiasm with what I do with others.

So what can I take from the above exercise?
1. Being honest and striving for personal growth is a core value for me.

2. I think perhaps my purpose might have something to do with communities (either online or offline) and pushing for this new change in the way we communicate/market/exist in business in the future. I need to explore this more.

3. I want to enjoy my work and share what I am passionate about with others.

I have some idea about where I am going at the moment but as far as a super clear “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG)” I think I need to spend some more time discovering and exploring my ideas more fully.

In an earlier journal question rant I spoke about my passion for online communities and part of me is leaning towards exploring this path more.  I have helped a few people set up their own online communities through custom strategies so perhaps one BHAG could be to become more well known for my ideas around setting up and managing these communities and look at doing more consulting and freelancing.
I do intend to look at writing up a case study or two around some of the work I have done with others on their online communities and look at following up to see how engaging with their community has helped drive their businesses.

I also spoke in an earlier question about my ideas for products and businesses (I still need to go buy a notebook to get all these ideas down).  So again I find that this could be a possible future direction for me. 

On a more personal BHAG there is also some part of me that would like to take a trip to Japan and perhaps study more about my martial art, Iaido and learn some Japanese language and culture.

One thing is for sure that I do have options, I think some more time spent looking into my ideas and then deciding on something to focus on that fits in with my values will lead me to a clearer picture of what my BHAG is. Perhaps my BHAG is to do all the things above?, or work out someway I can integrate online community, with entrepreneurship and Iaido or Japanese culture?
I think that it is part of the joy of life anyway, trying things, learning and heading towards a better sense of the right path for me. What is that cliche line? “It’s the journey, not the destination…”

As far as passions go, technology has to be up there on the top of my list.  I really enjoy keeping track of all the new hardware, websites, mobile phones and gadgets that always seem to be released overseas long before we even hear about them out here in New Zealand.  I try to listen to as many technology focused podcasts and follow many technology blogs.

I’m an early adopter of as much new technology I can get my hands on if I feel it is something that is going to change the way we think going forward.  The iPhone being one of those gadgets I lined up last year in July to get my hands on this game changing platform, not just because the iPhone is a cool piece of kit but because I believe that portable computing platform like the iPhone push forward the way in which we connect with others and have meaningful conversations (though tools including Twitter and Facebook).  Technology touches so many aspects of our lives without us thinking twice about it and I makes our lives *easier and more interconnected with those around us.

I am also passionate about the method in which I gather all my technology related information and media; the global community that exists online and in online communities and “social media” (a term I use relatively loosely as it seems to be a word thrown around in many a traditional marketers plan a lot as the new cool thing).  In reality I think the best “social media” is naturally and organically formed communities around a topic of interest and led by those within the community.

Whether this conversation is initiated by organisations or individuals doesn’t matter so much, as long as it is real, genuine and honest conversation.
It is becoming more and more accessible to engage and have real dialogue with a community of people using freely available tools and a smart strategy, I get excited when I see great implementations of these ideas/tools and people engaging in communities about ideas and interests they are passionate about.

*There is some debate around this… just try keeping your mobile phone or computer off for a day or two and see what happens!  I also am guilty of cursing at my computer screen when something doesn’t work as it should.