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So I Opened the Box today and found a golden table.
So I thought about what this actually might refer to and I came up with: meetings.
Seriously. Meetings…
When was the last time one of those landed in your inbox and made you respond, “Hot diggety, a meeting!” as you snapped your hand to the Accept button?
…I thought so. Me neither. So I had to think about it some more.
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So I opened my Kindle and a copy of “Do the Work” by Steven Pressfield showed up a couple of days ago. This book has been touted by Seth Godin for awhile, and I pre-ordered the free e-book about a month ago. Anyway, I started reading it today and something has already jumped out at me.
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I’ve just finished reading Seth Godin’s book Poke the Box and am just finishing Ricardo Semler’s The Seven Day Weekend. One theme that has struck me is the value of diversity in team, thought and innovation.
My final project for my Leadership in the Digital Age course was a video featuring portions of two interviews I conducted with two people that I left qualified as authentic leaders: Dr. Jim AuBuchon, president and CEO of the Puget Sound Blood Center (Seattle, WA) and president of the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), and Dr. Scott Dudley, senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, WA. One of the reasons these two organizations fascinated me is that, while being non-profits, they are both rather sizable organizations with sizable membership and budgets to match….not the way one might initially view a blood bank or a church.
During the course of these excerpts, these two leaders share some early leadership experiences, how social media and digital media influence their leaderships styles, and their guiding philosophies.
Future installments will return to these two leaders as well as include interviews with several others I have met so far.
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In The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner, one of the initial calls made to a reader is to first lead yourself. What I have learned so far as I delve into this area of study and experience is how critical it is to discover who you are. No, seriously….
I really do get how “new-agey” or “self-helpy” that sounds. If I had been presented with that exhortation earlier in my life, it would have elicited a derisive snort and that would have been the end of it. However, in the more serious context of the course I’ve been taking and the books we’re been reading (see my earlier post here for background), the skeptic fog has dissipated some. I have spent quite a bit more time writing out my personal story, rereading it and stepping back to see the touchstone experiences/people/movements that brought me to where I am today.
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I’m just past the halfway mark in my final class before completing my Master of Communications in Digital Media (MCDM) program from the University of Washington. The class is all about being a leader in the digital age, which, if you just blow past the words, sounds like yet another survey of leadership styles, papers to write, a video project and some other deliverables. Turns out it is providing me yet another viewpoint from which to view myself and those around me. By the way, this has been true for every single endeavor I’ve undertaken in this program, but now back to our show….
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I am not a BIG FAN of product support…..except, of course, when things go south. Perhaps it comes from the days when I operated in that capacity (and occasionally still do for at-home items, but I digress), or from the bad old days of sitting on hold for untold hours waiting for someone with the actual answer to give it to me, so I could fix the broken whatsit and get back to work/play/whatever.
Things have gotten better….
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Last week Amazon announced a Software Development Kit (SDK) for their Kindle e-reader. They are calling it the Kindle Development Kit (KDK). According to Ian Freed, Vice President of the Kindle group, “We’ve heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle. The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent.” (full press release can be read here)
The KDK will be initially released in a limited beta. The revenue split will be 70% to the developer and 30%, with an additional scheme for application delivery fees and ongoing delivery of any dynamic content or data. Three pricing options have been announced (from the KDK page):
So what does this mean? It means altering your perception of the Kindle. If the creativity of the developers of mobile applications on other platforms is any indication (e.g.- Apple, Palm, Google, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Nokia, etc.), in the next year you will be able to do WAY more on your Kindle than read today’s New York Times and items from your Kindle library. Kindle becomes an already accepted wireless mobile platform with a well-recognized name. It is priced under the bulk of netbooks and many smartphones (admittedly, it also does NOT have touch or color, but I don’t think the designers at Amazon are standing still on those fronts…).
This comes as a frontal challenge to the highly anticipated Apple tablet (side thought: if e-readers were THE gadget at CES this year, are tablets likely to be the hot item next year?). As of today (January 25, 2010), it is not public just what the focus and capabilities of the Apple device will be. Apple changed the whole idea of phone as mobile platform and enabled the developers for that device to stretch it and innovate in ways no one foresaw at the beginning (I’m reminded a little of the market for third party add-ons and ActiveX controls to Microsoft Visual Basic and early web development). Apple’s good at drawing its established customer base into the “next big thing/flashy object” and expanding it. I expect to see good sales of their device initially. However, Kindle is likely to remain at a price advantage, even if the Kindle v.next has touch and color capabilities. Apple has NEVER been afraid to charge top dollar for its products, and apparently a large portion of the consuming public is willing to pay. However, the growing fuzziness over devices in this area (overlap in function, price, purpose, available applications, etc. for netbooks, e-readers, smartphones and all the ‘tweener’ devices….) may take some time to shake out. Kindle has the advantage of being in the hands of a large number users today, and Amazon is just opening up the device to be enabled in other ways. It’s shaping up to be a very interesting competition.
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Thanks to the opportunity provided by my current class in the MCDM program, I have put together my first video. This has taken place despite my absolute novice skills in video editing (interestingly enough, shooting the scenes was fairly straight-forward for me).
Authentic Voice 
