RE:THINK

I still have a lot of session summaries to write up (or perhaps I won’t as it’s pretty easy to find great alternatives to me, such as my new friend,Chel O’Reilly).

But what I will do is try to summarize what this ride has been like.

I first became aware of TED around 5 years ago, a little before they began publishing the TED Talks videos. I’m a big believer in the power of big thinking - whether it’s a desire to change the world, or advance medicine, or solve issues of urban renewal, or rebuild natural environments, or to give great art a place outside the established museums and galleries and concert halls.

Indeed, seeking a place where big, brave thinking - a place of possibility, a place where “no” isn’t an option - has been a significant part of what took me to start acidlabs two years ago this month. For too long I worked at places bound in bureaucracy, in “dumbplexity”, in a mindset where policy and procedure are the only possibility.

I’m just not wired like that. And so it seems, this new family of mine, the TEDsters (or, as was proposed this week, TEDizens) aren’t wired that way either.

This week has been a wild ride. From the lowest lows of the horrors of the war in Afghanistan, the disaster that is the global economy (obviously they didn’t listen to Nassim Nicholas Taleb last year) to the highest, ecstatic heights of hearing Jose Antonio Abreu’s amazing orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel and singing along to Jamie Cullum playing John Lennon’s Imaginewith 1900 others as TED closed.

Back in March, my friend, Stephen Dann wrote of attending his first BarCamp that it was:

“…like coming home to old friends I’ve never met.”

And thus was TED for me.

I met doctors, lawyers, philanthropists, marketers, designers, musicians, artists, baristas (I taught them to make a decent long black), serious hacker geeks (hey,Chris!) and more, all with a common purpose. To think beyond the now, to dream of possibility and reject anger and resignation and to act as individuals and communities in order to make a better world.

There’s a point at the end of TED, where everyone knows it’s over but nobody wants to leave. Many of us simply hung around in the hotel gardens yesterday, continuing our discussions, affirming each others plans and ideas, and sometimes sharing astoundingly intimate details of our personal lives and the things that brought us to TED. Around us, the hotel staff continued to pack down the convention center. You reach a point where you know you have to go back and just breathe out as you enter your room, as we all did (and then we cheated and had dinner together to reignite the buzz).

The infamous post-TED slump is something I will strive to avoid. I will be very deliberate in maintaining contact with some of the new friends I’ve made. I have a swirling mix of vague and crystal clear thoughts about what I need to do when I return home - both in terms of acidlabs and in my life (and there will be changes in both).

I want so much to share this experience with my friends back home, and so I will - over coffee, or dinner or a call. And just maybe, we can have more than 15 Aussies at TED Palm Springs next time.

 

Related articles by Zemanta

• “Imagine” on the iPhone: Needs more cowbell (crunchgear.com)
• The end of TED 2009 (ethanzuckerman.com)

Seth Godin is a marketing genius, and author of several best selling books on marketing.

He recently wrote an article on the “Best and the Brightest” which emphasised the change in the landscape as young people no longer queue to be investment bankers!

Here is Seth’s post…

We all have them: dreams, aspirations, bucket lists. We see something nice, we wish it could be ours. Sometimes it is out of our reach (now), so we just let go of it, because “there is no way I can own an Aston Martin”. The thing is - people do! people buy nice things, and expensive things, all the time. Why can they, and not us? People also do things that we say “we can never do”. Why not???

You can dismiss this and say: “well, they are smarter/better looking/ born rich, that’s why”, and move on with your life.
Or you can say: “hold on! I’m smart. I’m good looking. I can get whatever I want!”
The truth is, you can get whatever you want, however remote you think your dream is from where you are, if you put your mind to work.
If you LOVE something, and it is really important to you, you’ll do whatever it takes to have it. If you don’t - it is not important enough for you.
There is no right or wrong. This is just it. Once you have defined, in your own mind, what it is that you want - all you need is a plan to get there, and to make the first step.
We’ve all heard the common saying: the longest journey starts with the first step. Think about it for a minute, and let it sink in.
One other thing to consider: suppose you’re standing in a busy shopping center, or the center of town, and you stop! and look around.
What you’ll probably find are big brands, large signs on rooftops of sky scrapers : they have all started with the first step - an idea, and a passion of one person, to make it happen!
Get this: Banks, property developers, electronics companies, shopping centers, EVERYTHING you see around you, started with an idea, and someone who pursued his idea. That is all it takes.
The following video, tells the story of a mobile phone salesman, working in a shop, which his mother would probably think is gorgeous, although other people may have different opinion (including himself).
This guy, had a dream in him, and one day it clicked, and he made the first step, to fulfill his dream.
My point is - so can you.

If Paul’s story touched you, please share below:

Are you part of this ‘joke’

This is an article by Jessica Irvine that appeared today on the Sydney Morning Herald, that highlights the situation in Sydney…

There’s a joke doing the rounds of finance workers in the CBD, given added poignancy by this week’s decision by upmarket shirt maker Herringbone to go into voluntary administration. What’s the definition of optimism in the finance sector? Answer: ironing five shirts on a Sunday night.

Global financial turmoil is cutting a swathe through Australia’s army of finance workers, most of whom call Sydney home. The list of job casualties is beginning to look a veritable who’s who of Sydney’s city skyline.

In the heart of the city, in the building formerly known as the millionaires’ factory, Macquarie Bank is tipped to have axed upwards of 1000 jobs. A few streets over on Phillip Street, there are 150 fewer investment bankers sipping double-shot espressos in the garishly orange foyer of the ABN Amro building.

A block away at Deutsche Bank Place, topped by the famous Lord Norman Foster-designed “goal posts”, there are 30 fewer Deutsche bankers to make the daily trip up in its vertiginous glass elevators. Down at Circular Quay, the historic AMP building is 210 AMP employees lighter, while the Axa Australia building has said goodbye to 90 Axa staff.

Job losses so far this year among Australia’s big four retail banks now stand at 1000 for ANZ, 179 at NAB and 450 at Westpac, according to the Finance Sector Union. Other big name casualties include Babcock and Brown (850 people), Insurance Australia Group (600), UBS (50), Merrill Lynch (20) and Goldman Sachs (10).

All up, the FSU estimates there have been almost 5000 jobs lost in the finance industry since the start of the year, most of them in Sydney. Surprisingly, it appears even this may be an understatement. The chief economist at JPMorgan, Stephen Walters, puts the losses at closer to 19,000, based on company briefings to analysts and media reports.

As the CBD vacates, there is a lingering sense of unreality about it all. Job losses are like the elephant in the room that everyone is gossiping about but no one wants to talk about publicly. Those still ironing shirts are keen to avoid the spotlight, while the newly unemployed, instead of protesting on the street, are quietly going about the business of putting the Mosman home on the market, auctioning the Audi and offloading the holiday house at Palm Beach. Tail between legs, they’re retreating homewards to start living the simple life, or start writing that novel they always knew they had in them.

It’s the silent recession, which, unlike other recent recessions, is coming from the top down, rather than the bottom up. But it in the end it will catch up with everyone.

Just as the sharemarket tends to lead the real economy, with stock prices plunging well before real activity does, job losses in the finance sector are likely to be a precursor to wider job losses in the rest of the economy. It is already happening, with Gerry Harvey announcing the closure of up to 10 loss-making stores next year and Qantas announcing it will axe more than 1000 positions.

The cyclical downturn in the broader economy is about to catch up with the financial downturn and one will probably amplify the other. Interest rates are falling at their fastest pace since the last recession but they spent six months of this year at 12-year highs as the Reserve Bank, after 17 years of continuous growth, attempted to keep the economy from exceeding its speed limits.

Heavily indebted households have been burnt and consumers in general have a new appreciation of the dangers of debt. It will take at least six months for interest rate cuts to begin to work their way through to help boost the economy.

Meanwhile, Australia has lost some of its biggest spenders. Fewer corporate luncheons mean fewer waiters and chefs. Fewer people catching taxis in the CBD means fewer taxi drivers. Fewer luxury purchases means fewer retail assistants and so on.

These former high-flyers also played an important role in inflating and maintaining property prices in well-located inner-city areas. It is not clear how much longer house prices in these areas can hold up against the tide of new properties coming on to the market. There are 312 properties currently listed for sale in Mosman, complete with their own “French Provincial-inspired terrace” and “breathtaking Middle Harbour views”. One three-bedroom villa is advertised ominously as “for definite sale”.

Enter the Government’s hastily constructed “economic security strategy”, consisting mostly of pre-Christmas cash bonuses for families and pensioners. It is a multibillion-dollar attempt to prime the economy’s pump. Problem is, it works best if the money is spent.

Pensioners, with their relatively low levels of debt and higher proportionate spending on food, are likely to spend most of it but a large amount of the goodies for families are likely to go straight into paying off credit card or mortgage debt.

A long-standing political tradition for targeting cash handouts at so called “battler” families with large mortgages, and ignoring young singles, may well have backfired. If the Rudd Government was really serious about encouraging spending, it should have given $1000 bonuses to young singles, or couples with no kids, to spend on the latest iPhone, coffee machine or a degustation dinner at Tetsuya’s.

The truth is that no one really knows for sure how much will be spent. Official figures on retail sales won’t be available until February. It will be March before we know the impact on economic growth.

Meanwhile, January and February are shaping up as crunch months for the Australian economy. This is customarily a quiet time for business so, if the Government’s spending package fails to lift consumer spirits, it’s likely to be a prime time for retailers and other consumer-dependent employers to announce further job cuts.

So enjoy your Christmas and New Year parties. When the fireworks cease after midnight on December 31, we’re in for one hell of a hangover.

Why are entrepreneurs viewed in a negative light?

Was God the first real entrepreneur

Fr. Robert Sirico speaks about his new documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur in this interview.

“If you have the talents of an entrepreneur, then you have an obligation to share these talents”

Change means we are immigrants into a new time. There is no instruction manual. There are no clear signs on where to turn, or what to do. This truer in 2008 than in 2007. And this is truer today than it was yesterday.

You can take on this new reality in one of two ways. 1. The glass is half empty. 2. The glass is half full. The first option is a pretty natural reaction; a first thought. And that’s where you need to leave it if you don’t want to be bogged down in a swamp of negativity.

The only way you want to take on life’s new challenges is to take them on with a ‘glass half full’ attitude.

It’s not just about having a positive attitude. It’s about being able to imagine – to see – what lies before you in a whole new way. Steven Covey describes this as a paradigm shift. It’s a cognitive, mental shift. And if, after years in the same groove, your thinking has fallen into a bit of a mental rut, you need to RETHINK the way you think about your self and your career.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Top 10 tips for job interviews
• How to Improve Listening Skills

The current market condition has a BIG impact on our employment rates: large corporations, government  bodies, and small companies are laying off thouthands of people, and very few are looking to get new people on their teams.

This unfortunate situation makes the competition on every vacant position fierce, and the lucky guy/girl to fill the position, is not necessarily the best one for the job!

How so?

This is a selling situation, and the person with the best sales skills, who can sell himself the best, and know the right people, will have the better chance of getting the job!

I know, this isn’t fair! it hurts! but you know what - it is what it is, and we can choose:

1. we can be ourselves, like we have always been, and hope for the best, or

2. we could learn new skills, which will increase our chances significantly to get the job we want. (and not just settle for the job we are given…)

GOOD NEWS!!!

Jen Harwood, an author, motivational speaker, and a business champion had release her new book Get the job you want, with some excellent tips on how to land the job you really want!

Here is what the author, Jen Harwood, had to say about her book:

Get the Job U want

“This book will describe how you can create the ideal job opportunities and gives you practical strategies and ideas. I share my own experiences and have proven these strategies.

Life is too short to be bumbling along taking what you can get. Your career can be shaped by YOU if you take the time to create a picture of it in your mind, and share it with others. I promise, if you follow the actions and strategies in this book, you will be inspired and informed on how to Get the Job U Want!”

Now, go GET THE JOB U WANT!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Unemployment surges; hits 15 year high
• Making the best of an unpleasant job

Related articles by Zemanta

• Basic Resume Writing 101