From the monthly archives:

November 2008

Listening In

by Richard Reeve on November 30, 2008

in @CCSeed

:en:Lozang Gyatso Source:http://www.thdl.org/c...

The power of listening within this space was stressed when I attended Chris Brogan’s New Marketing Bootcamp.  (note: word has it that Mr. Brogan is taking his Bootcamp on tour next year to over twenty cities.  I recommend you attend.)  Returning home I set up google reader and began tinkering with different searches. Now I’m amazed each day as reader delivers dozens of twitter users with similar interests to me, often within their first few days on Twitter.  And each week at least three new blogs I’ve discovered in keyword searches get added to my A-list.

Knowing how to use a tool and using it well are not the same thing. It takes practice to get to a point where your catching more value in your nets than dross.  I’m learning that search queries need continual refinement.  Searches that take advantage of subtraction save a lot of reader scan time down the road.

My interest in Jungian psychology guides me to focus my queries in two directions.  Certainly I’m looking for like minded individuals, but I think I’m learning more from folks “who have an axe to grind” with Jungian positions.  While I do not consider them enemies, the Dali Lama’s understanding that “our enemy is our best teacher” rings true for me.  How should I, committed to dream analysis as I am, reckon with these prevalent attitudes:  “they’re just dreams,” “I never dream,” “I never remember my dreams,” “dreams are just stupid.”

Over time, listening to the prevalence of these attitudes as they are exchanged in social media has made me reconsider where the bulk of my work actually lies.  No sense preaching to the choir.  Are you using search tools in conjunction with rss feeds in surprising and useful ways?

(Image via Wikipedia)

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The Home of Our Words

by Richard Reeve on November 30, 2008

in AziMuth

“One of the most important psychological purposes of the home is that the objects that have shaped one’s personality and which are needed to express concretely those aspects of the self that one values are kept within it.”

The Meaning of Things Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Eugene Rochberg-Halton

This has me pondering about arrangements.  I’m thinking about my books and their placement on any given bookshelf, and the difference I assign to bookshelves.   The placement of content spatially creates a value map.

I find a similar relational value to tag clouds and word maps, like the word clouds Wordle generates.  The predominance of our language usage, when it is displayed back to us in graphic form, tells an interesting story of value regardless of narrative structure.  I regularly view the word clouds that TweetStats and Wordle generate for this purpose:  If my regularly used words define the values within the content I’m producing, do the graphic results that these clouds provide reflect the values I hold and wish to share?

If not, then perhaps the results can act as a signal to begin working in that direction…

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I got tagged…I’m IT…RUN!

by Richard Reeve on November 29, 2008

in @CCSeed

Satellite image of w:Hudson Bay, Canada, in la...

I was twittering about Jung’s approach to playfulness earlier when I got tagged by All Considering .  I overcame my initial opposition recognizing in the game, which is a viral project running through the blogosphere to help build community, a gift of the topic folks were discussing.  The point: share six things folks don’t know about oneself, then tag six other bloggers to do the same.  I decided to tag those who I was chatting with at the time.

So, six things about me you didn’t know:

1. When I watched the Montreal Summer Olympics in 1976, I was in third grade.  I was so smitten with the whole event I began to run forty miles a week.

2.  In college I was able to travel to Moosenee, Ontario on the Polar Bear Express.  Moosenee is ten miles from James Bay, that tear drop at the south end of the Hudson Bay.  During the train ride up there we traveled through a huge burn area from a great forest fire that raged during the 1976 Summer Olympics.

3.  The closest I ever came to running a marathon was when I was twelve, when I joined a family friend during the last half of the Newport Rhode Island Marathon.   The run along the ocean one of my most memorable.

4.  Endurance has challenged me in different ways, especially the four years I delivered newspapers by car in the middle of the night, seven days a week.

5.  When I visited Greece I was able to survey the route of the original run from Marathon.

6.  I believe social media is a bit of an endurance test.

So now, here are the six bloggers I’m tagging:

http://ewainthegarden.blogspot.com/

http://howtobeawoman.net/

http://creativejuicesarts.blogs.com/

http://choosingtobe.com/blog/

http://togetherweflourish.com/

http://feelgoodguru.com/5-more-days-of-de-tox

Enjoy these folks…

(Image via Wikipedia)

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Heading to the Left Bank

by Richard Reeve on November 29, 2008

in AziMuth

View over the left bank of the Seine River in ...

Charles Olson developed much of his poetry out of the annotations he made in the margins of the books he was reading.  While studying his practice it was always interesting to track the stream of thought out of the given book, through notebooks and letters he was writing, at times across paper place mats from the local tavern, until the drafts of the poems would begin to emerge.

I’m struck how our interactions in social media can be of similar use.  Take this conversation I had last night with feelgoodguru on twitter.  In it we were both formulating, sharing from a “what if” posture.  In the end I came away with a clearer sense of something I’ve been pondering.

Starting with @feelgoodguru’s question concerning what makes for quality in art, I thought of the Jungian model of transference, which posits twelve possible channels of communication when two people are in relationship:

Person A ego to Person B ego

B ego to A ego

A ego to A unconscious

A unconscious to A ego

B ego to B unconscious

B unconscious to B ego

A unconscious to B unconscious

B unconscious to A unconscious

A ego to B unconscious

B unconscious to A ego

A unconscious to B ego

B ego to A unconscious

All that can be visualized as a box with with an X in the middle, arrows at the end of each line, with the ego’s and unconscious’ each taking a corner.

Not all relationships operate through all 12 channels, but we tend to know when they do.  Likewise, if we place the work of art into the equation for one of the people, we then have an interesting model to consider how the work effects us, and even more interestingly, how we effect it.

All of our interactions in social media get captured and can be searched at a later time.  If we approach our interactions with a creative posture, these tools might aid our creativity in ways that we are only beginning to realize.  Chris Brogan has an interesting reflection on cafe shaped conversations posted today.  While he reflects on the marketing challenges of this platform, he drills down into the essence of the potential unfolding in social media.  If this were Paris, I’m heading over to the Left Bank…

(Image via Wikipedia)

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Clearing the Inbox

November 29, 2008

I’m seated at the laptop, and making the final effort to get caught up with my inbox.
Amplification:
A simple and real enough dream image, and like all these traces, it is important to do the work and accept these matter of fact messages with a “reverence,” and not dismiss them.  Depending on what is occurring in [...]

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Accessibility and Thirst

November 28, 2008

A new role keeps leaping in front of me as I continue to wade further into social media: apostle.  I’ve heard the word evangelist used, and indeed those who are creating the tomes of content on this development deserve that moniker.  What I’m talking about is the transmission of this practice one on one, seated [...]

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My Thanks

November 27, 2008

The mere fact that your eyes now fall upon these markings; that these efforts, both the cumulative and the current have found their way into your head, and many heads; for this and for you, my gratitude.  May you enjoy this day.
(Image by rudenoon via Flickr)

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An Adventure of the Commonplace

November 26, 2008

“The choice is simply,
I will-as mind is a finger,
pointing, as wonder
a place to be.”
Robert Creeley “The Finger”

There is something I wish to send your way, seated as I am at these keys, before this screen, the hum of the laptop overtaken by the hot air blower now straining to heat the basement and thereby, the [...]

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Second Floor Tenants

November 25, 2008

My wife and I are living in an apartment on a second floor of a building.  We are both getting cleaned up to go out for the evening when there is a knock on the door.  Two couples I went to high school with tell us that they now tenants on the third floor of [...]

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Beginning at the Beginning

November 24, 2008

It’s pretty easy to get swept up in the social media whirlwind.  I’ve been doing my version of a full court press since early September and have ended up in a place far more tangible than I ever anticipated.  Over a thousand unique visitors a month visit this blog, and I’m apart of over three [...]

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