QTalks

Breakthrough idea from Harvard's Teresa Amabile: nothing succeeds like progress

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010 - Harvard Business Review.2009-Dec

analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries, together with the writers’ daily ratings of their motivation and emotions, shows that making progress in one’s work—even incremental progress—is more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other workday event

Why Twitter?

Being something of a recency snob, I don't often link to posts as old as this one, but this one is SO helpful. Twitter made sense to me from the beginning but I have a knack for it (which sometimes I'm too lazy to exercise), and I feel the benefits very clearly. It's not easy but it's worth it.

City Brights: Howard Rheingold : Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it).2009-May-11

I still hang out on Twitter (I am found there as @hrheingold), but it's clear that many of the people I talk to about it just don't get why anyone wastes their time doing anything with the name "tweeting."So I tell them that to me, successful use of Twitter comes down to tuning and feeding. And by successful, I mean that I gain value - useful information, answers to questions, new friends and colleagues - and that the people who follow me gain value in the form of entertainment, useful information, and some kind of ongoing relationship with me. To oversimplify, I think successful use of Twitter means knowing how to tune the network of people you follow, and how to feed the network of people who follow you.

So that's why QViews is lifeless...

My birthday post | Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist.2009-Dec-11

People ask me all the time how they can get more readers to their blog. The answer is that you have to be learning on your blog. If you're not learning, no one else is learning. You can't fake it. It's safe to talk about what you know, but it's not that interesting; no one likes a know-it-all. My favorite posts are the one's when I was doing something scary, but doing it with grace. In fact, I actually think those are my favorite times of life.

Jenny Wang's article in Houston Modern Luxury Dec 09

 

Posted via email from qviews's posterous

The Social Media are for groups of people

I have finally come to the conclusion that it's too demoralizing to start a Facebook Fan Page, or Group, or Ning community, or anything unless you have activity established already within a GROUP of people. You can TALK about providing some kind of platform or incentives or support, but really what people want to see is more than one person posting. Otherwise, it's just a fantasy. Most fan pages are established by companies that have employees who can be ordered to post. But grassroots communities need to have the activity going because it's all volunteer. I'm tired of seeing posts from one person--me. Enough.

Social media is for Being Social

The extraordinary insight of danah boyd--seeing simple things that other people overlook, constantly amazes and inspires me. Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Groups on LinkedIn) did not arise because marketers need a new channel for selling things. They developed because real conversation is often about trivial things, and all the triviality has been squeezed out of email. Using social media is first and foremost about being human, and if you don't show your humanity, you're misusing it.

apophenia: Sociality Is Learning.2009-Nov-30, by danah boyd

The flirting, gossiping, and joking around that takes place is not proof that social media is useless, but proof that it's extremely valuable.

Grumble, grumble. Third city? Mmphf!

Every couple of weeks, some professional contact of mine will comment how Houston will soon be the third largest city in the country. Huh?!

This excerpt below is from the Greater Houston Partnership's current Houston Economy at a Glance publication. Since many of the people I hear making this prediction are promoters of Houston, the fact this information came from the main chamber of commerce tells me that sophisticated business people in Houston ought to know whereof they speak.

Let’s do some simple math and extend into the future the population change in the cities of Houston, Chicago and Los Angeles and in their MSAs from the 2000 census through mid-’08, the latest date for which we have Census Bureau estimates.

We’ll do this in two ways—first by using the compound annual growth rate, then by using average annual nominal growth.

• Compound annual growth rate: The population of Houston surpasses that of Chicago 13 years from now. Overtaking Los Angeles requires 44 years. The population of the Houston MSA exceeds that of the Chicago MSA in 29 years, but doesn’t top that of the Los Angeles MSA for another 108 years after passing Chicago.
  
• Average annual nominal growth: Houston’s population edges past Chicago’s 15 years hence and moves ahead of Los Angeles’ just before the end of the century, in ’96. The Houston MSA passes the Chicago MSA 58 years from now, but takes 116 years to move ahead of the Los Angeles MSA.

Clearly, none of these events is imminent. Indeed, these extrapolations are likely to understate the time needed for rankings to change. Using average change for Chicago means showing that city’s population continuing to decline, whereas the annual estimates since ’00 show Chicago’s population declining early in this decade and then resuming net gains more recently—a trend which, if continued, would extend any change in city rankings beyond the first half of the ’20s. Furthermore, the calculations for Houston don’t adjust for the influx of new residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in ’05, and thus artificially overstate our underlying growth rate.

Pecha Kucha 01 in Houston 2009-Nov-19

At Domy Books