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Do You Have A Cool Home Office Setup? BusinessWeek wants to see it!

Tree House Office 03
Originally uploaded by BlueForest

Breaking news--and there's a deadline on this, people! This is a chance to have your business mentioned on a major mainstream news site, so hop to this--this is big!

BusinessWeek Online wants to create a photo essay of readers' standout home-based offices.

What do they mean by "standout"? Here's what they say:

"We are looking for unique spaces from which you run your home-based business today. Do you work from a tent on the beach, a tree house, or the back of a truck?"

Now, my home office is pretty hum-drum, but I know some of you folks work in some really interesting places--on yachts, from RVs, in trailers on the beach.

Some of you guys are very creative with your office spaces, so please enter this contest so I can live vicariously through you and your fame! (I will still enter cuz there's always a chance, but I am not expecting to win, seeing as though my office is bo-reen.)

The deadline is May 30--so hop on this! And follow BusinessWeek's instructions exactly (full details are here):

Send us a brief description of your workspace along with one digital image no more than 1MB in size to onphoto@businessweek.com by May 30. Be sure to write "Home-based Businesses Special Report photo essay participant" in the subject line of your e-mail. Tell us what you do and what distinguishes your space from a conventional office. Remember: Entrants must be running their own home-based business on a full-time basis, and have been at it for a minimum of one year. We will feature a selection of outstanding work spaces in an upcoming special report in photo-essay format and ask readers to vote on their favorites.

Doh! How I wish I could say that I work from a tree house (maybe next year--fingers crossed!).

And thank you to Gavin Heaton who was sweet enough to let me know about this opportunity.

via

Reuters Interview: Thou Shalt Unplug

I'd like to give a big thank you to Jill Serjeant, journalist for Reuters International Newswire, who interviewed me a few weeks ago and included me in her article about the new movement that is sweeping the tech world--the Secular Sabbath.

A little excerpt:

"Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages.    

For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.

Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off -- if only for a day."

Read the rest of the article...

HowTo Create A Work Schedule That Feels Like A Vacation

  Young spring love 
  Originally uploaded by mormoralice.

The NY Times has come out with a downer of an article siting a few web workers who died due to lifestyle related health complications.

It was implied that the desk potato lifestyle of these folks contributed to their premature demises, but I know of many, many, many virtual workers who have healthy, well-balanced  lifestyles that anyone would be jealous of.

Being healthy is something we are all challenged with, no matter what our jobs are, but we web workers are strategically positioned to create lifestyles that promote an extremely high quality of life. We can work the hours that we want to, we can arrange our day around what we enjoy most, and we are entirely in charge of how we organize our lives so that we have time for playing outdoors, spending quality time with family, and having diverse interests (outside of the computer).

Let's focus on the positive folks, and harken back to last year's Springtime Workday Remix. At this very time last year I told y'all about a seasonal change in schedule that I came up with that made it so that I felt like I was on a continuous vacation. Let's review:

Young Geniuses and Old Masters: Two Life Cycles Of Creativity

One thing that's pretty hard to miss if you spend any time in the web/tech world is that many of the superstars/geniuses are on the youngish side, oftentimes still in their 20's.

These guys are inventing groundbreaking products, creating jobs for themselves that have never been in existence in the world before, and living lives filled with freedom, creativity and invention.

I don't think I need to give ya a detailed list of young upstarts and their accomplishments--you know who they are. Just think of the twenty-somethings Ben and Mena Trott (creators Six Apart), David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Ruby On Rails), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (creators of Google), to name a few.

Seeing the amazing accomplishments of these younguns is enough to make anyone over the age of 21 who has not already created their history making product/site/language feel like an underachiever, but even if you're in your later 20's, 30's, 50's, or 70's don't start panicking yet.

Andy Interviews Seth Godin LIVE Thursday...And We're Invited!

Heads up y'all--I know we have some rabid Seth Godin fans in the house, so I wanted to let you know ASAP that Andy will be doing a LIVE interview with Seth on Thursday, June 21st at 2pm ET.

This is FREE by invitation only, and I'm inviting ya!

I think there is limited room on the call, so hop on over to the registration page to reserve a space pronto.

On the call, you will discover:       

• Why quitting may be the best thing you can do for your business (and your life)
• How to become the “best in the world” at what you do
• When to quit a project, relationship or idea and when to stick it out
• Why the best in the world quit all the time – and why you should too!

I'm excited--I just signed up and got the message "You're In!"  Hope to see you there!

Update: In case you missed the call, don't fret. They recorded it, so you can download it for free here and also get a special bonus offer. Hmmm, I wonder what it could be???

It's time to make some freakin' money: Andy Wibbels Launches 'Problogger Confidential'

Andy Wibbels has this cool new course that's starting next week called Problogger Confidential, and he's rounded up some of the savviest (is that a word?) problogging minds on the planet.

Andy says:

"Once a month we meet one of the top minds in problogging and grill them on what is really working right now.

And sure you’ll leave the Interview Call with a brain bubbling full of possibilities and ideas. But so often, people stop there and don’t take action. That’s why 2 weeks later, you and I have a Mastermind Call  to talk about what we learned and how to put that learning into practice immediately in our blogs."

If you know Andy, you know that he won't disappoint. He likes to stir the pot up and he's ready to squeeze these blog gods' money making secrets from their web jedi minds. Really, he'll squeeze their secrets right out of them.

(Note: No probloggers will be permanently injured during this squeezing process.)

June's problogger playmate is the award-winning blogger and online marketing veteran Jim Kukral! (This guy is a mastermind with affiliate sales, so you don't want to miss this one.)

The first call is June 20, so don't delay in checking out the course syllabus and get the rest of the details here: Problogger Confidential.

Going TV-free: Top 10 ways to cope

  TV turnoff week 
  Originally uploaded by snebtor.

I found this coping list over at the Center for Screentime Awareness, and I think it's spot on. This is something that would also be helpful to those with kids who would like to do the TV-Turnoff week. My favorite one is: "When forced to entertain oneself, one gets quite creative." So true! (list via)

"1. Sit quietly with a cup of tea and think about what you REALLY want to do before jumping into several activities and getting too busy.

2. Be patient. If you can live through 20 minutes of whining, your children WILL find something to do. "When forced to entertain oneself, one gets quite creative."

3. Send the kids outside. One man had a vivid memory of his mother standing at the kitchen door with her yellow rubber-gloved hand pointing to the yard and booming "EVERYONE OUTSIDE UNTIL DINNERTIME!"

  Instead of T.V I could.... 
  Originally uploaded by EmWI.

4. Make a list of all the things you love to do besides watching TV and keep it posted somewhere.

5. Take photos of your children doing creative things and keep them visible.

6. Go for a walk during your favorite sitcom, get your heart pumping, and breathe deeply.

7. Grow a little tougher skin when friends and relatives ask what in the world are you doing. Don't justify, just smile.

8. Create your OWN experiences instead of living vicariously through the lives of movie or sitcom stars. Remember, the best memories come from life's experiences. Instead of getting caught up in conversations revolving around technology, telling stories about sitcoms characters and treating movie stars as family, start working on building memories with experiences. Your OWN experiences…good or bad, make better stories than those told about characters on "Friends."

9. Keep a journal of your "withdrawal" - makes for good reading in a couple of weeks! (You won't believe how much easier it gets with time).

10. "Come out of the Closet" and tell your friends what you are attempting. You may meet with more support than you think. Parents commented that turning it off at first increased the chores and childcare responsibilities for a week or two with children vying for attention, but actually lowered chores and childcare responsibilities after children became more adept at entertaining themselves. For those veterans who had been without TV for 10 or more years, they constantly wonder how others find time to watch TV!"

TV Turnoff Week: April 23-29

  arroyo TV 
  Originally uploaded by Mary Hockenbery (reddirtrose).

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." -Groucho Marx

You'd better get your TV binging in this weekend, cuz Monday is the official start of TV Turnoff Week.

As I told you in my own TV abstinence saga, TV Turnoff Week changed my life. I did it sort of spur of the moment about 3 years ago, and stopping watching television had such a positive impact on the quality of my life decided to turn it into TV Turnoff YEAR!

I still don't watch TV that often, and I like it that way. It's easy to fall back into the habit of just mindlessly consuming whatever is flashed in front of our eyes, but it ends up just sucking our lives away.

If you decide to give up TV next week, imagine what you could accomplish instead. You could read a book or two, plant a garden, spend time playing outside with your kids, take a walk in the park, clean the house or do some DIY home stuff---it's amazing what we can accomplish when we unplug from the constant influx of media.

Or you might totally hate the experience, as this kid did:

"I really didn't like TV-Turnoff Week except I did notice that my grades went up and I was in a good mood all week." -Drew Henderson, 2nd grader, Donora, Pennsylvania

Virtual Worlds, Real Businesses

  help wanted 
  Originally uploaded by Andromega.

The Second Life (SL) stuff is definitely interesting and has a lot of potential, although it looks like everyone is still trying to figure out how it can be used in the best way.

I'm mainly interested in the virtual business/virtual collaboration part of it right now.  

About the virtual businesses in SL--now this is interesting. There are actually real life (RL) business, such as Coldwell Banker (real estate), H&R Block (taxes), American Apparel (clothing) opening up shops in SL. These are very mainstream businesses, but they see a commercial potential in SL, such selling real estate (yes, there's "land" for sale!), connecting with future customers, and testing out the functionality and popularity of products in the virtual world before bringing them into the real world.

H&R Block Party
Last night H&R Block, normally a very boring accounting company (is there any other type?), held a "block party" in SL in which they provided music and dancing (don't even ask :-) ) and general fun.

H&R Block had employees at the party (such as this guy Max, who's break dancing and wearing the H&R Block t-shirt in the photo) who mingled with the guests at the party and answered tax questions. (Image and story via)

While this might sound very "out there" :-) to some, I can see what H&R Block is thinking--like many mainstream businesses they are trying to figure out how to reach a certain segment of the population and build brand awareness and comfortability with them. They know that millions of folks hang out in SL, and where ever you have that number of people congregating and socializing in the same area, it's an opportunity to reach them on a marketing level.

Reaching the hard to reach
I hear it being said that traditional advertising is dead. Television commercials, which count on interrupting us in order to get our attention, are very old school. Now advertisers are trying to reach customers via the whole social media thing. It's more about creating a conversation with a potential customer rather than trying to give them a sales pitch.

It sounds like the H&R Block party accomplished just that.

So, the world is changing--if we don't want to watch commercials, we just TiVO them or we watch TV via the internet. Or we don't watch TV at all (this is my preference).

Whatever marketers are doing to try to get our attention we can find a way to avoid it because modern technology allows us so much freedom. The advertising and business folks are adjusting--they realize that in order to engage us, they need to actually participate and get to know us on a social level. Very interesting, especially in respect to SL.

Looking from the outside in
Great article on business in Second Life (via)

"Soon, jobs came into existence. You could make in-world money (hence, real money) opening a store, buying and selling land or currency, designing clothing for other residents' avatars, organizing in-world events, working security, performing as a musician or dancer or model or escort, or providing skilled services like scripting or building or landscaping or animation, although most of these jobs paid at third-world RL rates or below.

Soon, too, RL businesses decided that there was RL money to be made in SL and started moving in. This commercialism raised some hackles among the residents, but those businesses that took the trouble to understand the culture of SL were better received. Whether any RL business has yet made money from opening a place in SL is a good question."

Metaversed.com
As you can tell (due to the repeated linking to him ;-)) the SL avatar 57 Miles (aka Nick Wilson) has a very cool new blog that I'm enjoying that's completely devoted to covering virtual business in Second Life-- Metaversed.

And you thought *you* had a virtual business...
Yeah, there was a time when we real life folks with virtual businesses thought we were an exotic species in the business world, but SL has trumped us completely.

Now there's virtual businesses in a virtual world run and created by avatars who are virtual representations of real life humans.

Actually, it only freaks people out when they try to study it from a distance, try to mentally grasp the "what is real / what is imaginary" connundrum. For those who are brave (or interested) enough to try it, it's not really that big a mental leap. (At least it hasn't been for me.)

In other words--don't try to understand SL by thinking about it. Just do it. If you participate you'll probably understand.

At the very least--Second Life is a hoot! It's not for everyone, but for a certain segment of the population it's an amazing playground rich with social, learning and business opportunities.

Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke hash things out on CNN

More news broken via Twitter...Who would have though that the whole Kathy Sierra mysogynistic death threat fiasco would make it to the mainstream news media?

Well, it has, and this is no belated April Fool's joke.

I'm not going to go into the whole background of this story, because it's sort of been talked to death already, but this morning I learned via Nick Wilson's twitter feed that Kathy was on CNN this morning with Chris "Rageboy" Locke, the owner of the blogs that pubished the death threats. Unfortunately I found out after the fact, so I have no idea what they said, nor is there a video of the interview available yet. (Update: Here's the video of the interview.)

However, Chris and Kathy have released a joint statement on Chris's blog, and no, I won't link to it. I refuse to link to any of the bully bloggers. If you'd like to read their statements, Kathy links to it here. (Thanks KG--also via Twitter!)

From Kathy:

"Chris and I are in complete agreement that it would be tragic if this incident were used as a weapon by those who would limit free and open exchange. My desire is for much more open debate on this issue, not legislated limits. The overwhelming, incredible support so many have given to this issue makes me very hopeful, and the positive result of all this has been the conversation that's taking place right now, between so many people. This could be a very important moment if we stop, think, and talk about the kind of future we really want online, and make certain we don't give up something more important in the process."

And from Chris:

"Misogyny is real -- and vile. Violence against women is wrong. It must not be tolerated. This issue should be explored and discussed, not swept under the rug, not rationalized away. At the same time, we need to look closely and carefully at the implications for free speech. The First Amendment allows and protects language that many find noxious. But there are forces in the world at present -- not least in the US -- that would leap at any opportunity to limit speech or even abolish certain forms of it. Crucial as is the current debate about hate speech directed at women, it would be tragic if this incident were used as a weapon by those who would limit free and open exchange."