Cameron Woodward

Participatory Communities

Successful participatory communities have three major elements baked in, these are, the ability to create, share, and consume.

World of Warcraft, YouTube, Facebook, FarmVille, Threadless… all of these online social communities allow people the opportunity to create content, share content, and consume content.

Therefore, if the architecture of a social platform is focused on these fundamentals- rather than over elaborate features, an online social community has more opportunity for success.

On goal setting;

I love to rationalize my goals and get caught up in the tactics of ‘how am I going to achieve’ - I need to stop. 

If you’re like me, get a piece of paper and let all of yourself rip; the ugly secret hopes, the fantasy of being a CEO… no one has to see your goals except you. 

In other words, don’t allow fear to say that you need to be ‘realistic’ - push yourself; then you’ll have a good starting point to define some real  goals. 

Who do you want to be? 

What do you want to do? 

What do you want to have? 

These are the most important questions to ask yourself before you start on the long journey ahead. 

NanoMBA.com

Wow, what a week. 

I left my neighborhood in San Diego to venture into New York City. I was accepted into a NanoMBA (a week long intensive) program with Seth Godin, the author of several critically acclaimed and New York Times Bestselling books, including Permission Marketing, All Marketers Are Liars, Purple Cow, Tribes, and Linchpin. 

The experience was spectacular, beyond the amazing insights and guidance that I was able to gain from spending a week with Seth; I was also incredibly lucky to spend the week with massively ambitious and driven professionals from all over the world. 

We’ve started a blog, NanoMBA.com; now you can follow the progress of our NanoMBA group. We’ve done this so that we can keep track of all of our projects and rant, rave and fume about all of the amazing things we’ve learned from Seth and each other. 

If you’re interested is following the group, find us at nanomba.com. 

Cheers.

Good Idea, Bad Idea.

It’s the actions that are important, ideas are a dime a dozen. 

Sell loose leaf tea and create cute little tea bags – sell them around different stores. 

Create high end socks, packaged individually and made of organic and sourced material – sell them in boutique stores and online. 

Start an email list with insider information regarding the magic industry, sell access to your database. 

Three good, if not, great ideas that could be real businesses, maybe not, but the only thing stopping them from materializing is you.

Continuous Partial Attention

I heard about an interesting concept, the idea is Continuous Partial Attention. You’re paying attention, but only partially.

It allows you to get an understanding of a range of ideas, it’s a mechanism often used for finding new opportunities over a span of topics. The danger of Continuous Partial Attention is the inability to focus in on a one initiative and drill down into and idea that could have been something really special. 

Are you paying continuous partial attention to your businesses, a long range of goals, a huge spectrum of ideas? 

Do you think that it’s limiting you from really exploring your best concepts and businesses? 

Thoughts?

Priority

What makes you move?

Ok, you want to own a business, but why?

What motivates you to create movement, why are you putting energy into the things that you’re building?

Mom expects it, school taught you too?

Why? Why? Why?

Ask yourself, “What do I  want?”

If you’re spending precious time and energy on something you don’t believe in, maybe you should reconsider your goals.  

Live

Living though experience and learning through experience are two completely different approaches to life.

One allows you to accept fault, failure, and immaturity and learn from your experiences, the other, keeps you repeating your missteps time, and time again.

Decide!

The decision making process is incredibly complex.

What would you do if you got accepted into four different MBA programs at competing and all promising universities?

How do you choose?

Gut instincts is not the best way to go, research shows over and over again that intuitive decisions result in the worst results.

Instead of making a fast paced internalized decision, you could focus on which school fits best with your ideology, worldview, and paradigm; consider advice from conflicting opinions and draw a conclusion based on hard numbers and data you collect –

I don’t naturally like making decisions in an organized way, I tend to lean in the direction of fast decisions based on my internalized and natural dispositions, but my natural line of thinking is wrong. That’s the point, we’re wrong all the time, making important choices emotionally is dangerous and unreliable.

This is a good question, Are we in control of our own decisions?

Godin

Believe it or not, I was accepted into the Nano MBA in New York City, it’s a week long intensive with Seth Godin – I’m losing my mind.

It’s been an awesome experience so far and it’s only just begun.

More to come soon.

Total Sell-0ut!

People hate the sell-out, I totally understand.

How dare that musician/writer/businesswoman that had nothing but decided to break from the troop, take a risk, scale it, gain momentum and reap massive rewards. Creating something no one else was willing to do because they were afraid of failure.

I hate the sell out’s too, it’s because I’m jealous.