Pioneer week Challenge: Wrap Up

This post is about two weeks late but at least I'm getting to it now. If you didn't read my original post on the Pioneer Week Challenge now may be a good time to do that so that you understand what I'm talking about.
http://goo.gl/hrwri

Report

During the week we had planned to try some traditional Pioneer games. The kids were excited for the chance to try out some of those games (Marbles was a big hit). In addition to those games we played some of our board games and had a great time re-learning dusty games from our coat closet.

We also tried to eat meals that were more rustic. We cooked a couple of meals in Dutch Ovens and one meal on the grill. We also made our own butter. The kids really enjoyed shaking the heavy cream and were excited to try the butter on their homemade rolls. In fact we've found that if you buy your heavy cream at a reasonable price you can make your own butter for less than it sells in the stores. The added benefit being that you also have buttermilk as a byproduct for pancakes, scones, muffins etc.

I tried really hard to keep a pen and paper journal for the week. I didn't
do nearly as well as my wife (3 days to her 7) but it was interesting to see that my handwriting isn't nearly so bad as I had suspected it would be given how infrequently I write things down. I also tried to read more and finished a good book The Entrepreneur Equation by Carol Roth (review to follow).

We expected a lot of free time through the week and found that we didn't have near as much as we had planned. Which turned out to be a good thing. Below you'll find my thoughts on the results of the week as opposed to the activities.

Success

How does one judge success on something like a week without technology? "By their fruits shall ye know them". The fruit of our week without tech was promising. It showed me that my family is truly an Eternal Family. I saw my kids being more kind. I saw myself being more helpful to my wife. I saw my wife being happier. I saw my motivation to be better improved. In the end I feel like this is worthwhile and I would encourage everyone (with families or single) to try this Challenge.

FAIL

My participation in the Pioneer Week Challenge was limited. This means that I was able to access and attend to my technology habit at work. I was able to check email, Facebook, G+, Twitter, etc...and generally be connected to the world for the eight hours a day that I was at work. When the work day was over I was forced to cut out the phone, internet, TV, etc and become part of my most important social network, my family. The only failure of the week is that I wish I had the chance to eliminate tech from my life for the entire week like my kids and wife did. I feel like it would have made the week all the more important to me and my family. I feel so strongly about this that I'm considering taking a week off for the next Pioneer Week Challenge so that I can join my family in their tech deprivation.

Conclusion

The thing that I took from the Pioneer Week Challenge that sticks with me the most is that we live our lives full of distractions. Some of those distractions are necessary and part of the journey through life. Others are choices that we make. In large part technology is one of those choices. I'm not suggesting we all throw our tech in the garbage and drag out the horse and buggy. I am suggesting we find the distractions that we choose and decide if they make any sense.

Our screensaver for the week

Monkey makin' butter

"Cars" on the TV!

Facebook...it's been a good run. Google+ gives me so much more.

I was recently lucky enough to get an invite to Google's newest attempt at social networking. Google+ is the latest in a long line of mediocre and failed attempts by Google to compete legitimately with their newest and biggest threat to internet dominance - Facebook.

Google+ (G+ for short) is everything that Facebook should have become over the last several years...had they been listening. Which is exactly what Google appears to be doing with their early adopters at least. There are tons of new features and things to like in this social network and while I'd love to spend thousands of words on those features I will try and keep this short.

My favorite features:

First is the Circles concept and execution. Circles are your "circles of friends" sort of like Groups on Facebook but a million times easier to create and manage. Your circles act like individual streams for each group and gives you the ability to communicate the information you want with only the people you want. I know most of you Facebook-ers are saying that you can do the same thing on Facebook. My question is; how many of you are doing it? and if you're not why not? I consider myself pretty well heeled on almost every social media platform primarily Facebook and I don't break my friends into those categories because it's simply too time consuming and not very intuitive. Google has found the most intuitive way to not only conceptualize your groups but also curate them and execute their usage. You can create layers and layers of circles and share just the information you want with just the people that care about that information.
It's even got Twitter-like functionality. Twitter allows you to follow people that don't follow you back. Creating a source for news and information without forcing a "relationship". G+ also does this. You can add almost anyone to your circles and they aren't forced to follow you back. This means that you can get the same news and information feed that you have on Twitter without leaving the Facebook-like relationship network of G+. Admittedly G+ is new and as with all new things they glitter with awesome...but I see this network replacing both my Twitter and Facebook because it can do both functions for me on one site without a third party Hootsuite, or Tweetdeck interface.
The next innovative function (probably the next one to be mimicked by Facebook) is the "Hangout" feature. This feature allows people withe web cams to meet up and have a 10 way chat with each other. Built on the Google Talk product this is an awesome social integration that really takes things to a new level. While this feature won't stand long with Facebook playing catch-up very quickly it remains to be seen just how this will be executed in Facebook. I can tell you that it is very compelling in G+.
The next feature is deep integration with the mobile phone app and image sharing. Every time you use your phone to take a picture the image is immediately uploaded (not shared) to your Picasa web album and available to share. Another mobile feature is Huddle. This is a SMS feature that allows you to select one of your Circles and start a SMS chat with the circle. All of the responses are sent to all the circle members creating a complete conversation where everyone is privy to the conversation and no rebroadcasting is necessary. Very handy for organizing diner with some of your favorite people.
The long and short of it all is that Google has finally got social figured out. They will be a force and you'll find that your in a similar situation to when you left MySpace for Facebook. Below are some important links in learning more about this network and if you understand it all you'll be as excited about it as I am, maybe. One more reason to join...Ashton Kutcher is already building a following here.

Related articles

• Google+: Why I Think Mom and Dad Will Use It (jeanhsu.com)
• 9 Reasons to Switch from Facebook to Google+ (pcworld.com)
• How to turn Google+ into and online photography portfolio(thenextweb.com)
• Google Plus 50(chrisbrogan.com)
• 39 things you should know about Google+(webpronews.com)

Review: Trust Agents

I just finished this book and for most of the people who follow this blog this post is going to be boring. Of course there's always the chance that I'll make it interesting with some quip about monkeys or something. So maybe you should read the whole review.

Why would I pick up a book like this? On the face of things this isn't the typical book that I read or review. First of all the I despise self help books and this is arguably a self help book. Second I usually read for fun and that, generally speaking, means fiction. Third, and perhaps most importantly, monkeys are funny. Just making sure you're all still reading.


Recently I decided that I had some skills with technology that I could share with the less tech-savvy folk out there. In making this decision I had to understand how I was going to offer up that help and get word out that I was available. Being something of a geek and enjoying immensely the use of my new (free) Google laptop, I decided to start a website that I would call my "business" and offer up my help as a Social Media Consultant. CnctNow (read: connect now) is born. The only problem now is that I don't have a reputation to leverage to make this venture successful or even useful. I began my search for social media professionals and advice on how to become a social media consultant. The result of this search revealed Chris Brogan. Reading some of his blog posts and seeing the way he treated the business of social media gave me some perspective. I noticed that he had written a book and the first chance I got I picked it up at my local library.

It took me a lot longer than normal to read this book. It's not that I didn't enjoy the book. On the contrary I enjoyed it more than I expected. It took some time to get through this book because there's really so much to digest in this book. It's not just a book about social media and how to build an internet identity. It is about being human and treating people like they are human. It's about creating a sense of community by being friendly, helpful, honest, and, the buzzword of the book, transparent. I learned a lot from this book and it helped point me in the right direction for how to build my reputation, identity and how to make my own game.

You don't have to want the same things as me or even be interested in social media or the internet to get something from this book. Those things are good but this book really transcends its intended audience of entrepreneurs and business leaders and becomes a guide on how to treat people and live a life of influence and usefulness. I encourage you to read this book and get back to me on your thoughts. If you made it this far into this post I think you deserve to have one more bit of entertainment. Wasn't it worth it?Image via Wikipedia