A community is where they know your name and miss you when you are gone, according to Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England.
I like that definition. It’s so personal. It’s a bit like the sitcom “Cheers.”
Is a real community the same as a virtual community? I have been struggling with that question recently.
I have been trying to build on online community for the sole purpose of helping my business grow. I started a blog and joined LinkedIN, though I have not touched Facebook or myspace.
From my perspective, the real advantage of online communities is that space and time are nonfactors. Anyone anyplace in the world can be in my virtual community. I can answer them at my leisure and get responses in my e-mail’s inbox.
If you believe the hype, being part of an online community seems like the fastest way to riches and success. Lots of friends. More business. But is it? What is the purpose of an online community and how can it benefit me?
I am still trying to decide if being active in online communities is for me. Will the more I read and post develop new friends and generate more business? Does the 8th grader featured in today’s Raleigh newspaper really have 1.4 million fans?
Or is being online a huge time sucking trap? It seems that the more online I am, the less time I have to actually run my business or to meet and talk with real people? It seems like I spend too much of my day in front of computer screen already.
I want to explore how a real community, according to my definition, works.
Let me tell you about myself. I am not a very sociable person. Doesn’t mean I don’t like people. It just means I can be content to stay at home and watch TV and not feel obligated to go to parties or other social events just to be doing something.
I am not particularly shy, but I don’t think I am an extrovert, either.
In my definition, my Toastmaster group is a community. People know my name here – and they know when I am not here. As a side benefit, I have developed business relations that have helped my bottom line.
But being a member of a community means accepting obligations – and I think that is the part that many people in today’s society fail to realize.
Paying my dues may make me a club member, but that is not the same as being a being a member of the Talkmaster community.
Having an e-mail address and a password may make me a member of LinkedIn, but is that the same as being in a community?
It’s the difference between involvement and commitment. I often tell the story of the breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken is involved in the breakfast, but the pig was committed.
I am committed to Toastmasters, and especially this club. I understand that my obligation to this club means that I show up on a regular basis, do roles that are assigned to me and support others. In return, I get support for my efforts. I grow and my confidence to handle situations expands.
I am not so sure what my responsibilities and obligations are to my online community. Does my anonymity allow me a free pass? Is anything expected of me?
An ideal community nurtures trust. I trust all of you will make great speeches and have the capacity to learn and grow. You have faith that I will do a decent job – and even applaud me for my efforts!
Being a member of a community takes time and consistency. Everyone wants instant gratification, but it takes time to cultivate relationships. In an online community, it’s too easy to login and make comments – and then leave.
I believe that being a part of a real community is a key to health and happiness. My son, Daniel, took a course on happiness from the Harvard professor who wrote a book about it. It’s not about wealth. Instead, it’s about having an understanding of what makes you tick and the confidence in your own abilities. A good community builds that self-esteem that you have to earn.
The challenge is to be part of community where people share the same goals – and the goals are positive. My definition of a community also describes a criminal gang. And not every member of a community may share your goals. Bernie Madoff was certainly an outstanding member of the Jewish community – until he was found out to be running a huge Ponzi scheme.
So, I come back to my original question – can an online community replace a real community? It certainly can in expanding my horizons and contacts. Will it increase my business by being active? Possibly. Is it worth the time and effort? The jury, for me, is still out.
However, only a real community made up of actual people can help me in terms of personal growth and satisfaction. It takes effort and commitment, but it is certainly worth the effort.
Tags: competitive advantage, Toastmasters
Yesterday, I attended another “Meet the New Media” event. It was about how to use and measure social media.
The event is sponsored by Rebecca Antonelli. I have know Rebecca for years and, in fact, hired her for a brief period in the 1990s to help promote my business.
However, the real reason I went was to hear Mark Schurtman talk about analytics. Mark works with me on a freelance basis helping my clients understand their analytics. I was hoping that I could pick up a few leads from going to the event — although I had to leave early.
I don’t pretend to understand social media. I started a blog last year to promote my direct mail and search engine optimization business. I am on LinkedIN, but have not made any effort to really work it. However, I did have a recent pleasant experience trying to get information for my son about starting a Toastmaster’s club in Israel.
I am not on Facebook, I do not own a digital camera, I do not know how to use my cell phone except to make calls. Twitter makes no sense to me.
I remember manual typewriters and lead type. Maybe I am a dinosaur, but I have learned to embrace disruptive technology and have become an expert in search engine optimization and now creating websites.
But the question I had after listening to the presentations yesterday- Is it worth the effort? When I started the blog I was hoping to create a dialog about marketing and build my reputation as an expert in the field. I have been in business on my own for over 20 years and feel that I have something to contribute to the would-be entrepreneur.
The talk is about “community.” The chief rabbi of England, Jonathan Sacks, wrote that a community is where they know your name and miss you when you are gone. I am active in the community here in Raleigh and know lots of people. I know people through Toastmasters, the Jewish Community, bicycling, business, etc. The advantage of being self-employed is that I can associate with who I want to associate with. If I didn’t want to be part of the network, I wouldn’t do it.
But is being part of inside919 or any of the other “virtual communities” going to help me get new business? That’s my bottom line — what can I take to the bank to pay my bills?
As luck would have it, one of the newsletters I subscribe to had an article about large companies banning social media in the workplace. Too much of a distraction.
Long ago I gave up networking as a way to build my business. Everybody trying to sell me things — and very few had the contacts I needed for my business success. I kept seeing the same people over and over again and could never figure out how they made a living. On the other hand, my clients were too busy actually running a business to take the time.
I served in the Israeli army many years. There was a saying, “They can’t hassle you more than 24 hours a day! After that, it’s a new day!” Is social media something I need to embrace to get more business or is it just a way to waste time and energy?
Maybe I don’t know how to set up my blog correctly to take advantage of the possibilities. Would like some comments, which you can do by clicking on the headline. Haven’t quite figured out all the settings WordPress. I have comments so I can filter them before they become public to avoid span.
Look forward to starting the dialog.
One week from today, I will get on a plane and go to Israel. I enjoy the full rights of a United States Citizen and I am going to Promised Land as a Jew. I have two countries to call home. Israel is now seen as the Promised Land to millions of Africans who are fleeing their war-torn countries in search of a better life. While living in Israel for me is the dream of my forefathers, living in Israel for these refugees is a means of survival.
Refugees come from all over Africa including Ertieria, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and several others. In order for them to arrive in Israel they need to go through Egypt, which was often the most dangerous part of their journey. In Egypt they have Bedouins who will kidnap refugees and allow the rest of his family to go to Israel and make some money and send it back to the Bedouins in order for them to release the family member. Also, the Egyptian army would shoot anyone they saw trying to cross the border from Egypt into Israel. One of the children we play with had his brother and his father killed as they tried to escape Egypt into Israel.
These refugees come to the land of Israel because Israel is the one country where they do not need to fear for their lives on a daily basis. However, the situation in Israel is far from ideal. The Israeli government’s official position is to keep out the refugees, and any that are found once they do cross over are immediately sent to detention facilities. After the refugees are released they generally move to Tel Aviv. The government has a policy that the refugees should not live in the center of the country, but until recently this policy had been ignored.
For Israel this is a very complicated situation. On one hand as the Jewish homeland we feel that we have an obligation to help an oppressed people who are being persecuted in their own countries, but on the other side there is no way that Israel can absorb the huge economic, social, and security burden that these people bring with them. I have heard as many as 14,000 refugees are already in Israel, but the potential lies for millions to cross in if Israel opens its border. This would pose a huge security risk and lead Jews to be a minority in our own country.
I am a part of a grassroots volunteer organization known as Fugee Fridays. Every Friday we would pick up food from the food market in Tel Aviv and have drivers take the food twenty minutes and distribute it to three shelters for African refugees. Our usual routine is to have some of the volunteers go around and ask approximately sixty vendors for any extra food. We collect all types of food ranging from beets, to pita, to watermelon. We bring all the food to one spot and sort which food is good and into different baskets for each of the shelters. We load the baskets in cars and than we have people drive the food to the shelters. After we dropped off the food, we would go play with the neighborhood children for about an hour.
The government does not provide any significant government aid programs so volunteer organizations such as ours are needed to help these people adjust to their new lives.
I take pride in being one of the volunteers in Fugee Fridays. We are not there to make a political statement or in order to impress others. Rather we are just trying to help a group of people who are less fortunate. In March of 2008, four of my close friends saw that there was lots of food being thrown away at the market every week and there were lots of hungry refugees just minutes away. One week they showed up to the market and loaded a car with food, and they have done so ever since.
Every Friday evening we are running around with the kids and chasing them. I like to think of myself as one of the children’s favorite and they all call me “HaShamen” which means fatso in Hebrew. I run around with the children and usually have one on my shoulders while another one of the children is hitting me. One of my proudest accomplishments is that I thought one of the children how to say “What you talking about Willis.”
These children are really remarkable. They are a group of 20 children who live in the same cramped shelter with their mothers. The shelter is directly across from a brothel. These children have grown up with very little stability in their lives. There is a bond and friendship between all these children that it is obvious they are extremely loyal and worried about one another.
It was not until volunteering for about three months did I really understand the significance of what we were doing. I was delivering the food into one of the refugee’s home and I was invited in to have a cup of tea with the patriarch of the family. He was from the country of Chad and he told me about his personal narrative. He told me about the hardships he had gone through including his escape into Israel. However, his overall message was that he felt so blessed to live in a country that has security and where he was able to work even if it was only as a pool boy at the Hilton. He expressed to me how grateful he was for the weekly food that we provided with him and his family. Before that I was just viewing our work as giving food to people in need, but after walking away I realized that the real importance of the work we do is letting these people know we care about them. His entire life he had to fear for his life because of his race, but here are a group of strangers who dedicate their own time to show him we do care about him.
For me it is an incredible experience to be a 22-year-old Jewish American from Raleigh and to feel that I am having a positive influence on a 8-year-old Eriterian who has experienced hardships worse than I ever could imagine. For all the amount of time that me and the other volunteers have contributed to the refugees, I know that our impact will last much longer than the food.
I attended the District 37 Toastmaster Spring convention last weekend. As always, I had a great time. I enjoy seeing old friends, making new ones and listening to the excellent speeches.
I attended two workshops on goal setting, one by personal coach Laura Poole. She is a very dynamic speaker and has great content.
As I was listening to her, I realized that setting goals and achieving does not always equate to happiness. I know goals and happiness are related, but had never given the connection much thought.
My son is taking a course by Tal Ben-Shahar, the author of “Happiness” Daniel says that I am at a very high level of happiness because I really don’t care what other people think about me. I appreciate other people’s resspect and strive to do the “right thing,” but I am not obsessed with how other people perceive my actions.
I am happy. I have two wonderful kids, a business that pays the bills, a wonderful wife, and my health. I am thankful for all it and count my blessings every day. Do I have goals? Yes, lose some weight and make more money. I consider myself self-driven, but not ambitious. I don’t want — or need — a bigger house or a fancier car. I have the respect of people that I respect. I do business with people that I want to do business with. What’s not to be happy about?
Maybe being happy is a function of getting older. The ambitions I had earlier area have either been realized or abandoned. Maybe that is the definition of maturity.
Tags: happiness
I am following the news in the Raleigh News & Observer about former Governor Mike Easley’s saga of political influence.
Much of it centers around his relationship with McQueen Campbell. McQueen is a great guy. He is very unassuming and has a thick NC drawl.
McQueen joined both of the Toastmaters Club I was associated with — High Noon and Talkmasters. He was eager to get his Competent Communicator award and thought that by joining two clubs, he could do it faster.
I was suprised to find out after a few meetings that he was chairman of the NCSU and Easley’s pilot. When McQueen started Toastmasters, he was a bit awkward and nervous. However, he soon improved and let his sense of humor shine through. He enjoyed talking about flying and gave a very funny speech about what to do when the pilot has a heart attack. His main advice, “Your first job is to land the plane!” It was a humorous speech with a serious message.
I always wondered why politicians spend so much time and money to get elected to offices that don’t pay all that well. Mary Easley’s $180,000/year position at NC State sure seems like a plum position.
I don’t believe that McQueen did anything wrong. I feel sorry for him the way he is being raked over the coals by the media and being forced to resign from his position. I can only imagine the stress and lawyer bills he is accumulating as he fights the charges.
Although I usually side with the MSM on issues, it’s clear that they have used innuendo to indict to McQueen. However, I also think it’s time that politicians actually keep their promises and worry about their constituents and not their private pocketbooks.
Tags: Organizational Culture, Toastmasters
Posted by Steve on May 11, 2009 in
Learning and Training,
Toastmasters I am Toastmaster this week for Raleigh Talkmasters. It is my job to come up with a theme for the meeting.
Toastmasters is all about effective communication and leadership. However, there are times when mistakes are made.
My most famous incident occured when I was in the Israeli army and made the mistake of mixing up the Hebrew name “Meir” with the English command “fire!” and sent a 120-mm shell off to who knows where. The actual word in Hebrew is “Aish.” Long story, but the head of artillery was there and I was given a court martial.
Although I can laugh at this incident today, 54 people were killed that night in maneuvers. It was 32 years ago yesterday. I had nothing to do with it.
The one lesson I learned in the Israeli Defense Force was there are so many ways to die that you could never imagine. That is why my favorite Psalm is “This is the day the Lord has made, come and rejoice in it.” Nobody is promised tomorrow.
I am encouraging my fellow Toastmasters to write down there embarrassing failures to communicate. Often failure can be more of learning experience than being successful.
Tags: Toastmasters