Category Archives: blogging

Tempo and Trust

I sat down to expand on an idea that came up in conversation on my podcast today: the relationship of time and trust. And I got stuck. Stuck on a silent obstacle, a quiet logjam of thoughts – great raw material, but no flow. I rolled up my sleeves took a big sip of chai and got prepared for the fight.

I thought I was going to sit down and write a post about the relationship of time and trust, but I’m sitting here in this coffee shop doing the wi-fi nomad thing and I’m completely distracted by the music. I’m trying to unstuck this mental logjam and all I’ve got in my head is this music, this insistent energy keeping my logic all a-jumble.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m diggin’ the music, not hating on it. I don’t know who is picking the tracks, but they’ve got a serious acid jazz groove going on this afternoon with some deep Hammond B3 organ action and it’s got me in great place, but it’s the totally wrong groove for a heady round of intellectualizing and theorizing and such.

I’m in a mood to just be.

I can’t fight the draw to listen, much as I’m trying to spin the threads of a cogent argument together, and now I’m realizing, that I don’t want to fight this. Why should I? That sax is tasty, those guitar licks are nibbling at my psyche over a mellow feel and a full-as-a-fountain sound is coming from that organ. A sound somewhere between the wet metal plunk of a xylophone and the warm hum of electric clippers. Two wrongs making a right-on. Why should I fight it? Why can’t I just be? Spend a little be-me time listening and letting the rhythm drive the typing, letting the words wash up on me like the chords washing over my spine.

I can do this. I can write and I don’t have to fight for the words. I can feel and let the feel find it’s own damn path through me and cuddle up here as words on a screen.

The screen is cold, but the thought is warm and there is a pocket of flow that I know won’t last, already I can feel the slip, the self-conscious, but if I can breath and relax I might just get down one more note, I mean word, a phrase. No coda, just a rest.

And return.

It’s good to be.

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Welcome! So glad you’re here!

C'mon in!

Welcome! Or maybe I should say Welcome Back! As some of you know I used to write my blog over at davidscohen.wordpress.com. Well, no longer. This is the first blog post that I’m composing here on my brand-spanking new site. Hosting the blog with WordPress.com was great for a while – in fact it is wonderfully easy to do – if you’re new to blogging I highly recommend it. I just needed to add some fancy plugins and things that they don’t let you do over there, plus I wanted a tighter integration with the rest of my stuff.

So what’s the stuff?

Well if you’re here you’ve certainly noticed that this is a major rebranding/rebuild of my website. It was a butt-kicker getting here, but I’m very excited about it and I’ve got lots of plans for more content, business tools, doodles and fun down the road. Yes, it’s ok to say “business tools” and “fun” in the same sentence, in fact that’s part of the point of the redesign.

If you were a fan of the old blog don’t worry, all the old posts and drawings have been moved here along with a whole lot more. I’ve put up more galleries for doodles of Space Bunnies and such, a better page for keeping track of my podcast, The Be a Beacon Show – Personal Branding with David Cohen, and something new, an ecard service, which I’m calling doodlegrams.

I hope you’ll continue to visit the blog and explore this website, it’s new home, and if you do please drop me a note to let me know what you think.

Thank you so much!

David

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Right Brain resurgent

So where are the posts, David? Yes friends, I’ve been a little delinquent in my writing, but inspired today by a post written by the awesome Fabeku, I decided to just show up.

Now I don’t want you to think I’ve been idle in my absence. I’ve actually been putting out a fair amount of content, but it has been of a more whimsical and decidedly visual bent. I’ve been a doodling fiend. If you’re interested you can check out the magic marker output (along with the occasional picture shot on the go from my phone) by visiting my posterous at http://davidscohen.posterous.com.

I’ve been enjoying this resurgence of my creativity, and frankly a little nervous about ramping up the degree to which I show the world my soft and silly side, but the fact is I preach authenticity in branding, and by gum I mean to practice it as well. (and how often do you get to say “by gum”?) I expect that the current flood of doodle inspiration will abate a bit over time, but it has been bottled up for a while and it feels good to let the drawings flow and not get too judgmental about them. I’ve picked some fairly humble materials to work with too: basically I’ve been drawing on 4″ x 6″ blank index cards and mostly using Sharpies, pens and highlighters. Sometimes I’ll use nicer art markers too – the highlighter palette is a bit limited. I keep it all on the desk so I can take my doodle breaks, scan them and tweet them to the world. So far, the world hasn’t complained, and I’m grateful for that.

I’m also cooking up a new website for Equation Arts. It’s not quite done yet, but I think it will be a better expression of who I am. Here’s a hint of things to come:
There will also be a lot of the color orange ( I love orange), and some crossover doodles will make their appearance there as well.

I hope that people who connect with me know that I’m a big believer that we all have something special to offer the world and each other, but sometimes we find ourselves framed in the wrong context – that “something special” ends up hidden, muffled, suppressed – unable to shine. So the new website is for me a shift in context toward something more authentic. I hope you’ll stick with me through the transition. Thanks! And remember…

Also posted in art, branding, Branding Thoughts, change, commentary, context, creativity, personal branding, thanks | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Looking for work? Get fired!

These days I’m often asked to speak to career groups. There are a lot of folks in transition these days and many have never experienced a job climate quite like the one they find themselves in today. It’s a tough spot. One piece of advice that I often hear given to job seekers is to treat the job search like a job: set goals, have a plan, give yourself a quota of activity to accomplish daily, and don’t fall into a rut of inactivity. All good sound advice, but there is one vital piece missing: this is not a job you want, in fact this is a job from which you want to be fired!

Getting fired?! It’s appalling, embarrassing, humiliating… unless it is getting fired from the job of being an “A” Number One Unemployed Job Seeker. There’s nothing humiliating about losing that job title. So what do you do when you’re TRYING to get fired? Well naturally, you break some rules. But you don’t just break them quiet-like – you make some noise, you call attention to yourself. If you want to get fired you have to get noticed. Get noticed breaking the rules.

There is a dangerous rhythm that the job seeker can fall into: a cycle of online searching, sending resumes, filling out application forms, and visiting career groups. It can feel like a job, it can feel like progress, but if you’re not getting results it’s not progress. Break the rules, change the pattern. Get noisy. Start a blog, become a twitter networker, pick an issue in your industry that you care about and take a stand, do it vocally, don’t be benign. Instead of standing in line at the career fair, break the rules – organize your own event. Instead of waiting to get the sales job, break the rules – bring your target company a customer – you’ll get some attention, bring them 3 and you’ll get hired.

These days being good at what you do, being qualified and experienced are only enough to get you the opportunity to stand in line. It’s not differentiation, it’s another resume in the pile. Get out of line, break the rules, find another door, or a whole new line. These are risky times to play it safe. Get passionate, get creative, and by all means when it comes to the job of job seeking, get fired.

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Plugins for the brain – WordCamp Atlanta 2010

I'm going to WordCamp Atlanta!

Well I had a fun time last night at the kick-off of Atlanta WordCamp held over at SCAD’s Atlanta campus. Saw a lot of great folks from the Atlanta web/social media scene and a bunch of Twitter friends. It was great to see Amani Channel of Visual Eye Media running a session. However, my favorite session from last night was Topher Kohan‘s talk on SEO tips for WordPress. He’s a big advocate for many of the plugins offered by Yoast so I’ll have to check some of those out. He also stirred up a smidgen of controversy over the merits of the Thesis theme/framework.

Today there are a lot of appetizing sessions on the menu. I’m torn between attending Rusty Tanton‘s analytics integration discussion or Ryan Imel‘s talk on parent/child theming. In the afternoon I think I’ll stick mostly to the developer track until the last slot where it is going to be another coin toss between Dave Coustan‘s content strategy discussion and Tessa Horehled‘s "Making your blog your business: Scale & Monetization"

There’s a lot of other great stuff so it was tough to choose. If you’re there today, I hope you’ll please find me and say hello. 🙂

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I got a little press :)

Pardon me while I toot my own horn for a second – I’m excited to say that I got interviewed for an article in this week’s Atlanta Business Chronicle. Urvaksh Karkaria wrote an article for the Technology in Motion section entitled “Execs using social media sites to brand themselves as well as their companies”. Besides yours truly, Urvaksh interviewed Atlanta-based social media consultant Toby Bloomberg and Boston area branding consultant Kirsten Dixson. Nice to be counted in amongst such talented individuals.

Look for my mug on page 7B.

🙂

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