Did you know that I’m a futurist? Well I was in a futurists club for a while. I like future-y things like blogs, and websites, and personal branding, and I want you to like them too. I want you to like them because they are really now things, and they can help your career and your business.
Yes, I’ll confess that even futurists like me occasionally indulge in old-fashioned habits like nestling deep into the sofa with an actual, non-virtual, magazine and of course, a cat. I enjoy the tactile quality of riffling through the printed pages, and the cat seems to enjoy sitting on my chest. It is her way of reassuring me that despite all the changes and stresses of the information age she still cares for me deeply, even more deeply when it is drafty on the floor.
Generally this sidestepping of the digital now works out quite well for naps (for me and the cat) and it is certainly better for uninterrupted reading than trying to plow through an online document with Ms. Trixie padding restlessly back and forth across the keyboard of my laptop – cats are so helpful. However, avoiding the now is not better for business.
So, as I hinted, I was on the sofa beginning to get drowsy-eyed under the influence of all the feline warmth and non-digital purring when my gaze alit upon a quote. The quote comes from Reid Hoffman, creator of LinkedIn, from a tangible article in Business Week, now well-riffled in my hands. “Essentially,” Mr. Hoffman says, “every individual is a small business.”
Yes at first glance it may seem to be a modest quote. Certainly brief. In fact it failed to impress the cat, but Trixie is not known for her business acumen. I, on the other hand have a reputation to think of, and I quite like the quote – first off, it begins with “Essentially” and secondly, it is a sentiment that has been presaged by some of my favorite business thinkers, like Seth Godin and Tom Peters: The reality of our collective now is that today you may work for somebody else, but first and foremost you are in the business of being you.
As some have said, you are CEO of Brand You Inc. A thought that the cat found most perturbing as it was inspiring enough to get me up off the couch (disrupting her carefully kneaded perch) and over to the computer so that I might compose this post. You don’t think these new-fangled blogs just appear out of thin air do you?
So what does all of this have to do with DavidCohen.com? Well if you are the CEO of Brand You Inc., then I am the CEO of Brand Me. And as CEO of my own brand I figured I should own the company website. Fortunately for me that thought first occurred to me about 14 years ago, when davidcohen.com was still an available domain. My new friend, Nadia Bilchik, was quite impressed by this. Nadia is a dynamic individual, a speaker, trainer, and news anchor (you may have seen her on CNN). She is also the CEO of the brand Nadia Bilchik so naturally she has the domain nadiabilchik.com – Her domain was a more recent acquisition than mine, but she admits there was less competition to get the name. FYI “David Cohen” is a common name, the jewish equivalent of “John Smith”. “Nadia Bilchik” is about as common as, well, “Nadia Bilchik”.
So what am I trying to tell you? I’m trying to tell you that my friend the energy author, Jon Gordon, has jongordon.com, and my friend Jeff Pulver the godfather of VoIP, has jeffpulver.com, and Melissa Galt, the interior designer who helps people design their lives has, melissagalt.com, and you better believe that personal branding guru Dan Schawbel has danschawbel.com. Want to guess what domains Tom Peters and Seth Godin have? You know who doesn’t have her own domain? Trixie doesn’t have her own domain, but then again she’s a cat. Cats can’t type, even though right now she thinks she is doing a great job of helping me write this post.
If you are not a cat, then there is a good chance that you actually work for somebody else, but that doesn’t mean you can’t carve out a little virtual space for yourself. The price of running a website gets cheaper every day, the price of a personal domain is minimal compared to the advantages of having a findable platform where you can position yourself to the rest of the world. And BTW it is a competitive world, and with all the uncertainty in the economy it is only going to be more so. There is no better time than right now to claim your virtual turf, if for no other reason than to put up your own virtual billboard extolling all the virtues of Brand You.
If you’re lucky and have an uncommon name you might still be able to get something like yourname.com (but it won’t sit around waiting for you), and if you do have a common name don’t be discouraged. Get creative! Try initials, or middle names, or add “Mr” or “Ms”. And don’t forget about Mr. Reid Hoffman – be sure to visit his site and make your LinkedIn profile and when you do be sure to give the public profile a friendly name, like, um, oh I don’t know, maybe something along the lines of http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidscohen. And don’t be bothered that some David Cohen in London beat you to http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidcohen. Really I’m fine with it. It’s only an “s”. No big deal. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
"I adore your doodles... I swear looking at those bunnies lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind and makes me smarter. Who needs meditation when there are bunnies?"
live blogging at Ga Technology Summit pt1 – Thomas Friedman
Okay, if you’ve read this blog before you know what live-blogging is all about – rapid-fire stream-o-consciousness writing from a live event. It won’t be polished, but it will be real.
Taking the stage now at the Georgia Technology Summit is Thomas Friedman, author of Hot Flat and Crowded, and the World is Flat.
TF – stands for me horribly paraphrasing Thomas Friedman. I don’t type fast enough to give real quotes unless they’re really short.
TF – worried that US has lost it’s lustre. He’s pissed off at a billboard – advertiser dissing America for the lack of innovation. But despite the hype we are exploding with innovation. Excited about ET — energy technology. The World is getting Hot Flat and Crowded. The Hot comes from global warming – Al Gore stuff — 2 degrees different in average temperature.
So the world has a fever – that’s not a bad way to explain it.
TF – we’re 6 degrees away from being an iceball
Now I’ll really sleep well tonight.
TF – Thomas Friedman says too many Americans – we need to make Americans more sustainable. Crowded – is about population growth. We’re adding a billion people in 20 years. We’ve got 6.2 billion now in 2053 forecast is for 9+ billion. More people added between now and then, then were around when he was born.
TF- 5 global megatrends
TF – a billion lightbulbs = 20,000 metric tons. Stats on what if you put them on – there is a number, but just too much. Flat is the impact of the globe catching up with living like we do, and rapidly ramping up there consumption of resources and energy, and of course, outputing waste, carbon, BTUs etc. Other countries are “sprouting” Manhattans – cities springing up in deserts.
TF – said to his wife that everyone is getting hybrid cars (ironically) – the emergence of these new cities are causing energy consumption to vastly outpace any of these efforts to reduce energy usage.
TF – 300 million people living like US = an Americome (sp?) a unit of measure to help understand the increase of global consumption.
TF – first law of Petropolitics – showing a slide –
I can’t read the handwriting on the slide, looks like an oblique baseball diamond – I don’t think that is what he meant to communicate
TF – the freedom index for countries (petrol states) that depend on oil for their GDP- as price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up, and vice versa.
TF – Bahrain -first arab gulf state to start running out of oil, also first to adapt more democratic principles.
TF – “global weirding” – not global “warming”, but “weirding” – warm is too nice a word. Things will get weird (and not nice). If we keep adding greenhouses gases, we will raise the temp – and the problems. 2 questions. Who’s making hot? and Doesn’t Gore owe us all an apology? We have introduced so much CO2 into the atmosphere that we don’t know what climate effects are natural and which ones are caused by human actions. Are we making it hot or is Mother Nature? So now the Al Gore question – he monitored a talk with Al Gore – told him he should write an op-ed piece apologizing for “completely underestimating climate change” – that would be an attention getter. Climate model is changing rapidly. Showing slide of greenland in 1992 compared to 2002 showing snow melt – dramatic increase. Summer 2007 lost twice the ice than is in all the Alps.
TF- showing slide of British Columbia – pine beetle devastation – pine beetle not getting knocked back by winter the way it used to be so it is running rampant destroying forest.
TF – 1.6 billion with no connection to the energy grid. This will be devastating as the world gets more hot flat and crowded. Will amplify poverty. Fall behind, no Internet, no power to get water in droughts. Students in Guinea doing homework in parking lots because thats the only place with light at night.
TF – last of the mega-problems loss of bio-diversity – extinction and near-extinction of species. “We are in the age of Noah” – human intervention the only thing keeping some species alive. Two turtles in captivity in China, last of their species and they are trying to get them to mate – no luck yet. Word that will disappear from the dictionary – “later” – Later was a luxury for previous generations. Everything changing too fast now, nature was once unlimited, now “later” is gone. Later is over. If you’re going to save something you have to save it now.
So now is Thomas going to give us any hope?
TF- Looks like we’re cooked. Or is a list of opportunities masquerading as insoluble problems. They all have the same solution.
TF-Abundant cheap clean reliable electrons – solves all of the above problems – Energy Technology is the key – own ET and you own security, global respect. It has to be the United States of America, or we’re in deep doo-doo. Someone has to solve it – We need to be “big in big things”.
Give the guy a glass of water, would ya?
TF – “Green is the new Red White and Blue” – green revolution- sarcastic “everyone’s a winner” have you ever been to a revolution where noone got hurt? That’s not a revolution that’s a party. You’ll know it is a revolution when somebody gets hurt. Change or die – when that’s the choice that’s when you’ll know the green revolution is really here. when the word Green has disappeared that’s when you’ll know we won. When a car isn’t designated as a green car, because normal means green.
TF – We’re trying to prevent the doubling of CO2 since the dawn of the industrial age. Massive build out – if we were only using Nuclear Energy to solve the problem = 1 new plant every day for 36 years(not sure if I got the number right)
TF – believes in capitalism – got to make this an issue of innovation not regulation. This is a problem for engineers not regulators. Get 10000 to try thousands of ideas, and get the best out there and build an eco-system for innovation. Eco-system for innovation guy. Price signals for innovation. Stimulate the inventors in the garages and find the ideas that can change thing. Differnece between IT and ET – IT was a greenfield, there was no incumbant, no competitive pre-existing, cheaper thing in the way. The new Energy Technology has to be cheaper than what was before, need tax incentives to stimulate this, make it viable. Technologies vs. Commodities – price responds differently to demand.
This is the “tragedy of the commons” in action. Without outside stimulation (government encouragement through policy and tax breaks) there is not sufficient incentive for people and companies to adopt more expensive, but greener solutions.
TF – cold we have gotten funding for the Apollo Space program if there had been a cheaper dirtier way to get to the moon already? Of course not. We need to create the government leverage to make this happen. Need to create a long term price signal to stimulate innovation. “Change your leaders not your lightbulbs”
TF – if only we could be China for a day – just one day to play dictator and put in the beneficial policies that could stimulate ET innovation
TF – the last chapter – leaving Iraq, the biggest transfer of air conditioners of all time. A Democratic China or a Banana Republic? Banana – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Throwing in his lot with the optimists
Thanks Tom, we need that.
TF – Optimism – from the last page of the Hot Flat and Crowded book – a eulogy, ants and termites display high-intelligence collectively, but not individually, humans the opposite. All glasses half full, but not shrink from bad news, future is a choice. Can we solve the problems – We have exactly enough time, starting NOW.