Entries Tagged 'thinking' ↓

Catching up with last week’s Carnival of the Capitalists I came across a nice post from Rosa Say, Start a List: “What I Want to Learn”, where she suggests:

Just write down all the intriguing ideas coming your way this month, and something will start to emerge as your first pick before you know it.

This is exactly what happened (is happening) with this blog, as I explained in a previous post. It is amazing how difficult it can be to ‘think’ about what are we interested in, what do we want, who we are, and how easy it is to find the answers to these questions if we just observe carfelly the patterns that emerge from our actions.

Some weeks ago, Random Thoughts from a CTO wrote that

Regardless of which type of blog you promote, one thing is for sure — “You need to find your voice” and stay true to it.

Identity is certainly a fundamental ingredient to make a project successful. It doesn’t matter if the project is your personal blog, or some bigger task where a whole team is involved. People need to know the values, motivations and goals of the project, so that they can find how they connect to the project, how do they fit in it.

But do we ‘decide’ on the identity beforehand, when the project starts, or does it emerge organically over time? For business-style projects, I would suppose that the identity is something clear from the beginning, as they start with clear goals and motivations. But for more personal-style or experimental projects, such as blogs, the identity might not be defined long after the project started.

When I bought this domain and put up this page, it wasn’t even a blog. But I gradually realized that something blog-like is what I really wanted, and timidly started to experiment with the medium. I started with some short posts on random issues, trying out what worked best for me, what felt more comfortable, more fun. Slowly, some main subjects started to emerge: current events, IT, books I read… Later, some six months into my ‘blogging career’, I realized that the CMS I was using (Pivot) was inadequate, and migrated to what I perceived as a better one (Wordpress). Later still, I started looking for a tag line that would somehow convey what are the main subjects of this blog. Along the way, the design of the site changed quite a few times. And finally, after a bit more than a year, I have a clearer idea about the identity of this blog. But it is definitely nothing that I consciously planned.

But of course, this is just my personal case. Clearly, many blogs are created with a clear identity in mind, and state it clearly in their titles, tag lines and posts from day one.

Reading Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect I have come across an interesting explanation of the origin of the meme concept.

Apparently, meme was coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976. Johansson explains that Dawkins described ideas as capable to evolve and spread, just like genes. Dawkins called these ‘propagating ideas’ memes, and he wrote about them (as quoted by Johansson):

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm and eggs, so do memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

Johansson goes on to point out that “Ideas, or memes, compete, in a real sense, for space in our minds. Some memes persist and transform, others die out; the process is similar to that of genetic evolution”.

I find this a wonderful idea: ideas as genes, propagating like a mutation! The best idea reaches the most people, becomes ingrained in our collective mind. And of course, the blogosphere, with most of its inhabitants being compulsive linkers as myself, is the best milieu for rapid spreading/imitation of the coolest ideas.

And that was just the fifth page of the first chapter of The Medici Effect. This book reads promising!

Inspriringly, Don Blohowiak writes:

What is the leadership lesson? Simply this. People have an irrepressible need to apply themselves. To give expression to their innate capabilities. To use their minds and talents no matter their circumstances.

More at Leadership. Now. - Innate motivation.

Fer has come up with a new “inspiring quotes” meme to follow the pass-around book and musical memes that have raged through the blogosphere the last couple of weeks. Although I had successfully avoided the two previous memes, this one is flying directly my way, so I will oblige and squeeze my brain for something inspiring to share with you crazy people that stop to read my ramblings.

So here it comes.

Meme received from: Fer. (Ha! I got a first-generation meme! :-))

Five inspiring quotes that I keep handy:

1. “Winners never quit. Quitters never win.” from… ehem… a Snickers advertisement…
2. “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (this doesn’t apply only to women, of course)
3. “Always make new mistakes!” from Esther Dyson
4. “You make your own (good) luck” from popular wisdom and many other sources
5. “DON’T PANIC!”, you know from where…

Five people that I send this to:

1. Andreas, who surely needs a blog-post subject which will make it difficult to find a suitable illustrating picture.
2. Chema, who surely has the most action-inspiring quotes.
3. Julio, who surely will take this as an excellent excuse to step up posting frequency.
4. Tatus, who surely has more than five quotes to share.
5. La petite Marta, who surely has the juiciest ones.