To jumpstart your new year in these roiling times, consider this: ”When the economy tanks it’s natural to think of yourself first. You have a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. Getting more appears to be the order of business. It turns out that the connected economy doesn’t respect this natural instinct. Instead, we’re rewarded for being generous. Generous with our time and money, but most important generous with our art.” ~ Seth Godin 

Here’s my three-step approach to put that notion into practice in this ever more Connected Age (please tell me what you think):

1. Discover your main talent (Marcus Buckingham) and re-design your work and life to use it more often.

2. Constantly keep an eye out for problems and opportunities in your profession, market  - or in your life.

3. Recruit the mix of people who can collectively seize that opportunity or provide the solution to that problem.

In short: We’ll get better at methods that create more value, working together  – as a satisfying way of helping each other. That may be the most efficient and satisfying way to generate more value for our work and more meaning in our lives.

With the right team we can accomplish something greater with others than you can alone.  

Reminder: To be most helpful when being generous, adopt the Golden Golden Rule: Do unto others, not as you would have done unto you, but rather as they would have done unto them.

Two Predictions: 2010 will be the year of…

 1. Vastly increased collaboration everywhere. We may stumble but we will pick ourselves up, be more daring, supportive of strong partners -  and we will try more often, experimenting until we get it right: Right methods + right team.  Look for Peter Sims’ next book, Little Bets.

 2. Quickly-formed project teams.  Some teams will bond and seek more projects. Others will go bust, most likely because of the power of the weakest link.  (Motivation to participate dissipates when one person does not pull his weight and Rules of Engagement were not in place, upfront, to include the rule for graciously booting non-performers off the island.)

Oh and you may want to download What Matters Now, Seth’s free 82-page e-book with contributions from some 70 bright contributors, from Wired editor, Chris Anderson to Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert and Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick. Then learn how to lead online communities (with pithy advice from those who are) in another e-book created by J.C. Hutchins – Nick of Time.

Authors’ alert: Try your version of Seth Godin’s newest crowd attractor that rocketed his book to the top ten bestsellers at Amazon.  And the book isn’t even out yet.

Here’s what happened. About two months ago, he offered his fans the chance to be on the cover of his next book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.  Those who were quick to act might (might!) be among the crowd of faces on the book.

Note:  “Quick” evokes “scarcity,” which spurs us to act, according to Influence author, Robert Cialdini.

To further stoke his visibility and his advance sales of the book, yesterday Godin invited community-builders and marketers to  meet each other over at his “private,”  subscriber-based social network site, aka an online book club.  Of course, even these ostensibly key influencers had to provide electronic proof that they’d pre-ordered a copy of the book at Amazon.  That membership requirement certainly cements a SmartPartnership between the author and Amazon.  Also, Seth’s social network site, aka book club was launched off the free provider, Ning.

Some are offended by Seth’s approach.

Yet, as Ron Hogan at Mediabistro suggests, it is a super quick way for an author to start and grow a book club and boost sales.  Even less famous authors (such as the rest of us) can adapt this approach to entice our kind of readers to buy early, tell others and get to know each other online – thus building an active fan community to buy our future books.

(If politicans and pet stores can start book clubs, why not authors?) Finally, to cover your bases, create a book club page at Mahalo and  Squidoo – and a write up at the still ungainly “steamroller” of an author-credited, wiki service, Knol.

In art class we were asked to draw a familiar object.  I picked something simple.  A tire.  No one could recognize it. And yet, after reading The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures I was able to draw a description of SmartPartnering and another on storyboarding.

Let people literally see your idea to adopt it faster or to buy.  Read this fun book by Dan Roam.  Dan gives you a method based on our six ways of seeing:1. who/what    2. how much   3. where   4. when   5. how    6. why. These ways affect each step in our visually thinking/creating process:
1.    Identify the topic/issue
2.    Develop an idea/approach, to
3.    Express a solution.

Herb Kelleher intuited this approach when he used a bar napkin to show investors how Southwest Airlines could beat competitors.

I thought of Dan’s book when Ellen spoke to me after my session at the IABC conference in New York last week. Her firm, Cognac shows that even complex topics can be understood in ten minutes or less – with the right “big picture” image.   Since our brains retain visual information much better (David Melcher says 89% more) than text, this is mighty good news.

Even better, hear Dan lead a teleseminar on July 9th. It’s free.  And he’ll be joined by several bright minds: Seth Godin, Anil Dash and Rich Sloan.

Also hear my interviews with two other gurus in the fast-growing field of visual thinking, Lee LeFever and David Sibbet. Here’s Carl Gude’s visual shorthand for politics.

Ok. If you are still not comfortable drawing your own explanation, to illustrate your text, here’s some free resources for drawings, clipart and photos suggested by Meryl Evans.

Or discover simple ways to make and distribute “how to” videos.

By the way you can hear BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens interview me at IABC.

Seth Godin’s promise to put 1,000 faces on the cover of his next book, Tribe, reminded me of two other crowd pleasers:

• the top-of-heads photo on Clay Shirky’s insightful book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

• the 60-foot high faces of Chicagoans that appear on the Crown Foundation. See startled passersby watch the lips purse on each face, then spurt water like a modern-day gargoyle. Steven van Yoder would probably approve of Godin’s offer to make some members of the Godin tribe, “slightly famous.” Here’s some of my favorite quotes, by the way, from Shirky’s thought-provoking book:

• “We are living in the middle of the largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race. More people can communicate more things to more people than has ever been possible in the past, and the size and speed of this increase, from under one million participants to over one billion in a generation, makes the change unprecedented….”

• “What we are dealing with now is filter failure.”

• “Group action gives human society it particular character, and anything that changes the way groups get thing done will affect society as a whole.”• The basic capabilities of tools like Flickr reverse the old order of group activity, transforming “gather, then share” into “share, then gather.”

• Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.”Shirky is walking his talk. During an interview on the Colbert Report, Colbert suggested printing “Colbert” stickers to put on Doritos bags in their nearby grocery stores.

Shirky, evoking the theme of his book, invited audience members to create their own stickers.

Thanks Steve Johnson.Shirky recommended Jeff Howe’s forthcoming book, Crowdsourcing.

… rather than restless to leave. Recruit a diverse conference planning committee with different perspectives on the attendees and brainstorm fresh ways to get people actively learning, collaborating and considering ways to follow-up later with what they learn at your meeting. Here are four rather obvious yet rarely-used ideas that cost little to implement.

1. Adopt varied meeting formats for learning and idea exchanges between attendees.

Two benefits: meetings are interesting and enable people with different temperaments, needs and interests to get to know each other better, learn in different ways and find others with common interests.

Plus bring in more experts from way outside the ostensible topic/industry/professional area of the meeting attendees to get a fresh perspective. What reporters, financial analysts, seasoned exhibitors research, cover and/or serve the kind of people at the meeting? They can offer fresh, perhaps even brash advice, forecasting and other insights.

Examples:

“Our Best Advice”

Invite a panel of three outside experts to offer their best three tips in seven minutes. Invite a popular leader in your organization to act as moderator, introducing the session and it’s format, invite attendees to write their questions as the panelists speak – for volunteers to pick up – and to ring the “seven minute bell.” After the panelists are finished with their fast, to-the-point advice, the MC will read the questions asked by attendees. As the attendees leave this 60-minutes session, they are given a handout with the written version of the panelists’ tips and their background.

“Meet the Experts”
Provide three 30-minute expert-led round table sessions in a ballroom.

At the end of each session, ring a bell to notify attendees to move to the next table. Attendees reserve their seats for each session via online early registration and/or upon arrival at the meeting. NSA chapters regularly offers a version of this popular format called Meet the Pros.

2. Create more memorable multi-sensory moments that reinforce the meeting’s “storyline.”

Storyboard more of the moments along the main paths and byways that attendees will walk, from the moment they enter the meeting space and between meetings. Involve more sensory cues and points of interest, from “Burma Shave-style sequential signage along hallways to localized “overheard” audio conversations.

3. Create digital audio and video recordings of meeting sessions + on-site interviews with experts.

Cover attendees, exhibitors and speakers. Assign staff and invite attendees to interview others – perhaps with a suggested list of questions – with audio recorders (I favor the tiny Olympus) and video (I dream of getting the Flip Video that Kara Swisher uses). Also invite attendees to blog the meeting. In the hallways and waiting and gathering areas, show this coverage. Post conference, offer as streaming downloads from your Web site, perhaps free to some (members, attendees or employees) and for-fee to others (non-members, non-attendees and the general public).

4. Provide year round follow-up for continuous learning and community-building.
Before the conference announce a contest and/or way that people can keep in learning and interacting with each other so that the conference/meeting is the launching event of for the “community” of attendees.

Build on the learning, sense of affiliation, peer-to-peer idea exchanges and other collaboration. More firms, associations and other organizations should consider adopting the features of an online social network or be at risk for losing their members’ (or employees, customers or other kind of meeting attendee) top-of-mind attention/loyalty.

… so they’ll want to come back next year. How many conferences have you attended where you felt talked “at” by a series of speakers up on stage? Then you rushed between sessions to meet new people and catch up with friends in the hallways. Wouldn’t it be great to have a meeting designed to support you in exchanging ideas with the colleagues most helpful for you? Well, next February many professional meeting planners will be attending a conference that’s designed to in a “Me2We” way – where attendees turn from passive to active participants – interacting more frequently and productively. Then they can celebrate together and to learn from each other. (Not a new idea – just one that is spread too slowly for some, including me.) Some in the food industry have jumped in to help peers.

Want your next conference to be more meaningful and memorable? Via Jim Louis, one of the adept moderators of a closely-knit online group to which I belong called MeetingsCommunity (MeCo), I discovered MeetingsNet’s coverage of the innovative formats for the conference, “MPI Meeting Differently”:

“To improve the trade show experience, MPI is changing the layout of the exhibit hall. One innovation is something MPI calls “conversation spots,” freestanding circular plexiglass towers that are divided into quadrants and placed in high-profile spots around the exhibit hall. The idea is to provide a more intimate meeting area for exhibitors and attendees than they normally find on the trade show floor.

Organizers tinkered with more than just the trade show format. New concepts include:

a. The “Conversation Café”-a learning environment based on a coffee shop.

b. “Book clubs” – discussions led by book authors and subject matter authorities.

c. Wikis – each educational session will have its own wiki pages to encourage pre- and post-session communication and collaboration.

d. Educational sessions in “soft seating” or lounge-style meeting environments. Most of the 80 educational sessions will eschew a traditional classroom setting. Instead they will be held in the round to facilitate interactive learning and discussion.”

My hope is that this is the tipping point to make meetings even more interactive so attendees find in each other fresh ways to be mutually-supportive. Even as a “professional” (aka paid) speaker I’d welcome more short (20 – 30 minute) “meet the expert” sessions around 8-12 person tables, with a bell ringing so you could move through three sessions in a block. Then the mix and mingle times are more fun and valuable. That’s because you’ve probably discovered some people who share your interests and gotten a sense of whom you might like and respect enough to talk further. Use CrowdVine or other services to set up a social network – just for the conference.

For an invitation-only gathering, have inclusive, action-inducing rituals like the TED conference or Rennaisance Weekend.

Plus why not let attendees vote on the topics, speakers and session formats they most want?

And why not ask all invited speakers to 1) submit in advance, three of the tips they will present, then 2) receive an email of all speakers’ tips and be required to 3) refer to at least two other speaker’s tips as they complement the speaker’s message. Thus the conference would have more continuing threads of themes.

Also why not have lively panels of inside and outside experts (1. journalists or columnists, 2. researchers at investment banks, and 3. veteran, respected exhibitors) who see, from a different perspective, the sector represented in the conference. Give each panelist just seven minutes to offer their best two pieces of advice for attendees. Encourage attendees to submit written questions as they listen. Volunteers could gather the questions, sort for best mix for the strong and well-liked MC to present to the panelists to answer. As attendees leave the meeting room, they are given the handout with the written version of panelists’ tips and their bios. Thus attendees see more candor and pertinent content – in a contagiously active way. Who knows? That may lead to more unconferences. And, perhaps more associations and other member-based groups will start their own social network to keep people involved, meeting and collaborating all year long.

Speaking of partipatory, hear holiday cheer that’s guaranteed to make you laugh with joy. My way of wishing you a (Me2We) holiday you savor – with others .