Marc Sirkin's Mindnumbing Thoughts

Online Community Management: Yes, it's really a job View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: job career )

I've gone over this "theory" a bunch of times with friends over the years and finally am going to attempt to blog about it. Guys, you know how when you do something good for the one you love you think to yourself... "Big points for that!" You know what I'm talking about, right? Come up with that special gift and you get points. Doing the dishes gets you points. Remembering birthday's gets you points, but remembering her sisters birthday gets you even more. I'm not talking about lame airline points, miles or fake currency here... I'm talking about pure relationship pointage... and you know what that could get you! Different acts gets you different points - everyone has their own scale. The scale isn't what's important here at all. No. Before I get into the heart of the matter, here's a sampling of possible things you can do with points to whet your appetite: Long golf weekend with the boys Poker nights Ability to purchase new gadgets w

I started reading Fast Company again after a year or so of giving it up and am happy to be back. While I dug the Shaun White article in the Feb 09 issue what really caught my attention was an article titled " No Vacancy - Job Seeking refugees from the for-profit world shouldn't go running for the not-for-profit sector ." During my tenure in the not-for-profit sector (yes, I had a blog then too)this was probably the #1 question I got from friends and colleagues looking for something else to do professionally. I'm pretty much done giving advice around that topic, especially in light of my decision to join Microsoft instead of pursuing another post inside a non-profit. That said, I even wrote a blog post " So You Want to Work In Non-profit Land? " I think the FC article makes some good points and it really brings me back to the last 8 years of my professional life. The one comment I'll make however is that during my first 3 years or so (while at March of

I was fortunate to be in Seattle this week and to get an invite to a Social Media Club meeting from my good friend Filiberto Selvas . Filiberto and I recently traded comments on SocialCRM blog and on Twitter about the idea of agencies running/managing online communities for brands. As per my usual, I started with a very strong opinion that brands who want to start customer communities should not use an agency for hands on community management. My entire concept of online communities revolves around creating open and honest conversations. The thought of hiring an agency to manage it to me at first seemed ludicrous. I felt strongly that any brand that would outsource that function ought to reconsider their strategy and perhaps hold off on building customer communities until they were more ready to commit. At the SMC meeting of course, I met someone with a different opinion (surprise, he's an agency guy!). Thing is, he mentioned Betty Crocker. According to Wikipedia, Betty Crocker

It's funny, when you start to focus your attention on things, all sorts of interesting bits come your way. I had been holding on to a copy of an article from NYT Magazine about Philip Seymour Hoffman for a few weeks and finally read it over coffee this morning. It's a great article, a rare look inside a terrific actor and a stunningly intense guy. In describing when he first saw "All My Sons" on stage, he uses some really interesting images and vocabulary that is really sticking to me this morning. "It was like a miracle to me. But that deep kind of love comes at a price: for me, acting is torturous, and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great — well, that’s absolutely torturous." I'm struggling myself with what it means to be great in all my own roles - father, husband, employee, sports coach, son, grandson, brother, friend, etc...

As part of my ongoing, annual goal setting and life re-orientation as I now call it, I just finished reading "The Present," a parable by Spencer Johnson. This book is a lot more accessible, though not as deep as Tolle's "The Power of Now" and "A New Earth" and is a quick read. It's amazing to me that I've been trying to live more in the now for the last few years and have not made more progress. That said, I do finally find myself recognizing when I am in fact, not living in the present. A few nights ago, I totally flew off the handle after talking to my mom and while I was able to recognize what I was doing, I was unable to curb my behavior. Some things continue to get to me! Alternatively, on Christmas day as the girls were opening their gifts, this amazing wash of joy came over me. I know looking back that I was experiencing "flow" and was wonderfully, totally in the present moment. In any case, the book essentially presents 3 ways

Cross 'em off! I'm off to a roaring start in '09, completing 3 goals right off the bat. #1 was to figure out how to get GPS working properly on my mobile phone, and thanks to some slick software ( GPSToday ), it's not only working great, but it allows me to automatically add geodata to photos on the fly. Sweet. Check. #2 was to reorganize how we (my family) manages all our digital files and to put into place a better backup strategy. Basically, I've turned my home computer into a basic file server and mapped public folders to the kids and wife's mobile desktops. Once that was complete, I configured Cobian backup software to run daily backups on those folders, offloading the backup data to an external 250gb drive. For those really valuable digital photos, I'm using Cobian to create DVD ready archives so I can easily (and quickly) make DVD backups. Not only do I feel good about crossing these things off the list, I've got some peace of mind regarding th