Miscellaneous Uses for a Blog

Look Outside The Fishbowl

You’ve heard the term, right?  "Look outside of the fishbowl!" It refers to looking outside of that circle of influence and to peer out into the outside world to get their perspective. This is especially true when it comes to promoting your online presence outside of the online world. I’ve always taken issue with the "look out of the fish bowl" phrase. You see, when you are inside of a fishbowl, you see everything on the inside with relative clarity. However, if you look through the glass to the other side, that same fishbowl distorts your view of the outside world. Things appears stretched and twisted. Abnormally large or abnormally small.

This is something that has bugged me for quite some time. The growth and power of new media is impressive, but it still pales in comparison to traditional media channels. While you may have used a computer for years and communicate with email nearly hourly, yet over 1 in 5 US households have never sent an email in their life . That’s 21% of the population that has no clue, nor likely any desire to engage in the new media revolution. While you can make the argument that many of these are a generation separated from technology, that comes no were close to the 20%. The digital divide is still there folks.

As with any interest group, to those of us hyper-connected and in the heart of the online and new media revolution, it’s easy to get a distorted view of the realities of the other side. You are looking out of the fishbowl, but see a distorted view of the actual realities. I constantly hear arguments like

"Does anyone use X service any more?"

- Does anyone use Yahoo any more?

"It not a big deal because everyone has X."

- The DTV switch is not that big of a deal because almost everyone has cable or satellite TV already.

I think you can see the problem…

No, CLIMB Out of the Fishbowl

As you progress in your quest in this new media world, whether it’s building your personal brand or your business, where do you get this view of the outside world? Do you deliberately take the time to talk to others that spend little time online about your online presence? Have you taken a few days to completely disconnect and gain insight to where others focus their energy? Have you CLIMBED out of the fishbowl instead of just looking out of it?

What ways have you found to gain the perspective of someone outside of your typical sphere of influence? How has this new perspective helped you in your activities inside and outside of the fishbowl? Leave a comment!

This is going to be another random, personal post… so I apologize in advance.. Needless to say, I’ve been rather quiet on the new media front lately. I’ll do some more new media stuff here soon, but life has really been crazy the last couple of weeks.

Life and emotional chaos

Becca has been studying for the CPA test for the last year. Her latest section of the exam tested last week, and unfortunately, it didn’t appear to have gone as well as she hoped. Apparently there was a great deal of items in the exam that were not in the review materials. So much for the $3000 we spent on them. In any case, Becca then followed up the exam with sinus surgery less than 12 hours after finishing her test.  The surgery went well, but she’s been pretty inactive since Thursday. She headed back to work today.

The school year has also passed, and my son is beginning his first summer vacation. I don’t think the concept has quite sunk in yet, but I know both kids are anxious to get some quality pool time in this summer. The weather here has been pretty hot over the last week, so I’m sure the local pools will heat up in a hurry. Becca can’t wait until she gets the go-ahead from the doctor to be in the pool again. The kids get their fish qualities from her.

As some of you know, I tend to take on the emotional burdens of those I care for. I’ve had no problems caring for Becca over the last week, in fact I welcome being able to serve her. But needless to say, the emotional drain from everything has gotten to me a bit as of late. I haven’t even looked into producing a new episode of Looking Out The Window , and it’s been several weeks since the last show went out. It was also discouraging when my latest interview fell through. Realizations that I won’t make it to either Podcamp Boston or the New Media Expo this year have me down as well. But, such if life.

KCWeather as a business?

There have been many interesting developments on the weather front as of late. Yes, it’s been an active severe weather season (although pretty calm in Kansas City), but there are other things going on that have peaked my interest.  Primarily, is that I’ve been contacted by a few different people about starting up some sort of weather consulting company or weather network. While planning is still in their infancy stages, we’ve thought about everything from offering personalized forecasts for people (kind of a virtual assistant for weather) to utilizing current reader and listener bases to form a network. One person I’ve been in contact with is a former coworker of mine. The opportunity to possibly work with them makes me smile. The only questions are: Is there a market for specific weather information, or is the market already too saturated to make it into a business? Would it replace current work? The list goes on, but has certainly been an interesting thought to say the least.

Still looking for a phone

Thanks to those of you that offered your thoughts on the phone upgrade I’m looking in to. The more I’ve looked, the better the Samsung Instinct looks. Unfortunatly, it requires that I leave my current family plan and sign up for one of Sprint ‘s everything plans (that costs more than my current family plan). I was hoping that I could simply add data to my current plan and I’d be golden. That doesn’t appear to be the case. I’m not sure I want to spend $70 for an individual plan AND X dollars for a plan for my wife. If I could simply add $30 to my family plan to cover my phone, I’d be okay with that. To add twice that to my monthly bill is a bit much for us. Thanks Sprint.

I’m still looking for a phone, and the new Google Android phones look nice as well. Who knows when those will launch.. and I’ve heard they’re going to be rather expensive. I really need something with a full browser, so that limits my choices significantly. Needless to say, it’s pretty discouraging, but something I could really use (especially if this weather thing ends up panning out).

For now, that will cover my brain dump. I’m off to search for a hug…