Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly , from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

I usually like the books of Seth Godin, and sharing is caring, so I downloaded, started to read it and decided to put it up here. The book has over 71 thought provoking chapters, with some photos spread around – focusing on children, education and Room to Read – and beside the having a great content, it shows a very useful initiative, which I think deserves the “eyeballs”.

Below are my favourite chapters, with some samples – in case I have to persuade you to check out a free ebook.

Elizabeth Gilber – EASE

The world will still need saving tomorrow. In the meantime, you’re going to have a stroke soon (or cause a stroke in somebody else) if you don’t calm the hell down.

I don’t know who and where said it, some reformed movie hero probably – “All my life I was chasing everything and I missed everything”. We dictate a speed which is needless and useless most of the time. Where are we running?

Howard Mann – CONNECTED

We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we’re convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before.

We have friends all over the globe, yet we don’t know our neighbours. So immersed in global events we have no idea what happens in our streets.

John Wood – EDUCATION

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.

Education is a ripple. And there are too many still waters in the world.

Mitch Joel – COMPASSION

“It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”
We spend more than 50% of our lives at work. Why would anyone want to wake up in the morning and go to work with that attitude? If you don’t make it personal, and if you don’t make it count, what’s the point?

Should we really leave ourselves at home when we go to work?

Jeff Jonas – CONTEXT

When information is evaluated without context—regardless of highly sophisticated analytics, an infinite amount of compute, energy or time, little if any relevance can be established with certainty.

When information is evaluated without context – it’s not information. It’s just meaningless data. I have 500 HUF in my pocket. That’s no information to you unless you know current prices in Budapest. Without context, it is not information.

Chip and Dan Heath – CHANGE

We’re wired to focus on what’s not working. But Murphy asked, “What IS working, today, and how can we do more of it?”

Indeed, talking about what does not work solves nothing. Concentrating only on the symptoms won’t give you a solution. And CHANGE links so nicely to CONTEXT. Without CONTEXT there is no information. Without information, we can’t find a solution.

And more. 82 pages with short, thought provoking chapters. The book is free, and freely distributable – through Twitter, Plurk, website, whatever, write your review, your thoughts, your comments.

And after you have read it, share what you liked.

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Image by HubSpot via Flickr

Karen Swim is a wonderful person in my opinion. First of all she is a helpful lady, she is (add an undefined number of positive adjectives here), and she learns from everything.
Plus, she has similar views to mine, which is always a plus in your friends.
Now, in her last post she learned about business on the internet. Says she. I think she just got reaffirmed in her strict belief.
You see, everyone gets all these messages in his mailbox, on twitter, on websites

The secret to build a huge audience for your blog!

5000 visitors a week!

I have to admit that they are tempting offers. My blog has about 5-8 visitors a day, so the logical thing would be to rush to the offer. But, frankly, I don’t care that much about visitor numbers.

Karen quotes Steve Woodruff’s tweet on the subject and adds her own comment

“How I built a Twitter network of ___ in ___ days.” Sheesh. How about, how to build relationships and add value over the long-term?

To that I say, Amen! I read articles, posts and tweets on how to build subscriber numbers, how to drive traffic to your website and how to build an empire on a social media network, but are we missing the true value of developing relationships with real people?

I don’t know how many people read Karen’s blog, but I know that whenever she gives her opinion, asks for help, shares her worries, there are a lot of comments, offers and friendly messages.
I know how many people read my blog and I am sure that I did not trick them here with some arcane tactics – actually, based on the number I am absolutely sure that I could even name them, tell you their birthday dates, what they are doing as a hobby and so on.

You can argue that business does not need this relationship, for which I say that’s nonsense. If I ever need a copywriter in English, or someone to help me with my resume I know where I will go. If I need advice about building a new fence, to design a business card or a website, I know where I will go.

I will go to the person I know and trust, and not because I expect a discount, but because I know they will do a good job, and won’t shove their sugar coated junk down my throat.
So yes, Karen said it really

We do business with people, not numbers to be manipulated into clicking our junk and buying our stuff. Instead of screaming to be heard, quietly listen and allow those human beings to tell you what they want and need. You may be pleasantly surprised at just how pleasant business becomes when you make it personal.

And I say, Amen to that.

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I registered on LinkedIn last December, but was not really using it until late February. Then I had started my jobhunting project, and jumped into it fully with the intention and expectation that it will help me.

One of the things that I really like is the fact that you can not just connect to anyone, because if you got refused there are consequences – I never tried what those are, but I think it’s something like the system will demand some data to prove that you know the person.

The other is the Questions and Answers section. That was the way I met someone who really helped me a lot since then. It is not a Forum like on Xing, you put up a Question and everyone has a chance to write ONE Answer. One and not more. Later, he can add clarification to his answer, as the person placing the question can add a clarification to his question too, but there is no chance to start a long flame war.

There is also a rating system, each answer can be rated as a good answer and one as the best answer, with the best answer giving an “expertise” in the field of the Question, but I don’t really pay heed to the expertise bit, only over 20 best answers. And even then I would check out the answer that was deemed the best. (For example, I have expertise in Job Search , Government Policy and Using LinkedIn with 1 best answer in each Category. Now, if you want to know about Government Policy, don’t come to me or you will be disappointed )

Another thing I really like is the Recommendations bit, even if we all know that not all of them are valid. But I trust them 80% – and yes, if you ask me to recommend you, I will answer honestly if I would rather not. Some people does not want to seem rude, and will give a vague recommendation, I will take the risk and will answer with a polite no.

What I absolutely don’t like on LinkedIn is the way groups are handled. There is simply no way to see what groups are there, all you can do is go over the profiles and if you see a group that seems relevant you can check it out. But no Group Search function in LinkedIn.

Some people mentioned that people on LinkedIn are not too active. Given the number of Questions asked and Answered on any day, including the weekends and holidays, I think that’s not true. But one thing is sure,LinkedIn does not try to build a community, it just gives a chance to discover connections, find new people, provides a kind of directed forum to ask and answer questions, but sort of forces us to take the whole connection thing to the next level – e-mail, twitter, phone, whatever. It does not have an Events part, it does not give you an unlimited number of messages to shoot at strangers, but the core functionality is well implemented I think. Build a network, and discover what it gives you. That’s all.

I don’t want to decide if it’s a good or bad thing, but it clearly shows that LinkedIn is a tool for one thing and does not want to do too many things at once.

Once they have the API published and “complete”, I expect to see a lot of auxiliary services to pop up, group sites integrated with LinkedIn, debate forums integrated with LinkedIn, linked-in mapping mash-ups, and so on. That definitely has the advantage of letting the LinkedIn staff concentrate on the core functionality.

So what do you think?

I have to admit, that I was already on LinkedIn when I registered on Xing, and that probably skewes my perception a bit, but I think not too much.

When I went to Xing, I did all the usual things, register, set up a profile, and there I ran into my first problem. When you fill out the Professional Experience block, Xing doesn’t really care about the years you enter with your workplaces, the topmost position will be the one you entered last. And there is no way to reorganize it – at least, I did not find any. So after I gladly entered everything, I spent about half an hour to creat a blank position, and move content in the right order, and then to delete the on at the bottom. Not a good start.

Then, I set out to explore the big vast land of Xing, and here came the most painful surprise. When I regitered, I just wanted a simple membership. A simple, non-premium membership, which is free, so I can try out Xing. Now, there is a free membership all right. Only problem is that you can’t do anything with that. You can use a limited search option, but if you click on a profile, it takes you to an upgrade page.

What does it mean? Well, if you have a basic, non-paying membership, then you actually got a site where you put on a very limited version of your CV, fill out the Haves and Wants, and wait for people to find you. Like a very simple job resume site, like Monster, or Totaljobs, only I joined Xing for a different reason.

Ok, you can join groups, and post on the group forums, but that’s it, it’s rather difficult to connect people with a basic profile.

Now came my birthday, and I got a 10 days premium membership as a gift, and now I can try it out for a bit more. Differences: you can set your status message. Yes, if you are a premium member, you can tell the world, that you are Working on a technical specification for a client. For 5.95 EUR.

But wait, there are more differences, you can actually click on the profiles when you search for people, and you are taken to the profile page. Now, we can start to use it. Lots, and lots of empty profiles. About a dozen I found points to their LinkedIn profile.

Now, there are good things in Xing too, and it is useable with a premium profile for sure. I like the Wants section, I like that you can search for groups. There are a lot more Continental Europeans than on LinkedIn.

The Employment status is a nice thing, but not overly important. On one hand I like that I can see the profile of those who checked my profile, but it means that you cannot hide it like on LinkedIn (note, I don’t really mind that, I don’t hide it even on LinkedIn. I click on you, you see it was me).

I like the Event part, although most of the time I decline them – first invite for an Event on Xing was for senior management. Still don’t know why I got that one. However, now I got an invitation to a BBQ party not too far from my place, I am going to check it out. And there will be golf too. Probably won’t fit in with the crowd, but sounds like a good evening programme :).

So that it. If you buy premium membership, it is an OK thing I think. If you work in Europe, go for it.

But it actually does not give you anything over LinkedIn. There are no non-group forums. No Answers & Questions, no recommendations. Actually, the whole premium membership does not give you anything beyond the ability to use the site.

On the other hand, on LinkedIn you can have all of it for free. And more contacts, more active community. And the A&Q section beats the Forums hands down, where you have dozens, hundreds of 1 post threads, and only for group members.

So now comes you, tell me what’s your take on Xing?

I tried Spaz, then I tried Twhirl which I really like, and now I try AlertThingy, because I like the whole Friendfeed concept, I am a bit bored with signing up to another new,revolutionary service, and then logging into each and every one of them just to see what happened.

So I now use AlertThingy, and sometimes I use Twhirl, but most of the time I go to the browser, because that is better. I can see more, it is more comfortable than trying to find anything on the AIR apps.

And for Friendfeed I mostly use the MySocial24x7, which has the amazing ability to filter content by service. So, decided to try my hand with this Adobe Air thing, and build something that is a bit of a twhirl, and a bit of a mysocial24x7 and a bit of an alertthingy. Probably will be ugly as Hell, because I am not too good with these graphic things to be honest, actually I have been trying to build a new design for my site for the last month, but never could put together something I like.

So I got a basic concept, I am looking at some Adobe Air development tools, and then off to build it.

And doing the site redesign. Slowly it takes shape, I expect that in the next 2 months I will be able to finish it with everything. And then starting a new one, until I will be content.

Then Tivadar Puskás ((I asked on Twitter what the world ‘Hallo’means. According to wikipedia, it comes from ‘Hallom’which means ‘I hear it’in Hungarian, shouted by the excited Puskás I can believe it, because the word does not mean anything in English. )) invented the telephone exchange, which became a reality in Boston, in 1877.

That was the Telephone 1.0.

The following years has brought great popularity to the phone service, and slowly, it has spread around the world, to the extent that simple people acquired the ability to call each other from their own home, and several services has been built around the phone, the toll free numbers has been invented, the tone mode has been invented which allowed the use of IVR menus, and a lot of other, more or less useful services and supporting technologies.
That was Telephone 2.0
Later, the phones lost their cords, and moved into people’s pocket, and now they could send text messages, actually bringing back the joy of writing a letter – a pre-phone communication technology – on the phone, sending it from one device to the other, and even more additional services has been introduced.
That was the Telephone 3.0

Except, nobody ever say it, because that seems kind of weird. Neither do we use the expression with the television set, which has improved a lot from the first black and white sets to the modern TiVo.
Then why, why do we insist saying things like Web2.0 and now Web3.0?

It is the same thing as it was, only there is more of it, more users, more servers, more services, and we have learned a lot of new things we can do with the same web.
Should not we say “Web User 2.0″ instead? But then, would not it be extremely weird?

Josh Catone hit the nail right on the head with his post: There is no Web3.0, there is no Web2.0 – there is just Web.

I think another interesting topic for one post or several posts could be “How you define authority and what it means to you?”

Now Joanna ducked it for the moment, but I thought I will think and write about that, plus I will nag Amy and Shawnz too – well, she said I should push her to writing, so here we go – that they share their thoughts on this too.

So after the brief introductory here we go.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary authority means the following things

1. a person with a high level of knowledge or skill in a field — see expert
2. lawful control over the affairs of a political unit (as a nation) — see rule 2
3. the power to direct the thinking or behavior of others usually indirectly — see influence 1
4. the right or means to command or control others — see power 1

1. a (1): a citation (as from a book or file) used in defense or support (2): the source from which the citation is drawn
   b (1): a conclusive statement or set of statements (as an official decision of a court) (2): a decision taken as a precedent (3): testimony
   c: an individual cited or appealed to as an expert
2. a: power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior
   b: freedom granted by one in authority : right
3. a: persons in command; specifically : government b: a governmental agency or corporation to administer a revenue-producing public enterprise <the transit authority>
4. a: grounds, warrant <had excellent authority for believing the claim>
   b: convincing force <lent authority to the performance>

Most of the time when we talk about authority we instantly think of the 2nd and 4th meaning, the word authority invoking the images of our boss, the policeman, the teacher at the school, etc.

As I wrote to Joanna’s post, I see authority as something that is bestowed upon certain persons in certain areas of life by those who control that area.

For the policeman it’s the police and the Minister of Interior’s, for the teacher the Ministry of Educations, and for the priest it’s his Church.
For experts, bloggers and ‘common’people authority is bestowed by colleagues and readers and people who control that field of expertise.
One thing is common – authority can not be forced. Sure, authority can be misused, abused and taken advantage of, but if the person or people who control the area of the abused authority does not agree with the events, the authority can be, and will be withdrawn.

And it goes down to the roots, if the police chief won’t fire a policeman, then the ministry will fire the police chief and if it does not, then the voters will vote down the minister, and the new minister will fire the chief, and the new chief will fire the policeman.

• I am not naive. It’s not that quick and spectacular most of the time, but in the long run it works like that. Dictators are always elected by the people first, and dictatures are abolished by the people. Always. Sometimes it takes 40 years, sometimes 10, but the dynamics and the process is the same.

With authors, experts and bloggers it is faster. That’s where Amy’s idea of connectivity comes in, where my idea of being authentic and genuine comes into play, and all the rest takes it’s part.

Because as I see it authority is all about power I give you. A chance to prove me you are what I think you are. And if you fail, then I revoke your authority. And then, you have no power. And if you have no power, no authority, then you have nothing. Be a blogger, an expert, a writer, a priest or a politician.

And don’t mix force with power. They are not the same.

And now, what You say?

I am helping others to connect not only to their environment and to my environment, but also to each other and to themselves.

For me, this is the essence of ‘authority’ blogging: the ability to create connections.

Amy writes so, and yes, that is true in my opinion. Blogging with ‘authority’ and creating connections are related. However, for me it seems a bit more complex than that. To create connections you have to blog with ‘authority’ but it’s a feedback process at the same time, as creating connections will improve or reinforce your authority. The more connections you make, the more authority you will have.
Amy quotes Chris Garrett who says

to blog with ‘authority’ means to blog with a ‘friendly and open’ personality, to demonstrate ‘expertise, experience, knowledge or talent’ and to display an understanding of how to ‘develop visibility’.
and that is quite true to a level, to create connections you have to be friendly and open, and being an authority is important too – especially since we talk about authority blogging, right? -, but I think there is one important thing that is necessary more than the rest.

Being authentic and genuine.

You can argue that a ’friendly and open’ personality includes that, but not necessarily. Blogging with a ’friendly and open’ personality does not mean you are an authentic and genuine person.
I know a few people both in real life and online who are ’blogging’ with (showing us) a friendly and open personality, and they are far from that personality in fact.
And I would argue that a friendly personality is not necessary to have authority – as Chris points it out too.

All in all, in the long run you need to be authentic, genuine and honest, because if you lack any of those, all the expertise and friendliness and connectedness won’t be enough to be an ’authority’ blogger.
And these days, when people are connecting on dozens of places, it is harder to pull out any pretensions.

On the other hand, if you are genuine and authentic, making connections will be easy and almost automatic, and then authority will grow out of it. Well, provided you have some knowledge, experience, talent to share.

That’s my two cents in addition to Amy’s post, and I hope she gets to SOBCon, ’cause she deserves it.

By the end of the day, I’d talked to most of my friends… Sometimes I’m not sure I even have any friends. I may just have a large group of people that I tell everything to. It’s like I’ve made intimacy a superficial gesture.

Carrie Fisher – Postcards from the Edge

I read the book, well, I think it’s the third time, and it just caught in my mind this time. I read it before of course, it is in the book, page 87, bottom of page, but it was yesterday that it just hit home.

Of course, Suzzane Vale was referring to Hollywood social circles, not Facebook, but it just describes a certain side of social networking.

Anyway, this post does not want to be a Facebook, or MySpace or whatever criticism. I’m just reading a book and these sentences just caught my fancy, and I had to put them here.

If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?

How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

Now it sounds sensible, and all, but there are some problems with this.

1) Resumes are required. I know that they are not really used, only to go over the checklist, but they are required. No CV/resume, no interview. Plain and simple.

2) My sophisticated projects can’t be seen or touched. I mean, they could be, if you bought the softwares.

3) Blog – well, to be honest, around here, Hungary, Central/Eastern Europe, blogs are seen mostly as the playground of teenagers. Blogs are not serious. Sorry. Maybe in a few years.

Some people support this view on resume’s, Zoltán Erdős, Bob Warfield, Deb Owen, some support with caution – if I read it right – like Dan Schwabel, and some disagree for one reason or other like Just a Guy, so there is no consensus here even among the blogging people.

My take on this?

Well, I think they all have valid points. We all know that it always worked like this. You sent your CV (or resume) because it was a must, but your best chance was knowing someone who could assure the HR guys that you are not a psychotic killer, you are fast learning and all.

The only thing we have as a new thing is the internet, where you can do the same groundwork, with blogs and LinkedIn profiles and networking, but I don’t think we are there yet – which is a pity, because I am awful with resumes.

At the same time, the internet made it sort of permanent, and along your professional profile and insightful comments on JavaLobby, the would be employers will find your photos that shows you in a stupor, lying on the floor, surrounded with beer and vodka bottles. Or your rant against your current employer. Or your not so professional blog where you write down your most private and intim secrets, just forgot to create a separate mail account for this blog.

So far I always depended on my resume and then on the interview.

Now however I am trying to move to the UK, so LinkedIn, twitter, my blog and general net presence is my resume, simply ’cause I will be on a totally foreign playfield, having nothing else but a resume and some google results.

Ten years ago I would not have known what to do, where to look, now I can try to find people on the net, talk with them, “social networking” and all, and with twitter it’s faster than face to face.

Nota bene: no, I don’t use twitter to pitch myself, but knowing people who can tell you which is the best pub in town is a huuuge advantage.

And why the hype in the title?

I start to feel that people are too fast to push out the “do a blog” answer to everything these days.

I know I love blogs, I love twitter and all the net stuff that makes it easy to connect with people. But I know that around me, even in the IT profession, at least 60% of the people never heard of twitter or linkedin, and don’t take this whole blog/social media thing seriously.

They don’t read them, they don’t know them, they don’t use them.

We are not there yet.