jessie newburn dot com

Email, IM, VM, Text or Twitter?

With clients and colleagues, I've got it down. See, one of the things I like to discern early on in a relationship is where the client is most likely to listen and respond. Are they a phone person? Do they prefer email? Will reaching them through gChat allow space for a decision to be made quickly? It doesn't matter so much to me which communication mode they prefer. What matters is that they are clear in their request and that I then honor their preferred method of communicating. After all, I do want efficiency and results.

So, why didn't I think this same question would be relevant with dating?

OK, so I'm dating a few guys now. And I experienced a bit of  miscommunication and frustration this weekend vis-a-vis preferred communication technologies. (No missed dates, but some stumbles that almost made this happen.)

One guy wants phone calls and voicemail messages  Not just phone, but land line, at home. I once emailed him a note and he somehow missed it and didn't find my message 'til three weeks later! Yeesh.

Another guy is all about the text. Chime, chime, chime goes my cel phone. Text message, text message, text message. It's fun, but I've actually had to ask that he meet me in my realm a bit more, as I'm a bit clumsy with the text messaging.

Yet another guy is making his moves via Twitter.

Last summer, I dated a guy where most of our primary communication technology was Facebook: status updates, wall posts and the FB inbox.

Again, I'm cool with the various communication tools and options. I just realized this morning that I have to apply the same understanding I use with my clients to the dating scene. Works for me.

A Full-circle Skirt

When I first started contra dancing, I was all about the *wild.* How far could I push the moves? How much more could I get out an 8-count? How many extra spins could I work in? I still do that sometimes. It's cool. It's fun. And, at times, it's just right.

But then I discovered that I don't have to push myself to get a good dance. I've discovered that attention to form has a lot of ROI. And, I've discovered that I can actually get more out of the dance by not focusing on the excess but on the micro-ness of my movements and form.

But the best discovery (other than what I mentioned above AND leather-soled shoes) is the value of a full-circle skirt. Lord, have mercy. When I dance in a full-circle skirt -- especially the 1950s heavy cotton vintage kind -- wowsa! I barely have to move and the skirt swishes and sways behind me. I love it. And while I am, of course, focusing on my partner and the progression of the dance, I can always see my skirt in my peripheral vision. It makes me feel more elegant and feminine, which then reinforces my desire to focus on my form rather than the flash and excess.

So, I have two 1950s cotton, full-circle skirts, impeccably sewn. One was a gift from my mother, a dancer in her own right, whose waist size had surpassed mine. The other I found at a thrift store for $2.49! Ric-rac galore! I still haunt the interior of eBay looking for more of the same. I just love them. I love to dance in them. I love to wear them in the summer. I love walking and feeling the heavy swoosh of quality skirt as a I walk. And when I dance, watch out!

:-)

***
If any of my peeps out there have older relatives, who would have been young and fun-loving in the '50s, I'm a candidate for purchasing any 1950s-era full-circle skirts. My waist is 28". *Sigh*  Any length skirt is good. 

ing is no dingaling

I have an ing direct account. It didn't take me much to become a customer. There was a tonal quality and resonance that I felt and liked when I read their marketing materials, both print and online. (I'm not much of a TV watcher, so the TV ad world just kind of passes me by.)

ing knows how to talk to GenX customers. GenXers, clumped in a peer personality, trust de-institutionalized info. You know what ing does? They talk. They use conversational language. Their tact with customer communications is to get real. And guess what? I'm interested in listening to what someone has to say, though I'm rarely curious about what an institution has crafted as its message.

Here's the opening text from an email I just got from ing.

Below is some important information that we're required to send you each year. It seems like a lot of legal stuff, but we promise, it will only take a few minutes. Give it a look.

I actually did as they said. I "gave it a look." And they were genuine; it really only took a few minutes to read, garner the meaning and move on.

How civil. How respectful. How real.

And how functional and effective.

Yay.

A DIY "certified" nonprofit group

Your Luminosity. What a name! But look at what they do. From their site,

"... at Your Luminosity we make setting up your own foundation or non-profit organization both easy and inexpensive. In less than a week any individual can set up their own non-profit organization or foundation, and go on to --

• Create a webpage
• Solicit donations
• Send tax receipts
• Grant money
• And more"

It looks interesting. They charge $60/month and basically handle a lot of administrative and compliance issues for a nonprofit. Looks like you have to use their website to get their services, at least for donations received.

I wonder if this business offers an expense relief to many of the smaller nonprofits nationwide. If it does, what a gift that would be for small organizations to be relieved of some of the time-consuming tasks of processing donations.

One more reason to love Chipotle

Yay for Chipotle: a chain restaurant with style, soul and healthy, tasty food at a great price. Now there's one more reason to love Chipotle: they are beginning to source food locally for their chains. It ain't easy, but they're working it out. Washington Post article on the subject here.

at&t does it, why not others?

I noticed that at&t is charging a "payment administrative fee." Says them, "Please be advised that payment made with a representative may be subject to an administrative fee. There is no cost to pay by mail or via an automated payment method." et cetera.

It's about time. I hope more businesses and, particularly, municipalities start adopting a similar stance. EZ Pass is the most glaring and visible opportunity. Every car or truck going through a human-operated toll booth in order to pay the road tolls should be charged a surcharge for the extra cost required to serve them. Period.

Local municipalities should do the same. If someone has to walk into an office to pay, for example, a water bill with a human being, charge them more. In all fairness -- and with a high degree of that unpopular but highly useful concept of "profiling" -- it may be kind to have a cut-off date for age. People over, for example, the age of 60 could be exempt from the extra fee.

I don't know how the psychology works on such things. Maybe it's better to offer a discount, so people feel they are able to save money and get a little extra for themselves. I don't know. I just know that I believe it's time for radical self-responsibility and that simple things like getting an EZPass should be a civic duty. You don't want one? You want to wait endlessly in line for a toll booth operator to take your $2, great, get out an extra bill. It's $3 for you. Consider it a usage tax of sorts.

You don't like it? Take responsibility and lessen your impact on "the system."

I gave 'em 12-18 months.

But my timing was a bit off. It's less than a year since this post, and Border's is clamoring for cash in the most discomforting of ways. Oi.

I look at Border's and their solution and way out of their mess is so clear to me. It'll require different thinking and a different corporate culture to make it work, but their old thinking and old culture has already proven itself ineffective. So, gosh, given a choice, I'd pick a new culture and way of doing business over a collapsed business. But that's me. I like fresh ideas that are logical, serving people's needs and allowing businesses to succeed by being integrated in the functionality of their customers' lives.

It would be funny, except ...

... except, it's not.

Bear Stearns staff are auctioning company-branded items on eBay. Someone even had the idea to create "white T-shirts emblazoned with: 'I invested my life savings in Bear Stearns and all I have left is this lousy t-shirt.' " Hardee-har-har-har.

Now, I appreciate style, quirky humor and an enterprising spirit. And the B-S (funny initials they have, huh?) folk seem to be playing their demise for all it's worth in the press. Going out with a bit of style, right?

Well, there's not much else for me to say here without going into a diatribe... Maybe said folk won't find eBay auctioning quite as funny when they're auctioning off their excess personal items to raise some cash for living expenses. Then again, the company does have the markings of a slimeball operation; thieves and con artists tend to have amazing skills for coming out of their crimes on top of things, with slick smiles on their faces and a wake of victims behind them.

Oops. I did start off on a diatribe ... My bad. Perhaps it's my own way of finding some sarcastic humor to amid the tragedy of the B-S.

Freecycle with Social Media underneath

Help me, Beloved Geeks. Someone, somewhere, please take the wild success of Craigs List and Freecycle.org and add a social media component. Let me have a user profile. Let me select tags for items I'm interested in hearing about. (Really, I'm tired of scrolling through Freecycle offers for baby formula coupons, knowing that a pair of ladies ostrich-leather cowboy boots, size 8.5 M might be buried in there somewhere.)

Let me connect with friends and neighbors. Let me offer my items first to my weak social ties, to people in my zip code, to colleagues in a social network. Please, Beloved Geeks, GenXers, leaders who know how to ensure the survival of the tribe in an economy soon to explode into a mess so unimaginable in today's affluence. Help me connect with neighbors. Help me Live Locally. Help me "afford less." Help me, Beloved Geeks, help me.

And here's what I'll do. I'll make it work. I'll bring the feminine mo-jo, the juice, the connectivity. I'll bring the meaning and value and purposefulness to what you do. I'll make your Kingdom of Geekness shine and spread far and wide to lands known and unknown. I cannot build the Kingdom. I cannot protect it as a fortress. But I can make your efforts meaningful. I can make you happy that your strength, will and capacity transformed society.

Oh, and make money while you do it. I wouldn't have it any other way. Add the hyper-local ads. Paid. User-created. TAGGED!!! $1 a pop. 10 cents a pop. Your call. Conquer the universe a dime at a time.

Help me, Beloved Geeks, I cannot do this alone. I need you.

Co-knitting at Borders?

The local Border's where I live in Columbia hasn't received many of my dollars in recent years. The appeal of being in an endless big-box store, crammed (over-crammed?) with merchandise has lost its appeal. Yet, I've been to the local Borders more times in the last month than I've been in the last few years. Why? I'm interested in co-working: that is, working with others in a productive and social space.

Interestingly, for as large as my hometown is, I almost always run into someone I know there. I love it. I can work. I can have light interactions with weak social ties, and I feel included and connected to the human race when I'm out and about.

Wednesday evenings host the knitting club at Border's. The ladies, and they are all ladies, were chatty, happy and loud. I couldn't help but overhear the conversation and announcement that Border's was, in essence, cutting them off. "The Fire Marshal this ... " "The Fire Marshal that ..." Essentially, their success as a group means they are beginning to outgrow the place. Their announcement to the group: We're looking for a place that can hold us all, like an empty room in a school or church.

Yeah, right.

Half the fun of getting out of the house and meeting up with friends to knit, cowork, study is being out. The chance encounters, running into friends I haven't seen in ages, and striking up conversations with new people is why it's worth going. Knitting in a school room? They'll solve their problem right away, I'd bet. Their group numbers would plummet.

So, there I was in Borders on knitting night. Every table was full, as is almost always the case, regardless of the evening. The adjacent magazine area was packed. It was a chatty, friendly and productive environment. Once again, I found myself irritated at Border's lack of understanding the business model that will take them forward into the next decade or two of financial success: People want public spaces to be together.

I decided to sleuth. I roamed the store and counted 57 people. This is a HUGE store in a grayfield of the suburban nightmare of one-story big-box stores spread over vast amounts of land. There were 63 people in the small bit of space in the cafe and magazine area.

I've blogged about this before here and what I think the solutions for Border's are, so kindly click the link and read on if you're curious.

Enough with businesses trying to do good with pink this, and red that and 10-percent-of-profits-go-to-X kind of overplayed, mediocre, boring corporate do-gooded-ness. It's ineffective. It's noise. It does little.

Just watch what your customers are doing and pay attention to trends. All the answers are right there!

Photo credit ... compliments of MySpace

I got a kick out of this. Reuters giving photo credits via a Myspace page.

Crystal Balls and Presidential Victories

I'm not much of one for politics, particularly the national kind. But I'm much of one for watching trends, shifts in direction and generational influences. So, I'm going to "crystal ball" the presidential elections. I'll be using the Strauss and Howe generational theory and The Fourth Turning as my primary reference info to do so.

OK. Here we are: America is at the end of the end of a cultural mood known as an Unraveling: Feelings of personal optimism are high; feelings of public trust are at their nadir; great politicians can be sunk by one small blunder; even the best of plans are stuck in the mud of compromise by the Silent Gen reign of many decades. The acerbic and long-standing fighting (and very little action other than talk) of the Boomers is getting on pretty much everyone's last nerve. There is, to sum things up, little belief in the power of institutions, little hope that large problems can be solved, but, eh, ya know ... things aren't so bad on the personal front for most people. Sound familiar? That folks is now, and that is an Unraveling Era.

Given that America is just entering into the generational constellation that has, for the past 500+ years of Anglo-Saxon culture, produced a rip-roaring Crisis right at this point, the likelihood that a swift and sudden Crisis will hit soon is high.

****

But on to the Crystal Ball. First, the Republicans.

Personally, I ain't feeling the Republicans. I just don't get a vibe on them having much cultural power right now. GenXers (Nomads) lean Republican, but they vote for efficacy and survival -- short-term AND long-term, first. They're also more independent voters than other generations, so don't count on them for towing any party, or the party line.

Crystal Ball #1: The absolute worst choice Americans could make at this time would be McCain. Not because of who he is, but because he was born in 1936, is a Silent Gen, and the current generational constellation is ill-served by Silent leadership. The Silent compromise ethic is NOT what is needed in a Crisis era. While beneficial and necessary in other times, a compromise-oriented leader is a disaster in a Crisis Era.

Crystal Ball #2: Huckabee (1955) actually has more of an edge that would bring swing voters, particularly GenXer parents (Nomads generation parents tend to lean conservative) over to vote for a Republican presidential candidate. Unfortunately, the man just doesn't have "National Leader" stamped on his forehead, and nothing can put it there. Oh well. Sorry, Republicans, I think you're out of this election.

**** Now for the juicy stuff: Da Dems ****

Hmmm, interesting how the Republicans are often referred to by last name, while the dems are by first. Let me go informal here.

Scenario #1: No Crisis (as in THE WHOPPER Crisis that'll last quite a while). If The Crisis doesn't hit before the Democratic National Convention, then Hilary will probably win.

• The Silent Gen (1924 - 1942), honoring sensitivity and their civil rights roots, PLUS needing their information to come from experts, will probably provide a chunk of Hilary voters. While small in size, relative to the other generations, they're 32 million members DO VOTE!
• Boomers, while larger in size at 64 million, are not historically (as a Prophet generation) very active or dependable voters, preferring the spiritual to the political path for deep change.
• Nomads (today's GenXers), while typically not big voters, do become voters (usually conservative) when they have families. And today's GenXers, ages 27-47, and numbering 82 million, are solidly in The Family-raising Years.
• About a third of the 79 or so million Millennials will be of age to vote. Most of them will have Boomer parents. (GenXers will be the parents of most Millennials in high school and below.) Most Millennials will vote, now at least, as their parents do, as they trust adults to make good decisions FOR THEM. As in, for their interests. As Boomers are quite divided politically by the time they reach mid-life and early elderhood, the Millennial vote will probably be a wash now ... not in numbers, but in impact. Just add a notch to whatever side their parents vote on for now. (Later in life, Heroes -- today's Millennial generation -- tend to vote largely Democratic, but that's down the road.)
  

Now, sales professionals know: People buy emotionally and back things up with logic and fact. Without much emotion about the election and the direction of the country (and there ISN'T much emotion or carrying about the public in an Unraveling Era) then Hilary has more of a chance. Why? Because people will vote with their minds and she is a good candidate on paper and logically so for many. Crystal Ball #3: Sans Crisis, Hilary is in. 

Scenario #2: Crisis hits before the Democratic National Convention. Hands down/Crystal Ball #4. Obama. By a landslide.Why? Because he really is the only candidate capable of handling The Crisis. And people feel him when he speaks. They may not like him. They may not find him the most qualified, but he has a tonal quality to his voice that speaks to a capacity to cut through BS, frame issues intelligently and take action, without being stuck of the moral fighting so typical of his next-elder colleagues. And in a Crisis, that's what's needed. Plus, Americans will need someone who can instill hope and offer a vision, and he can do this.

People make decisions first with feelings and intuition ...  support it later with logic. In a Crisis, that feeling-based decision-making process will become clear and dominant. Why? Because a Crisis will accelerate emotions. An Unraveling doesn't. Hilary, qualified as she is, doesn't stir people's hearts. Though she can stimulate their minds. Obama stirs people deep inside ... even if they don't THINK he's the best candidate ... he's the best (currently identified) national leader in a Crisis.

Americans will know, intuitively, from conversations on the street, at work and around town; they will know that he is the one to lead them through these dark times. And so it is. The silver lining of the dark cloud of a Crisis Era is that all the generations are lined up perfectly to come together, unite and evolve into something greater on the other side of the Crisis. Boomers will be in elderhood, providing principled moral leadership. GenXers will be in prime positions of leadership, managing the Crisis for the good of all. Millennials will unite as a can-do, upbeat team (Army?) under their next and next-next elder generations, and the Homeland Gen children will serve their necessary role of being over-protected in an era of adult self-sacrifice.

Such is the Anglo and American history for the last 500+ years; it's a cycle that moves with amazing consistency.

The only question is who will be our president when The Crisis hits? I offer that the answer lies in whether the Crisis -- in whatever man-made form it takes -- hits before the Democratic National Convention or after it.

****

If you're local to the B-W area, I'm offering an introductory class on generations: one on Wed and another on Friday. Come. It'll fun.

 

This is, of course, just crystal ball-ing a scenario. I might need some Windex and a soft, linen-free cloth to clean mine up. :-) Rock on.

They're kidding, right?

Brushing my teeth earlier this morning, my eyes landed on a puzzling statement printed on the tube of toothpaste from which I had just squeezed out some paste: "If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away."

They're kidding, right?

Now, I could take this toothpaste warning down a humorous path, with ease. But I'm going to jump to what may seem to be an overly analytical stance: This kind of statement both hastens and underscores the intensity of institutional decay. See, institutions have power when people have faith in them. And who can believe a toothpaste manufacturer that claims their product, when ingested, should cause the consumer to seek medical help ... or, Lord, have mercy, contact a Poison Control Center? It's in-credible ... un-believable ... and under-mining of authority. There's no truth in this statement. Microscopic as this is in the big ol' scheme of things, it's an indicator.

I just came from a girls-only, mid-day Sunday PJ party, drinking champagne, eating chocolate and watching chick flicks. The "flick" was bootlegged, which spawned a bunch of jokes and laughter. Much of it around the ridiculously disproportionate FBI warnings in the front of movies about international crimes and such related to piracy. The jokes went on about the movie industry's attempt to compare stealing a car to stealing a movie. Please.

This type of BS undermines authority, rather than supporting it. And while I can definitely Get My Rebel On, institutional authority (intelligent authority) has its place. I find it disturbing to see it eroded so foolishly.

But, hey, I'm just one chick, currently in PJs, blogging about how I see what is, what could be, the gap in between and then some.

An Internet Party

A clever and funny vid on the many internet and social tech sites around today. Thanks for passing it along Dave: blogger, Facebook friend and the one who introduced me to Twitter. Oh, and I think I know you IRL, too.

my.barackobama.com

My goodness. If the dot-com era required an "e" in front of every new word, seems the Oh-Ohs require "my" in front of all new endeavors.

I just stumbled across the "my.barackobama.com" page for "Tommy from Columbia, Md." To even begin to articulate all the stuff going on in this site, this phenomenon and this tactic would be overwhelming ... even to me, and I just love me some details. Got 5-10 minutes? Click around. It's fascinating. They even took the O of the Obama logo and LGBT-ified it here. They "first American"-ified the logo here. (I like that term "first Americans" ...) Kid-ified it here. And, well, you can see more for yourself.

It's worth a whirl, even if it overwhelms you.

Single-focus

Last night I was a man. Well, at least for about 30-40 minutes. See, I showed up at the weekly contra dance at Lovely Lane Church, and there were a ton of women there, especially younger women. Plus, the Baltimore Open Band (a drop-in band) was playing, so a lot of the regular guy dancers were on stage playing music. So, I decided to help balance things out and "be a man" for a while.

I like switching roles now and again. It helps me see the dance and the dynamics from a completely different perspective. Contra is a called dance and a community dance where,  quite unlike a waltz or swing where the man has full responsibility for the lead, he follows the dance but holds the lead inside of each of the called moves. Capiche?

Well, in one of the dances where I was being a man, I was dancing with a stellar and solid dancer. It was fabulous. Then she asked me a simple question: a question I've been asked many times before. Rather than answering it easily and fueling additional conversation between us, I found myself stumbling just to give her a couple of words as a short answer. I couldn't lead *and* talk. Or, perhaps I should say, I couldn't talk the way I'm used to fluidly speaking and hold the pattern of the dance in my head. To myself, I laughed and thought, This must be some of the frustration that men often feel when they are concentrating on something and women, with a profound capacity for diffused awareness, interrupt them, not understanding the significance of even a small interruption on their focus. It was quite informative for me.

Here's an educational and entertaining YouTube vid on the subject of men's single focus capacity and women's diffused awareness.

Call me a prude then.

Pics of Hannah Montana, a 15-year-old Tv and pop star, are circulating on the internet. In them, she is (in heavy make-up and staring right at the camera) taking candy out of a another girl's mouth. It was all innocent, she says. The comments on the internet, of course, range from "I'm 15, too, and this is just what teenagers do. Times have changed. Get a life" to more conservative comments.

Count me in on the conservative side here. While I completely "get" that these kinds of photos are acceptable, FASHIONABLE and normal to many Millennials, I don't see them as innocent. Not in the least. I see such pics as shallow attempt to "wear the accessory" of lite girl-on-girl porn in an attempt to be more adult, more sexy, more attractive.

And I dare say she may well be accomplishing her goal. And I wouldn't say she can't or shouldn't do such things. But I certainly don't side with her in calling such behavior innocent. A 15-year-old sliding her tongue into another girl's mouth -- and ensuring that said deed is captured in photos is a choice and a statement. 

My guess? Her Hollywood persona created to cater to 'tweens is probably starting to wear on her. Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus off stage) is probably feeling her own hormones swelling as she moves through her own natural life cycle of coming of age, and she's probably a bit passive-aggressive about the bonds of being cute and pre-designed for her character. Posing for a lite girl-on-girl tongue action is teenage rebellion. She has a right to that experience and right of passage, even if she does have a whopping contract with Disney.

I just don't believe she can honestly call her behavior innocent. My two yuan? If she wants to be more adult, she can start now by being more honest and direct and owning her behavior and choices.

The Nerve!

At the latest Friday night contra dance down at Glen Echo Park, a bright, enthusiastic, young man asked me to dance. He was cute in a 23-year-old-ish way ... and a bit geeky and awkward. Not recognizing him from prior dances, I asked him if he was new to the scene. He was. I asked him what he liked about contra dancing. He really liked the patterns; the structure of the dance gave him creativity inside the patterns. I liked his thinking and know this to be true for myself, as well.

During the break when waltz music is played, he then he told me there was one thing he didn't like about contra: "I don't like that the men mostly have to ask the women to dance. For a shy guy like me, I wish the women would ask me to dance more." I can't speak to my exact facial expression, of course, but as kindly and firmly as possible, I offered an alternative perspective: "Well, as a woman, I believe it's an excellent life skill for a man to have the nerve to ask a woman to dance. Practice here, at contra, where you're likely to get a 90% or higher positive response from the women."

Then, as if orchestrated ever-so-perfectly by God, a friendly, geeky, older man waltzed up to me, arms outstretched and asked me to dance. In a six-count or less, I said my good-bye to the young geek and waltzed away with the brave one.

Happy Meals for Good McGrades?

McGrades. Wow. Now, that's a term to add to our pop lexicon. ;-)

"An Orlando parent said she was appalled when her 9-year-old daughter brought home her report card cover and it contained an advertisement for McDonald's promising free Happy Meals for good grades, attendance and behavior." ... from the St. Petersburg Times.

Gambling is gambling.

What do you call a politician who supports "freezing interest rates" on super-risky mortgages?

Gambling is gambling. Risk is risk. And if people chose to risk their homes with ridiculous and risky mortgages, that was a choice that bears possible (and probable) consequence. Now, "President Bush will announce this afternoon an agreement with major mortgage firms to freeze interest rates for five years for financially troubled homeowners -- a plan advocates say will help forestall a major foreclosure crisis but some conservatives say amounts to a bailout of people who made bad financial decisions," according to The Washington Post.

Count me in with the so-called conservatives on this one. "Pragmatic realists" is more the term I'd like to use. Lord, help us. We need leaders who will make tough decisions in times of crisis, or pending crisis. Not a bunch of (fill in the blank)s.