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I'd a pleasure once again to sit down and chat with Russell Bowers, and this time on SocioSocial. The program will be aired on Dec 3 / Dec 4, 2011. You can hear it however here. 

Russel Bowers is also moderating the publishing session at SocioSocial YYC scheduled for Dec 07, 2011. Learn more about SocioSocial here.   

SocioSocialYYC is a new style of conference.  It's not about lecturers at lecturns. The group says it wants to bring people together in a "relaxed, sociable environment to exchange ideas." Taking place from 8am-4pm at the Engineered Air Theatre in Calgary, attendees will go over topics in publishing, technology and social media. Presenters will be vying for a place at a  future IdeaCity or TEDTalks.  Registration for attendees can be found here. Manoj Khanna of Rapid Books spoke with Russell about the event and his own experience as a new publisher.

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My personal favorite:

[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head. --Warren Buffet

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Here's the presentation that I gave today on eBooks in Children's World at the Children's Book Fair in Calgary.

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Steve Jobs will be missed forever, in today's digital world, and tomorrow's whatever world comes into being - dominated by a brilliant company "Apple" that he built, succeeded and dedicated his life to. May his soul rest in peace, and god bless.  

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A classic Steve Jobs NeXTstep demo video. Amazing speed @ probably less than or around 14MHz. This was the OS that was built ten years ahead of its time. Simply, genius.

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As we delve deep into the abyss and dismay of digital phenomenon, it is becoming increasingly clear and confusing on how we can or will benefit from the factors such as self-satisfaction and self-healing, and bring that sense of self-upheavel towards the cause of self-maturity to the level where we are capable of self-publishing and share our experiences of life and its learning with the larger reader group and that is the world.

Sean writes an impeccable post on top 5 things you must know about self-publishing. And not to spoil all 5, here are first three:

1. Self publishing can be the first step to lifelong writing success.

2. You don’t have to be on your own.

3. The digital age makes niche markets viable, and self publishers will be the ones to exploit them.

Read the entire post by Sean here - http://bit.ly/nHIhXc.

Disclaimer: Sean works for me, and is a Marketing Co-ordinator @rapidBOOKS. 

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Very interesting comment from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs "...Macintosh of all the machines that I've seen meets that standard."

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A heart warming story of Caroline Casey shared by herself. Sometimes we're blind, figuratively, when we try to be someone, something, that we're are not and we know we are not but we still try hard. Caroline shares some great examples and lessons she learned throughout her life journey. I particularly like the way she put it how she wants to change the way we see the world, people and challenges. An amazing woman, and loved the talk.

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As a publisher it is important to understand the lay of the land and worry about the distribution, sales, the work effort that goes into building a crafty book, the hard work in followups, contracts, etc. etc. Traditionally, these were and have been and will continue to be the focus items for any publisher, and to add to their woes, the digital content and the digital distribution is here to stay. 

Publishing in digital age is fun, exciting, challenging, a lot more work, and a pure joy. And its faster than before. And most of all it will keep the publishing industry on its toes with new innovation in publishing and making it more reader friendly. 

I recently met some fellow publishers, authors, and publishing industry folks, and most of them had this general fear about what the digital age is going to do to them - nothing terrible they hope. And indeed, it is nothing terrible.

The advent of digital content and digital distribution on the other hand has oppened up some new avenues and new channels for any publisher across the globe. And it also has created new opportunities for any publisher to seek and advance in their business with new opportunities. Fiction or non-fiction, or poetry or prose, or any type of content that someone is writing to share their life's worth of experience has no boundaries and borders. Every publisher needs to embrace this digital age with open arms, as oppose to hiding or shying away from it.

Enough fear is created elsewhere as to how the digital content will destroy the traditional publishing or is already doing that, but through the loooking glass there are better oppotunities than missed ones in this new age.  

I plan on sharing some stories, and share my experience as a newbie digital publisher of rapidBOOKS. 

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Check out my latest post on TechVibes -  Calgary tech entrepreneur nomintaed for Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management - http://bit.ly/9XleC3

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Check out my recent post on CIO Blogs -

Challenges in managing IT Operations - http://bit.ly/itopr

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Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. View the full video of Jeremy Rifkin’s talk at the RSA.

Courtsey RSA Animate.

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This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. Courtesy www.theRSA.org.

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Annotations - a note of explanation or comment added to a text.

According to Raffi, Twannotations will bring a context perspective and will add to increased search and streaming ability. The way he's described the Twannotations looks like is that every tweet annotation will have a “type,” and each type can have several attributes - types can be repeated but attributes cannot, and these will be publicly visible unless you set your account to private. Interesting fact, Twitter is not going to validate Twannotations, but there will be an annotations explorer where one can see the treending annotations, stats, and developers 'wiki' zone.

Here's the presentation:

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We all know the value of entrepreneurship, and the benefits it reaps for all of us - be it economical, life-learning, technology advancement, research-wise and academically. Entrepreneurship is not only about job growth, creation of new jobs, or technical innovation, but it also fosters a culture that is forward looking, helps in transforming local & national economies and prepares the local region for tough competitive economic and technology environment. 

Entrepreneurial firms drive the future of innovation and prosperity in nearly every community, and, thus, are the focus for any economic development efforts. But with advent of recent economic downturn there should be more efforts to promote local economic development. And when it comes to transformation I don't think there's any single cookie-cutter approach or a silver bullet that can help us instantly transform our economy. Rather, the development of a culture that fosters entrepreneurship as a long-term strategy can only supplement growth and help fuel the transformation of local economies.

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder of Yahoo! recently presented his thoughts on high-growth entrepreneurship at the Presidential Summit of Entrepreneurship.

Some of Jerry's thoughts:

...the power of the Internet, innovation and ideas, and entrepreneurship is borderless.  People around the world, especially young people, are increasingly enthusiastic about chasing new opportunities and starting their own businesses.

...While entrepreneurship may be an individual’s pursuit, a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment where technology entrepreneurs can thrive doesn’t happen by accident.

...You need to have the right foundation to enable entrepreneurship to flourish.   A foundation that includes: a commitment to research and development; investment in education (including fundamental science at the University level); access to capital funding; and a culture that encourages an entrepreneur ecosystem – from immigration and technology access to online communities and mentors who encourage our youth.

You can watch the full video here. 

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This is an interesting piece by Hugh MacLeod, and touches the core - the basic fundamentals of how long you have to wait to wait for something in anticipation for the much awaited outcome that is not going to realize very soon. And then in the end its a may be. And yes rightly said Hugh. But how many of us realize that patience is a virtue, and in a tweeting world today I wouldn't count many. 

In Hugh's words:

This cartoon is about the nature of PR. Unlike most marketing, the game isn’t about writing a check, pulling a lever and waiting for the sales to come in. It’s a wee bit more subtle and long-term than that.

 

And educating the client about the long-term view is probably the hardest part of the job…

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(*REVISED FOR 10.6

Details found at - http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060322202753429

Written by © Mark Hunte - 2009*)

tell application "Address Book"

set biglist to {}

set theGroup to "Dupilicate Entries"

if not (exists (group "Dupilicate Entries")) then

make new group with properties {name:"Dupilicate Entries"}

save

end if

set the_names to name of people

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in the_names

set theName to item i of the_names

if theName is not in biglist then

copy theName to end of biglist

else

set counter to (people whose name is theName)

if (count of counter) > 1 then

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in counter

set this_item to item i of counter

add this_item to group theGroup

end repeat

save

end if

end if

end repeat

end tell

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