Foursquare

It's been awhile since I've seen a new social technology emerge on scene that looked like it had that "explosion potential". The last real time for me was Twitter (and for all you FB apps fans, sorry I don't count Farmville) and that was nearly three years ago.*

But Foursquare is different, because it creates a new take on social networking by through local-based gaming that adds in the elements of GPS tagging along with localized loyalty rewards. As David King also notes, this new technology is worth exploring.

If you haven't explored Foursquare on your own yet, here's a informational slide deck to get you start:

How Foursquare Helps Consumers and Business Owners

View more presentations from 22squared.

* According to my twitter trail, my start date on Twitter was April 14, 1997

Thought of the week ...

I wish I knew who to attribute this quote to, but the closest I can get is that is was shared at ALA Emerging Leaders session this past week in Boston.

“Leaders do not provide energy, they release it from others”

I've been thinking a lot of leadership philosophies lately and wondering how many people in management positions actually think about their own? From some recent conversations I've had with colleagues in the field, I've come to realize that it's not really thought about enough, which leads me to wonder two things ...

1) how can you truly lead if you don't know yourself well enough to have philosophy?

2) how can you expect others to adapt and flourish under your leadership style, if you don't know what it is yourself?

Over the past two weeks I've been rereading the L3 Leadership manifesto. I think there's a lot to this approach that focuses first on leading yourself. If you don't where to start in thinking about or identifying your own personal leadership philosophy, the manifesto's 34 pages walks you through a great series of small exercises that helps you better understand your leadership potential.

L3 Leadership Approach

• L1—Leading Self: Total Life Leadership. Achieving personal mastery and work/life integration.
  
  
• L2—Leading With Others: Creating and sustaining Collaborative Advantage.
  
  
• L3—Cultivating The Best Place To Work: A culture of high engagement, retention, performance and productivity.”
  

Related posts:

L3 Leadership
My leadership motto

PS: Thanks Justin for blogging this & Karen for tweeting. Good stuff on a cloudy day to ponder and think about.

21 Things for 21st Century Parents

I've seen over 400 adaptations of this program in the last three years, but this one has to be one of my favorite marketing angles ...




Darien Library rocks!

drooling ...

The images from the One Laptop Per Child's latest project, XO-3 has me drooling. Can't wait to see how this second refinement turns out.

Centers for Kicking A$$

Thanks Kathryn for highlighting this gem of twitter comment from Kathy Sierra. It's well worth the 2nd highlight :)

9 Top Posts for 2009

Google Analytics is a great free tool that can tell you a lot about the visitors and usability of your site. But to be honest, I really don’t take look at it or take advantage of it at all.

However, since I did add it to my blog a few years ago, I thought it might be interesting to see what posts in 2009 generated the most visits. Anyway, icyi here’s my top 9 for 2009:

1. Future of libraries with or without books
   
2. Future of Public Libraries
   
3. Learning 2.0 Survey
   
4. What’s your digital foot print?
   
5. Future libraries in the networked world
   
6. QR Tags Concept leadership
   
7. Trendwatching: the ebook device race
   
8. Finding the Phoenix: Ugame Ulearn Keynote
   
9. Friday’s Thoughts – Learning

Happy 2010 !

Faces in Libraries

The Amex commercial that highlights faces found in everyday object and places, has got me inspired to see if I can look at my every day surroundings at work and in the library and see faces as well. Here’s an example that I discovered in the Faces In Places pool on Flickr:

Photo by Knoton

Got any from your surroundings to add?

The attention economy, streams and information flow

Looking for a good 18 minute talk to challenge your thinking about marketing strategies in the network era? Then check out dana boyd’s recent talk from the Web 2.0 Expo. For me it starts getting really interesting around 06:17 “Shifting from a model of distribution to a model of attention is inherently disruptive, but it is not inherently democratized ..."



If you’re not into listening (she does talk fast ) then read the paper:
Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media

Sharing... Responding ... Engaging

A comparison of these three charts from ShareThis is very interesting ...








Read ShareThis' The Value of Sharing: Social Engagement

Mag+ concept video

This concept video by Bonnier Research & Development offers up a preview of how the magazines reading experience could be transformed through mobile networked devices.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Check out their beta lab blog and also the discussion in the comments.

The UI interface that Bonnier is exploring really blows the lid off the functionality of the current crop of ereader/ebook devices. And personally, I can't wait to see what Apple unveils when they finally officially jump into this race. Things are definitely going get interesting.