Passing along

Saying goodbye even if it is to just the Blog Synergy, still is a recognition of a time passing. An accomplishment of some note worthiness, yet bitter sweet. Our expectations were to tackle synergy and see what we could find out.

 

We found out quite a bit. It has been recorded here. You can see all the doors opening. See the evidence on each one's blog.

 

The energy of synergy is still happening but in ways and efforts that are no longer focused here. It has been a great preparation for the road ahead. There is so much to be thankful for.

 

I know that I am thankful for

Troy Worman - his ever changing templates at Orbit Now. His tireless questioning, probing for the good. Still a teammate at the Hitchhiker's Guide.

 

Felix Gerena - the depth of his thought, his careful expressions of humanity at Brand Soul.

 

Phil Gerbyshak - making it great everyday, relentlessly expanding the network, a good role model

 

Trevor Gay - the simplicity guy, always bringing it back to the front lines, to the doers

 

Rosa Say - the lady, amongst this group of guys who kept us on task, taught us all the real meaning of aloha

So while the Blog Synergy door closes, others are opening. Keep in touch with this group. Greater things are destined for their future. 

 

 

Technorati Tags : blog, synergy, relationships, learning, communications

 

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Aloha as in Goodbye...for now

Well everyone, we've decided to move the blog Synergy to the old "no longer posting but still lots of great information" section of the blog world, perhaps one day to be resurrected by us, or by others who feel they can show the mojo that is synergy to the world.

As each of my teammates shared their gifts so freely with me, I thought it only fair that I share what I feel their gifts are with you, for one last time. They are in alphabetical order, though they all will remain #1 in my heart for a LONG time.

Trevor Gay - Simplicity is the Key is the message Trevor gives to all of us, and he encourages us to keep it simple. Trevor shared this with me by supporting me when I've been down, and reminding me that the simplest of acts, a thank you, can go a million miles. Thank you dear friend!


Felix Gerena - Brand Soul is Felix's home, and it is one I've learned from by being mindful to put my heart and soul into what I do. It has really been a wake-up call to me to think differently as this amigo from Spain has reminded me to think more with my heart and less with my brain. Thank you very much Felix. You've helped me more than you know.

Rocky Noe - Hillbilly PHD is what Rocky calls himself, and it is definitely appropriate. Learning doesn't just happen in the classroom...or in books. Learning happens in LIFE, and Rocky shares his life, and his lessons with us. I've learned much from Rocky's lessons, and expect to continue to learn from them.

Together, Trevor, Felix and Rocky have formed a new synergy, with a book venture appropriately titled, Three Amigos with One Message. Wonderful teamwork guys! How you spanned the miles to collaborate on a wonderful book is quite an inspiration to me. Thank you for sharing your gift with me...and with the rest of the world!

Rosa Say -  Managing with Aloha is the title of Rosa's book, and one of her blogs, and it is an amazing message, and one I have LOVED learning more about. Being from Wisconsin, I knew zero Hawaiian before meeting Rosa. Now, after "talking story" with Rosa online and offline, I come to realize that aloha has so many meanings, and the Hawaiian language is amazingly rich and full of energy. One day, I will study it in depth so I can understand its richness in more detail.

Rosa has given me the gift of much aloha, much more than I can share in this brief post. Thank you for all you've shared, and all you continue to share, with me. The gift of your organization alone is worth a lifetime of hugs from me!



Steve Sherlock - Steve has shared his 2 cents with me, taken me hitchhiking around the blogosphere, and has great passion for good customer experiences. His ability to multi-think has been of great inspiration to me, as I learn from him you can separate your thoughts, but not your spirit. Steve's spirit of the goose is amazingly strong, and he has honked me on to many a new height.

Additionally, Steve has been one to pick me up when I was down and not doing what I needed to do, and I don't know if I ever told him that before. Thanks man!


Troy Worman - Last but not least, it's time to Orbit Now! with Troy. Troy gives us all the power of disorganization, and has encouraged me to not be afraid to creatively destruct things to make something bigger and better. His ever-changing themes on his blog, and from time to time on this blog, have reminded me that just because something works now, doesn't mean it can't work BETTER if we change it! Additionally, Troy finds some of the coolest stuff in the world and shares it with us on his blog, be they quotes, daily links, or just a new blog we all need to read. Thanks buddy!

Well that's everyone on our team. For now, I must say Aloha, as in goodbye, for now. But I must also say, to my teammates and now dear dear friends, Aloha as in love. You have mine, and I thank you for yours. If there is EVER anything I can do for you, just say it, and if I can do it, it's yours.

You've helped me make it great! in more ways than you'll ever know! Thank you!

Phil Gerbyshak


Technorati Tags: trevor gay, felix gerena, rocky noe, rosa say, steve sherlock, troy worman, synergy, aloha

Blog Synergy 'Wind Down' - Trevor's goodbye from England

As Blog Synergy winds down I am delighted to compliment my fellow 'Synergy Bloggers':

Phil Gerbyshak – ‘Action Man.’

Phil has energy to burn and never seems to stop. He inspires many including me with his infectious enthusiasm. Phil is a young man going places and I wish him well. Nothing is ever too much trouble for Phil.

Steve Sherlock – ‘Mr Doer.’

Steve is one of those people who you can rely on with your bank balance. When Steve says he is going to do something – he does it. His is very prolific and always encourages others. A real gent – I’m proud to know him.

Rosa Say

What can I say? Rosa is the one who keeps us all ‘in order’ providing us with structure – something I am not always good at providing! Rosa is amazingly busy and despite all that she does she has an uncanny knack of making everyone feeling special. And Rosa forgave me for addressing all my team e-mails ‘Hello Guys.’

Troy Worman – Mr Modesty.

I am staggered by how much Troy can pack on to a Blog. He must have more information on his page than anyone I know! One symbolic example of his modesty is when I asked him for help on an IT problem I didn’t know how to deal with. Troy told me in simple words by return what I needed to do and it worked perfectly. Troy is a great buddy.

Felix Gerena

One of my Amigos along with Rocky Noe. Felix is very intelligent and has a wonderful academic brain. It has been a great pleasure to establish a great working relationship with Felix through our joint writing and we believe this will go from strength to strength. More important is Felix and I have become close friends.

Rocky Noe - my ‘Hillbilly friend.’

I have known Rocky for over three years and with each passing month we get closer. Rocky brings to the table a pragmatic view of life and many years of practical experience as a manager and a leader. Rocky is far too modest about his terrific writing skills and working with him in our joint writing efforts is an honour.


Final Remarks

So that is my brief testimonial to each of my Blog Synergy colleagues. Their qualities, skills and knowledge deserve thousands of words rather than these few words but we do not have space on this Blog.

Blog Synergy has been a wonderful experiment and I have learned a lot. Most of all I have got to know my team mates better and now consider all of them personal friends.

As we come to the end of Blog Synergy I am happy. All good things come to an end. We have all learned through this and we have all agreed the best thing to do is stop at this point.

I will keep in touch with all my team mates and I want to let them know through this my final Blog Synergy posting that I am always available for anything I can offer to each of them.

Keep it simple guys and lets all keep in touch.

Learning questions of synergy

Rosa posed a few good questions here on the Team Synergy blog. I have been busy composing an answer (actually several answers) and I am about ready to reveal them.

Are you ready?

I hope so.

Rosa's first question:

How will our LEARNING STYLES and HABITS have to EVOLVE so that the web communications of our future serve to POWER partnerships, teams, groups and communities?

I think the key to this is our respect for the individual. The web communications are done with tools of technology: instant messaging (IM), voice over IP, email, blog, video blog, podcasting, wikis, etc. There are plenty of tools. But they are only tools. They still require people to operate and use them. We must be mindful that there is another person on the other end and they may not be as adept at the tool as we are. We must be mindful of the verbal communication studies that show 15% of the actual communication is in the words we use, another 20% in the tone of our voice, and 55% in our body language. When we do email or IM, it is only the text that is present. When video phones become common, then the body and facial expressions can come back into the picture to help convey the message.

Until then, be kind to one another.
Confirm what is being said/written, so you do not go off having half heard something.

There is more in common amongst us than there are differences. We need to be kind and patient to explore each other to let this come out into the open.

I heard (via Steve Garfield's field report on Rocketboom) Jeff Jarvis say that the battle between distribution and content was wrong, the conversation is the kingdom and trust is the king.

We need to get to a position of trust with one another in order to succeed together.

It won't be easy. But therein lies the challenge!



Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

Technorati Tags : learning, synergy, trust, conversation, content, distribution

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PodCamp Lunch Sunday

PodCamp Lunch 1
Originally uploaded by shersteve.

The "Power of We" was in full force at the first PodCamp here in Boston this weekend. The photo shows two key types of interactions that occured during lunch. Of course, more of these occured in the halls, before and after the sessions, and during the sessions themselves.

One - conversations generated a buzz. Whether one to one, or one to multiple, there were many going on all the time.

Two - one form the conversations took was in a recorded format. Here Christopher S. Penn, white shirt black sleeve, is capturing some video during an interview with PodCampers.

The energy and synergy created by the lunch room buzz will continue to play out over the next days, weeks, months...

Stay tuned to PodCamp. There will be another one in Boston in 2007. There is talk of bring this format to other major areas. It may come you something reachable from your neighborhood.

If it does, do stop stop anywhere, get thee there. It is worth it!

Technorati Tags : PodCamp+Boston, PodCamp, blog, vlog, synergy, collaboration, cooperation, environment

Synergy & Stigmergy

From Tim Milburn writing at StudentInc

I am a huge fan of synergy, which is the combined interaction of two agents (people) resulting in a larger result than their individual efforts could achieve. It's helpful to realize that each one of us is better together. Like the Ecclesiastes writer says..."two are better than one, a cord of three strands is not easily broken."

This is not new, Tim has commented here before. But he takes a turn and goes into Stigmergy which according to the wikipedia entry is:

Stigmergy is a method of communication in emergent systems in which the individual parts of the system communicate with one another by modifying their local environment. Stigmergy was first observed in nature - ants communicate to one another by laying down pheromones along their trails, so where ants go within and around their ant colony is a stigmergic system. Similar phenomena are easily seen in many (all?) eusocial creatures, such as termites, who use pheromones to build their very complex nests by following a simple decentralized rule set. Each insect scoops up a 'mudball' or similar material from its environment, invests the ball with pheromones, and deposits it on the ground. Termites are attracted to their nestmates' pheromones and are therefore more likely to drop their own mudballs near their neighbors'. Over time this leads to the construction of pillars, arches, tunnels and chambers.

Read Tim's full posting. I think there are parallels with what we are attempting to do here in the blog world and what the termites accomplish.

What do you think?


Technorati Tags : synergy, stigmergy, StudentInc, collaboration, cooperation, environment

Home Plate - Defined

From the late Bart Giamatti:

 "There is no great, long poem about baseball. It may be that baseball is itself its own great, long poem. This had occurred to me in the course of my wondering why home plate wasn't called fourth base. And then it came to me, ‘Why not? Meditate on the name, for a moment, ‘home.'' Home is an English word virtually impossible to translate into other tongues. No translation catches the associations, the mixture of memory and longing, the sense of security and autonomy and accessibility, the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness that cling to the word ‘home' and are absent from ‘house' or even ‘my house.' Home is a concept, not a place; it's a state of mind where self-definition starts. It is origins, a mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original; perhaps like others, especially those one loves; but discreet, distinct, not to be copied. Home is where one first learned to be separate, and it remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it were ever to occur, would happen. All literary romance, all romance epic, derives from the Odyssey and it is about going home. It's about rejoining; rejoining a beloved, rejoining parent to child, rejoining a land to its rightful owner or rule. Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things. And ‘going home' is where that restoration occurs, because that's where it matters most. Baseball is, of course, entirely about going home. It's the only game you ever heard of where you want to get back to where you started. All the other games are territorial – you want to get his or her territory – but not baseball. Baseball simply wants to get you from here, back around to here."

Read the full posting at this week's MondayMorningMemo by Roy Williams at the WizardofAds.

 

Home is where you want to be for a holiday.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Technorati Tags : MondayMorningMemo, WizardofAds, Bart+Giamatti, baseball, mental+images, pictures, words

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