I just got back from Kroger and realized that I did not say hello to anyone, I didn’t interact with a human.  I saw people. I paid for my groceries at a e-z scan.  I had to walk through the store from one end to the other to pick up milk, bread, cheese, eggs for an omelet tomorrow morning.

Is Facebook, twitter, Linked-In, FreindFeed, WordPress, “social networking” make us less social?  Are we becoming a less “social” society due to the time we spend on-line?

I think to some degree we are becoming less social through on-line social networks.  At work if you have a difficult person to deal with would you rather email them or IM?  Call them that would be to difficult! Much less video chat with them.  For me, I prefer  to go to someone’s desk.   I like people and if you want something done fast get it done in person.  I want to see people, talk to them ask them how their day is going and how their family is doing.  Yeah we can do that on Facebook or Yammer, but it is not the same. You can’t hear inflection of someone’s voice in a Facebook comment.

Think about this.  As humans we need real human to human interaction.  Here is some scientific proof that humans need to touch.  If we didn’t touch each other, the human species would eventually go extinct.   Social networking is great, and when you are trying to make it to a birthday party on time e-z scan at the grocery store helps.

Use on-line social networks to keep in touch, but don’t let them substitute for face to face interaction.  Just remember sometimes it is great to just say hi and better yet this time of year Merry Christmas!

Let me know your thoughts, thanks for reading.  Merry Christmas!

Not much to say here click the banner below and prepare to be blown away!!

As a leader we must continually keep growing. There are several ways to do this. You can:  enroll in classes at a local University, listen to podcasts, or start teaching a leadership class.   My favorite way is to read books.   I try to ready about 2 books a month.   Lately, I just found a new tool to help leaders keep growing and like podcasts it doesn’t cost any money just some time.

The tool is Thomas Nelson’s books for bloggers program.   It is free to join.   What you have to do is write a 200 word review on your blog and post it on any retail website like Amazon.com or Borders.com. There are some guidlines you must follow, but other than that is it easy peasy.   In return you get advanced copies of great books from some excellent authors.  What more could a leader ask for?  Free leadership books!!  So go check out a new book and who knows you may just set the world on fire with your Leadership skills.

The Lesson

Wow it is 12:22 am on Monday March 30, 2009. I am tired but I am not going to be just yet.  The past 2 and a half days have been a whirl wind and a great experience.  See I attended Start-up weekend Detroit.  I didn’t know anyone. I did not know what to expect.  And to be quite honest… I was a little nervous going in.  See I am a mechanical engineer turned finance guy with a little web, html, java script experience.  I knew my “Kung Fu” in web-design was not that great.  You know what…?  It did not matter.

I had an idea, my pitch was to create a website where shoppers could enter in their grocery list and the website would sort the list to what aisle the shopper needed to go down.  I did not know if my idea would fly.  Guess what,  my idea did fly 4 team members joined me and a 5th one came over on Saturday.  And my Kwik Shopper transformed into Aisle Walker.

What I learned from this weekend was your idea does not have to be perfect to pitch it to someone.  And sometimes you have to take a risk to get a reward. Randy Adams, the CEO of Searchme.com said it best “An idea that is in your head is just an idea”  that summed it up my kwik shopper idea.  By attending Startup Weekend Detroit, in less than 48 hours me and a team of 4 guys created the back-end, the logo and site layout and a strategic plan to have aislewalker.com live by the end of next week.

If you are planning on going to a future Startup weekend go, pitch your idea. Who knows your next pitch may set you free.

Good Luck and keep jammin’

I have to give credit to Chris Kaufman at TwitArt.com for providing the awesome photoshop mockups of AisleWalker.com.

When Monday comes in a couple of days most of us will here those words. How was your weekend?  What did you do?

How cool would it be to say, well I pitched an idea about a website to 50 people and we tried to make it work.

That is what I am doing this weekend, it started yesterday and goes till Sunday. The ideas is to start something where it didn’t exist.

My idea is called Kwik shopper, it is a website designed to help you shop more efficiently at your local grocery store. And save money along the way. Will it work? Yea in theory, will we have the passion to keep it going after we get back to our day jobs?  That is the question.

I will keep posting about the weekend as we progress. You can always check out detroit.startupweekend.com for more info on the cool stuff happening at the Compuware building downtown Detroit this weekend. You can also follow us on twitter.  Go to twittersearch.com and put in #swd09 in the search box.  And you can get my updates by following me at LarryWilson3 on twitter.

I saw this great sign today it read:

Life isn’t about finding your life
Life is about creating your life.

Today was a historic day at General Motors. Employees all over the globe celebrated GM’s 100th birthday. It was really cool to watch and be a part of. At the end the production version of the Chevy Volt was released. Check out all the cool action at gmnext.com

The next 100 years is going to take: Leadership, Passion, Vision and Focus from all of on the GM Global Team. I am looking forward to being a part of writing the next 100 years for GM.

Look closely at what was on the moon tonight.

No matter what business we are in or what school.  We always have to be creative.  Watch this video.  This couple was creative.  Listen to the crowd and how “ho hum” the couple is about thier wedding dance.  And then listen at the end.  A huge difference.  It has that WOW factor we need once in a while in everything we do.

I can’t think of much to say on today.  Just remember how you felt 7 years ago and why we are in Iraq ….so it doesn’t happen again.

I get this questions from time to time when I talk to people about Maddogleadership. Finding your passion in life is a exploration process. I encourage junior high and high school students to start this early. But a college student or someone mid-career can do this as well.

You need to explorer the talents, skills and desires you have. For instance if you think you would like to be a tennis instructor find a tennis instructor to talk to. Network. Ask friends or family if they know of anyone that teaches tennis full or part time. Once you find that tennis instructor talk to them about what they do. The most important part is to job shadow them. Job shadowing is where you follow or “shadow” someone in their day to day job activities to get a idea of what their job is all about.

When exploring your passion and potential career opportunities talk to as many people as you can. The more you learn about a career or a professional field the better you will understand it and know that is something you want to dedicate your time to. Some careers require extensive training after completing several years of college. By exploring and talking to people about a particular field or career you will know the training required for that career.

What ever your passion requires you will do you will do it. When people are working in their passion even the mundane parts of a job are worth it. You may not like to do the boring parts of your job but doing them allows you to work in your passion, which makes it all worth the hard work.