Are you ready for 2010? Seth Godin and friends can help you equip yourself for a stellar year ahead. The free e-book “What Matters Now” is made up of contributions from 72 forward thinkers like Seth Godin, Dave Ramsey, Michael Hyatt, Tim O’Reilly, Tom Peters, Dan Pink, and Chris Anderson, to name just a few (see full list below).  Besides the voice of God, you should consider allowing these 72 voices to influence you… your decisions, your thought process and how you work, play and live. Each of these people have good things to say.

Get the free PDF and see What Matters Now!

The Contributors + Links

1. Generosity by Seth Godin
2. Fear by Anne Jackson
3. Facts by Jessica Hagy
4. Diginity by Jacqueline Novogratz
5. Meaning by Hugh McLeod
6. Ease by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray and Love)
7. Connected by Howard Mann
8. Re-Capitalism by Chris Meyer
9. Vision by Michael Hyatt
10. Enrichment by Rajesh Setty
11. 1% by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell
12. Speaking by Mark Hurst
13. ATOMS by Chris Anderson
14. Excellence by Tom Peters
15. Most by William C. Taylor
16. Strengths by Marti Barletta
17. Ripple by John Wood
18. Unsustainability by Alan Webber
19. Autonomy by Dan Pink
20. Poker by Tony Hsieh
21. Momentum by Dave Ramsey
22. Consequence by Saul Griffith
23. Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer
24. Harmony by Jack Covert
25. Tough-Mindedness by Steven Pressfield
26. Evangelism by Guy Kawasaki
27. Compassion by Mitch Joel
28. Knowledge by Alisa Miller
29. Parsing by Clay Johnson
30. Forever by Piers Fawkes
31. Empathy by Karen Armstrong
32. Neoteny by Joi Ito
33. Celebrate by Megan Casey
34. DIY by Jay Parkinson
35. Adventure by Robyn Waters
36. Dumb by Dave Balter
37. Nobody by Micah Sifry
38. Analog by George Dyson
39. Independent Diplomacy by Carne Ross
40. THNX by Gary Vaynerchuk
41. Attention by David Meerman Scott
42. Context by Jeff Jonas
43. Change by Chip and Dan Heath
44. Passion by Derek Sivers
45. Magnetize by Fred Krupp
46. Confidence by Tim Sanders
47. Slow Capital by Fred Wilson
48. Open-Source DNA by Kevin Kelly
49. Technology by Phoebe Espiritu
50. Expertise by Aaron Wall
51. Fascination by Sally Hogshead
52. Difference by David Weinberger
53. World Healers by Martha Beck
54. Sacrifice by John Moore
55. Focus by Todd Sattersten
56. Leap by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
57. Women by Paco Underhill
58. Timeless by Mark Rovner
59. .eDO by Dale Dougherty
60. Productivity by Gina Trapani
61. Iterative Capital by Michael Scharge
62. Willpower by Ramit Sethi
63. Mesh by Lisa Gansky
64. Enough by Merlin Mann
65. (Dis)Trust by Dan Ariely
66. Social Skills by Penelope Trunk
67. I’m Sorry by Jason Fried
68. Sleep by Arianna Huffington
69. Knowing by Dan Roam
70. Government 2.0 by Tim O’Reilly
71. You Can’t by Aimee Johnson
72. Gumption by J.C. Hutchins

I had the great fortune to be at a fun, informative think tank yesterday called LifeWork 2.0 . I connected with a lot of interesting people and learned many things. Something that stood out to me was the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). At one point it was said to be as good as almost as good as SEX. While you can pay for sex, SEO is often not that easy to come by. SEO is REALLY important… very critical to get right. And when you get it right, you can rule your world.

There’s a good bit of information on SEO at Wikipedia and of course, you can Google it.

What I took away from our SEO conversation was that Quality is probably better than Quantity regarding the traffic on a web site. Also, having organic search results and good keyword density is a must.

We learned about lots of new web apps and tools. One I’ve been playing with today is saynow.com . I’m thinking of creative ways we could use this for our church. Also, as a designer, one of my favorite color tools is Kuler from Adobe. If you send large files, having a free or paid  YouSendIt account is a must have. There are so many tools and apps, I could never list them all, but hopefully you’ll find a few of these useful.

I love being a part of Water Cooler Wednesdays!

Most people take the information they are given (television news, newspaper, internet) as fact. Most of the reporting is, in fact, fact. However, in my studies I’ve learned to be a little more critical or skeptical of all the percentages and figures that bombard us every day. Credibility is HUGE in the world of statistics and research. RELIABILITY and VALIDITY are crucial.I am about to wade into the waters of research like never before in order to complete my master’s thesis. Academia wants proof. Cold, hard, undisputed, peer-journaled proof. Proof that can be considered synonymous with fact. Sometimes that’s easy. I wish we could just point to a few Wikipedia links or Googled references, but they want more. Research. Proof. I’ll be devising and conducting proof-producing experiments in the coming months to get what they crave. In the meantime, check out this great presentation created by Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and XPLANE. You can read more about it here. Enjoy!