Weaving Connecting & Creating

Submitted by cas on Sat, 11/14/2009 - 23:38

This time last week I was creating software as part of a hackathon team at SocialDevCamp Chicago. Our team was called "Team Awesome", Abraham (@abraham) was the project visionary and hardcore hacker who recognized a valuable service could be built to allow the creators of Twitter Lists to invite people to add themselves to the lists be tweeting a specific phrase, transforming their list in to an "Awesome List". For those of you who may not be active users of Twitter or Twitter Lists, all you need to know is that this addition is "Awesome!".

Meet Face-to-Face Grow Revenue

Submitted by cas on Tue, 11/03/2009 - 14:11

In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "The New Face of Face-to-Face Meetings" I was delighted to read about how much more effective face-to-face meetings were compared with virtual meetings. The article included some great metrics on the ROI for investing in face-to-face meeting:

$1 invested leads to $12.50 in revenue and $3.80 in profit

I know in my gut there is such great value in meeting face-to-face and it was great to see some metrics associated with this gut feel!

Engaging Introverts

Submitted by cas on Mon, 11/02/2009 - 14:36

On more than one occasion I have been part of meetings where I had something of value to add and the design of the meeting, or lack thereof, missed the opportunity to engage this introvert!

Introverts - “think to speak”
Extroverts - “speak to think”

Here are four simple tactics that can be used to engage introverts in your team and in your meetings.

Enlightenment at Ignite Chicago

Submitted by cas on Sat, 10/24/2009 - 18:02

Our Product Launch

Submitted by sallyodowd on Mon, 10/19/2009 - 16:50

First off, I want to say thank you to Paul Caswell for bringing me on board to launch Weave The People, a web-based tool for launching people’s potential.

As you may know, Paul is a technology inventor born in Manchester, England, who now calls Chicago home. Paul founded Weave Technology LLC just a year ago and launched his first product, Weave The People, October 6.

I am proud to say the press release, which we posted on PR Web, resulted in about 300 visits to his site in just 3.5 days–about 1/5 all visits in the last four months!

Awareness of Type

Submitted by cas on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 18:22

Everybody sees the world through their own lens, contributes to the world in their own unique way and builds relationships based on their own preferences.

I am fascinated by the art and science of personality types, which I believe, provides us some great tools to better understand first ourselves and then others, leading to richer relationships and more effective ways of working together.

There are many different models for understanding type, my favorite system is Insights.com which is where the four color image in the post is from.

I and Thou and Unity of Being

Submitted by cas on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 20:50

I was reminded of Martin Buber's "I and Thou" last week when I was visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. ("I and Thou" was originally called "Ich und Du", published in 1923, modern translation here )

Martin Luther King, Jr references Buber in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, written April 16, 1963: "Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things."

Buber's "I-it" relationship is a subject-to-object relationship in which two people are separate. The "I-thou" relationship is a subject-to-subject relationship where two human beings are aware of their unity of being, there is connection instead of separation.

Designing a Gathering

Submitted by cas on Tue, 07/28/2009 - 11:20

I am working with Lennie Rose from Big Ooga who shared with me a compelling story of her vision for the future.

Inspired by her vision, I chose to connect with her tribe and create a weave for her next gathering. This is a community of accomplished entrepreneurs and small business owners focused on lifting each other, getting gigs and referring work. We began by asking:

How are we going to be when we gather together?

The questions that we ask influence the conversation at an event. As we were designing the questions for the weave, we then asked ourselves: what questions if asked, would allow the group to connect, provoke authenticity and allow the potential to unfold?

8 great questions from The Soul Purpose

Submitted by cas on Thu, 05/14/2009 - 11:51

Describe your leadership journey and how you got to “here”
What significant challenges have you experienced in this journey and how did you deal with those challenges?
What are your core values in life? What’s most important to you?
If you were to give your child advice for living in one word, what word would you choose?
What is a life motto or words you live by?
In order for you to be successful, what do you need to learn and what do you need to let go of?
What wants to happen here? What is waiting to emerge if we just let it?
Why are you here and what do you want?

Thanks to Tina at The Soul Purpose for these questions. You can read her blog post on Deep Listening here

Some Ideas for Your Weave

Submitted by cas on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 11:34

First: what kind of weave do you want to create?

A weave can be used show any group of people. Think of who you are going to share your weave with and what would make it interesting for them. Here are some ways weaves have been used successfully.

Introverts - “think to speak” Extroverts - “speak to think”

How are we going to be when we gather together?

First: what kind of weave do you want to create?

Introverts - “think to speak”
Extroverts - “speak to think”