Earbud_U Season Two, Episode #6 – Ben Giordano

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #6 – Ben Giordano, Owner- Freshy Sites, Web Developer, Entrepreneur, All Around Good Guy!

Sometimes…some days…podcasting just doesn’t work.

A guest isn’t prepared, the audio doesn’t work, or the host is not prepared.

Sometimes, no matter how prepared the host, the audio, the equipment and the guest are, everything goes right, but there still isn’t enough there!

Our guest today is Ben Giordano, of FreshySites, a local website building business, based in Binghamton, NY but expanding exponentially up and down the East Coast.

Look, I’ll be honest, the interview with Ben was fraught with problems “from the git-go”…as Kramer would have said back in the day.

I managed to get together with Ben after a year of chasing each other and when it was finally go time, the audio equipment failed, the computer (almost) failed, the Internet failed and the signal dropped in the call…everything failed except for us talking.

Which, of course, does no good for the host or the listener and does even less good for the guest.

And, I’m not throwing anybody under the bus here, other than myself…

Anyway, this is the shortest interview to date that I’ve ever had.

It was also the most stressful to date, again, not because of anything that Ben and I did, but because the audio/Internet gods decided to slam down the ban hammer that day.

What are you gonna do…

But, we managed to pull it out and redeem it by the end, and the audio gods left enough over for us to have an interview.

Connect with Ben (and FreshySites) via all the ways you can below, and have him build a website for you:

Ben on twitter: https://twitter.com/bengiordano

FreshySites on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FreshySites

Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bengiordano

FreshySites on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreshySites/

The FreshySites website: http://freshysites.com/

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #5 – Donya Zimmerman

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #5 – Donya Zimmerman, Former Lawyer, Business Development Consultant, Mediator, Entrepreneur, Community Engager

[powerpress]

Sometimes, you wind up with a problem you didn’t expect, because you weren’t paying attention to the right thing at the right time.

Instead, you were so focused on the wrong thing (thinking that it was the right thing to be focused on at the time) that you totally missed the problem staring you in the face.

Then, when the problem rears its ugly head (as problems often do), you are—well—blindsided—by what happens to you.

This happens to people, neighborhoods, societies, and cultures. And as of the summer of 2015, (and leading into more recent incidents in the fall) well, the only thing that we know for sure, is that blindsiding is happening more and more in our American culture.

Our guest today knows all about being blindsided by not paying attention.

Donya Zimmerman, former lawyer and current business consultant and mediator, ran her own law firm for a little while. But like many entrepreneurs, she became so focused on one area, that she completely neglected focusing on another area.

She is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, born and raised in the hardest of hard places. Donya is honest about her mistakes, her missteps, and her blindness in a way that is humorous, refreshing and—quite frankly—courageous.

Look, courage is more lacking than genius is in our fraying culture.

We laud the entrepreneur who cocks and crows about cashing out at a high valuation, or the one who makes his or her next round of seed funding, but we celebrate less failures and disappointments. We also celebrate less the culture that grinds the courage out of people and pulls them back into the bucket of mediocrity and accepting the status quo.

Donya’s trying to do better. She’s trying to avoid being blindsided again. And, much like her city, her state and her country, what she needs most is not our approbation, condemnation or our slings and arrows.

What she—and many others who try, fail and try again—needs is our grace, our forgiveness and our open hand of hope and help.

Connect with Donya via all the ways below:

Donya Zimmerman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dzbusconsultantandmediator

Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting blog: https://dzimmerman36.wordpress.com/about/

Powerful Biz Woman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PowerfulBizWoman

Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting website: http://conflictresolutionandconsulting.com/

Family & Community Mediation and Business Consulting on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FACMBC

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4a (Special Edition) – Dianne Crampton

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4 (a) (Special Edition) – Dianne Crampton, Consultant, Organizational Development Entrepreneur, TIGER for Success in Organizations

Consulting and training is hard, but not for the reasons that you would think.

I have sat in a lot of situations with people in organizations who have power in those organizations, and when viewed from the outside, those situations look like interviews.

I’ve actually had my wife correct me on this distinction with a difference before she got distracted by my quote-unquote cute butt.

The hard part of consulting and training is determining what the client needs, even though what they say they want is not always what they need. The other hard part is a corollary to that: developing a product for other people who are part of your business network who may not be able to afford your services.

Our special guest for our show today, Dianne Crampton, has discovered the solution to this.

Dianne lives and works in Oregon, so maybe it’s something in the start-up air that’s wafting up from San Francisco and other points south, but she’s managed to do some hard work and gotten some attention for her work.

The other part of developing a consulting product is funding the development of that product, and that’s where the Indiegogo part of this all starts.

Dianne will talk about all of this in our podcast today.

So, support the show, go to Dianne’s Indiegogo page (link here–> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/improved-360-team-behavior-work-culture-survey/x/8706859#/) and donate a few bucks to help a consultant productize a service that matters. There is a $5 reward for each funding lead, so go check out all the details!

Trust us, leadership is as important to resolving conflict as practical skills are.

Connect with Dianne in all the ways you can, below:

Dianne Crampton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diannecrampton

The TIGERS Success Website: http://corevalues.com/

The TIGERS Success Blog: http://corevalues.com/blog/

The TIGERS Among US Website: http://www.tigersamongus.com/

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TeamBuildingSuccess/timeline/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Diannecrampton

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4 – Yvette Durazo

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #4 – Yvette Durazo, Conflict Engagement Practitioner, Teacher, Ontological Bi-Lingual Coach, Onion Peeler, Fence Destroyer

[powerpress]

Time zones are tricky things to navigate.

First, we’ve gotta do the math in our heads, and figure out how far back or forward a person (or organization) is either behind us, or ahead of us.

Then, we’ve got to write that information down and not forget it. And then we’ve gotta be sure to follow up on the day that we are supposed to talk, interact or do business.

It’s hard enough getting the guy down the street to show up for a meeting, but when we are working with a person or company in another time zone, the barrier of a few hours of difference—the lines and boundaries separating us—can seem insurmountable.

Our guest today is Yvette Durazo and she lives in another time zone. She is also bilingual and she coaches, and asks questions in two languages.

We talked about lines and boundaries on this episode of Earbud_U and we forget that lines are powerful. They demarcate. They separate. They serve to—as my mother would say—fences that make good neighbors.

But, our world is in the process of changing, right?

Boundaries and lines, time zones and fences don’t matter much anymore when I can reach out and Skype with another person half a world away.

Or, maybe they do.

Maybe lines and demarcation matter now more than ever.

Maybe there is comfort in separating and being alone. The rise of mindfulness practices, meditation for executives and the idea traversing it’s way around Twitter of building tiny houses, are testament to the fact that human beings are feeling rushed, crowded, jostled and overwhelmed.

Yvette lives in San Diego and whenever I visit New York City (or think about traveling or living in a large metropolitan area); I often flash back to the crowded, dirty settings of films like Soylent Green or BladeRunner.

Have we come much further than those dystopian future fantasies would suggest?

I don’t know. But maybe Yvette does.

Connect with Yvette in all the ways that you can below:

Google + Profile: https://plus.google.com/+YvetteDurazo/posts

Blog: http://www.unitiveconsulting.com/#!blog/cp6k

Website: http://www.unitiveconsulting.com/

Other Ways to Hear Yvette’s Voice:

Conflict Engagement Specialists Show: http://www.conflictengagementspecialists.com/blog/bilingual-workplace-mediation-and-coaching-with-yvette-durazo-unitive-consulting-conflict-management-mediation-and-coaching/
Impact for Coaches: http://impactforcoaches.org/coaches/yvette-durazo/
Sales Leadership Alliance: http://www.salesleadershipsd.com/contact-us/meet-our-members/yvette-durazo/
UC San Diego Profile: http://crg-stemm.ucsd.edu/affiliates/industry/durazo.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/conflictmanagment

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/yvette-durazo-ma-acc/4/564/b07

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode # 3 – Dr. Joey Cope

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode # 3 – Dr. Joey Cope, Questioner, Conflict Resolution Practitioner, Dancer with Disputes, A Peacebuilder of Many Colors

Some people are soft spoken and you get the wrong impression about them.

They tend not to get visibly frustrated, and in my experience, enemies tend to believe that they are pushovers…or worse…

When I first met our guest today, I made a joke about how he “was shorter in person than he appeared to be on the Internet.” I waited a beat, and then, Dr. Joey Cope, laughed.

When I think of people in my field—the field of peacebuilding—that are “go to,” I think of Dr. Joey Cope. When I was a young graduate student, I was taught by him directly and, I wasn’t always sure that he was sure about my character on a regular basis.

Character counts in the field of mediation. As does age, wisdom and moral rectitude.

However, we are in a field that is being challenged on all sides by technology, the media, the changing nature of politics and many other areas. Technology levels all things and will continue to do so, but character has to count when we deal with the one area that software can’t touch: the human heart.

Dr. Cope is young in thought and energy, but he is an old hat in the area of wisdom, expertise and “been there, done that.”

He is on social media and he is using the new tools we have to spread old wisdom as well as to ask some questions about forgiveness, social justice and the ways in which we choose to communicate.

I hope you have as good a time listening to this interview as I did recording it.

Connect with Dr. Joey Cope through all the ways that you can below:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/joeycope

Dr. Cope’s Blog on the Web: http://joeycope.com/#sthash.83T8uJO0.dpbs

Dr. Cope’s 2nd Blog on the Web: http://peacebytes.org/

Connect with Dr. Cope on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joey.cope1

Connect with Dr. Cope on LinkedIN:https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joey-cope/3/521/74a

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode # 2 – Chris Strub

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode # 2 – Chris Strub, Social Media Maverick, Social Good Trailblazer, Finding the Niches Where Helping Meets Digital

[powerpress]

As an entrepreneur, the one thing that I struggle the most with—along with everything else—is the word “no.” When I say “no,” when I hear a “no,” or when I have to give a “no.”

Recently, I sat in on a ten week leadership class, provided through my local church. Stewardship, discipleship, working with others, and team development and management were all covered in this class.

I asked the instructor one evening, how do you say no?

I am a person who believes in experiences and sees the potential in others. But one thing that I have struggled with for years, is seeing potential in others that they don’t see in themselves. And then, after seeing the potential, I push them inexorably toward the excellence that I think I see in them.

After many years, I discovered why that is a horrible model for leadership.

There are two kinds of leadership, just like there are two kinds of power.

The one kind of leadership is the one that I just described. See the potential in others. Then push the people toward the development of—and realization of—that potential. The other kind of leadership is one that is built around serving your followers and allowing them the space to live out their potential in their own way.

The second model is the one that exemplifies our guest today on the show, Chris Strub. I’ve been a fan of his for years and, full disclosure, we used to work together before he was anybody. But this guy is blowing up now basically everywhere, and you’ll get to hear why in a little bit.

Also, in about a month here on Earbud_U, I’ll have an update about the super secret project that Chris alludes to on this podcast and how that all turned out in the Summer of 2015.

Check out all the ways to connect with Chris Strub below:

Check out his latest trailbalzing adventure, 50 states, 50 youth orgs. in 100 days on the web: http://www.teamstrub.com/

Chris’s Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/chrisstrub

Team Strub on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TeamStrub

Chris on LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisstrub

Check out Chris’s Photos on Instagram: https://instagram.com/chrisstrub/

Live Streaming Daily on Meerkat: http://meerkatapp.co/smallgnumber6/6dd11abf-1bc6-4cab-baa5-ae16d481fd17

Google +: https://plus.google.com/+ChrisStrub/posts

Check out Chris on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ32kX6XL9SAqrnY_FOkBXg

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode # 1 (a) – Neil Denny

Earbud_U, Season Two, Episode #1 (a) – Neil Denny, Mediator, Collaborative Lawyer, Author, Grudge & Forgiveness Expert

Neil Denny’s perspective and approach to peace starts where most people think that the path ends—at forgiveness and reconciliation.

But don’t get us wrong, he’s also a peace building entrepreneur who understands the need that all mediators, negotiators, attorney mediators and others have to do to get other people to walk along the path to peace.

Building a business and keeping your equanimity are not mutually exclusive. When the money doesn’t come in and when the doorbell (or phone) isn’t ringing, what else is the peace builder to do? Well, applying principles of marketing and development can help, along with understanding how partnerships really work between people in business.

Neil is involved in a tom of projects, developing new niches for peace. Feel free to connect with Neil in all the ways that he’s differentiated below:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/neildenny

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/neildenny

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Denny/e/B005HSOTNY

Youtube: https://youtu.be/WTmUDGib-VQ

Get Artisan: https://getartisan.wordpress.com/

The Conflict Specialists Show w/Dave Hilton: http://www.conflictengagementspecialists.com/blog/collaborative-law-and-the-get-artisan-movement-with-neil-denny/

By the way, this is our first two-part episode here on Earbud_U. So listen to the first half (released earlier this month) by clicking on the link here!

[Podcast] Virtual Ghettos – The Earbud_U Minute

Ghettos are popping up all over the virtual place.

In the physical world, the ghetto began as a way to segregate Jewish populations from other populations in Italy and all throughout the rest of Europe. Then, if Wikipedia is to be believed, ghettos came to the US, first as a way to segregate the Irish and Italian immigrants, then as a way to separate African Americans from predominantly White populations.

With that in mind, look down at the screen of your smartphone. How many apps do you have?

How many different neighborhoods, or ghettos, do they represent?

In the virtual space of the Internet, information may want to be free, but people apparently want to be crowded into virtual cities and neighborhoods—with all of the separation, regulation and virtual social norming as informal policy.

As we innovate further—and as digital natives move further and further away from the ghettos that digital immigrants seem comfortable in—the question we must ask ourselves is: Which comes first, the regulation or the innovation?

We have to figure this out as a global culture, because physical ghettos lead not only to segregation, biases and prejudices (which may prove to be minor annoyances in the virtual space) but also to poverty, lack of access to resources and reduced opportunity (which may prove to be even more damaging in the virtual space that in the physical world).

Conflicts between those in the virtual ghettos, those in the virtual suburbs and those on the virtual frontier need to be addressed by people who have experience with emotional intelligence, active listening and strong facilitation ability.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Podcast] Web 3.0 – The Earbud_U Minute

We need to figure out what kind of Internet we want to have.

The business model currently funding and pushing the growth of the Internet is based upon monetizing a base of users who come to a project and use it for free, or for a nominal price.

The user takes advantage of the content/service/process for free. And, as a result, the user is so enamored with the content/service/process that they keep coming back over and over again, building a trust based relationship with the creator/creators of the project. Subsequently, in order to fund the project, there are hopefully so many users that an advertiser has no choice but to put advertisements in front of a group of eyeballs with whom the project owner has built a relationship.

This is the model underlying Facebook. The nominal fee model (a subscription-based model) underlies LinkedIn, journalism models, ecommerce platforms and other content/service/process platforms.

Web 2.0 is what everyone is talking about now, but Web 3.0 is really, where the Internet has to move to.

Web 3.0 is beyond just the Internet of Things. Web 3.0 is the Internet as Everything. Web 3.0 is the Internet waging active battle with the last, sticky remnants of the world built through the assumptions of the Industrial Revolution. This is a world created around the rules, laws and policies, created by politicians and people to keep the common democratization of the Internet out of the hands of the common people before the Internet.

Here’s a question: Why is it that there aren’t any internet connected roads?

It has nothing to do with technological innovations such as creating concrete that can communicate with strips on the road. Or with computer chips that can talk to your car. Or signs and traffic signals that talk to the road, the car and each other.

The reason there aren’t roads that are intelligent is not a smart car issues, no matter what Google Cars would have you think.

The issue is really laws and regulations.

Laws are the last bastion of the Industrial revolution world that have yet to fall to the unending sweep of the Internet. We see the beginnings of this with our current thrashing around privacy, data, and “who owns the future” (either you or a corporation) but once we settle all of this we will have new business models that will allows the Internet to be truly “baked in”.

Then, once that happens, the sky truly will be the limit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] 3 Reasons the Future Won’t Be the Same as Now – The Earbud_U Minute

Nostalgia for the future is a terrible thing. As a matter of fact, we have heard recently that nostalgia for the past might be poison.

Human beings, without much great reluctance, tend to romanticize the past, and believe that the future will be exactly the same. Only slightly cooler.

However, three facts mitigate against this view:

Peace is not the absence of conflict. It’s the management of change.
The “good old days” were just as filled with uncertainty, suspicion, anxiety, awe, nostalgia (both forward and rear facing) as the current time is.
The same conflicts that occurred in the past, will continue to occur both now and in the future, but the impacts of those conflicts will seem faster and more immediate.

Case in point for all of this is the recent 75^th anniversary commentary around the 1964 World’s Fair. None of the changes that we currently take for granted were even thought of then.

Or, to make it even more bald: We are currently living in the future that Blade Runner promised us, just without it raining all the time and us all wearing the same drab outfits.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/