PostSecret, building bridges and facing the two-headed monster

PostSecret

Heather came home the other night buzzing from her experience at Frank Warren's presentation on PostSecret, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Select secrets are then posted on the PostSecret website, or used for PostSecret's books or museum exhibits.

Purchased book in hand, she wanted me to jump right in and start reading postcards aloud and revealing secrets of my own.  I wasn't in the mood.  Instead, we called it a night and I went to sleep thinking about.....secrets.

Do I have any?  I guess I do; I guess we all do.  Most of them are probably buried in some dark recess of our memory.  Others might be lurking just under the surface, longing to be released, which is what sending something in to PostSecret is all about.

Some are incredibly sweet.

Others are pretty intense and angry.

Some are sexual.

People are releasing all sorts of secrets through this creative and anonymous avenue.  I'm intrigued to give it a try.

Building Bridges

I am delivering a keynote address tonight at the annual fundraising banquet in support of KAOS 91.1, a social profit generating radio station that our family has been a proud supporter of for years.  The theme of this year's banquet is BUILDING BRIDGES.  I'm a big fan of bridges.

Without giving too much away, I'm going to talk about metaphorical bridges and how they strengthen and sustain us as human beings and as communities.  It should be a fun 15 minutes and a great event.

Facing the two-headed monster

Krista Balsom, Anas Eljamal and myself are delivering a workshop on Wednesday morning (March 12) on email management (and survival).  The idea for this session came to me last year, in the midst of delivering a broad range of workshops on communication, social media, and effective networking.  It struck me that the one thing we all deal with, at some level or another, is managing the constant flow of email.

How many times have you heard someone say: "I left the office for two days and I returned to 450 emails"?  I think it's funny that over the years that number gets exponentially larger.  It seems like yesterday when 100 seemed like a HUGE number.  I'm guessing that most of us have stopped counting.

We're going to talk a lot about ways to manage your email more effectively, including a strong list of DO's and DON'TS and some technical tips and tricks that will really help.

The thought behind this workshop is that if we do a better job with this core functional piece of our daily work life, we will free up time to do other, more important things, and we will reduce our stress levels.

You can still register for Wednesday morning's workshop by clicking here.  We get underway at 8:30 am sharp and will have you on your way by noon.