Wow! What a week!

Several hundred delegates flew, drove and hitchhiked (okay maybe not hitchhiked) to fill the auditorium of C3 Church in Atlanta and be part of the C3 Americas annual conference.

To get a bit of a feel for the conference checkout the #c3americas Twitter feed.

There were a few highlights for me. Well… maybe just a slight bit more than a few.

Phil Pringle’s session where he talked about faith and conscience had to be the absolute best teaching on that subject I have ever heard.

Phenomenal!

If it becomes available for download I’ll link it here. (which incidentally would be a good reason to subscribe to my RSS feed. Hit the link at the top right.)

The thing that constantly amazes me about Ps Phil is his ability to break down a difficult and controversial subject and leave you saying ‘of course, why didn’t I think of that before. It makes so much sense.’

“Your body is designed to be a temple, not an entertainment center! You were designed for God to inhabit!” Phil Pringle

“If your sincerity supercedes your faith you will find yourself living in performance.” Phil Pringle

But hey… there were many more speakers. Everyone shared absolute gold. Each one was completely unique. And Ps Chris Pringle’s session should rid you of any remaining religious devils OR make them manifest. Get the audio of the sessions if and when they become available. — hint rss feed (audio sessions are available here)

One of the many things I love about this family of churches is the freedom to be yourself. I mean really, how many of you are under constant pressure to be or act a particular way? Wouldn’t you just love the freedom to just be who God made you?

When you see the massive diversity of gifts, talents, personalities, capacity, training and experience of people throughout this movement you realize that there is a place for nearly everyone. Admittedly the religiously judgmental, the critically proficient and the defenders of tradition may find it somewhat harder to fit in… at least without a merciful reshaping of their fundamental values and insecurities. (…But God)

Oh.. did I mention the loud, worshipful, motivational, impartational, blow your mind loud, incredible, presence of God, forward looking, humbling, faithbuilding, honouring, really loud, can we do it again Stadium Night at Center Stage, Atlanta.

No?

I guess I didn’t. Why don’t you ask someone else who was there about it or if you were there, leave a comment below.

What do you think? Let’s talk.

Reading a post this morning from Seth Godin prompted me to post this.

I was in Detroit last week visiting family and the second day there I had problems with my 2 year old iBook. It’s been a stellar performer to this point, and since I run Leopard, I always keep a time machine drive with me.

Anyway…. my computer would only go part way through the boot sequence then shutdown. Since I didn’t know what to do, I took it to the Apple Store in Twelve Oaks. I knew there was a store there since I had bought a shiny new 16GB iPhone there the day before. BTW, this was my first visit to Detroit so I wasn’t aware of many options.

On arriving at the store, I was greeted by a pleasant individual who directed me to the Concierge service where I booked an appointment with a Genius at the Genius bar. I think I only waited about 15 minutes before I was able to see someone. 10 minutes later he told me that my hard drive needed replacing. My options: send it away for a flat fee of something like $271 and they will fix whatever is wrong (7-10 working days) or get the hard drive replaced myself. Since I didn’t have my OSX install disks and I was heading back to Canada in two days, I asked about them installing the OS which he said they would be happy to do.

Next morning I’m back with a new hard drive that was installed at Best Buy, but there is a problem with the OSX installation. Finally the tech figures out that the extra RAM in my machine is faulty. It’s Kingston, which he tells me has a lifetime warranty. (I didn’t know). He pulls it out and proceeds to install…. 45 minutes later I’m good to go. I’ll migrate my data from my Time Machine drive later that night. He pops the RAM back in, since he wants to leave it the way I brought it in and I’m off.

That afternoon I start to migrate my time machine data and all hell breaks loose. I finally find a steak knife to remove the RAM but it appears it’s too late. My iBook won’t even recognize my Time Machine drive. It looks like my data or something got corrupted. 

8:50pm I pull back into the Apple Store hoping they are still open. (Best Buy said they could do nothing since it was a mac formatted drive) The Genius I’ve been working with for the last two days happens to still be there. He’s not sure what to do, so he directs me to another specialist. 25 minutes later they have checked out the drive, changed some permissions, deleted some files and voila! I have a Time Machine drive back and working. Store closed at 9:00pm, I’m still there at 9:20pm and not feeling anyone pressure me. On top of that I was not charged for anything they did at the Genius Bar on my off warranty iBook.

FREE… NO CHARGE!!!

A customer service success story.

Apple may do some things wrong, but I’ll tell you they should do some things right. If I didn’t already have an apple, I would probably be buying one from an Apple store.

Thanks Aaron

The sad thing about all of this is that there are no Apple stores anywhere near my home. And I mean days away. Makes me almost want to move to Detroit… NOT!

 

What’s your experience been with customer support and service? 

A quiet week.

Well it was a quiet week in my part of the blogosphere. It’s like the curtains never opened and you couldn’t see any lights peaking under the doors.

Amazing how a blog can seem like a home.

Actually my life was very unquiet this week. I spent most of the week at a conference catching up with colleagues. It was invigorating, exciting and exhausting. I loved it.

I was reminded about excellence in every area of life. I also came away from the conference feeling much more motivated to do the really important things in my life. I’ve already started putting some of that into practice.

How was your week? What kept you occupied?

I’ve got an idea. I was just looking at my Kiva.org account and I’d love to help someone else get involved. Sooo…. I’m giving a $25 Kiva gift certificate to the first and the 12th commenter on this post…

Jump in and let’s talk. Oh and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

I really wanted to come back to the whole concept of generosity today.

Sowing and reaping. Law of Attraction etc…

Alex asked why people serve, but I’m wondering about what drives generosity in people.

Several months ago I started supporting Kiva.org. In fact we even ran a contest here and I ended up giving away three gift certificates. Jonathan-C Phillips got on the bandwagon as well as many others. Since that time, I’ve continued to support Kiva as you can see from the sidebar. In fact our church has been supporting Kiva for quite a while now too.

Since I gave my first loan to Kiva, the first entrepreneur has already paid back one loan. That’s exciting to me.

The last few times I’ve been at the kiva.org website, there haven’t been many entrepreneurs to lend to. The reason: Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton have featured the organization in books and on television. As a result of the exposure, lot’s of people have gotten involved.

My question is this: Why? Did they suddenly become generous because there was an opportunity? Or were people moved to generosity because someone said they should be?

Did Oprah and Bill Clinton (funny that the former president has to be identified by both first and last names) simply point out something that people were looking for? Or is it the power of personality?

My friend is headed to Sudan to provide some basic humanitarian aide. What would it take to get you to support him?

What moves you to be generous? What are the basic criteria you insist on in a charitable project? Let’s talk!

Sometime ago fellow blogger Alex Shalman asked what I get out of serving. Since I’ve taking soo long to answer the question I figured I better have a really good response.

I’d like to be altruistic and super principled and say that serving is it’s own reward, however that’s not the complete picture. While serving others definitely leaves me feeling fulfilled there are other things at work.

Sowing and Reaping

One pretty important life principle to me is the law of sowing and reaping. (I know others may call it Karma or the Law of Attraction)There are returns to everything I do. If I’m building into other people’s lives then ultimately there will be a payback in my life. I don’t really serve for what I can get out of it but I know I will get something back.

I think this law plays out a lot in the blogverse. There are people that particularly demonstrate it. Three people that live this out most obviously to me are:

• Aaron Potts at personaldevelopmentpartners.com
• Liz Strauss at successful-blog.com
• Jonathan-C. Phillips at smartwealthyrich.com

These are friends who are constantly doing things for others and as a result, they themselves are benefiting. They don’t use people to get what they want. They genuinely devote themselves to seeing others succeed. They are great examples of the sowing and reaping principle.

Which leads me to the other benefit I get out of serving others.

FRIENDS and great connections.

’nuff said.

What’s your take? What do you get out of serving others? Why don’t we start a conversation in the comment section. Let’s talk!

The life which is unexamined is not worth living. — Plato (c. 428 – 348 B.C.)

What does it mean to have an examined life?

Do you regularily examine your life? I mean your life not just your goals or strategy.

I think there are times when we get so caught up in pursuing our goals that we completely forget about who we are. We have countless examples of people through out history who thought that the end justified the means.

And then there are some of us who carry bitterness, anger, resentment or even hatred without ever bothering to ask why. WHY?

I know there are times when I just feel angry and if I don’t ask myself why… if I don’t examine what’s going on… I end up taking it out on those closest to me. WHY?

Do we examine who we are and what our assumptions are? Do we ever take a good look at our character? If not, why not? Are we hiding things even from ourselves?

Unexamined!

The big question is how do you examine your own life? Phil Gerbyshak asks some great questions somewhat along these lines. What questions do you ask? When do you ask them and who else asks? Do you tell the truth?

Let’s talk about it!

This week I met a remarkable young woman who’s living with Cerebral Palsy. Well I didn’t actually meet her meet her. We discovered each other on the internet. Her name is Glenda Watson Hyatt.

She proves that limits don’t have to be limiting!

I first noticed Glenda’s name in a comment on another blog I read. I would link to it if I could remember which one it was. At least I think that’s where I first noticed her name. Funny how those things work. The little details get lost in the more important ones.

The fact is, I didn’t meet her until she sent me an email. She was wondering what part of Canada I lived in. I guess she noticed my face among the myBlogLog readers on her site and decided to say hi, after first checking out my blog.

Anyway the point of all this is to get you to read Glenda’s blog. It’s called doitmyselfblog.com. When you get there, on the right sidebar is a little button that says help me blog for a year. Click it and vote for Glenda.

I think Glenda is a champion.

She’s living the GREAT life that she desires.

A few days ago, Liz Strauss wrote a great article about Boomers, GenY and changing the world. Read the whole article. It’s quite thought provoking.

Boomers and GenY

As I read her article, it seems there are three things that characterize the two generations.

• Authenticity
• Views and values
• The necessity for active communication

It is those things that make us more similar than different. (for the record, I’m a boomer)

When I was growing up, I heard a lot about the "generation gap". I’ve since been told that it’s a myth. Yet there is a gap if we don’t learn how to work together. There is a gap if we don’t bring our unique strengths together to enrich the world.

With the dreams and energy of GenYers and the dreams and wisdom of Boomers, who knows what could really happen. IF… we found the synergy between two different generations.

I’m really interested in exploring how we can bring two great generations together to impact the world.

I know there are several GenYers who read this blog and I’d love to hear what you think. Jonathan, Alex, David… what do you think? How could boomers contribute to your life? How do you think we could better work together?

What about the boomers? How can we work with GenYers to change the world? How could GenY contribute to your life?  Liz… you started the conversation. What do you think?

Being very careful not to accuse anyone else of being in the boomer camp, how about Wendy, Char, Dawud, Aaron, Rory, Robyn and Adam. What do you think? I think your opinions are really important. I would love to hear from you. Let’s talk!

5 things Thinks I like about blogging

I thought it would be easy to just go ahead and write out the things that I like about blogging. I figured there would be more than just 5 things. I mean come on, with a tool as powerful as the almighty blog, surely there would be a myriad of things to like.

Alas, I quickly discovered that defining five things was much more difficult. While I like blogging, the reasons remain clouded in mystery for me. But because I was tagged, I felt I must press on to the ultimate goal of self-discovery.

What do I like about blogging?

1. Well…. I do really enjoy making new friends.

   That has certainly been an entirely unexpected consequence of my blogging experience. When I started out I didn’t expect… well… I’m not sure what I expected, but I didn’t think I would actually get to know people. I thought blogging would be about me telling the world what they needed to know about life. Instead I’m making friends with some great people who are enriching my life.

   I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Rory. Earlier today he made me laugh as he pointed me to a couple of really great articles. (Read about how to copy a document  and getting recruited by keeping your hand in your pocket?

2. I’m surprised that I can honestly say I enjoy the deadlines and pressure of daily posting.

   Well actually I only post six times a week. Initially I thought I would be telling others about my experience developing greater self-discipline, but the benefit has been much more concrete in my own life. A daily routine is certainly a mark of self-disciple and blogging has helped me develop that.

3. I think one of the most interesting things about blogging would be people’s comments.

   A day without comments is like a day without love. A short comment on an article is a simple reminder that I’m not alone. Someone notices and someone cares. Had I been one of those bloggers who is hit with negative comments, I may not enjoy it so much.

   The first comment I ever received on a post was the hightlight of my day. "someone noticed me". Weird yes, but real nevertheless. I even got a personal invitation one day to be part of a discussion on another site. Thanks Dawud! It made my day.

4. Another thing I really like is blogging gets me thinking.

   Now admittedly it seems like I’m always thinking about the "blog". I have a melancholic personality so thinking does come easy to me. Actually it’s analyzing and over-analyzing that comes easy to me. Thinking through complete ideas and putting them down on paper (digitally) is an incredible process. I love it and I hate it!

5. What else do I like about blogging? It’s the unbelievable generosity of people.

   Yeah I know you can find examples of negative, hate mongering, selfish and self-absorbed people in the blogosphere. Incidentally you can find them anywhere. It’s just that everyone I’ve met in this 2.0 world has been incredibly generous. Generous with their thoughts, ideas, help, compliments and support.

   I asked for help on my site design and Liz said "how about Above the Fold then I can promote your site."

   More than I asked for

   Vivienne sends me emails all the time with helpful information.

   More than I asked for

   I noticed Ben experiences the same phenomenon in his corner of the blogosphere.

Looks like now I’m on a roll. As I’m re-reading what I just wrote I realize something. It really is the people that make blogging what it is. If you are open, genuine and willing to learn, this is the place for you.

What about you? How has your blogging experience affected your life? Let’s talk!

Contest Results

In appreciate for all the people who helped me with my site tweaking, I just made a $25 loan to an entrepreneur named Firangiz Salimova in Azerbaijan. Together we have now made loans to six entrepreneurs in six different countries. Give yourselves a hand!!!

I also promised to give out two kiva.org gift certificates to the most helpful reviewers.

the ENVELOPE please… and the winners are:

“Jonathan at smartwealthyrich.com and Liz at successful-blog.com”

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on the site.

Even though the contest is now over, I would still appreciate any thoughts you might have about the site design and layout. I’m listening!