Finding Your "Familiars" In Social Networks: A Step by Step Process

January 2, 2013 No Comments

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“A familiar spirit is the double, the alter-ego, of an individual. Even though it may have an independent life of its own, it remains closely linked to the individual.” ~Pierre A. Riffard

“Resist the temptation to think what afflicts you is peculiar to you. Have faith that what is in your consciousness can be communicated to the consciousness of all. And is, in many cases, already there.” ~Alice Walker, The Temple Of My Familiar

WHAT IS A FAMILIAR:
Familiarity implies intimacy. To become familiar with another person implies having more than a casual acquaintance. In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as “familiars”) were supernatural entities believed to assist shamans in their practice of magic. A familiar is a being who you come to know intimately and who works with you to create life and magic. This begins through listening, continues into relationship and culminates in collective action.

WHY DISCOVER FAMILIARS:
The core reason to discover your familiars is to have a relationship with meaning. A second reason for engaging in this process is to develop a community full of common purpose. A third reason for cultivating such relationships is to bring your gifts to the world and make a solid contribution to humanity at large.

YOU CAN FIND YOUR FAMILIARS THROUGH LISTENING:
The scholar R. Grimmasi writes about discovering a relationship to animals at a young age in the forest. He did this through listening and observing. “I quickly learned that it was necessary to remain still and silent in order not to scare away the wildlife…it was there in those silent moments of observation and anticipation that I developed my ability to establish rapport and communication with other beings, with “familiars”…familiars react to various symbols because of what they represent and the authority behind the power of the symbols.” Grimmasi identifies a very important aspect of relationship with familiars: symbols. Consider for a moment what you symbolize within your network by what you post on a daily basis. Write about this, draw this, speak about this. What is your symbol? What do you symbolize?

FILTER FOR FAMILIARS:
Filter your social relationships to determine which types of people respond to your content with eagerness. Now discover all the people just like those people within your own network. They may not be interacting with you simply because they are not seeing your posts in their News Feed or because they are focused elsewhere. Chances are that people similar to your “hottest” relationships will respond to you upon receiving a gift of your content. Try cc’ing one or two of these “Discovered Familiars” (a “discovered familiar” is similar to your known familiars).

HOW TO FILTER FOR FAMILIARS:
1. Import your Facebook connections to a Yahoo email account.
http://bit.ly/Import_Facebook_To_Yahoo

2. Download the connections as a CSV file. Open this file in Excel.

3. Upgrade your LinkedIn to an Executive account (you will need this level for a later action). Now, export your connections as a CSV file.

4. Sign up for Social Bro or Simply Measured and download a spreadsheet of your Twitter followers. Use the Klout Audience Analysis in Simply Measured to receive a spreadsheet you can rank by Klout or by other interesting data like Listed, Location or specific bio content. In Social Bro, you can export both Followers and Friends (who you follow). In addition, within Social Bro, you can adjust some nifty sliders to specify various aspects of the download (if desired).

5. Learn how to use the Sort and Filter functions in Excel to refine your sifting of these spreadsheets from Social Bro and Simply Measured.

6. Next, sign up for LeadGrabber Pro’s 1 month account and extract up to 300 specific types of profiles that you identify. Or go into specific groups and extract all users.

7. Filter and Sort your spreadsheets by location and by keywords in the biographies. These keywords are symbols of your potential familiars.

8. Use Spokeo and other Open Source Intelligence Tools (OSINT) to learn more about your familiars so that you develop a list with integrity. Here is a list of excellent OSINT tools: http://bit.ly/OSINT_Tools_2013

9. Upload all of your contacts as CSV format into a Gmail account. http://bit.ly/Import_CSV_to_Gmail

10. Get the Rapportive plugin for Gmail so you can see the latest details on any contact, including their social links. This seems to work best in Chrome. http://rapportive.com/

CONNECT ONE TO ONE:
Next, connect personally with all of your connections. This will take time so make it worth it – for you and for who you are connecting with. Study what the person is talking about, conceive a clearly written paragraph containing an idea that will help him/her. This can be an encouragement, a business idea, a compliment on a character quality or a note of gratitude for something he/she wrote or posted (along with a story on how this post helped you). Email him/her, send them a Facebook message, use LinkedIn Inmail, use @mention your connections on Twitter and Facebook. Also, use other modes of communication. Chats via Skype can be vital, as well as starting Google hangouts.

START WITH A GIFT:
It’s important to say something that helps the other person first. It has to begin with them. A great way into this is to study the person’s last 12 posts in any given social platform. What are they trying to discover? Can you provide the answer. Be specific to that person. Make your message short but deep. Get to the point.

Follow up, follow up, follow up. Act with with the intention of the best and highest good for all. Do what you love.

From Here to There: How To Open a New World

December 29, 2012 No Comments

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“Why are you on the Internet so much?” they asked.
“Oh, I’m finding out about more things every day…,” she replied.

Humanity wants a path to a better world. Individuals are looking for a mechanism, a function, to hurdle perceived obstacles.

There is a whole new world of life-giving products, services and processes busting the seams to become mainstream. And there’s an old world of death-dealing things that now needs to pass away. The new world is as inevitable as the attraction between two people whose eyes dance, where the electric meets the magnetic, a gravity that cannot be ignored.

Fortunately, the network has officially eclipsed the hierarchy. Humanity now sits in an ever expanding set of concentric circles. Connecting laterally is far more effective than “climbing the corporate ladder” in today’s paradigm.

If you want to experience your new world take the following steps:

1. 1 HOUR FREE WRITE: Spend an hour free-writing, where you allow the pen to move across the page without editing yourself. (Suggestion: Write with a pen on a pad of paper. See more on why at Julia Cameron’s page about “Morning Pages” here – http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/ )
2. THREE KEYWORDS: Next write down a few keywords that capture your feeling after doing this writing.
3. SEARCHING THE KEYWORDS: Search these keywords in every social property and social “device” at The World Wide Mind.
4. ARCHIVING THE IMAGES: Save the images, links and text you find that “fit” or “attract” you.
5. MEETING UP: All of these images, links and texts were created by someone. One of those “someones” is going to jump out to you. Find that person’s social handles and send a message. Meet up with that person in the flesh. Spend some time “in the world” of your images. The experience of going from image to flesh is truly amazing.
6. CREATE A NEW WORLD: Once you’ve tasted this alternative universe that emerged from steps 1-5, you have to calculate the consequences for yourself of fully entering that world. Once you do your calculations, develop your ideas and write down your plans, simply go into that world. You just created it.

This process can be used over and over again. And this process can be used by individuals and enterprises, by students and institutions, by citizens and governments.

The Black Box and the White Box: Moving towards better collaboration with markets

December 13, 2012 No Comments

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“Capturing the full potential value from the use of social technologies will require transformational changes in organizational structures, processes, and practices, as well as a culture compatible with sharing and openness.”
~McKinsey Report, “The Social Economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies, McKinsey & Company, July 2012.

WHAT IS THE BLACK BOX: Wikipedia defines the black box as follows, “In science and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed solely in terms of its input, output and transfer characteristics without any knowledge of its internal workings, that is, its implementation is “opaque” (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, a business process, or the human mind. The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is sometimes known as a clear box, a glass box, or a white box.” (SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box)

BUSINESS HAS TO MOVE OUT OF THE BLACK BOX: Business must move toward the white box model for one simple reason: more access to customer collaboration. We live in an age where customers and employees work together on products, services and programs. The most effective product lines, service offerings and policy programs involve customers in the development process. The reason this method is so effective is because the customers have a previous experience that contributes value. The professional expert who has worked for years in a specific business niche can benefit massively from amateurs who have tried multiple variations. Major brands are involving customers in the development of next season’s fashion line, governments are inviting citizens to work with policy makers, and customers now lead service communities under corporate umbrellas. As the old adage goes, “many hands make light work”.

MOVING TO COLLABORATION: In business, black boxes have been essential in a competitive market, to protect sensitive internal processes in development. If one’s competitor can see how one develops an application, a program or a product, then he can take it and improve it and beat you to market. Corporations have prioritized black boxes to protect their stakeholders and investment in people, materials and resources. But in many cases, these same black box eco-systems have created misunderstanding and conflict. And these misunderstandings are a primary reason why businesses are moving toward transparency. To state this another way: we exist within a world so clarified by social networks that many businesses are opting for collaboration models. Businesses are opting for white boxes.

Jacob Tell, an innovator in collaboration vs. competition at Oniracom, a leading lifestyle marketeing company, has said, “We’ve chosen a partnership model over a competitive model. This is a proper way to approach business in today’s increasingly networked world.” As a veteran of the Internet and people-person par excellence, Mr. Tell has identified a very true and helpful dynamic for today’s new paradigm of business — a humanized way of being and doing where we come together for a win-win.

THE WORLD WANTS THE WHITE BOX: Mr. Tell is not alone in his sentiments, either. Kim Stokely, a leading trainer of educators in the United States has said, “This time of history signifies the end of individualism and the beginning of collectivism.” The US Intelligence office has just published a Trends 2030 paper that states, “There will not be any hegemonic power in the future. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world.” Tom Oliver, of the World Peace Festival, has stated, “Until now the world has had no method that systematically deals with violent conflict. To fill this void, experienced peace builders from across the globe have got together with government officials, civil society and the military to design a strategy that could prevent war and resolve violent conflict. This strategy works at all levels – from the bottom up and top down.”

The entire human community cries out for a unified and transparent world group of leaders that move from competing black boxes to collaborative methods of dealing with conflict, poverty and disaster. The world needs and wants a White Box paradigm and good 21st century corporations, banks and governments will step into this clear room together. Peace is quite possibly the number one reason for entering this white box paradigm and leaving the black box method.

RESOURCES:

DEEP TRANSPARENCY VIDEO:

HOW TO OPEN THE BLACK BOX – The method to opening the black box is straight-forward:
1. Research your customer using social media monitoring solutions. Listen to what your customer is saying.
2. Design a White Box program to invite your customer or fan into the process of your business. Base the strategy and aspects of this program on what you discovered through research.
3. Design safeguards in this program to protect your business from sabotage from competitors.
4. Allocate inner resources from every silo (HR, PR, Marketing, Sales, C-Suite, Customer Service, etc.) to handling different aspects of this White Box program. Designate one person to manage the entire program and be a liaison between the departments involved.
5. Design the campaign where you announce this program.
6. Launch the program.
7. Be sure to follow up on EVERY entry/suggestion. Allocate resources so that you can do this. This is a full-time job for one employee (or more, depending on the size of the operation).

SOURCES:
1. Here are 9 case studies where social media took out the middleman:
http://barnraisersllc.com/2012/04/9-case-studies-social-media-middleman/

2. The Current State of Social Engagement Inside the Large Enterprise:
http://www.slideshare.net/dachisgroup/current-state-of-social-engagement-inside-the-large-enterprise-engagement-scale-report

3. Transparency.org:
http://www.transparency.org/

4. Twelpforce Case Study Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc6Z5KR-Oys

5. Framework and Matrix: The Five Ways Companies Organize for Social Business:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/15/framework-and-matrix-the-five-ways-companies-organize-for-social-business/

6. Brandwatch
http://www.brandwatch.com/

The Land of Smiles: What a Bank Can Be

December 10, 2012 No Comments

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A COMPLIMENT IN MONTE CARLO: I received an amazing compliment in Monte Carlo last month. A grizzled and seasoned banker looked at me owlishly over his tortoise-shell spectacles and said, “Mr. Hansen, you come from a land of smiles. But we are bankers and we care about just one thing in life: making money.”

I sat with this compliment for some time, thinking about what it meant for me personally. And, as I sat, I kept coming back to the theme of happiness. How am I happy? How is this banker happy? How is my family happy? How is this banker’s family happy? Is it really money that makes a person happy? Or is it something else?

THE HISTORY OF MONEY: When one looks at the history of money itself, it becomes very clear that the pursuit of money alone does not yield happiness. In The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson writes, “And yet the silver of the New World could not bring the rebellious Dutch Republic to heel; could not secure England for the Spanish crown; could not save Spain from an inexorable economic and imperial decline. Like King Midas, the Spanish monarchs of the sixteenth century, Charles V and Philip II, found that an abundance of precious metal could be as much a curse as a blessing…What the Spaniards had failed to understand is that the value of precious metal is not absolute…an increase in its supply will not make a society richer…”

REAL SUCCESS: The real value that people seek is an in-the-flesh connection to other human beings in the context of love. And no amount of money in the world can buy this. Maria Elita, a Greek-Australian healer, has said, “Success to me is being able to look after my grand-daughter when I can, help my children grow up respectfully, spend time with my aging parents, listen to other people’s stories of hope, kiss my boyfriend often, spend every Sunday night with my crazy Greek family, express my truth as only I can, forgive the past, embrace the future and remember The Miracle that I am. None of my success is monetary or material .. Because TRUE SUCCESS has no dollar value, cannot be measured, and does not need awards.”

My hypothesis is that the “land of smiles” is precisely where the banker in Monte Carlo wants to be. This desired place is, as Miss Elita writes, where the awards have to do with family, friends, kisses and hugs.

Now I could stop there and feel self-satisfied about this little piece I’ve written on this sunny morning with coffee, fresh orange juice, steaming croissants and love by my side.

But I won’t.

Because the journey that I want to take is with this banker. In person.

PiedPiperWithChildren

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS FROM BANKERS: I want this particular banker to find a way “out” of the vault of his office and into the sunlight of his family’s embrace. He has a family, he has a life outside the bank. And that family does not get enough of his presence. And, deep down, he does not get enough of their presence.

Yes, this banker likes his bank and the adventure of business. And this keeps his blood pumping. But there’s a missing piece of the story: how can he take this sense of adventure, this exhilaration of the “hunt”, this heady rush of blood that comes from successful risk-taking and turn it into a gift to humanity? How can he turn his creativity with digits into a creative act for communities, for families and for the world at large. Because that’s what the world needs from bankers now.

One of the world’s most powerful bankers, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has said, “Investment bankers are just doing God’s work.” But how can bankers fulfill on this statement of Mr. Blankfein’s? Because most of the rest of the world would disagree with him.

WHAT A BANK CAN BE: Banks have always been solid pillars in society, providing a reference point with a promise of strength, stability and assurance. The bank manager has always been a respected and acknowledged expert leader in the community. A facilitator of conversation. An authoritative source of advice and assurance. But this role lessened in the age of mass distribution and mass communication. It became a game of mass advertising, selling mass product through mass distribution.

Online gathering places allow institutions such as banks to reclaim their position of community leadership. By opening up and facilitating one on one conversation within the supercharged online community environment. And as banks listen to their customers and follow their lives, a new relationship between a bank and a customer emerges. In this relationship, the bank brings a new and deeper emotional and social intelligence to working with human beings.

BANKS TAKING THEIR PROPER PLACE IN THE COMMUNITY: Banks should take their place within the community created through human-centered actions, in ways that are consistent with their institutional strength and provision. Acting in this way in the context of community, the bank will gain true human dimension: by interacting with the community and assuming its place as a pillar in society.

This is an incredibly worthwhile objective, which provides added value and a distinct competitive advantage for banks that choose this path. It’s a path bankers can lead humanity along into the land of smiles.

Deep Transparency

November 13, 2012 No Comments

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Vivere pericolosamente.

That’s what I mean about deep transparency. Just open the entire enterprise up, all the silos, including the black box, and then let customers work with experts/staff to re-form the brand into what it wants to be. The brand is already alive and it needs to feed. So let the very best people feed it: and that’s going to be the customer.

The social networks are a visual experience of the subconscious

November 10, 2012 No Comments

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…but the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, For they dream their dreams with open eyes, And make them come true. ~D.H. Lawrence

A VISUAL EXPERIENCE OF THE PSYCHE: The social networks are a visual experience of the subconscious. We are re-membering the ability to communicate via extra-sensory perception. To say this more clearly: the Interwebs are a training ground for communicating via thought alone. To phrase this a third time: when one uses the Interwebs to communicate, one is peering into the collective unconscious…the realm of collective imagination…you are literally looking into a catalogue of humanity’s thoughts and dreams.

THE NATURE OF THE AVATAR: The Sanskrit noun avatāra is derived from the verbal root tṝ “to cross over”, joined with the prefix ava “off , away , down”. The implication in regards to one’s Facebook profile or Twitter account is fascinating: namely, that a digital social avatar is a separate, living entity fed by YOUR blood, your dreams, your fears, your desires…and by the context in which it flourishes. To say it again: your digital “avatar” is a “crossing over” “away or down” into the social fabric of the Internet. And, I would argue, this avatar has already come to life and is attracting a community (context) every second of every day as others interact with your content, your expression, your 24/7 presence.

NAVIGATING THE IMAGINAL: What the social networks taught me: how to travel to a lived physical experience via the imaginal. To say this a second time, in a different way: a human can create a collage of image, text and relationship in social networks that yields a path into a desired physical experience. And yet again, to say this in a third way: you have assembled your desired location via the stories, images and relationships engaged within the Interwebs.

The New PR – How to become a Brand among Friends

October 15, 2012 No Comments

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The New PR – How to become a Brand among Friends
Eleftherios Hatziioannou and Nathaniel Hansen
Nov 7th, 2012. Rebirth of PR Conference in Portoroz, Slovenia.

What we know from our very short history of living online is that community precedes commerce; there’s no commerce without community. ~Kevin Kelley

THE NEW PR PROFESSIONAL: Employees in PR departments and agencies worldwide should be interested in people and relationships. The excellent PR leader possesses a high social and emotional intelligence. He/she is aware of the needs within a community, including complaints, desires, trends, overall sentiment. Today, we have deep access to communities – because people interact publicly in the rapidly expanding online eco-systems. The new PR pro understands the power of communities and is actively engaged within these settings. PR has traditionally been in charge of letting the world know the corporate view on any given issue. Nothing has changed in this respect – except that we use a new means of communication – namely, the social networks. The New PR pro is ideally suited to nurture and guide the communities forming around brands in social networks. The core activitiy in this process is LISTENING.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~Rachel Naomi Remen

SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: The value of Social Business Intelligence is primarily related to strategic planning and action steps based on sophisticated listening technologies. When a “Chief Listening Officer“ sees a pool of friends chatting about product-related interests, he reports this to leadership (along with possible conversations and content-marketing tactics). Marketing, Sales and PR are called in and the pool of friends is discussed. Every division can learn from the resulting insights of these cross-division collaborations.

INSIGHTS & ACTIONS: In business, we can save a lot of time and money when we are listening. For example: We can be much more precise and targeted with our brand messages. And we can add real value by approaching our prospects and existing customers with helpful answers, solutions and relationship-building actions. A strategy built upon intelligence is much more effective than one built upon leadership’s assumptions and gut feeling. Certainly experience is vital. But matching experience WITH observable behavior in the market is an even more effective way of developing strategy. In terms of PR planning, we have an excellent map showing how the US Army listens and responds to blog visitors: https://thesocializers.com/pr_algorithm.html At each stage of this PR chart, we listen, plan respond and then act.

INTERESTS & INFLUENCERS: To understand the value and function of an influencer in social networks, one must understand the nature of Communities of Interest. A community of interest is a community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about a specific passion, making their connection primarily Interest-Based. Twitter is an excellent example of an Interest-Based network. Participants return frequently and remain for extended periods in Communities of Interest, due to compelling conversations and sticky content.

An influencer within a social network is someone who leads a community of interest. When an influencer sends a message into his community, many members of the community take action and re-send this message to one another. An influencer can turn the tide of opinion within an interest group very quickly to one side or another. The value of gaining an influencer’s attention for a brand, a governmental agency, a publication or a service is HUGE!! The reason for this is that, typically, an influencer has a significant following of other influencers who are interested in a specific topic.

There are many ways to ascertain influence in social networks. The most basic of these is to use Google Ad Planner and Google Analytics to measure the unique visitors to a website associated with a particular influencer. One may also look at the “Talking About This” metric within Facebook Insights, the number of lists a specific Twitter user is on, the number of comments made in YouTube on a specific channel, the job title one holds/company one works for in LinkedIn, the number of re-pins in Pinterest, etc…

There are also a growing number of solutions for taking all of this information and scoring a person’s influence in particular social networks and topics. Klout, Kred, PeerIndex and Empire Avenue are all examples of such Influence Scoring Solutions.

INLUENCERS AS YOUR FRIENDS:
When you find out who the most influential people in your industry are and when you listen to them and study who they are and what they do – you will be well prepared to reach out to them. Your main goal must be to build relationships with them and make them part of your network – just like you did with journalists at press events. But you have to careful about how you do it. You cannot gain their trust and credibility without investing time and efforts first. But once you have established these relationships and “made new friends“ it will help you spread your message much faster and further than ever before.

CONCLUSION: In PR, we want our community to know we care and that we have heard their needs — just like good friends do. In the ideal PR department/agency, we have already assigned listening to a specific staff member (Chief Listening Officer).The rebirth of PR means, we have ideally integrated what we’ve learned through listening solutions into our day-to-day operations. We have ideally distributed our findings to the management and all divisions with the goal of creating a tighter corporate team, focused on the customer as a friend. Through listening, PR has the ability to nurture communities in social networks by feeding them with precise and relevant answers and engaging in conversations. The New PR delivers real value to the customer, the stakeholder and the market as a freind would. And of course it’s about associating yourself with the right people (influencers) who can help you spread your message much faster and further.

If you are interested in learning how the New PR can be integrated in your daily efforts and how you can get the most out of it for your own brand/corportation – come and join our lecture on Nov 7th, 2012 at the Rebirth of PR Conference in Portoroz, Slovenia. There we will share our experiences with international clients from various industries and we will together take a look at the strategies, practical tools and methods we have developed in the past years.

Of course, we are also looking forward to making new friends.

Architecting Heaven: the action of writing one's ideal world into being

October 7, 2012 No Comments

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For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~William Stafford

Perhaps the most confusing aspect of being human is the experience of being alone. We want to connect with one another, to know one another, to be immersed in love with one another. And so we enter the Internet and spend truly huge amounts of time creating worlds to connect within. But for some, deep down,
there is an unsettling feeling that this entire experience in social networks is not meeting what we are looking for. And the question arises as to why this unsettling feeling persists.

Perhaps this feeling is about coming to terms with that moment no-one has mastered…the moment
of passing from flesh into mystery. The moment of physical death. A thousand philosophies speculate on the passage from physical life into the hereafter: from
becoming fodder for worms to reunion with friends and family in the lap of God. The reality is that we cannot avoid this day that eventually comes to us all. So
we keep strong and love those around us the best we can. I believe that humans are architecting spiritual realms via social networks. And I believe that this is what the massive growth of communication in today’s world is all about…a discovery of how to contend with the final doorway, a planning of how one would like “forever” to look like, a participation in a fantasy world that one can make real in a very short amount of time.

To say this again, more directly: The myriad groups and circles that now exist in the digital realm are really a spiritual creation as well. Perhaps we are at a point in history where community created in these digital-light realms precedes or presages the fabrication of such experience in the spiritual realm. Whether one believes in life after death or not, this possibility is here with us now: the bonding of “invisible” presences across the world through image, light and thought. We do this via our laptops and mobile devices every day. And perhaps this is a global training in how to do this with only our minds, only our hearts, only our feelings.

What a truly amazing experience these social networks can be! The experience: I can now see the invisible through my glowing screens. To be clear, I can see the faces and hear the voices of those who share a specific passion with me, who share a common dream with me, who also believe what I believe. Social networks are dream-maps. And it is via these dream maps that I can expand into all that I am meant to be. Giving oneself to one’s deepest passion and discovering a community of support for this has never been so easy, so simple and so satisfying. With one keyword entered into a search field, an individual can make a passage from loneliness into togetherness, from fear into love, from death into life. And that’s a major gift of this experience we are all sharing presently in these networks of light and life.

My conclusion is that humans are architecting their heavens every day via social networks. Humans are writing their ideal worlds into being within the Internet. When I find those who love what I love and share time and food and presence with them…I know, in that moment, that I will have experienced what I believe about the hereafter. These millions of digital circles are a massive proof of humanity’s core desire to be reunited. To find a specific Twitter list, a specific Facebook group, a specific LinkedIn group and to correspond with those who occupy this group…this is an image of humanity’s greatest aspiration: to find one’s people…and be with them, in the flesh, in the spirit, in the heart.

SOCIAL STORY WEAVING

August 14, 2012 No Comments

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WHAT IS “SOCIAL STORY WEAVING”? The concept behind “social story weaving” is to bring a potential network of Benefit into awareness of itself. No path could be more efficient than telling a story that is the seed of a future reality. In this action, we begin to see how social networks may be used to form connections in a fun, creative way for the benefit of all involved. Want to be woven into a fiction that becomes a reality? Then try it out TODAY!!

SOCIAL STORY #1 – WEAVING FACT AND FICTION INTO WIN-WIN CONNECTIONS: Once upon a time Jason de Silva — https://www.facebook.com/jasonlsilva -— and Barry Ptolemy — https://www.facebook.com/barry.ptolemy — noticed a girl from Sicily named Gia — https://www.facebook.com/giasdivinedelight —. Her life captured the perfect blend of homeliness and eroticism, nurturing and adventure, Hestia and Aphrodite. Jason and Barry decided to make a home-spun movie about her. Sjoerd Koppert — https://www.facebook.com/SjoerdKoppert — provided the sound stages and musical talent for the film. And that is how Uru — https://www.facebook.com/urumusique —, one of Koppert’s top talents first came to Palermo.

The film followed Gia’s romance with her fiance Jason — https://www.facebook.com/jason.duque.18 — across the continents. The couple purposely chronicles their journey to marriage in the social networks. The tension in the plot comes when multiple suitors begin showing up in Palermo, looking for Gia. And that’s the name of the film: Looking for Gia. In the midst of filming, Ryan Kavanaugh — http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryankavanaugh — at Relativity Media caught wind of the story and wanted in. He put 30 million into the film and the project went to a whole new level. The story demonstrated how stories are woven via social networks every day of the year. The film connects the well-being of the entire planet to the well-being of Gia and Jason’s relationship, showing how the ups and downs of economies, governments and individual’s all depend upon the success of their marriage.

The film’s plot is fascinating because we see through it how everyone has power to shift the direction of humanity and move us forward or backward. There are 8 major tangents that take place in the film. All of these tangents tie back to Gia and Jason’s relationship and the growth of their love.

*This post is dedicated to Gia and Jason Duquestar, two very beautiful souls from Palermo, Sicily.