A heart warming story of Caroline Casey shared by herself. Sometimes we’re blind, figuratively, when we try to be someone, something, that we’re are not and we know we are not but we still try hard. Caroline shares some great examples and lessons she learned throughout her life journey. I particularly like the way she put it how she wants to change the way we see the world, people and challenges. An amazing woman, and loved the talk.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

As a publisher it is important to understand the lay of the land and worry about the distribution, sales, the work effort that goes into building a crafty book, the hard work in followups, contracts, etc. etc. Traditionally, these were and have been and will continue to be the focus items for any publisher, and to add to their woes, the digital content and the digital distribution is here to stay. 

Publishing in digital age is fun, exciting, challenging, a lot more work, and a pure joy. And its faster than before. And most of all it will keep the publishing industry on its toes with new innovation in publishing and making it more reader friendly. 

I recently met some fellow publishers, authors, and publishing industry folks, and most of them had this general fear about what the digital age is going to do to them – nothing terrible they hope. And indeed, it is nothing terrible.

The advent of digital content and digital distribution on the other hand has oppened up some new avenues and new channels for any publisher across the globe. And it also has created new opportunities for any publisher to seek and advance in their business with new opportunities. Fiction or non-fiction, or poetry or prose, or any type of content that someone is writing to share their life’s worth of experience has no boundaries and borders. Every publisher needs to embrace this digital age with open arms, as oppose to hiding or shying away from it.

Enough fear is created elsewhere as to how the digital content will destroy the traditional publishing or is already doing that, but through the loooking glass there are better oppotunities than missed ones in this new age.  

I plan on sharing some stories, and share my experience as a newbie digital publisher of rapidBOOKS. 

Check out my latest post on TechVibes –  Calgary tech entrepreneur nomintaed for Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management – http://bit.ly/9XleC3

Check out my recent post on CIO Blogs –

Challenges in managing IT Operations – http://bit.ly/itopr

Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. View the full video of Jeremy Rifkin’s talk at the RSA.

Courtsey RSA Animate.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace. Courtesy www.theRSA.org.

Checkout my latest story @Techvibes – Productivity. Cloud. And the iPad – NetBooks – Tablets era http://bit.ly/bqw4Ib 

Looks like @TwitterAPI has been keeping very busy. Raffi Krikorian, Twitter Developer, unveiled today Twitter Annotations – “twannotations”.

Annotations – a note of explanation or comment added to a text.

According to Raffi, Twannotations will bring a context perspective and will add to increased search and streaming ability. The way he’s described the Twannotations looks like is that every tweet annotation will have a “type,” and each type can have several attributes – types can be repeated but attributes cannot, and these will be publicly visible unless you set your account to private. Interesting fact, Twitter is not going to validate Twannotations, but there will be an annotations explorer where one can see the treending annotations, stats, and developers ‘wiki’ zone.

Here’s the presentation:

We all know the value of entrepreneurship, and the benefits it reaps for all of us – be it economical, life-learning, technology advancement, research-wise and academically. Entrepreneurship is not only about job growth, creation of new jobs, or technical innovation, but it also fosters a culture that is forward looking, helps in transforming local & national economies and prepares the local region for tough competitive economic and technology environment. 

Entrepreneurial firms drive the future of innovation and prosperity in nearly every community, and, thus, are the focus for any economic development efforts. But with advent of recent economic downturn there should be more efforts to promote local economic development. And when it comes to transformation I don’t think there’s any single cookie-cutter approach or a silver bullet that can help us instantly transform our economy. Rather, the development of a culture that fosters entrepreneurship as a long-term strategy can only supplement growth and help fuel the transformation of local economies.

Jerry Yang, Co-Founder of Yahoo! recently presented his thoughts on high-growth entrepreneurship at the Presidential Summit of Entrepreneurship.

Some of Jerry’s thoughts:

…the power of the Internet, innovation and ideas, and entrepreneurship is borderless.  People around the world, especially young people, are increasingly enthusiastic about chasing new opportunities and starting their own businesses.

…While entrepreneurship may be an individual’s pursuit, a “high growth entrepreneurship” environment where technology entrepreneurs can thrive doesn’t happen by accident.

…You need to have the right foundation to enable entrepreneurship to flourish.   A foundation that includes: a commitment to research and development; investment in education (including fundamental science at the University level); access to capital funding; and a culture that encourages an entrepreneur ecosystem – from immigration and technology access to online communities and mentors who encourage our youth.

You can watch the full video here. 

This is an interesting piece by Hugh MacLeod, and touches the core – the basic fundamentals of how long you have to wait to wait for something in anticipation for the much awaited outcome that is not going to realize very soon. And then in the end its a may be. And yes rightly said Hugh. But how many of us realize that patience is a virtue, and in a tweeting world today I wouldn’t count many. 

In Hugh’s words:

This cartoon is about the nature of PR. Unlike most marketing, the game isn’t about writing a check, pulling a lever and waiting for the sales to come in. It’s a wee bit more subtle and long-term than that.

 

And educating the client about the long-term view is probably the hardest part of the job…