Tag: wolweek

Lonely ideas have hidden friends

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Lonely ideas have hidden friends. Working out loud and sharing the ideas draws out the hidden friends.

Draw Out The Hidden Friends

An example of discovering hidden friends came after yesterday’s post on the power of sharing lonely ideas.

Anne Marie McEwan saw my post through a share by Richard Martin (@indalogenesis) on twitter and responded sharing her lonely idea.

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In one of life’s moments of serendipity, I had just been advised through twitter of the launch of peeracademy.org so I knew the hidden friend for Anne Marie’s idea:

All of sudden an idea isn’t so lonely anymore.

Every Idea has Friends Somewhere

If you have an idea, there is a good chance someone else has had the same idea, a similar idea or an aligned idea. If you let your idea be lonely, you will never know how their thoughts and actions might help your agenda.

We manufacture serendipity when we put ideas out in networks to be found, engaged and used. The networks supply the capability but sharing our idea creates the moment of opportunity. Knowledge in flight has somewhere to go.

Working out loud let’s others connect the dots between our ideas and others. Share an idea and it is rarely lonely any more.

See if you can’t draw out a few friends for your lonely idea.

International Working Out Loud Week is from 17-24 November and is an opportunity to experiment for a week with sharing of your work. Join in the movement of people working out loud.

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Share the Lonely Ideas

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Put your ideas in circulation. Ideas don’t deserve to be lonely. Share them in conversation. Watch them grow. Discover you do more.

Ideas start in conversation

We are surrounded by wonderful ideas. We have many every day. Too many are born and die lonely and unloved.

Almost all the ideas explored in this blog come from conversations. These posts are the insights and reflections on a flow of daily interactions. Many come from working out loud and the comments others make in reply to my work. 

Over time, I have learned to watch for those wonderful ideas that pop up in conversation. Teasing them out in conversation enriches them. Noting them down supplies a ready source of inspiration for future posts (Evernote is a blessing). Without others to share those conversations, there would be far fewer quality ideas.  

Ideas are better in action.

All of the ideas that become posts are further improved by being shared further, refined, tested, challenged and built upon. The really good ideas grow most through use by others.

Ideas get lonely if they have only one brain to occupy. Lonely ideas wither, lose their power and are forgotten. Sharing an idea increases its value. You still have the idea but now it has been shared elsewhere. Not only do you still have it but the process of sharing enables others to help you improve your once lonely idea.

Even better, a lonely idea shared is a call for collaboration. So many of the best projects I have been involved in arise when an idea shared becomes a common cause.

Share your lonely ideas. Connect with others to create, share and improve your ideas.

You will discover you do more by working out loud.

International Working Out Loud Week is from 17-24 November and is an opportunity to experiment for a week with sharing of your work. Join in the movement of people working out loud.

What I learned from Global Day 1 of #wolweek

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

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Lessons are already coming in from International Working Out Loud Week (#wolweek) even though it has only just begun.

While it is the end of Tuesday in Australia, Monday was a holiday and most of the world is only now starting day 2 of #wolweek. Here’s what I have experienced so far:

  • Just do it: #wolweek began as a conversation with Jonathan Anthony and Austen Hunter. Somewhere along the way the idea of a week working out loud had a date assigned and became International Working Out Loud Week. The idea clearly resonates with over 200 tweets alone on day 1. If your idea is good enough put it to test in the market without further ado. We could have spent a year planning the event and got less traction.

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  • Sharing magnifies: The conversation that started #wolweek was public. We discussed our plans everywhere we could. Ideas and encouragement helped us continue. People jumped in to push the momentum up on this because they believed a week celebrating working out loud was worthwhile. As there is no organisation behind International Working Out Loud week and there has yet to be a meeting, enthusiasm and participation driven by sharing sustains the activity.
  • Networks explode: I wondered if #wolweek would be a phenomenon of a few chatty people at first. However when we saw major influencers (Thanks Helen Bevan, Gloria Lombardi, Helen Blunden, Rachel Miller, Jane Hart, Miguel Zlot and many more) and brands with big reach ( Thanks Change Agents Worldwide, NHS, Yammer and more) join the conversation it was clear that the sharing of #wolweek would be magnified by networks. Networks explode the potential of sharing. As Jonathan Anthony likes to say, we discovered the BOOM! moment.
  • You are the person: Bryce Williams first described working out loud. There are many other advocates who are probably better placed have spent more time promoting working out loud than the instigators of #wolweek (for example John Stepper, Jane Bozarth, Harold Jarche, Luis Suarez, Austin Kleon, etc to name only a few). If we had worried about support, their engagement or permissions, it would not have happened. Many of the above have jumped in enthusiastically as supporters of #wolweek.  

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  • Change takes time: I have learned to enjoy the fruits of working out loud in networks, but I have always biased this working out loud to networks that have a common purpose and people I know even, if it may be part of  much larger community. It is still uncomfortable for me to use twitter or another totally public forum for this sharing. #wolweek has already shown me the benefits of being a little more open and a little less final in my sharing in this public forum. I can start to see what Luis Suarez and others have gained from moving beyond email into open conversations.
  • Less noise:  I expected to see a lot of noise (apologies if I am inflicting some, but then adjust your filters). I have been searching for posts with the tags #wol, #wolweek and #wolyo. I expected to find at least some noise. Perhaps it is my purpose in learning about #wolweek, but I have found almost all the posts fascinating, a great insight into other’s work. I am not alone.

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Four more days to go globally.  Let’s see what magic all this sharing can bring.