Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Northeast Corridor: Call my psychic and let's push for insurance to reimburse

When friends are really in trouble, here along the Northeast Corridor we bring up the "p" word - that is, "psychic."  NEW YORK Magazine even provides reviews of the best psychics in the Metro Area.

When it comes to selecting a psychic, you better know what you're doing. For more than two years I have been referring them to Andre, a clairvoyant at Psychic Interative, 702-216-9900, extension 827. The cost, for the relief of angst, is peanuts: $19 for 15 minutes.

Belief can create the placebo effect, of course, and since I believe in Andre's magical powers they have had a profound influence on me.  My business, for example, is back to earning monthly what it used to pre-economic meltdown and I have raised my social intelligence (SI) to near-genius level. 

My only beef is that, unlike the cost of therapy, this isn't reimbursable by insurance and the bill-back-to-patient not tax deductible.  That needs to be changed.  I will put Andre on it.

 

Facebook: Will it make college reunions obsolete?

Face it, transportation costs keep skyrocketing.  For me to drive or fly from Connecticut to my alma mater Seton Hill in Greensburg, Pennsylvania for a reunion would set me back.  And in these days of the new frugality, being set back on my budget is unacceptable.

Also, Facebook keeps me up-to-date with all my classmates who matter to me.  What purpose would it serve to return to the scene of my adolescent suffering?  In addition, there is the expectation, isn't there, of making a donation.  By this stage in my life I have so many other competing causes like animal rescue and supporting the New Haven Zen Center.

Colleges might have to orchestrate reunions over Skype.

Hardship Fatigue: Slouching toward joy

"Let's go camping, where the wireless carriers can't find it."

That's what a buddy from way back suggested to me yesterday.  He had had with the media's hammering on tragedy and hardship, ranging from 9/11 to all those who had lost their houses. 

A guy in marketing, he also predicted there would be a surge in the introduction of products and services which bring joy.  Last night when I went to see the inspirational film "42" of Jack Robinson, which has a happy ending, the movie house was jam-packed on a Tuesday.  My friend sure seems to be on the money.

In communications, what we should be pitching to clients, editors, and reporters is Happy Talk.  The analogy is post-World War II when Americans grabbed greedily at whatever could bring joy.  That included buying single-family houses with grass they could tend, having lots of children, and serving good booze at cocktail parties.

Spinning good news, just like spinning bad news, is an option we have, including in our personal lives.  Instead of starting out the conversation on the elevator with "So sad about Boston," a successful mortgage broker in my complex belted out, "Isn't it grand to be alive." 

Bro, Can You Spare Me a Link: Ham-handed SEO

Social media is mature.   It's light years since Robert Scoble triggered shock and awe with the book "Naked Conversations" which he co-wrote with Shel Israel.  In it, the two evangelists informed the world that business had become a conversation. 

To become part of that conversation, everyone who wanted to make a buck or have influence set up a site and sought the counsel of the search engine optimization experts (SEO) about attracting traffic and comments.  Those were the days before likes, shares, tweets, and retweets.  For most that didn't work out so hot.  That's because they didn't really understand how to conduct a digital conversation which resonates. Just as fatal they didn't know how to network with those who could provide them inbound links which had a lot of Google juice.

SEO is no different from any other business process.  You have to know what sells, what incentives will help you sell more, how to attract hotties on the net who will link to your material, and how to keep coming up with what's new and will resonate.

This month this blog is eight years old.  Compared to the big guys like BUSINESS INSIDER and DRUDGE REPORT, I am a two-bit player.  But from the get-go, I have been hounded by those requesting, usually in the most ham-handed way, links.  They will fail most tests for Emotional Intelligence (EI).  Currently, it's even more difficult for them to get the inbound links they want.  Yet, they haven't figured out how to play the SEO game.  They may never.  They may simply be stuck in the pre-digital era when business was not a conversation.

Meditation Clears Mind Like Modafinil: April Schedule of Events at New Haven Zen Center

The performance-enhancing substance for The Achiever Class is Modafinil, reports NEW YORK Magazine.  That has made Walter White's Meth on "Breaking Bad" seem so 20th century.  The hitch with Modafinil, as with most additives for the human psyche, is that it can become addictive.  Then we all knows what can happen.

When that does happen, some users/abusers discover that plain-vanilla meditation can have the same effects.  The person can focus without distraction and think clearly about anything for hours on end.

After reading this in NEW YORK some may be connecting the dots and deciding that it might be smart to skip the Modafinil and go straight to meditation.  So, here is a schedule of the April activities at the New Haven Zen Center, on Mansfield Street, not far from Yale.  Stop by and join the rest of us blissed-out souls who manage awesome feats of concentration.

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April 3 - (Free) Interviews with Guiding Teacher Ken Kessel, JDPSN.  From 7:00 P.M. until about 8:30 P.M. Ken sits on his cushion off the main meditation area to listen to us and somehow that forces us to listen to ourselves.  The few words he does say tend to resonate for weeks.

April 5 to 7 - Buddha's Birthday, Providence Zen Center, Providence, Rhode Island.  Buddha's birthday has a pull force for the Kwan Um School of Zen.  There are rites and rituals, along with lots of food (forget mindful eating), games, and getting to know the delightful human being inside the robes monks and nuns wear.  For more information on taking the journey to Providence you can please call 203-787-0912.

April 8, 7:00 P.M. - Zen at Yale's Battell Chapel (where College/Elm Intersect) Ryushin Sensei, the Abbott of Zen Mountain Monastery, will deliver a free Dharma talk.  You don't have to be a member of the Yale community to attend.

April 21, 9:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M.,  (Free) Interviews with Guiding Teacher Ken Kessel, JDPSN.  After the one-on-one sessions are over, then there is a Dharma talk, followed by a light lunch (guess that means mindful eating.)

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For those who may be shy or simply wary and just want to slip in and try out zen without the fanfare of an event are welcome to:

Meditation - Every Sunday, 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M.

Meditation + Chanting - Every Wednesday, 7 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. Arrive around 6:30 P.M. and a zen master will introduce you to the fundamentals of practice.

All this comes free but donations are welcome.  As they say, "The Dharma costs nothing but the heat and electricity do."

P.S. The scientific term for what occurs during meditation is "neuroplasticity."

 

Infographics: And the word was made graphics

Words aren't going away.  They just can't be stand-alone any more.  Text mandates graphic support. 

No surprise Huffington Post has a help-wanted on Craigslist - here you can read it - for a communications professional competent in Infographics and other kinds of graphics.  For a while we have been a visual society.  However, the migration to graphics being a must-do has been accelerated by all the digital content competing for our attention.  Text accompanied by graphics will win out over naked words, both in short and long form.

Mashable had been an early adopter of Infographics everything.  Soon enough, on sites I blogged for the editors featured those contributions which had graphics such as charts.  It's obvious for us in writing that we have to add to our toolbox the wrenches and hammers to put together ways to graphically illustrate the points made in the text.

New Haven Zen Center Retreat: Washing windows for enlightenment

The zen master handed me and another seeker of enlightenment bottles of window-cleaner and paper towels.  Our work detail during the one-day retreat at the New Haven Zen Center this Saturday was to make all the windows on the second floor sparkle.  The task was to be performed in complete silence.

My co-cleaner, I have a hunch, had been a manager of some type or maybe an engineer.  He immediately came up with a system, elegant in its simplicity. Since he was tall, he would do the top of the windows, and since I was short, I would do the bottom.  We finished up a few minutes before the 45-minute deadline.  This experience could be something we present at TED. 

Other work projects for those who also took part in this retreat included polishing the wood, bleeding the radiators, cleaning up after the lunch, and sweeping the front and the back of the house.  Those too were to be done in silence. The abbot of the center was assigned by one of the program planners to dust the altar of the Buddha. 

The objective of the worker-bee period was to approach work with "mindfulness."  That is, we were to be one with the task, with ourselves, with our co-workers, and with the now.  The awesome thing is that, once work was framed along those lines, it wasn't work.  It was just what we on retreat were doing as part of acquiring the mindset and tools of zen.  In that, it was no different than the sitting and walking meditations, chanting, and sharing a meal in a ritualistic manner. 

The trick, of course, is to be able to transfer that spirit of seamlessness or wholeness I was introduced to on the retreat today to making a living on Monday.  I will keep you posted.

Ideas - That's why clients and even some employers are buying Baby Boomer writing services (not experience)

Some have assumed that, with the economy in recovery, that aging Baby Boomer me is back in demand because clients and employers value experience.  And can again afford to pay for it.  That assumption may not be 100% accurate.

Sure, the insight which comes from operating through trends and fads and having an intuitive grasp about what is effective is something to bring to the table.  However, those contracting services and even hiring those in communications want the ideas. 

Those ideas take all sorts of forms.  They could be about what kinds of topics to pursue. For example, when considering how an expert in human resources can have her bylined opinion-editorial published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, the writer could suggest focusing on the utility, outcomes, ethical, and legal issues associated with leveraging BigData in recruiting and hiring.

Another form they could take is for a mid-sized law firm to learn to manage controversy in order to attract new kinds of business through the attention the media bring. 

And yet another type of idea is reconfiguring the persona which is standard in a line of work.  Instead of the security analyst be brash and exhibit extreme confidence, have that person develop a hybrid identity that is part Warren Buffett and part Pope Francis I.

The bottom line on all this is that ideas are what get organizations and individuals into the sandbox to play.  Without fresh perspectives and ways to get things done entities look, walk, talk, and smell like they are leftovers from the 20th century.

AT&T's Jimmy Azhari: Hero to Working Tech-Unsavvy Baby Boomers

"Go see Jimmy.  He's at the AT&T Mobile store on Universal Drive, North Haven, Connecticut."  - That's what I tell my Baby Boomer colleagues who have to keep up with mobile if they want to keep working.

The "Jimmy" I refer them to is the mobile sales representative Jimmy Azhari for AT&T.  By nature and/or nature, he has infinite patience and even seeming love for us Baby Boomers who enter that mobile center in emotional bits and pieces.  Likely we are several developments behind in mobile technology and we know it.  

Tonight, since I will have a long ride on Metro North from New Haven to Grand Central and then on the subway to lower Manhattan to my new gig, I had to see Jimmy myself.  My issue was: What was the most reliable and lowest cost way for me to have my own WiFi for my laptop?

He explained my options.  Slowly.  And in detail.  He then went through the pricing.  Slowly.  And in detail.

No surprise, for Q4 2012, Azhari won the AT&T VP/GM Excellence Award for being among the superior sales representative in CT.  It wasn't only my colleagues and myself who had found exactly the right solutions via Azhari.

What I chose was the AT&T hotspot.  Then I asked Azhari to install the whatever.  He did just that. Then he showed me how to use the new mobile device.  I asked a few questions.  He explained why it really wasn't a cost-effective way to replace DSL. 

When the sale was all rung out, I felt such relief.   Two years ago I felt that same weight off my shoulders when I crawled into that same AT&T center totally distraught about the smartphone I had wrongly selected.  It was not working out and because of that it was hurting my business.  That's when I met Azhari.  

He calmed me down, explained my alternatives, programmed the iPhone, and then gave me a brief tutorial how to use it.  There had been no need to return to the store again until tonight.

If all tech-savvy folks on the front lines were as empathetic and caring as Azhari perhaps we Baby Boomers would be making bigger strides in finally feeling perfectly at home in a world according to mobile. 

Mary: The Crawley to watch next season on "Downton Abbey"

In America, the fourth season of "Downton Abbey" will start with Mary Crawley as a single mother.  That's the character development we will likely focus on.  The rest of the family has sort of settled into change as necessary.  Edith will become more confident and reckless.  The Earl will go along with the new order. Branson will evolve into the business manager.

Mary is a wild card.  The loss of her soulmate could soften her.  She has had a sharp tongue and domineering personality.  She could navigate to the wise woman Mama has been.  Cora is the force of motherhood on the show.  The family could use a wise matriarch in-training.  Cora won't be around forever and she did almost die of the Spanish flu.

On the other hand, the tragedy could harden Mary into a shrew. She could make Edith's unorthodox choices an issue in the family, causing great suffering. Edith is getting stronger but she is probably not strong enough to push back against Mary.  Also, Mary could continually tongue-lash the Earl for allowing the country estate to lose money over the years and champion commoner Branson.  Mary knows Shrimpy lost it all.  She could also become meddlesome on how little Sybil is reared, spilling her poison into the next generation.